Comments on: Let’s name it ourselves …

By: Edward

Edward — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:27:29 +0000

Finally gathered my thoughts for a serious post about the naming thing:
I think my approach to the naming thing would be to pull back a bit and look at the big picture.
As implied in this post and others, next generation CMS/LMS/whatever software may have some interesting new features that break the mold of the traditional CMS. It’s no longer about _courses_ per se, but about some more nebulous Collaborative Learning Environment (for lack of a better term).
But isn’t providing a Learning Environment the whole point of a College or University? Some facet of the Learning Environment does happen to intersect the Internet, but the software used to facilitate that intersection is not itself the Learning Environment. The software is just one item used to help create or maintain that environment. Other such items include electricity, cabling, computers, and the staff to keep it all working properly.
So I’d probably try to work the “Utility” or “Infrastructure” concepts into the name of the software.
I still can’t come up with a good name, though. Some of the obvious combinations are either taken or just don’t sound good. (Collaborative Learning Infrastructure: taken. Collaborative Learning Utility: bad, very bad: “Does your institution have a CLU? Nope, our institution doesn’t have a CLU.” Academic Collaborative Learning Utility: taken, plus they’ve got lawyers.)
Oh well. The commercial players will probably want to play name games to try to differentiate their products anyway.
I think the utility concept is good, though, and that if this sort of system is done really well it should just fade into the background and provide expected functionality without calling much attention to itself.
Edward

By: LG

LG — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 10:38:40 +0000

Edward,
I didn’t say this before, but I thought your use of ASCII was extremely clever! Perhaps if we started blogging it, Academic System for Course Interaction on the Internet might garner adoption?

By: LG

LG — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:19:00 +0000

John,
I used ePortfolio1 and ePortfolio2 to delinate two specific uses of a portfolio (which I defined in the post). We throw around all kinds of ‘portfolio’ language without knowing which use we’re putting it to. Bb portfolio users (the portfolio product), I’ve heard, can configure their product to function as either ePortfolio1 (where Administrators are aggregating learning outcomes data) OR ePortfolio2 (student-created and managed for their specific audiences, such as job interviews or grad school applications or simply to show off work to relatives), BUT the product can not be configured simultaneously for both functions. Is that still as clear as mud?