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Designing distributed learning systems

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Abstract

MANY COMPANIES are adopting an approach of hiring the skills they need, then discarding them and hiring others as needs change. Individuals must rapidly learn in their specialty and also develop new skill sets over the long-term. Access to intellectual capital and to learning and performance support systems is improving with developments in the World Wide Web. However access is not usability, and usability is not organizational impact. This paper provides principles and examples of distributed learning and support systems that can aid individual development. It considers motivation, speed of program development, and cost issues for some current projects where usability and impact are central design criteria.

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References

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Author notes

  1. J. Olin Campbell

    Present address: Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, Vanderbilt University, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, Vanderbilt University, USA

    John Bourne

Authors
  1. J. Olin Campbell
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  2. John Bourne
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Correspondence to J. Olin Campbell.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

J. Olin Campbell is Research Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Vanderbilt University, and President of Campbell Associates. His work focuses on strategies for assessment, learning, and performance support using computer simulation, and on strategies and tools to make development of distributed learning more cost effective. He is Associate Editor of theWeb and Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (http://www.aln.org/). He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford in educational psychology, an M. Div. in theology from Union Theological Seminary (New York), and a B.A. from Yale in psychology.

John R. Bourne is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of the Management of Technology at Vanderbilt University. He has been on the faculty at Vanderbilt for the past 28 years with sabbaticals in Sweden and Northern Telecom. He is Editor of theWeb and Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (http://www.aln.org/) and is Editor-in-Chief of theCritical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering.

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Campbell, J.O., Bourne, J. Designing distributed learning systems. J. Comput. High. Educ. 9, 80–88 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02948779

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02948779

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