Getting a good education in this country isn’t always an easy or inexpensive proposition, but there’s hope on the horizon. In one A+, gold star example of good gov, 30 of our federal agencies got together and created a website called Federal Resources for Education Excellence(eLearning), or FREE. The site is justsick with information, teaching tools, and school resources, to borrow a phrase from the students.

Spawning from an interagency’s workgroup idea “to make hundreds of federally supported education resources available” for Americans online, the FREE website was funded by an Innovation Fund from the obscure but impressive sounding Government Innovation Technology Services Board. Three hundred and forty teachers broke into ten teams to develop Online Learning activities and lessons Learning Management Systems(LMS) .

FREE’s website is not particularly impressive at first glance, but like a kiwi fruit, once you get inside it suddenly gets pretty interesting. A click on “World Studies – Africa” brings up an array of options from African Voices to Water in Africa, each brought to you by a different federal agency. African Voices sends you to the beautiful Smithsonian Institution site for an audio lesson, and from the Peace Corps’ Water in Africa you get pictures and lessons from the volunteers.

Take it from somebody who learned most of her lessons about the world from National Geographic magazine, this is a BIG step up. If you’re interested in rocket science, NASA can help you there with a “Rockets: Educators Guide,” or if that doesn’t turn your key you can try “Interactive Constitution” from the National Constitution Center. This website seems to cover it all.

FREE is an effort to give teachers in America a place to go to find resources that previously were not, well, easily accessible. Teachers can use it in a number of ways: searching by grade level or subject matter, tracking an RSS feed that announces new resources on the site, and following the FREE group on Twitter.

Imagine being a teacher faced with a twenty-year old textbook and a dreary lesson about the colonization of California in 1774. You log onto FREE and find Web de Anza, an entire site brought to you by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Oregon that’s dedicated to the study of Bautista de Anza’s two expeditions to Alta California. If that’s not helpful enough, the website also gives examples of how other teachers used the resource in their classrooms. And if that’s still not helpful … well, maybe you should consider a new career.

Everybody should take the time to stop by FREE. It’s a reminder of how our government can sometimes cooperate across agency lines to produce really valuable services. Oh yeah, and if you hadn’t guessed by now, the website is totally free. Ok, maybe not totally free, but we’ll leave that to the economics lessons.

Source: ohmygov.com

I had the pleasure of participating in a small symposium on quality in e-learning last week, organized by Athabasca University and the International Council for Distance Education. One of the things that bothers me about the quality issue is that only seems to reach the top of the agenda when e-learning is involved. The discussion seems to always start from the premise that the quality of e-learning is inherently suspect and we need to ensure it meets the same standard as our face-to-face instruction. In fact, there are no system-wide quality standards for teaching and learning in higher education and most higher education institutions rely almost entirely on student satisfaction and graduation rates as their measures of education quality. Nonetheless, perception is often more powerful than reality and, according to Frits Pannekoek, President of Athabasca University, distance education and online learning is facing increasing restrictions around the world and its quality is being increasingly questioned. With this in mind, the 13 participants spent a day and a half exploring what the quality issues are, real or perceived, and what the key dimensions of quality should be. We used the Quality On the Line framework as a starting point. Although this was developed on 2000, we found the key categories still relevant:

Institutional Support
Course Development
Teaching/Learning
Course Structure
Student Support
Faculty Support
Evaluation & Assessment.
Trying to specify the actual benchmarks in each category proved to be much more difficult. At BCIT we have developed our own framework that took into account the Quality On the Line document as well as as several others. Ours is more course-specific, has more specific categories, and doesn’t address institutional factors. The categories are:

Course Overview & Introduction
Learning Outcomes
Assessment
Course Materials
Learner Engagement
Educational Technology
Course Resources
Learner Support Resources
Coming back to my opening point, what strikes me about both these frameworks, and the quality in e-learning discussion more generally, is that most of the issues are also directly applicable to all teaching and learning. So if we are going to focus on quality and invest time and effort in developing standards, let’s make sure they are not just applied to e-learning.

Here are some additional resources. Paul Bacsich, formerly of the UK Open Universityprovided these links to different quality frameworks:

http://www.utdc.vuw.ac.nz/research/emm/index.shtml
http://www.acode.edu.au/resources/ACODE_benchmarks.pdf
http://www.eadtu.nl/e-xcellence/
http://www.virtualcampuses.eu/index.php/Critical_Success_Factors
Torstein Rekkedal from NKI Norway (one of Europe’s largest online distance education institutions) provided these references:

Rekkedal, T. (2006): Distance Learning and E-Learning Quality for SMEs – State of the Art. In: Paulsen, M. & Vieira, V. (eds.): An Analysis of E-Learning Experiences in European Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, pp. 11-18. Bekkestua, NKI.
Rekkedal, T. (2006): State of the Art Report on Distance Learning and E-learning Quality for SMEs. 27 pages. Paper prepared for the EU Leonardo project, E-learning Quality for SMEs: Guidance and Counselling, May 2006.http://nettskolen.nki.no/in_english/elq-sme/ELQ-SMEStateofArt.pdf
Rekkedal, T. (2002): Quality Assurance in Norwegian Distance Education – the Background for NADE’s Quality Standards with Reference to some European Initiatives. In: Hansson, H. (ed.): Eight Contributions on Quality and Flexible Learning. Report 1:2002, pp 27-53.Härnösand, Swedish Agency for Distance Education.http://nettskolen.nki.no/forskning/DISTUMQualityAssurance.pdf
Rekkedal, T. (1998): Quality Assessment and Evaluation – Basic Philosophies, Concepts and Practices at NKI, Norway: In: Rathore, H. & Schuemer, R. (eds): Evaluation Concepts and Practice in Selected Distance Education Institutions, pp. 39-65. ZIFF Papiere 108, Hagen: FernUniversität, 1998. http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/ZIFF/ZP_108.pdf
Rekkedal, T. (1996): Quality of Education Produced and Delivered by Different Institutions.In: Helsinki University of Technology: Open and Distance Learning – Enhancing Mobility in Europe, the Future with Socrates, pp B1-B9. Espoo: European Commission/Helsinki University of Technology. http://www.nettskolen.nki.no/forskning/30/quality.htm
Ljoså, E. & Rekkedal, T. (1994): From External Control to Internal Quality Assurance: The Background for the development of NADE’s Quality Standards for Distance Education. In: EDEN: Human Resources, Human Potential and Human Development: the Role of Distance Education. Proceedings 1994 EDEN Conference, pp 153-166. Tallin: EDEN.http://www.nettskolen.nki.no/forskning/17/tallinn.htm
NADE – Norwegian Association for Distance Education (1993): Quality Standards. Oslo: NADE. http://www.nettskolen.nki.no/forskning/18/kvalen1.htm
http://www.bcitltc.com/2010/09/quality-in-e-learning.html

The smart phone devices have outclassed its prime adversary landline phones. Today the peripheries of smart phones have moved beyond corporate houses to universities.

Content development in mobile devices is a new concept that had been thought of for quite some time now and that makes a lot of sense — the adoption of these devices around the world is just tremendous. Mobile Learning is growing at an expeditious pace. Business professionals and universities are embracing mobile learning on all sorts of devices.

As advancement of mobile applications continues to expand its global reach with corporations and universities in particular are actively investigating how to deploy learning to mobile professionals.  With careful planning a course developers in particular should be able to craft and deploy a wide variety of content to help those learners who are on the go.

Duke University, Abilene Christian University, Hamilton County Virtual School, University of Adelaide’s Faculty of Science , Hastings College, Leeds College, St Helens College, Walsall College are some of the well known institutes who have opted to replace textbooks and use iPhone and iPad instead. iPad and similar smart phones utility as a mobile learning device has been successfully experimented in many sectors and is recently being introduced to the healthcare sectors.

The term authoring tool can be somewhat misleading. People can easily be deceptive when they hear the term for the first time, the reason behind its close resemblance with word-processing software for professional writers. But the fact is the authoring tools go far beyond writing and word processing.

E-learning authoring tools provide trainers the opportunity and liberty to integrate an array of media to create professional, engaging, interactive, creative and innovative training content.

Today there are numerous types of authoring technologies to choose from, the task may seem somewhat daunting, but if planned in a proper and systematic way it doesn't have to be. One of the secret to pick the correct authoring tool is having a clear understanding about your own technology restrictions, instructional needs and business requirements.

empower, one of the leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning management system (LMS) has developed an iLearn Application compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. This application is very useful for course developers to promote their courses using the ilearn application to users with basic stuff to advanced topics, Healthcare to IT, in an interactive and engaging method.

The iLearn application by empower contains tools to create your own course in your field of expertise. Content developer can create categories and courses in such manner that it can be managed easily by end users who can download the iLearn App from iTunes which comes with a few preloaded courses. End users can view these preloaded courses or can go to store front and can download free courses or demo courses or pay and purchase paid courses. Once the courses are downloaded are visible in his App on his iPhone/iPad. The tool/GUI will automatically create a course in an attractive graphical format as an output. Various others functionality can be easily deployed using the iLearn application.

empower iLearn application is simple and effective it provides tools so effortlessly that you can create your training module within minutes. Put videos, images, audio, text and make the learning the way you want it to be and then since it‘s your amalgamation of hard work and smart work – you give a price tag to it and share it with the world.

About emPower

emPower is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Our mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. We provide 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.

Our Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing our 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

The regulation implementing the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA) was published on November 21, 2008, and became effective on January 19, 2009.

PSQIA establishes a voluntary reporting system to enhance the data available to assess and resolve patient safety and health care quality issues. To encourage the reporting and analysis of medical errors, PSQIA provides Federal privilege and confidentiality protections for patient safety information called patient safety work product. Patient safety work product includes information collected and created during the reporting and analysis of patient safety events.

PSQIA authorizes HHS to impose civil money penalties for violations of patient safety confidentiality Security Compliance. PSQIA also authorizes the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to list patient safety organizations (PSOs). PSOs are the external experts that collect and review patient safety information.

The confidentiality provisions will improve patient safety outcomes by creating an environment where providers may report and examine patient safety events without fear of increased liability risk. Greater reporting and analysis of patient safety events will yield increased data and better understanding of patient safety events.

OCR works in close collaboration with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) which has responsibility for listing patient safety organizations (PSOs), the external experts established by the Patient Safety Act to collect and analyze patient safety information. OSHA Training

Massachusetts General Hospital will pay the U.S. government $1 million to settle what the feds are calling "potential violations of the HIPAA Compliance," according to a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The case involves patient information that an employee left on the subway.

This marks the second fine related to HIPAA noncompliance in a week. The first fine, imposed on Cignet Health, was a $4.3 million civil penalty, mostly for failing to cooperate with an investigation.

The settlement follows a probe by HHS' Office for Civil Rights, which enforces HIPAA rules that require healthcare providers to protect the privacy of patient information through administrative, physical and technical safeguards.

"We hope the healthcare industry will take a close look at this agreement and recognize that OCR is serious about HIPAA(Healthcare Compliance) enforcement. It is a covered entity's responsibility to protect its patients' health information," OCR Director Georgina Verdugo said in a statement.

The possible HIPAA violation occurred after a Mass General employee left the documents on a subway in March 2009. The documents consisted of protected health information for 192 patients of MGH's Infectious Disease Associates outpatient practice, which includes HIV/AIDS patients. The investigation found that Mass General failed to implement "reasonable, appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy of PHI" removed from Mass General's premises and disclosed, potentially violating the HIPAA rule(HIPAA Training).

A patient schedule containing names and medical records numbers, as well as billing forms that included names, dates of birth, diagnoses, insurer policy numbers and providers, were among documents lost.

As part of a corrective action plan, MGH has promised to develop comprehensive policies and procedures to ensure PHI is protected when removed from the MGH premises, train its workforce on the policies and send twice-yearly reports to HHS for three years.