Elearn 20009 keynote Openness and the Taxonomy fo the Many
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Empowering Professional Openness through Groups, Networks and Collectives Vancouver, BC Oct. 2009 Terry Anderson, Ph.D. Canada Research Chair in Distance Education
Transcript of Elearn 20009 keynote Openness and the Taxonomy fo the Many
Empowering Professional Openness through Groups, Networks and Collectives
Vancouver, BCOct. 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
– Groups– Networks– Collectives
• The Open Scholar
Values
• We can (and must) continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience.
• User control and freedom is integral to 21st Century life-long education and learning.
• Access to learning only 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 usually entails 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 13
LMS OrKMS
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
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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
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 ??
Wave completely demolishes the line between synchronous and asynchronous communication. Mike Feldstein, Oct 2009
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
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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
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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
Openaccessweek.athabascau.ca
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 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
Terry Anderson [email protected]
Homepage: http://cde.athabascau.ca/faculty/terrya.php
Blog: terrya.edublogs.org
Your comments and questions
most welcomed!
