September 2002 — Editorial

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Administrative and Instructional Portals

By Dr. Sylvia Charp, Editor-in Chief

Ways to serve the educational community better through the use of technology have increased. This is also true in government and industry, where the need for efficiency is apparent. At the Society for Applied Learning Technology's (SALT) Education Technology 2002 Conference in July, the commonality of educators was noticeable in the subject areas that the organization focused on. This year's topics included "E-Learning in Education and Industry," "Knowledge Management" and "Technical Skills Training."

Waiting for Education's Revolution

E-learning's future in education seems assured in both education and training, which is indicated in the chart below from research firm brandon-hall.com. In the SALT Conference keynote address Dr. Alan B. Salisbury, chairman of Avilar Technologies Inc., said we are still in an evolutionary mode and the revolution in education has not yet occurred. He also said that many learning issues need to be studied and resolved, including skill completion rates, time allocation, faculty acceptance and availability, domain applicability, and a special emphasis on quality.

Other notable information from the SALT Conference included:

  • The sharing of information and experiences has increased, saving time and money.
  • Collaborative software efforts are producing better results.
  • Not everyone is enthusiastic about mobile computers because of their limitations, which include tiny screens, slow processing speeds and short battery lives - typically three to four hours of useful life. They're best used in situations where large environments, graphs and extensive browsing are not provided. Mobile computers also provide performance-based assessments and specific functions independent of location or time.
  • Brandon-hall.com projects that the mobile learning industry will grow from 2.5 billion users in 2002 to 6.5 billion users in 2006.

    • What Are Portals?

    The Army's new education initiative, eArmyU (www.earmyu.com), has been in operation since January 2001. The university is an asynchronous e-learning project that offers a flexible degree program using technology anytime, anywhere. Currently, a consortium of 23 schools provides course materials for the online university. More than 80 certificate and degree programs are available to more than 72,000 students. The program is scheduled to expand to additional sites, serving about 100,000 students within four years, pending approval. Though 50 percent of Army students are new to higher education, as of February 2002 more than 10,000 courses were completed and about 5,000 courses were in progress at eArmyU. The heart of the university is a portal that contains e-learning services, such as high-quality degree and certificate programs; administrative support services, including registration, textbook distribution and announcements; and personal information.

    "Portal" has been a buzzword for a few years. At the most basic level, portals assemble a variety of useful information into a one-stop Web page, bringing about greater efficiency. Portals are also entry points to a variety of resources, such as e-mail, financial records, schedules and announcements. They allow administrative and instructional information to be found in one place to serve a community, such as a university or other educational institution, so users don't have to deal with dozens of different Web interfaces. Portals consist of a number of information channels, including: