Archives for 2009

DSOS1: Designer Shock

June 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

avant-garde downloadable fonts and design styles

Here’s an unusual idea – a book which is an introduction to a web site. Well, not exactly – because there’s more to it than that. The print version shows you what’s on offer, but the site allows you interactive connection with the software. This is what used to be called in the world of rock music, a ‘concept albumn’. Still confused? Read on. DesignerShock is a German-based collective of graphic design artists. They’ve come up with the idea of making design software available online.

This comes in the form of downloadable fonts, screensavers, wallpaper, product packaging, undsoweiter. You’re with it so far? But they also offer an additional element. You buy the book – which illustrates their designs – and it comes with a CD which gives you access to their web site. So, you have access to unlimited free use. You can download then change, stretch, and adapt the basic information to suit your own taste, using morphing software.

But the problem is that the book is quite hard to read. It’s difficult to know what is main text matter and what is extraneous page decoration and book navigation details. Sometimes the book’s own system of presenting graphics seems to overwhelm its contents.

The examples they show are almost all avant-garde – that is, nearly unreadable. You’ve got to have a strong stomach to even take them seriously. There is one set of fonts in which the letters H and W are identical.

There are also examples of product package designs, icons, dingbats, and did I mention? – the book also doubles as a mousemat. It’s all wacky – but there is the germ of a good idea in here.

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Stefan Gandl, Alexander Dewhirst, Designershock, DSOS1 DesignerShock, Berlin: Die Gestalten Verlag, 2001, pp.180, ISBN: 3931126641

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Duncan Grant & the Bloomsbury Group

July 22, 2009 by Roy Johnson

richly illustrated biography and social study

Duncan Grant came from a privileged upper class family in Scotland where he spent childhood holidays with his cousins the Stracheys (including Lytton Strachey who later became his lover) amidst a family whose eccentric behaviour reads like the events of a PG Wodehouse story. He went to Rugby School with Rupert Brooke and then lived with Lytton Strachey at Lancaster Gate. Duncan Grant and the Bloomsbury Group concentrates on his life and work amidst this illustrious collection of aesthetes.

Douglas Turnbaugh’s narrative weaves in an out of his many affaires as a young man – Strachey, Arthur Hobhouse, John Maynard Keynes – but also emphasises his hard work in trying to become a successful artist, studying the old masters, copying them, and attending art schools in London and Paris. Grant’s life merged with that of the Bloomsbury set when he took up residence with the Stephens in Gordon Square. He and Keynes lived on the ground floor; Adrian Stephen on the first floor; Virginia Woolf on the second; and Leonard Woolf on the top floor.

He joined the Omega workshop which was organised by Roger Fry, subsequently replacing him as Vanessa Bell’s lover – despite the fact that he was her brother’s lover at the time. Then during the war he was like most of the Bloomsberries a conscientious objector. He became the father of Vanessa Bell’s daughter Angelica, who was passed off as the daughter of Clive Bell – to whom Vanessa was still married.

In the 1920s Vanessa learned to tolerate his affairs with a succession of younger men. In fact the whole family became involved in this sexual ambiguity when Julian Bell, Vanessa’s son, studying at Cambridge, began sleeping with Anthony Blunt – who later turned out to be simultaneously Keeper of the Queen’s pictures and a Soviet spy.

The cruelty of concealing the true identity of Angelica Bell’s father came home to roost in the late 1930s when she discovered the truth, and reacted to it by marrying another of her father’s ex-lover, David Garnett – which caused a rift in the family. [She gives her own account of these events, plus a picture of her Bloomsbury childhood, in Deceived with Kindness.]

In 1946, at the age of 60, he met the young Paul Roche, who was to be the main love of his late life and a serious threat to Vanessa. His work in the immediate post war period was considered unfashionable, but he continued working, mainly on decorative projects and private commissions. In the 1960s and 70s however, his reputation revived and he continued painting and pursuing young men with a remarkable degree of success until his death at the age of ninety-three.

This is a rather uncritical biography, but it captures the spirit of the ages in which Duncan Grant lived quite well, and it is rich in anecdote. The book is generously illustrated with Grant’s work and portraits of the Bloomsberries, and it has a good bibliography. I bought my copy second hand on Amazon to flesh out my collection of Bloomsbury materials, and although it is a little dated it turned out to be really good value.

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Douglas Turnbaugh, Duncan Grant and the Bloomsbury group, London: Bloomsbury, 1987, pp.192, ISBN 0747501033

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Duncan Grant biography

September 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Bloomsbury painter and interior designer

Duncan Grant (full name Duncan James Corrowr Grant) was born in Inverness, Scotland in 1885. He was brought up until the age of nine in India and Burma where his father was posted as an army officer. He returned to England in 1894 to attend school. While at St Paul’s school, London, he was brought up by his uncle and aunt Sir Richard and Lady Strachey (the parents of Lytton Strachey. He was encouraged by his art teacher and also his aunt, who organised private drawing lessons for him. Eventually, he was allowed to follow his desire to become an artist, rather than joining the army as his father wished, and he attended Westminster School of Art in 1902.

Grant’s cousins the Stracheys, with whom he had spent summer holidays as a schoolboy, played an important part in his life during this period. He spent the summer of 1905 with Lytton Strachey, and around the same time Pippa Strachey took Duncan to a meeting of the Friday Club where he first met the artists in the Bloomsbury Group.

At the beginning of 1906 he went to Paris, taking with him a letter of introduction from the French artist Simon Bussy and £100 from an aunt sympathetic to Grant’s artistic interests. He rented an attic room in a cheap hotel and enrolled at Jacques Emile Blanche’s new art school, La Palette. While in Paris he copied paintings in the Louvre.

The Art of Duncan Grant is a visual record of Grant’s easel painting and murals. He also did fabric design, theatre and ballet work, illustration and print-making, and commercial interior decoration. Throughout a long life Duncan Grant continued to experiment with new styles and techniques. This book offers an opportunity to grasp the extent of his achievement.

During his year in Paris, Grant developed a number of other important connections. He met the British artists Wyndham Lewis, Henry Lamb and Augustus John, and made friends with the American writer Gertrude Stein. He was also visited by the newly married Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell, along with Vanessa’s sister Virginia Woolf, and their brother Adrian

Returning to London, Duncan Grant formed relationships over the next few years that were to affect the course of his life and work. In 1908, he became the lover of John Maynard Keynes, a university friend of his cousin Lytton Strachey. They travelled to Italy, Greece, and Turkey, seeing much that would influence Grant’s artistic style.

In 1909 he moved to 21 Fitzroy Square and became a regular visitor at Virginia and Adrian Stephen’s Thursday evening gatherings which formed the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group. He also became a co-director of the Omega Workshops in 1913, along with Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell. All of them shared an interest in the decorative arts as well painting on canvas.

In 1911 he worked on his first major commission, collaborating with other artists on a series of murals for the refectory of what is now South Bank University. The art critic of The Times thought that his murals Bathing and Football could have a “degenerative influence on the children of the working classes” – though both panels are now in the Tate Gallery.

From 1914 Duncan lived and worked with Vanessa Bell, moving to Charleston with her and his lover David Garnett. Vanessa was married to Clive Bell, but he had moved on to an affair with someone else and only visited at weekends. Despite Grant’s homosexuality, he and Vanessa remained together for fifty years, and they had a daughter Angelica who was born in 1918. Angelica was led to believe that her father was Clive Bell, and she only discovered the truth as an adult. She gives her version of all this in her memoir, Deceived with Kindness where she describes her reaction of marrying her father’s former lover, David Garnett, who was twenty-six years older than her, much to the disapproval of her mother.

Like most of the members of the Bloomsbury group, Grant was a pacifist. In order to be exempted from military service during World War I, he and David Garnett moved to Wissett in the Suffolk countryside to become farm labourers. Although they were at first refused exemption by a tribunal, they appealed and were eventually recognised as conscientious objectors.

He had his first one-man exhibition in 1920 and his work was exhibited regularly until the end of his life. Grant and Bell were in great demand to paint murals and decorations. Duncan Grant enjoyed a reputation as one of the most important British Artists until the late 1930s, after which period the influence of pre-war Bloomsbury was eclipsed by the second world war.

Vanessa and Grant also travelled widely in Europe and spent much of their time living in Cassis in the South of France. After Vanessa Bell’s death he continued painting, dividing his time between Charleston and London and also travelling to Turkey, Morocco and France. The last great love of his life was the poet Paul Roche, whose daughter the actress and artist Mitey Roche he taught to paint. He died of pneumonia at Aldermaston in 1978 at the age of ninety-three.

Francis Spalding’s Duncan Grant: A Biography is the standard account of his life, which stretched from the Victorian age well into the modern era. It is based on his unpublished memoirs, letters and diaries, and it meticulously documents Grant’s daily life, his travels from Seville to Cyprus, and his encounters with everyone from E.M. Forster to Andre Gide and D.H. Lawrence.

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Bloomsbury Group – web links

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, featuring designs by Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, and others.

The Omega Workshops
A brief history of Roger Fry’s experimental Omega Workshops, which had a lasting influence on interior design in post First World War Britain.

The Bloomsbury Group and War
An essay on the largely pacifist and internationalist stance taken by Bloomsbury Group members towards the First World War.

Tate Gallery Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury
Mini web site featuring photos, paintings, a timeline, sub-sections on the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant, and biographical notes.

Bloomsbury: Books, Art and Design
Exhibition of paintings, designs, and ceramics at Toronto University featuring Hogarth Press, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Quentin Bell, and Stephen Tomlin.

Blogging Woolf
A rich enthusiast site featuring news of events, exhibitions, new book reviews, relevant links, study resources, and anything related to Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search the texts of all Woolf’s major works, and track down phrases, quotes, and even individual words in their original context.

A Mrs Dalloway Walk in London
An annotated description of Clarissa Dalloway’s walk from Westminster to Regent’s Park, with historical updates and a bibliography.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Annotated tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury, including Gordon Square, University College, Bedford Square, Doughty Street, and Tavistock Square.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
News of events, regular bulletins, study materials, publications, and related links. Largely the work of Virginia Woolf specialist Stuart N. Clarke.

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
A charming sound recording of a BBC radio talk broadcast in 1937 – accompanied by a slideshow of photographs of Virginia Woolf.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephens’ collection of family photographs which became known as the Mausoleum Book, collected at Smith College – Massachusetts.

Bloomsbury at Duke University
A collection of book jacket covers, Fry’s Twelve Woodcuts, Strachey’s ‘Elizabeth and Essex’.

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Dust or Magic

June 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

secrets of successful multimedia design

Dust or Magic is a book for people who want to know about or work in the new media. It takes the line of revealing the truth about how multimedia projects really work – pointing to both successes and complete turkeys. Bob Hughes has been active in the field over its last decade, and he discusses a fascinating range of examples – from websites and CD-ROMs to kiosk programs and interactive video.

He starts with an account of digital technology from Alan Turing onwards – but the chronology darts backwards and forwards from Russian constructivists to Greek theatre and back again to Richard Wagner. Later, he settles down to a slightly smoother chronology, but without sacrificing his wide range of reference. He offers Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, and Ted Nelson as key pioneers and presents excellent accounts of their work.

This is followed by detailed sketches of the pioneers of Virtual Reality, Interactive Video, and early hypertext programs such as Guide, Toolbook, and Hypercard – including developments which have been passed by which he claims could be revived with the development of new technology.

There’s something of an intellectual dip in the middle of the book when he compares English revolutionaries of the seventeenth century with the Guerilla Girls, and he celebrates web sites and Hyperstacks which are not much more than collections of idiosyncratic enthusiasms. Fortunately, the level rises again with a whole chapter devoted to Voyager, which he claims made innovations with the bare tools [Hypercard] available at the time.

The latter parts of the book are devoted to accounts of working on multimedia projects – one for the Nationwide Building Society, of all people – and he covers the disaster of the Microsoft ‘Sendak’ project, before passing on to discuss theories of ‘creativity’ and report on forays into the world of advertising. He discusses the psychology of idea-generation, its relation to programming and the world of computer games, the advantages of motion and sounds on screen, and there are some interesting observations on the need for visual ‘transitions’ between one screen of information and another.

Reading all this, you get an invigorating sense of intellectual excitement, the downside of which is that no single idea is pursued to any depth. This is a weakness occasionally reinforced by a surprisingly cavalier attitude towards his readers – ‘sorry – I’ve lost the URL’.

And yet he’s actually gone to the trouble of locating the original authors of some of these programs – an admirable trait in an age when a lot of software has a lifespan of five years or less. He’s very fond of using metaphors to explain his arguments, and there are lots of interesting historical anecdotes woven as side-bars into the text. At its best, he throws up novel connections from different media and sources of technology; at its weakest, he flits from one unexamined generalisation to another.

Apart from concluding that projects are best carried out by small teams, he never seems to get round to explaining the ‘secret’ in his sub-title, but this is a lively and stimulating introduction to the history of software development which should go onto the reading list of anyone who wants to know what happens on real-life projects. It’s a revelation of the costly disasters as well as a celebration of the often unsung heroes of new technology during the last thirty years.

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Bob Hughes, Dust or Magic: Secrets of Successful Multimedia Design, London: Addison-Wesley, 2000, pp.264, ISBN: 0201360713

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Dynamics in Document Design

July 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

information layout and management for professionals

Karen Schriver’s Dynamics in Document Design is another strong entry in the Wiley series of books about writing in the marketplace. Schriver does not intend yet another ‘how to’ book for beginning document designers. Such books are plentiful. She assumes her audience is acquainted with the fundamentals of document design and wants more information about the complexities and subtleties of document design. In this area – and many others – Schriver succeeds admirably.

Schriver’s book is so rich in insight, information, and innovation that no review will do it justice. One of the book’s many virtues is its presentation of heuristics for making decisions about typography and page-layout grids. A heuristic, as Schriver explains, “is a way of thinking systematically about the key features of a problem.” Schriver’s heuristic for grids includes taking an inventory of all the text elements (photographs, descriptions, captions, etc.) in the document, organizing these text elements into rhetorical clusters, measuring the actual print or display area, dividing the print or display area into columns and rows, considering exceptions and deviations, trying out some optional spatial arrays for the document, and applying the grid to longer sections of the document to see how it works. For someone who has to design a longer document or complicated web site, Schriver’s heuristics are very useful.

Schriver has not neglected design issues on the Internet. Her 18-page discussion of a student’s case study of the effectiveness of a web site is worth the entire price of the book. As a practitioner of feedback-driven audience analysis, Schriver had taught the student, Daphne van der Vlist of Holland, procedures for studying user responses to document design. Van der Vlist studied the reactions of seven users to the Virtual Tourist web site.

As happens often in Schriver’s book, real users have rich and informative critiques of real documents. In her study, van der Vlist found that users had trouble with incomplete and illogically clustered headings, information that violated users’ expectations, underdeveloped information, poorly laid out lists, and pictures that narrowed content inappropriately. To aid her readers in understanding the users’ problems, Schriver used a four-page spread of eight screens from the web site, with user annotations in the margins surrounding the centered screen representations. Schriver’s analysis and graphic presentation of her student’s case is exceptionally informative and effective. People designing web sites should read this section.

Another strong section of her book describes one of her own projects-
evaluating government-created drug education brochures aimed at teenagers. Using feedback-driven audience analysis, Schriver and her collaborators gathered 297 students ranging from 11 to 21 years old and asked them to respond to the text and graphics in the brochures that they provided. The students’ responses were very sophisticated and revealing. Schriver presents the responses to several brochures by using the format mentioned earlier. She reproduces the brochure in the center of a single page or a two-page spread and surrounds it with student responses in the margin. She draws lines to connect student responses to specific passages and graphics.

The student responses are very constructive and sophisticated. One complained that a brochure was cliched and suggested that a more effective approach would be to present stories about how drug users died or destroyed their lives. Another student complained of the long paragraphs and suggested a list, which other young people would be more inclined to read. Another said the impact of a brochure would be improved if the authors “use pictures of a dead guy.” The students were especially fond of realism. Many of them disliked the line drawings and preferred photographs of actual drug users suffering the effects of drug abuse.

Schriver also discussed the constraints that the government writers and graphic designers operated under when they developed the drug education literature. Many were reluctant to talk about what they did. Bureaucracy and politics stifle the effectiveness of documents and of open communication between researcher/designers like Schriver and her subjects. A quotation from one person eloquently revealed the stress that some government writers and designers felt:

That brochure is not attributable to anyone. We receive lots of assignments, that was just one of them. We can’t say who wrote it. There are so many hands in the process. And we can’t say that what was printed was what anyone in this office wrote. We have to go now.

Schriver offers an important innovation to document design teachers – her protocol-aided audience-modeling method (PAM), which allows document designers to better anticipate problems that users have with documents. PAM has two steps: (1) The student reads a sample document and lists the problems she thinks the intended audience will have with the text and graphics. (2) The student reads a transcript of a think-aloud protocol created by one of the intended users of the same document. A think-aloud protocol has a user think aloud about any difficulties she or he encounters while reading a document (form, instruction, etc.). In her research, Schriver has found that students using PAM were 62% more accurate than a control group in predicting readers’ problems. PAM, in short, is much better than such traditional methods as audience heuristics, peer-group critiquing, role-playing, and purpose oriented audience analysis.

Yet another valuable innovation is Schriver’s timeline of document design from 1900 to 1995. She devotes forty-four pages to tracing the evolution of five design contexts: education and practice in writing and rhetoric; professional developments in writing and graphic design; education and practice in graphic design; science, technology, and the environment; and society and consumerism. On twenty-two sets of facing pages, Schriver has columns devoted to each of the aforementioned contexts in a given decade of the twentieth century.

The evolution of education and practice in writing and rhetoric is fascinating by itself. Schriver begins in 1900 with the instructional emphasis on usage, grammar, and mechanics. “Students are expected to adapt their texts for an audience and to find an original thesis, but they are not taught explicit ways to do so.” In 1904, one of the first technical writing courses in the twentieth century was taught at Tufts College. In 1939, “teaching technical writing or composition at the college level is considered ‘professional suicide’.” In the 1950’s, college instructors finally begin to pay some attention to audience analysis and the relations between writers and readers. In 1955 and later, technical communication courses begin to show interest in teaching graphics. In the 1970’s, some technical communications professors finally begin to get tenure for work in their specialties. In 1994, academics and industry experts express concern that literature professors have too much say in tenuring and promoting writing, rhetoric, and technical communication faculty.

Again, this review cannot pretend to do justice to the many virtues and innovations in Karen Schriver’s excellent book. Even though she aims her book more at experienced document designers and information architects, beginners and students can also profit from reading it. If you design documents for paper or electronic publication, buy this book. You will not be disappointed.

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Karen A. Schriver, Dynamics in Document Design, NewYork/London: John Wiley & Sons: 1997, pp.560, ISBN: 0471306363

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E-Commerce User Experience

July 12, 2009 by Roy Johnson

guide to making eCommerce sites more efficient

Web guru Jakob Nielsen teamed up with design maven Donald Norman to form a consultancy which now dominates the business of Web ‘usability’. E-Commerce User Experience is a company report they have produced which offers guidelines on how to make e-commerce sites more efficient. The suggestions they make are based on findings from detailed studies of twenty e-commerce sites, with users in the United States and Europe. The sites tested are typical e-Commerce sites – clothes, flowers, books, furniture, toys, and CDs. Companies range from Boo, Sears, Disney, and eToys, to Herman Miller. The main issues covered include how to sell goods and services, how to build trust with customers, and how to display product information.

Other important issues include trading across national boundaries, and making the ordering transaction as smooth as possible. The testing methodology is meticulously documented, and in line with current thinking on quality testing, the emphasis is on small groups carefully watched – not mass numbers. It throws down the gauntlet to his critics. What he’s saying is – ‘This is what users actually do and want. Can you prove otherwise?’

Nielsen even gives you advice on how to do your own usability testing – and how to cut corners to make it cheaper than the very service he offers. In other words, he follows his own principles of ‘show the customer what’s available’. This is an approach which inspires confidence in the user – and it does the same for his readers.

He deals with issues which are very basic, and yet which can be difficult to do properly – such as how to categorise topics on a site. Do CD-ROMs belong under ‘entertainment’ or ‘electronics’ – or both? How to classify information requires that you have analysed your bank of data closely, and conceptualised the connections between its items.

On some of his recommendations you might be tempted to think ‘But that’s common sense’. For instance – ‘Make it clear how much products cost’. But when he examines the sample sites, it’s interesting how they often don’t deliver this information. Prices are often concealed until late in the checkout process.

He’s very thorough on how search results should be displayed – and in particular ‘failed results’. Any eBusiness which carries a lot of different stock items needs to think this issue through carefully. There’s also a detailed examination of the heart of any eCommerce site – the shopping basket. Every click, box, and link is examined for its relevance and efficiency.

He follows the policy of comparing eCommerce sites with physical bricks and mortar stores – which is reasonable, because these are the real competition. Some people are bound to complain that Nielsen’s paradigm is entirely commercial, arguing that there are Web sites where the ‘experience’ is paramount. His reply will be to point to his title – this is e-Commerce. But in fact the lessons we can learn from this can meaningfully inform designers of all kinds of sites.

Nielsen’s approach forces you to consider every smallest detail of the on-screen experience from the user’s point of view. This means clear labelling and navigation, intelligent page design, and thoughtful information architecture. Show graphics of your products – close-up pictures giving details. Arrange shopping carts so that the customer choices on colour, size, and other variables is made before the actual check out.

Don’t be surprised by the high price tag. What you’re paying for here is an industrial strength professional business report. Anybody working in eCommerce will profit from its recommendations. It’s packed with first-hand experience, well illustrated with real-life examples, and the advice offered is based on rigorous testing.

As one of his enthusiastic reviewers at Amazon says – ‘Anybody contemplating a serious e-Commerce site will find their investment in this report repaid ten times within the first year’s trading’. I think that might also be said for any serious Web designers or design studios.

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Jakob Nielsen et al, E-Commerce User Experience, Fremont (CA): Nielsen Norman Group, 2001, pp.389, ISBN: 0970607202

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E-Learning in FE

July 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

practical guide and resources for the e-tutor

This is written from the perspective of practising FE teachers – and healthily sceptical ones at that – well aware of the resistance to and pitfalls in e-learning. And it covers all the possibilities – from simple Word documents to Moodle and other advanced courseware. They start off by looking at all the very common objections made to the use of IT in teaching. ‘Computers can’t replace teachers’; ‘It might be OK in other subjects, but not mine’; and ‘Not in my back yard’.

You’ll have heard them all. These are firmly refuted, whilst at the same time they acknowledge the sceptics and the pressures of daily life in FE. Then come some simple suggestions for interactive eLearning without any advanced IT skills – largely based on using the tools available within Microsoft Word and PowerPoint – to which many (if not all) are likely to have access.

This includes the inventive suggestion of using ‘comments’ to attach audio files giving feedback on pieces of submitted work – which shows what’s possible with these relatively simple and widely available features. This technique is not complex and is within the technical skills of most tutors. Moreover, it can be used in both ‘directions’. Students in art and design can supplement their submitted work with critical commentaries on their choice of materials via attached podcasts.

There are also examples of audio recordings used in PowerPoint for language lessons – and as they point out, these techniques can easily be repeated with new materials. Once an item of interactivity has been created, it can act as a ‘learning object’ – a small, independent and re-usable unit of learning.

Next comes a tour of the free and nearly-free software programs which allow tutors to create course tests and exercises: Hot Potatoes (quizzes) Action Mazes (choice actions) mind mapping, course management tools, and web quests. The main problem here is that many of these programs merely encourage users to link up existing Word files to create a spurious sense of interactivity – which isn’t real eLearning.

The new digital classroom can make use of cameras, audio-recording devices, and video recorders – all of which are now regularly combined in mobile phones. There’s also a discussion of interactive whiteboards (which I personally recommend you practise using thoroughly before embarrassing yourself in front of a class).

And if you don’t want to make your own eLearning materials, there are lots of ready-made options available for free or licensed download. They include maps, images, encyclopedias, and mini-courses endorsed by BECTA and NLN (National Learning Network).

This leads naturally into a discussion of how these materials are made available to students. The answer is via VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments). These can be intimidating for teachers – but at the same time their salvation. What they offer is a central repository for documents, exercises, student work, learning plans, and interactive courses – as well as facilities such as email, chat rooms, and discussion forums.

There’s an interesting chapter on mobile learning devices – laptops, PDAs, phones, and tablets. What emerges here as the unsung hero is the flash disk (or pen drive) – up to 2 GB of complete portability which can store information and even executable programs and fits in your shirt pocket.

They end with a comprehensive review of the support organisations and sources of help for the aspirant eTutor. My only reservation was that there might have been more practical examples and illustrative screenshots. But apart from that, I would say that this was the best guide to eLearning I have come across.

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John Whalley, Theresa Welch, Lee Williamson, E-Learning in FE, London: Continuum, 2006, pp.118, ISBN 0826488625

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e-Learning in the 21st Century

June 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

theory and practice of designing online learning

e-Learning is education’s Big Thing at the moment. After all, it makes sense. If courses are put on line, students can study where and when they wish, tutors are freed from lecturing and classroom drudgery, and the institution can offer its courses to customers worldwide. That’s the theory anyway, and many institutions have thrown their text-based materials onto web sites, hoping to keep up with the rush. But of course, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Garrison and Anderson take a gung-ho line on e-Learning, arguing that it will transform education in the coming century – but they point out from the start that a lot of careful planning is required. As far as educational theory is concerned, their approach is ‘collaborate constructivist’. That is, it’s based on the idea that individuals create meaning for themselves which is then related to society. A great deal of their emphasis is placed on ‘community’:

A critical community of learners … is composed of teachers and students transacting with the specific purposes of facilitating, constructing, and validating understanding, and of developing capabilities that will lead to further learning.

Almost all their observations in the first half of the book are posited in terms of educational theory. But when in the second they come to give practical advice, most of it confirms my own experience of online tuition and course design. For instance, they emphasise the need to establish as rapidly as possible what they call ‘social presence’ – some sense of rapport between members of the learning community.

There are also some useful tips on course design – such as not overloading students with too much content, and placing more emphasis on cognitive skills and critical thinking. They are also good on how to promote and guide online conferences. Open University tutors please take note.

They cover evaluation and assessment, problem-based learning, and the organizational problems created for institutions, plus repositories of free learning objects which might help designers overcome them.

The authors are unashamed enthusiasts, and they cover in detail how the skills and facilities of successful online learning can be harnessed to overcome the apparent weaknesses of asynchronous communication in a networked community.

It’s a pity there are no practical examples of online courses or reviews of software, but anyone involved in the development of online courses who needs theoretical justification for their enterprise will find plenty of it here.

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D. R. Garrison and Terry Anderson, E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice, London: Routledge, 2003, pp.167, ISBN 0415263468

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E-mail Publishing

July 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

complete guide to electronic publishing on a budget

Lots of people now have websites, but are they reaching lots of customers? In the main – no. And the reason? Well, how does anybody know a site exists? Why should they go there when there are lots of others doing the same thing? And who’s got the time anyway? Chris Pirillo argues that e-mail can be a more effective way of reaching customers than the Web. And he might be right. Many people pin all their hopes on a few HTML pages stuck up on a server (which he describes as being like opening a hamburger stand in a dead-end street). On the other hand, almost everybody reads their e-mail, so why not use it as a vehicle for publishing instead?

Some of the more popular e-mail newsletters have 200-400,000 regular subscribers. He outlines the possibilities – discussion groups, bulletins, and announcement lists – but it’s the free e-mail newsletter which is at the heart of this book. He takes you through all the technicalities of how to run one. ISP registration; mailing programs; list management software [it’s still possible to do most of this free, by the way] subscribing and unsubscribing; and how to deal with bounced messages and address changes. The approach is direct, there’s a reassuring tone, and his advice is based on first-hand experience – which follows the very practical approach of these guides from TopFloor.

This is most definitely not a get-rich-quick manual. In fact many of the successful ventures he describes don’t make any money from their newsletters – though they might from associated activity, such as consultancies and advertising. In fact the odd thing, as he observes, is that there might be a case for creating a website which compliments a newsletter.

The latter part of the book is a series of essays by other successful newsletter entrepreneurs: Peter Kent, founder of TopFloor publishing; Adam Boettiger who describes running a discussion list; Fred Langa who bravely reveals the nightmare of running a list during a series of recursive mailbounce loops; and Randy Cassingham, who made his newsletter This Is True into a full time job:

Everybody thought I was crazy; they didn’t see how I could make money by giving my column away for free over the Internet. I replied that I ought to be able to quit my day job in two years, and then went home that night an expanded my notes into a business plan. That plan has remained virtually unchanged and, virtually two years to the day later, I quit my day job, moved to Colorado, and went to work full time on This is True.

There are also several useful appendices: list service providers (Lyris is the current favourite); mailing list software (LISTSERV, Majordomo); resources for electronic publishing; e-mail programs; mailing list e-mail commands (such as unsubscribing and requesting a weekly digest of messages); and fifty golden tips for e-mail publishers.

He’s gung-ho, but doesn’t hide the fact that it’s all a lot of hard work. However, if you follow his instructions, you could be up and running in a few days. But what happens if your newsletter is so successful that the technical management of it becomes a pain? Answer – subscribe to a list management service. He gives a comprehensive list of questions a potential subscriber should be prepared to ask in making a selection.

So although the book appears to be targeted on a small audience, it is one which might expand rapidly as soon as people wake up to the fact that e-mail is what he calls the ‘undiscovered form of electronic commerce’. This is an excellent addition to the best-selling series of TopFloor’s ‘Poor Richard’ guides to digital enterprise.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Chris Pirillo, Poor Richard’s E-mail Publishing: Creating Newsletters, Bulletins, Discussion Groups, and Other Powerful Communication Tools, Colorado: TopFloor, 1999, pp.334, ISBN: 0966103254

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E-volve-or-Die.com

July 3, 2009 by Roy Johnson

eBusiness techniques and strategies for success

Mitchell Levy preaches the simple message of all eCommerce books – “At the most basic level, online customers expect service, speed, and easy access”. In fact the overall message of E-volve-or-Die.com is that the customer must come first. He certainly explains how eCommerce works at a practical level, with lots of real life examples. It’s a world of constant experimentation, collaborating with the right partners, and keeping the customer at he centre of every decision. Part one deals with the transition from the industrial to the digital age; part two is how to form and implement a business plan; part three deals with marketing; and part four is about shifting markets, surviving, and e-volving into the future.

It’s all expressed in an upbeat, gung-ho style which sometimes slips over into enthusiastic cliche – ‘E-commerce is here to stay’ and ‘Thinking outside the box’ – but on the whole his writing is clear and vigorous. Yet it does seem rather perverse to insist that eCommerce be called ‘a holistic Internet-enabled entity’. He deals mainly with big businesses such as eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo! (all of them one time risky start-ups) but the principles are the same even for small businesses.

What most people will not be aware of in eCommerce is how heavily it relies on partnerships, affiliate programmes, and all sorts of new intermediary trading – as well as the new business opportunities created by payment mechanisms, reminder services, portals, and traffic monitoring.

Some of his larger management strategies make big business sound a bit like some form of economic Boy Scout utopia, with everyone on the payroll pulling together with no such thing as friction or rivalry in sight. The rest is sensible advice, and his proposals are backed up with evidence.

For the most ambitious readers, he outlines the issues and opportunities of establishing a global presence, and he shows how to make the important decisions in focussing on your core business abilities and ‘outsourcing the rest’.

At the sharp end of serving the customer is establishing a customer database – to which all employees should have access. The other element which is both new and yet a constant of eCommerce is change.

Don’t make a five year but a one year business plan – and be prepared to revise it after six months. Nothing stays still on the Net.

People with small business sites will be glad to know that he offers plenty of tips on how to make your site more effective – all of which is elaborated on the book’s own web site at www.ECnow.com – and he ends with a series of real life case studies of companies who have successfully embraced the new opportunities.

This book will be of interest to students and teachers of business studies, commercial site managers, and anybody who wants to take a look at the practical consequences of launching into eCommerce.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Mitchell Levy, E-volve-or-Die.com, Indianapolis (IA) New Riders, 2001, pp.324, ISBN: 07357102871

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