5/11/2010

Microsoft Office's Last Stand

It's difficult to overstate the success of Microsoft Office. Calling it one of the best-selling tech products of all time is a bit like calling Michael Jackson a very popular musician—it's certainly accurate, but it woefully misses the mark. According to Microsoft, more than 500 million people around the world use the Fantastic Four of productivity apps—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Yet no one simply uses Office; for many, these programs are an essential daily tool kit, the ever-present background hum of the white-collar grind. | 0 Comments

5/09/2010

Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network

While the LMS has become central to the business of colleges and universities, it has also become a symbol of the higher learning status quo. Many students, teachers, instructional technologists, and administrators consider the LMS too inflexible and are turning to the web for tools that support their everyday communication, productivity, and collaboration needs. Blogs, wikis, social networking sites, microblogging tools, and other web-based applications are supplanting the teaching and learning tools previously found only inside the LMS. | 0 Comments

7 Things You Should Know About Analytics

Analytics tools provide statistical evaluation of rich data sources to discern patterns that can help individuals at companies, educational institutions, or governments make more informed decisions. Colleges and universities can harness the power of analytics to develop student recruitment policies, adjust course catalog offerings, determine hiring needs, or make financial decisions. In a teaching and learning context, data from such sources as the LMS, college application forms, and library records can be used to build academic analytics programs that use algorithms to construct predictive models that can identify students at risk for not succeeding academically. | 0 Comments

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