I love the stream of consciousness effect imparted by linking from one blog to another. It reminds me of the best part of the best classroom discussions; making new connections. Let me try to recreate a recent experience in a way that you can share.
One minute I'm reading the Furrygoat experience (found because long ago I used his PocketFeed PocketPC RSS reader), the next minute I'm linked to Kathy Sierra (from the Head First books) for a discussion of thank you's for customer loyalty. Evidently she has a thing for trendy eyeglasses, to which I can not relate, having recently turned 40 and only acquired my first pair. However, her local eyeglass store could relate and she was duly rewarded.
I started thinking about how people will wear university hats, t-shirts, sweaters, cheer for teams... long after the learning experience. Will we ever see this for Capella and University of Phoenix or Thompson NETg? What about the elearning in our own organization?
Why? Why not! How can we 'brand' e-learning and bond with our learners, like say Notre Dame? I've never been tempted to paint say a Macromedia logo on my niece's face, but maybe that's just me.
Does anyone contribute to an alumni fund because of one teacher or experience? It is clearly a branded, larger experience. music fades in, playing Beach Boys "Wouldn't it be nice". Is there some way to instill this into our elearning even if our elearning comes from a variety of sources and covers all sorts of content? Top-notch universities accomplish it with a wide range of content and various sub-contractors they call professors.
That's a long enough post for a first timer. I hope you take the time to surf Kathy's blog and read entries like, "Most classroom learning sucks" or "Getting past the brain's crap filter." Sometimes it is nice to think about elearning while you're not really reading about it.
