Technology

information & communication technology

Learning Networks – The New Framework

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Stephen Downes presented a work in progress in Palermo this week, Learning Networks – Theory & Practice. In order to better understand it myself, I have put my notes up here, but please listen to Stephen’s audio file and look at his slide presentation. This presentation begs for a lot more discussion. What follows is my summary and any errors or omissions are my own:

First of all, traditional online learning has been institution-based, consisting of online courses, learning management systems, and closed networks of licensed content. Content is seen in terms of course packs and learning design linearly sequencing.

On the other hand, learning networks are not institution-based but resource-based within an open network. On the Web, content is not packaged but aggregated. E-learning is more of an
engagement and a conversation than an event.

From these premises, Stephen has developed several learning network design principles (works in progress he says) that specify how networks differ from traditional learning. These can be used as a means of evaluating new technology, to determine whether it is network-centric (see the slides for details).

  1. Decentralization
  2. Distribution
  3. Disintermediation
  4. Disaggregation
  5. Dis-integration
  6. Democratization
  7. Dynamism

These principles are based on Connectivism (see George Siemens’ post) and Stephen also links these principles to what Robert Paterson has written in Going Home: Our Reformation:

E-Learning has been based on centralized systems

But these centralized systems, such as the LMS, are like a dysfunctional crutch –
There’s so much going on out there – you have to leave the cocoon and experience the web.
Stop trying to do online what you do in the classoom – it’s a different world online.

My own opinion is that the Web offered a lot of options for learner control, but this was co-opted by technology vendors and institutions. For instance, there are still “web-based learning program” that disable your browser’s navigation functions.

The fact is that the genie is out of the bottle, and we are in the metaphorical process of casting off the horseless carriage and adopting the automobile. Stephen’s framework, Rob’s vision and George’s pedagogy provide some of the foundation and now there are new tools, such as DrupalED, coming out of the artisans’ workshops to help us implement this framework. Allons-y!

DrupalED Now Available

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Boris and Will are two of the founding members of a new site called DrupalED with an aggregated edtech feed.

DrupalED is a distribution that combines core Drupal.org with a selection of modules optimized for use in educational settings. These range from K-12 to university, as well as per-class, per-department, and per-institution scenarios.

It is free, open source, libre, and available for you.

I think that this one is going to grow :)

Update: Please read Will’s comment to this post.

Architecture for a better future

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Dave Pollard produces more thought-provoking articles than almost anyone else on the Web. I have used his Natural Enterprise model to inform my own work in developing better business models for small businesses, and now Dave has started to put many of his ideas together in his latest post, Creating a Post-Civilization Culture. His framework consists of four components – Principles, Learning, Enablers & Infrastructure. The premise is that,

With the right principles that can guide our decisions, the learnings to build the new culture properly, and the enabling building blocks, we can create the infrastructure that embodies the new culture.


This framework, coupled with Robert Paterson‘s narrative on the next Reformation, could sow the seeds for some grassroots action. It may be just what we need at the local level to address our own community’s sustainabilty issues.

Provinent Acquires LearnStream

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Provinent, headquartered in Toronto, with its development shop in Fredericton has just purchased LearnStream, another Fredericton company. From the press release:

Provinent Corporation, Canada’s leader in e-learning consulting and custom e-learning content development, announced today that it has acquired New Brunswick based LearnStream, a pioneer in e-learning courseware development.

I wonder if we’ll be seeing any more mergers and acquisitions this year?

“A Learning Blogosphere”

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A recurring theme here and elsewhere is that decentralized Web 2.0 technologies are better than older, centralized technologies (e.g. LMS & LCMS) in enabling learning on the Web. Here is an interesting story about a University of Michigan class that implemented blogs for learning, beginning about a year ago. The first installment from the Community Engine Blog is now posted:

Milestone 4 – Why blog instead of using technology X?

This question came mainly from academics who had invested in some previous computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) system. Nonetheless, it also came from students and is a reasonable question. Should we adopt new technologies because they are new? As I hope this tale illustrates, adopting new technologies is costly.

My answer is this. By design, blogging allows individuals to raise topics of interest and create threads of conversation without having to ask anyone’s permission. That was an explicit design consideration for this course; I wanted to know what was going on with students. Bulletin boards tend to be top-down and are owned by one person. Wikis force you to go through a social filter. Others can edit your pages or even delete them.

Second, because blogging also produces XML-based feeds, it is very easy to aggregate all of the individual contributions in one place while still maintaining individual attribution. Third, the XML-based feeds in blogs allow me to join people and resources to my group vs. having to get them to join me. Note, I did ask permission of everyone whose feed I aggregated into our site, but they did not have to go through a sign-on process and explicitly produce content for the site. By localizing content creation, blogs make it possible to ask permission and get a coherent stream of content.

The lessons learnt in this case provide some guidance to anyone implementing blogs for education today. Some of the obstacles were due to the fact that this class was just slightly ahead of the technology adoption curve, but their experiences can now inform many others embarking on similar trips. The numerous trackbacks & comments attest to the value of these experiences being posted.

In the space of a year, blogs for learning have moved from the bleeding edge to the leading edge.

Tagback

Mrs Blash’s Home and School Communicator

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I have frequently mentioned how a blog would make home and school communication very simple. Well Debbie Blash, a school Principal, has started a blog:

Welcome to Mrs Blash’s home and school communicator. It is hoped that through this blogger that we will be able to improve home and school communication. Please feel free to contact me through this site.

It’s on Blogger, so it’s free and it seems so obvious that I wonder why more schools (like ours) have not adopted the medium. Mrs Blash is obviously new to blogging, but she has taken the plunge in order to further communication – bravo! In our town we have "Talk Mail" using the telephone system, but not much on the Internet. Maybe soon …

Guidelines for Effective Corporate eLearning

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Anol Bhattacharya, author of SoulSoup, has posted some good guidelines on elearning for the corporate world. I can really relate to guideline #1:

1. The business world is not about learning, it’s about doing business.

So before doing training needs analysis – please, do go through a business needs analysis. It may not be the same as the strategic direction or vision statement of the company; it’s more complex. We are dealing with different goals and perspectives. What needs to be learnt varies from the point of view of the CXO, training manager, product manager/department head and the learner. Catering to all viewpoints is a daunting task, but, believe me, it’s the first and foremost task to do. Any shortcut is a pathway to doom’s loop.

This is similar to the principal of The Problem, The Balloon and the Four Bedroom House; namely that an inadequate analysis may rise up and bite you during a subsequent part of the project.

Anol has a number of other principals that would be worthwhile for anyone developing “learning solutions” for the business world. I got a déja vu chuckle from #5, stating that big LMS rollouts are out:

Then the fun begins. People sit together in meeting rooms, munching donuts and sipping coffee, to interview LMS vendors. The process made them feel important. After that hoola-hoop, when the LMS was finally implemented (e Learning rollout – drum roll please!), there was nothing inside it. So they filled it up with off-the-shelf courseware and uploaded all the junk PowerPoint presentations, PDF and Word documents. Finally when they realized nothing is going according to their expectations (god only knows what those were!) – they jumped to the conclusion – e Learning doesn’t work!

Via James at IncSub.

Yahoo uses Drupal

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Sebastien Paquet is blogging the Information Architecture Summit [what’s the difference between a summit and a conference?] in Montreal this week (thanks Seb). The presentation on Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study, shows how Drupal meets the needs of the expanding company:

I used to work with an internal group to build an intranet. We didn’t want to go around begging for money, so it needed to be cheap. [php, movable type, drupal, other logos pop up] We wanted it scalable [some logos go away], customizable and extensible, easy to use (unlike coders, designers are a fickle bunch) [some other logos vanish], and conducive to collaboration. A bottom-up feel to it. Categorization. The answer was Drupal. It has broad functionality, blogs, calendar, strong taxonomy system. Active developer community – I want to do as little work as possible. There’s a new version about every four months. It has a very abstracted engine. It’s not the greatest at everything, but the taxonomy part is very strong.

The strength of the Drupal community just keeps growing :-)

Seb has blogged a number of other sesssions, well worth the read if you’re interested in IA.