Blogging rhythms

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I’ve been helping out with OLDaily for the past several weeks, but Stephen is now back as editor-in-chief. The pressure of getting out a daily newsletter was much more difficult than I thought it would be. I found that I was scouring my feeds and looking for appropraite posts quite often each day, and then trying to give some kind of fresh perspective. Luckily, Gary Woodill and Barry Dahl were doing the same and I only had to do 2-3 posts per day. Gary also handled the daily publishing of the newsletter. Thanks guys :-)

I started the OLDaily project all full of energy, but was quickly called to task by a reader for repeating a post that Stephen had already covered. I learned to check the archives before posting, realizing that Stephen’s audience is quite large and someone will notice any slip-up. This was of course once I figured out how to track comments.

This co-editor stint has given me a new pespective on blogging. As of last week I was finding the grind a bit much and had stopped posts on this blog. I found that once I’d filtered, examined, pondered and then written for OLDaily that I didn’t have any interest to write one of my own posts. My own pace is much slower and I need to have three or four posts in the mill and let them stew a bit before I decide to post any of them. Many potential posts get chucked or wind up as a quick link on Delicious.

Each blogger writes for different reasons and I mostly do it to make sense of what I’m observing, reading or pondering. There is no pressure to create a daily post and I now know that I couldn’t handle that kind of pressure to deliver for very long. I have more respect for journalists and their deadlines. I also have an even greater respect for Stephen and the enormous cumulative value of OLDaily for our field. Adding a post numbered 45,167 showed just how small my contribution had been.

And now back to our regular programming …

User Generated Context for Learning

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Umair Haque’s short paper on User Generated Context has some insights pertinent to online learning. Haque says that “context” is what most users generate and that content remains an area for professionals or at least the well-known amateurs. The rest of us just add context to what is flowing from the main information nodes, like TechCrunch or the New York Times [kind of like what I’m doing with this post]. Understanding that most of us in the “long tail” generate context, not content, is an important differentiation.

For content players and publishers, user generated context means that connected consumers aren’t their competitors – but are vital, essential complementors, who create very real value for them. The more context there is, the greater demand for their content is likely to be. That means that it’s vital for content players to explode the amount of context connected consumers create about them.

In the online learning business most content is locked down and it is difficult for users to add context that is persistent. I discussed this gap in Learning Content Should be Hackable. Take MIT’s open courseware initiative for instance. The media are available and free but there is no easy way to add context without porting the content to some other place. Blogs, wikis and social bookmarks enable contextualization of learning content but most of this is ad hoc and dependent on the user’s choice of social media tools. Wikipedia is a good example of context being added through links and in the article discussions.

Creating good content on a platform that lets users (teachers & learners) add context may be the the real killer application in education. Content developers and institutions have been so concerned with protecting their content that they don’t see where the real value lies. Letting others add more context will only increase the value of their content.

Non-consumers in education

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Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn say that Computer-Based Learning Could Transform Public Education within a Decade through “Disruptive Innovation”. This is based on Christensen’s models of disruption from his Innovators series of books, which I’ve discussed in Entrants and Incumbents.

The authors use the model of innovation that shows certain advantages for entrants, namely motivations and skills that incumbents don’t want or have. Targeting “non-consumers” is the suggested tactic, as Sony did with its transistor radio against the higher quality vacuum tube radios in the 1960’s.

Using the same methodology in analyzing the public system and its reliance on text books,  they suggest:

Pitting computer-based learning directly against teachers or continuing to cram it into schools will not work. Producers of computer-based learning software must introduce it disruptively, by letting it compete against non-consumption initially. And software makers must customize the software for different learning types while other entrepreneurs find new channels to reach students.

One business model of this type is the University of Phoenix targeting adults who never would be able to attend a traditional university full-time or on site. Another would be the online language learning offerings cropping up all over the Web.

An example the authors provide is that of pharmaceutical makers advertising direct to consumers, so that patients can ask for a specific prescription from their physician.  In this case, centralized purchasing is being completely bypassed, and so with it the massive advertising dollars of the industry.

This could happen in public education. With students identified as “non-consumers” [who are never consulted and have no influence in the education system], they may have education options in the next decade that are “as good as” the existing school system. The next generation may just decide to opt out of the public system. Is this how our public education system will end, with the last student quietly turning out the classroom lights?

Distributed Work Rules

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About ten years ago it was called computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) but today I would just call it getting things done using the Web. Most of my work is at a distance and I’ve been using Web collaboration tools since they became available. The Web has been around for the past 15 years or so, which means that for anyone under 35, it’s been part of the surround for most of their working lives.

I’ve been working as part of a distributed team that is composed mostly of people over 40 and as a result have accumulated several hundred e-mails on one project alone. I usually get maybe a dozen e-mail per day, but this month has required some serious triage of a hundred at a time. I guess this is how “normal” people work every day. Perhaps the next time I join a distributed team, I’ll ask everyone to accept certain ground rules. If not, I may decide not to play.

  1. Documents that are edited by more than one person must be created, edited and commented upon on a wiki or other collaborative web document such as Google Docs, Central Desktop, etc. (This graphic explains it quite well)
  2. The group must select a text chat method for small details that need to be discussed (Skype, MSM, Google Chat, etc). [Dozens of threads using “Reply All” saying things like, “well done” are a waste of the team’s time]
  3. Document formatting should only be considered/discussed once the content has been agreed upon, and then only one person/agency is responsible.
  4. E-mail should only be used for official correspondence that requires a date/time stamp for archival reasons. Contracts, acceptance of deliverables and official feedback would be examples.

Any other suggestions? Perhaps we need a Distributed Work Manifesto.

Meritus University in New Brunswick

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Meritus University is now the third fourth private online university in New Brunswick, joining Lansbridge [update: Lansbridge lost its degree granting status in August 2010] and Yorkville Universities [and the University of Fredericton]. Meritus is owned by the Apollo Group which also owns the University of Phoenix. Locally, the Federation of New Brunswick Faculty Associations, which represents faculty at public institutions, says that ” … students are being shortchanged by private, for-profit universities, such as Meritus”. This is an interesting statement from those who have enjoyed an oligopoly [defn: An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers] on higher education for the past few centuries. I am sure that the paying students will decide in the end which institution offers the best education and related services.

Due to New Brunswick’s legislation that enables the creation of online private universities, we now have three. With their distributed staff this probably doesn’t equate to a lot of jobs but we are beginning to see a bit of a cluster here. Hopefully we’ll see some innovations in teaching and education from these new institutions, and not just a replication of the medieval scholastic model. At Meritus, the focus is on business administration teaching staff who actually have experience in business. Perhaps that’s what faculty at public institutions mean by being “shortchanged”.

I previously wrote about the move toward standardization in higher education and its implications in From Cottage Industry to International Certification.

Deki Wiki

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Another new tool found via Benoit Brosseau is Deki Wiki. This product from MindTouch is open source and seems to have all the right attributes to make it wildly popular:

Similar to CMS web frameworks like Drupal, Mambo, Joomla and DotNetNuke, Deki Wiki delivers a remarkably extensible platform, but it’s a wiki in nature; therefore making it community-centric and significantly easier for end-users to participate. Also, it has a complete application programming interface (API) for programmers.

Deki Wiki is available as a free download; a free hosted service; or with enterprise-level support.

Mahara open source e-portfolio

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My friend Benoit Brosseau told me about Mahara, which seems to fill a growing demand for e-portfolios in education. I like their approach:

What makes Mahara different from other ePortfolio systems is that you control which items and what information (Artefacts) within your portfolio other users see.

In order to facilitate this access control, all Artefacts you wish to show to other users need to be bundled up and placed into one area. Within Mahara this compilation of selected Artefacts is called a View.

You can have as many Views as you like, each with a different collection of Artefacts, and intended purpose and audience. Your audience, or the people you wish to give access to your View, can be added as individuals or as a member of a Group or Community.

Learner control over content access would be one of my essential criteria in selecting an e-portfolio system. More innovation from New Zealand!

Collaboration versus Teamwork

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In his Valence Theory of Organizations, Mark Federman identified “several specific forms of valence relationships that are enacted by two or more people when they come together to do almost anything; these are economic, social-psychological, identity, knowledge, and ecological.”

Recently Mark has posted on why bureaucracy and collaboration are mutually exclusive, showing the limited nature of Teamwork …

… in comparison to the more balanced aspect of Collaboration which brings all valence relationships into play.

As much as organisations advertise for “team players”, what would be best are workers who can truly collaborate by connecting to each other in a more balanced manner with all the facets of their lives. Of course that would mean that the blunt stick of economic consequences would have less overall significance.

Learning professionals as first responders

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When I was in the Canadian Forces Medical Services much of my work was in preparation for mass casualty situations, such as would happen in a conflict. Hospitals and medical personnel train for mass casualty situations because the rules are a bit different from the standard admission process. You are overwhelmed with casualties and the system cannot treat everyone as they would like or need. Priorities are set. An important role is that of triage [from the French verb “to sort” – Processus de prise de décision utilisé sur les lieux d’une urgence et servant à classer les victimes selon les priorités de soins – Grand dictionnatre terminologique].

I was thinking that triage is good metaphor for learning today. We are inundated with information and sources of knowledge. Learning professionals can help sort the signal from the noise by understanding the current circumstances of the organisation and do an initial triage. Of course the situation will be changing so what was important yesterday may not be important tomorrow. Only by constantly looking outside and inside will the learning professional provide a valuable service.

So if anyone asks why you’re reading 100 Web feeds and checking out the chat on Twitter and Facebook, tell them you’re doing triage.

I am a Canadian

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John Diefenbaker, Prime Minister of Canada, in 1960, while referring to the Canadian Bill of Rights:

“I am Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.”

I was only one year old at the time. Of course, each generation has to keep fighting for its rights and freedoms and ensure the rights of those who cannot.

It’s a great country — Happy Canada Day!