Beyond LMS Keynote to Canada Moodlemoot 2009

BEYOND LEARNING MANAGEMENT TO OPEN LEARNING SUPPORT AND INSPIRATION,

Terry Anderson, Ph.D.Canada Research Chair in Distance

Education

Overview

• Energy drivers for change:– Social constructivism and peer production– Individual and group Choice & Cooperative

Freedom– Group, Network and collective learning

opportunitiesTechnological Affordances of Distributed web

services• Design Characteristics of Next Gen Systems

Values

• We can (and must) continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience.

• Student control and freedom is integral to 21st Century life-long education and learning.

• Education for elites is not sufficient for planetary survival

21st century learner• Wants to learn things• Continuously moves between on and offline• Is learning to recognize and demand quality

when investing in learning• Knows there are many paths to learning and is

used to staggering amounts of content• Normally uses a wide set of information

processing, creation and communications tools

“The decline of the compliant learner’. P. Goodyear 2004

Steven Warburton, 20075

Pedagogical Control

Transactional Control

Teacher ControlContent, lecture

assessment,

Negotiated Control

DialogueDiscussion, wikis

AutonomySelf directed

learning

Dron, 2006

Tony Karrer 2008

Openness challenge of Educational in the 21st Century

• Making the Formal Informal – Making the Informal Formal (Martin Weller, OUUK)

The Theory of Cooperative Freedom (Morten Paulsen)

• Affords Freedom to all

learning participants• Voluntary, but

compelling participation• Means promoting

individual flexibility• Means promoting

affinity to learning groups and networks

Paulsen, 2008

Choosing the right for the right amount of openness?

http://www.go2web20.net 2795 logos as of February 05, 200910

Taxonomy of the ‘Many’Dron and Anderson, 2007

GroupConscious membership

Leadership and organizationCohorts and paced

Rules and guidelinesAccess and privacy controls

Focused and often time limitedMay be blended F2F

Metaphor : Virtual classroom

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Formal Learning and Groups• Long history of research

and study• Established sets of tools

– Classrooms,– Learning Management

Systems – Synchronous (video &

net conferencing)– Email

• Need to develop face to face, mediated and blended group learning skills

Groups as Communities of Practice

• Wengler’s ideas of Community of Practice– mutual engagement – synchronous and notification

tools – joint enterprise – collaborative projects, “pass the

course”– a shared repertoire – common tools, LMS, IM and doc

sharing

LMS and Distributed web 2.0 Group Tools

Problems with Groups

• Restrictions in time, space, pace, & relationship - NOT OPEN

• Often overly confined by teacher expectation and institutional curriculum control

• Usually Isolated from the authentic world of practice

• “low tolerance of internal difference, sexist and ethicized regulation, high demand for obedience to its norms and exclusionary practices.” Cousin & Deepwell 2005

• Group think (Baron, 2005)• Poor preparation for Lifelong Learning

beyond the course

Paulsen (1993)Law of Cooperative Freedom

Relationships

• Groups are necessary, but not sufficient for quality learning.

Group

NetworkShared interest/practice

Fluid membershipFriends of friends

Reputation and altruism drivenEmergent norms, structures

Activity ebbs and flowsRarely F2F

Metaphor: Virtual Community of Practice17

• Collaborative Learning In Groups

• Cooperative Learning in Networks (Paulsen, 2008)

Networks Add diversity to learning

“People who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas” Burt, 2005, p. 90

Communities of Practice • Distributed• Share common interest• Self organizing• Open• No expectation of meeting or even knowing all

members of the Network• Little expectation of reciprocity• Contribute for social capital, altruism and a sense of

improving the world/practice through contribution

(Brown and Duguid, 2001)

Networks

Creating Incentives to Sustain Contribution to Networks

The New Yorker September 12, 2005

Alec Couros VoiceThread http://voicethread.com/#q.b67978.i350123

•

"the network contains within it antagonistic clusterings, divergent sub-topologies, rogue nodes" Galloway and Thacker, 2007 p. 34

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeblet/423397690/

“There is crack in everything, that's how the light gets in” Leonard Cohen

Network Pedagogies

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• Connectivism– Learning is network formation: adding new nodes, creating

new paths between people and learning resources – “Learning can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a

database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn are more important than our current state of knowing.” Siemens, G. (2007)

• Partcipatory Pedagogy- Students as content-co-creators• Complexity

– Learning in environments in which activities and outcomes emerge in response to authentic need creates powerful learning opportunities

– Learning at the edge of chaos– Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education

See the Networked Student by Wendy Drexler

Network Tool Set (example)

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TextText

Stepanyan, Mather & Payne, 2007

Access Controls in Elgg

Group Network

Collective‘Aggregated other’

Unconscious ‘wisdom of crowds’Stigmergic aggregation

Algorithmic rulesAugmentation and annotation

More used, more usefulData MiningNever F2F

Metaphor: Wisdom of Crowds

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3. Formal Education and Collectives

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• Collectives used to aggregate, then filter, compare, contrast and recommend.

• Personal and collaborative search and filter for learning• Smart retrieval from the universal library of resources – human and

learning objects• Allows discovery and validation of norms, values, opinion and “ways of

understanding”

“a kind of cyber-organism, formed from people linked algorithmically…it grows through the aggregation of Individual, Group and Networked activities” Dron & Anderson, 2007

Collective Tools

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Collectives, Privacy & Identity

• Best way to protect personal integrity is by creating a robust but realistic web presence.

• Your actions are being mined, best to be a miner rather than a lump of coal!

• Active social net users are more socially active and integrated than non users (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007)

• Use of Blogs reduces feelings of alienation and isolation among online learners (Dickey, 2004)

• When perceived interest and benefits increase, willingness to provide personal data increases (Dinev & Hart, 2006)

Collectives, Communications and Privacy

• The end of privacy as currently conceived• Development of the affordances of Web for “privacy protected” control.• Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) tools to control access or

unauthorized release/sharing of data• “PETs Plus – tools to transform otherwise privacy-invasive technologies

into privacy-protective ones, with little or no loss of functionality”. See Searchlight Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian CBC Search Engine Podcast – Jessie Brown

• Creating a positive (non zero-sum) return such individuals will participate in data exchange of private information for knowledge gains without loss of privacy control.

• Users must be knowledgeable to make effective and non exploitive trades

Group Network

Taxonomy of the Many

Dron and Anderson, 2007

Collective

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Group Network

Net Technologies

Dron and Anderson, 2007

Collective

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LMS Web 2.0 Tools

Semantic Web Tools

Types of Teaching Different teachers –different tools

1 Teachers who teach curriculum want:1 Attendance and participation monitoring2 Quizzes and gradebooks3 Content management and distribution of teacher created and filtered

resources

2 Teachers who teach learning want:1 Tools for individual and collaborative construction2 Tools for reflection, self and group assessment3 Content management (tags, spaces, organizational views) of teacher,

student created and web resources4 Spaces for exploration and discovery5 Networks for developing learning skill and social capital6 Aggregators for assessing net-wide student artifact construction

3 Teachers who want it all!

Tools Create Behaviours and Attitudes

• “The confluence of constrained mental models of teaching and learning, plus forces that privilege problem-minimizing strategies over the messy engagement of deeper teaching and learning have trumped, for now, the potential of the building’s innovative, collaborative spaces.” Brown & Peterson, 2008

Critique of LMS

• LMSs concentrate on the course context. • All resources are loaded and linked within the overall

structure of a course. • LMSs have an inherent asymmetric relationship

between instructor and learner in terms of control of the learning experience.

• The learner’s role is one of passive acceptance of content and limited permissions set by the LMS.

• Nearly all learner experience is designed to engage content in exactly the same way.

We publicly assert that all users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically:

* Ownership of their own personal information,:their own profile datathe list of people they are connected tothe activity stream of content they create;

•Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and* Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social WebAuthored by Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, and Michael Arrington

Why destroy artifacts of student learning?

• If people are continuously working in a walled garden like Moodle, they are going to have to make separate copies of the work if they consider it worth keeping. Dave Cormier

• “In order to protect my own digital identity, sometimes I have to filter content that I share publicly. “ Sharon Peters

Design Characteristics of Next Gen Systems

• Learning is Integrated into Real Life• IP and Persistence – Student ownership and control• Expanded tools for negotiation

– Real time communication– audio, video and immersive– Voting, polling, presence indicators

• Expanded tools for artifact production, storage and retrieval

• Connections beyond the courses, programs, peers and institutions

• Increased transparency and Control• Parcellation and Scale, Adaptability, Stigmergy (Dron 2007)

Engagement in Formal Education

• A social component– Meeting and engaging new friends– Discovering new social interests

• A Cognitive component– Being challenged– Being exposed to how much you don’t know– Observing others with incredible interests and skills

• An institutional component– Efficient and effective policies– An organization that cares about your more than your

tuition.

Presence Pedagogy- Steve Bronach“Presence is the sense of being in the immediate vicinity of others.”

Presence Pedagogy- Bronach et al (2008)

• Creating an environment that effectively capitalizes on the presence of others requires – Thematic design of space– Promotion of presence– Build help seeking and giving capacity– Rich tools and support for collaborative work– Stimulating emergent communities or practice– Appropriate problems

• Both Asynchronous and Synchronous forms of presence

From AEtZone Appalachion State University

• Active Worlds based, 7 years continuous use• closed virtual community• “As of April 25, 2007, AET Zone is a patent-

pending application. A patent entitled "Virtual Education System and Method of Instruction" (application serial # US 11/739,866) was registered with the USPTO.

Network and Collective Tools are Very Disruptive

• Christensen (1997,2008) studies innovation and the impact of disruptions.

• A disruptive technology “transforms a market whose services are complicated and expensive into one where simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability characterize that industry” p. 11

Unless steered by very wise leaders organizations will: “shape every innovation into a sustaining innovation - one that fits processes, values, and the economic model of the organization - because organizations cannot naturally disrupt themselves” (Christiansen et al. p. 74

From Leigh Blackwell’s LMS Comic at http://flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/sets/1733041/

Is the Personal Learning Environment a threat or a promise for education?

• A PLE is a user constructured web interface into the owners’ digital environment.– Content management integrating personal and professional

interests (both formal and informal learning), – A profiling system for making connections– A collaborative and individual workspace– A multi formatted communications system– All connected via a series of syndicated and distributed

feeds to each other and selected others.

"The PLE is an approach not an application." Stephen Downes

• An approach that:– Values and builds upon learner input– Protects and celebrates identity– Respects academic ownership– Is Net-centric– Supports multiple levels of socializing,

administration and learning – Supports communities of inquiry across and within

disciplines, programs, institutions and individual learning contexts

What is your PLE?

Sue Perth, Western Australia, AU2008 survey of 196 web 2.0 types

Scott Leslie’s PLE Diagramm

See others at Scott’s Wiki at http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/PLE+Diagrams

Scott Wilson's PLE and the Institution image

Why service-orientation could make e-learning standards obsolete?Vossen & Westerkamp, 2008

Professional, Hobby, Personal

News

Produsage, networks

Personal Hosting: Blogs, E-portfolios,

Presentations, ProfileBookmarks

Tags Resources

CollectionsPhotosBooks

Formal Education Provider(s)

Production Tools

IPLE

Identity

Email

Social Networks

Stages of PLE adoption• imagination (we become aware of the

technology)• appropriation (we identify ways it could be of

use to us)• objectification (we personalize the technology

and its uses)• incorporation (we make the technology part of

our lives)• conversion (we become identified with our use

of the technology) Ling 2004

Connectivist Education

• Goal of education is to create connections among and between learners, resources, ideas and knowledge.

• How can we do this within contexts that are closed to the outside world?

• Formal learning as a transition to lifelong learning using and building networks

• Training wheels for open communication:– Compulsion– Feedback and evaluation– Practice at critical reflection– First steps at creation of an academic and

professional online presence

• As technologies on the Internet grow increasingly sophisticated and open, the ability for Information Technology departments to integrate these new technologies decreases. Michael Farmer, 2009

• “Every technology application hosted by an institution or available on the web can be a technical and bureaucratic obstacle course, or it can be a launch pad into the learning imagination.”

• Envisions a “harvesting gradebook” aggregating contribution, multi media, automated - as killer app of educational future (Brown & Petersen, 2008)

Innovator Open CoursesSustainable Future?

• Siemens and Downes (2008) ~2000 enrolled 19 paid fees.

• Alec Couros: Open Connected Grad course• David Wiley 4th version, University of Utah• Subscribe NOW (free) www.irrodl.org for

special issue on Open Educational resources edited by Wiley fall 2009.

The promise of open, yet credited courses – Is it real??

• Cormac Lawler on WikiUniversity:– Giving people access to spaces in which they can share, discuss, and

question their knowledge– Developing open peer review models around this knowledge– Improving awareness about how knowledge is constructed– Framing and critiquing knowledge in a learning context (and giving people

access to this open learning context)– Developing peer review models around these learning contexts– Improving awareness about how learning works

• http://cormaggio.org/?p=26 Cormac Lawler, 2008

• What about accreditation??• WikiEducator moving from Commonwealth of Learning to Athabasca

http://wikieducator.org/

Operational proximity

• We believe that these key concepts– participation; – emergence; – operational proximity; and – responsiveness—increase the possibility that

learning, from diverse professional and organizational perspectives, can actively contribute to the evolution of distance education teams and their CMSs. Whitworth and Benson (in press –emerging issues

Content Discovery

Presence Communi-cation

Reflection Collabor-ation

Blogs

Social Tagging

VoiceThread

Wiki

Web Conference -Elluminate

Moodle

Web Tool Affordances

From Siemens and Tittenberger, 2009

Conclusion

• Learners and society needs new types of education and learning opportunities that exploit groups, networks and collectives

• This requires new types of learning technology that are controlled by individual learners

• The adoption of these disruptive technologies is worth the gain!

• “The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, the realist adjusts the sails.” William Arthur Ward (1921 – 1994)

"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”

Chinese Proverb

Terry Anderson [email protected]

http://cde.athabascau.ca/faculty/terrya.php

Blog: terrya.edublogs.org

Your comments and questions most welcomed!