In my last post I had mentioned we are producing podcasts in the EWD Sound Studio. Here is a Podcast produced by Julianne Hatton.
If you are looking for education-related podcast’s follow this link.
Today I want to share a topic that has been on my mind going back to when we first introduced web-based learning in 2003. The Digital Divide or lack of high-speed internet and or lack of computer.
You can find many stories on the internet like this one. Maybe you have your own story you would like to share?
COVID-19 brought to the forefront this gap between those that have high-speed internet and or computers in the home. I follow on Facebook my local Councilman, Stuart Benson, and was surprised by the information he was providing in his post. This was a letter to Dr. Mary Polio, the Jefferson County Public School Superintendent.
Here is a portion of that Facebook post that caught me by surprise.
“Nearly 80,000 homes and two-thirds of District 20 residents find themselves without access to high-speed internet. Despite our best efforts over the past decade and our continued expansion of services, we have only made small strides with infrastructure expansion”.
Louisville, Kentucky, I feel has been somewhat aggressive with fiber installation. Google Fiber came to town, ATT’s responded by installing fiber as did another carrier, Spectrum. Have you noticed these trends where you live?
A good friend of mine responded to both the Board of Education and other Councilman in our area an idea I thought at the time was original. Utilize the school’s radio broadcast studios or reach out to the local universities and seek the use of their radio broadcast studios. Teachers could do simultaneous Zoom calls with their students using the radio. I was not as clever as I thought, this is exactly what Chicago did amid a polio outbreak back in the fall of 1937.
How does the lack of high-speed internet impact our work as we continue to build web-based learning content?
Since 2004, we have followed the ADDIE Model [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADDIE_Model] we give attention to the Analysis phase. Who is the targeted audience? A lot of our content is delivered outside of government buildings and networks and is brought right to the home of our audience.
Our Food Safety course comes to mind, Kentucky Food Safety Training 1034154. This course is completed by the food handlers that work in any setting that food is served. We support our TRAIN Learners that are using their smartphone or going to their local libraries to complete training. This impacts how we build the course in Lectora https://www.trivantis.com/products/inspire-e-learning-software/.
We monitor all the feedback mechanisms available to us through TRAIN. Course Reviews, the Discussion board found on the TRAIN course page, and mandatory TRAIN Evaluation. Learners share their experiences. Are you monitoring these resources?
We do see fewer learner issues now that we have been delivering through YouTube.
Last, some of my thoughts related to SCORM and HTML content. Kentucky was an early adopter of SCORM, and we built a lot of curriculum in Lectora that was published as SCORM. Again, coming back to identifying your target audience. We found out over time, that if our target audience was in our Government Network, meaning State Health Department employees sitting in their office on a computer connected to the state network or a Local Health Department employee sitting in their office on a computer connected to the state network, SCORM worked most of the time.
But as our targeted audience grew outside of those state networks, problems arose. We noticed this first with our Medical Reserve courses and then other courses that targeted our medical communities and our responding communities. What comes to mind is all the calls from small volunteer firehouses that could not get SCORM content to launch or complete.
So, we abandoned SCORM and re-published our Lectora content into the HTML format. We standardized all Kentucky course processes. If a Learner takes a course built under External Content, Live Event (In Person), or Live Event (Online), no matter, the process is the same. The TRAIN Learner clicks Launch/Register, they click Mark Completed, they complete an Assessment which is mandated for all of our web-based curricula, they complete a mandated standardized Evaluation, they click Course Review and receive their award, a Certificate.
Again, back to the ADDIE Analysis phase. We must make sure we do a good job evaluating the target audience’s capabilities regarding their technology and what we built to deliver to them.
I would be interested in hearing about your SCORM HTML experiences.
David
David Knapp 
Good point about meeting the audience where they actually are.
And thank you for the link!