Amy Severson

The Learning and Instructional Development Centre (LIDC) is a large department at Simon Fraser University. I try and joke sometimes that we are paid by the syllable, which is why it is such a long name.

It has grown, both in size and scope over the last five or six years, and continues to redefine it's position with the university. These changes make it challenging to write a any summary of our structure and my position within the Centre.

I am an instructional designer in our department, and rely on the many talents of my colleagues to support what I do, and what I attempt to do.

One of my responsibilities is the support of learning technologies at Simon Fraser University. SFU licenses WebCT Vista (a Learning Management System - now properly called Blackboard Vista, I think) and Elluminate (an online synchronous communications or conferencing platform). I work heavily with both these products, working with faculty and other staff to integrate sound instructional principles in the daily use of these platforms. The use of these platforms is voluntary, and we provide general advice on their use and implementation in the blended or hybrid classroom. There is a separate department on campus, CODE (the Centre for Online and Distance Education) that provides the heavier lifting for scheduled and entirely online or distance courses. We are also exploring the use of Wikis to support collaborative work in the face to face classroom.

Our department offers general workshops, Instructional Skills Workshops, a Certificate in Web-based Instruction, a Certificate Program in Teaching and Learning for Graduate Students and  a reader group, a symposium each year, and two Teaching Assistant days each year.

We have an award winning media department, who design websites, learning objects and visual presentations for faculty and departments.

There is more, but these are the projects that I am most frequently involved with. I will post more later.

Best,
Amy

I liked the outline of gathering information, processing information and and acting on learning that you expanded on in your blog posting.

I think that creating information (in the form of mind maps, memes or a traditional text document) is part of that for a kinesthetic learner like myself. Sylvia mentioned (in the Welcome thread) how her PLEs include collaboration as well (I think I'm paraphrasing there), which

I think that as a learner or owner of a PLE it helps me to have an objective. Mine right now is to continue to build my instructional design skills and place these ideas in larger contexts. I have been working in instructional design for only a couple of years, so I feel that I am still building or finding my own bias' (this is why I find blog writing so intimidating - you mean I'd have to commit to an idea ?!).

Someone else commented on having a folder of "things to read" from the last Scope discussion, and certainly my RSS feed can overwhelm me some mornings (and again in the afternoon, and again in the evening....). This is why I like having a place where I can tease out the ideas that I like, and create my own sense of learning theories and methods work in my world). That being said, I like seeing the process of learning and thinking in other people since I can them make unexpected links or go off in entirely new directions. As a side bonus, I often learn that colleagues have similar questions or are nearly as confused as me (grin).

I like the word ecology, and we all live within an ecology that makes sense to us. Personal, after all, including the levels of order and chaos, simplicity and detail, personal and communal, directed and random that work best for your own PLE.

It's true, I'm in Facebook :-) One thing they've recently done is allow the integration of other tools. I have my del.ici.ous links and my four most recent Flickr photos in my Facebook page. If they'd just add my Google Reader starred items, you'd have an interesting view of how my personal life and my work life collide.

I also stream my del.ici.ous and my Google Reader starred items in my wiki page at work. The work wiki is getting closer and closer to being my project management and personal learning environment.

The beauty is that I can access all these different feeds individually (they are getting more and more integrated with my Internet browser), and view them collectively.

I'm an instructional designer at Simon Fraser University (though for various reasons, I'm currently telecommuting from London, England).

The first thing I thought when I did when I saw this forum title was associate PLEs with Portfolios. I'll be interested to explore the similarities and differences.
Can an LMS (Learning Management System - or a VLE - Virtual Learning Environment) be extended to provide some of the benefits of a PLE as well? I hope we explore in this session how all these new-ish terms can co-exist.

I'm not convinced that video often adds value to an online course. I think that is because the type of video I most frequently see is the talking head variety. My bias is to use audio only in those cases, as it downloads faster, and combined with a photo, provides just as much personality.

I can see video being used to demonstrate a dance step, a series of kinetic steps to set up an experiment, or proof of cause and effect, for example. These recording would require careful planning, practice, and some assured video recording and editing, however! :)