Virtual Canuck

I was shocked last week to read a story in Globe and Mail that they were allowing Inukshuk Wireless (a telephone company owned by Rogers and Bell) to discontinue its funding of educational multi-media projects.

By way of background in 2000 the federal government offered bandwidth that was being reserved for educational use, to the private sector. But one of the conditions was that the winner had to propose a funding arrangement to return value to the education system. This bandwidth had been allocated to education back in the days when everyone thought that educational TV would be a big deal. In Manitoba and Sask, they were using the bandwidth, so they were not made to give up the bandwidth, nor reap any compensatory services.

So Inukshuk won the bid, began issuing calls for proposals to develop educational media and developed a system to administer this funding. The 2009 call offered $2.4 million for projects, as per the terms of the agreement. Naturally, Inukshuk would rather not have to cover this expense, so I assume, went whining to the federal government. Our Conservative government, not wanting to get involved in business nor displease their corporate backers, allowed them to cease funding the programming. This was done without consultation nor notification, beyond that the fund was no longer operational.

I realize that Canada is plagued with a system that does not allow for national learning programs, but why on earth – except for ideological bias, would a government allow a company to renege on a contractual agreement, that has brought needed investment to Canadian education?

I hope other Canadians  will join me in writing to Industry Minster Tony Clement, asking him who he is governing on behalf of and to demand that this contract be fulfilled as negotiated.

I have been neglecting the ‘Canuck’ lately and wanted to take a few minutes on this last day of 2009, to share a few odds and ends that I’ve been meaning to write about.

Earlier this month I had a great time in Second Life doing a guest appearance with Ross McKerlich in a  Danish Education Masters Class with Mariane Riss blogged by her SecondLife Avatar Mariis Mills at http://milmariis.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/case-mil09-didactic-design-discussion-4/. I was presenting on Community of Inquiry Model and our work on identifying COI indicators of social, cognitive and social presence in immersive environments. Technically the presentation went well, slides and audio was clear and then we had fund answering questions by positioning our avatars on a large wheel – with 5 point Likert like scale inscribed (see Mariis blog for a picture). Having to move and see where others clustered (and changed our locations) gave a more real expression of individual and collective ideas and gave opportunity to talk or whisper to others with same answer. A simple but engaging illustration of the value add of immersive contexts.

This month also marked the release of another distance education related book from AUPress. Dietmar Kennepohl edited Accessible Elements: Teaching Science Online and at a Distance that focuses on the unique challenges of teaching science (including labs) at a distance. I haven’t read all the chapters, (OK, I skimmed through my own ) but thought the book has both theoretical and practical insights into the special challenges of teaching science when physical labs and face-to-face interaction are not possible. Like other AUPress books, the full text is available online and paper copy can be purchased for $40 (Canadian).

I also noticed this week a new online journal (published by the E-learning Network of Australasia, using the Open Journal System) Impact: Journal of Applied Research in Workplace E-learning.  I have often thought that we focus too much of our time and energy as DE researchers on formal education, ignoring the value and impact of Net based learning in the workplace and informal learning. The first issue features articles on Connectivism, Heutogogy (the study of self-determined learning), a good lit review of e-learning the workplace and a couple of good articles on evaluation. I look forward to following this journal into the future and congratulate the editors on offering a quality, open access journal in an important area of study.

Finally, I see that Gilly Slamon and her colleagues in the Beyond Distance Research Alliance at the University of Leichester are offering their 5th online/F2F learning and research festival. Positively Disruptive: Learning Futures Festival Online The week long affair features Elluminate keynote sessions, break outs and lots of blog and twitter action. Seems like good value and likely good learning for 70 pound registration fee

Well, Best of the season and New Year to all!

Terry

I’m always interested in learning from the prognosis of the New Media Consortium‘s Annual New Horizon Report. The 2010 preview (7th annual report)  is out – with still a few weeks to go in 2009!

As usual the report categorizes new educational technologies in three time frames.  And the winners are :

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

• Mobile Computing
• Open Content

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

• Electronic Books
• Simple Augmented Reality

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-Based Computing
• Visual Data Analysis

Rather than squint into my own crystal ball, to attempt to validate or refute this latest publication, I thought it might be fun to look backwards to the first New Horizons Report issued in 2004.

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This has been quite an eventful last week. It started with the 16 hour flight to Melbourne and the publication  of a short article in the Journal of Distance Education.  A Rose by Any Other Name: Still Distance Education – A Response to D.R. Garrison Implications of Online and Blended Learning for the Conceptual Development and Practice of Distance Education. In the article, I challenge Randy’s assertion that distance education is really only independent study and that e-learning has a completely different epistemological history. I came out in favour of the inclusiveness of the term “distance education” to encompass print, mass media, conferencing and other web based mediated forms of teaching and learning.

But since being in Australia, I see that the term distance education is quite out of favour. I spent three days at a symposium at Deakin University that focused on flexible learning. Flexible learning is defined very broadly  at Deakin but MAY (where appropriate) include pace, place, content, approach, form of interaction, teaching types, content etc. We spent some time trying to clarify the “where appropriate” and realizing that sometimes flexibility is either too expensive or not even desired by students – and then of course a teachers’ perspective on flexibility may be radically different than students’.

I then prepared for a presentation on Boundless Learning” for a group from Haaga-Helia University of  Applied Sciences in Helsinki Finland, that I presented using Adobe Connect. I won’t whine about the performance of Connect, except to say the sound quality, not to mention the dropping from the system, leaves it far behind competitive web conferencing systems. After a few reboots of both my own machine and the Connect server, I managed to do the show, but it wasn’t great. I tried to explore some of the potential of OERs, open publication, open courses etc the need to form some sort of boundaries – on the boundless and often overwhelming opportunity of learning in a new infused society.

All of which, made me realize again that “distance education’ at least when considered from a geographic notion of distance, is but one dimension of flexibility, boundlessness and openness. Maybe I will have to give up the term, but then, to be inclusive, I’d have to become Canada Research Chair in Boundless, Flexible, Open, Customizable, Adaptable, Configurable, Learner-centered, and Distance Education! I think I’ll keep with the status quo for my last 2 years as Canada research Chair in Distance Education!

Glenn Groulx, a student in our Masters of Distance Education programming, has been doing significant work on EduBlogging. He presented at a CIDER session last month (recording here and Powerpoints here) where he outlined a set of metaphors that helps us recognize and appreciate the different types of blogs and motivations of bloggers in educational contexts.

Most recently he has also done a series of two podcasts with graphics  on Field blogging – blogging where and whenever  the occasion is right. These postings will help newcomers get a handle on both blogs and podcasts as very inexpensive ways for learners and teachers to express themselves digitally and gain network presence.

Thanks for this work Glenn- much appreciated.

Each year, Athabasca University hosts its several hundred part time tutors and undergraduate faculty to a face-to-face conference. The usual format is not unlike standard academic conference with political or academic keynotes from ‘away’ doing keynote speeches, followed by a variety of concurrent sessions. This year the theme was “Celebrating our Own” meaning we were looking to save money and focus on homegrown AU expertise – and I was asked to do one of the two keynotes.

This was a very big speech for me, given that “an expert is someone more than 50 miles away from home”, I really had to rise to the occasion to demonstrate my expertise, a couple of klicks from my house in Edmonton. But more importantly, I wanted this rare opportunity to confront the University and the main actors with my growing conviction that our undergraduate model of unpaced education is at a pedagogical and economical dead-end. This is a serious charge, as this model has served Athabasca well in the past and still accounts for around 70% of our registrations. – thus it is our core business. I was also concerned that I was going to talk about our undergraduate programming, despite the fact that I am not involved at all in this model, instead I teach in the more traditional paced model of distance education used in the graduate programs. I was hardly comforted on checking in and seeing a colleague from our undergraduate adult education program, who when overhearing of my topic, told me that “I didn’t know what I was talking about.” However undaunted, I presented the talk and was gratified by the many compliments and suggests. I posted the slides to our institutional repository – AUSpace.

I used the talk to overview a new taxonomy of distance education (DE) pedagogies, that moves away from the usual generations of DE based on technology (see for example Jim Taylor’s example of the 5th generation of DE) . I argued in the keynote that our self paced learning model (now migrating from text and mail correspondence, to  text and email) is an example of the first Cognitive/Behavourial Pedgagogy of DE.  This model is associated with creating the “perfect package”, individualized tutoring and no opportunity for peer interactions or learning. The model scales well, but denies the situated and contextual nature of learning and does not afford any student-student interaction. I noted that the model is grounded in the value of good content- despite the fact that the explosion of content in Open Educational Resource repositories, ITunesU, publisher offerings, open textbooks and professional development organization offerings, is causing a massive devaluation of content, despite the costs of creating high quality content.

I then moved onto constructivist moels of DE pedagogy as demonstrate in our graduate programs and most e-learning and bledned learning systems in operation today. This model is alive and well and a whole series of LMS learning environments have been created to support it.

The third pedgagpgical model I described is based on connectivist  ideals. This model with its use of web 2.0 tools continues to allow for self-paced programming but works to allow students to create and enhnace connections – with other learners, with content, with learning networks and with machines.

I’m now working on a paper noting the typical and emerging types of teaching, cognitive and social presence associated with each model. Naturally our experience and expertise with connectivist pedagogical models and learning activities is much more limited than that with earlier pedagogical models. Nonetheless, I hope I was able to convey my excitement and interest in further developing connectivist models to serve as replacement for our aging and somewhat moribund cognitive/behaviourist models. I was also really pleased to see some of the innovations (audio based assignment marking, web 2.0 library interfaces, web conferencing tutor ours, voicethread intergation etc. etc.) that are emerging from faculty interventions to develop connectivist learning possibilities.

All and all, I came away from the conference with renewed energy and excitement about the future of our self-paced programming.

open access week-Athabasca

Like many academics around the world we are becoming more interested (and informed) about the opportunities afforded by open access. As “Canada’s Open University” this is a natural fit for us, and thus we are pleased to take the opportunity to participate in the international Open Access Week Oct 19-23 2009.

As our contribution to the gala week, we are hosting a series of five noon hour (Mountain time UTC/GMT -7 hours) sessions focusing on various components of open access. The 60 minute sessions run on the Elluminate webconferencing system and all are invited to attend. The sessions will also be recorded and linked from http://openaccess.athabascau.ca/

The first session (Monday Oct 19) with myself as speaker, focuses on the general theme of open scholarship. The Tuesday session features a presentation on research opportunities and issues related to open access presented by Patrick McAndrew from Open University UK, who co-leads the OLNet research initiative.  The Wednesday session features Athabasca University President Frits Pannekoek on Open Academic publishing and features an overview of the issues surrounding the founding and operations of Canada’s first open access scholarly publisher Athabasca University Press. Thursday’s session,  by AU Librarian Tony Tin, focuses on open institutional archives and repositories. Rory McGreal winds it up on Friday with a session on Open Educational Resources.

All the sessions are open to the general public and you are welcome to participate. The URL’s for participation (and longer descriptions of the sessions) are available at http://openaccess.athabascau.ca/

Mark your calendars and be ready to ‘open’ your mind during Open Access Week!

Terry

At least in North America, and in education domains, in which I am involved, The American Psychological Association calls the shots in terms of formatting and style for most education publications, student papers and thesis work. In addition it is the normal format required for many (most?) educational Journals including the one I edit IRRODL.

Thus, I pay attention when a new edition comes out. Generally the edits and enhancements made to each addition are useful and helpful in reducing complexity and increasing intuitiveness. In particular as an online journal we are concerned with the ways that electronic resources are cited, quoted and included in formal academic discourse.  The 6th edition continues this positive trend. The changes are covered in both podcast and text format at the APA’s site. They also offer an online course Mastering the 6th Edition for $40.

Things I like about the 6th edition include: (more…)

I was very pleasantly surprised to receive this week the download stats and a check from Athabasca University Press. I edited the second edition of the Theory and Practice of Online learning and it was copy edited and now promoted, sold and distributed by Athabasca University Press. I documented the reason for releasing the book under a Creative Commons license as one of Alan Levine’s Amazing Stories of Openness see Terry’s Amazing Story of Openness

During the first year of distribution 404 copies were sold and at 5% of net sales, my royalty check was for $636. During that year 26,497 chapters or copies of the whole book were downloaded at no charge. This means  1.5% of readers choose the paid route- This may be underestimated  as some readers probably downloaded more than one chapter, or more than once. In any case, this $600 is about the same range of funding I have come to expect from the other 5 academic type books I have authored or co-authored. But of course, the fame and glory from 26,000 PLUS readers is unmeasurable!

The download links for the full book and each chapter are accessible here (more…)

After reading Wired Chris Anderson’s (2009). Free: The Future of a Radical Price (available but ironically only for free to residents from the world’s richest country, the US, from SCRIBD), I spent some time reflecting on the disruptive effects of ‘free’ on higher education provision and opportunity.

Free has not only effected media consumption, publishing, and software production but also has capacity to create very disruptive, low end challenges to higher education. A low end disruption offers a service to a large new market by providing satisfactory (but not necessarily equivalent, at least at the beginning) services to large new groups of consumers. The most publicized example in higher education is the University of the People, founded by Israeli entrepreneur Shai Reshef. UoPeople is headquartered in California and is now registering students for its first courses to begin in September 2009. Mr Reschef provides a good overview of his vision and the logistics of operating a very low cost institution in a recent Higher Ed podcast. (more…)