Association for Learning Technology

Manchester, UK, 8-10 September 2009

Terry Anderson, Ph.D.Canada Research Chair in Distance Education

Introduction

Terry Anderson’s CV in Wordle Tag Cloud

Anderson & Anderson,( submitted for publication)

Presentation Overview

• Brief scan of the environment• Taxonomy of the Many• The Open Scholar

Values

• We can (and must) continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience.

• Student control and freedom is integral to 21st Century life-long education and learning.

• Education for elites is not sufficient for planetary survival.

Harmonizing Disruptive Technologies

• “Managing and aligning pedagogical, technical and administrative issues is a necessary condition of success when using emerging technologies for learning”

• But it takes leadership and disruption

Gregor Kennedy et al. , Melbourne Educating the Net Generation: A Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy , 2009

Recent history of Higher education Innovation

• Last systemic innovation was the emergence of the community colleges and open and alternative colleges of the 1960’s

• Last 40 years of reform:– Examples: Problem based learning, faculty development,

community, collaborative, technology enhanced learning– Peripheral and outside of main stream rewards and strategic

planning– “ We can no longer pursue an add-on approach to the

changing faculty role”• Rice, Eugene. (2006). From Athens and Berlin to LA: Faculty Work

and the New Academy

Promising Signs

• Ubiquity and multi-functionality of web 2.0

• Growth of openness and online resources, OERs

• Increasingly effective pedagogical models and learning activities

• Real educational alternatives – including private sector

• Death and retirement

Aligning with 21 Century students• Students are NOT deeply digitally engaged, empowered, nor

skilled and certainly not homogeneous • But they “arrive at college with well-established methods of

sorting, doubting, and ignoring”• “odd kind of student — one who appears polite and dutiful but

who cares little about the course work, the larger questions it raises, or the value of living an examined life” Tom Clysdale, 2009 Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology

• Or is the life that we examine in formal education?• We can no longer maintain interest and enthusiasm based on

respect and superior knowledge

Net presence means Creating and Sustaining Social Capital

• “Relationships, more than information, determine how problems are solved or opportunities exploited.” p. 17 Looi 2001)

Choosing the right tool(s)?

http://www.go2web20.net over 3000 apps 12

VLE

Taxonomy of the ‘Many’ – A Conceptual Model

Dron and Anderson, 2007

GroupConscious membership

Leadership and organizationCohorts and paced

Rules and guidelinesAccess and privacy controls

Focused and often time limitedMay be blended F2F

Metaphor : Virtual classroom

13

Formal Learning and Groups• Long history of research

and study• Established sets of tools

– Classrooms,– VLEs– Synchronous (F2F, video

& net conferencing)– Email

• Need to develop face to face, mediated and blended group learning skills

Garrison and Anderson, 2001

Critical Tools for Group Learning Environments

• Collaborative tools– Document creation, management, versioning– Time lines, calendars, – Strong notifications

• Security, trust – hosting on institutional space?– Behind firewalls, away from search engines

• Decision making and project management tools• Synchronous and asynchronous

conversations/meetings

Groups as Communities of Practice

• Wengler’s ideas of Community of Practice– mutual engagement – synchronous and notification

tools – joint enterprise – collaborative projects, “pass the

course”– a shared repertoire – common tools, VLEs, IM and doc

sharing

• Online communities are a means to help preserve and continue the interests, knowledge and culture of a group bound by common interests. Looi, C. K. (2001)

Looi, C. K. (2001). Enhancing learning ecology on the Internet Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 17(1), 13-20

Distributed web 2.0 Group Tools

Problems with Groups• Restrictions in time, space, pace, &

relationship - NOT OPEN• Often overly confined by teacher

expectation and institutional curriculum control

• Usually Isolated from the authentic world of practice

• “low tolerance of internal difference, sexist and ethicized regulation, high demand for obedience to its norms and exclusionary practices.” Cousin & Deepwell 2005

• Group think (Baron, 2005)• Poor preparation for Lifelong Learning

beyond the course

Paulsen (1993)Law of Cooperative Freedom

Relationships

• From Groups to Flocks ?? Michael Wesch • Do groups still only make sense in education?

Frontiers of Group Learning

• From systems designed to tack, control and lead learners, to systems designed to motivate and inspire learning.

What motivates learners?• Personal and social relevance• Opportunity to do well and be

recognized• Chance to meet cool people

and engage in cool activities• Disequilibrium (Dewey)• Rewards - formal education’s

last strategic advantage Frontier College Archives

Groups Summary• Groups are necessary, but not sufficient for

quality learning

Group

NetworkShared interest/practice

Fluid membershipFriends of friends

Reputation and altruism drivenEmergent norms, structures

Activity ebbs and flowsRarely F2F

Metaphor: Virtual Community of Practice23

Networks add diversity to learning

“People who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas” Burt, 2005, p. 90

• Collaborative Learning In Groups

• Cooperative Learning in Networks (Paulsen, 2008)

Compelling, not compulsory activities

Google Wave ??

Communities of Practice • Distributed• Share common interest• Self organizing• looser aggregation defined by a range of loose and

tight links • No expectation of meeting or even knowing all

members of the Network• Little expectation of reciprocity• Contribute for social capital, altruism and a sense of

improving the world/practice through contribution

(Brown and Duguid, 2001)

Networks

Transparency

The ability to view and share thoughts, actions, resources, ideas and interests of others.

“radically increase learner awareness of others’ learning activities in the PLE”

Marc van Harmelen Manchester PLE

Dalsgaard, C., & Paulsen, M. (2009) Transparency in Cooperative Online Education

Major Challenges in Creating Incentives to Sustain Contribution to Networks

The New Yorker September 12, 2005

•

"the network contains within it antagonistic clusterings, divergent sub-topologies, rogue nodes" Galloway and Thacker, 2007 p. 34

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeblet/423397690/

“There is crack in everything, that's how the light gets in” Leonard Cohen

Connectivist Learning

• emergent practice, rather than prescribed education.

• Helping and scaffolding students to construct, connect, explore and mash resources and people to create contexts, that induce learning.

George Siemens

Network Pedagogies

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• Connectivism• Participatory Pedagogy- Students as content-co-

creators, peer teaching• Complexity

– Learning in environments in which activities and outcomes emerge in response to authentic need creates powerful learning opportunities

– Learning at the edge of chaos– Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education

See the Networked Student by Wendy Drexler

Student Organized Networks

Network Tool Set (example)

36

t

Stepanyan, Mather & Payne, 2007

Access Controls in Elgg

Voicethread.com

Network Learning EnvironmentSummary

• Cooperative versus collaborative• Compelling but optional interaction• Persistence• Transparency• Finding, building and enriching connections

inside and outside of the “course”

Group Network

Collective‘Aggregated other’

Unconscious ‘wisdom of crowds’Stigmergic aggregation

Algorithmic rulesAugmentation and annotation

More used, more usefulData MiningNever F2F

Metaphor: Wisdom of Crowds

40

Formal Education and Collectives

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• Collectives used to aggregate, then filter, compare, contrast and recommend.

• Personal and collaborative search and filter for learning• Allows discovery and validation of norms, values, opinion and “ways of

understanding”• Educational semantic web

“a kind of cyber-organism, formed from people linked algorithmically…it grows through the aggregation of Individual, Group and Networked activities” Dron & Anderson, 2007

“They follow not the logic of the network but of the set. They are aggregations that appear in some ways as a single entity” Dron & Anderson, 2009. On the Design of Collective Applications

OnlineActions

AggregationData Mining

Filter & Select

Collective Tools

43

Collective Examples

Groups Networks

Collectives

Dron and Anderson, 2007

Taxonomy of the Many

Personal Learning Environments

• Easy to use• Personally configurable• Gadgets, widgets• Push and pull data• Multiple machines, portable• Reflective spaces, • Creating net presence and social capital

Dron & Anderson, 2008

Social Learning 2.0 Applications in Educational Contexts

Groups Networks Collectives

Personal LearningEnvironmentsFormal Education

Organizational Learning

Open Scholar

• “the Open Scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it--at any stage of its development”. – Gideon Burton Academic Evolution

Blog

Open Scholars Create:

• A new type of education work maximizing:– Social learning– Media richness– Participatory and connectivist pedagogies– Ubiquity and persistence– Open data collection and research process– Creating connections

Open Scholars Use and Contribute Open Educational Resources

Because it saves time!!!

Open Scholars Self Archive

Quality scholarship is peer and public reviewed, accessible, persistent syndicated, commented and transparent.

Open Scholars Apply their research

Open Scholars do Open Research

• Open Notebook: a laboratory notebook that is freely available and indexed on common search engines. …it is essential that all of the information available to the researchers to make their conclusions is equally available to the rest of the world.

• —Jean-Claude Bradley

Open Scholars Filter and Share With Others

Open Scholars support emerging Open Learning alternatives

Open Scholars Publish in Open Access Journals

• Open Access Journals have increased citation ratings:– Work in progress with Olaf Zawacki-Richter, Ferne

University, Germany– Analysis of Google citations for 12 Distance Education

Journals (using Harzing’s Publish or Perish tool)– 6 open access, 6 commercially published– Early results show roughly equal citations/paper, but

recent gains in citations by open access journals

Open Scholars Create Open Access Books

Upcoming Emerging Technologies in DE edited by George Veletsiano

Open Scholars comment openly on the works of others

• Bookmarking and Annotation add value• Cite-u-like, Brainify, Diigo, Delicious etc• VLE additions like Margenalia.

Open Scholars Build Networks

Open Scholars Lobby for Copyright Reform

Source: swiss-copyright.ch

Open Scholars Assign Open Textbooks

Open Scholars Induce Open Students

• Students as co-creators• Students gaining experience as writers,

authors and teachers• Getting over the use, but don’t

contribute barrier• Students engaged in meaningful work• Extensive literature on value of peer

instruction - especially for gifted students

• Empowering learners as future teachers

Open Scholars support Open Students OpenStudents.Org

Open Scholars Teach Open Courses

Alec Cuoros Open Access Course: Social Media & Open Education (Fall 2009)

George Siemens & Stephen Downes

Introduction au technologie émergentesDave Cormier

Open Scholars Research Openness

Open Scholars are Change Agents

• Open scholars develop tools and techniques to help cross-pollination, sustain and grow effective learning networks.

From (Looi 2001).

Open Scholars Battle with Time

Save Time by using the efforts of others

I haven’t got the time to save!

Open Scholars are Involved in the Future

• Through personal experience we forge an ecology of lifelong learning.

Conclusion

• “Open Access is more than a new model for scholarly publishing, it is the only ethical move available to scholars who take their own work seriously enough to believe its value lies in how well it engages many publics and not just a few peers.”

• Gideon Burton, Academic Evolution Blog

Slides available on CrowdVinehttp://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/attachments/0000/4595/ALT-C_Final.pptx

Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca

Homepage: http://cde.athabascau.ca/faculty/terrya.php

Blog: terrya.edublogs.org

Your comments and questions most welcomed!