John Silva Blog

What have I learned about managing e-learning programs? Quite honestly nothing new.
Much of what was covered in this course has been addressed effectively in previous courses. If I learned anything it was about the Illinois Virtual High School through my research. It reinforced what I suspected that for high school students, a hybrid program for [...]

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I believe the role of the program manager is implied in the title; the role is to manage. By that I mean that program managers must make sure that assessment happens at the right time by the right people and that they have the requisite tools to get the job done. Program managers, as I [...]

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Cultural and geographical diversity can be a thorny issue. One thing I remember reading about cultural differences is the challenge of the constructivist nature of online learning and some cultures views of teaching. Some countries prefer teachers to be the focus as subject-matter experts delivering information to students. E-learning programs might be in conflict. E-learning [...]

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Having a technology plan is absolutely important. Does it need to be a 3-year plan? No but it does need to be a long-term felxible plan.
Technology changes at a dizzying pace. Internet technologies are constantly evolving as are communications technologies. Technology plans that are not flexible will fail. Organizations that do not have a lomg-term [...]

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My first reaction to this as I was reading is that the things the author was describing as “learner support” I would simply call, “good teaching”. The other thing that kept popping up was, “what kind of support is she talking about?” Finally on page 6 she discusses institutional support and instructional support.
From what I [...]

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Technology issues in an e-learning program
The combination of hardware, software, network, online, and communications technologies that are available for e-learning are mind-boggling. Keeping them working together is likely a huge challenge. One of the more simple issues I feel involves the browser and I’ve seen some problems with this program.
I have both Internet Explorer and [...]

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