View 2 | mLearning Part 2: Open Formats - MDDE 610

by Andre Gallant
Tags: mLearning, open-source
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Overview

This VIEW continues to build on my focus on mLearning throughout my studies. It is both an example of mLearning in action, and a testament to my dedication to the open-source movement.

In writing this assignment, I believe I have touched upon the following MDE competencies:

1. Problem Solving, Analysis, & Decision Making

1.1. Recognize problems.
1.2. Define the aspects of problems.
1.3. Formulate questions.
1.4. Find and access information.
1.5. Evaluate the relevance of information for a given situation.
1.6. Compare alternatives.
1.7. Make reasoned arguments leading to rational solutions.
1.8. Justify these solutions.
1.9. Present them to others.
1.10 Recognize the wider implications of specific knowledge.

2. Instructional Design & Development

2.5. Develop instructional products or learning objects in distance education.

3. Communication Technologies and Networking

3.1. Use a variety of communication and document sharing tools to create, reflect, and communicate with others.
3.2. Analyze and evaluate the various applications and implications of these technologies.
3.3. Justify the applications of these technologies in real-life contexts on the basis of theory and research.
3.4. Compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of these technologies in various distance education contexts.
3.5. Apply these technologies in distance education and in real-life instructional contexts.

4. Communication & Interpersonal Skills

4.2. Construct coherent arguments and articulate ideas clearly to a range of audiences, formally and informally, through a variety of techniques.
4.3. Justify and defend your ideas orally and in writing in meetings, forums, seminars, exams and other contexts.
4.4. Support the learning of others when involved in teaching, mentoring, moderating, or demonstration activities.
4.5. Participate effectively in collaborative group activities..
4.6. Demonstrate effective design, delivery and evaluation of presentations, computer conferences, or seminars.
4.7. Work cooperatively with diverse groups and individuals both within the university and/or in the workplace.
4.8. Organize, and convey your ideas effectively through a range of communication skills and work collaboratively and in teams.

5. Research

5.1. Frame research questions.
5.3. Access and critically evaluate sources and content for quality, applicability and relevance.
5.5 Formulate questions and reasoned arguments, leading to rational conclusions.
5.6. Summarize and synthesize information with a view to pursuing deeper understanding.
5.7. Effectively communicate information, arguments, and analyses in the discipline of distance education, in a variety of forms, to suit different contexts and audiences.
5.8. Critically analyze the issues and discuss the wider implications affecting the use of information.

 

Reflection on Competencies

Teamwork is a recurring theme in my mLearning endeavors. For this assignment I re-teamed with a previous collaborator (Collin Madland), and met some new teammates. We once again had to evaluate our best collaboration solution, and again devided upon Google Docs (3.1-3.5). This web-based technology has had a recurring role in several of my collaborative projects, though I am weary of some of its privacy-related concessions (3.4).

Because this assignment required that I decide upon an issue relevant to mLearning of interest to me, I took it upon myself to address a problem facing the content-creation community and look for a solution that might suit the educational community (1.1 – 1.8, 1.10). I did so by actually creating an mLearning video (2.5, 5.7). As with the project presented in my first VIEW, my team and I also had to moderate a conference for this mLearning content (1.9).

The video itself dealt with the issues of content creation, formats, and copyrights/patents (5.1, 5.5). Gathering information on this topic required visiting several on-line sources and choosing accurate information (5.3). Using this information, I created an argument for the use of open-source standard-compliant software for content creation, and for the created content itself (5.6). This argument hinged on the fact that non-public non-standard formats are a risk for information loss over time (5.8)

An interesting note about this collaborative assignment is that it actually involved little collaboration, because each team member created their own content and decided upon their own issues of concern. The collaboration came mostly in the sense of motivating each other and avoiding overlap (4.5, 4.7, 4.8), and then in presenting our project in the forums to our classmates (4.2 – 4.4, 4.6).

 

mLearning and open formats

Download the video on the left, double-click it and... nothing happens!

That is the experience of most people who've tried viewing it anyhow. But it isn't because the video itself is damaged. Rather, it's because the video is in an open format that most computer operating systems aren't equipped to view.

Again, that sounds like a contradiction. If the format is open, then how come computers aren't all equipped to view it? That was in fact the topic of this mLearning video, which I created for MDDE 610 as my contribution to another group project on mLearning. This content was entirely created by me, however, as each team member decided to create their own mLearning content on a particular topic of interest.

The first question you might be asking then, is why I decided to use an obscure format when iPod videos (Podcasts) are so well established (and were in fact integral to the topic of my first VIEW on mLearning). The answer is found in my resume: I am an ardent advocate of open-source platforms and open formats. As the video states (don't worry, I'll tell you how to play it below), in academia we have an obligation to show our work, and to protect our content. One of the dangers we must protect our content against is its lose in time. We must preserve the knowledge we have or create. Closed formats (including such staples as Microsoft Office DOC and DOCX) endanger our information by forcing those who seek it to use closed software to view it. Should Microsoft ever shutdown (and all companies eventually do), every file stored in their proprietary formats risks becoming inaccessible. Corporations are under no obligation to reveal their code in such an event. Open formats, on the other hand, are a matter of public record and can be picked up by any individual or company and continued. This offers a guarantee that the data stored in open formats will never become obsolete.

Another obvious advantage to open formats is the lack of patent and copyright entanglements. The reason most operating systems don't support open-source video formats is because they own a competing format for which they gather royalties. Microsoft has WMV, Apple has AAC & MP4, etc... They simply don't want the competition from the free sector. But in academia free is a boon, not a setback.

And so I made the decision to use a free format. This mLearning content is packaged in an MKV file: A free container format that doesn't encode the audio or video itself, but merely bundles everything together into one file. The video is encoded in Ogg Theora and the audio is encoded in Ogg Vorbis. This file also includes subtitles for the hearing-impaired, encoded in SRT-format plain text. The advantage of doing things this way is that the video, audio and subtitles can be edited separately without changing the other elements. The MKV format also allowed me to create chapter points at each page of the presentation.

Oh, and by the way, as promised, one can play this file using the free open-source VLC Media Player at http://www.videolan.org/vlc  It is available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS/2, QNX and numerous other systems. That is the power of open formats.

Enjoy

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