MOOCs going mainstream

The dust is settling on the MOOC debate. Is it here to stay? Is it just the latest flash-in-the-pan which will disappear once they hype has died down?
The Economist's writer thinks that on-line courses - including the latest incarnation of these, the MOOCs - won't kill mainstream degrees but that "MOOCs presage a period of great change in higher education".
Quoting from the first edition of MOOC Forum, the article makes clear that MOOCs have pervaded university level education: "An editorial explains that there are over 500 MOOCs being offered by more than 100 well known, and accredited, university brands".
The issue of completion of a MOOC has been a criticism. The writer "E.L." makes a good case for this being immaterial in a rapidly changing world where the needs of the learner are so varied and not necessarily tied to paper qualifications.
The MOOC term, albeit hijacked from a much more grass roots approach (and more appealing - let us have more #change11 MOOCs!), seems to have been a catalyst for giving a tweak to distance learning in two dimensions - the number enrolled and the open access of it. These aspects allow the provider to monetize in a different way, usually by having those that want credit for the course pay for this.
MOOCs are here to stay - until a better term comes along.

Learning Design gone mad - OLDS MOOC

Desperately trying to follow the learning plan for Week 2 - but it is too prescriptive. Supposedly, the principles of Learning Design have been followed to design this OLDS MOOC. Oh dear.
Having a day by day activity list with the Thursday (day one) task being to "plan your week" is an example of poor context definition. How can you plan for what you do not know and for collaborative tasks you cannot find? Is it just a matter of putting down some times in a calendar? I am meant to make sense of this outline:

Present your contextual analysis (of the project? have not even determined a group to work with). Comment on others' analysis (where are they? most learning journals seem empty).
The highly structured, day by day defined activities do not fit the context of a MOOC with a diverse group of learners. I know if I prepared something like this for my classes, in such a rigid and structured way, it would all go awry in no time.
I am doing the reading but cannot contribute in the way that the highly scaffolded daily activities are asking.
Not looking very encouraging.... too prescriptive, too unrealistically scaffolded. Fine for classic left-brained sequentialists, how about the other half?? What sort of context planning is this?

Looking back at the first week - OLDS MOOC

Time flies!
I know from other MOOCs that I have done that the first few days (weeks?) in a new MOOC experience can be unsettling and frustrating. But I found that by persevering and having some faith that you will get there in the end brought great rewards (testing my growth mindset to the limit! - see Dweck). #change11 was the most rewarding MOOC - and also the most frustrating at the beginning; this was a constructivist MOOC and I had not realised how imbibed with this approach I had become.
OLDS MOOC was frustrating at first because of a constraining communications and sharing platform - Cloudworks. To fulfill the communications and sharing aspect, finding pages again and being able to interact across pages are key requirements. I did not find success in these requirements - come back Stephen Downes and his website all is forgiven! Although it needed much work on his part to keep up to date, it fulfilled its purpose well.
I've had a go at trying out existing social media for communications and sharing and this is showing promise. Twitter is always good for this but I am really warming to Google + Communities. This has the potential of being an excellent platform for this (have been using it with my family and have been really pleased with it - personal, private, instant and fun).
I set up "OLDS MOOC - Schools" community to try to generate interest in this subdivision of Learning Design and it has eleven members at the time of writing. Glad to have help from Penny Bentley which I have found encouraging.
The idea behind this community was to be a study group with a special interest (Learning Design is schools), but I have yet to establish a project. Cloudworks did not work for me for this and had hopes that Wallwisher would - yet to see if this will generate an interest in Learning Design in schools using Google Apps suite of programmes. Perhaps it is too specific - if no interest is shown I shall have to look again.
Looking forward to week 2 - although I note that the day-by-day structure of the course is very specific and requires you to keep up. Some of us do have jobs and the daily requirement is proving difficult. Also, having not found a project yet I am not sure how this week will work.
We shall see.

Bonk vs Anderson Interaction Compared

Dr Curtis Bonk's Week 3 session on #bonkopen was titled "50 Hyper-Engaging Ideas: Critical, Creative, Cooperative". Using the unique Bonk presentation style, he rattled through many useful ideas grouped, roughly, into developing critical thinking, creativity and cooperation.
This was the same week as the #change11 MOOC on Interaction Equivalency with Terry Anderson and I have written my notes on this in my previous post.
It was interesting to compare these two live sessions - Bonk's appropriately entitled "Hyper-Engaging Ideas" and Anderson's measured yet reactive sessions.
Both were Teacher-student interactions as defined by Anderson, both had Student-student interactions in the chat, and both had, I am sure, Student-content interaction going on as we kept up with a huge range of resources being thrown out by Bonk and the relatively more difficult material and concepts from Anderson.
The Teacher-student interactions:

• Bonk fire hose in action engaging as many students as possible using polls and comments. It was interesting to note the change of pace when Justin took over whilst Dr Bonk suffered the effects of his constant drinking from his vitamin water-bottle.
• Anderson with a measured tone and approach, relying on sound scholarship and reacting to the chat to adjust his presentation and explain where necessary.

What would have happened if the subject matter was reversed? If Curtis Bonk had to deal with Interaction Equivalency and Terry Anderson present many ideas for maintaining engagement?
The presentations would have been very different, of course - but, as Bonk himself said, little was remembered after a few minutes from the rapid fire presentation. He used polls constantly to maintain an interest and have students choose the take-away ideas, but his style suited the presentation of a huge range of materials.
I did remember the Anderson presentation better. I could take time to concentrate on some of the ideas because of the pace, and there was enough participation required of me to enable the ideas to stick.
Student-student: The chat was manageable on the Anderson presentation (30 or so participants), impossible on the Bonk one (200+ participants). There is a problem of scaling up on the chat which, if this type of platform is to be used, Bb will have to solve.
Student-content: I prepared, usefully, for both presentations, and this helped with my learning. It was more necessary in the Anderson one since I needed to learn some concepts first and read around for contexts.
Bonk has a great series of 10 minute video primers on e-learning and teaching, on an attribution share-alike CC license: 

Have a look at the video on Online Student-Instructor-Practitioner Relationships, Bonk's primer on exactly this subject - Online interactions. Here he gives a very practical approach with many suggestions on how to achieve good interactions and hence good relationships online.
So, very different methods, both achieve their goals.
What did I take away from this week on bonkopen?

• Considering activities in terms of their Cost, Risk and Time - evaluating these in terms of the amount of each that you can give
• What do students want? Asking early what students expect from the course and use the interaction to calm fears "we'll be doing that in week 3" etc, as well as increasing student commitment to the class.
• Simulations to elicit discussion
• Two heads better than one - posting individual summaries online and have them edit these into one
• Reverse brainstorming - solve the problem with reverse conditions
• Six hats - using de Bono for learning

Zen of Teaching - Clarifying the Myths Around Teaching, Learning and Technology

Today's #change11 session was presented by Antonio Vantaggiato, Universidad del Sagrado Corazon, San Juan, Puerto Rico. His complete presentation, with videos, is here.

In listing and discussing the myths around teaching, learning and technology, Vantaggiato hopes to clarify the issues - since "such myths tend to confuse teachers, researchers and students."

This aim was achieved for me, the discussion of each myth helped me clarify in my mind the issues. Fundamentally, shortcomings of language (in how they describe concepts and ideas, and how these interrelate) do not help to form a coherent argument of where we are or where we are going.

The story is told in this way, in myths [explanations in square brackets]:

• Learning happens in the classroom, because we deliver instruction. So we lecture.
• Ergo, identify the correct method together with the right content and the right teacher and: LEARNING HAPPENS! [Without studying and without responsibility upon the student]
• Subsequently "learning" can be assessed by a test, perhaps standardised.
• What do we test? We need to have "content". [But content leads to a consumption process, the faculty member is a content provider, the classroom hierarchical and the learning is closed - Luke Waltzer]
• We can deliver this in a LMS. [But Gardner Campbell writes that we should shut down the LMSs and have "understanding augmentation networks" - moving away from educational assembly lines towards intellectual ecosystems of interest and curiosity]
• Technology has us in the shallows - Google is making us stupid.
• Death of the book. [Will evolve into other formats]
• Death of an industry. [Industry should adapt, change; big publishers behaving like monopolies, seeing the resurgence of this into digimedia, looking to package and control, against our open web principles; Wikipedia did not kill Britannica, Windows did]
• Teachers can be replaced by machines. [Actually a change of role]
• Technology in the curriculum. [Always have had technology in the curriculum - language, paper, pencil, book, blackboard; is online learning more or less effective than learning in a classroom? George Siemens: "who cares" - the question is irrelevant]
• Don't need internet, twitter, whatever - turn off these devices for successful learning.
• Need STEM. [Actually need STEAM, include the Arts, Liberal Arts]
• Labels help us in what we are talking about. [e-learning, virtual learning, mobile learning labels do not mean much, are not helping to get beyond those narrow definitions]

So if these are the myths - what helps us establish what learning is?


Learning is ...

• Sense making.
• Learners should experience chaos and confusion
• Teach to think deeply
• Teach to think rigorously
• Autonomy is key - in control of their own learning
• Connections
• Navigations
• Openness

The presentation ended on MOOCs, to everyone's delight.

View over the walled garden - 21st Century Universities

A very informative session in yesterday's #change11 MOOC where Jillianne Code and
Valerie Irvine gave their views on the subject of the 21st Century University, using their university. They are Educational Technology professors and Co-Directors of the Technology Integration and Evaluation (TIE) Research Lab at the University of Victoria.

Clearly a time of change - issues facing brick and mortar universities

• diminishing funds, cutbacks
• decreasing 18-22 demographic
• increase in colleges with degree-granting status
• increase in online programmes
• demands from learners for flexibility

They (or their university) saw as solutions two aspects:

• Recruit more international students
• Change registration options to allow for combined f2f and online by existing students

The second seems a natural way to go, although getting professors on board to teach online seemed to be a very big issue - comment from one that they would rather have the top professor from a particular field than have them be tech savvy. This surprised me - professors were spoken about in awe and seemed to be ivory-towerish.

The back channel mentioned the riots to enroll in South African universities, such was the pressure to do so. Putting the meaning of this incident (massive pressure from the rest of the world for university education) against the wish of well off Western universities to make money from international students, left me concerned. Should this be the approach? And the point was made that these international student places should be mainly residential and not online, so that real fees are paid. Wow! Talk about business ruling...

Had not realised that administration system changes have such huge costs, even for relatively minor changes, and so changes of the status quo is really costly and difficult.

They categorised the registration option changes as follows - Multi-Access vs COOL Courses

• COOL - collaborative open online course - a Multi-Access course but open
• Multi-Access - not necessarily open, LDAP connectivity

Discussion followed on the use of MOOC as a name for such courses, or perhaps COOL (or even MOOSE!).

There seemed to be some real constraints in the 21st Century University. It seemed that universities are 21st Century only on the timeline but not really changed much from the 20th Century versions. Knowledge seemed to be trapped in universities due to restricted delivery method options. Instead of ivory tower, my mental metaphor changed to be walled garden, not being able see out nor others to dare to see in.

The Patriot Act and ownership of data in Elluminate were mentioned as constraints as well as internal university rules: they can make material open but for evaluation of students they have to be enrolled in the course.

Thanks for such insights - which I think are probably too stark out of context of the discussion, but forms my list of issues.

Consequence of change in learning - teachers have to give up power

Listening to Howard Rheingold at the questions session on #change11 MOOC brought home to me how reliant we are as teachers on control. Control of the learning environment, control of what is taught, control of what is assessed, control of the learner. Some of this is inevitable. But if we are to go towards open processes, then some of it we have to replace.
Rheingold had three relevant statements on the subject:
He tells his students that "absorbing all is not the goal but making sense of it together is" and that it is "scary and difficult for a teacher to give up power to the student. It is very rewarding once you do it, but you give them the responsibility to learn." Also, students "students cannot come into the classroom to be passive".
Of course, age is a factor. I agree with this approach 100% for university level students. We in schools should be weening our students towards these approaches. When? Well, I do think we have some of this in many Primary schools just by the nature of how they operate. In ours, we use the International Primary Curriculum and so the approach hands over some curriculum and learning control (although teachers work really hard in planning for such a programme).
It has caused us to re-think our 6th - 8th grade programme and to plan for more "open" approaches. To do this, teachers have to give up some power. How much? With what and where?

Attention probes caught my attention

In Howard Rheingold's #change11 session today, Attention was the first Net Smart literacy covered. And well placed at number 1 it is.
As we went through the session, some of his pointers made sense and helped me make better use of the Collaborate session. His point was about multitasking (and I suppose attention-wandering).
He described having "attention probes" in a class or lecture situation - devices to ensure that attention is where it should be - for achieving concentration, mindfulness and metacognition. This is an important point since if attention is not there, learning is not going to be there. We have tried some experiments with this (having computer stations facing back wall with swivel chairs, or "close screens: commands for laptops) but ultimately it is the learner who should be monitoring their attention. What techniques are there for use in classrooms? Any ideas?
Rheingold used the term Infotention for this type of attention to task. Here is his list of points for training yourself and others for improving this skill (his point is that though multitasking is difficult, combat pilots and others do it, so it is a matter of training and it becoming instilled):

• Make better, faster microdecisions:
• Ignore or attend?
• Open a tab for later?
• Tag or bookmark for much later?
• Match attention to toolset:
• Spatial arrangements
• Keep goal(s) visible (piece of paper in a visible place, even)
• Start small, cultivate habits

I tried this during the session, having a plan on how to deal with links that came up in the chat (going back into the Collaborate session is PAINFUL to get these on the recording) and how to keep notes on the snippets (yes, pen and paper). And then, put it all together in a blog post so that it sticks in my mind a little better and may help others by reading another version.
"Attention to intention is how the mind changes the brain" says Rheingold. It worked for me.

Net Smart for both personal empowerment AND shaping digital culture

With over 50 participants, #change11 MOOC started 2012 well with an excellent session with Howard Rheingold.
His work on Net Smart is well described and his new book "Net Smart - How to Thrive Online" pulls all this work together. We were treated to an overview and some insights which convinced me that seeking only digital literacy is insufficient - we should be having our students (and teachers) be Net Smart. This would enable not just personal empowerment, an important Rheingold point, but it would enable the quality of digital cultural commons to improve. Asking questions about whether Google and Facebook are having negative effects is pointless - he maintains - rather steer the cultural commons forward in positive ways by being a shaper of the future and an inhibitor and neutraliser of poor or dangerous practices.
He uses the terms "literacies" instead of skills since he includes the social context as important.
The Net Smart Literacies are:

• Attention - know where your attention is going, keep focused, by mindful (be metacognitive) of what you are attending to (talked about "attention probes" - devices to keep your attention on task - see my next post).
• Critical Consumption (Crap Detection being his term - he describes crap as information tainted by ignorance, inept communication or deliberate deception) - with strategies such as "think like a detective", search to learn, look for authors and search them, triangulate.
• Participation - empowerment which comes from know-how, curation for contribution ("a person who contributes thinks of themselves differently from those who only consume"), attract like-minded participants, build up your network, create a participation culture.
• Collaboration - smart mobs, collective action, crowd-sourcing, cooperative and collaborative learning (see his 2005 TED talk on the New Power of Collaboration).
• Network Know-how -know how to do.

Great pointers from Rheingold:

• Don't just consume - create
• Architectures of participation use self interest to construct public goods
• Curation is lightweight collective intelligence
• Learn norms & boundaries of local cultures before participating
• Crap-detect thyself before broadcasting questionable info
• Organisms cooperate as much as they compete
• Actions climb the curve of engagement
• Wide variety of ways to participate
• Enable self-election 
• People contribute to enhance reputation, learn, meet others add to public good
• Casual conversation builds trust

Ross Mayfield's diagram on the Power Law of Participation was used to illustrate the benefits of participation:

A goal should be to build your own (and your learners' own) personal trust network.

"If digital cultures are making us shallow, explore the deep end" quote from Rheingold using a photo of a swimmer peeking over the edge of the pool at the shallow end.

Setting the scene for Authentic Learning

Jan Herrington's Authentic Learning is the subject of this week's #change11 MOOC.
She sets the scene really well with a set of nine videos, breaking down the process into steps:

• Authentic context
• Authentic activity
• Expert performances
• Multiple perspectives
• Collaboration
• Reflection
• Articulation
• Coaching and scaffolding
• Authentic assessment

 This approach is not limited to university level work so it is great for the preparation that we are doing as a school to consider "open approaches to learning" within a secondary school setting.
As an introduction, her video explaining the academic and real settings continuum, explaining this against an authentic task and decontextualised continuum, helps greatly.

Falling at the first hurdle - ubiquitous sage on the side not for me

This week's topic on Slow Learning for the #change11 MOOC had me fall at the first hurdle. Clark Quinn's introductory post asked the following question: "What would my ideal learning situation be?"
He replied by saying it would be having a personal learning mentor with him, prompting support at the right moment and developing him slowly over time. He thus develops the concept of an automatic "sage on the side" to prompt, guide and thus produce learning.
Listening to the subsequent live session and participating in the final session was useful to have an understanding of this, the idea of drip irrigation as opposed to flooding and the value of formal and informal learning for novices, practitioners and experts. This slide is worth repeating:

His statement that learning gets better when we work with more people can be true and I liked the idea of the big L in Learning - learning which is more through problem solving, innovation, research and creativity.
But I would not use his learning GPS system (nor do I generally use a real GPS system - I prefer to use it only when necessary in very new and difficult circumstances).
I do not think that a personal learning mentor would be my ideal learning situation. The point of open is just that - open to wherever I want to go, not someone or something else to control.
I have just seen the following video, produced by Corning Glass and called a Day Made of Glass. It is both inspiring and worrying. Could I work with ubiquitous in-your-face technology?
The constant prodding of a sage on the side would worry me because of both this intrusion as well as manipulation - "stealth mentoring" as Carole McCulloch puts it in her post. I want to be totally in charge of my learning and I am not sure that even a human mentor is what I need.

Gamification - increasing fluid intelligence

Thanks to @suifaijohnmak for the link to Gabe Zichermann's TEDxKids@Brussels talk on Gamification.
An absolute enthusiast for games in education (and life) - fast talking presenter with a powerful message.
"Kids are going to be alright" - in fact they are going to be "awesome" - according to Zichermann his prescription to adults is  "get into the game with kids - don't fight the game trend, understand it".

Simulations - design features take-aways

Clark Aldrich's final session on the design of simulations again provided interesting ideas which resonated. An obvious expert in the games and simulations area, Aldrich reeled off statistics, concepts and pitfalls from his area.
Again, I found good ideas and terms that I can take away from simulation design which can be applied in school learning.
One was the idea of skill cones - as a player progresses through the simulation, skill cones can be used to see how s/he is introduced into a new skill and how this gets harder. Truncated skill cones show no ease of transition into a new skill but straight into a higher level of difficulty. By graphically placing these skill cones in the simulations timeline, you can ensure that not all difficulties are met at once. Parallels with introducing skills into lessons...
The other idea was that of the toleration waves for resolution and frustration. I have to use a snip from Aldrich's presentation to explain this:

This was a great way of showing the balance between frustration and resolution, with the dips into frustration being controlled and planned in the timeline of the game. Again, parallels with lesson design and perhaps problem solving.
I wrote about conceptual learning yesterday, in relation to Conrad Wolfram's stance on mathematics. His approach is to use simulations to concentrate on the ideas, the concepts, and really get to understand them - rather than concentrating on calculations and the manipulating algebra by hand. Simulations, surely, will play a bigger part as we move towards conceptual understanding and away from factual knowledge in our learning and teaching.
(As an aside - I did wonder what I would get from this particular week in the #change11 MOOC. Again I was surprised that I really enjoyed and learned useful ideas from another area - the power of connections that a MOOC provides).

Opening up sim creation - Clark Aldrich tells us how he does it.

Today's #change11 MOOC session on building simulations was fascinating - hearing simulations designer Clark Aldrich tell us how simulations are created and designed.
I should not be suprised that the process mirrored the design of learning, but it was refreshing to see these principles being expressed in novel ways. Aldrich started by stating that the goal of education is individualistic - with the intention to build competence and build conviction, through participation and practice, emotion and interactive content.
Building conviction was explained carefully and was an interesting concept since normally we do not address it. He means doing the hard things even if you do not want to, to have your understanding (and experience?) at more than a naive level so that your competence is reinforced by your self knowledge and will (my words - please correct me!).
As a philosophy, Aldrich spoke about aligning what you are doing with what you do well with what you want to do with what you think is important to do (in a growing and sustainable way) - this sentence and emphases taken from his slide (based on his book "Unschooling Rules"?).

The road map for producing simulations is simple:

1. Determine the concept.
2. Create and Design.
3. Code.
4. Calibrate.
5. Deploy.

He went into detail about the various roles in the process, of aligning delivery of content with the importance of context, agreeing on the metrics for success (ahead of time) and on the programme goals:

• Engagement
• Fun enough (liked this - you are not designing for total stimulation)
• Relevant
• Convenience
• Well chunked
• Easy to access
• Acceptable cost per student
• Acceptable time to creation
• Comfort level of instructors and sponsors (not sure what this meant for sponsors).

It is interesting that these could be learning design programme goals and relevant to any design of learning.

Aldrich went through the "storyboard" of several simulations to show how you can use instances to explain the simulation. These took some listening to and the chat channel was quiet during this process. I, certainly, had to concentrate and not chat!

Two rules of thumb stick in my mind from the presentation:

1. The cost: $100k / 6 months / for every finished hour. This seemed very reasonable for a well-planned, designed and executed simulation, and a great statistic to have from an expert in the know. There were adjustments to this for single player (-25%), adding multiplayer to a single player (+60%), light-weight mechanics (-70%) and 3D client installed (+100%).
2. The number of critical decision makers: this was a great way of putting it which I am sure could be applied in all sorts of situations. In symbols, where d is the number of critical decision makers:

        If d < 4, costs are 25% less; if d > 10, costs are 100% more.

What a great rule of thumb, and we can all think of situations where this is so. I would add also that as d gets larger, the probability of reaching a decision approaches zero.

Attempting some structure for #change11 - some harder technology

The change11 MOOC site is well designed thanks to Stephen Downes and serves as the nerve centre for this fast-paced gallop through all things change in learning.
I am trying out symbaloo as a dashboard for all things connected with this MOOC - if it works for you please feel free to add and adjust!

Introspective look at MOOCs - too soft a technology?

Today's #change11 MOOC live session allowed us to hear from Jon Dron and his area of expertise - technologies. After a discussion on constraints, the conversation focused on the pedagogy of MOOCs.
Activity in this MOOC has cooled, even though the topic under discussion generates interest and is a meta-concept that allows us to consider assemblies of technology, so it is of interest to educators (pedagogy is a technology), or should be.
It seems that the drop-off is par for the course. I do not have the figures but I suppose one could question what is massive about this MOOC (now an OOC?).
Dron spoke about about the evolution of a community about a MOOC, and how we could look to evolutionary concepts to consider its likely development. Would the MOOC community parcel up into separate groups like the Galapagos finches? Would there be some partial parcelisation but maintaining loose boundaries that would enable filtration of ideas (genes)?
This perhaps is the only natural outcome that we could hope for. The massive part of the MOOC is not sustainable as it is - there are limits on time and attention that a MOOCer can give and with time this will erode.
There seems to be a philosophical reluctance on the part of the MOOC designers to provide any further structure (if I read Stephen Downes' chat posts correctly) and so it will be inevitable that we have many that will fall by the wayside in our journey. Providing structure will harden the technology/pedagogy but could a better sweet spot be found?
We did touch on having a beginner strand and I suggested intelligent tags (something that allowed a hierarchy like an account structure: #change11 for just change for truly open learners, #change11-core for those who wanted their path charted somewhat, perhaps even #change11-tech for those who wanted to follow the week's technology strand only and perhaps #change11-  for those who wanted to receive all the sub divisions of the tags).
 Despite my comments I am still on this learning journey - MOOC or OOC.

Dron's balance between hard and soft technologies - seeking the Goldilocks moment

Jon Dron presented a very informative session in Week 11's #change11 MOOC.
Titled "Soft stuff, hard stuff and invisible elephants", Dron described the following:

• the meaning of technology 
• the inclusion of pedagogies as technologies
• SOFT and HARD technologies
• getting the right balance between them
• how to move from soft to hard and vice versa
• and the elephant in the room - "it ain't just what you do, it's the way that you do it. A bad technology, used well, can work brilliantly, while a good technology, used badly, can be useless".

He describes all this well in his post on the nature of technologies.
Dron defines technology as the "orchestration of phenomena for some use" (W. Brian Arthur) and classifies them as:

• Soft tech - an active orchestration of phenomena by people
• Hard tech - the orchestration is embeded into a device.

Dron spoke about refrigerating food being a hard technology (difficult to do without automation) and that soft technologies needs people - the technology does not have everything that it takes to make it happen.

He points out that all technologies are ASSEMBLIES of other technologies and tools, some soft, some hard.

Getting the right balance of this for a given time, context and learner is difficult and needs the "Goldilock moment":

• Not too soft
• Not too hard
• Just right!

Aggregating is a way of making technologies softer and replacing with harder things making them harder. A mashup could be made harder or softer.
In discussions about the MOOC approach, Dron said that making the learner have control over the hardness or softness of the technology will allow the learner to have the right balance and find their Goldilocks moment.

Findings regarding the effect of technology on learning generally state NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE - Dron makes the point that it is not the technology but how it is used, what he calls the elephant in the room.

Erik in Abundance

It has been really instructive learning about how Erik Duval teaches.
This week's MOOC #change11 subject, Learning in a Time of Abundance, has allowed us to see into a practitioner's teaching environment (classroom, lecture hall, virtual space, not sure what to call it). Duval has organised teaching (note that I am using this term even though what he has really organised is his students learning approaches) to minimize the direct teaching for memorising current knowledge and leverage the abundance of information. As stated in his presentation at the beginning of the week, Connectedness, Openness and Always-on gives us the environment for this leverage.
Yesterday's COOLCast on JeffLebow.net added another part of the story. Here we were able to learn about Duval's motivation - that his life is really a MOOC, and he said that this week has been a little bit less massive than he expected it to be.
Abundance in the title means also the abundance of content. The availability and abundance of content is such a different experience that Duval says he can concentrate more on what meaningful activities can be built around it.
What tools does Duval use to sip from the firehose of online information? Duval has simple principles, is a strict keeper of time, he has down time which he really respects (family, for example). Secondly, he books in time with his students when he does not do other things. He does a lot of Twitter to be pointed to material, following a # tag for a few days until it does not interest him anymore. He uses RSS and e-mail as good filters.

The other Duval resource was his presentation "Learning with Open Eyes - The Role of Learning Analytics" given as an opening keynote at de OnderWijsDagen in Utrecht on the 8th of November 2011. This was given in Dutch but I think that you can get a lot out of the Slideshare presentation:

Learning with Open Eyes The Role of Learning Analytics

View more presentations from Erik Duval

This is a key area and I now see why Duval answered the question on Assessment in such a way (see my post on his Monday presentation) - Learning Analytics is what he was talking about as self-tracking data.

Late into Learning in a time of abundance - Erik Duval

(from archive.org Erik Duval)


#globaled11 drew me away from the MOOC #change11 this week, but I'm back! So late into making sense of this week's topic - Learning in a time of abundance by Erik Duval.
Duval said three things are different now:

• Connectedness
• Openness 
• Always on

These make it appropriate to look for a different approach to learning and teaching. Implications for learning:

There will be differences in

• WHAT we learn
• Things keep evolving so rapidly that memorising current knowledge (of engineering - his subject) does not make sense. We still do emphasise knowledge even if we say we do not.
• HOW we learn
• We should leverage the abundance of information to change how we learn, using the three differences above; "please put your mobile phone ON" is his comment at the start of his lessons.
• Duval's lessons can be up to 5 hours long and the learning takes place throughout the day and night, with dips in the very early morning.
  

Are students strategies to learn appropriate given that factual information is so easy to find? Duval implied that the internet has changed the dynamics of communication, people are always on (that is to say, even though you are off [asleep] your digital identity and information is there for all to find). 


Assessment - the inevitable question:

Paraphrasing Duval: "We should do something else but we have not figured out how to assess it so we should keep on doing what we have always done" - Duval says that this does not make sense to him.

Duval uses a lot of formative assessment and self-tracking data as feedback, not as assessment. He says that he does assessment in the same way it is done in professional life - he will have a conversation with the student and then translate this into a number between 0 and 20.


Question - how much do you tell your students?
Duval explains the following at the start of the course:

• Students will publish in blogs - not write report documents
• He will not just stand in front of the class
• He explains why they have to tweet (mandatory)
• The dangers of neglecting other classes.

Sometimes too much analysis paralysis (great term!) - talking about some issue for ever, need to just move on.


Can clear objectives be maintained but work in a much messier, fragmented way?
Duval doubts that there are such clear objectives except in an abstract way. He says that it is just how life is, messy. Answer is never 42 in engineering terms....


Permission to operate in this way?
"Don't ask anyone for permission"! Like a good lapsed Catholic he just asks for forgiveness afterwards if things go wrong. Great approach.


Comment on coherence and messiness: Duval will spend quite a bit of time with students if what they are presenting is incoherent. Incoherent - self contradicting statements - but messiness? Things connected to many different things in messy ways? Fine.


Practical guidelines for educators based upon his experience:

• "Let go" is his best advice - let go of fake control, since we as teachers focus on things we can control since we often doubt our capabilities to teach.
• Accept that other teachers will be just as scared.
• Connect to the life of students - how do I make it authentic and valuable to them.

Erik Duval's challenge for the week:

• Find examples of where this approach works really well.
• What are the limitations to openness? Challenge him with situations where openness does not work.

Good practical MOOC session - thanks!

Models - usefulness and otherwise

Well, my last piece on Rhizomatic Learning.
In today's #change11 MOOC live session a series of questions allowed Dave Cormier to expand on the ideas and again it was an interesting hour.
At one point Stephen Downes started to sketch to explain traditional learning and rhizomatic learning (it was me typing in the labels - it may not have been exactly what Stephen meant).
All of a sudden it started to make sense, the idea that nothing new is created with traditional transmition of knowledge, that rhizomatic learning created something new, and then STOP! On the wrong track, Dave dragged us back underground to draw the rhizomatic approach (top right).

For me, a model has to be simple to follow and we should not need to read French philosophy to "get it". Stephen's alternative started to make sense, Dave's rhizomes clouded it for me. So, for me (and I stress that others may well find the concept useful) it goes no-where and as a model fails.
However, let me add something more concrete to the question raised about "assessment" or at least the badging or verification of such learning.
I can see that for teacher professional development, an open non-curriculum self-directed connected learning approach works (have I just described rhizomatic learning?). In my school, those at the cutting edge of technology for learning are learning in exactly this way. The ideas that permeate from them are proof that the learning is taking place. They are badged by their subsequent actions, and this is a perfectly acceptable verification.