Learning in the flipped classroom is something that happens if the learner and / or teacher go against the traditional chalk and talk method, a mind-numbing methodology that has been inflicted for generations on unsuspecting students.

The flipped model has been much talked about in learning circles. Such circles have now come to include and accept ‘learners’ as active participants in the learning process. It essentially depends on using the new technologies to make learning interactive and interesting through the endlessly experiment media. The model seeks to provide a self-paced learning experience to the learner, in effect a ‘tailored’ one so that the learner may delve deeper into topics. The subjects / topics are of interest to him/her or spend more time on a particularly difficult one. Sounds amazing! Some may even rue the fact that they were born much earlier and being unable to take advantage of this newer system sweeping across the learning community.

Why, there may come a time when schools are no longer necessary and the learner “thinks’ his PC or tablet or some other gadget ‘on’ and chooses his / her learning for the time. No school buildings, no principal, no teachers and the least of all no punishments or social ostracism! The resultant tax savings may be channeled to other pressing needs or even subsidizing the studies of a ‘needy’ learner.

One may be forgiven for thinking that all this is fine for affluent societies, what about the millions who are in that part of the world where the required stuff is not available? Remember there was limited internet before the 1990s and yet societies have developed!

Some doubters still question this flipped learning model but these are in an increasing minority (their fear stems from having to relearn or come down from their pedestal of the ‘omniscient’ one).

About emPower

emPower  is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.

Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.
For additional information, please visit http://www.empowerbpo.com.

In July, the Dept. of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights made clear that it would start doing a better job at making sure entities covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act were taking the necessary steps to protect patient data and comply with patient privacy and security laws.

What have health care organizations been doing since then to prepare for the tighter enforcement? Not much, according to the results of a survey of more than 400 HIPAA compliance officers and health information management directors.

In November, HCPro, a health care regulation and compliance consultancy firm in Danvers, Mass., conducted a survey to gauge how prepared health care organizations are for a HIPAA audit. In a Dec. 2 blog post on the survey's findings, HCPro said it found that only 17% of those surveyed were fully prepared, and 70% said they were only "somewhat prepared." A full report on the survey's findings is scheduled to be published in January 2012.

These findings come just four months after the HHS Office for Civil Rights, the department tasked with enforcing HIPAA compliance, awarded a $9 million contract to the McLean, Va.-based consulting firm KPMG to create an audit program. It will verify that health care organizations, payers and business associates are prepared to meet strengthened HIPAA requirements that were laid out in the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. Part of KPMG's plan is to conduct random, on-site audits of 150 organizations by Dec. 31, 2012.

According to the contract, the site visits would include interviews with organization leaders such as chief information officers, privacy officers, legal counsel, health information management officers and medical records directors; an examination of the organization's physical features and operations, and its consistency in following policy; and observations of compliance with regulatory requirements.

Organization leaders told HCPro in its survey that they were not fully prepared for these audits for several reasons, including a lack of commitment to HIPAA compliance by senior management. One survey respondent, according to HCPro's blog posting, said most organizations say they don't have time to implement HIPAA regulations on a regular basis. "There needs to be an outside agency coming into the hospital and interviewing the employees on a regular basis," the respondent said.

Although the number of entities KPMG plans to audit is small compared with the number of HIPAA-covered entities in the U.S., any organization could be chosen, according to HHS. KPMG was instructed to audit a wide range of covered entities in terms of scope and size, and could include anyone from individual physicians to business associates.

Under the HIPAA Security Compliance Rules, organizations must complete a risk analysis and have policies in place detailing their approach to patient privacy and security and sanctions for those who do not comply. Experts say not only do organizations need to prepare those documents for the possibility of a random audit by KPMG, but the Office of Civil Rights also has the authority to conduct an audit based on complaints made by patients who feel their privacy was violated.

A robot walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have a screwdriver.” A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says “Give me what’s in your cash register.”

The fictional theme of robots turning against humans is older than the word itself, which first appeared in the title of Karel Čapek’s 1920 play about artificial factory workers rising against their human overlords. Just 22 years later, Isaac Asimov invented the “Three Laws of Robotics” to serve as a hierarchical ethical code for the robots in his stories: first, never harm a human being through action or inaction; second, obey human orders; last, protect oneself. From the first story in which the laws appeared, Asimov explored their inherent contradictions. Great fiction, but unworkable theory.

Machines are increasingly operating with minimal human oversight in the same physical spaces as we do.

The prospect of machines capable of following moral principles, let alone understanding them, seems as remote today as the word “robot” is old. Some technologists enthusiastically extrapolate from the observation that computing power doubles every 18 months to predict an imminent “technological singularity” in which a threshold for machines of superhuman intelligence will be suddenly surpassed. Many Singularitarians assume a lot, not the least of which is that intelligence is fundamentally a computational process. The techno-optimists among them also believe that such machines will be essentially friendly to human beings. I am skeptical about the Singularity, and even if “artificial intelligence” is not an oxymoron, “friendly A.I.” will require considerable scientific progress on a number of fronts.

The neuro- and cognitive sciences are presently in a state of rapid development in which alternatives to the metaphor of mind as computer have gained ground. Dynamical systems theory, network science, statistical elearning theory, developmental psychobiology and molecular neuroscience all challenge some foundational assumptions of A.I., and the last 50 years of cognitive science more generally. These new approaches analyze and exploit the complex causal structure of physically embodied and environmentally embedded systems, at every level, from molecular to social. They demonstrate the inadequacy of highly abstract algorithms operating on discrete symbols with fixed meanings to capture the adaptive flexibility of intelligent behavior. But despite undermining the idea that the mind is fundamentally a digital computer, these approaches have improved our ability to use computers for more and more robust simulations of intelligent agents — simulations that will increasingly control machines occupying our cognitive niche. If you don’t believe me, ask Siri.

This is why, in my view, we need to think long and hard about machine morality. Many of my colleagues take the very idea of moral machines to be a kind of joke. Machines, they insist, do only what they are told to do. A bar-robbing robot would have to be instructed or constructed to do exactly that. On this view, morality is an issue only for creatures like us who can choose to do wrong. People are morally good only insofar as they must overcome the urge to do what is bad. We can be moral, they say, because we are free to choose our own paths.

There are big themes here: freedom of will, human spontaneity and creativity, and the role of reason in making good choices — not to mention the nature of morality itself. Fully human-level moral agency, and all the responsibilities that come with it, requires developments in artificial intelligence or artificial life that remain, for now, in the domain of science fiction. And yet…

Machines are increasingly operating with minimal human oversight in the same physical spaces as we do. Entrepreneurs are actively developing robots for home care of the elderly. Robotic vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers are already mass market items. Self-driving cars are not far behind. Mercedes is equipping its 2013 model S-Class cars with a system that can drive autonomously through city traffic at speeds up to 25 m.p.h. Google’s fleet of autonomous cars has logged about 200,000 miles without incident in California and Nevada, in conditions ranging from surface streets to freeways. By Google’s estimate, the cars have required intervention by a human co-pilot only about once every 1,000 miles and the goal is to reduce this rate to once in 1,000,000 miles. How long until the next bank robber will have an autonomous getaway vehicle?

This is autonomy in the engineer’s sense, not the philosopher’s. The cars won’t have a sense of free will, not even an illusory one. They may select their own routes through the city but, for the foreseeable future, they won’t choose their own paths in the grand journey from dealership to junkyard. We don’t want our cars leaving us to join the Peace Corps, nor will they any time soon. But as the layers of software pile up between us and our machines, they are becoming increasingly independent of our direct control. In military circles, the phrase “man on the loop” has come to replace “man in the loop,” indicating the diminishing role of human overseers in controlling drones and ground-based robots that operate hundreds or thousands of miles from base. These machines need to adjust to local conditions faster than can be signaled and processed by human tele-operators. And while no one is yet recommending that decisions to use lethal force should be handed over to software, the Department of Defense is sufficiently committed to the use of autonomous systems that it has sponsored engineers and philosophers to outline prospects (.pdf report, 108 pages) for ethical governance of battlefield machines.

Joke or not, the topic of machine morality is here to stay. Even modest amounts of engineered autonomy make it necessary to outline some modest goals for the design of artificial moral agents. Modest because we are not talking about guidance systems for the Terminator or other technology that does not yet exist. Necessary, because as machines with limited autonomy operate more often than before in open environments, it becomes increasingly important to design a kind of functional morality that is sensitive to ethically relevant features of those situations. Modest, again, because this functional morality is not about self-reflective moral agency — what one might call “full” moral agency — but simply about trying to make autonomous agents better at adjusting their actions to human norms. This can be done with technology that is already available or can be anticipated within the next 5 to 10 years.

The project of designing artificial moral agents provokes a wide variety of negative reactions, including that it is preposterous, horrendous, or trivial. My co-author Wendell Wallach and I have been accused of being, in our book “Moral Machines,” unimaginatively human-centered in our views about morality, of being excessively optimistic about technological solutions, and of putting too much emphasis on engineering the machines themselves rather than looking at the whole context in which machines operate.

In response to the charge of preposterousness, I am willing to double down. Far from being an exercise in science fiction, serious engagement with the project of designing artificial moral agents has the potential to revolutionize moral philosophy in the same way that philosophers’ engagement with science continuously revolutionizes human self-understanding. New insights can be gained from confronting the question of whether and how a control architecture for robots might utilize (or ignore) general principles recommended by major ethical theories. Perhaps ethical theory is to moral agents as physics is to outfielders — theoretical knowledge that isn’t necessary to play a good game. Such theoretical knowledge may still be useful after the fact to analyze and adjust future performance.

Even if success in building artificial moral agents will be hard to gauge, the effort may help to forestall inflexible, ethically-blind technologies from propagating. More concretely, if cars are smart enough to navigate through city traffic, they are certainly smart enough to detect how long they have been parked outside a bar (easily accessible through the marriage of G.P.S. and the Internet) and to ask you, the driver, to prove you’re not drunk before starting the engine so you can get home. For the near term (say, 5 to 10 years), a responsible human will still be needed to supervise these “intelligent” cars, so you had better be sober. Does this really require artificial morality, when one could simply put a breathalyzer between key and ignition? Such a dumb, inflexible system would have a kind of operational morality in which the engineer has decided that no car should be started by person with a certain blood alcohol level. But it would be ethically blind — incapable, for instance, of recognizing the difference between, on the one hand, a driver who needs the car simply to get home and, on the other hand, a driver who had a couple of drinks with dinner but needs the car because a 4-year old requiring urgent medical attention is in the back seat.

It is within our current capacities to build machines that are able to determine, based on real-time information about current traffic conditions and access to actuarial tables, how likely it is that this situation might lead to an accident. Of course, this only defers the ethical question of how to weigh the potential for harm that either option presents, but a well-designed system of human-machine interaction could allow for a manual override to be temporarily logged in a “black-box” similar to those used on airplanes. In case of an accident this would provide evidence that the person had taken responsibility. Just as we can envisage machines with increasing degrees of autonomy from human oversight, we can envisage machines whose controls involve increasing degrees of sensitivity to things that matter ethically. Not perfect machines, to be sure, but better.

~~~

Does this talk of artificial moral agents overreach, contributing to our own dehumanization, to the reduction of human autonomy, and to lowered barriers to warfare? If so, does it grease the slope to a horrendous, dystopian future? I am sensitive to the worries, but optimistic enough to think that this kind of techno-pessimism has, over the centuries, been oversold. Luddites have always come to seem quaint, except when they were dangerous. The challenge for philosophers and engineers alike is to figure out what should and can reasonably be done in the middle space that contains somewhat autonomous, partly ethically-sensitive machines. Some may think the exploration of this space is too dangerous to allow. Prohibitionists may succeed in some areas — robot arms control, anyone? — but they will not, I believe, be able to contain the spread of increasingly autonomous robots into homes, eldercare, and public spaces, not to mention the virtual spaces in which much software already operates without a human in the loop. We want machines that do chores and errands without our having to monitor them continuously. Retailers and banks depend on software controlling all manner ofoperations, from credit card purchases to inventory control, freeing humans to do other things that we don’t yet know how to construct machines to do.

Where’s the challenge, a software engineer might ask? Isn’t ethical governance for machines just problem-solving within constraints? If there’s fuzziness about the nature of those constraints, isn’t that a philosophical problem, not an engineering one? Besides, why look to human ethics to provide a gold standard for machines? My response is that if engineers leave it to philosophers to come up with theories that they can implement, they will have a long wait, but if philosophers leave it to engineers to implement something workable they will likely be disappointed by the outcome. The challenge is to reconcile these two rather different ways of approaching the world, to yield better understanding of how interactions among people and contexts enable us, sometimes, to steer a reasonable course through the competing demands of our moral niche. The different kinds of rigor provided by philosophers and engineers are both needed to inform the construction of machines that, when embedded in well-designed systems of human-machine interaction, produce morally reasonable decisions even in situations where Asimov’s laws would produce deadlock.

This essay is the subject of this week’s forum discussion among the humanists and scientists at On the Human, a project of the National Humanities Center. Learning management system(LMS)

Evert business has to struggle hard to extract the best performance out of employees. While some companies use the mix of various managerial tools, there are others who believe in the process of earning from learning. As a matter of fact, learning is one of the simplest ways to improve the performance of human resource of an organization. For those organizations, which seek to find cost effective ways of imparting learning process, e-Learning is the best tool at hand.

However, learning is sometimes frustrating and uninteresting. But when learning is inherent in a job, the task of the management becomes easier. There are various things that one must incorporate in order to accelerate the process of learning. Firstly, if employees know that have to learn, things will get pretty difficult for the management because employees have a tendency to repel new changes. As such, learning should be inherent in the business, so that the employees know that they are gaining something out of the process.

E-learning is straightforward and uncomplicated. Organizations that have incorporated e-learning in daily routine have witnessed improved performance overall at all levels. Management might have several issues with a new system, just like the employees, but the top management needs to find the return on investment. Needless to mention, just like employees, management, too has to involve a lot of efforts and time, which often can be of real worry.

There are many companies in the world, which have been hugely benefitted from the earning from learning process. On the onset, it can be said that the process works largely for employees. However, there are many companies, which use the technique for improving their output. It is like a source of motivation for the employees, unlike monetary motivation, that seeks to bring the best from them without giving extra pressure on the job.

Earning is the prime concern for both employees and the organization, but doing the same job constantly for years reduces the pleasure of doing it. When the effectiveness of the mind improves, there is an increased desire to do things better and faster, which in turn can be of immense benefit to the business itself. Instead of hiring new staff and training them for new jobs, improving the abilities of present staff is a much better concept because the management can control them better. Learning and earning are essential components of every business that wishes to grow and develop on a constant basis.

About emPower

emPower  is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.

Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.

For additional information, please visit http://www.empowerbpo.com.

When OSHA Compliance issues a new or revised health or safety standard, inevitably questions will arise. Perhaps OSHA did not define a key term used in the standard, or maybe they used some subjective language that could be open to interpretation. Issues such as these can make it difficult for employers to implement the new regulation. However, questions can often be answered by simply taking the time to read the Preamble to the Final Rule printed in the Federal Register when OSHA publishes a new standard, most specifically the section titled “Summary and Explanation of the Standard.”

So what is this Preamble I am talking about? When OSHA promulgates a new or revised health or safety standard, they go through a long process by where they draft the proposed standard, publish it in the Federal Register as a Proposed Rule, and allow a period of time for stakeholders to comment on the proposed rule. After considering all the input provided by the stakeholders, OSHA will tweak the draft standard and then publish it in the Federal Register as a Final Rule, along with a wealth of other information gathered during the process. As a side note, this process usually takes 10+ years to complete, and in the end OSHA may actually abandon the proposed standard.

In the section of the Federal Register titled “Summary and Explanation of the Standard”, OSHA will break the proposed draft standard down paragraph by paragraph, and include the many comments, questions, and concerns expressed by the stakeholders about each paragraph. This process reveals many ambiguous areas contained within the originally drafted standard, and OSHA’s subsequent explanation or rebuttal provided within this section of the Preamble often provides valuable insight into OSHA’s intent when they created the standard.

Here are a couple of examples of what I am talking about, both originating from OSHA’s permit-required confined space entry standards for general industry:

• Paragraph 1910.146(b) defines one of the three criteria of a “confined space” as "the space is large enough and so configured that an employee can bodily enter and perform assigned work". Many people are confused by the term “bodily enter”; it is not defined in the OSHA standard, and some people think it means that if the space is large enough and configured so an employee could place any part of their body inside the space, it would be a confined space. But in the Preamble to the Final Rule for the Permit-required Confined Space Entry Standard, the section that discusses this particular term explains that the standard is intended to cover only spaces that were large enough for the entire body of an employee to enter. So now we have a clear definition of the term “bodily enter” as it applies to this standard.
• Paragraph 1910.146(c)(5)(i) allows the employer to utilize “alternate entry procedures” to enter certain permit-required confined spaces where they are able to demonstrate that the only hazard posed by the permit space is an actual or potential hazardous atmosphere, as long as the employer can demonstrate that continuous forced-air ventilation alone is sufficient to maintain the permit space “safe for entry”. Unfortunately, the OSHA standard does not quantify what OSHA considers to be “safe for entry”. But in the section of the Preamble to the Final Rule that discusses paragraph(c)(5), OSHA explains that employers may use “a guideline of 50 percent of the level of flammable or toxic substances that would constitute a hazardous atmosphere in making the determination”. So now we know that using forced air ventilation to maintain flammable gas at no more than 5% of its LEL (half of the OSHA limit for a “hazardous atmosphere when considering flammable gas) would be considered “safe for entry” when utilizing these alternate entry procedures.

Sure, many issues such as these are later clarified by OSHA in their letters of interpretations or directives, but those typically are created years after the standard has been published. So why wait? Be in the know from the beginning by reading the Preamble to the Final Rule whenever OSHA publishes a new or revised OSHA standard.

Where can you locate Preambles to Final Rules published by OSHA? Sometimes you can simply “Google” the particular Federal Register you are looking for (e.g.: preamble final rule 1910.146) and sort through the results. Or you can go to www.FederalRegister.gov to search for the document or topic you seek (here is the link for the preamble to the permit-required confined space standard).

Remember, however, that none of this applies to OSHA’s original standards that were issued back in the early ‘70’s, as those standards do not have a preamble. This applies only to those standards that were created or revised since then, such as but not limited to, Lockout/Tagout, Hazard Communication, Bloodborne Pathogens, Forklift Operator Training, Respiratory Protections, Personal Protective Equipment, Steel Erection, & Fall Protection and Prevention. One more important thing to keep in mind is that OSHA does occasionally issue technical corrections to standards through the Federal Register as well, so also search for any related preambles that address updates when researching a particular OSHA standard.

Have you ever found a helpful “nugget” of information that was buried inside the Preamble to a particular OSHA standard that you found especially valuable?  If so, or if you have other related comments about this topic, would you please share your experience with others in the comments section below?

http://oshatrainingservices.blogspot.com/2011/10/really-want-to-understand-os...

Recently I got an email from my elementary division head. Our school is piloting a 1:1 netbook program this year, and our administration is interested in how the program is going and the different ways the netbooks are being incorporated into our curriculum. I started putting together a list, and even surprised myself at how much the availability of wifi-ready technology engages my students and supports instruction during the course of a regular school day.

1. Keyboarding – Each morning students grab a netbook and practice keyboarding skills. With daily practice, they are improving quickly. Reluctant writers are frequently students who just despise the physical act of writing. They write as little as possible, because they don’t want to have to actually “write” it. Once they can type, they are much more willing to craft longer pieces. Programs like BBC’sDance Mat Typing make it fun to develop keyboard skills.

2. Internet Research – Because it is so convenient to “look it up” online (and fun, too), students will quickly offer to look up the answer to a question using the kid-friendly search engines we have identified and bookmarked on our class Diigo page. Research is also fun when you are trying to solve a mystery! My fourth graders look up clues given by classes in other schools who join us forMystery Skype calls and try to figure out where their new friends are from!

3. Global Awareness – Why use a paper map when you can use Google Earth? We’ve used animated models to help us learn about the earth’s rotation, revolution, and the changing of the seasons. We were also able to easily see the earth’s hemispheres and find locations on earth by latitude and longitude.

4. Extra practice – Proofreading or practicing multiplication facts is dull and boring on worksheets. But when students can practice using interactive games, I’m finding that they spend much more time and effort to get the answers right.

5. Blogging – When a piece of writing is going to be turned in for only the teacher to see, a student is more likely to put forth minimal effort. But tell that student that their piece will have a world-wide audience, and they begin to imagine who might read their post, and what they might ask about it. Soon they’re writing with their audience in mind, and use their author’s voice to ask questions and encourage reader comments. As a result (and with a little help from their teacher’s twitter network), they get a variety of feedback and encouragement from all over the world. It’s quite the motivator!

6. Digital Storytelling – Using sites like Storybird, Storyjumper, Zooburst and Little Bird Tales, storytelling comes to life. Would you rather write a story on notebook paper, or create your own pop-up book or self-drawn and narrated tale?

7. Collaborative Learning – Group work just got fun. With collaborative documents like wikis and Google docs, students can be part of something bigger. They can merge individual work into a comprehensive piece, or collaborate to create a presentation or write a story.

8. Connected Learning – Through the Global Read Aloud Project, we’ve enjoyed a shared literature experience with over 3,000 other students across the globe using Edmodo. Students were attentive and engaged, knowing that they would be able to use their netbooks to get on the group Edmodo page and respond to questions, take polls, and make predictions about the story.

9. Eager Readers – With the netbooks available anytime, students can grab one as soon as they finish a book and take an Accelerated Reader quiz. Knowing that they are required to take a quiz, they read more carefully. Most of them are excited to push themselves to higher-level books and see measurable progress in their reading/comprehension ability.

10. Passion-Based Learning – Above all, the convenience of 1:1 netbooks provide students with the opportunity to learn about anything! By allowing time for students to construct their own learning, we teach them that they have the freedom and the power to learn about whatever interests them. This encourages our students to pursue their passions, and become life-long learners.

Count me a believer. Our 1:1 netbooks are providing a great return on investment. Technology isn’t everything – but when it is easily accessed and used to support elearning, it motivates students and encourages collaboration, innovation, and creativity. I applaud our administration for taking this initiative, and look forward to many more days of learning ahead.

This is the second in a series of three posts on developing an e-learning plan. The first postdiscussed why an e-learning plan may be needed, this will discuss how to do a plan, and the third post will discuss what should be in a plan.

The importance of context

This is the most difficult of the three posts to write, because how a plan is developed will depend very much on the context, and particularly on the size of the institution, the level at which the plan is to be done, and the personality and status of the key movers and shakers within the organization. An e-learning plan can cover a whole institution, an academic department or Faculty, or a program area. Indeed, a good plan is likely to have input and implications at all these levels, although the focus is likely to vary, depending on who commissions the plan (see ‘The sponsor’ below).

Second I have set out the actions needed for a plan in a logically ordered way, but in reality the development of a plan is likely to be less ordered and concise. In this context, General Eisenhower’s comment before the D-Day landing should be remembered: ‘Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.’

The sponsor

Every plan needs a sponsor. This is the person (or maybe the committee) that requests or commissions the plan. Ideally, the sponsor should have the power to approve and support the recommendations in the plan, and can ensure that the main recommendations are implemented. At an institutional level, the sponsor is likely to be the President (in a relatively small institution), or the VP Academic/Provost and/or a VP Administration (if IT Services report to this person), or a high level Technology Committee chaired by either or both the fore-mentioned VPs (in a larger institution). Indeed, the first step in developing an e-learning plan may be setting up a high level committee that represents all key stakeholders and which will eventually have responsibility for approving and implementing an integrated Technology Plan that includes plans for teaching, research, administrative and infrastructure requirements. However, it is best to keep the elearning plan simple and focused, at least initially.

Also, it should be recognized that although an e-learning plan will have major implications for IT Services and other administrative areas, it is primarily an academic plan, as its focus should be on the use of technology for teaching and learning. For this reason, although specialized units such as IT Services or a Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology are likely to be heavily engaged in developing an e-learning plan, it is probably not a good idea to have one of these units responsible for the plan, because a good e-learning plan will need to get the support of a wide range of stakeholders, and is likely to require resource decisions that will need to be taken beyond such specialized units. However, if the senior administration has shown no interest in developing a strategy for e-learning, then one of these centres might take leadership. The chances of such a centre’s plan being implemented are slight, but it might galvanize the administration to do something instead. In any case,the Directors of such centres are likely to be the ones who will need to persuade their VPs that an e-learning plan is needed.

The sponsor’s responsibility should cover the following:

    setting a clear mandate for the plan: what it is meant to do, when it should be done by, and to whom the plan will be presented for approval or amendment. In particular, it should be clear whether the plan is to include all learning technologies, both for on-campus and distance teaching (preferably), or whether it is to focus on one or the other.
    deciding on how the plan will be done, in broad outline (e.g. who will do it, who needs to be consulted,  and how the plan and any decisions will be communicated to the key stakeholders)
    choosing who will do the plan; this may involve hiring an external consultant – in which case an internal counterpart should be appointed to work with the consultant – or appointing a chair and members of a team to develop the plan. Although a team approach has its value, the chair or lead person should have high status within the organization and be capable of producing a clear and practical plan, even if there are differences within the team.

Integrated planning

Ideally, an e-learning plan should be integrated within a broader planning cycle (see header to this post). It will be seen that an e-learning plan needs to be driven by the institution’s strategic directions, so it should link clearly to the strategic plan and an academic plan (if they are being developed). Thus the Strategic Plan should have  some statement about the institution’s intentions regarding the use of learning technologies, even if only at a broad level (e.g. ‘The University will increase its use of learning technologies to help deliver the IT skills and competencies needed in all professions.’).

Such a broad strategy should become more defined at the Faculty or departmental level and hence reflected in the Academic Plan. One of the benefits of doing an e-learning plan is that it requires academic departments to identify what kinds of courses (classroom, blended or online) they are likely to be developing. (e.g. ‘The Faculty of Medicine is heavily committed to delivering continuing professional education to a wide range of medical specialists across the province; this will involve extensive use of online learning, and in particular video-conferencing for demonstrating medical procedures.’) This kind of direction at the department or program level greatly facilitates the development of an e-learning plan, and helps locate it within the broader strategy of programs, faculties and the institution.

Of course, there can also be a ‘bottom-up’ movement, where individual instructors or course teams identify needs that are then incorporated into an Academic Plan that then influences the Strategic Plan. Thus in reality there is usually a flow of ideas and strategies in both directions. The important thing to have though is a process that allows these ideas to flow throughout the institution and for decisions to be made and priorities set.

Lastly, the e-learning plan (or more likely an integrated Technology Plan which incorporates the e-learning plan) will need to be ready in time for it to be included in the budget process, if there are cost implications (which there almost certainly will be.) Nevertheless it is quite likely in some institutions that there is no strategic or academic plan, or if there is, there is no mention of e-learning or learning technologies. In that case, an e-learning plan is likely to struggle to be accepted, but may play an important role in influencing strategic thinking at a senior management level in subsequent years.

Who should be involved?

This again will depend on the size and nature of the institution. In a large university, faculty need to be heavily involved in all stages of the process. This means in effect having meetings with faculty across every main department or faculty grouping. This is necessary because the learning technology needs of engineers are very different from those of social scientists. Also, some departments or divisions will have a very clear idea of their learning technology needs; others will be much further behind in their thinking in this area, and indeed may need a lot of help in defining their needs. Nevertheless in all cases faculty  should be involved. I will discuss below some of the activities and methods that can be used to engage faculty in this process of identifying their needs and intentions. In two year colleges, full time instructors should be involved, but often it is difficult for them to find time to attend meetings because of their teaching load. For this reason, Deans or Heads of department in two year colleges will probably need to be heavily involved in developing an e-learning plan.

Secondly, whether a team or an individual is tasked with developing the plan, it is likely to need some kind of cross-institutional committee to facilitate the development of the e-learning plan. This could be an ad hoc committee set up especially to steer the planning process, or an already existing committee (such as an educational technology committee), or a specially created sub-committee of a larger committee. The important point is that members of the e-learning planning committee can act as a champion and liaison within their own areas, and help facilitate the collection of information and meetings within their departments. Such an e-learning planning committee is likely to include a couple of Deans, some faculty members, the Directors of IT Services and Learning Technology units, and a student representative.

If a Dean or senior academic chairs the team or e-learning steering committee, they will almost certainly need the extensive commitment of someone, probably from the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, to do the donkey work of arranging meetings within the different Faculties, taking notes of meetings, and writing up and analysing the outcomes of these meetings, even if in the end the final writing of the plan will be done by the Chair. The e-learning plan will take up a major portion of this technical support person’s time for a period of six months to a year. The choice of this technical support person is critical. This person must have a good understanding of the issues around the choice and use of technology for teaching, have good communications skills, be able to synthesize a wide range of input from stakeholders, and be respected across the university or college.

Although there is more controversy about this issue, it is my belief that students also need to be engaged in the e-learning plan development. There are various ways to do this, which I will describe later, and it is important to have realistic expectations about what students can contribute to the discussions, but they provide an important and different perspective.

Lastly, in some institutions, the Board can play an important role, both in ensuring that the institution is looking at modern methods of teaching and has strategies and plans to support the use of learning technologies, and in possibly helping to locate earmarked funding if the plan identifies such needs.

The eight stages of planning

Once the sponsor has set in motion the e-learning planning process by setting a clear mandate and appointing someone responsible for managing the planning process, the following steps need to be put in place:

1. Discussion and buy-in by the executive team of the need for an e-learning plan, and support for the process.

2. Communication throughout the institution of the mandate of the e-learning plan, why the plan is needed,  how it will be conducted and integrated with other planning activities, who will be involved, and the expectations being placed on stakeholders to participate fully. The Deans have an important role in ensuring this message is received and understood within their departments.

3. Analysis of the strategic plan and academic plan (and if available, departmental teaching plans) for strategies and directions for e-learning. (There may be no reference to learning technology in these plans, in which case interviews with senior administrators and Deans may be necessary to identify implicit strategies, directions and priorities).

4. A SWOT analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to teaching, and the possible role of learning technologies within this context. (This is best done at a Faculty or divisional level, as part of the e-learning planning day (see below). The aim here is to identify areas where learning technologies can play an important role in dealing with general issues around teaching and learning within the division or department.

5. Visioning/identifying future needs. Mintzberg argues that what’s important is not so much strategic plans but strategic thinking. What are the learning needs of students today and tomorrow? How can we deliver teaching to meet the needs of a rapidly changing demographic? How do our students prefer to learn? What skills and competencies must students develop and what’s the best way to develop these skills? What learning technologies are we using now in the department, what works, and what should we be using in future? What are the current barriers to using learning technologies in the way we would like? How do the answers to the learning technology questions relate to the earlier questions about teaching?

This means holding a structured discussion about teaching methods and the role of learning technologies, in order for goals and strategies to be identified. Once identified these goals and strategies are likely to differ considerably from department to department.

One way of facilitating this structured discussion is to have a series of lunch hour ‘show and tell’ sessions of faculty using technology for teaching within the subject discipline, in advance of a half-day planning session. In the half-day there would be a short presentation of  a SWOT analysis of the department’s teaching context conducted in advance (perhaps by the Dean), followed by a brainstorming session where faculty are asked to develop concrete scenarios of how they would like to be teaching in the future. These scenarios would be collected for planning purposes. This would be more suitable where a department has not been using learning technologies to any extent or in very limited ways. This is as much an educational exercise as a planning exercise for faculty.

Another way is to hold a 90 minute session with a cross-section of instructors within a department to ask what technologies they are currently using, what technologies they would like to be using in future, and what the barriers are to increased use of learning technologies. This would be more suitable for a department more experienced in innovative uses of technology for teaching. Eventually, this kind of thinking and planning should push down to the program level (a bachelor’s, or masters program, or a foundation year).

In both methods (brainstorming or shorter 90 minute discussion sessions), learning technology and IT Service staff, and student representatives, should fully participate, as well as faculty and perhaps part-time instructors.Whatever method is used, the aim is to come away with  clear idea of where the department or division wants to go with learning technologies, what are the main barriers, and what resources are they looking for to support their use of learning technologies.

6. Analysis of data and the writing of the report. This requires pulling the information together from the various sources: strategic directions in the strategic plan; SWOT analyses; academic plans indicating courses to be offered and how they will be delivered; reports from meetings with individual faculties. What will be covered in the report will be discussed in the next post.

7. Delivery of the report to the sponsor. The sponsor may well want the report to go out to the academic divisions for comment and further input. The report will then be accepted or amended by the sponsor, budget implications identified, and priorities set. The plan may then be integrated within a broader Technology Plan, and then submitted as part of the budget process.

8. Final decisions following the budget process will then be communicated to the various stakeholders and the implementation plan (see next post) will be implemented.

How long?

Ideally, there should be an annual planning cycle that includes an e-learning plan(Learning Management System). The first time an e-learning plan is done can take up to nine months in a large institution from start to finish, and a couple of months in a small institution. However, after the first year, the process tends to become more streamlined, and can be done in as short a time as six weeks, even in a large institution. However, because of rapid developments in technology, and changing needs and directions in teaching, some form of annual planning for learning technologies is essential.

Conclusion

There are many different ways to do an e-learning plan, but they all require some time and commitment from a wide range of stakeholders.. The process becomes quicker and easier over time, but a well-managed process is essential. In the next post, I will discuss what should be in an e-learning plan.

Questions

1. Does your institution have a process for planning for learning technologies? Does it work?

2. Is this really necessary? Wouldn’t it be better just to let management make these decisions? Or just let individual faculty members decide what they want to do?

3. If you think planning is needed, is this the best way to go about it? Could it be done more easily or simply? If so let me know!

This article was originally posted at http://www.tonybates.ca/2011/10/31/how-to-do-an-e-learning-plan/

eLearning has revolutionized the study arena in many ways. Presently, almost all recognized global universities have eLearning programs for various disciplines. Experts are trying to find out new ways through which students can learn faster and gain better knowledge of subjects so as to impart better learning on the electronic medias. LMS or Learning Management Systems are considering many new dynamics in this field. Gamification or game mechanics is one such technique that is being experimented and used for imparting better e-learning in many subjects. The concept uses the mechanics of gaming in non-gaming applications and studies.

However, using game mechanics doesn’t refer to the inclusion of games in the electronic learning process. In fact, the mechanics has almost nothing to do with the applications of narrative and themes used. It rather encourages and urges the users to learn and explore properties with the help of different feedback mechanisms. Games are appealing because they engage the viewers and player in a particularly entertaining way. The use of the similar mechanics in LMS of eLearning can ease out things for learners and can help extensively in improving the learning process by increasing the interest.

The process of using game mechanics in LMS for eLearning is best done by gaming experts. These bunches of tech freaks know the ways to engage viewers. Learning or studying appears to be boring for many students who take it as a burden or duty. But when the entire system of eLearning will be converted into an engaging activity, the concepts of students and teachers will change in many aspects. The purpose of learning is to compel the brain to understand the concepts of e-books, and further translate the same into action and reactions. This is the prime reason why materials and books need to be fascinating to engage students.

While using gaming mechanics in eLearning, gaming engineers focus on creating goals and objectives. All games have certain objectives, which is the prime drive behind playing it. The same concept is used for creating goals in eLearning. These objectives, however, cannot be long-term as students will lose interest in achieving them. This is where the concept of ‘layers’ of objectives has been thought if. Giving many segments of goals will encourage learners to pursue them in a more concentrated way.

As discussed earlier, it is essential that regular feedback is taken from the learners regarding the use of game mechanics in the LMS structure in eLearning. The aim is to encourage and motivate learners to take an interest in all the activities, and; therefore, regular assessment is essential to measure the success and progress of the technique. If concepts used can hook the learner for several hours, then the engineer has undoubtedly succeeded in making the right use of gaming mechanics in eLearning.

About emPower

emPower  is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.

Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.

For additional information, please visit http://www.empowerbpo.com.

Media Contact (emPower)
Jason Gaya
marketing@empowerbpo.com

emPower
12806 Townepark Way
Louisville, KY 40243-2311
Ph: 502 -400-9374
http://www.empowerbpo.com
http://www.empowerlms.com

Given the need to abide by HIPAA compliance in healthcare entities and the sensitive matter of protecting patient records, cloud computing is a good resource in managing the job. These entities can sensitize their cloud computing associates and get their role documented in the process of HIPAA compliance.

HIPAA Compliance: The objective behind

Sensitivity in maintaining individual health record of every person is too significant and this is what gets ensured under HIPAA security compliance, which aims at protecting an individual’s information to be obtained, created, used and maintained electronically at a specific healthcare unit or hospital. As a result of this rule, the healthcare unit is responsible for taking every measure to keep this information confidential, secure, reliable and free from any electronic interference. But healthcare units usually find it tough to meet the expectations of this security rule & it requires a more technical approach in abiding by the directives of the security rule.

Healthcare unit’s responsibility in ensuring HIPAA security compliance

Under HIPAA security compliance, each of the three aspects, namely administrative, technical and physical, has to be adhered to by implementation specifications. These specifications specify the modus operandi for meeting the three aspects. A healthcare unit or hospital has to either implement a security measure to achieve this objective, execute the given implementation specifications or, may not put into practice either one of the two. But as part of HIPAA compliance, the body has to document whichever choice it wants to implement and this document should additionally comprise of basis of the evaluation on which this decision has been arrived at. Outcome of all this can be visibly noticed in the form of a challenge for IT professionals working in health sector.

Shouldering HIPAA compliance responsibility with cloud computing vendor

No surprise, emergence of cloud computing looked like easing the scenario but with enough caution, given that an outside agency in the form of cloud providing associate is involved besides the healthcare unit. Because of this vendor-client partnering, the ultimate responsibility to abide by HIPAA compliance resting with the healthcare unit gets pooled with the vendor, since implementation gets carried out at the vendor end. Thus, there is much room for the sensitive information getting trickled at the remote location where cloud model has been setup. In this situation, the healthcare unit will have to adhere to all the security aspects and implementation specifications as discussed above, so as to satisfy the HIPAA security rule. In the process, the healthcare unit will have to extend its interference and control at the cloud computing associate’s location in terms of integrity, encryption, data transfer & management, etc., which this body earlier left up to business associate due to contractual limitations or budget constraints.

Documentation of roles

Obviously, the healthcare unit has an opportunity this way to allot even responsibility to its cloud computing business associate and keep it under the scanner, as if HIPAA compliance is not just the healthcare unit’s liability, but is as much an accountability of that vendor. The documented modus operandi of this body can well include the extent to which it has involved vendor and along with, ask the vendor to document its procedures and practices in following the technical requirements and the HIPAA compliance as a whole.

While cloud computing can be the technical answer for healthcare IT professionals to successfully satisfy HIPAA security compliance, the organisations in healthcare can well ensure strict adherence of HIPAA rules by shouldering equal responsibility with their cloud computing business associates.

About emPower eLearning

emPower  is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.

Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.
For additional information, please visit http://www.empowerbpo.com/HIPAA_Compliance_Training.html.

Media Contact (emPower)
Jason Gaya
marketing@empowerbpo.com

emPower
12806 Townepark Way
Louisville, KY 40243-2311
Ph: 502 -400-9374
http://www.empowerbpo.com
http://www.empowerlms.com

OSHA announced it will hold two stakeholders July 29 to hear from stakeholders as it considers whether to develop a standard meant to control workers' exposures to infectious agents. The tasks it would address might or might not be direct patient care, and the announcement listed examples: housekeeping, food delivery, facility maintenance; handling, transporting, receiving, or processing infectious items or wastes; maintaining, servicing or repairing medical equipment that is contaminated with infectious agents; conducting autopsies; performing mortuary services; and performing tasks in laboratories that result in occupational exposure.

The meetings will take place from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The deadline to confirm registration is July 22, and OSHA said only about 30 participants will be allowed in each meeting. OSHA Compliance staffers will be present to take part, and Eastern Research Group, Inc. of Lexington, Mass. will manage logistics for the meetings, provide a facilitator, and compile notes summarizing the discussion that will be posted in the docket for the Infectious Diseases Request for Information (Docket ID: OSHA-2010-0003, www.regulations.gov).

OSHA published the request for information in May 2010 and received more than 200 comments were received in response. It said these meetings will center on such major issues as whether and to what extent an OSHA standard on occupational exposure to infectious diseases should apply in settings where workers provide direct patient care, as well as, settings where workers have occupational exposure even though they don't provide direct patient care; the advantages and disadvantages of using a program standard to limit occupational exposure to infectious diseases; the advantages and disadvantages of taking other approaches to organizing a prospective standard; and whether a standard should require every employer to develop a written worker infection control plan.