Content and Connections: New Opportunities for

Formal Education

Terry Anderson, PhD Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education

Orkand Distinguished Lecture Series

Lecture Overview   Intro and compulsory opening joke   Compelling case for use/re-use of open content   New models of connected learning   New Roles for our Educational Institutions

 “Canada is a great country, much too cold for common sense, inhabited by compassionate and intelligent people with bad haircuts”.   Yann Martel, Life of Pi, 2002.

Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada

* Athabasca University

Fastest growing university in Canada

34,000 students, 700 courses

100% distance education

Graduate and Undergraduate programs

Master & Doctorate – Distance Education

Only USA Regionally Accredited University in

Canada

 Athabasca University

Values  We can (and must) continuously improve the quality,

effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of learning.   Learner control and freedom is integral to 21st Century

formal education and life-long learning.   Education for elites is not sufficient for planetary survival

“Today’s learners want to be active participants in the learning process – not mere listeners; they have a need to control their environments, and they are used to easy access to the staggering amount of content and knowledge available at their fingertips”

EduCause Horizon Report 2009

The compelling Case for Openness

Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. –

Terry Foote, Wikipedia

Open Education Resources (OERs) Vision + Affordance

  “At the heart of the open educational resources movement is the simple and powerful idea that;   the world’s knowledge is a public good in general   the World Wide Web provides an extraordinary

opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse that knowledge.”

Hewlett Foundation Smith, & Casserly. The promise of open educational resources. Change 38(5): 8–17, 2006

OER Granularity

  Diagrams, photos   Articles (Open access publications)   Games, simulations, activities   Units of learning (IMS LD)   Units and courses   Programs

Special Issue of IRRODL edited by Dave Wiley fall 2009

OER’s are Open (Mostly)   Meaning you can:

  Augment   Edit   Customize   Aggregate and Mashup   Reformat   Re-published

  But they need to be licensed –   not just put online

See Scott Leslie’s 10 minute video at http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/opened.htm

A Tale of 3 books

Open Access

100,000 + downloads &

Individual chapters

500 hardcopies sold @ $50

Free at aupress.org

Commercial publisher

934 copies sold at $52.00

Buy at Amazon!!

E-Learning for the 21st

Century Commercial Pub. 1200 sold @ $135.00 2,000 copies in Arabic Translation @ $8.

Reading OERs Ebooks – just around the corner?

Reading OERs Espresso Book Machine

  Binding: Perfect-bound books, indistinguishable from the bookstore copy.

  Page-Count: 40 to 830 pages.

  Speed: A 300-page book in less than 4 minutes.

  File Format: Standard PDF for book block and cover.

  Books can be downloaded from the web, or in person from CDs, flash drives, etc.

  Cost $.03 /page

Reading Green - “Each of the books printed and sold… will save 5.8 kilograms in carbon emissions,”. Kanter 2008

Problems with OER

  Little take up by conventional teachers   Too little reward and recognition for authors   Too few learners, by themselves, actually engage with

the content   Trouble breaking away from dependence on text

books   Undeveloped business case   Too few teachers remix and repost content   Too difficult to upload, tag and share

Solution?? Vibrant communities of Produsers??

Our own Experiment: Course development based on OER’s

  4 Athabasca University courses:   Nursing,   Communications (Writing for the Theatre)   English for Business, &   Educ. Tech

  Vastly different results   Critical variable was the attitude of the developer(s)

Christiansen, J., & Anderson, T. (2004)

Feasibility of course development based on learning objects: Research analysis of three case studies. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Education,

What is missing?   Clear pedagogical goals   Culture of development, sharing

and remix   Network and social software

Solutions   Lack of Business models

  Reducing dependence on text books?   How much does current production

cost?   Can we engage students to produce

high quality content?   Are ads more palatable than fees?

The Emerging Political Economy of Peer Production: Michael Bauwens

  a 'third mode of production' different from for-profit or public production by state-owned enterprises.

  Its product is not exchange value for a market, but but use-value for a community of users

  “produce use-value through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital”

www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499

Prod-Users - From production to produsage - Axel Bruns (2008)

  Users become active participants in the production of artifacts:

  Examples:   Open source movement   Wikipedia   Citizen journalism (blogs)   Immersive worlds   Distributed creativity - music, video, Flickr

Produsage Principles produsage.org

  Community-Based –the community as a whole can contribute more than a closed team of producers.

  Fluid Heterarcy – produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledge, and may form loose sub-groups to focus on specific issues, topics, or problems

  Unfinished Artifacts –projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished;

  Common Property, Individual Rewards – contributors permit (non-commercial) community use, adaptation, and further development of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital they gain through this process

“open education is not just about disseminating resources that can be localized in many ways to improve education in local contexts, but also about an opportunity toward broadening and deepening our collective understanding of teaching and learning. “Toru Liyoshi and M. S. Vijay Kumar 2008

OERs as Disruptive Technologies

  Christensen (1997, 2008) studies innovation and the impact of disruptions

  A disruptive technology “transforms a market whose services are complicated and expensive into one where simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability characterize that industry” p. 11

  Unless steered by very wise leaders organizations will “shape every innovation into a sustaining innovation - one that fits processes, values, and the economic model of the organization - because organizations cannot naturally disrupt themselves” p. 74

Open Educational Resources

Produser Model Ex. WikiEducator

Open participation Emergent governance Unrestricted licensing Mass growth potential

Produser/Consumer Ex. MIT OCW

Restricted participation Staff production

Institutional governance Non commercial license

Mora, M. (2008)

Short Case study: Open University UKʼs Development of Open Learn openlearn.open.ac.uk

  Rationale Opportunity:   The risk of doing nothing when technology and globalization issues

need to be addressed.   A testbed for new technology and new ways of working   way to work with external funders who share similar aims and

ideals   A chance to learn how to draw on the world as a resource.

  Brand Promotion   A route for outreach beyond current student body   Demonstration of the quality of Open University materials in new

regions.

Open Learn Example http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

490 units

Social Learn: to devise means to put ourselves out of business - before our competitors do!!

  “For 3000 years education has made the learner adapt to the system. SocialLearn [1] aims to reverse this and make the education system adapt to the learner.”

  Make the formal informal, and the informal formal.

  Web 2.0 tools, attitudes, learning designs

http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/sociallearn/ Martin Weller

Creative Literacies driving Web 2.0:

“The ability to experiment with technology in order to create and manipulate content that serves social goals rather than merely retrieving and absorbing information”

p. 107 Burgess, J. (2006) Learning to Blog. Uses of Blogs Bruns &Jacobs

We are producing content How best to harness this creativity?

  65,000 videos uploaded to YouTube every day

  Facebook 24 million photos uploaded daily

  50 million blogs, 50% written by under 19 year olds   Scientific America 229(3) 2008 &

FaceBook Home

OERs concluded   We have opportunity, tools, demand and capacity to

revolutionize the production and distribution of powerful learning content.

  But Education is more than content, how do we organize ourselves for effective learning?

Steven Warburton, 2007

Group Network

Social Learning Taxonomy of the Many

Dron and Anderson, 2007

Collective

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Group Network

Social Learning Taxonomy of the Many

Collective

LMS

Web 2.0 Tools

Semantic Web Tools

Social Learning   Each of us participates in Groups, Networks and Collectives.   Learning is enhanced by exploiting the affordances of all three

sources of social learning.   Issues, memes, opportunities and learning activities arise at all

three levels of granularity.   Tools are designed and often work best at particular levels, but

can always be appropriated

  Formalize the formal   Informalize the formal (Martin Weller)

Choosing the right tool?

http://www.go2web20.net 2806 logos as of Feb.16, 2009

OR

1. Formal Education and Groups:

 Classes, cohorts & collaboration   Leads to increases:

 completion rates,  achievement  satisfaction as compared to individualized

learning  Collaborative projects forge strong links   Familiar logistic challenges similar to

institutional, campus-based learning  Can operate ‘behind the garden wall” to allow

freedom for expression and development  Refuge for scholarship

Formal Learning and Groups   Long history of research

and study   Established sets of tools

  Classrooms,   Learning Management

Systems   Synchronous (video &

net conferencing)   Email

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

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, LMS, IM and doc

sharing

Distributed 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

Challenges of using new social software tools for group tasks

  Control   Pacing and Deadlines   Support   Privacy   Assessment   Ownership and perseverance

Groups are necessary, but not sufficient for quality learning.

2. Formal Learning with Networks

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  Networks create and sustain links between individuals creating flexible communication and information spaces

  Networks link diversity, span boundaries, enable communication among disparate individuals

  Each of us may belong to many networks   Networks can connect self-paced and independent

learners to cooperative study activities

Network: An integrated system of resources and people

Networks

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  Provide resources from which students’ extract and contribute information

  In school one should learn to build, contribute to and manage one’s networks

  Transparency provides application and validation of information and skills developed in formal learning

  Provides role models for new students   Networks last beyond the course - basis for

ongoing support and advise from alumni and professional communities

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

Communities of Practice

  Distributed   Share common interest   Self organizing   Open   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)

Communities of Practice

  Distributed   Share common interest   Self organizing   Open   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

Groups are Managed - Networks Emerge!

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  Networks cannot be controlled like a group - requires new types of learning activity and leadership

  Meritocracy nor autocracy   Need to both amplify and extinguish interactions   Facilitate quality knowledge and artifact construction   Stimulate emergent behaviours and adaptation

The New Yorker September 12, 2005

Building Networks of Practice in Education

  Motivation – marks, rewards, self and net efficacy, net-presence

  Structural support   Exposure and training   Transparent systems   Wireless access, mobile computing

  Cognitive skills – content + procedural, disclosure control   Social connections, reciprocity

  Creating and sustaining a spiral of social capital building   Nahapiet & Ghoshal (1998)

Network Pedagogies

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  Connectivism   Learning is network formation: adding new nodes, creating new

paths between people and learning resources   “Learning can reside outside of ourselves (within an

organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn are more important than our current state of knowing.” Siemens, G. (2007)

  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

Social Software works to facilitate and build Networks

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  Networks combine personalization with socialization creating transparency (Dalsgaard, 2008)

  Focus is on the individual’s spaces and the way they share and expose their space to others   Reflections (blog)   Tagged Resources (photos, links, tasks)   Accomplishments (portfolio, artifacts)   Sharing and growing interests and skills   Finding friends, study buddies (profiles)   Scheduling, coordinating   Collaborative work spaces (wikis, doc sharing)

Network Tool Set (example)

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Text Text

Stepanyan, Mather & Payne, 2007

Access Controls in Elgg

Brainify.com Social tagging network for students

Networks force Individual Ownership and Construction

  “Networks in contrast (to groups and communities) make no claims about the type and character of the links between nodes” Chris Jones, (2004)

  This forces network participants to more actively engage in their own network development, off loading the responsibility from teachers and empowering learners to build and manage their own networks

 

"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

Researching Educational Networks of Practice

  How to sustain input beyond the course ?   What type of control is needed to support and grow

trust and provide sufficient privacy?   Control and evaluation ?   Appropriate tool sets ?

3. Collectives: Harvesting the Wisdom of Crowds

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3. 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   Smart retrieval from the universal library of resources – human and

learning objects   Allows discovery and validation of norms, values, opinion and “ways of

understanding”

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

Problem with very weak ties   Information, communication and interaction with those

we share very weak ties is likely of most value, because they have access to resources and connections that we do not. But they are also least likely to want to expend energy sharing their data.

  Collective applications work best when we contribute for our individual gain, affording harvesting for collective gain

  Ex. Social bookmarking

Collective Tools

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Collective Examples: Determining our Effect

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  Analysis of blog postings using semantic and matching techniques Potential uses:

uncover suicidal ideation mental health of the community understand evolving communication genres

measure impact of popular memes understanding and predicting early adopters

See Mishne, & de Rijke (2006) Capturing Global Mood Levels using Blog Posts

Collective Example: Terry’s Store at Amazon

Drachsler, H., Hummel, G., & Koper, R. (2009). Identifying the Goal, User model and Conditions of Recommender Systems for Formal and Informal Learning. Journal of Digital Information, 10(2)

Explicit

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  Explicit recommender systems:

  Collective filtering of stories and comments   Customizable by individuals to set quality of comments

displayed   Critical mass essential but demonstrates how informed

readers collectively filter for each other   “6,000 or 7,000 comments on a busy day that other

people write (and review) and just a dozen stories of just a paragraph or two that we actually generate,” Rob Malda, Founder Slashdot

Collective Examples for Educational Application

  Artifact Ranking systems: Google Search; CitULike;   Tag Clouds: What do collectives find of interest?   Recommendation Systems: People like me, like …..   Wikis: Contributions from the crowd   Folksonomies: Bottom up and emergent classification

systems   Voting and auctions: Perfect market?   Prediction Markets:   Net based psychology and sociology

Hive mind? Borgs? Group consciousness?

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  Collectively managing planet Earth   What does it mean to be aware of each other?

Collectives operate as mirrors to monitor and learn from our collective selves (Spivack, 2006)

Are We what we click?   “If you want to understand

the new connected world and how we choose to live in it, Look no further than our Internet behaviour; after all, we are what we click" p 203” Tancer, (2008)

  Behaviours (online searches, paths etc.) viewed collectively offer powerful insights into human behaviour

Collectives, Privacy & Identity   Best way to protect personal integrity is by creating a

robust but realistic web presence.   Your actions are being mined, best to be a miner rather

than a lump of coal!   Active social net users are more socially active and

integrated than non users (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007)

  Use of Blogs reduces feelings of alienation and isolation among online learners (Dickey, 2004)

  When perceived interest and benefits increase, willingness to provide personal data increases (Dinev & Hart, 2006)

Net

Calendar Assignments Grades Syllabus Discussions?

Blogs E-portfolios Resources Course and social Communities

Learning Content

Net

Calendar Assignments Grades syllabus

Blogs E-portfolios Resources Course and social Communities

Learning Content

GROUPS

NETWORKS

Collectives

Where will I find the Time?

Is this stuff just a big fad that I can safely ignore?

  Clay Shirky (2008) social surplus of time “Two hundred billion hours of television watching, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television”

 School is not the primary learning context. By using all the resources of content, places, groups, networks and collectives we prepare students for a life and a love of learning.

Content Connections

Research

  “The class is not the primary learning event. It is life itself that is the main learning event. Schools, classrooms, and training sessions still have a role to play in this vision, but they have to be in the service of the learning that happens in the world.

  Etienne Wenger

"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”

Chinese Proverb

Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca

Blog: terrya.edubogs.org

Your comments and questions most welcomed!

Network Politics   The mere existence of this multiplicity of

nodes in no way implies an inherently, ecumenical or equalitarian order". P. 13 Galloway and Thacker, 2007

  Networks used to wage war on both states and terrorist resistance

  The more the West continues to perfect itself as a monolith of pure, smooth power, the greater the chance of a single asymmetrical attack penetrating straight to the heart” p. 17

Internet Singularity

Ability to Create Digital Artifacts

Human Knowledge

Ability to Analyze the Online World

Gary William Flake Microsoft / MSN http://flakenstein.net/lib/flake-singularity.ppt

“ Primary cause is claimed to be ubiquitous computing, democratization of computing resources, and iterative processes of creation and discovery becoming continuous.”

On average, the production and provision of the distance learning courses consumed nearly 90% less energy and produced 85% fewer CO2 emissions (per student per 10 CAT points) than the conventional campus-based university courses