Practitioner Profile Interview with Tim Beachy

My first meeting with Tim Beachy (pictured at the right) was at the Learning Management System (LMS) Advisory Committee Meeting in 2003 via the Iowa Communications Network, which is a fiber-optic network that makes it possible for Iowans that are physically separated by location, to interact in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

We were both new to our positions as LMS Coordinators, I worked for the Iowa Department of Public Health in Des Moines and Tim works for the College of Public Health Center for Public Health Preparedness at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. This first meeting was about preparing for the launch of the learning management system, Prepare Iowa and how we were going to get local public health agencies to use the system and why these agencies should use it.

Since that first meeting, the two of us worked collaboratively through the years on different aspects of maintaining and marketing Prepare Iowa. Tim always maintained the “techy” parts and whenever I ran into reports not running the correct data, Tim was the “work-around king” and could get the results. Tim’s knowledge of the system and working relationship with the LMS vendor landed him a collaborative speaking gig at the SALT (Society for Applied Learning Technology) conference in 2007.

I recently asked Tim a series of questions, below is interview.
Q1. What is your role?
A. My role is to administer the LMS by:
·Providing technical support to end-users, course developers, managers, and other various administrators
· Turn provided content into online delivered course content (in other words, I’m not an actual content creator)
· Use various programming tools (i.e. html, css, javascript, SCORM, SQL) to provide as usable an experience as possible within the framework of the LMS
· Provide training as well as training materials to end-users and administrators, provide marketing input and create marketing materials
· Provide technical research and vision for the future of the system, provide reports and data analysis
· Develop and collaborate on integrations with a variety of third-party systems and programming interfaces
· Assure data integrity
These are the sorts of tasks that any administrator/coordinator of a small LMS may have to do. It also involves wearing many different hats, although most of my hats have a technical bent to them.

Q2. Your background, how did you get good at what you do?
A. I have formal certification in computer support (hardware, software, OS), but am self-taught in terms of web development.

Q3. How do you keep up with all the latest trends/continuing development in eLearning?
A. I’m more of web-in-general kind of learner, and have not always viewed the LMS world as something other than a web application (i.e. based on web technologies that are used everywhere). While there are specialized considerations for the LMS world (namely SCORM), I find that I'm best served by studying web techniques and standards in general, and then figuring out how they can/should be applied to eLearning. I follow blogs from the masters of HTML/CSS (Eric Meyer, Garrett Dimon, Jeffrey Zeldman, Cameron Moll), I receive updates from W3C, Vitamin Feed, Mashups Via Programmable Web, Mashable!, and some others. I do follow the Moodle and WordPress worlds when I have time, particularly latest module and plug-ins releases. While I love the technology side, I really feel close to the usability side of development, which is why I follow the standards world, as well as subscribe to a couple of newsletters and RSS feeds geared specifically to User Interface and Usability: User Interface Engineering, Digital Web, UXMatters, Information Architecture Institute. I've attended 2 conferences related specifically to this topic as well. I've also attended a SALT conference and a couple of platform-specific user conferences.

Q4. What current trends do you see, what do you think is current or the next big thing?
A. I think that the mobile/vodcast/podcast world is far from hitting full stride. I think that the platform potential is there, but it needs time to mature as a concept as well as a technology. I think the next big thing in eLearning will coincide fairly well with the next big thing on the Web, and that would be semantic markup making a whole lot more information accessible to machines without human intervention. One example I could see of this is: a person's calendar negotiating registration in a face-to-face course without necessarily involving the human side very much. This may just mean that an LMS could become more than a site you go to and log into, but could insert itself more into a person's everyday routine and may show up in bits and pieces in their calendar, RSS reader, email, voicemail, etc. I think that better integration tools may emerge as more and more "Web 2.0" rubs off on the LMS world.

Q5. Is there anything in your role that you are not using, but you should be?
A. I should be more involved in SCORM package development, current tools, and the model standards, but I have to fully submerge there yet.

Q6. Any advice that you would share, what is important, what is not?
A. I think my answer for number 3 pretty much stands here -- focusing just on eLearning limits the scope of vision, while learning and understanding the underlying concepts that the entire web works off of makes the eLearning part a specialized extension. Also, don't be tied to one technology, language or framework. You have to make limiting decisions at some point, but always try and maintain the future and global vision in perspective when making day-to-day decisions.

My involvement with Prepare Iowa and Tim was always a love-hate relationship. I loved being involved and working closely with this relatively new technology, but I hated not knowing some of the aspects of the system and having to turn to Tim for answers, however, what I liked about working with Tim, was I could pose a question to him, which he would answer and then explain the process. This was key because not only did I learn from him, but a contributing factor to what sparked my interest in wanting to know more and learn more in this growing field of eLearning. What I enjoyed was that we were always discussing of ways to improve the system, what will help the end user, so there is a sense of pride to see where the system was and how it is transforming to what it is today and I know that Tim has played a major role in that push.

Additional Information
Article about the changes to Prepare Iowa http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/midwest-public-health-workers-prepare/story.aspx?guid=%7B1AC74934-1AEA-42FC-A779-53386C084686%7D&dist=hppr

Week 7

I'm really glad that a discussion thread was added, I love reading what others think of the readings as it definitely makes me think, ah...yeah I can see that and it typically generates some great discussion.
I liked the Gen Y example from the Learner-Centered Framework article, I found the concept to be interesting, it almost reminded me of a Montessori program. I don't work in education nor do I have a background in education, so I'm not sure if I'm off base, but I would imagine that when you make students responsible for their learning there seems to be a better level of engagement. It also reminded me of discussion that I've had with my spouse regarding education for our children, we want our kids to be life long learners and be passionate for learning and so far they are, they are constantly asking questions, wanting me to read to them, and I try to structure our day with a lesson of some sort, whether it is shapes, colors, ABC's, the presidents, which I can proudly say that both my two and three year old know who the first three are (still working on the rest), but I do worry - are they going to be stimulated in school? From my perspective it seems like schools my community continually go on about not enough money, but when they get the money, it is spent on something different and there is no focus on how to engage the student or how is that going to help prepare the student for the future. Our high school graduation rates are getting lower and lower by the year, yet they say we have an excellent school system.
I know I'm starting to stray, so I apologize and will try to bring it back on topic....

On page 15, "Technology can be used to change the role of teachers to that of colearners and contributors to the social and interpersonal development of students, counterbalancing the
potential of computer technology to cause personal and social isolation and alienation. Online delivery of education can then provide a means to centralize course development and link intergenerational learners to academic tutors on a global scale." That seemed to jump out to me because for one, I am in Iowa pursuing my MA through the University of Colorado Denver and I think I've learned just as much in this distance course than any face to face.

Week 5 Historical Timelines

Well I think for the Historical Timeline project, I'm going to focus on training in the business/corporate workplace, if that will work....for example, what did businesses do to train employees throughout the decades.
I only decided today as I've been going back and forth and I kept coming back to it, so I will begin....

Week 4 P3 Model

Great article this week, as some of the other classmates have stated in their blogs, Khan's model helps break the process into an easy to understand visual, which can help when you are having to justify decisions to the high ups.
On the first page, Kahn states "When an e-Learning course is completely desinged, developed, and taught, and managed by a single individual, it is clear that the same individual has performed the role of content expert, instructional designer, programmer, graphic artist, project manager, etc..." I immediately thought of the first online course I developed for the department I was working for - they handed me the content and that was it, it was a great learning experience and there are things that I know now that I definitely could have improved upon, but it was also one of the reasons why I became interested in instructional design and eLearning.
I know that a lot goes into developing a good online course, but seeing that Table of roles and responsibilities was almost jaw dropping (for me at least) because although I know the processes are there, to break it down was quite eye opening.

Week 3

I have set up my Diigo account and joined the IT 5650 group, I think it will be similar to the del.ici.ous account.

This week's reading was titled, "Reflections from the Introduction of Blogs and RSS Feeds into a Preservice Instructional Technology Course." I found this article very interesting since of course we have had to keep a blog for some of the previous courses as well as the two this semester and I have enjoyed the blogging activity in the past. In fact, I enjoyed so much that I decided to start my own personal blog.

I loved the suggestion that was stated about using blogging as a way for teachers to promote literacy as a parent I worry that will all the technological advances that sometimes we will lose so the human interactions. For example, a friend's 14-year old came over and we were talking about school and I asked her what books she reads to which she replied oh, we don't read a lot of texts in school, most is all online and I really don't like books. So I think the blogging practice in a school is a great idea as I think it could promote some of the outcomes the article mentioned as well as give parents the ability to feel connected (if it was for middle/high schoolers).

I thought it was important that the article stated how even though they thought their students was on the same page, it is important to still try to explain "how to" - I found that with some of our users in my previous job, that they may be tech savy, but if we were using something new, we needed to do some "how to" explaining.

In reading the article, I also found that I really had no idea what an RSS feed was, so it was helpful to read about that as well.

This week we are also to be reading 4 other blogs, plus Laura's. I read Marilyn's blog and really like her point about the Chapter 6 that provided a solid background on Design and Development strategies and wishing it was available last semester, I completely agree. I found that chapter very useful, which I felt all the Chapters were relevant, so I printed it to have on hand. Phil made a great point in his blog regarding that reading the other blogs is time consuming, but I have found it interesting to read what others are thinking, it seems I have been able to find something different that I may have missed the first time around, so even though it is time consuming, it is valuable.

I also read Chad's blog and found his post about the RSS feed update video useful, so thanks Chad for posting that, it was a helpful reminder and easy to understand. I also agreed with Jodi's blog when she mentioned something from the article, point 3 - Minimize the number of websites students need to visit to gather information. Keeping these simple will keep the task manageable for students. (p. 58) I am not a teacher, but as a student, I think this is important.

I definitely think my post is probably longer than it maybe should and it is getting late, so I'm going to finish for now.

Week 2

I am not finished with the readings, I'm finding it difficult to get through all the reading assignments between the two classes...I've tried working a schedule out, but I'm not finishing them in time.
So from my initial readings regarding the Distance Education by Bernard, I never realized how long distance education has been around. I did get a little lost in the reading, but did agree with the point "attention to quality course design should take precedence over attention to the characteristics of media. This presumably includes what the instructor does as well as what the student does," as well as "active learning" both those stuck out for me in the reading. I think
because it helps keep the students attention.
Although, I am not finished with the entire second reading assignment, I am enjoying it much more and finding it more useful than the Bernard reading. One of the biggest things I had heard at my previous job from our online users was they enjoyed those courses that offered the "real word" situations, which was a characteristics of authentic activity in Chapter 2 of the "Teaching and Learning online" assignment. One of the things we tried to make sure we did was to always use real, life-like situations for our courses. I haven't finished this reading, but will update my thoughts when I'm done.
I also joined the Watercooler 2.0 group that consists of Phil H, Greg J, and Jessica D - we will be focusing on social learning applications, such as Web 2.0 in the workplace setting for our trend analysis project. I'm excited as I think we have a really great group of people.

Week 1, Day 1 - Tired Already

Tired already, really?! How can it be, alas it appears I have fallen under the sniffles and sneezes among head congestion, so my energy level is not up to par. I am excited for this semester to begin and learning the trends and current issues in eLearning. When I was working full-time, I felt somewhat current, but now that I've been mostly a stay-at-home mom while pursing my MA, I sometimes feel out of the loop.

So, I hope to soak up as much as I can...