Greater Arizona eLearning Association (GAZEL) E-Learning Research Portal (ELRP) Project Overview

1. Greater Arizona eLearning Association (GAZEL) • E-Learning Research Portal (ELRP) Project Overview • Presented March 2, 2006 by • Mark Goldstein, President, International Research Center • (602) 470-0389, markg@researchedge.com, http://www.researchedge.com • Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA - http://www.ida.org/) funded study • Proposes a web portal project to provide government researchers and other e-learning research communities with a rich and highly relevant e-learning research database, coupled with sophisticated retrieval, visualization & collaboration tools to aid research productivity & quality • Utilizes a custom taxonomy, XML variant, semantic analysis, and meta tagged database, with continuous automatic & manual updating, covering e-learning research institutions and practitioners, related Communities of Practice (CoP), topical news feeds, relevant literature & external resources • Search capabilities support a variety of querying, navigation, and presentation functions and capabilities, including clustering of relevant results, advanced 3-D visualization and knowledge navigation, targeted strategic alerts, as well as user designated pathways to relevant knowledge

2. This E-Learning Research Portal (ELRP) would have a variety of tangible and intangible benefits, as well as a substantial impact on the e-learning research community, and perhaps the e-learning industry as a whole. Some of the expected tangible benefits include: • Improved productivity for practicing e-learning researchers and increased opportunities & value in connecting collaborative players • Depth and quality of search assures good grounding for initiatives • Underlying ontology and taxonomy efforts will define, refine, and aid e-learning research and industry strategic focus • Improved e-learning research will yield improved e-learning products, enhancing their deployment and effectiveness • Improved e-learning and its deployment will serve training needs for workplace skills and drive economic engines around the globe • Project implementation risk low using existing & emerging toolsets • Modest budget to pilot ($250K), implement ($750K) and sustain • Multiple practical scenarios for “institutionalizing” with long-term maintenance, evolution & support of multiple research communities

3. E-Learning Research Portal Home Page E-Learning Communities of Practice E-Learning Resource Index/Links E-Learning News Feeds & Blogs E-Learning Research Query Entry Meta Data Repository E-Learning Researcher Collaboration CoP Discussion Groups Information Processing Collaboration Environment & Tools Discussion Groups Archive Knowledge Visualization & Navigation About, Contact, Press Releases Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Disclaimer Institutions & Researchers Directory End User Feedback & Data Input

4. Data Sources Information Architecture Information Architecture Management Interviews/ Surveys E-Learning Research Knowledge Map Knowledge Map, Taxonomy & XML Authoring & Management Tools User Feedback & Suggestions E-Learning Research Ontology/Taxonomy Online Submittals E-Learning Research XML Variant Information Warehouse Queries Results Communities of Practice Indexing E-Learning Research Meta Data Repository Information Processing Autonomic Semantic Analysis & Meta Tagging Selective Web Site Indexing Data News Feeds & Blogs Manual Review & Meta Tagging Data