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Scooped by Ana Cristina Pratas |
"I belabour this point because it has been the practise of most traditional educational institutions to place most of their efforts into the creation of institutional, and not topic-based, portals. That is to say, most institutions list only their own course offerings, to the exclusion of other institutions. They rely on people using standard search engines to locate the course, though of course the portal is structured as though someone would first look up 'The University of Alberta' and then puruse the course offerings (indeed, the University of Alberta
menuhttp://www.atl.ualberta.ca/disted/distlist.cfmfurther requires that you proceed to individual faculty pages before you see any course listings).
I'll call this the 'restaurant' model of online course offerings. Like restaurants, traditional institutions are appealing to their name and reputation (and the occasional review). The only 'brand' present in a restaurant is the restaurants' own; the only choices offered are from the restaurant's own menu. Production and consumption is localized. Advertising promotes above all else the restaurant's name and distinctive quality.
It is hard to over-emphasize this point. For even where some various institutions have formed coalitions, the tendency has been to favour the individual institution over the breadth of content and expertise. California Virtual University (CVU), which I discuss elsewherehttp://www.atl.ualberta.ca/downes/threads/column041499.htm, is a classic example of this. Even though a consortium was formed, each institution clung rigidly to its own identity and methodology, even to the point of individualized course numbering systems.
Now online learning portals have existed for some time - I can off the top of my head list TeleEducation http://tenb.mta.ca/ and the WWWDEV course database at the University of New Brunswick http://www.unb.ca/wwwdev/c3.html. Even in such portals, courses are listed by topic. The name of the institution appears only as an attachment to individual courses.
What is new about Hungry Minds - and about UNext, a similar service http://www.unext.com/ just featured in Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,32474,00.html- is that these agencies are acting as online course brokers. Rather than merely listing online courses, they are acting in some capacity as a representative for both the course vendors and the potential students.
well worth stepping back to do some harvesting and generation of new perspectives in the topic...