Author: Brian Powell

iLios

The infrastructure for curriculum management in the undergraduate medicine program at my university is under strain. While the medicine program has expanded to 3 campuses in a distributed model and enrollment more than doubled, the learning management system (LMS), assessment, scheduling and curriculum management tools have not kept up and are not integrated. The solution is a system developed at a similiar medical school in the University of California at San Francisco. iLios, as it is called, is a curriculum management system which stores the content separately from the LMS in a learning object repository where it is tagged with metadata and can be accessed directly and developed by faculty and staff. Implementing this system here will make it easier to map and improve the curriculum in a way that makes the expansion sustainable.
For a copy of my full pitch email me at brianpuede@gmail.com

Tags M12, pitch, Venture Forum

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Mod07: One-to-one Technologies Uncategorized

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Mod06: Open Source

OSS can be good prep for MS in the office

Post author By Brian Powell
Post date October 24, 2009
7 Comments on OSS can be good prep for MS in the office

“Opponents of OSS in schools feel that using applications like OpenOffice.org to teach students office productivity applications would put them at a disadvantage in the workplace. Do you feel that the skills students would learn on OSS applications can transfer to proprietary applications? ”

I think students can be just as prepared for MS Office in the office environment if they are taught the basic desktop publishing concepts with OpenOffice.org and several other such applications in the class. The idea is to teach them the basic concepts and procedures of planning, laying out and editing content giving them experience in problem solving by exploring the interfaces, menus and help manuals of several applications.

What inevitably happens for students taught with open or proprietary software is that they get to the office and the new version of MS software has a radically altered interface. Just compare MS Office 2003 with MS Office 2007, or compare Word Perfect with MS Word. As for other software, Macromedia Flash changed significantly each time it came out, and then was added to Adobe Creative Suite.

I admit that students would probably prefer the proprietary professional workplace software to in some cases create better product easier. Fortunately, there are trial versions to practice with before going to the workplace.

Tags M6

Mod03:The Global Learning Technologies Marketplace

European venture resource list

Post author By Brian Powell
Post date September 24, 2009
1 Comment on European venture resource list

I take global resources to include European ones as well.

Here’s a list of top 20.

http://www.vccafe.com/2008/11/12/top-20-entrepreneurial-startup-resources-europe/

Tags Mod3

Mod03:The Global Learning Technologies Marketplace

CASUS Cubed

Face One: Market Focus

CASUS In.struct is a system developed in Germany beginning in 1994. It currently combines an authoring tool, player and learner tracking to create and deliver online cases for undergraduate and continuing medical education to help prospective physicians practice making diagnosis and other decisions about patients. It’s market focus is higher education and training related to continuing education.
Who we are. CASUS. 2009. Retrieved September 23 from
http://www.instruct.de/en/WerSindWir/index.html

Face Two: Types of Offerings

CASUS In.struct is primarily an infrastructure provider offering an authoring tool software, some guides on how to use it to create case content, and a server to host the player and the cases created by the customer. The system has been developed to the extent that CASUS has several licenses for different uses of the system. An authoring license allows the customer to create cases on CASUS. The course license allows the grouping of several cases under a course administration tool which provides detailed assessment information on each student user. An Exam license allows the use of the cases as exams for testing students online, and a faculty model license is an arranged customization of CASUS In.struct at a negotiated cost.

Face 3: Who is the Buyer?

The buyers of CASUS In.struct are notably not medical students – not the end users. The buyers appear to be all in higher education or continuing education and are either medical faculty, medicine related programmes or departments.

Face 4: Global Markets

CASUS has clients both wired anglophone countries and “european” countries with language skills. The first clients were in Germany, and then new clients were established in North America. Most notably, a slight customization was dubbed CLIPP (Computer-assisted Learning in Pediatrics Program) and the 31 or more cases developed in it are in use by over 80 medical schools in the United States and Canada.

CASUS Projects. CASUS. 2009. Retrieved September 23 from
http://www.casus.eu/index.php?article_id=22&clang=1

Face 5: Development of the Market

It appears that clients in Germany, Europe, and North America comprise a market that supports import of content and infrastructure. That they buy licenses to use the German server hosted system suggests that they support importing the infrastructure, and the sharing of content in the form of cases created by different clients and contributed to CLIPP in North America suggests that clients in the United States and Canada are willing to import content.

Face 6: Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

The medical schools in Germany and North America already have well developed learning systems in the form of instructor-led courses. However, they are under pressure to achieve competencies in a growing curriculum as, for example, new illnesses, clinical treatments, technologies, and pharmacology are added each year. Many schools are under pressure to increase enrollments as there is a shortage of physicians and medical faculty to train them. Consequently, there is a little of all three levels of competition with other forms of learning. In some instances and aspects the cases are readily accepted into the existing mix of learning technologies which tend to be teacher led. In other instances, for lack of lecturers or scheduled class time, cases are used for independent study. In a third instance, the use of online cases is imposed on faculty and students who prefer lecture delivered content instead of problem-based learning or independent study.

Tags Mod3

Brian’s review of pitches

Post author By Brian Powell
Post date September 17, 2009
No Comments on Brian’s review of pitches

This is my analysis of three of the pitches. I’ll posit these before commenting on others’ even though it is late in the week. Recombo 2005 seemed easier to analyze as an entrepreneurship and as a business then the other two which could be considered intrapreneurships within UBC. For the latter I kept thinking that the interview approach did not bring out the most of the interviewee’s knowledge in the form of a pitch for an investment.

More on Ingenia later but I will say I had the least confidence in that pitch, perhaps because from EVA perspective it seemed a risky bridge too far.

Recombo

CEO Credibility	Brad appears to have a good grasp of his company’s status, strategies, and challenges as generalities, and seems to go into the necessary depth of detail compared to some of the other pitches I viewed.
Management Team	He has a very small team of experts at 12 but does not give much detail about what their expertise is in
Business Model	Sounds like Recombo as done their homework on their market, product, workflows, and optimum company culture. They have tailored a product set that they can reuse with each customer instead of building one-offs. He is balancing the risk of passing off some potential clients to focus on those more closely matched to Recombo’s packaged products.
Competitive Products	The Content Integration Platform sounds robust. I’m not familiar with the market myself. Brad mentions a similar company that got bought out but I would have liked to have heard whether he is aware of any other company that could move into this market with the three publishers he doesn’t have as clients as well as content provider companies not using his publisher client.
Market Readiness	It sounds like Recombo has been in business for several years and has demonstrable successes. I remember using what I think was Recombo freeware for validating LOM data back in 2003, when reuseable and XML repackaging of chunks of content was emergent.
Technical Innovation	From my experience, I think it has been as innovative as IMS and standards have been nascent and emerging. Their products will only be viable until their clients move to systems that adopt interoperability standards, smoothly import and export content and data, or the number of competing systems shrink or merge in the pattern of Blackboard’s. When there is more homogeneity among content systems someone is bound to innovate a product which is more portable or standalone. The current excitement about mash ups and pipes suggests to me that there is interest and expertise transferrable to innovation by others in this area.
Exit Strategy	As an EVA it sounds like he wants to corner more of the publisher market than the one of four publisher clients he has and through them more content provider clients for non publishing needs. He either wants to increase revenues to $100 million or be bought out. I think he should focus more on innovation, integrate his product more with frontrunning performance and training systems.

David Dodds, CIO, UBC

CEO Credibility	David Dodds sounds well versed about mission, vision, strategy and workflows.
Management Team	Five vice presidents on a steering committee appear to be the management team, but it might also include the innovators and “thought leaders” he refers to. The university has experts in all aspects of its venture, and they appear to be available to him as resources.
Business Model	The eStrategy sounds to me like a very high level strategy to disseminate the vision and support large, mostly campus-wide longer term initiatives. It sounds like a wise approach to me – especially as it views the university as a community and encourages bottom up initiatives that fit with the vision.
Competitive Products	I don’t think this is a relevant question. However, leading faculty is aptly compared to herding cats. He realizes it is better to promote a simple message of the vision and meet frequently with innovators in the faculties to give them voice.
Market Readiness	Demonstrable successes with campus registration and a distributed undergraduate medicine program.
Technical Innovation	I’m not sure this is relevant either. The innovation here is is in fostering solutions for a university of this scale by treating it as a community, and fostering innovations that involve off campus community.
Exit Strategy	It sounds like success is making the university produce better graduates and help the community. The community would include other educational institutions which could benefit from the innovations as well as the graduates. He did not say it but those who benefit might just give back to the university.
Overall investment status	I interpret this to mean to invest in the university. I have to say yes, because it is producing large scale results that have value beyond UBC.

Michelle Lamberson, OLT
I had mixed feelings about addressing this pitch because of the proximity of it to my work; however, this is not the first such intrapreneurial unit I have seen of this kind, and I really would like to explore how it could succeed. As an EVA the evaluation of her answers in the interview is a little constrained by not being able to ask more questions.

CEO Credibility	Michelle is faculty and is an early adopter. This gives her the needed credibility with faculty and technologists. She also appears sociable and approachable which are assets in maintaining the necessary connections in the university
Management Team	He has a very small team of experts at 12 but does not give much detail about
Business Model	Sounds like Recombo as done their homework on their market, product, workflows, and optimum company culture. They have tailored a product set that they can reuse with each customer instead of building one-offs. He is balancing the risk of passing off
Competitive Products	She is surrounding by competitors if central IT and IT and innovative groups in faculties find it easier to work directly with each other and seek to divert funding from OLT if they perceive OLT is not focussing on initiatives relevant to their needs. For example OLT might pursue development of one wiki product while another group in a faculty might have more success developing another wiki product.
Market Readiness	In my opinion, faculty focus more on research than on teaching. There seem to be too many other groups with overlapping interests and working with so many of them to get consensus on moving some innovation forward while the majority of faculty are focussed elsewhere means that this will be a long road.
Technical Innovation	I’m not sure this is relevant either. OLT’s goal appears to be to get new technologies that enhance teaching and learning to enterprise level and ubiquity on campus. The innovation would be their positioning administratively as a central resource, and their ability to develop new technologies to enterprise level. I understand that innovation in intrapreneurial settings works better in quiet until there is something substantial to show without looking like funds have been diverted from others. She definitely has a balancing act in this respect
Exit Strategy	OLT’s goal appears to be to get new technologies that enhance teaching and learning to enterprise level and ubiquity on campus.
Overall investment status	I assume the funding I would continue to fund this discretely and give funding incentives to faculty who collaborate.

Tags Mod02:Business Bootcamp

Guy Kawasaki the “Art of the start”

Post author By Brian Powell
Post date September 13, 2009
No Comments on Guy Kawasaki the “Art of the start”

Guy talks about his book, the “Art of the Start”. Youtube has various talking Guy Kawasaki clips but the first listed is short and sweet. In contrast to David Heinemeir, he emphasizes creating meaning rather than profit as being core to a business. Sure, David also alludes to fixing little problems, making the world better, and improving the quality of life. The book has a chapter on pitches for different purposes and humourous suggestions such as making the presentation font big for the eyesight of those successful but usually older venture capitalists who will be watching. One possible way of reading content on inter/intrepreneurship online is to look for it in books 24×7.

Tags General Discussions, M2; Business Bootcamp; Powell, Mod02:Business Bootcamp

Mod01: Introductions

Hi from Brian (aka Robert)

Post author By Brian Powell
Post date September 11, 2009
No Comments on Hi from Brian (aka Robert)

Enough reading, I’m taking the plunge. This is my first course in MET, and I’m a little surprised ETEC522 is the first one for me. It should be an invigorating start. I like the online aspect because I’m really into anywhere anytime and lifelong learning, and because I have a long commute.

I’ve been working in multimedia and distance education for the last fifteen years and currently work at UBC in the Faculty of Medicine helping with their distributed program. My career has taken a circuituous route through teaching in Northern Quebec, overseas, then doing a MA in Applied Linguistics, to developing language labs and software at UBC, to seven years online course design and support at Athabasca University while taking the odd course now and then on the way.

This course looks like it will give me a more current and corporate perspective on educational technology. I hope to see an overview of emerging technologies beyond what I’ve been able to work with in my current position. It’s also a great opportunity to see what is going on elsewhere. I look forward to working with all of you.

Tags introductions, M1, Powell