Observations about learning, knowledge and technology

Substance not popularity, reflection and boredom, not pace

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 19:40:00 +0000

I read with interest Frances Bell's post on Binaries, Polarization and Privacy in which she highlighted the divisive and binary nature of voting and such systems online that favors popularity over complexity and substance in online environments. Of course network theorists, such as Barabasi, have more than ten year ago shown that this development is inherent in online network forming: preferential attachment is one of the main characteristics in network forming: it is the person who gets most votes, the person who has been on the network the longest, the person who is most popular, who gets the attention, not necessarily the person who has something profound to say.

In an educational sense, this is problematic as it would be more important for people who have something valuable to say, and this might be something that is critical of the view point of the majority on the network, or a different point of view altogether, who would stimulate thought processes and debate on the network. In a learning environment where the voice of instructors is heard less and less, for instance in MOOCs, the emphasis should be on collecting the serendipitous, the slightly different to ensure a critical engagement with resources.

I would also like the incorporate here some thoughts on pace. It seems to become more and more valued to do everything fast, presumably as we have less time to give attention to each happening and piece of writing or video, but I wholeheartedly enjoyed this piece by Popova that harks back to reflections from some of the great minds of the past on 'boredom' and its importance in 'getting your act together' and being creative and making connections between information by taking the time for reflection. If there ever was a time in which boredom and reflection is important, it is today!

What MOOCs might have been...................

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 15:38:00 +0000

Well, I have not used my blog for a long time. A new job and sitting back to see how the commercialization storm that took MOOCs by surprise would unfold were my excuses. I have decided that I would not be true to my own principles and ideas of education and learning that involve active participation and human interaction if I would not do exactly that, participate and interact.

How did my change of heart come about? This morning a final draft student thesis landed in my inbox. It was a total surprise, it included many of my own thoughts, advanced on some of those thoughts, spun my own data around and it made me realize that what is at the heart of the original MOOC development, connecting and sharing with other human beings, is as valid today as it was when I took part in one of the first MOOCs as a student on 2008. That experience blew my mind away as it lifted my educational experience to a global level and involved sharing with people who I considered experts and forward thinkers in the field. It flattened the hierarchy of power in educational institutions with the click of the button. That is for me the essence of the MOOC!

I can no longer be quiet and sit back. It is clear that the highjack of the MOOC concept by some has opened up access to learning for some (especially already educated people). It is debatable if the xMOOC commercial development has done and will do anything to advance the essence of the original MOOC development: opening up access to education and learning for ALL; sharing of the learning experience and resources between young and old, advanced technology users and experts in the field and novices; advancing models of learning that take advantage of emerging technologies; creating technologies that will enhance this non-hierarchical connectivist learning; creating learning and knowledge commons structures in society, to name a few issues, but we will see.

My first reaction when xMOOCs appeared that used the same old, same old, top-down course (infra-)structure that we were used to from institutions was: how dare they distort something really good to something pretty mondane, just at a large scale, and then to make money out of it? Of course it is because they could. That's the beauty of humans with technology in their hands, we can create, build on something else and make it into what we want it to be.

I still wish they had called it something else, or perhaps the original MOOC should not have been called a MOOC, but a COOL (Connectivist Open Online Learning) event.

Anyway, Anna, you have made my day and guided me back to the origin of MOOCs of connecting, creating and sharing. Thanks!

The process of open educational practice, rather than the outcomes. Stuff badges!!.

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Dave Wiley posted a piece on why universities will be the biggest awarders of badges.

I can see why he thinks this is the case. Educational Institutions are the ones that have for centuries been awarders of pieces of paper for successful working with knowledge, but not necessarily for learning outcomes!!! That's the problem with formal education, resources are provided, and interactions between people taken place, but if people actually learn anything is not easy to measure. Who is to say that all these students who were so good at the exam actually learnt anything, they might just have been very good at answering exam questions? As open education practicioners, we should think about this when discussing certification and question if this model is actually the right one for open learning.

Clearly, by awarding badges to open learning episods, for instance, you actually change them into closed courses. We already have lots and lots of those. So, why are people suddenly so obsessed with accreditation of open courses? It seems to me that at the moment the hype generated by MITx and Stanford around their 'open' courses and the idea by Mozilla to give boy scout awards to learners are at its heart, but in my view they do not only devalue Higher Education, and produce a two-tier system, one for the people who can afford the high fees who receive the 'quality learning experience' with all bells and whistles and human interaction and support, and the other people, who can't afford these and who get an open dehumanised, machine learning experience and apparently receive a token of appreciation in the form of a badge from the institution for their effort! All this as employers might value this second rate experience from a top-tier university more than a 'quality experience' from a not so top of the range university. The market in higher education at its best (:-( !!

Of course accreditation of prior learning is not new. Over the past twenty years there have been enough challenges in providing some sort of award for open learners' efforts. Learners might use the certification they receive for their open learning episode to show institutions that they have achieved a certain level of competency. Again, its the institutions of higher education that put value (or nonvalue) to these certificates.

How important should this be in the current technology-rich climate? And, is this really, really the direction that we would like open educational practice to develop into? Would it not be more valuable to use our energy in thinking about the learning process, and not about the external pressures for accreditation of (possible) learning outcomes? One other model would be to developing Open Educational Resources and provide access to them, but to do this in the context of open learning environments that give learners choices and control over their own learning process and learning experiences. Environments where learners will be stimulated to interact with other human beings and be critical of the world in which they live, higher education included, and where they are tempted to be analytical. And yes, technology can be used on these environments to guide learners in this, for instance learners might be able to use analytics visualizations to see where on their learning journey they are, rather than to have an HE institution make all the decisions about the value of their learning. There are wider benfits to open learning than a certificate by an HE institution!!!

Research publications on Massive Open Online Courses and Personal Learning Environments

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:48:00 +0000

People interested in Massive Open Online Courses will probably be aware of the research by Helene Fournier and me on Personal Learning Environments and MOOCs. We carried out research in the MOOC PLENK2010 (The MOOC Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge that was held in the fall of 2010). The data collected on this distributed course with 1641 participants has been massive as well. Its analysis has kept us and some fellow researchers busy over the past year. The research has resulted in a number of publications and I thought it might be useful to post links to all of our journal articles, conference papers and presentations that were published in relation to PLEs and MOOCs in one space. Each publication looks at the data from a different perspective, eg, requirements in a PLE, self-directed learning, learner support, creativity.

Fournier, H., Kop, R., and Durand, G. (2014), Challenges to research in Massive Open Online Courses, Merlot Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 10, No.1, March 2014

Fournier, H., and Kop, R. (2014) De nouvelles dimensions à l’auto-apprentisage dans un environment d’apprentisage en réseau, Association canadienne pour l’étude de l’éducation des adultes
Kop, R., Fournier, H., and Durand, G. (2014, In Press), Challenges to research in Massive Open Online Courses, Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

Kop, R. & Fournier, H. (2014) Developing a framework for research on Personal Learning Environments, Elearning in Europe Journal, Issue No. 35, special Issue on Personal Learning Environments

Kop, R. (2012) The Unexpected Connection: Serendipity and Human Mediation in Networked Learning. (PDF) Educational Technology & Society, 15 (2), 2–11, p. 2-11
http://www.you-learn.org/papers.html

Fournier, H. and Kop, R. (2013) Social and affective presence to achieve quality learning in MOOCs, ELearn 2013 conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, October 21-24, 2013

Kop, R. (2011) The Challenges to Connectivist Learning on Open Online Networks: Learning Experiences during a Massive Open Online Course. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 12, No 3 (2011): Special Issue - Connectivism: Design and Delivery of Social Networked Learning

Fournier, H., Kop, R. and Sitlia, H. (2011), The Value of Learning Analytics to Networked Learning on a Personal Learning Environment, 1st International Conference on Learning analytics and Knowledge 2011, Banff, February 27-March 1st, 2011. Paper 14 conference presentation

Kop, R. and Fournier, H. (2011) New Dimensions to Self-directed Learning in an Open Networked Learning Environment, International Journal of Self-Directed Learning, Volume 7, Number 2, Fall 2010, page 1-18 - conference presentation

Kop, R. and Fournier, H. (2011) Facilitating Quality Learning in a Personal Learning Environment through Educational Research, online session at the Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research, May 2011. The link gives access the the Elluminate recording, an Mp3 and Powerpoint slide.

Kop, R., Fournier, H. and Mak, S.F.J. (2011) A Pedagogy of Abundance or a Pedagogy to Support Human Beings? Participant support on Massive Open Online Courses, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Special Issue - Emergent Learning, Connections, Design for Learning, Vol. 12, No. 7, pg. 74-93

Fournier, H. and Kop, R. (2011) Factors affecting the design and development of a Personal Learning Environment: Research on super-users, in the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, Volume 2, Issue 4, 12-22, October –December 2011. conference presentation conference paper

Kop, R. and Carroll, F. (2011) Cloud Computing and Creativity: Learning on a Massive Open Online Course, European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, Special Issue on Creativity and OER

Kop, R. (2010) The Design and Development of a Personal Learning Environment: Researching the Learning Experience, European Distance and E-learning Network Annual Conference 2010, June 2010, Valencia, Spain, Paper H4 32 conference presentation

Some of the background data of participants and the course cause a little overlap in the papers, but we think the diversity of subjects covered in the papers will shed light on the learning experiences on MOOCs and make for a varied tapestry of information on MOOCs. PLENK2010 provided us with rich in data and we are still working on the analysis of the dataset as a whole for a paper on motivation and one on research methods, in collaboration with Guillaume Durand, using some challenging research methods. We will let you know when these papers will be published.

Call for Chapters - Open Online Learning and Teaching

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:47:00 +0000

This call for chapters for a text on open online courses (.doc), edited by Rita Kop, Stephen Downes, George Siemens, might be of interest to readers. The two-page abstract of prospective chapters is due Oct 31, 2011.

The balancing act between relevance and serendipity in the information stream

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:22:00 +0000

Boring! Yehh,yehh, no surprises. Have you had that feeling when looking at the results of your information searches? It is something I have been thinking about a lot the past months.

If the role of the educator used to be to challenge learners by providing different points of view and coming up with, to the learner, unexpected ideas and points of view to stimulate the thought processes, how might this be facilitated in a networked environment? Algorithm-driven search engines recommend relevant information to our search query, and are not (yet) up to recommending us serendipitous information; information that also contains unexpected gems of information that ensures new angles to feed our thought processes. I believe that currently the best way to achieve serendipity in our information steam is through human intervention.

Web users can now be in control of their information stream and pull information in from human sources. These sources might be information brokers, knowledgeable nodes on the network, or be aggregated through feeds written and produced by a multitude of interesting authors, or news sources and distributed through micro-blogging tools such as Twitter or Tumlr, or through curation sites such as Scoop.it . What all these sites have in common is the 'human touch'. They ensure that users get recommendations from people in their area of interest, and quite often also recommendations 'one step removed' from these people, such as through #tag communities on Twitter, which should result, as described by Jarvis, in 'unexpected relevance' in the information received.

When I look at my own information stream, I am still not quite happy with the level of serendipity, even though I use all these tools and have automated their use and made them more appetizing, for instance through the use of the 'flipboard app'. There is a lot of 'dross' that I have to sift through to find these really interesting bits. I find that I invest an increasing amount of my time at sharing, curating and producing information, which is not a bad thing as the activity in itself helps my thought processes and might also provide an aha moments for someone else.

PLE Presentation Canadian Institute for Distance Education Research

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:45:00 +0000

Last Wednesday Helene Fournier and I gave a presentation to CIDER, the Canadian Institute for Distance Education Research in which we elaborated on our research related to Personal Learning Environments. You will be able to find the Elluminate recording and files here. As the sound quality was not super, I tidied up the file and you will be able to find the slidecast here.

Problems with commercial enterprises dominating the 'cloud'

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:32:00 +0000

Did you notice the last couple of weeks that things are changing with those nifty cool Web2.0 and social media applications that not so long ago were a novelty and made lots of waves in the learning technology field? Yes, exactly, first Delicious was not interesting anymore to Yahoo, then last week Google decided to stop their Google video service, now this week Friendster tells us to save our files.

In the case of Delicious, after a public outcry, they have reversed their decision. Google is after widespread protests looking into moving the videos to YouTube, while they re-instated the position of their RSS reader, Google Reader, in their navigation to its original position after protests by RSS aggregators when they moved it.

What can we conclude from this? Clearly, the web-surfers and users are not the customers of these commercial enterprises; their advertisers and share-holders are, the behavior of users are merely the by-product of the money-making enterprise, required to produce the 'social graph' needed for advertisers to sell their stuff. Any application that is not profitable will be disconnected, how successful it might be in supporting people's lives and learning.

Another important point to draw from this is that we as users can collectively influence the behavior of the new Web monopolies to ensure that the services important to us are not cut just like that. These companies have to understand that we can walk with our feet and that they will have to perhaps provide some services that are vital to the lives of users at a loss to on the other hand make lots of money in other ones, very much like commercial bus or postal service operators are required by governements to run not such profitable routes in order to provide a balanced service. Of course there is no global government to take on these companies, bar perhaps the European Union who is not afraid to fine the Microsoft, Apple or Google of this world if they breach monopoly laws.

The final point I would like to make is that it might be time for new public services to safeguard what is vital for education and tp people's learning. We have public libraries, why not public search engines, as was suggested by White. These would not be guided by commercial interests, but would be available to safeguard our social and cultural heritage. It is clear that the way the Cloud is ruled does nothing to ensure that what is important to its users is maintained, rather it is like everywhere else in the world, it is greed that makes the Cloud go round.

The value of analytics in an educational and learning context

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:07:00 +0000

I had some time to reflect on the presentations and conversations at the 1st International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference in Banff. There were many thought provoking presentations that gave an inkling as to the direction people interested in education, or interested in educational technology, might take analytics in the coming years. One of the figures I found most interesting, came from Abelardo Pardo, who worked with Carlos Delgado Kloos on a 'virtual machine' that they used in their research. They asked their students to install the file on their regular computer and use it for their course work, while Abelardo and Carlos could track student activity. When they looked at the browsing behavior, only 28.51% of students accessed LMS-related pages for their learning activities, while all other pages accessed were outside this institutionally controlled environment. Now of course it is quite likely that there are contextual factors that influenced this behavior, but still, it clearly points towards a finding that students only make a limited use of the institutional LMS for their learning and that if analytics are to be meaningful, they will have to include student learning activities outside the LMS. Quite some analytics presented at the conference were related to the institutional LMS. Of course this begs the question: if students only use the LMS for such a limited amount of their learning, and data on the other learning is not collected, what will be the relevance and value of carrying out analytics on this LMS environment?

Some presentations showed that analytics might be used to enhance the effectiveness and streamlining of the processes taking place in educational institutions in four ways:
1. To support the administration
2. To adapt the learning support services to make up for deficiencies in student performance.
3. To show learners their analytics in order for them to reflect on their performance and perhaps adapt their learning and learning behavior in certain ways.
4. To adapt teaching to analytics findings about student learning and learning behavior

What do I think of these four?
1. Analytics to support the bureaucracy must always be a bad thing, as analysis of data always means inputting of data, from which follows that learners and educators will have to engage in this added burden. There is enough evidence to support that the bureaucratization of university is a negative, rather than a positive development (Foucault, Reading, Delanty).
2.I like the idea that analytics might make it possible for student support services to be better matched to student needs, but coming from a background in adult education and widening access to Higher Education, I have seen my fair share of problems with using the deficiency model to support learners. I feel more comfortable with
3. the analytics model promoted by Erik Duval who runs analytics on student activities and shows the students the results. This seems more empowering to learners as it involves a need for reflection on their learning.
4. Analytics can also be run as a research tool, so teaching staff might get a better understanding of the learner experience and the problems learners might come across in order to better match their teaching. Caroline Haythornthwaite showed us some of her visualizations of communication and group forming, which highlighted insights that analytics might provide in the ties between learners in learning settings.

If the analytics are solely run on the LMS related activity and the 28.51% figure is in any way generalizable to other institutions, of course all these analytics will only tell roughly a quarter of the story. It means that people will have to start using analytics outside the institution, on the network, as Helene Fournier and I have done here at NRC in Moncton. Of course carrying out analytics on networks is not easy as people access services in a distributed environment and the analytics would be most meaningful if these could somehow be linked, perhaps by using the same identification for all of them. It would be cool, though, and could enhance the learning experience of self-directed learners, if they would be able to quickly check if they would meet their learning goals through visualizations of their activity. As that is one thing I have learned engaging in analytics: visualisation does clarify activity pretty well.

Some other developments related to linked data are the research and design of recommender systems for learning. Currently there are problems with the testing of these as large data-sets are required to ensure reliability and consistency of results as Katrien Verbert highlighted in her talk. Some other analytics-related systems are currently under development at the Open University in the UK, such as Cohere, a discourse argumentation tool that aims for depth in discussion, and iSpot, related to BBC nature programmes, that uses a novel ranking system.

A theme running throughout the conference in several of the presentations, was the ethical dimension. analytics is about human behavior and of course there are some important ethical considerations to the collection of human data. This will be another post before long.

Learning Analytics is clearly a developing field and there is still a lot to learn for all involved! Thanks again George for bringing us all together in such a wonderful location.

Learning about learning analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:00:00 +0000

I have been at the 1st International Learning Analytics conference in Banff over the past two days and it has been an eye opener to the power of analytics. Not just to enhance efficiency of educational institutions, but also to help learners in their learning and researchers and educators in getting an understanding in the dynamics in class rooms and on networks. I will write more about the most interesting points later.

For now I have included the link to the presentation at the conference by Helene Fournier and me that tells a bit more about our use of analytics in our MOOC research. If you prefer a different format, Doug Clow has been tapping away on his live-blog and given a near verbatim account of the event.You can find the link here.

Learning on MOOCs

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:43:00 +0000

Back to writing my blog after some time writing different types of papers and having been 'up to my elbows' in data, yes MOOC data, to make sense of the learning processes on PLENK2010. Helene Fournier and I have been quite busy over the past months analysing data and writing papers and preparing presentations, which we will post here as they are being published.

The post by Martin Weller on the responsibility of learners in a MOOC, and the comments to it, has made that it seems time to write some of the findings of our research here. The issues I found most interesting in the PLENK data relate to Martin's point on responsibility of the learner, the nature of active participation on MOOCs, the factors affecting active participation and how people on PLENK experienced their participation.

From the data (that we collected using qualitative and quantitative methods) it was clear that there are a number of issues that stand out.

Power relations on the MOOC
Confidence levels of novice MOOCers
The level of presence of participants and facilitators
The willingness to help by all involved.

Participants felt they had a new responsibility to actively participate in new ways: eg. by aggregating resources, by RSS or Twitter, to do something with these resources, but not necessarily in the way that the facilitators would have hoped for, by actively producing something. The majority of participants (1580 were not really big producers, there were only around 60 people who did this) shared resources with other participants, but also with people outside the MOOC. The level of creative production very much depended on the level of confidence of the participant and the the amount of time the participant had to invest on learning in the MOOC.

I have included here a link to the slidecast of a presentation I gave of a paper on New Dimensions to Selfdirected Learning on Open Networked Learning Environments, that Helene Fournier and I prepared for the 25th International Self-directed Learning Symposium that was held in Cocoa Beach, Florida earlier in February.

Who is to say what is active participation?

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:21:00 +0000

The online discussion that George started by his post on lurking on #PLENK2010 made that Helene and me at NRC wanted to know a little more on how people perceived themselves to be: 'lurkers' or 'active producers', what determined their choice and how important lurking or actively producing has been for their learning as this really goes to the heart of learning on MOOCs. That’s why we produced the surveys.

People who have read my blog posts and earlier comments on George's and Jenny's blogs know that I researched 'lurking' in the past and already know that especially self-directed learners will fall into the lurking category. Of course we should not forget that the majority of PLENK participants are mature adults with a high level of education and a predisposition to self-directed learning through their natural development as human beings, so it is not surprising that only 40-60 people chose to be active producers on the course and all others (around 1550) chose not to during the 10 weeks that PLENK ran. I also found the paper by Nielsen (reference by Eduardo Peirano as one of the comments on George's blog post) on lurking on the Web illuminating as it confirmed that the numbers of 'lurkers' in PLENK are no different from the numbers in other online networked engagement.

The basis of MOOCs has always been four activities: 1. Actively aggregating, 2. Actively relating these aggregated resources to earlier experiences and knowledge, what Stephen Downes calls remixing, 3. Actively repurposing; producing a digital artifact with this mix of thoughts, and 4. An actively sharing stage.

If it is true that people don't require the producing activity for their learning, we might have to reconsider if it is necessarily to promote it as strongly as it has been done at the start of MOOCsin the past. Of course as some people mentioned in the discussion, if nobody is an active producer, there is not much to base the remixing stage on. It also takes away a lot of the creativity that people showed through the artifacts they produced and that we all discussed, admired and used to develop our own ideas and thoughts.

Ctscho (commenting on Jenny's blog), I agree with you that George was wrong to add negative connotations to the activities of most of the PLENK participants, as of course the ‘lurkers’ have been actively engaged in the course through the other three activities: aggregating, remixing and sharing. And our research so far shows that people were actively engaged in these activities, although the sharing took mostly place outside the PLENK course structure and sometimes after the course had finished because people needed time to think about the high level of resources and information they had to digest during the course. It would not surprise me if George did this to provoke the discussion ;-)

If the majority of PLENKers think that their active participation, without the producing stage, is legitimate (and the empirical evidence that we collected so far clearly points in that direction) it might be that George has to eat his hat ;-), and reconsider his ideas, beliefs and feelings regarding what type of activity is required for learning on a course of this nature. Current theories of learning show that activity is conductive to learning, but luckily they do not prescribe what type of activity this would have to be!

Another issue that needs to be considered is if the format of the course, which has not changed much since the initial MOOC CCK08, is really conductive to people actively engaging and producing. It came up throughout the course that the active producing and engagement in the course might be stimulated by a higher level of ‘strong’ rather than ‘weak’ ties amongst participants. Of course this will always be challenging in a course with this high number of participants (1614). People suggested for instance a ‘buddy’ system, where old-timers would be encouraged by facilitators at the start of the course to form some groups to support new-comers. It was also highlighted that the latter were least likely to have the confidence to produce, and the closer ties might create an atmosphere of trust that would make people feel more at ease than on the wide open open course. The Second Life group also turned out to be perceived as a place to make people feel comfortable. Of course it cannot be denied that in a course like this there were some strong characters and power-plays between participants (and facilitators) as in any other place where humans congregate that might have influenced engagement and participation.

For the development of our PLE, it is important to get as much feedback from you as possible on this as we have to decide what features we can or should build into our PLE to create the best possible environment to support learning. The surveys are still open and so far 68 people have filled out the lurking one and 28 the active producer one. Comments on other issues are also welcome, in the surveys or on any of the blogs and discussion forums with the #PLENK2010 tag.

Active participation - lurking on PLENK

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:07:00 +0000

It is a while that we had the last PLENK2010 session, but quite an interesting debate has flared up about the importance (or not) of active participation in Massive Open Online courses such as #PLENK2010. You might have seen George Siemens' blog post and comments, and the ones that followed by Jenny Mackness and John Mak .To learn more from PLENK participants on this issue, Helene Fournier and I hoped participants would not be quite 'surveyed out' yet and would be willing to fill out one of the two surveys below.

NRC researchers would like to invite Active Participants in PLENK2010 to fill out a survey on their experiences in this Massive Open Online Course. Active participants include learners who actively contributed to discussion forums in the course Moodle, blogs, twitter, social networking sites, and in the sharing and production of artifacts. The Active Participant Survey can be found here http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JDC58ZM.

NRC researchers would like to invite PLENK2010 Lurkers to fill out a survey on their experiences in this Massive Open Online Course. Lurking is defined in this context as passive attention, silent participation, and/or self-directed learning. There has been a lot of interesting discussion on the topic of lurking on the BlogSphere so we would like to explore the issues a bit more through this survey. The PLENK2010 Lurker survey can be found here http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JJ8ZXMC.

The research team thanks you in advance for your invaluable contribution to the research! Contact Helene Fournier (helene.fournier@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca) for any further inquiries about the surveys or the research.

Modelling PLE based learning

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:47:00 +0000

InWednesday's #PLENK2010 session Sebastian Fiedler gave us his thoughts and ideas on Personal Learning Environments. He moved the discussion from the technology to the concept and made us think about the personal learning, rather than the learning environment in PLE. His model to analyse personal learning looked like this:

During the discussion following his presentation quite a few questions were asked about this framework: would people move from 1 through a continuum to 5? How would this work? Howard Johnson in his blog pointed out that PLE based learning is very much embedded in the context in which it takes place. Learners are in a constant flux, working here, playing there, interacting on Twitter, drinking coffee in the local community centre. That is also my problem with this model: it is all about the self, but this self doesn't operate in a vacuum. I would prefer to see a model of learning that encompasses the context and interactions that people engage in. I produced a model of PLE based learning a while back that incorporates the learning context. It has Kolb's learning cycle at its heart, but also shows the process of aggregation of information, relation of the materials to earlier experiences and knowledge, creation of digital artefacts and sharing of these with the wider world and communicate about them with others.

Of course while learners are going about their lives and are involved in activities that make that they learn, their personal development continues and I have found the Perry stages of development, as described in an earlier post, helpful in understanding how this might work.

Feeling uncomfortable with Personal Knowledge Management

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 20:43:00 +0000

Harold Jarche illuminated participants on #PLENK2010 on his ideas of Personal Knowledge Management on Friday. The way he sees it seems to boil down to doing something with information in an effective way: share it and/or action it. Vlimaka on Cryselina linked some of the readers of the week in an interesting way to what Harold had to say and made the connection between PKM and Knowledge Management in organizations and how the two might compare.

I have some problems with Knowledge Management and even more so with the term Personal Knowledge Management.

1. My first problem is that it gives me the jitters to see that another business term has crept into the social sciences. There have been widespread protests at the use of the word 'capital', to describe the value of our social, human and cultural interactions as human beings in terms such as 'social capital', 'cultural capital' and 'human capital' as it was suggested that in these more is at stake than monetary gain. Do we really have to call the way we organize our personal interactions with others and our creative actions which help us to transform information into knowledge management? Is there not a more inspirational term available? I would say 'enrichment', 'organization' or 'development' would already be better terms, or perhaps 'creation' or even 'control' but perhaps people in PLENK will be able to come up with a better term.

2. To me there also seems to be a tension between the words 'knowledge' and 'management'. In my idea of knowledge there is not much of it that you can manage. It is related to the problems Stephen Downes already saw in 2003 with knowledge management . Knowledge is not the same as information or data, which you can capture and store in systems.

Knowledge in my view is related to the context in which it emerges. Depending on your view of knowledge, it can be constructed, which makes that it is related to the earlier experiences and or knowledge of individuals or others in his or her surroundings. This makes that it would be hard to manage as it would be related to the context in which it is produced over which you don't have control.

It might emerge through a process of immersion, sharing on networks and actions related to information processing, eg. through blogging and receiving from and tweeting information and resources and artifacts on to other people in a connectivist view of knowledge, this makes the management of it even more problematic as knowledge would be embedded in the context in which it emerges, and span a person's mind, the people involved in the interactions and the tools used to carry out the actions and interactions. The only management you would be able to do is to ensure that the conditions to achieve knowledge development are being met, for instance by installing tools on your machine that allow you to communicate, create artifacts, and push out the artifacts produced onto the Web, but to me these are the least significant in the knowledge creation process.

The only view of knowledge that I can see that would allow for management is the traditional view, where institutions such as universities who produce a high form of knowledge can chop it into bite size chunks, make these into course packages that instructors can pick of the shelf for the students to digest. And even there one would argue in a quality teaching situation, more will happen than the transfer of this managed knowledge; students would be expected to make connections with what they already know and information they find outside the institution, or with information and resources provided by the instructor. And there would be communication to share what is known. Learning outcomes might not quite be what the manager would have intended.

What then about knowledge management in the workplace? What defines the current knowledge workers job? Here as example a description of 'portfolio' adult educators by Fenwick, that I think is also applicable to other workers today (2003, p.175):

'They are increasingly expected to adapt themselves to conditions of flexible jobs, flexible knowledge and skills and flexible work loctions . . .Within these flexibilised employment arrangements, a career has become an individual's responsibility, a lifelong human resource project crafted through the process of continuous reflexive self-assessment, continuous learning and adaptation and of course self-marketing.'

To me people's career and flexible knowledge once again mean that knowledge in the workplace is again related to the context in which it is generated; the workplace, the knowledge worker him/her self, the professional network. The only instance I can see related to the management of knowledge has to do with the optimization of work by employers, businesses and corporations. What are they to do when a valued worker leaves? How to capture what the worker has learned? Well, I would say they need to allow sufficient time between someone leaving and a new person to be appointed to ensure that work-related knowledge is not lost. There needs to be a process of enculturation and immersion of the new employee in the proximity of the leaving worker, but it seems in the work place of today time is not allowed for this.

So, what do I think of (personal) knowledge management? No thanks, not for me!

A model of a PLE: Socratic questioning or connectivist participation in an information stream?

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:25:00 +0000

Maria Andersen presented at #PLENK2010 today. She discussed her ideas of a Personal Learning Environment. she proposed a new model of education, rather than to rebuild the old system. A revolution, rather than an evolution as she couldn't really see institutions changing very much.

Her ideas for a PLE are quite different from the connectivist model and this has in my view a lot to do with her view of knowledge. As a mathematician she still sees a place for a basic body of knowledge that can be built upon, while I think connectivists prefer to see knowledge as a mesh of interwoven connections at which learners pull and push to give it shape by actively engaging with and in it.

She would like learning button where people could go to for answers to Socratic questions about a certain topic. Of course first a great number of people should be willing to ask the questions, but if enough people engage in it, a world of questions would be out there related to the interests of many people. She sees intrinsic motivation as the major driver to learning and envisages learners to want to engage to satisfy their natural curiosity. You can find a paper in which she elaborates on it here.

My guess is that connectivists will find the questioning too structured as people would not be in control of their own learning, and won't be actively engaged in producing artifacts. But if the pool of questions would be large enough in the fashion similar to the development of the wikipedia, and reach a tipping point, the thing would start to lead a life of its own, people would like to get involved and people would be able to see it as a bit of fun, some intellectual sparring. I think it could work especially if semantic elements were to be built in, where questions would be suggested by friends, or recommended after engaging in earlier question and answer activities, and friends would be able to help out and give feedback on answers.

I can't wait for the first batch of questions relevant to me and my interests to appear in my PLE. I will have to wait a while for it, but not that long, I don't think! It seems that more and more people are interested in PLEs and their development.

Formal learners have the best of both worlds?

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:51:00 +0000

Thanks Dave, your post has finally made me put my fingers on the key board to write the post that I have been thinking about for the past days. You start with where most discussions on the PLE originate, in an opposition to the institutionally controlled LMS. To me it seems more helpful not to take the technologies as the central point of discussion, but the forms of learning: formal (as in institutions) and informal (as on open online networks).

The idea I liked most to move from formal towards informal learning comes from Ivan Illich, who would like to rid us of ‘scholastic funnels ‘(1992) and instead create ‘community webs’ .He would like people to be able to call on the teacher or peers of their choice, teach if they feel they have something meaningful to say and call meetings to share resources whenever possible (1971).

This sounds pretty much like a Personal Learning Environment to me. To move community webs onto online networks was never his plan, though. He was very much wary of technology as it might further develop the ‘surveillance society’ that he abhorred. He could see, however, the use of technology to serve personal, creative and autonomous interaction ‘and values which cannot be substantially controlled by technocrats.’

To me there are three major challenges to achieve this type of webs online:

1. Power

2. The network as a place to learn as opposed to an educational institution – the role of the educator/knowledgeable other

3. The learner as a developing human being –critical literacies

1. Power

Dave and other network enthusiasts (and I count myself as one of them) speak often about the power that educational institutions hold over learners. What they rarely discuss however, are the power relations on online networks. Everyone familiar with the work of Barabasi will know that there are power relations on the online network, as there are in educational institutions. Barabasi found through his research that participants on networks are not only selective, but that the nature of networks prevents network “surfers” from having access to all information at the same level.

The most intriguing result of our Web-mapping project was the complete absence of democracy, fairness, and egalitarian values on the Web. We learned that the topology of the Web prevents us from seeing anything but a mere handful of the billion documents out there.

(Barabasi, 2003, p. 56)

We are in the hands of corporations such as Google to help us find the resources and documents that we need, which makes us dependent on them to build an ethical dimension into their search algorithm. Of course we have found other ways to filter our information; knowledgeable others we trust can provide us with relevant and interesting information . Bouchard (2010) and Boyd (2010) still see problems with these as well and question the possibility of hierarchy-free peer to peer connections on the Web:

However, the notion of 'supernode' predictably emerges when some contributors are recognized by a number of others as having particular relevance to, or knowledge of a problem. There seems to be a natural tendency within the 'perfectly' democratic network to organize itself, over time, in a hierarchical system composed of leaders and followers. We are then left with a social organization that resembles the 'outside' world of government and commerce, with the difference that the currency of exchange in the network is not money or power, but reputation and popularity.

(Bouchard, 2010, p. 3)

Boyd (2010, p1.) also emphasizes problems with this:

Instead, what we're seeing is the emergence of a new type of information broker. These people get credit for their structural position. Although the monetary benefits are indirect, countless consulting gigs have arisen for folks based on their power as information brokers. The old controllers of information are losing their stature (and are not happy about it). What is emerging is not inherently the power of the creators but, rather, the power of the modern-day information brokers.

To me it seems that there is a shift in power from educators who might operate in educational institutions, who are paid to provide learners in their care with a rounded education, and with this I mean they provide information that encompasses a multitude of points of view on a topic that they are supposedly experts in. The online information brokers, however, who operate on networks, are free agents and do not have a responsibility or obligation to provide a critical point of view. They might do this, but do not necessarily have to. I don’t know of any research in the role of information brokers in networked learning. (If you do, please let me know).

2. The network as a place to learn as opposed to a group in an educational institution

Now, I know that proponents of learning on networks see this differently. Stephen Downes for instance represents in this blog post and this image a particular picture of learning on networks and in groups (in formal education). He argues that on perfect networks the diversity, autonomy, openness and connectivity will facilitate optimal conditions for learning.

To me there are some issues with this. Firstly, as I just hinted at, power relations on networks are not as perfect as that. Secondly, networks are not as diverse as might be optimal as research has shown that there is a tendency for tribalism on the Web. Thirdly, not all learners are as autonomous and possess the critical literacies to make them comfortable with the negotiation of online networks for learning.

People learning in a group in an institution seem to have the best of both worlds: Groups don’t operate in a locked room; members of a group can move onto the Web and the network of their choice whenever they like. Groups are also not necessarily the one way knowledge transfer entities that Stephen describes. There are examples of a totally different approach to group learning . The advantage that groups in formal education have over self-directed learners on networks is that support is provided for learners who need an extra step up to feel comfortable in the learning setting. I like the matrix Gerald Grow (1991) provided on the matches and mismatches of learner needs and educator support. Good teachers have always kept in mind the balance there is in supporting and letting go. I also like the model of learner autonomy by Paul Bouchard (2009) that shows that learners need to address different aspects, some psychological, others pedagogical, in order to feel comfortable while learning in semi-autonomous learning environments.

Also as mentioned earlier, a knowledgeable person is present and being paid to make that people become aware of issues a self directed learner on a network might not come across. ‘Kerr refers to Kay’s non-universals for instance, a series of understandings (identified on the basis of research by anthropologists) that are not learned spontaneously, and which are common to all known human societies – for instance, “deductive abstract mathematics, model-based science, democracy [and] slow deep thinking.” Kerr suggests that if learning these non-universals is considered important, then methods ought to be identified to teach them.’ (Kop&Hill,2008).

As a researcher who has carried out research in the importance of ‘presence’ in learning I am also concerned about the lack of intensity of the learning experience on open online networks compared to a formal class room. A body of knowledge is emerging that emphasizes the difference between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ ties in different learning situations (Jones at al, 2008). Here a link to an earlier post on presence and the learning experience.

In my view ‘rubbing up conceptually to other people’s blogposts’ is still a very different experience than sitting opposite the person and communicating in a real life situation. It is more like reading a book or an article than experiencing a person with all five senses. Research seems to indicate that the higher the intensity of the interactions, the higher the engagement and motivation to be actively involved in the learning experience (Kop, 2010).

I would like the level of communication and collaboration in learning to reach the level of a dialogue. This is what educators such as Freire aspired to in order for learning to be a transformative experience, rather than for it to remain at the level of a conversation. Critical educators such as Freire (Freire and Macedo,1999, p48) who worked in areas of social and economic deprivation and intended to bring about transformation in people’s lives by using education for awareness raising of injustice and power relations in society. He thought it to be essential that teachers have a directive role. In this capacity, teachers would enter into a dialogue ‘as a process of learning and knowing’ with learners, rather than the dialogue being a ‘conversation’ that would remain at the level of ‘the individual’s lived experience’. He found it important to engage in a dialogue because he recognised the social and not merely the individualistic character of knowing.

He felt that this capacity for critical engagement would not be present if educators are reduced to facilitators. You can feel where I am going: is it enough for facilitators on this course to have a ‘hands-off’ approach’ and provide information, or should facilitators engage with the topic of the week and at creating a learning environment that makes people think at a deeper level? I would be interested to hear from you. Chris Jobling already said a little bit about this on his blog yesterday.

I also have here a quote from a discussion post by Antonella Esposito on the #PLENK2010 discussionboard that I though expressed well where networked learning is moving, but also its challenges:

I believe that harnessing the value of technology-based informal learning deals with managing a good balance between serendipity and intentionality. It deals with a double ability: on the one hand the ability to lead your attention towards threads of discussion which reasonate what you are studying or working on, or merely are interested in; on the other hand, it deals with the abilty to surf the complexity of an open environment, in which interdisciplinarity, different stages of competence and the interplay of personal, professional and scholarly level of conversation offer new views to be sifted and expanded.
The more you “live” in such social spaces, the more you need sophisticated literacies to integrate them in your own learning journey. (Antonello Esposito on PLENK discussion forum week 4 http://ple.elg.ca/course/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=417)

This leads me to my next point.

3. The learner as a developing human being –critical literacies

In all of this we should not forget that we are all developing human beings. I would like to go a little deeper into Perry’s scheme of intellectual and ethical development. Perry arrived at his scheme through empirical research in college education, and there has been some criticism and also some extensions to the scheme have been developed (see Moore and Williams(2002) Understanding learning in a postmodern world: reconsidering the Perry scheme of intellectual and ethical development, in) The nine stages have been depicted in some cartoons here (slideshows by William Rapaport in middle of page)). Perry saw 9 stages of development, which progress from a dualism between right and wrong. , starting with the identification with an authority figure, then on to a stage where different positions and beliefs are acknowledged, but are simply wrong; as the learner always thinks he is right and the other is wrong.

The third stage is seen by Perry to include attempts to include diversity and moves towards acknowledging that there is a multiplicity in human opinion, experience and ‘truth’. He says at this level ‘the acceptance of uncertainty to be legitimate . . . is for many students an exciting one'. In position 4 the learner moves towards the notion in this uncertainty that one’s own thinking is the important thing. In position five a relativism is added to the mix and the learner becomes aware that the context influences one’s thinking: ‘one’s task in life is finally understood fully as intellectual and ethical – a question of judgments and meaning-making in both academic and personal contexts. (Perry, 1998).

In position six to nine the emphasis shifts from being intellectual towards being ethical and involve commitments. Commitments are chosen and are anticipated, clarified and refined in light of ‘legitimate alternatives, after experiencing genuine doubt, and reflecting a clear affirmation of one’s self or identity – define one’s identity in a contextually relativistic world’ (Moore & Williams, 2002). quite sophisticated and according to Perry this level is not reached till post-graduate learning.

Why bring the Perry scheme up here? In many instances over the past years I have been asked how people might be able to cope with the challenges of learning on online networks. As Antonella expressed in her post, we require sophisticated skills, literacies and advanced development to learn independently. Stephen Downes and I facilitated another Massive Open Online Course earlier in the summer with as topic Critical Literacies, as we are well aware that learning on new open online learning environments requires different capacities from learners than more traditional learning settings (although we might not quite agree on them (:-)). Stephen has given several presentations on this, which are more entertaining than my words so I have linked them here.

Conclusion

Oeps, this post has become a little longer than expected. The main point I have tried to make is that learning on open online network is quite different from learning in a formal educational setting: it is self-directed which requires different conditions for a learner to thrive than in formal education.

It also doesn’t seem to me that learners in formal settings have such a bad deal: they have structures that support them in their learning, and no, I am not that pessimistic about the teaching in institutions. It is not a ‘unity’sausage, where all lecturers, teachers and professors are all good or bad at teaching, and use all the same tools and resources and the same pedagogy. They are as diverse as participants on a MOOC, or nodes on a network providing information. Of course they have the advantage of moving on and off networks as they please as well as their learners, so are they the fortunate ones?

The symbiosis between theory and practice

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:27:00 +0000

Last night and this morning on the Twitter #PLENK2010 a discussion went on about the relation of theory and practice. Questions were raised about the need for theory at all.

Well, I have learned over the years that to me theory is very important. For one to understand why I practice in the way I do. Also to question decisions made by politicians about education and schooling; so to understand what their aims and objectives are with schooling and if they are in the best interest of children and adults. One framework that has helped me in this over the years is an adaptation of the Alexander Framework, from the E836 course Study Guide of the MA in Education course by the OU in the UK. I have included it here.

Should not all educators be thinking about the four questions in this diagram? What should learners learn? How should the learning be taught and assessed? What is an educated person? Why should learners be educated in this way? And should not all educators be aware of the invisible influences on the learning and teaching process, such as ideas, values and culture which will influence the views of learning, knowledge and education of themselves and their institution? I find that this picture shows fairly clearly what part of the teaching practice we can observe, and what influences are hidden in formal educational settings.What it lacks is the role the learner plays in all this, as her or his voice is hidden in the pedagogy of the institution. The way adult learners have shown their agreement or disagreement with the relation between theory and practice is with their feet: At the moment they feel the teaching no longer relates to their lived in world and their context, they will leave the course. Of course children do not have this choice as schooling is compulsory.

Since I have started working on the research and development of a Personal Learning Environment my ideas of what should be in the diagram have changed slightly, as the observable practice has changed; the curriculum content, assessment and pedagogy are no longer related to the institution, but to the learners autonomous drive to find out or do something new, so I now use the following visualization:

It is the learners themselves whose ideas, values and beliefs will influence their learning. A certain level of reflection on their own learning, knowing and education is important to make progress on their learning journey, or if you find that too directed, on their climbing frame of learning: scrambling up one moment, moving sideways or back down and in another direction the next time.

PLE components on the climbing frame of learning

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 23:46:00 +0000

Hi all who responded to my post on the eXtended Web through #PLENK2010.

Several of you wondered how a recommender system might work and if it would make your search less rich rather than richer in the end. On the PLENK discussion forum several of you made some suggestions. And yes, you've hit the nail on the head. The problem with recommender systems is that someone puts the algorithm together that decides what is being recommended, and what has priority in the recommendation.

What I find most fascinating about developing a PLE is how these systems might be combined with 'human' factors. You can for instance have a recommender based on your earlier searches and learning activities, and add it as a 'smart' search' option in your PLE (so it doesn't replace, but is added to your usual googling). I would like to add an 'ask a critical friend' option, that would not give you the answer that you would get from the friends and aquaintances you would normally consult, but from people with an opposing point of view. A bit like the role of the quality teacher who wouldn't lead you to the easy answer, but who would lead you to another paper, another activity to carry out, to push you further in your thinking.

These might need to be connected to 'scaffolds' in the form of communications tools for instance, or reflective diaries, or tools to make you think about your self that would push you up the climbing frame of learning. I see learning not as moving from A to B, but up and down, and from left to right and back; not as the lineair pathway that (educational institution) administrators would like us to follow. It is more related to our activities and interests in life than a pre-defined curriculum; it would put tools in our hands that we would feel comfortable with in addition to connections to people we feel we could trust but who would challenge our beliefs and ideas. It would make us take action and dare us to take risks and leave our comfort zone; to take that next step into the unknown, but still with some support; the level of which we will be able to determine ourselves. Wouldn't that be neat?

The use of data to advance learning in a networked environment

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:21:00 +0000

The #PLENK2010 subject of the week is the eXtended web. In my blog post used in the resources of this week, I highlight a number of issues related to this: The use of Intelligent data for PLE development and networked learning, the challenges of an open online networked environment for learning, and access to technology.

In this post I would like to delve a little deeper in the first aspect on how data can be used to 1. enhance people's searches, and 2. on how data can be used by educators, or 'knowledgeable others' to enhance people's learning.

I will start with the second point first. Ken Clark for instance carried out a study to find out if 'individual teaching staff [can by], reflecting on their courses, learn anything important from examining their courses through analytics? How can this be done effectively? What do they find?'

Of course academics and researchers have researched people's learn and teaching for quite some time, but it is only recently with the introduction of LMSs and their back-office data (eg on how often people access the course, for what activity etc.) that this type of data has been analysed. It has been analysed by administrators, to find out' learning outcomes', but to me this information is fairly limited. It becomes much more rich when you also analyse the 'discourse', the text people have written for instance in discussion boards, or on Massive Open Online courses such as PLENK, other written material and artifacts produced by students and facilitators, such as blog posts, to reach a better understanding of the ways in which people teach and learn.This analysis might help to enhance future courses and future teaching, facilitation and learning. Educators can be involved in this research themselves and directly use their findings to take action to make changes to course/curriculum/interactions etc.

The second new possibility that data collection offers, is that collected data might inform people's searches: By collecting data on people's earlier learning projects, or from people's personal profile, ranking systems and recommendations could be produced that might provide people with 'smart' information, more relevant to their needs than without.

Of course there are problems with this type of data collection as the use of 'intelligent marketing' is currently showing us. Especially privacy issues have been highlighted as being problematic as before you know it people you don't want to know particular things about you, will know them and use them in ways that are not necessarily what you intended the data to be used for in the first place. So there are also ethical issues for research.

On the other hand, the information abundance about which I wrote in an earlier post, make it near impossible for a single human being to find and analyse all information by him/herself without some type of aggregation and filtering, or communication with others.

Contrasting Institutional learning with personal learning

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:08:00 +0000

All the posts and comments on the #PLENK2010 discussion board this week so far have given me something to think about. It was a conscious decision to put the subject of the week in the title of this post. It seems most discussion has revolved around the technical platform that an institution or a person might use, rather than on what these platforms actually mean in the learning of participants.

In my experience, and that is in a brick and mortar university, the LMS/VLE is mainly used to support the teaching and administration that takes place in the institution. The PLE/PLN is there to support learning. This different emphasis makes all the difference to me. Institutional learning is very much focused on what the teaching staff provides, rather than what students as autonomous learners can find for themselves. In my PhD research I looked at a crossover possibility, where within the institution over a two year period a slow transformation was created from highly supported learning and a directive teaching approach towards autonomy in a research project in which social media played an important role.

My research highlighed the importance of communication in learning to crate a high level of social 'presence'. An LMS/VLE is problematic in facilitating this.On the one hand teaching staff might meet students on a regular basis, so there might not be such a need for discussion board interaction, on the other hand major problems with power relations on discussion boards have been identified. Also. some people will perform well by not contributing much in discussions, but instead spend time in self-directed study away from the course site, while others perform well by communicating extensively with tutor and other learners.

Nonnecke and Preece explain that when people are not participating in the discussion board (otherwise called ‘lurking’) this is not necessarily a bad thing: ‘Lurking is not free-riding but a form of participation that is both acceptable and beneficial to most online groups. Public posting is only one way in which an online group can benefit from its members’ (Gulati, 2003, p. 51). Research by Bedouin in non-participation in online discussion found that the people who were not very visible in the online classroom ‘spent most time reading assignments, reading others’ comments, web searches, writing assignments and spent less time on writing online messages’ (Gulati, 2003, p. 52).

Gulati’s research indicated that half of these learners identified themselves as self-directed learners, rather than social learners. The way people participate in online discussion depends, apart from a tendency to autonomous learning, also on a number of other factors as argued by Mann and also Levy. They posit that the openness in online dialogue and the power-relations within an online learner group are important issues in creating relations of trust within the online community (Mann, 2005; Levy, 2006). This resonates with Gulati’s research results that also identified that the power relations in the discussion forum influence participation. She found that confidence and affective issues were important aspects, while the level of knowledge displayed by some participants was also a determining influence on the level of participation and confidence of others.

I don't know how you experience the use of discussion forums on this course as opposed to finding your own way of communication and collaboration on your own PLENK network, through the use of blogs, wikis, Twitter and other tools? My research showed that feedback from knowledgeable others in their learning was crucial to move on, develop and learn, but that it was not necessarily important that this other would be a university instructor. The level of presence was important, however. And Dron and Anderson (2007) see a difference in presence and engagement in the learning activity if there is a high level of presence (that you can find for instance in a group on a course) but lesser so on a network with a looser structure and even lower on a collective, through applications such as flickr or delicious, where the connection with others is facilitated through tags.

This is clearly one of the major challenges in this MOOC as the numbers are high and the learner group is dispersed and participants might not speak the same language. I can already see though how it is not only the facilitators that provide feedback and support. The more this happens the more successful the learning I believe.

Dron, J. and Anderson, T. (2007) Collectives, Networks and Groups in Social Software for E-Learning, World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (ELEARN) 2007, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Gulati, S. (2003) Informal learning: Building an argument for Inclusive Online Learning, 2003 ATHINER Conference, Athens

Levy, P. (2006) Learning a different form of communication: experiences of networked learning and reflections on practice, Study in Continuing Education, 28,3, pg. 259-277

Mann, S. J. (2005) Alienation in the learning environment: a failure of community? Studies in Higher Education, 30, 1, pg. 43-55

Caught by the pulse of this learning event

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Jenny called it the resonance and I just read a blog post, but can't remember whose it was, where it was called the pulse: this event has a momentum that really catches you; the participants, and also the facilitators. I presume I can't speak for any of the others, but this learning event has taken over my life. I find it addictive and hard to not check my #PLENK2010 Twitter stream at night and read some blog posts. I found myself watching a football match and at the same time writing a blog post for PLENK. The emails are streaming out of my inbox with queries and discussion topics that I would like to get talking about. Where will I find the time in the next 10 weeks to be involved in PLENK and to do other work?

I understand the feeling several of you have expressed of being overloaded; luckily I don't feel overloaded as I have carefully made selections of my readings and communications from the Daily and discussion board, but I do feel as if this event has caught me by the scruff of the neck (or is that not an English expression?) and its pulse has caught me.

This week we tried to define PLE and PLN and I think we have done that and more as we already started unpacking new aspects of the PLE/PLN debate, with discussions on information abundance and the attention economy, and blog posts and technologies to show what a PLE or PLN could look like. I liked some of the creative wording that materialized: 'The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time'; I could see the keyboards and hear the music. And other creative expressions in the production of videos and podcasts that has already taken place. The different language streams are also really good to see, but I wish I would be able to figure out what the Spanish posts have to say, which I can't, so I might have to invest some time as some did to use an online translation service to give me a gist of what went on there.

A new dimension will be added to the mix from next week: Every Wednesday for the next nine weeks someone with expertise on the topic of the week will join the Wednesday session to provide us with a different focus to the debate and I look forward to next Wednesday with Martin Weller from the Open University in the UK and the topic of the week: Contrasting personal learning with institutional learning.

Thank you all for spicing up my working life this week and I hope we can keep the vibe of the conversation going next week.

Information abundance leads to restricted depth?

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:48:00 +0000

As a comment to Jenny's blog post on 'breadth versus depth - an illusion?' in #PLENK2010 I have repeated here a short section of the literature review of my PhD thesis as I though it might bring some depth to the discussion adding literature on 'information abundance' and 'economy of attention'.:

Burkeman and Johnson wonder if we really want all this new information? They highlight that;

The end result of a perfect search world is that as fast as answers are generated and consumed, new questions come quicker, with the consequence that ignorance expands. . . What we know that we don’t know expands faster than what we know. . . . there is this sense that the world is out there to be Googled. But linking from one thing to another is not the same as having something to say. A structured thought is more than a link.’

(Burkeman & Johnson, 2005, p. 5)

Furthermore, Hagel explains that there are other problems with the information abundance and introduces the notion of the “attention economy”.

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate the attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

(Hagel, 2006, p. 1)

Hagel argues that the more information is available, the less time we have available to go into any depth when analysing the information. In addition, Goldhaber (1997) posits that, by using new technologies, we might end up chatting, but not necessarily about anything of substance. The abundance of information and the poverty of attention could be the cause of changes in thinking processes. If we compare the information behaviour of people in antiquity with current scholars, the former were able to spend their time contemplating minute details and perhaps discuss findings with a small number of people, while contemporary thinkers, if they make use of the Web, might be engaging with gigabytes of information and possibly communicate with a wide variety of people dispersed all over the globe simultaneously. Suggestions have been made that these new ways of working might influence our thought processes (Bauerlein, 2008; Armstrong, 2004). Dennis and Al-Obaidi (2010) for instance compare changes in modes of thinking and concepts through the new technologies with an “epistemic rupture”, while Greenfield problematizes Internet use as opposed to the book.

When we read a book usually authors take you by the hand and you travel from the beginning to the middle to the end in a continuous narrative series of interconnected steps. It may not be a journey with which you agree or that you enjoy, but none the less as you turn the pages one train of thought succeeds the last in a logical fashion.

(Greenfield, 2006, p. 1)

She argues how in traditional education teachers and tutors compare and contrast narratives with one another and help people with the building of a conceptual framework in doing so (Greenfield, 2006, p. 1; Greenfield, 2004). The Web is changing this linear process and of course not everyone uses books in the linear fashion she describes. New Internet-based ways of obtaining information, such as following hyperlinks, which are an integral part of the Internet experience, and the creation of knowledge by participation in informal, interactive online phenomena, in which people take part at their leisure offer opportunities for engagement in a wide range of subject choices according to one’s own interests. This offers learners the chance to follow their own learning journey in a manner suited to actively constructing knowledge and linking it to their own experiences in an autonomous fashion, while collaborating with others. Greenfield is concerned however, that if people do not have access to a robust conceptual framework developed over time with the help of knowledgeable others, they might have problems constructing knowledge (Greenfield, 2004).

The abundance of information on the Internet and other information sources have raised concerns about the feasibility for individuals to critically analyse all that is available to ensure reliability and validity and to manage the vast streams of information now available. Bauerlein (2008) even goes as far as arguing that the lack of attention span because of this overload of information and the different resources used today have created the “dumbest generation of Americans” to date. CIBER (2008) researched how people acquire information and how information behaviour has changed over time. They surveyed literature from the 1980s and 1990s and carried out primary research on internet based behaviour themselves and they found that “power-browsing”, the clicking of hyperlinks and the skimming of web pages, replaced traditional chronological reading and longer term critical thinking. Advanced information searching was lacking and the level of information literacy, in the form of validating information and sources, was at a low level (CIBER, 2008).

Sandbothe argues that the ‘comprehensive and systematic development of reflective judgement at all levels of the population and on a global scale is the central task for a democratic educational system in the twenty-first century’ (Sandbothe, 2000, p. 67). This might not be promoted by the new ways of accessing information. Moreover, McKie emphasised that people, when they start an information search, will take into account the amount of time required for the search, where they expect to find the information and the route to take to get there. Not everyone uses the same route as people are different and have different learning preferences, cultural backgrounds and personalities. She argues that to give too much guidance would be a mistake as it would constrict the experience and the possibilities of finding the relevant information (McKie, 2000).

Walters and Kop (2009) argue that information literacy is acquired at a young age and highlight that “information behaviour” is a developmental process at a deep level and that this sort of behaviour will be very difficult to advance substantially later in life, eg. on a course at university. Bass, on the other hand, highlighted that there is a great deal of evidence to show that electronic environments encourage analytical and reflective practice. In addition, ‘there are clear indications that the electronic era will provide an unprecedented opportunity for immersion in archival and primary materials, and consequently the making of meaning in cultural and historical analysis for all kinds of learners, from novice to expert’ (Bass, 1999, p1.).

Bruce saw the information abundance as an advantage over earlier media in ‘the way it can open up our questions. We ask one thing, but the Web leads us to ask more questions and to become aware of how much we do not know’ (Bruce, 2000, p. 107). He would like us to use the Internet not to “pick and choose” what fits in with our own points of view, but also to take on board what discomfits, and to look for alternatives that make us think. It should perhaps be questioned if people will do this of their own accord or that they will need the guidance of an educator. He saw the greatest challenge as a change of our search strategies from looking something up, to incorporating web-searching into thinking and reflection processes in order to enable a fruitful investigation.

New emerging collaborative tools that facilitate networking and communication with others might aid in developing such a referencing strategy. Also information aggregators could help with the organisation and streamlining of searches.In addition, PLEs that have 'smart' data analysing and recommending features could enhance searches to be relevant to the needs of learners and increase depth of reflection and thinking.

Clear challenge in learning: match or mis match between learner needs and educator support

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 02:02:00 +0000

In 1991 Gerald Grow drew up his matrix of matches and mis-matches between learner stages and teacher styles and the first few days on #PLENK have confirmed to me that in any learning situation there is a need for a certain level of support to learners, also to participants in a course such as PLENK so they do not to feel that they are drowning in an overwhelming sea of information. I think that all four of us facilitators are providing support in one way or another, in addition to several of MOOC old-timers and it is interesting to see that participants in the course have their own strategies to find support. Some posted comments on the course blog containing technical questions, while others used the Moodle discussion board or email, while I have also seen questions on Twitter and participant's blogs.

To me the level of autonomy that learners have and can handle is one of the major challenges for successful learning in a Personal Learning Environment as it is clear from a body of literature that not all learners are able to fully direct their learning them selves. This can be because of age and level of maturity, but there are also factors influencing the successful self-directed learning of adults. Paul Bouchard from Concordia University in Montreal distinguished four major groups of influencing factors: 1. Related to issues of motivation, confidence and self-efficacy of learners; 2. related to organizing and sequencing resources and information and time; 3. related to language and increasingly other media used in learning; and the fourth related to economy, as people make a cost and benefit analysis about what type of learning they will get involved in, which could be in a formal course where they receive a qualification if positive learning outcomes are achieved, or informal related to interest for instance.

It is my current job with our PLE group here in Moncton to research, think about and find out what kind of support learners need in a PLE and then to translate this into a pedagogical platform and technical support structure that will enhance the learning experience. We will tell you more about our research throughout the course, but I was hoping that you would be willing to engage in this thinking process and tell us what would have helped you in this first week to find your feet, to get into the swing of things that wee bit easier. What scaffolds or climbing frames of support might help you in this process of self-directed learning?

Another exciting open learning event will start on Monday!

noreply@blogger.com (Welsh Cloggy) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 13:43:00 +0000

I am really pleased to be involved in another connectivist course. A Massive Open Online Course on Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge this time; #PLENK2010. I was a student at CCK08 and CCK09 and was facilitator this year at a Critical Literacies course with Stephen downes, and I will also facilitate at this one on Personal Learning Environments, which promises to become another cracker. Already over 900 participants have enrolled and the last few weeks in Moncton have been frantic with anticipation and preparation to ensure a learning environment would be ready on time to accomodate such a crowd of learner

This time there will be four facilitators, Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Dave Cormier and I and that also promises to bring some spice to the online debate as from our pre-course discussions it has already become clear that we don't have the same views on learning; on how personal or how social it is for instance.

I really like the hustle and bustle of this type of courses and the initial confusion, which slowly moves towards clarity via lots of moments of excitement, insight and pure joy to be able to communicate worldwide with people who are interested in what I am interested in.

And this time the course is also part of the research that we at the National Research Council of Cananda here in Moncton are currently carrying out. We're trying to research and develop a PLE that forms a pedagogical platform on which people can truly learn; not just aggregate information. That is my challenge here, to ensure that that happens.

I see this course as a great opportunity to learn from participants what their ideas are of what a PLE should or could look like, but also of how they like to learn themselves and what tools and support mechanisms they would find helpful with that.

http://ple.elg.ca/plenk2010/
Let it all begin!