Retired Initiatives

Previous initiatives are retired when they are no longer major priorities for the NMC or when they have reached a stage of implementation that they have been more broadly adopted by the NMC community.

The Pachyderm Project (Retired)

How can we help people and institutions create media-rich digital stories about their work and passions?
The Pachyderm project addressed this question in two ways: with a multi-million dollar open-source authoring platform built by and for museum and university scholars and staff; and with a series of workshops and curricula that focus on the development of skills related to digital storytelling and an understanding of how to best use digital media. Since the release of the Pachyderm platform in October 2005, the focus of this initiative has been on building and supporting the community of Pachyderm users, encouraging its use in museums and higher education, and stimulating adoption of the tool and the materials created with it. The Edward and Betty Marcus Digital Education Project for Texas Art Museums is a major outreach activity under this initiative. The Pachyderm Project, actually part of both the New Media & Learning (NMLI) and New Collaborations Initiatives , is such a large project that it is held to the same standards as an NMC initiative.

Learning Objects Initiative (Retired)

Are there systemic and more efficient solutions that can make creating effective web-based learning easier?
This initiative, now retired, focused on stimulating and supporting the authoring of learning objects. At the time, the theoretical work that informed the software to house learning objects (repositories) was well established, but it was very difficult to author effective, engaging learning objects. The Pachyderm Project has its roots in this initiative, and several historically important events and publications supported work in this area, including the Learning Object Summit and the NMC monograph, Guidelines for Authors of Learning Objects.