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Editor's Notes

• #2: There is a hugh market for elearning, it’s a large and growing area. By 2010 the e-learning industry is estimated to be worth 12.1B dollars in the US. The infrastructure sector is growing at a rate of 28% per year – so this is a healthy sector to be involved in with plenty of growth opportunity We have targeted our tool for enterprise, which is estimated to be worth 8.1B in the US by 2010 Ireland is a leading innovator in elearning. Many of the leading e-learning companies are based in Ireland. We can see evidence of this is the investment in this area of late, with EI and SFI investing heavily, but most notable of all was the announcement recent announcement of HMH who are to invest 350M in elearning R&D in Ireland creatiing 450 high value jobs. Large and growing Infrastructure - 1.9B The enterprise customer segment – target – 8.1B
• #3: Thank you Good morning ladies and gentlemen. In order to compete in the global market high cost economies such are those in western europe and the US need to differenciate themselves as a place on innovation, a knowledge based economy. In order to do this training and retraining is very important and will become even more important. Elearning allows us to train staff any time anywhere, and also can personalise training to individual needs. But all this comes at a cost – elearning courses are very expensive to produce. What I am going to present to you today is the product of cutting edge research we have been doing in DCU investigating elearning course authoring. We have have developed a state of the art software tool that allows elearning courses to be produced cheaper and faster. Not only that but the elearning courses produced will be of a higher quality as they will personalise to the individuals training needs
• #4: Before looking in detail of the MIKAEL course development tool, I want to set the scene by saying a little about the e-learning industry as a whole The elearning marketplace can be broken into 3 main sectors – content, infrastructure and services. The MIKAEL tool operates in the infrastructure sector, which is the engine of elearning. It is the technology that manages, creates and delivers e-learning. The MIKAEL tool as a course development tool fits into this sector, with other infrastructure, integrating with content management systems and course delivery systems Distinguish where we fit in the wide spectrum that is the eLearning market place LCMS - not a delivery system, but we manage the content with a view of creating courseware Definition – Methodology by which a form of technology is used to deliver educational and instructional materials for the purpose of training an individual or group entity.
• #5: There is a hugh market for elearning, it’s a large and growing area. By 2010 the e-learning industry is estimated to be worth 12.1B dollars in the US. The infrastructure sector is growing at a rate of 28% per year – so this is a healthy sector to be involved in with plenty of growth opportunity We have targeted our tool for enterprise, which is estimated to be worth 8.1B in the US by 2010 Ireland is a leading innovator in elearning. Many of the leading e-learning companies are based in Ireland. We can see evidence of this is the investment in this area of late, with EI and SFI investing heavily, but most notable of all was the announcement recent announcement of HMH who are to invest 350M in elearning R&D in Ireland creatiing 450 high value jobs. Large and growing Infrastructure - 1.9B The enterprise customer segment – target – 8.1B
• #6: Rich heirtage of elearning in ireland World leaders and innovators
• #7: Moving forward – strategic investment in the space We can see evidence of this is the investment in this area of late, with EI and SFI investing heavily, but most notable of all was the announcement recent announcement of HMH who are to invest 350M in elearning R&D in Ireland creatiing 450 high value jobs.
• #8: Time-consuming - Powerpoint 33:1/Elearning 200-250:1/Instructional software 500+:1 Resource intensive – trainer/course developers expensive resource Inefficient – much of the material is available Limiting - personalisation
• #9: The MIKAEL tool has been built on two key concepts – reuse and personalisation Firstly the tool looks to reuse any existing resource in an organisation or on the wider WWW, so that the expense of creating new learning content is kept to a minimum. In terms of what we can reuse, we can reuse knowledge structures describing how to teach some concept, we can also resuse learning content such as pdf, word, powerpoint, flash annimations, assessments. Secondly the tool looks to personalise courses created to take advantage of everbodies individuality. The dimensions which we can customise include: Prior knowledge – the knowledge people come into a course with –depending on which different learners may have differing starting points in a course Learning goals – take an a course in accounting ethics such as a course in Sarbian Oxley, we would expect an accountant on the floor to get a different course to the CEO of an organisation. Each needing to know the regulation at different levels for differing reasons. Learning styles – personally I learn best through audio, but many people take information in best when it is in text form, these are very simple differences in learner styles but what we can do is utlise the way individuals learn best so that they learn faster through personalisation
• #10: In order to create an elearning course using MIKAEL, the course developer engages in 4 simple iterative steps. Firstly the course developer defines what to teach. To do this the course developer constructs a knowledge map, of the course defining the main concepts in the course and the relationships between those concepts. The course developer can import this information from some resource, such as the index of an ebook, or some pdf document. By importing the knowledge we elminate the cold start problem and give the course developer something to work with right from the outset of developing the course. Secondly the course developer fleshes out the knowledge structure with learning content. – Traditionally the course developer might have gone to google and searched for each concepts he or she needs content for, MIKAEL automates this search for you, searching multiple search engines, digital learning repositories and internal repositories with one click of a button. to google and search for material on the concept, the tool will do this for you - but not only google or the WWW, the tool can integrate with knowledge repositories in your organisation and get learning content which is particular to your product Thirdly to allow for personalisation by defining the anticipated learner demographic and outlining what elements of the course are for what demographic. Allowing us to define the elements which are for a CEO in an organisation and elements of the course which are for the accountants in an organisation for the sarbian oxely course. Finally, the course is exported using SCORM standard, or what ever the standard that is in use in the organisation, the course is then ready to be imported by the organisations course delivery system to be delivered to employees of the organisation.
• #11: To come back to the benefits we outlined at the start of the presentation, I just want to go through them once again demonstrating the dimension of the MIKAEL tool which allows for each benefit. The first benefit, was for the course developer stating that courses development would be more efficient , we have shown this to be the case through reuse of learning content from the organisation and from the web, and reuse of organisational knowledge as the starting point in course development. Not only that but time saving are made through the automated search of content. Another great thing here is that the tool is powerful enough to take advantage of advances in web searching technology to make search more accurate. The second benefit, was that staff in the company would get better training from a courses developed using MIKAEL, this is due to the fact that mIKAEL creates courses that personalise to the knowledge workers needs, recognising that different people have differing prior knowledge and experience before taking a course (eg. Some staff might come from a technical background others managerial) also differing learning goals (take a course in sarbanes –oxley – the CEO of a multinational needs a different course to a fund accountant for their day to day duties) We can also personalise to how people learn. Training produced is cost-effective for the organisation as we are reusing as much organisational knowledge and content as possible rather than going to the expense of creating it. Through personalisation staff are only in the training for as long as they need to be as courses are very focused.
• #12: Finally, I just want to say a few words on how we envision this project forward. Over the past 3 years we have developed a robust flexible elearning course authoring tool. The time is now ripe to customise this tool to some sector. There are two potential mechanisms for this: Firstly through a tech transfer were we give you the tool, and you customise it to your business needs. The second option is to use the expertise we have in DCU in this area, where we can customise and mould the MIKAEL tool around your buiness training needs. We think that the EI innovation partnership scheme would be an ideal mechanism for such a venture. If you want to learn more about the MIKAEL tool, please come have a chat with us at the DCU stand. Thank you very much