Observations on Training 2002
The second good article in as many days posted to the ELearningLeaders group, this item is a summary of reactions to the Training 2002 Conference just held in Atlanta. More...

The Myth of Interactivity on the Internet
Of course not everybody would agree with the author's one-sentence assessment of online learning ("If learning is learning with people, then elearning is learning with content.") and when he says "the internet" he mostly means the web. Still. More...

Pricing Changes by Blackboard and WebCT Cost Some Colleges More -- Much More
We all knew that the less expensive learning management systems - notably WebCT and Blackboard - would be raising prices. Right? But what price increases! According to this article, WebCT's new system, Vista, will cost in the six figures for most colleges. More...

Selecting a Vendor: Market Demand

You will have to register as a member of the elearningleaders Yahoo group in order to read this item (a major annoyance) but it's worth the effort to have a look. More...

Self-Organization and Identification of Web Communities
What is surprising is not that the web self-organizes - human creations have been doing that for millennia - but rather that it self-organizes in such a way that we can retrieve the resulting structure. More...

Standards for Quality Online Courses
Their summary says it best: "More than a year ago, MVU began developing rigorous standards to guide the design and evaluation of online course quality. Based on decades of research and the work of the best minds in the field of Instructional Design, we have recently completed a comprehensive set of standards that can now be used to design and evaluate online courses." Now the question is: do we need ASTD certification any more. More...

WebCT Launches Industry's Premier Academic Enterprise System, WebCT Vista
Pricing is of course not mentioned in this short press release as WebCT launches its new "integrated, enterprise-class" learning management system. More...

Hybrid Teaching Seeks to End the Divide Between Traditional and Online Instruction
This discussion of blended learning - or as the Chronicle calls it, hybrid learning - is useful but is written as though the author has only just discussed online learning. Blended learning is introduced in that same eyes-wide-open style, despite the fact that it has been around for years: when WebCT was first introduced six years or so ago, for example, it designed to be used in what we would now call blended learning. More...

Deviants, Inc.
On the surface this article may appear to have nothing to do with online learning. Indeed, it reads more like corporate America meeting John Stuart Mill in drag. But that's why you need to read it. The thesis of the article is the strongly worded assertion is that deviance is what leads the way to innovation, and therefore that corporations should embrace deviance. "The history of innovation proves it; corporate leaders need to accept it: The advantage always falls to the deviant, because nature -- and commerce -- hates stasis. More...

What Executives Must Know About E-learning
Good survey article that provides an executive level (read: simple and brief) summary of the reasons to consider e-learning and the best way to approach e-learning for the first time in a company. More...