-
Dear LMS companies (and other ed tech sales people),
Thank you for getting in touch with me, and for not bothering our VP and President and CIO after I didn’t initially respond to you voice mail or email request to talk about the latest features that your LMS has to offer. In the six years I’ve been in this job, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with many of you, both in person and via other means. I admire the enthusiasm and patience you have in a role where I personally would struggle, especially when trying to get people like me excited about your latest offerings. I suspect it must be very deflating to talk to people like me, and I…
-
Mobile Learning at an Applied Institution
We’ve been asked on numerous occasions about our mobile strategy–how we got there and where we are going next. Oddly, we are rarely asked the why question, but for me that is really where it starts. The Context When I first came to JIBC 4 years ago, mobile was on my radar as the latest thing but I was already at that stage of ed tech dis-illusionism where everything sounded like a buzzword. But the more I learned about this peculiar institution– which boasts a relatively unusual range of course offerings, course formats, and professions and pathways–the more mobile became interesting. When a particularly savvy program area pitched the idea of an app, explaining…
-
Innovation in Higher Education
I spent the better part of last week at CNIE 2014 in Kamloops where I got to enjoy some good sunshine, great TRU hospitality, great music, and good presentations and conversations with old and new colleagues. It was probably the first time I’d been to a conference where I left with a feeling that there was a common angsty thread in many of the discussions around innovation, nicely kicked off by Audrey Watters and already captured on her blog Hack Education (how does she do that so fast??) and wrapped up by Brian Lamb (not yet posted but hopefully captured). The purpose of my presentation–slides here–was to talk about how an over-investment…
