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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Wiki Course Authoring

In my Ten Predictions for eLearning for 2008, I said -
Wiki + SCORM + Add-ins will become more common for easy authoring.
Not sure if he saw my post, but I was just reminded by Tim Seager from Xerceo about their Prescribe tool that provides:
Full Wiki, RSS functionality that is SCORM conformant for tracking and managing competencies.
He also pointed me to a video that shows the tool in action. However, this video may be the worst video I've ever seen in terms of making me want to use something. It's horribly cryptic, you can't tell what's happening and it defeats the whole point that I see in using a Wiki for authoring...
A Wiki should make course authoring extremely easy and even easier to make updates. It also could allow learner contributions in some kinds of controlled scenarios.
Their video makes it look really complicated. My guess is that it's not that bad and would make a lot more sense if I knew the tool. Tim, you may want to get help on better presenting your tool.

The other thing that they aren't currently talking about is using various add-ins to provide additional functionality within the course. This is something I described a long time ago in: Authoring in eLearning 2.0 / Add-ins & Mash-ups.


7 comments:

Chris McQueen said...

Wow, you're right, that is the worst video I've ever seen. I didn't make it through the first 30 seconds. I hope someone takes away the person's Captivate license. (And, say it with me people, 'voice narration').

Anonymous said...

Holy cow... it was like a contest to see if you could figure out what he was clicking on!

Slow it down...

I'll take voice narration, but text narrative would be fine, too, if I could control the progress.

That video gave me a headache, though it looks like the tool itself might be cool ... I think.

Xerceo said...

Sorry everyone, and thanks for your patience. Special thanks to Tony as well.

We've just put up a newer version ( slower paced w/ voice narration). Please keep the comments coming.

Best,

Tim
Xerceo

Anonymous said...

What caught my eye in your post was "Full Wiki, RSS functionality that is SCORM conformant for tracking and managing competencies." I am not sure the wiki is useful for tracking and managing competencies. I used it last semester for my class and my students loved it. Many that I thought were not getting anything from the wiki (based on what was in the wiki) actually learned a great deal through the process. The final product was convoluted and very difficult for an outsider to understand. However, when my students did a presentation on what they learned and gave a "tour" through their wiki, I realized that the use of the wiki was a learning tool but the final product was not an assessment tool. As a result, I don't think you can "track and manage competencies."

Xerceo said...

Hi vyonkers,

Our thought on Xerceo Prescribe: SCORM course + wiki is to include assessment/survey building to an editable SCORM course. This means you can have the experience your students had of a collaborative wiki but you or they can add surveys, comments and assessments. Finally, from the assessments and using any SCORM based LMS your students competencies can be tracked and all of this part of a learning plan with other courses/ content assigned.

Tim Seager
Xerceo

Anonymous said...

Hey Tim, thanks for not being offended at the comments.

Can you put up a link to the new version of your video? I still see the old version from Tony's link.

Xerceo said...

Hi Jef,

You should be taken to the new video by following Tony's link. If not, here's the direct URL:

http://www.xerceo.com/tutorials/Xerceo-Prescribe-Introduction.swf

Thanks,

Tim
Xerceo