Monday, August 25, 2008

Vocational training e-learning newsletter

The Australian Flexible Learning Framework provide a free newsletter "Flex e-News" about federally funded e-learning tools and training for vocational sector training. The August edition has items on E-standards, e-Portfolios, m-Learning and some podcasts. However, there are some catches with this: the newsletter is poorly formatted (which detracts from the message about e-Learning) and some activities are restricted to state registered training organisations (so you can't necessarily attend if your organisation is a national one, but registered in a different state).

Newsletter Formatting

The newsletter failed a W3C Markup Validation, with 463 Errors, the highest number I have seen for a web page. It also had problems with an automated accessibility test for the disabled:
Test summary outcome

AutomaticHuman review
Priority 10268
Priority 2245249
Priority 31977

From: Testing outcome: http://flexenews.flexiblelearning.net.au/, TAW 3.0 (8/25/08 4:56 AM) Validation conform to WAI guidelines, W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999
The newsletter format could be made bit simpler, as well as fixing the technical errors. One way would be to design it for a mobile phone. Not that anyone would read it on a mobile phone, but that would curb some of the web designers excesses. Another way would be to have an RSS feed which strips off the formatting and gives short, readable items.

State Based Administration of VET

The Australian Flexible Learning Framework is a national training e-learning strategy, but is administered by state governments. As a result, training organisations taking part have to be registered in a state and obtain funding and support via that state. This does not make a lot of sense for developing e-learning systems which are designed to be location independent.

This adds to the problem that e-learning initiatives for the vocational sector are separate to those for universities. As a result it will be very difficult to get cooperation on standards for e-learning and e-portfolios and much of the government funding will be wasted on duplicated and conflicting efforts.

The Federal Government is conducting a Review of Australian Higher Education. The Discussion Paper (June 2008) touches on the high cost of e-learning. One way to reduce those costs would be to merge university and vocational e-learning programs. Another would be to make the vocational programs national, with no distinction made for what state a training organisation happens to be physically located in. Courses, tools and standards could then be developed for educational use across Australia and across education sectors.

7 comments:

  1. this page contains 45 errors...

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  2. Anom wrote August 26, 2008 3:07 PM:

    "this page contains 45 errors..."

    Yes, unfortunately Blogger doesn't produce validating web pages and despite my best efforts, it has about 47 errors for my posting about the e-learning newsletter.

    But then that is far short of their 463 Errors.

    Also I should point out that no one is paying me to write this blog, whereas I assume the federal government is paying someone to do the Flex e-News newsletter. ;-)

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  3. hi tom, i'm just curious, isn't the tester that you've used on this e-newsletter only designed for web pages? having looked at this e-newsletter, i think it's only been designed for email so not sure that the same guidelines apply?

    perhaps if we all start to focus on developing the standards needed to ensure e-newsletters meet the same standards as needed for web pages then we won't have these problems any more.

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  4. yes, that is true that the newsletter would be paid for. But in the end, I guess that it doesnt really matter how many errors it contains, as hardly anyone bothers to validate pages anymore ( except the Government ). Especially when the medium in question is meant for email distribution only.

    All I was really trying to do was point out the hypocrisy of this article ;)

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  5. Good points Anom, I completely agree :)

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  6. At 08:03 PM 26/08/2008, curious wrote:
    ... isn't the tester that you've used on this e-newsletter only designed for web pages? ...

    Yes. The newsletter is supplied both as an email message and a web page. I had difficulty reading the email, so as suggested in the message, I tried the web version. I had problems reading the web version, so I did the web tests on it.

    ... perhaps if we all start to focus on developing the standards needed to ensure e-newsletters meet the same standards as needed for web pages then we won't have these problems any more. ...

    Good idea. Another option would be to use an RSS or Atom feed.

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  7. At 09:46 AM 27/08/2008, Anom wrote:
    ... hardly anyone bothers to validate pages anymore ( except the Government ). ...

    But this web page is from the government and it doesn't validate.

    ...Especially when the medium in question is meant for email distribution only. ...

    The newsletter was supplied as a web page for those who had trouble reading the email (which I did).

    ...All I was really trying to do was point out the hypocrisy of this article ;) ...

    Point taken. I should try to find some way to get Blogger to produce validating web pages, or stop using it.

    ReplyDelete