It's out of the classroom now!

July 23, 2010 - PRLog -- Distance learning, eLearning, online learning, and learning technology - these are contemporary names for non-traditional knowledge transfer approaches which have, over the last couple decades, come to life in the classrooms of formal learning. But A. Andaz Ahmad, Director of Instructional Technology, and Christina Smith, Director of Student Life, Leadership and Development, for Ivy Tech Community College – Northeast in Fort Wayne Indiana, let the Jin out of the bottle. In less than three weeks, they brought together experience, imagination, and contemporary learning technology to meet a seemingly impossible goal: Implement a demonstrably effective New Student Orientation program before July 1, 2010.

Not only did they beat the goal; and every other campus in the process, they fundamentally altered the scope of use for contemporary learning technology.  Working together Andaz and Christina decided to look at the historic student orientation from a new perspective: rather than have new students be passive recipients of data (capital and people intensive brochures and lectures), they chose to create an interactive experience! They set out to change the game; to begin the movement toward “knowledge networking” as espoused by their technology partner Qarbon.com, Inc.

With complementary skills in instructional design, communications, business, and technology, they quickly created goals and a framework for their ideas. They were able to rapidly “storyboard” their ideas with Qarbon’s ViewletBuilder. As the principal creator of the New Student Orientation program, Christina learned to bend ViewletBuilder to her wishes in just a few hours. At the same time Andaz focused on the demonstrably effective part of the goal buy leveraging the integration between ViewletBuilder and ViewletCentral.

As the New Student Orientation components came together, they could reinforce key points with voice-overs and some other effects to help ensure that they keep students engaged and yet still move quickly through the necessary material. They were able to hold true to sound learning theory in this process by including validation steps - quizzes. These embedded quizzes require students to demonstrate understanding of the material presented so far. What has been learned is crystallized. If the material has not been demonstrably learned then rapid feedback is at hand and the student is referred back to the source content. Interactive engagement is enhanced by embracing student input as appropriate to the topic being presented. Since sessions are available over the internet on-demand, the orientation can fit into any student’s crazy life.

To address the issues of demonstrating effectiveness, Andaz experimented with capabilities of ViewletCentral which houses the Viewlets that comprise the New Student Orientation; and receives data from each use of a Viewlet. As the New Student Orientation emerged, Andaz observed the native capabilities of ViewletCentral to capture very detailed data about any student’s individual path through the orientation. This helped Christina discover where people hesitate or stumble as they experience the orientation Viewlet. From there she made clarifying edits to the materials. In addition to data about the path taken through the orientation, ViewletCentral receives the data entered in response to a quiz or survey question. This combination of data is available as a reliable data source for correlation analytics regarding resource use, student performance, and more.

Andaz and Christina, in a remarkably short time, without the need of programmers, were able to create a clear, concise, and compelling solution to what seemed to be an impossible goal. Now any other campus that has ViewletBuilder can get the New Student Orientation Viewlet from Andaz and Christina and then modify it to their own unique requirements in a few minutes or hours! In addition to meeting the goal, they have demonstrated the productivity improvement value of using contemporary learning technology outside the real or virtual classroom!They have demonstrated that contemporary learning technology can rapidly overtake many of the booklets, binders, seminars, and in-person sessions that are so expensive and difficult to change.

As ViewletBuilder becomes ubiquitous with faculty and staff at IvyTech, they can begin to enjoy the network effects with the informal knowledge needed by students, faculty, staff, and other authorized and interested parties. With ViewletCentral as the library and data hub any organization is experiencing Qarbon.com, Inc.’s notion of “knowledge networking”. From ViewletCentral (given proper permissions), any Viewlet can be accessed from an email, web page, instant message, even Facebook or other social networking site.

The rapid a high quality results demonstrate Andaz’ position that building on long term strong relationships with technology vendors often outweighs any transient pricing or functional differences. He says, “The special administrative and technical support I received from Qarbon is a direct result of mutual experience, commitment, and trust that has developed over many years. It is unlikely that we could have been successful without that mutual investment over time. These factors hold great promise for us at IvyTech.”

A. Andaz Ahmad
IvyTech Community College – Northeast
Director of Instructional Technology, Media Services, and Distance Education
In progressively senior roles, Mr. Ahmad has demonstrated positive leadership, resourcefulness and imagination, judgment, responsibility, and more while reconciling the often conflicting needs of administrators, faculty, staff, and students.

Christine Smith
IvyTech Community College – Northeast
Director of Student Life, Leadership and Development
Since 2006, Ms. Smith has brought innovation, imagination, and creativity to improving the success of students at IvyTech and IIT; buy reorganizing processes redefining communications and increasing student engagement.

Qarbon.com, Inc.,
A leading innovator in knowledge transfer technologies for over a decade, delivers capabilities for Enterprise Knowledge Networking™ with a package, comprised of ViewletBuilder Enterprise and ViewletCentral Enterprise. They are easy to use, proven, and reliable technologies that are packaged and licensed to meet the unique challenges of enterprise communities of interest and action. For more information, contact Dave Mosby at dmosby@qarbon.com.

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Qarbon is a leading innovator of contemporary knowledge transfer technologies that serve medical, financial, business service, and many other industries. The products improve productivity of SME's, power users, trainers, and technical staff. And, all those they serve.