Virtual Canuck

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education confirms my own experience that most students enrolled in online course do not complete standard course evaluations forms. Online teachers don’t have the luxury of handing out evaluations forms on the last day of classes (naturally before marked papers are returned,) and assigning a graduate student to stand over the captive audience, refusing to allow any to leave without completing the form. The result is return rates that although never 100% are typically well over 75% and good enough to get a sense of a meaningful and representative sample of the population.  Unfortunately,  in online courses,  identical questionnaires delivered as a component of a learning management system or emailed directly to student produce only a trickle of responses. This low response rate causes some professors and administrators to question not only the validity of the sample results, but also the value of exercise itself.

(more…)

During my presentation to CK08 Stephen Downes challenged me to clarify if his distinctions between groups and networks matched my own. I had a little trouble determining exactly his criteria- as I am sure he has my own, but I did find a long speech he gave in New Zealand in 2006 titled Groups versus Networks : the class structure continues .

Later I found a shorter explication in the Moodle discussion associated with CCK08

Stephen distinguishes groups and networks on 4 dimensions:

1. groups emphasize sameness, networks emphasize diversity
2. groups emphasize order and control, networks emphasize autonomy
3. groups emphasize borders and membership, networks emphasize openness
4. groups emphasize additive, cumulative knowledge, networks emphasize emergent knowledge

I find  myself agreeing with the first 3 distinctions ideas, though Stephen tends to view things in more black and white terms than I, with less tolerance for gray. But where I think there is substantive disagreement is in the nature of thinking and knowledge production that he claims differentiates groups from networks (#4 above). (more…)

The announcement that 6 candidates in the current Canadian federal election have had to resign from the race due to network documented   “indiscretions” gives one thought about the potentially haunting effects of web exposure. Now, most of us have enough sense not to release videos of us lighting up 30 joints at a time (no, I didn’t make that up!), but how do we know that everything we expose on the Net will continue to be an asset, rather than an embarrassing liability in future times. I had a related experience this week when a student from a past course asked me why her picture is still accessible on an Athabasca elgg powered social software site, a year after the course ended. In this case, it was because, she had not deleted the picture, a function taken care of by most LMS when they ruthlessly destroy (or least make hidden) all data at course end, and moreover, never expose such data to the ‘outside world’.
(more…)

I am pleased that Ben, Dave and others at ELGG have released version 1.0 of ELGG as scheduled yesterday. The new version promises a number of significant improvements over Elgg .9 that we have been piloting at Athabasca. The software is described here and can be downloaded and installed locally or taken for a test drive at http://test.elgg.org/

The Groups feature seems much enhanced with ‘pages’ (like wiki pages with optional editing feature), cleaner discussions and files and resources. I set up a test group entitled ‘Social in self paced’ and readers of this blog are welcomed to join this group.

The important finely graduated permissions feature is entact in the new version. I haven’t yet found the RSS import and aggregator features-but perhaps because the plugin wasn’t installed in the test version. The archtecture of 1.0 allows for a huge number of widgets and plugins- some installed by indiviudal users, some by site administrators.

The Elgg gang is also celebrating their award from InfoWorld’s best of Open Source Software in the social software category, where the judges write:

You won’t find an open source version of MySpace, but even at the current .92 version, Elgg comes darn close. So why would you even want to create smaller communities? Simple: While Elgg lets corporations, governments, and schools quickly establish blogs, the system’s collaborative features encourage building communities of users with shared interests. Other Elgg fine points include podcast support, file repositories, user profiles, RSS aggregator, and branding features. Significantly, the software integrates with other IT systems and provides OpenID authentication. Developers can add specific functions using an open API”

Congratulations Elgg team. I look forwarded to installing and working with the new, improved version.

I’ve long been a fan of Clayton Christensen’s ‘disruptive innovation” theories outlined in “Innovator’s Dilemma” and the follow up “Innovator’s Solution I think he provides a great deal of sound theoretical and practical reasoning about the process of innovation. Unfortunately, the examples in his books come mostly from industry and especially high tech innovation contexts. Thus, Walter Archer, Randy Garrison and I wrote an article in 1999 Adopting disruptive technologies in traditional universities: Continuing education as an incubator for innovation. applying Christensen’s ideas to distance education and extension education. The paper actually won an award, but we just just scratched the surface.

Thus, I was thrilled to see that Christensen, has teamed with a couple of educators to write a whole book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation will Change the Way the World Learns devoted to disruptive innovation in schools. First, let me say that the subtitle is a bit misleading in that the context of “world learners” is the USA and only that subset enrolled in formal K-12 education. But that is one of only a few limitations of the book.

The thesis Christen argues is that in education as in other ‘industries’ disruptive technologies- those that “transform a market whose services are complicated and expensive into one where simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability characterize that industry” p. 11 are relentlessly fueling innovation. Now I know that for many of us, thinking about innovation in education seems almost an oxymoron, and Christensen notes that bureaucratic and administrative mentalities attempt to “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” p. 74.

The technology that Christensen argues is the key disrupter is of course online learning. Not the use of computers in classrooms that generally only add cost to existing models, but rather the “anywhere/anyplace” type online learning that displaces “monolithic, classroom instruction”. Many of us having been proclaiming for years that the “sky is falling’ on traditional models of delivery, but Christensen uses his plotting theory to provide a logarithmic graph (shades of Ray Kurweil here) postulating that by the year 2019 “student centric’ technologies will displace over 50% of classroom instruction. This follows the slow start, rapidly accelerating trajectory associated with all disruptive technologies. Between then and now, improving technologies with multiple paths for the different ways student learners, coupled with decreasing costs and looming teachers shortages will create conditions in which more than half of the students (and their parents) will find more attractive than classroom delivery.

I was also impressed that Christensen sees the evolution of user -generated content via easy and accessible web 2.0 tools to create Produser type products as the driving force for the innovation. The first phase, well upon us, is the use of the disruptive technologies to serve folks where the options are ‘online or nothing’- as confronts traditional distance education students. The second phase shifts to modular production of thousands of ‘tutor aides’ distributed through user networks that reaches critical mass in 2014 when 25% of students have opted for this model of formal learning.

Christensen’s US centric politics come out in the final chapters when he talks about forging a consensus for change. He has little faith in the established public systems’ capacity for change and seems to look to charter and independent schools and provides examples of leaders who threaten to fire all the teachers, or separating (creating new schools) as means to forge the consensus for change needed.

Given my interest in educational research, I was especially intrigued to find that Christensen has a chapter on “Improving Educational Research”. However, there was little new here, mostly a rehash of the now familiar research lingo from the US right, arguing for a move from descriptive to prescriptive models, where knowing exactly what works, will allow EVERYONE to make the right educational decisions. If things don’t work then we are back to studying the context, but rather than acknowledging that knowledge is contextually determined, he argues that we just need to tweak what could be inferred as laws of learning to meet specific contexts. The chapter then provides the reader with an elementary lesson in validity and reliability and Christensen then reverts to his more familiar turf to talk about research on the ‘history of manned flight’ (make that humaned flight). However to be fair, Christensen seems to come around to at least an acknowledgment of importance of context, when he concludes the chapter by noting failures could have been avoided in following research results if ” the user had “defined the categories or situations in which the recommended actions would be effective”p. 174.

Don’t buy the book for the research chapter! But readers of this blog will likely both enjoy and have many of our intuitions about change in education both confirmed and informed by this important book.

I am pleased to announce the 2nd edition of the edited text Theory and Practice of Online Learning. As the first edition, this one is available in paper copy ($39.95 Canadian) and in PDF for open access download. This is one of the first 6 books produced by the newly launched Athabasca University Press which bills itself as Canada’s first Open Access Press. The 2nd edition is licensed under a Creative commons, attribute, no commercial and no derivative license.

In the 2nd Edition “every chapter in the widely distributed first edition has been updated, and four new chapters on current issues such as connectivism and social software innovations have been added. Essays by practitioners and scholars active in the complex, diverse, and rapidly evolving field of distance education blend scholarship and research; practical attention to the details of teaching and learning; and mindful attention to the economics of the business of education.”

The first edition sold the 400 print copies quite rapidly and downloads of the full text have continued at over 4,000 per month totally more than 85,000 since its release in 2004. Five chapters from the first edition were also translated and many chapters are used in online graduate and other distance education and training courses. This experiment with ‘open access’ was by all counts a grand success, even without money flowing to the authors or as is more likely to the publishers.

For more details regarding the motivation for publishing in open access format and to see brief summaries of each of the chapters, interested readers may wish to read my introduction to the 2nd edition

The following is a rather long and scholarly type post arguing for the use of Networks in addition to groups commonly employed in formal campus and distance education. The essay will probably find its way into a published paper or book chapter, but I thought I would post it here in case anyone has interest and especially comments.

Thanks

Terry (more…)

The latest issue of EduCause Review headlines an article Conference Connections: Rewiring the Circuit by George Siemen, Peter Tittenberger and myself. The work is mostly George’s but I was happy to play a supportive role in its production and editing. The article does a good job of overviewing the ‘augmented’ use of network technologies in F2F conferences, use in blended f2F and online conferences and those virtual conferences that are hosted entirely online.

One can’t help but notice the demand for (and extensive use of) wireless connectivity by delegates at face to face conferences these days. Of course, too much of this activity (especially emails) likely situates delegates (virtually) back at home and likely the F2F session suffers from contention for attention. However, we highlight in the article means such as blogging, IMs, audience question possing and polling that can be used to focus and enhance interaction even during F2F conferences. The article also describes ways in which the net is used in blended fashion to support learning before and after the conference.

But of greatest interest in the article (to me) is the overview, examples and (limited) evaluation data from conferences that run completely online. The growing awareness of the ecological and financial cost of travel, coupled with the opportunity cost associated with spending days away from home and workplace, make completely online conferences increasingly attractive. This article is chocked full of links and provides a good discussion of the techniques, benefits and challenges of using net technology to enhance professional development conferences.

Well worth a read, but then I’m biased!!!!

Terry

Recent posts have gotten me thinking further about the “taxonomy of the many” groups/networks and collectives that Jon Dron and I have been interested in for the past year or so.

First there has been a small buzz about “Personal Learning Networks” I enjoyed Jim Lerman’s post Will Richardson adds some nice comments on Utube [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/mghGV37TeK8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] and Stephen Downe’s 2006 slideshow and George Siemens (early) thinking on the topic. A compelling feature of these arguments is the need to extend learning, via connections with others, beyond the small group of people in ‘class’ or work team or more generally a group.

In a more recent post George Siemens worries about his personal discomfort with the term Collective or collectivism and argues in Collective Intelligence? Nah. Connective Intelligence

"For reasons of motivation, self-confidence, and satisfaction, it is critical that we can retain ourselves and our ideas in our collaboration with others. Connective intelligences permits this. Collective intelligence results in an over-writing of individual identity.”

In the work by Jon Dron and myself, we have argued that it makes sense and helps use develop learning activities for ourselves and others to divide learning into four aggregations of the many (well, make that three of the Many plus one). These are:

• Individual learning – Most of my learning takes places as I read, watch and listen with no desire or expectation for human interaction, connecting or networking.
• Groups – the tightly formed aggregation typical of work place teams and educational classes (f2F or online), that are directed, managed, focused and often private collaborations.
• Networks – free flowing interactions, loosely governed, often transitory membership, and span both loose and close ties among members (think Edubloggers, members of churches and hockey fans). This is the type of aggregated relationship that George defends in his post.
• Collectives – These are non personal aggregations of the Many. They allow us to compare ourselves to the many, collectively predict and make decisions, ask questions of all, vote and visualize our aggregated opinions and ideas, match our interests and find networks, groups and individuals and in many other emerging ways help us understand and control our collective worlds. In collective learning activities we are not directly searching for human connections – only mining for information. Allison Littlejohn and her colleagues at Caledonian have nicely recounted some ‘collective’ educational history and explicated the idea further in a nice posting titled Collective learning

These categories are not totally exclusive and some applications (like Wikis for groups and networks) serve more than one aggregation. But I don’t think it adds value to prejudice one above the other, or to argue as George does, that we will lose something (ourselves? our ideas?) if we exploit the affordances of collective tools and applications.

Rather, one should use the best tool for the job. I have no intention of losing my identity nor having it “overwritten” when I click on Google and effect in a small way the page ranking systems, nor when I buy a book from Amazon and it effects their recommendations to me. These are examples of collectives working. But if I want a ‘connection’ then groups or networks (likely both) are my best choices.

Scott Leslie and his colleague Bruce Langdon have crafted an excellent review of the promise and practice of social software use in both formal and informal learning. The 27 page report is titled Social Software for Learning: What is it,
why use it? and is published by the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education.

The report makes a quite compelling pedagogical case for the use of social software and then details common genre of social tools and their applications in mostly formal education. Given the sponsorship by the Observatory, it is perhaps no surprise that the report focuses considerable attention on adoption and use of these technologies in formal higher education contexts. I especially liked the attention to the institutional issues such as Should we develop our own social software applications or use freely available, commercial and very popular alternatives such as Facebook? If we do build our own apps, should they be behind institutional firewalls and passwords or exposed to the Open Net? And most importantly will students use these services if we build them? While not providing definitive answers to these questions, the report nicely overviews the advantages and disadvantages and provides references and links to some interesting examples.

This report nicely complements and updates the earlier FutureLab’s 2006 report Social Software and Learning . Both reports provide definitions of social software and describe, with examples, the major genre (blogs, wikis, tag apps, etc.) but the Futurelab report focuses more on social software’s impact on informal and lifelong learning, while Leslie and Langdon address the tension and challenges of this potentially disruptive technology to formal educational institutions.

The only major problem with the report is its access restrictions. I realize that some person or organization usually has to pay for any quality production, but guarding this report behind a password, will insure that its readership and impact is very significantly reduced. Fortunately, my University is one of only 5 Canadian universities to subscribe to the UK based Observatory. Thus, I was able to request a password and access the report, but I had to click away my right to copy, email or otherwise open the document to others. A shame…..

If nothing else, do read the free abstract of the report and wait a few months and the report may yet appear in some Googleizable cranny of the Net. Or perhaps wrangle an institutional subscription to the Observatory for this and a number of other interesting reports.