Talk:History of virtual learning environments

message: It seems to me that there are several fundamental reasons for opposing this patent.
First, but not least, the fiduciary responsibility that universities have toward the taxpayers and private donors who provide their funding, and to the university researchers who actually did develop innovative education technology. As it stands, our institutions are faced with the prospect of paying royalties to a third party for their own inventions. Regardless of how one feels about software patents (and I am personally opposed to them), I hope we can all agree that if royalties are due, they should be paid to those who actually invented the technology, not to those who simply managed to bulldoze a patent examiner.
Second, scholarly responsibilities. Academics have a strong obligation to provide credit where due. Allowing Bb to claim "inventions" that were in fact the work of others is utterly inconsistent with that responsibility. This work has been going on for almost five decades; Blackboard's claim to have "invented" it all in the late 90s is repugnant. One must also consider the chilling effects on future research. If educational technology researchers must work under fear of lawsuits, it's a near-certainty that research and innovation will suffer.
Third, pedagogic responsibility. Academia is ethically bound to provide education of the highest possible quality. Does anyone believe that the current systems represent perfection? Or that this patent won't create a chilling effect on future research aimed at improving on-line education?
Most universities have IP lawyers on staff (or on retainer) to handle the genuine inventions of university researchers:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/speeches/05-18.htm
I see several institutions on that list that are well-represented in the lists of prior art that have been compiled. I urge those institutions, in particular, to have their legal staffs prepare amicus briefs in Blackboard v. Desire2Learn.
Several have noted that Bb management is backpedaling on their outrageous claims, using spin-speak with null semantic content (marketroid phrases such as "enterprise" are utterly meaningless in this context). I suggest that, in addition to the amicus briefs, the university IP staff demand a detailed explanation of what, if anything, Blackboard actually invented, and how these claimed inventions can be distinguished from the dozens of examples of prior art that have been cited. Again, this should be done for fiduciary reasons if nothing else. Given the present undefined nature of Blackboard's claims, how can a university guarantee that it won't inadvertently infringe the patent? Are we expected to get approval from Blackboard's legal staff before doing any kind of on-line teaching? Or should we merely forge ahead and wait to see if Blackboard sues? Neither prospect seems appealing. -- G. Bolstrood (who uses "another brand" for teaching, doesn't want to get sued, and, most of all, doesn't want to see his students forced to use the crapfest that Blackboard calls a course management system).
Prior art Work form NJIT efforts (Virtual Classroom) and realated work at OEP in 1971-1973, now on the web via the NJIT library.  the items below have not been in electronic form before.
Those of you following the blackboard patent review might like to see some
the documents now on this website.  they were not in electronic format till
now.  they include early EIES user manuals and even manual from teh EMISARI
system from the Office of the Emergency Preparedness
(1971) that had roles and and similar concept in it.
http://www.library.njit.edu/cccc-materials/index.cfm
the njit library has started to put some of our old reports on the web and i
asked them to put up first some of the user manuals which i think you will
find clearly document things like single interface and multiple roles and
linking of relevant materials.  You can get the whole document from the
above website.
what is there now is the following items and i have made a few quick
comments under each  title.  If any one has looked at the prior art that
blackboard submitted i would be curious to know if NJIT was included at all.
I suspect not.
Also i discovered a two page copy of the original trademark document for
"virtual classroom" should i scan it and send it to you.  (it is still held
by njit)
Doc     Title   Date    Author
RR#13   Guide to the topics system      Jan. 1981       Peter Johnson-Lenz,
Trudy Johnson Lenz
this was a system with roles for editor, indexer as well as the normal
administrator roles and it linked relevant messages into a discussion
thread. this was the user manual
RR#14   The evolution of a tailored communications structure : the
topics system   Jan. 1981       Peter Johnson-Lenz, Trudy Johnson Lenz
more detail on the design
RR#25   Learning in a virtual classroom : volume 1 of a virtual
classroom on EIES : final evaluation report     1988    Starr Roxanne Hiltz
a major early evaluation report but did confirm that you could be a student
in one conference and an instructor in another with only one sign on.  also
a single interface  inside the class conference to link to any other
material and other related conferences.
RR#26   Teaching in a virtual classroom : volume 2 of a virtual
classroom on EIES : final evaluation report     1988    Starr Roxanne Hiltz
discusses the methods of teaching and the software design to support those
methods
RR#29   Teaching lower level computer science courses via virtual
classroom and video : course reports by faculty         n.d.    Starr
Roxanne
Hiltz, Fadi Deek, Maura Deek, James Geller, Ajaz Rana expeerineces by
teachers in teaching
RR#30   Teaching upper level computer science courses via virtual
classroom and video : course reports by faculty         1995    Starr
Roxanne
Hiltz, Julian M. Scher, Michael Bieber, Murray Turoff more experiences in
teaching
TM-225  Conference system user's guide          Assistant Director for
Resource Analysis, Office of Emergency Preparedness the library put up the
user guide for the system i designed in the us government in 1971 which was
used through 1985 and for which quite a bit was published.
this had numerous roles that were created on the fly for people responsible
for reporting different things and it also was integrated into the
communications with a directory that showed what everyone role was and what
they were responsible for.  the concept of roles is very clear in this user
manual and what constituted a role could be changed and each individual
could have many roles, editing a notebook, reporting date, etc.
TM-230  EMISARI : A management information system designed to aid and
involve people  Feb. 1973       Assistant Director for Resource Analysis,
Office of Emergency Preparedness
this is an overview of the same system explaining the design.  if roles were
present in numerous applications over the years it is hardly something you
should be able to patent as a general concept for one application.
there was  a host of applications of roles under the title of hypertext
systems as to could create and manipulate the different aspects of hypertext
structure and this is well summarized ina thesis of one my students Usha Rao
in the early 90's if you want ot get it from university microfilms. these
were systems build at a great many
R&D labs at places like xerox park and SRI.   but emisari was the
first except for the "delphi conference system" in 1969 which i build at OEP
as well in 1969 and is published in the Journal of Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
the other paper i dont recall if i sent you was "party-line and discussion"
computerized conferencing systems in 1972 at a conference which even
included chat and IM in its capabilities.  I was not sure how to break this up and stick in the main text but anyone who would like to should feel free to do so.  There is also early work on the home pages of Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff
http://is.njit.edu/turoff and http://is.njit.edu/hiltz
the above was the text of a message i sent to a number of people interested in prior art, Murray Turoff turoff@njit.edu
67.83.101.28 07:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: General Discussion 

message: * History of any art prior to 1990 with regard to remote teaching and interactive communication.
This is a correction regarding one commercial computer assistead learning system. The article on the history of virtual learning environments mentions in the late 90's "The Learning Manager (TLM), from Campus America, Inc." I brought the predecessor of TLM to Laurentian University in 1991. It was then caled CML (Computer Managed Learning), later LMS (Learning nmanagement Systems) and had been in use in Alberta and Australia for some years at that point. The Company Website claims it has been operating for more than 20 years. The program was developed at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) beginning and it was spun off as a private company, later sold to Campus America, where it apparently failed and returned to the Learning Management Corporation. 
* MIT School of Management's dotLRN (See ) Start date unknown - around by at least 2002... anyone have a better date? 
In the late 1980's IBM had a system that ran under Novell called ICLASS for MS-DOS based, Token-Ring attached, stations in K-12.  The system provided course/class management.  The successor program for MS-Windows was called School Vista.  I couldn't find many links, but here are a few:
http://www.gp.k12.mi.us/technology/mary/svinstructionalplans/instructionalplans.htm
www-03.ibm.com/industries/ca/en/education/k12/technical/updates/svyearend.pdf  
--Igoldste 17:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Unknown Dates

message: I added this is on behalf of one of the authors of the paper, who didn't have a wikipedia account.  It's pre-web though, and whilst there are references to it online, we couldn't find a direct source to refer to. --Straycat 20:41, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1989

message: I don't have good information on this product, but here is a start  Nils Peterson 15:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1992

message: Is online testing relevant?
1995
Online multiple choice quiz script released by Eric Tachibana (Selena Sol) et al. of eXtropia, earliest download page available at the Internet Archive is from 1998 with various educational site examples. 
1996
Quiztest inspired by Eric Tachibana (Selena Sol)'s multiple choice script above, an online testing system capable of displaying content such as a text prior to the test, was released by Kristina Pfaff-Harris.
:Sorry, I added both of these and they are probably not. However, they are pre 1999, they do allow for an administrator (teacher) verus student ditinction in roles, and some of the early entries also seem to be methods of online testing. --Timtak 09:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Online Testing

message: Postings over the August 26-28 weekend period have broadened the scope of this article to include "distance learning". Interesting, because even without a software or algorithmic core, such approaches might have been, or might be, patentable "business methods" (in US anyway). But there are other broadenings of e-learning beyond the VLE/LMS core that are not included: quality, benchmarking, etc. Some other things creep in from time to time but not systematically, e.g. e-learning hardware. A quick scan of Wikipedia suggests that there are no "History of X" articles close to this article - and I detect no drive from elsewhere to create such. So how far should we extend this one? Presumably the working view is "keep broadening till lots of people shout"? Paul Bacsich 08:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Alternatively, insert a preamble stating that use of VLEs relates other fields of education and technology (distance learning, expansion of education (esp HE), computer networks, Internet, WWW) and point to articles that can deal with the history of those topics more thoroughly. --Philbarker 11:35, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As long as multiple people are daily using this page to accumulate and organize their data, keeping it all here for now makes sense. I'm expecting continued interest in adding stuff and organizing what is added so long as the patent thing is considered a threat. I could easily be wrong. WAS 4.250 13:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope issues 

message: Note that "Virtual Learning Environment" as defined in this article excludes the original NON-INTERACTIVE "distance learning" modality:  pedagogic text. Text on paper was first primarily used to span distance in time, but eventually would typically span distance in space as easily via postal service, dispersed publication, et cetera.
See Library. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.78.53.129 (talk) 05:50, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interactivity 

message: This article is way too long. Very few people would actually have the attention span to read this whole thing. In my opinion this article needs to be summarized with descriptions of only the most important events and also of visible trends; the more detailed information could be placed in seperate articles by decade. For info on how to do this, see WP:SIZE I'd do it myself but I don't know anything about the topic. Ahudson 18:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I re-factored the list of 1990s publications out to its own article. Each of the two articles are about 100 kilobytes long.--SallyForth123 21:44, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  article size, etc. 

message: There's no mention of the IUPUI effort that created ANGEL Learning, FYI.  http://www.iupui.edu/news/angel2.htm
I don't have time right now to incorporate it, but hope to come back to do it.
Computerhag 15:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: ANGEL Learning

message: There is a new article called public participation in patent examination.  I've put a link to this article as an example.  Any others?--Nowa 14:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Public participation in patent examination]]

message: I posted a link to this article over at "Just N examiner" blog.  The topic of discussion was prior art searches.  I asked the examiner community there if the format of this particular article was useful.  Here is the response from a biotech patent examiner (posted with his permission):
:Yes, in general I could see this being helpful. I am a biotech examiner... Often I would like to have background on the field I am working on in a concise format. The Wiki article cited above is helpful because it cites references! Whether it is wiki (i.e. contributed by multiple users) or not is immaterial -- that it is correct and footnoted is what's important. (emphasis added)
So in short, nice work to all.
Any other patents or pending patent applications that we should develop histories for?--Nowa 23:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Feedback from a US patent examiner

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:PLATO Davis 1.jpg

message: There is an ongoing discussion about the nature of VLEs and LMS systems. It is increasingly being accepted that a Learning Management System is not a direct equivalent of a VLE but a larger system that could include a VLE and a host of other pieces of software or hardware. See discussion at the LMS entry.
Gillorien (talk) 16:54, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: VLE / LMS Definitions

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