Here’s a podcast of my presentation last Sunday at the “E-Learning Futures” pre-conference workshop for the 2006 University Continuing Education Association conference. The occasion represented a number of firsts for me. It was my first presentation for this organization. I hope it won’t be my last, as I found my colleages at the conference to be focused very intensely on what colleges and universities must do to address our mission of providing opportunities for life-long learning to our world. It was my first time presenting from a wiki. Thanks (as ever) to Brian and Bryan for inspiration and guidance in all things webby, and thanks to Alan for Levine’s Law: start with the demo. It was my first time learning of Berkleeshares (where have I been?), and of the many fascinating models of online education at the Berklee College of Music, where Debbie Cavalier is Dean of Continuing Education. Debbie organized the session I was part of, superbly. I look forward to what I will continue to learn from her. I was also very impressed by her presentation on “Collaborations,” in which she was joined by two other fine presenters, Barbara Macaulay of UMassOnline and Linda Behrens of UC-Davis Extension. And coming to us from Adobe Systems and the Learnativity Alliance, Ellen Wagner‘s lunch presentation on “Mobile Learning Comes of Age?” was a great capstone to the session: funny, informative, pointed, thoughtful.

One other first: I had never before asked attendees to take a survey before the presentation. Inspired by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, I decided to give it a try. I used phpSurveyor to whip up a fast thirteen-question survey. Along the way, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to survey my students before a course begins, for several reasons: it would communicate to them that I want to know them and want to help them know each other, it would give me useful information for my own planning, and (this was the stealth realization, the a-ha for me) it would allow me to plant seeds for our work together. For example, let’s say I ask them a question about their familiarity with this or that, and their answer is “no, don’t know that.” By even asking the question, I’ve planted a seed in their minds that may help them later when the topic comes up. Some little bit of scaffolding, a little bit of prep.

phpSurveyor is open source, and I run it on my Bluehost account, which also hosts my blog and podcasts (among many other things). There’s a lot of power here for very little money. Best of all, I learned something valuable. Special thanks to Jerry for the inspiration to try phpSurveyor.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (18.7MB)