FUSION is Desire2Learn’s big annual user conference, and this year it’s in Denver, CO. Last year in Chicago was fantastic, and a professional breakthrough for me. It was pretty great to present for, interact with, and get to know 700+ power-users of the software my team was building. This year is special, as I’m representing a whole product as it’s new designer: Learning Repository.
Learning Repository?!
Yeah, it’s not an awesome name for a web app, but it’s accurate. Learning Repository is a catalogue system for learning objects. Learning objects can be simple files, collections of files, things grouped together into a unit or module, or even complete courses. Most people in the industry refer to catalogues like this as LORs. In our implementation, the search is super powerful, the integration with Learning Environment is seamless, the structure is ridiculously flexible, and the metadata management is … well, complicated and insane, but that’s where some of the best stuff is.
Fusion 2011
I’ll be doing four presentations at Fusion this year (see the schedule), and I invite anyone who is interested in learning objects, repositories, Open Educational Resources (OERs), harvesting metadata, federated searches, and any related topics to come by, or catch me in the comments.
Licensing and Rights Management for Learning Objects: What Next?
Monday @ 2:20pm in Plaza Court 1
Now that you can find and share more teaching materials online, navigating the complexities of licensing, copyrights and digital rights becomes a great challenge. Join in this focus group to discuss sharing and searching of learning objects, with all rights and privileges reserved, in Desire2Learn Learning Repository.
Administering Desire2Learn Learning Repository
Tuesday @ 8:00am in Plaza Court 3
Federated searches? Trust permissions? Harvesting other indexes? Managing Learning Repository can overwhelm even the most seasoned administrators. This session will provide hands-on experience with managing Learning Repositories, discuss options for indexing third party resources, share some best practices, and demonstrate the power of Learning Repository. (Full as of Thursday before Fusion … yikes)
Desire2Learn Learning Repository: See What’s New
Tuesday @ 3:30pm in Plaza Court 8
The Learning Repository team has been hard at work. This session will introduce the new functionality recently released for RSS notifications, options for publishing, version management, CourseBuilder integration, and more.
Being Ready for the World (World Readiness)
Wednesday @ 10:50am in Plaza Court 8
Technology has made it easier to reach global audiences, but with it comes language and cultural differences that need to be overcome. Desire2Learn technology offers opportunities from both an organizational and course design perspective to reach out to that larger audience effectively. Co-presenter for Jeff Geurts from Learning Platform.