A "New" Kind of Virtualization for Distance Learning

IT communities have been buzzing for a few years with the belief that desktop virtualization is clearly the path of the future. The June 13, 2011 issue of InformationWeek has two separate articles regarding desktop virtualization, a system whereby all functions of the individual user including the applications required to run them are pulled from a remote server. With on-campus virtualization, you do not necessarily need a powerful computer at your desk. Instead you need only a device, such as a Citrix Xen client, capable of pulling everything it needs from the server, displaying it on the screen, and taking inputs from mouse and keyboard. In theory, a college should be able to outfit its lab or classrooms in a more cost effective way.

However, virtualization is also the path of the past. Before personal computers (either Apple or IBM versions) came into being, the business world used large mainframe computers with mindless, aka CPUless and hard driveless, terminals to access them. At some point it just became much cheaper for an organization to own several or many PCs rather than a very expensive and difficult to maintain mainframe. Mainframes in general required their own atmosphere controlled spaces. They had significant trouble with power losses or fluctuations. They required very specially trained and skilled technicians. If a mainframe goes down, every terminal in your organization is down. Designed long ago, the architecture for mainframes could not operate the resource intensive applications of today or even 5 years ago.

Although in virtualization we are not talking about mainframes, a good deal has changed. In fact, virtualization now does not necessarily mean you need a special client device. Instead, it may be possible for a virtual server to work with existing desktop computers, laptops and tablets.

I believe this has a fascinating potential to resolve the issues we see in our technology classes. Typically, students sign up for a technology class who do not have the required software, who have incorrect versions of the software, who have hardware that cannot run a demanding application, who have software installed that conflicts with the application required for the class, and who at least at the start of classes do not even understand the impact these problems have on their performance in online classes. With so much being said about the importance of all students getting the best possible start in class, it is even more important in a distance learning class, where technical deficiencies at the beginning will place even a good student in peril throughout the course.

At this point, I am not convinced that desktop virtualization will mete out its potential on campus but it does have the potential to solve a number of problems online. Hopefully, the new CEO of IBM, Virginia Rometty can see the new path of virtualization.

YouTube or iTunes U: Who Will Win the Battle for Educational Content?

2005: the Pioneer Days for Web Video

In 2005 providing video and audio content electronically to our students was a vexing problem at the college. Video files in particular presented several obstacles. They were insidiously large; took forever both to upload and download; were outrageously difficult to edit and even to add simple titles; and came in a variety of file formats, depending on the camera used. We talked about buying a streaming server which for our college and level of usage was much too expensive and required an additional expensive streaming license from Real Networks or another similar service. We posted them on our own web site but this meant that students were required to have a viewer for videos, an additional codec for the file type, and possibly upgraded hardware on their home computers. The video also needed to completely download before it could be played. Shortly after this I discovered that the ability to progressively download, a process that mimics the streaming of a regular server, had been added to Adobe’s Flash Player. (Progressive download was first added to Flash in 2003 but the implications were not readily apparent until a few years later.)


A colleague at the college did some research and discovered in 2007 that we also could likely use Apple’s iTunes U as a method for delivering our video content. We could upload videos at no cost onto Apple’s servers which would be downloaded on the student end using the iTunes Player either on the home computer or on a portable device like the—at the time—extraordinarily popular iPod. Unfortunately, the generous Apple contract required us to sign a limited liability clause which proved to be a several-year “sticking point.”


Comparisons but Not Apple and Apple

Fast forward to today. We and the rest of the educational world are using both methods for video.


Much of the video currently on the web including Google’s YouTube is sandwiched in a Flash wrapper to help it play with a minimum of problems. YouTube is very easy to use and has millions of users worldwide.


ITunes U now has near 1000 participating institutions, approximately 75,000 available files and millions of downloads.


Because the numbers fluctuate daily and iTunes U is primarily “marketed” to educational institutions it can be difficult to compare the two. YouTube can and is used by anyone with a video to upload. Although anyone can use iTunes for music and movies and have an iTunes account, iTunes U accounts are for institutions. It is not exactly an apples and apples comparison.


At the college we use both services. Faculty members find it easy to upload video content for their classes on their own with YouTube. Cellular phone cameras can quickly post video to YouTube. Our college adds recorded college events and activities to iTunes U.


However, YouTube content was limited to 10 minutes, regardless the file size. In 2010 this was increased to 15 minutes. ITunes limits its uploads to 1 GB file size, regardless how long it runs. We have found that lengthy videos can be compressed into small file sizes so that ITunes works best for our recorded campus events and whole class sessions, whereas YouTube is very convenient and easy to use for faculty within their classrooms.


EDU YouTube: A Strong New Contender

The fight has heated up with EDU YouTube which allows academic institutions to add longer running video content to a specific YouTube channel.


Although I have not seen it yet in the EDU YouTube courses, Google has a straightforward method for profiting from their videos. They have sidebar and pop up ads relative to the video content. I do not see the same clear methods for profiting from the iTunes U videos.


Currently, I would speculate that because of the ease of use, the absence of the necessity of a player especially with the rise of smartphones that can easily access the Internet, and the easy potential to profit, I believe that Google’s YouTube is on target to win the race.

Educational Twitter Problems

Twitter has and has had tremendous promise for use as an educational tool but bringing it into broad educational usage is fraught with challenges, some that have to do with students, the administration, and faculty…and some with Twitter’s own policies.

Added in 2009 Twitter lists are also a great way to group together and make the tweets you follow more manageable. Since your lists can be private or

public, you can also follow lists themselves, essentially follow the tweets of sets of others without following them individually.

For a few years, we have been using Twitter as an administrative communications tool. We post weather and classroom closing, registration, and student program information. It has been a hard sell to our students and to our faculty. Our faculty members believe they do not have the time to learn new applications. Our students also do not want to learn anything they are not already using. Our increasingly younger students attempt to use Facebook for everything rather than explore other things that may be useful for other purposes. Additionally our IT administration of our collective colleges does not trust the permeability and security of free systems. After our college successfully began using Twitter for weather messages, the system of colleges licensed a pay system that can send emergency messages to cell phones but not much else.

Last year my department cosponsored bringing to speakers Mark Freydenberg and Ben Aslinger, Bentley University professors, to our college for a presentation on Web 2.0 technologies that they use in the classroom. I find fascinating their discussions about using Twitter and cell phones in the classroom as a way to get better and more rapid participation and feedback from their students. Their integration with Twapperkeeper meant

that they could capture and archive Twitter discussions for better analysis of their content and quality. It was disappointing to hear that Twitter used their terms of service to eradicate Twapperkeeper. However, there may other ways to capture the content.

For the past semester, our numbers of Twitter users were at about 17% our official college Facebook Insight numbers. We began using more than a year before Facebook but despite concerted efforts the number of users has not budged by more than one percent.

The future of Twitter is unclear. Twapperkeeper founder John O’Brien believes that Twitter is forcing out helping applications so that they can develop and somehow monetize these aspects themselves. However, I have not seen the results of their efforts so far. The popularity of Facebook dominates the college landscape. Facebook also continues to morph into the social media application that does what all others do. So far the only uncopied advantage Twitter has is that it forces users to be more concise with its 140 character limit. But is that an advantage or simply an anachronistic novelty?

Missing the Value of LinkedIn

A few weeks ago I participated in a discussion about the difference between elearning and distance learning with a number of educators: a consultant, CEO of a mission, a professor, an online trainer, a CLO, a teacher/writer, and a technology director. They were from Washington, D.C., Utah, Great Britain, California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Virginia, and Oregon. They had all volunteered to be a part of the discussion, to share their knowledge and perceptions. For each of them I was able to see online resumes so I could verify that they had some experience, education, and/or background knowledge. I could tell quickly that their comments were valid and reliable during our discussion. We had this conversation asynchronously over a couple of months. A couple of individuals posted research links and other references. I do not normally directly network with any of them but I know people who know some of them. With this asynchronous conversation happening I received emails each time someone posted so that I did not have to constantly check this for two months. During this time several people looked at my background and experience, some desiring to connect with others in my profession, others looking for collaborators or employees with my skill sets. All of this happened in LinkedIn.

In the paragraph above, I have done more to explain what LinkedIn does than the sum total of news coverage for the past couple of weeks. The media focused on the initial public offering and continually asked us if the fact that the IPO did so well was due to a new dot-com boom. They asked us this question even though they gave us only one possible answer. They did not talk about the possibility that LinkedIn has intrinsic value, how it is different than Facebook and Twitter, how the business has grown over the last five years, that it is populated not by everyone you know but by colleagues, that LinkedIn profiles people but has ways to plug in business and industry, and that because LinkedIn is connecting individuals with the same professional interests it is also building the most powerful electronic “mailing list” in the world. The media—all the media—really failed in informing us so that we could answer their question intelligently.

For five years, I have been trying to generate interests at my college in LinkedIn which I believe has enormous value for our students and faculty. I have always placed Linked in the pantheon of social media: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I organized workshops and talked to many individuals as we worked on other projects. It has been an uphill climb but some of our faculty members are encouraging students to get the account and those students are using LinkedIn to get jobs.

For their part, the students initially do not like LinkedIn. They want it to be Facebook. Although LinkedIn is making what I believe are some antithetical concessions, it is not the place where you post what you are wearing or where you are eating dinner. It is not the place that you post your favorite jokes and pictures of your vacation. It is not the place for concise blast messages. Not the playground Facebook has become, it is grown-up. It is the networking of the adult world, a digital place where time, money and other resources matter and a place where who you connect to online has more of an impact than on your feelings. Students have to be taught the value of LinkedIn, just as I have to teach our faculty and college administrators. Just as the media should be “teaching” everyone. Having stated this, I cannot deny that there is a potential for people to make a boat-load of money but this is not the only story. It is not even the main story.

Compfight for Images

From the January edition e-Learning review I discovered a really neat Web 2.0 tool called Compfight, which allows you to search the Internet for images. Okay so you're wondering can't I already do that with Google? Yes, you can but you have a limited—yes, Google, I said limited set of ways that you can search. Compfight is a Flickr image search tool. Compfight’s thumbnails make it easy to use as well.

Compfight allows you to search for images in safe and unsafe modes as Google does. It also allows you to the license. You can choose "any

license, creative Commons, commercial" to sort the images based on the license. You can also find just the original versions of the picture, its copies, or both. Plus if you like the picture you find this button so that you can tweet it or Facebook it right away.

As a learning management system administrator and a faculty trainer at my college I must confess that it is difficult to help even our faculty users understand some of the ins and outs of copyright, fair use, and public domain items when it comes to their course. Lately we've been talking just a little bit more about Creative Commons which perhaps offers a middle ground, a place where others are willingly sharing their content but also specify exactly what you can do with it. This is what is missing in the general Internet search with Google.

One thing that always concerns when a powerful, new free tool appears on the Internet is its long-term prospects. So many web companies start out as free hope they will be bought out by someone "big." Other companies are hoping that once they get us addicted to the usage their pages that we will be willing to pay for the service. Since change the college is a process not an event, training people to use something new is problematic if that item only last a couple of years. Come by which began in 2008 is already due for some administrative changes. And according to Site Trail it is respectable usage numbers. Still is valuable enough that for now I am advising people to use it before it becomes a pay service.

Too Much Interactivity in Online Courses

The first time I heard it I was at a Sloan-C conference a few years ago. It was a small isolated study so I regarded it as a curiosity rather than a study to cause us to re-examine our online learning philosophy. Since then, I have seen it again a couple more times. Last year in the Distance Learning Report a different group of researchers reported that increased interactivity lead to decreased student satisfaction and may actually decrease a student’s chance of success in the course.

It makes sense to me that increased work places a student under increased stress to make sure the extra activities are completed in a timely fashion.

Despite the sample sizes and the program implications, I can accept the possibility of the veracity of the researchers’ claims. It makes sense that in the continuum of online learning activities there is both a point where the activities can be insufficient in number to allow the students to adequately achieve the course objectives and a point at which adding more does not mean the students learn more.

However, I am not interested in seeing more studies showing the same on either side, “those fer and those agin.” For those of you doing research I propose the following questions. Where are the lines to be drawn? Where is the “sweet spot” in the middle where it is ideal for learning, not too much but containing sufficient rigor? Is “sufficient rigor” the same for all institutions of higher learning? If not, what accounts for the differences? Who is best suitable to determine what is too much or too little, faculty, administrators, student, accrediting bodies, states, or the federal government? Is there a different point depending on discipline?

For now, I suspect that at most institutions for a sizeable percentage of institutions there is too little interactivity, especially if the institutions allow instructors to design their own content. Answering the questions above can help us to repair this problem.