Virtual Canuck

About a year ago Jon Dron and I completed a chapter for the 2009 Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies edited by Stylianos Hatzipanagos, & Steven Warburton of King’s College London, UK.

Unfortunately the publishers,  IGI choose to charge what I think is an exorbitant fee of $265 US per copy and they didn’t even provide a free copy for the chapter authors!! (whining and sniveling heard). Fortunately Google books offers a preview of the book with it seems about 130 of the over 600 pages in the ‘handbook’. And for some strange reason, at least for the present, IGI has the full text of our chapter in PDF here.

The chapter reviews our model of groups, networks and collectives, provides example of learning activities for each and contains a summary table comparing and contrasting these aggregations on 11 defining qualities.

Besides shameless self promotion, I write this post as a tablespoon of remorse, for once again allowing my work to get hidden in expensive tomes that are inaccessible to many. But, at least our chapter is available (temporarily??) as a lost leader from IGI – enjoy.

I was pleased to read a recent article that creates a framework for use and adoption of blogs in higher education.The article is  Kerawalla, L., Minocha, S., Kirkup, G., & Conole, G. (2009). An empirically grounded framework to guide blogging in higher education. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 25(1). I normally wouldn’t link to or blog about the article as it is walled in a proprietary garden, but the special issue on Social Software and learning in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning is  available (at least today) as  a free sample.

The Framework consists of general considerations related to the functionality of the blog, its use relationship with other course tools and its role in pedagogy. The Framework then presents a raft of question to guide planning and implementation. The Framework is a good start and asks many of the detailed questions that will lead to much better, or at least more thoughtful implementation of blogs in formal courses.

I like a framework or a model to be simple enough to serve as an easily remembered mnemonic to guide practice, rather than a never quite complete, but often too many, list of questions.  So brainstorming a way to talk about the complexity of implementing a blog innovation, takes me back to Durkheim’s (suicide theory) and the use by Tinto and many other educators to talk about the need for academic and social integration to explain healthy living and persistence in formal courses. The integration factors also resonate with Everett Rogers characteristics of successful interventions – one of the main factors of which is Compatibility or how easily the innovation meshes with or integrates with other salient features of the learning context.

My implementation model includes: (more…)

Following Stephen Downe’s lead, I post below the draft chapter that I was asked to produce for the forthcoming STRIDE handbook for The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). See related handbooks here.

Social Networking in Education
Terry Anderson

Social networking is a term in common use only since 2003.  The term has been defined by many and generally viewed as referring to networked tools that allow people to meet, interact and share ideas, artifacts and interests with each other. Social networking applications have been phenomenally popular with sites such as Facebook, MySpace, SecondLife and LinkedIn counting their user numbers in the tens of millions. Social networking to date has found applications primarily in the contexts of informal learning and entertainment however there is growing interest in its use in formal education in face-to-face, distance and blended modes. I have refined the definition of social networking and especially that used in distance education as networked tools that support and encourage learning through face-to-face and online interactions while retaining individual control over time, space, presence, activity and identity (Anderson, 2006). Key to understanding both the power and the disruptive affordances of social networking is what Dalsgaard (2008) refers to as transparency – making visible and retrievable the activities, ideas, communications, artifacts and interests of others. (more…)

Last month I did a keynote at MATI in Montreal and later Raymond Cantin phoned me and recorded a podcast where I talk about the main points of that presentation. Raymond did a good job in the interview, and did the whole thing with Open Source tools.

Raymond works for La Vitrine Technologie-Éducation which does an ICT Watch and offers technology integration workshops. He made the podcast for Profweb, which is the Quebec College crossroad fo IT integration. On Profweb, you can read articles written by teachers who share their stories about their use of technology in the classroom.

If only Alberta and many other provinces and states invested in such learning opportunity for their teaching professionals.

I much enjoyed the sessions at the second Canada Moodlemoot last week in my home town of Edmonton. Many of the sessions and all the keynotes (including my own) were distributed (often 60-70 remote participants, over 300 F2F) and recorded using Elluminate. Slides from 34 of the presentations are accessible on Slideshare with the tag Canadamoot.

Throughout the sessions issues relating to ownership, persistence, the ever expanding functionality of multi-tool LMS environments and the value of utilizing (in formal education) the host of evolving web 2.0 apps, were raised. All of these issues are exacerbated when we follow Martin Wheeler’s maxim to “make the formal informal and the informal formal” or perhaps we should just try to maintain the separate distinction of both as argued by Jennifer Maddrell?

I wanted to reflect in this post about the tension that arises when choosing the best facilities to host the interaction and learner contributions that define web 2.0 type education. There seems to be 3 major contenders for the honor of hosting and both pros and cons for each alternative. These are:

1. Hosting Behind the Garden Wall – hosting behind the password protection of the institution - 
2. Hosting in the Front Yard – hosting by the institution, but allowing access, visibility and comments from outside the institutional community.
3. Hosting on the Commons, or in Someone Else’s Yard – hosting by external commercial or non profit hosts.
   

1. Hosting Behind the Garden Wall. This is the current state of the vast majority of both online and campus based models of learning provided by formal educational institutions. The model fits well with institutional practice and culture as it extends online existing practices -courses take place behind the protected doors of campus based classrooms.  Institutions are used to being able to control who enters these classrooms, the time and nature of the activity that takes place within them and generally there is little contention as, quite clearly, the space belongs to the institution – trespassers can legally and quite easily be locked out. Recently institutions have been trying to facilitate increased access behind the wall for registered learners by creating single sign-ons and portal technologies allowing access and importation from services beyond the course, including library and institutional record access. In addition there is an ever growing number of tools built into modern LMS systems. Registrars use passwords to allow or deny access to courses, the resulting interactions and to restrict access to licensed learning materials. Institutional control also insures that services can be maintained and that changes in versions, services and resources are controlled by the institution – thus minimizing surprises and possible disruptions and maximizing control over the online environment within which education processes occur. The closed wall also protects the garden by use from unauthorized spammers and unregistered students (heaven forbid that those without prerequisites or course fees, be able to peer in). Finally the wall provides a safe space – long a requirement for open scholarly debate by faculty and for the development of the skills and “half-baked ideas” that students may be reluctant to share with the general public.

However at least two problems arise from this model. The first relates to ownership and persistence. Assuming that learners retain copyright on the works  that they contribute to the course (the default condition for any creative works), then it is hardly responsible behaviour for the institution to restrain or restrict access to or to destroy these works at the end of the class. Students may also want ongoing access to this work – perhaps for a formal e-portfolio development or for whatever purposes they choose to use their work. A second problem arises when public access and commentary related to  the work is essential for pedagogical efficacy. Two instances come to mind, the first is the capacity to invite guests to participate in the course. At many institutions this was an easy process prior to the LMS era (one opened the classroom door, or the teacher allowed access to the coures web site. Now, as often as not, registrar control over a single sign-on systems, makes giving guests access problematic, since the guest may or may not need access to a host of auxiliary services, some of which may not be licensed for non registered users. The second and more pedagogically challenging issue is that some educational artifacts rely on access and comment from external audiences to gain authenticity and value. Creating blogs with out access to external audiences and external comment, negates a great deal of their educational value. In addition wikis and other web 2.0 often have their pedagogical value greatly  enhanced by contribution beyond the course to other students at the institution and more importantly to other general and targeted audiences. More generally, almost all social software gains functionality and value as the number of users increases – restricting access only to registered students often reduces the value of the educational transaction.

Hosting in the Front Yard

An institution may license, create it own proprietary,  or use an open source application on its own servers to provide access to both registered and unregistered students and perhaps the general public- including search engines. Moreover, some tools (notably elgg) allow individual to set the read and the comment permissions individually on  the profile data, blogs, presentations, tagged resources and teaching and learning content, thus allowing individual users to determine the access to their content. Institutional hosting also can insure the integrity and persistence of the data produced, since this information is stored on servers owned by the institution -  thus eliminating the fear that student or faculty work will just disappear. Secondly, allowing individuals to control access and privacy insures that these are set to match the wishes of that individual. For some exposure to the wide world and related search engines is a terrifying thought, for others it is essential for building and maintaining a positive net presence. Finally, since the application is hosted by the institution, there are no advertisements or promotional links -except those added by the institution.

Disadvantages include the challenge of either allowing a single sign-one that may restrict guests, or forcing students to maintain two sets of passwords- one for secure institutional sites and the other for more user controlled ‘front lawn’ access.  Hopefully a day of Open ID will insure a solution to this “every location demands a different authentication”, which seems to define the day. Front lawn solutions also challenge system administrators who like to see applications as either within or outside of password protection- not ones that are half in and half out and carrying potential for infiltration and risk of unauthorized access. We have had unpleasant experiences with spammers creating offensive links and presence on at least two sites (IRRODL Journal and Canadian Institute for distance Education Research) that we operate on Athabasca University’s front lawn. A final disadvantage comes from the cost of technical support and hosting for applications that MAY work as well on someone else’s front lawn as on our own, without incurring institutional costs.

Hosting on the Commons, or in Someone Else’s Yard

Some of the most interesting sessions at Moodlemoot demonstrated linking of moodle sites to externally hosted resources (see for example the interesting links from a Moodle course created by University of Victoria staff at http://moodle.uvic.ca/course/view.php?id=1324). The gotoweb20.net site currently lists nearly 3000 web 2.0 applications, many of which can be harnessed for teaching and learning. No institution is able to match the innovation spurred on by web 2.0 developers eagerly trying to create the next killer web app. Thus, mixing and matching applications from learning innovators across the web insures maximizing innovation at low cost. The out sourcing of the development and hosting to others can be cost effective. However, eventually even web 2.0 apps have to generate money, so at some time the service will either include ads, charge fees, invent some new revenue stream, or go broke. – not scenarios that inspire construction of long term course offerings. Another advantage of external hosts is that students may already be familiar with and using these systems. For example, Facebook now hosts 26 different Athabasca University groups (most of which are not very active). This reminds me of bank robber Willie Sutton’s response to why he robs banks “I rob banks because that’s where the money is.” There has also been argument that students view these non-institutional sites as “their space” and don’t appreciate institutional interventions. However,  I don’t leave such suggestions uncontested, just as I retain the right to walk into a “student’ pub on campus.

Many of the business plans for these web 2.0 innovations are based upon selling out  (sooner or later) to a larger firm, and as we have seen even purchase by a secure company like Google or Microsoft, in no way guarantees that the application will survive or be included in other offerings from the purchasing company. Some institutions have legal or moral obligations to keep copies of student work that is used for assessment. This is an important issue as most assigned work in higher education must  be assessed or at least credited in some ways if it is to be taken seriously by many instrumental and time challenged  learners. In addition hosting of private information on servers outside of the country or that can be viewed by external agents such as the USA Department of Homeland Security, may violate learner privacy rights.

Summary. Despite the attractions of security (behind the wall solutions) and cost effectiveness (on someone elses’s yard), I conclude that there is no one best solution from the three I discuss above. Perhaps only dancing among the compleixty and simultaeously  hosting all three solutions in every fromal education program creates the necessary blend of security, innovation and public presence that defines quality education in networked era.

I’ve been familiar with Wenger’s ideas of Community of Practice (CoP) for a decade and find the concept relevant, interesting and of practical value when I think about ways in which groups (workplace, graduate courses I teach, close colleagues with similar interests, community groups, work teams and task forces) function. However, I have long felt the concept didn’t match precisely with traditional teacher – centered courses nor with the more fluid and open relationships that define networks and of course not relevant at all to collective activities. (more…)

I have nearly completed this term’s paper and report marking using Adobe Acrobat to add voice comments and annotations. In a word, the results are terrific!!

First, it saved me time. I am not a fast typer and using voice, meant I didn’t even have to spell check!! My comments were much longer than text annotations and I was able to give examples, suggestions etc. that I could have done in text, but likely would not have due to time constraints.

Second, I was able to express more affect by chuckling, expressing uncertainty and in other ways adding a personal touch to the marking.

Three, I was still able to add text comments and a marking rubric at the end using a text annotation tool that floated over the text and allowed me to annotate without disturbing the text, as it would if I made tracked changes using Word (I could of course, have used Word’s comment feature with similar results).

Four, initial feedback from students seem very positive.

So I think voice annotation of essays and term projects will win a place in my teachers “personal learning environment”

How did I do it? Following the inspiration and great work of Phil Ice et al. (see an excellent paper on the subject here) I purchased a copy of the full version of Acrobat (not just the reader). Educational price was $160 Canadian with tax and it installed easily on my Mac. I tried using the internal mic, but I could not reduce the quality of the recording enough to create ‘efficient recordings” – ones that are small enough to be emailed.  Unfortunately, the MacBook doesn’t accept  a regular PC microphone, so I had to buy the iMic accessory that hooks into the USB port and provides a normal microphone in and out. I could then use  Audio Midi Setup tools to reduce the recording quality to 8000 Hz. This quality is fine for a single voice and gives 15 second annotations at about 200 KB. Phil tells me that this initial setup is much less problematic on a Windows machine.

On my first try I hadn’t reduced the audio quality and the result was a paper of 25 MBytes, which choked my email system. Later, with reduction in HZ, final projects were in the 2-10 MByte range, with my voice annotations. I realized later that by using the Moodle drop box for returning assignments, I didn’t have to worry so much about the email restrictions, however large file size is a concern on any voice or video annotation application. I did have to reload two files which seemed to have gotten damaged in delivery to Moodle, but it could have been my impatience at fault.

A few years ago, I had used the voice annotation tools built into Microsoft Word, but had to abandon the project when the files got absolutely HUGE. I haven’t played with Office 2007/8 versions, so maybe the quality reduction for voice annotation can be done with Word as well, but I do recommend the Acrobat tool for ease of use- though I did have to convert every Word file submitted to a PDF (quite easily done using the save as PDF feature in Word 2008).

So thanks Phil for excellent advice and demonstartion of this tool at last years Canadian Network for Innovation in Education conference.

I’m a believer!! There are many ways to improve education, but few that also save teacher time!

What Brian Lamb seems to confuse in this entry about the Open Education Resources, universities and information scarcity argument is that information (or more accurately a surfeit of data) available on the net does not equate to a surplus of quality learning content.
Quality learning content charts a path through complex issues, ideas and problems creating learning moments and activities. Early distance education theorists including  Borje Holmberg wrote about “guided didactic interaction” by which he meant a style of writing, that engaged in simulated dialogue with the  learner(s). This style is unlike the academic prose common in scholarly articles and the technical writing of advanced manuals, technical specifications and or popular press prose that is readily available on the net. It attempts to capture the personal motivation and excitement of the teacher to create the motivation often necessary to support learners through difficult content. Today, the learning conversations expand to simulations, games, web explorations, and even realtime and asynchronous conversations among learners. A skillful teacher creates these paths and simultaneously scaffolds learners new to the discipline and its associated discourse.
We do not have a surfeit of such learning content on the Net today. OERs are beginning to make a contribution to this effort. Properly licensed (read Creative Commons, with derivatives allowed) OER’s also allow other educators and learners to contextualize, mash, translate and republish this specialized content, thus creating an ever expanding and infinitely malleable resources.  I write this note from Brazil where students regularly attend formal courses and engage in informal learning without the support of quality textbooks and the Net resources often bundled with these expensive textbooks. OERs offer the possibility of sharing not only the open access resource of  research and scholarly content, but as well the expertise and passion of educators who are skilled at helping learners. We need more of these resources not constraints or misinformed criticism of the OER promise to increase access and public knowledge.

I’m sitting in the Rio airport one leg down and three to go on my way home from the Canadian-Brazil International Seminar on Distance Education, just concluded in Goianas. The seminar featured presentations and lots of questions from about 200 Brazilian delegates and Canadian DEers Heather Kanuka, Griff Richards, Elizabeth Murphy and myself. I did two presentations, the first titled Distance Education: Past, Present and Future and a shorter panel presentation on quality in distance education.

Elizabeth was the star of the show, with her panel presentation in Portuguese. She also had her video camera out and captured a few minutes of my concluding comments on Web 2.0 implications for quality DE programming. The camera angle reveals my midriff  bulge that increased significantly after five days of fine Brazilian food and beer.  She uploaded the video to YouTube, demonstrating the ease with which video can be captured and shared with minimal editing.

Brazil is well on its way to developing a vibrant online distance education community with a consortium (Brazilian Open University consortium) supporting course development and learning centre support for a number of Universities. I have a lingering fear that the 30 person max cohort model of asynchronous online courses, may fall short of meeting the large demand for postsecondary education. But as pointed out by Brazilian colleagues, Brazilian culture is one of conversation and communication and perhaps the more cost effective “industrial model” used by most of the Open Universities in developing countries, is not a good match. I was always surprised how few students were carrying laptops (or at least have ready access to desktop machines) , which seems to be a prerequisite for the type of online distance education predominately practiced in Canada. This reinforces my interest in self paced courses that allow options for cooperation and collaboration using social software and promise more scalable models than the 30 student, teacher led cohort.

This post from Goiânia Brazil where four of us Canadian Distance Education folks are presenting at a Brazilian-Canadian summit on Distance Education. Goiânia is one of those agriculturally based town in Central Brazil with 1.5 million inhabitants that few in North America have ever heard of. But the folks are friendly, the weather tropical, the food terrific and all and all an enjoyable few days.

I also had a great time at the Sloan-C conference in Orlando last week. This conference, in its 14 year, had about 1200 registrants and I was honored to be asked to do the opening keynote. My slides are posted and the presentation was a few rehashed “group-network-collective” ideas from Jon Dron and myself and some issues on Open Educational Resources and the challenges of adoption. The presentation  ended with some of the metadata results from Bob Bernard et al from Concordia University on effectiveness of Distance Education and a new meta analysis on impact of different types of interaction that is related to my 2003 articles on “Equivalency theory”.

The second keynote was by Curt Bonk, who overviewed the is new book the World is Open featuring ten things that are changing the educational world. As usual Curt did a media heavy presentation (but he only wore one pirate hat this time) and each of his many slides was packed with graphics and illustrations about everything wonderful about new web based teaching and learning opportunities. By contrast the closing keynote by Liz Burge was media free. She did a reflective participatory talk on engagement and ethical issues in distance education. The contrast between her and Curt’s presentations nicely illustrated the point that the message is as powerful as the medium. I was also intrigued by the awareness of how ethical issues are profoundly contextually bound and that the new context of the pervasive web makes some ethical issues even more important, while making others irrelevant.

I was most impressed with a presentation by Shannon Ritter who is the Social Networks Advisor for Penn State’s World Campus. I love her work title (we need a SNA at Athabasca!) and her slides were great. She is building a variety of sites on SecondLife, Facebook and Flickr that are designed to allow World Campus students to experience some of the excitement and identification with Penn State that accrues to campus students . There is nothing quite like actually being at a location in person, but that does not mean we cannot create some of the same sense of identification and fun using social software tools.