Still, naming things can help to mark a turning point. Or a good name can draw attention to changes and give them a defined form that can be used to capture significant trends. Web 2.0 was one such turning point. In the field of learning, Stephen Downes’ elearning 2.0 article was another.

We are now at a period where technological advancements are beginning to coalesce into something more definitive than a random collection of innovations like FourSquare, semantic web, and augmented reality.

Steve Wheeler kicked off a conversation last week with his presentation on web 3.0. Downes replied suggesting Web X (for web eXtended) would be a good title. A great term – but unfortunately, it sounds like web ex – the online meeting vendor. We need another term. I’ve been thinking about xWeb. But my reaching for clever words was not in isolation. Today Rita Kopp posted on the eXtended Web. Like the development of the terms PLE, connectivism, elearning 2.0, and even web 2.0, xWeb doesn’t represent novel insights. Instead, it gives form to a topic that many people are grappling to define.

What is the xWeb?

xWeb is the utilization of smart, structured data drawn from our physical and virtual interactions and identities to extend our capacity to be known by others and by systems.

This is an imprecise definition, but it’s a start. Many elements are involved, as xWeb builds on previous iterations of the web/web 2.0. What is unique with xWeb is the way in which it will transform how we work, learn, and interact with each other and with information. At one level, it is a maturation of the web – a natural extension of current trends with technology and the internet. At another level, it involves a negotiation of two key questions that I continue to grapple with:
1. What does technology do better than people?
2. What do people do better than technology?

With xWeb, we are rethinking what we have to do as people and starting to rely on what technology does better than we possibly could.

Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to capture the nature of the change around technology. I’ve blogged some of those thoughts here (and on elearnspace), included others in presentations and papers, and captured others on delicious.

Some of the recurring themes:
augmentation
aggregation
semantic web
location-based services (geoweb)
data overlay
smart information
visualization
social media
open data and data in general
Internet of things
cloud computing
mobile technologies
Analytics and monitoring…

And, to that list, we could add filtering, recommender systems, distributed “like this” tools, annotation tools (diigo), wearable computing, and so on.

These comprise the key themes at the centre of the xWeb:

1. The physical and virtual worlds are blurring – as evidenced by augmented reality browsers (Layar) and services like Yelp and Foursquare
2. Data is being laid on top of physical objects (digital graffiti and contextual/historical overlays as well as the 3D web)
3. Data is becoming more intelligent – rather than simply pointing to other sources (as with urls), data is now beginning to quantify the nature of that connection.
4. Physical objects are projecting their presence into the digital (the internet of things)
5. Data is increasingly stored in the cloud, permitting better access across a range of devices
6. Data is increasingly open, permitting new/novel combinations by end users…Google maps was one of the first examples of the power of openness, many examples have followed (including open street maps)
7. The abundance of open data, new data sources (social media, sensors) and numerous data uses (overlay, digital graffiti, and social networks) sets the stage for advanced analytics about end users or the current state of mind in a society (such as Twitter trends). Connections mean things. As connections between people, people and data, and data/data become more abundant and explicit, we can gain new insights into what people are thinking and how/why they are acting.
8. Smarter data with better analysis sets the stage for personalization and adaptation of content/socialization/product provision.
9. Data+analysis+personalization requires the formation of predictive computation: “because you are in this demographic, like these types of movies, are friends with these people, you will like this particular coffee maker”. Instead of searching for data, data finds us. In a sense, data knows us.

Dave delivered a great keynote – slides and podcast are here. TEKRI will post video soon. He combines of deep knowledge on a fairly wide range of subjects (more on that soon), with great wit, and an engaging presentation style. Most importantly, he presents his ideas in a manner that resonates with the audience. Great ideas need to be presented in a manner that sparks new connections and a desire for creativity in an audience. Dave delivered on both accounts.

I agreed with much that Dave had to say – I’ve been addressing similar topics under the umbrella of connectivism: distributed cognition, coherence, social learning, pattern recognition and expertise, and decentralized narratives.

After the conference, Michael Cheveldave (from Cognitive Edge – the company Dave founded to advance his theories and methods) very ably ran a three day accreditation workshop at the TEKRI office. On Tuesday night, Dave stopped in for a two hour informal presentation.

And that is what I’d like to address.

First, information is not power. And, neither is money. Or any of the other terms that get equated with power. Quite simply, integration is power. How an individual or organization forms a coherent view (integrates elements) internally and how it is related to the entities (venture capital firms, government officials, vendors, clients) that either enable or constrain their actions, that ultimately determines success.

What, for example, gives Goldman Sachs their “power”? Is it their wealth? No – other firms and countries have significant wealth but lack the capacity for influence of GS. Is it the location of their headquarters – i.e. New York? No – many top banks are headquartered in London, Hong Kong, or other major cities. No, the real power of GS is how they have managed to integrate their company with businesses and government. The bailout of AIG benefitted GS more than almost any other firm. The fact that former GS leaders hold influential government positions reinforces the company’s integration with government. Power and influence, then, are not single points but rather the capacity of an organization (or individual) to construct an integrated network that not only frames a certain reality or addresses certain problems or situations in society, but also creates very situations that only they can solve.

Goldman Sachs is a great example. When GS created financial instruments of growing complexity, the government needed to hire their employees in order to make sense of the new financial climate. This in turn created a structure that reinforced the power structure of GS, ensuring “too big to fail” status.

What does this have to do with Dave Snowden?

I’m going to make an imperfect leap from power as an integrated network in corporate and government settings to power as integrated knowledge in conversations, education, and society in general. Dave has a wealth of knowledge, drawing effortlessly from poetry, philosophy, organizational theory, and historical events. However, after a few minutes of listening to Dave weave Hegel’s work with complexity science, neuroscience, throw a shot or two and Peter Senge and others, you end up with an entity that is conceptually challenging to interrogate. After Dave had the floor for about 2 hours (with periodic questions from the audience), in the session, he had created a context of discussion that gave him full control to direct and redirect the conversation according to principles and terms that he had established during his presentation. If someone builds a house, you are left with only the option of arranging furniture once they let you in.

I’ll probably insult both people by saying this, but Dave Snowden shares some attributes of certainty in his reasoning with Stephen Downes. They know what they think. They say it clearly and forcefully. Doubt, vagueness, and uncertainty, if they are part of the process of formulating their views, are well-disguised in dialogue. I, in contrast, (as Stephen has noted in his post the vagueness of George Siemens) do not possess this certainty. I’m somewhat at peace with ambiguity, vagueness, and uncertainty. As philosophers, both Stephen and Dave have been trained for precision in word use and thought.

Dave’s ability to bring a broad knowledge base to bear on knowledge, complexity, and organizations change (with an air of knowingness) results in many nodding heads as he speaks and very little debate when he is done. Essentially, his mode of dialogue creates an integrated cognitive structure (i.e. power base) that is largely unassailable without attempting to interrogate and dismantle each element that he has already connected. This is, I’m sure, why he is a sought after speaker and consultant.

About SenseMaker

During a Cognitive Edge accreditation workshop, I encountered SenseMaker. SenseMaker is an important tool. Grad students conducting research that involves narrative analysis will find this to be an exceptionally useful piece of software. SM takes qualitative data (narratives) and adds a quantitative overlay through a process of self-signification. There is much to be excited about here.

I signed some sort of NDA, so I haven’t a clue how much detail I can go into about SM. Basically, as a narrative-driven tool, SM offers researchers, business people, politicians, policy makers, and others to make sense of complex situations. But is narrative capturing and self-signification sufficient to “make sense” of complex subjects? In the edfuture course, we’re exploring trends and patterns. These will be used as a basis for considering long term implications in society and education. The value of tracking trends – drawing on reliable data sources (World Bank, Unesco, UN, US gov’t) as well as narratives – rests in challenging our existing views, thereby reducing our rigid existing frame of reference and increasing our capacity for adaptivity.

The inclusion of external, non-narrative data sources, are not part of SenseMaker. Perhaps I’m looking for a tool that does too much, but I can’t separate narrative from the tremendous amounts of data now being created and captured by organizations (and by our constant externalizing of our activities and thoughts through social media and mobile devices). As Stephen Wolfram has stated, the future of science, and the biggest innovation of our era, is computation. I’ve been playing with the concept of learning analytics for several years, but I see analytics as part of a larger integrated information structure. It’s nice to know what learners are doing, but I want the ability to situate this information in a larger context of economics, societal trends, and other influencing factors. I’ll tackle this in more detail in a subsequent post. For now, I want to emphasize the value of SenseMaker for research and express my desire for a complimentary tool that offers a more integrated data-driven approach to sensemaking.

1. I’ll be able to collaborate with Gráinne Conole. I met Gráinne a few years ago when we were both presenting at a conference in Lisbon. She continues to make enormous contributions to the educational technology field.
2. The IRRODL journal is one of the (if not the) most widely cited journal in educational technology/distance/online education.

Special Edition: Connectivism: Design and delivery of social networked learning

Edited by George Siemens (Athabasca University) and Gráinne Conole (Open University)

The special issue will have its main focus on Connectivism and social networked learning in distance and open education.

Particular emphasis will be placed on emerging technologies, innovative design and evaluation approaches to the design and delivery of social networked learning, learning theory frameworks for digital learning, faculty development through distributed models, innovative pedagogical approaches, research on effectiveness and applicability of connectivism in various contexts, historical roots of social networked learing, and comparison studies between major learning theories in relation to connectivism.

We particularly welcome papers on:

• Actor Network Theory in relation to social networked learning
• Activity Theory
• Critique of Connectivism as a learning theory
• Design methodologies for social networked learning
• Personal learning environments and learning management systems
• Research agenda around Connectivism
• Distributed learning in fragmented information environments
• Open learning and transparent teaching
• New theoretical insights into understanding new technologies
• Models and frameworks for social networking
• Innovative approaches to the design and delivery of social networked learning
• Case studies and empirical studies on social networked learning
• Epistemological foundations for networked knowledge

Authors are cautioned that the International Review of Open and Distance Learning is not soliciting manuscripts dealing with technology use in traditional classrooms.

More information is available here.

Timelines:

March 30 – Call for Papers
May 30 – Call closed
July 30 – Peer review completed, revisions requested
August 30 – final copy due
October 30 – Issue released

Portugal has initiated an unprecedented roll out of computers in a device called the Magellan. Magellan is a small computer based on Intel’s Classmate – dual boot Linux/Windows XP – that costs each student about 50 Euro (~$65 USD). Parents who want an extra computer have to pay something closer to 300 Euro. Having distributed 470 000 Magellan laptops to grade one students over the last two years, the Observatory is tasked with researching the impact of these initiatives and suggesting ways forward with the Technology Plan for Education (TPE). (Portugal will also be providing 1 million Magellans to Venezuela).

Portugal is approaching at 2:1 computer student ration, though at younger levels, it’s closer to 1:1. Early research results aren’t surprising:
- Students are heavy users of computers, but not for education.
- Teachers make limited use of computers and other technologies in class
- Parents are limited computer users
- Teacher training is lacking in utilizing computers effectively in classrooms

I presented the following concluding thoughts to the Observatory at the close of the conference:

At the core of the discussion surrounding the future of education is a concern of how to navigate shifting power and control. What is the role of the student? The teacher? The school? The parents? If learners have the ability to do what educators have done in the past (access information directly), what role should the educator play?

Part of the discussion this week has been on the lack of computer use in classrooms. I’ve been thinking about this argument for several years. I’ve concluded that class time is not wisely used. It’s expensive to get educators and students together in a physical space. Perhaps classrooms are not the place to emphasize computer use. Perhaps face-to-face time should take on a different model than we currently utilize. We should do what we can with technology outside of classrooms. Then we wouldn’t need to meet in classrooms as often.

I mean, if I’m at a face-to-face conference and all of the sessions are online, why bother attending in the first place? It’s the classroom model that needs rethinking, not computer use in classrooms. Stop trying to bend and twist the technology medium to serve f2f needs. Sure, there are instances where searching or tweeting about a subject may help extend the conversation. But, depending on the age level of learners, I think we’re often further ahead to extend the learning process with technology (i.e. out of classroom) and focus our valuable f2f time to do things that we can’t do online.

The Portuguese Secretary of Education made an interesting opening remark during the conference opening: schools are the primary vehicle for addressing societal inequality. I agree. We need the function schools currently perform. I’m not convinced, however, that we need schools as we know them today in order to meet this vital obligation.

When we start crafting models that have a future focus, we need to find some premise for making our decisions. How will we decide if our choices are the correct ones when we don’t yet know of the impact? I suggest that a good choice today is the one that gives us the greatest range of future choices tomorrow. When we don’t know where the future is trending, we need to adopt a many-small-experiments model. We can’t bet everything on one approach. When we cannot anticipate, we must investigate. Small experiments are key.

Most of us in education agree on our needs today:

1. We want good teachers
2. We want good educational content
3. We want to give our learners a bright and hopeful future
4. We want school systems that are relevant to learners and to society
5. We want schools to remedy the social and cultural inequalities that other institutions of society generate

While we agree on the purpose, role, and need of education, we don’t agree on the way to fulfill these needs. We have a sense of the future we desire, but are adrift in conflicting views in how to achieve.

Five key areas are worth considering:

Technology

I often hear, as I have this week, that technology is neutral, that it is a tool that we select and use. I strongly disagree. Technology is not neutral. Each tool reflects certain philosophies and beliefs that are designed (or coded) into it. Software is a mix of constraining and controlling choices reflective of corporation or programmer goals and intentions. Technology is also actively promoted by a host of corporations and individuals who seek personal gain through this promotion. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it just is.

Why is it that we are so certain about technology? Does anyone think we will be using less technology in a year? In five years? At what point do we pause and ask “Am I using too much technology?” or “How am I being changed by my reliance on technology?”. At what stage do we say “Enough. Here is my limit.”? Or is technology a limitless landscape that in inextricably bound to humanist ideals of progress?

I’m a huge supporter of technology. But I’m more and more interested in the boundaries – if any – we are prepared to place on its role and influence in our daily lives. Is there any other concept in our lives where we permit such limitless future influence?

And this is the irony of technology: Technology creates problems that can only be solved by more technology. Others have said this before. But it is quickly becoming an inescapable reality in our daily lives. The technology and innovations in healthcare that have extended human life and created modern cities have also contributed to population explosion. The only way to feed a world with 6+ billion people (a number only made possible by technology) is to rely on more technology: fish farms, GMOs, etc.

Technology is philosophy. Technology is ideology.

Many of the battles that humanity has fought in the past about human rights, societal organization, democracy, and the role of government, are now being renegotiated in the digital realm. A programmer is today’s policy maker: you can do this, but not that. Software companies are today’s property owners: this is my content, but I’ll let you farm it on my land (or site).

When I hear people talk about the neutrality of technology, I get worried. This ideology-blindness is disconcerting. We are controlled by what we’ve created as much as we control it. Technology is now more than an extension or augmentation of humanity. It is increasingly becoming humanity. Today, I view my iphone less like a device than I do as a part of my cognition. We need to surface technology’s hidden ideologies and philosophies. If we don’t surface these aspects, we dance blindly to a tune that we refuse to acknowledge, but still shapes our moves.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning are the most important aspects of the TPE. Teachers will continue to play a vital role in the lives of students in the foreseeable future. Investments in building educator capacity are important. Children are whole beings; their understanding, their learning, and their knowledge do not segment the way our society is structured: home, school, play. TPE’s emphasis on evaluating family technology use and the out of class contributions of technology to learner development are valuable.

Alternative pedagogy – one that abandons the ideological tethering from previous eras – requires that we answer several questions: Which classroom practices does technology render obsolete? What changed roles do learners and teachers play in this game? What systemic inefficiencies need to be addressed? Which policies hinder, rather than enable, systemic adaptation? These questions are at the heart of educational reform.

We need to know what we are changing to, not what we are changing from.

Practical concerns exist. Preliminary research by the Observatory shows many students are helping teachers with setting up computers, using the whiteboards, and other technical tasks. Teacher’s use of technology is, I suspect, heavily influenced by confidence. Other concerns arise as to the physical set up of the classrooms. A point was made during the conference about classrooms now requiring curtains or blinds to reduce screen glare. Most classrooms are not equipped with sufficient power outlets for recharging laptops. Practical concerns of this nature cannot be overlooked in a successful national laptop roll out.

Content

What will we learn in the future is largely irrelevant from the standpoint of today. How will we learn in the future is critical. In this sense, content is closely tied to innovation in teaching and learning practices.

Content has taken a beating over the last decade. First with web 2.0 and now with social media, focus has been on interaction and engagement. Obviously content has a role to play. The key question for me is whether we need content in order to start learning or whether content is the by-product of an effective learning experience. I’m somewhat partial to the latter view: engaged learners tackling complex subjects under the direction of a talented teacher will learn more than those who consume content. MIT’s decision to discontinue first year physics class lectures attests to this.

Content providers to education, after a long period of drubbing, are beginning to find their niche and to push their agenda: high value content, interactive content, well-organized and structured content. During the conference, we heard that publishers feel that we need them and that without their contributions, we are somewhat lost. Quality, structured content was presented as the means to solve education’s dilemmas.

While context is the primary determinant of how we balance content and interaction, I have a different view of content from what publishers promote. I’m not convinced that nicely packaged and structured content is what we need. Yes, I can understand how well structured content can lead to content personalization. But beautiful structures are of limited value when they fail to serve the needs of society. Properly tagged content, tied to learning objectives and learning profiles means nothing if it doesn’t assist in developing the learners ability to produce personal content (rather than being fed personalized content).

We can organize our content in two primary ways: technologically or socially. These methods have some overlap. Technology enables the social (folksonomies) and the social drives the technological (Facebook). There seems to be a drive to organize the worlds content in a type of digital Library of Alexandria. I think that’s a reasonable idea. But we have to ask ourselves how digital content should be organized based on what it is rather than on our assumptions of content organization.

If we were to build a library today, what would it look like? What would we include? How would we make sense of it? Do we worry about having too much? Or do we take a Google-like approach and dump everything, wherever, and apply intelligence at the point of search. Do we need organization applied at the point of content creation or do we need it applied at the point of use or search?

Quality of content is a genuine concern. A pure dichotomy doesn’t exist, but we can see points of tension: Apple App Store vs Androd Apps, Britannica vs Wikipedia. How much curation do we need? How will we determine quality? How will end-user feedback inform our actions?

The availability of open educational resources also changes the teachers role in relation to content. Teachers should use freely available resources wherever possible. If resources don’t exist on a subject, these should be developed collaboratively across school systems. In terms of content, learners should create, teachers should curate.

Leadership

Technology is, possibly in a positive sense, a lever for change. The systemic innovation that many desire may not be possible through policy decisions alone. Large scale changes – globalization, warming, population growth, economics – provide fertile soil for change. Technology can be seen as the fertilizer that aids growth of the seeds we plant in this soil. Regrettably, many people have only a vague sense of the change desired.

Education is largely vision-less.

We adopt catch phrases from popular media pundits. What we need is substance – a vision and a means to discover the suitability of that vision. What we have, instead, is mental pablum, ill-informed anti-school rants, and general poor quality thinking. As Dan Meyer recently stated, the further a person is removed from the school system, the less encumbered they feel to see the reality of schooling in society.

Leadership can be somewhat attended to by the contributions of many. When we distribute control, we distribute responsibility. As I commented on NETP, grand schemes and plans benefit from contributions of individuals. Ideas of reform should be shaped by the voices of those who are impacted. Leadership in education should concern itself with creating spaces for vibrant discussion and use these spaces as a means to test their ideas of change. Ultimately, school leaders are accountable to funding agencies. While I’d like to rant against this structure, for now I’ll reserve my comments to the need for leaders to solicit input from diverse voices and to engaging on ongoing network (connected) discussions with systems around the world. Swanson has stated that (.pdf) undiscovered public knowledge can help to foster innovations and novel connections.

Leadership also faces basic tasks of managing supplies of technology, repairs, ensuring vendors (hardware and software) are held to established procedures and standards. It is difficult to establish the proper mix of pursuing innovation while addressing practical day-to-day details. Once Magellans are in the hands of students, the inevitable question of maintenance arises. What happens if hardware fails? What about new versions of the hardware or software? What about in-class technologies such as interactive whiteboards and LCD projectors? Initiating a project is often easier than sustaining it.

And then there is the difficulty of the social and organizational dimensions of change. Change management and incentive strategies can help move an agenda forward. However, leaders don’t need people who do what has been planned. Today, leaders need co-leaders – people who are active in experimenting and exploring future directions.

Leaders face a large scale rebalancing of education. They need to find new points of balance: between teacher/learner, planning/emergence, organized/complex, top-down/grassroots. The entities that will shape our future are already in play. It’s about new and novel combinations, finding new states of relatedness.

Research

Portugal is in a unique position. What is being done with technology in schools is what many countries will do in the future. It is important for Portugal to share and publish work on this front. Many are watching and many will turn to the system as a model for consideration as they develop their own digital learning structures.

Research on the impact of technology can be tackled in four ways:

1. Good description: As Latour states, writing good descriptions of what’s happing is hard work, but very informative. I’m somewhat reluctant to use surveys as their value is limited and often provides little more than confirmation of what an active practicioner already knows. Writing excellent, thorough descriptions of what is happening can be very valuable in coming to understand the nuances of a phenomenon. This is especially true when multiple narratives are included in the final assessment.
2. Patents/innovation/entrepreneurs: How does a technologically literate populace impact society? Long term trends include raise in intellectual property through increased patents, new inventions, and new organizations or startups. Unfortunately, this impact requires clear vision and patience – an increasingly rare mix in an electorate accustomed to sound bites. However, Portugal will know this initiative has been successful if, twenty years forward, new companies and new innovations drive its economy.
3. Sustained, long term evaluation – determine not only trends and actions, but also changes in actions. If a group of learners use laptops for certain tasks, how does their use change over time? When does change, change. This is where it gets interesting. Long term observational and use studies can provide insight into new patterns of use.
4. Because it’s the way of progress – I have not seen any studies that evaluate the effectiveness of the iPod in listening to music. For end-users, it’s not an issue. They use it because it works. Perhaps research in educational technology should have a similar focus: use it because it exists, because it is a part of society, because it is used in other aspects of their lives. By this metric, simply have computers available and using them for learning is success enough.

I’m reminded of a statement: the easiest way to lead is to get in front of a parade. As such, I’m quite confident making the statement that national level technology and pedagogy changes – such as Portugal has initiated – will be common proclamations over the next several years.

Education systems have to start to change somewhere: if a technological basis of education is not developed now, it will have to be developed in the future. Countries collapse future opportunities to choices made today. The need, therefore, is to create national systems that have the greatest flexibility and options for future connections/choices. For all its shortcomings and failings, no approach offers the large (potential) array of future connections that technology offers. To embrace it at a systemic level is no longer a matter of choice. It is a matter of societal need.

I’ve posted below that I wrote while at University of Manitoba addressing the LMS/PLE issue. I’m not sure how long an archive of their copy will exist, so posting it here might give it a bit more of an existence.

A Review of Learning Management System Reviews

October 6, 2006

Learning Technologies Centre, University of Manitoba

George Siemens

Abstract

Learning management systems (WebCT, BlackBoard, Desire2Learn, Angel, Moodle) hold a position of first choice in learning technology adoption within higher education.  Selecting a traditional Learning Management System (LMS) requires balancing learning and management. Theinitial intent of an LMS was to enable administrators and educators to manage the learning process. This mindset is reflected in the features typically promoted by vendors: ability to track student progress, manage content, roster students, and such. The learning experience takes a back seat to the management functions. Numerous reports (citing administrators, IT departments, and educators) laud the management functions of an LMS. To-date, student experiences and efficacy of the tools have been subjected to limited research. The position offered in this report encourages an organizational definition of learning as the starting point for selecting a technology platform for creating and delivery learning content. A clear definition of learning vision and desired future states, created through input from stakeholders (administrators, faculty, students, and information services) should provide the foundation for decision making, and the boundaries of platform selection. This report covers the typical decision-making criteria utilized by various organizations in selecting an enterprise LMS—most often with the intention of settling on a single, system-wide platform.

Introduction and Background

While virtual learning environments have been available in some capacity since 1960, “the PLATO system featured multiple roles, including students who could study assigned lessons and communicate with teachers through on-line notes, instructors, who could examine student progress data, as well as communicate and take lessons themselves, and authors, who could do all of the above, plus create new lessons” (Wikipedia, 2006a, 1960s section, ¶ 1). Learning management systems have only been available, in roughly their present form, since the 1990s (Vollmer , 2003), with Blackboard and WebCT being broadly adopted in universities and colleges by early 2000 (Online, 2006). Initial versions of an LMS focused on organizing and managing course content and learners. As with many organizations, higher education was unsure about the role of technology in the educational process.

Aggressive sales and state or province-wide licenses resulted in WebCT and Blackboard—now merged as one company (Blackboard, 2006a) cornering over 75% or the market (Mullin, 2005). The rapid penetration of learning management systems as key tools for learning occurs in a vacuum of solid research as to their effectiveness in increasing learning—or even indication of best practices for technology implementation. Pedagogy is generally a secondary consideration to student management; some researchers attempted to bridge research from face-to-face environments to technology spaces (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996)—a practice that may be convenient, but errs in assuming that the online space is an extension of physical instruction, not an alternative medium with unique affordances. Learning management systems became the default starting point of technology enabled learning in an environment largely omitting faculty and learner needs.

Learning Circuits’ (n.d.) publication, A Field Guide to Learning Management Systems, revealed the nature of most LMS decisions at committee levels (an experience paralleled in academic environments): “an LMS should integrate with other enterprise application solutions used by HR and accounting, enabling management to measure the impact, effectiveness, and over all cost of training initiatives” (p. 1). The value of an LMS is ensconced in language of management and control—notions that most academics would perceive as antagonistic to the process of learning. Most LMS options, features, and comparisons (LMS Options, 2006) focus on tools included in a suite, not on how to foster and encourage learning in relation to an organization’s definition of “what it means to learn.” Discussions of features are divorced from emphasis on learning opportunities.

Current LMS Trends and Needs

After almost a decade of LMS experience, educators and administrators are beginning to question the prominence of an LMS. In a recent LMS governance report, Wise and Quealy (2006) stated “the educational significance of LMS is largely overemphasized and misunderstood …[suggesting it is critical for a university to] … understand itself—what it values, what it does well and how it does it, what it would like to do, and how it might do this” (p. 4).

In a previous publication (Siemens, 2004b), this report author has suggested that LMS in general are the wrong starting point for learning:

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are often viewed as being the starting point (or critical component) of any elearning or blended learning program. This perspective is valid from a management and control standpoint, but antithetical to the way in which most people learn today.

Learning management systems like WebCT, Blackboard, and Desire2Learn offer their greatest value to the organization by providing a means to sequence content and create a manageable structure for instructors/administration staff. The “management” aspect of a learning management system creates another problem: much like we used to measure “bums in seats” for program success, we now see statistics of “students enrolled in our LMS” and “number of page views by students” as an indication of success/progress. The underlying assumption is that if we just expose students to the content, learning will happen. (¶ 1-2)

Two broad approaches exist for learning technology implementation:

1. The adoption of a centralized learning management approach. This may include development of a central learning support lab where new courses are developed in a team-based approach—consisting of subject matter expert, graphic designers, instructional designer, and programmers. This model can be effective for creation of new courses and programs receiving large sources of funding. Most likely, however, enterprise-wide adoption (standardizing on a single LMS) requires individual departments and faculty members to move courses online by themselves. Support may be provided for learning how to use the LMS, but moving content online is largely the responsibility of faculty. This model works well for environments where faculty have a high degree of autonomy, though it does cause varying levels of quality in online courses.
2. Personal learning environments (PLEs) are a recent trend addressing the limitations of an LMS. Instead of a centralized model of design and deployment, individual departments select from a collage of tools—each intending to serve a particular function in the learning process. Instead of limited functionality, with highly centralized control and sequential delivery of learning, a PLE provides a more contextually appropriate toolset. The greater adaptability to differing learning approaches and environments afforded by PLEs is offset by the challenge of reduced structure in management and implementation of learning. This can present a significant challenge when organizations value traditional lecture learning models.

The two dramatically opposing approaches to elearning deployment require consideration of what learning means within an institutional context.

Selection Criteria

Reviews of LMS selection criteria fluctuated considerably within the cases reviewed, often reflecting a lack of clear focus on intentions of an LMS as a learning support tool. These criteria were generally considered important:

1. Ease of use by faculty and students
2. Integration with a learning object repository
3. Functionality and tools available
4. Transition ease and cost from existing tool
5. Integration with other enterprise-wide tools
6. Extendibility—configuration to the university or college
   environment
7. Cost

Cases Considered

Learning Management Systems: A Review

In LMS: A Review, Hultin (In press) analyzed key criteria to consider when adopting an LMS, and offers various common platforms. LMS purchasing mistakes include:

1. Skirting senior management
2. Failing to spell out your needs
3. Comparing apples and oranges
4. Excluding IT from the process
5. Focusing more on price than on value
6. Overlooking scalability
7. Ignoring LMS interoperability
8. Overlooking vendor track records
9. Selecting customization instead of configurability (pp. 4-5)

The report attended to divergent needs of different users (administrators, faculty, course developers, learners), context of use (internet connections), usability, and time required to learn the LMS. To meet the needs of various users, a learning environment was offered as a valuable aspect of LMS implementation, while learning environments in this context were linked to an LMS, they will be presented later as an alternative to an LMS:

An important aspect of the learning environments is that they don’t realize any pedagogical models or create learning for the individuals itself. It demands a context based on a pedagogical idea. The pedagogical idea can be realized and strengthened with appropriate learning environments. It is therefore important to integrate the possibilities with Internet based learning already in the idea—and production phase when developing course content. (p. 8 )

Learning environments were categorized as: (a) communication (asynchronous and synchronous), (b) distribution, (c) test and assessment, and (d) interaction (p. 9).

Over the last several years, specialized service providers (like Questionmark, CourseGenie, and Articulate) have offered enhanced testing and content development tools—replacing the tools included in many LMS. This trend is resulting in LMS vendors providing “partners” (Blackboard, 2006d) with priority status in developing and integrating third-party tools.

Melbourne-Monash Collaboration in Educational Technologies

Input from diverse stakeholders within the university environment was solicited during this report. Informal conversations—with individuals directly involved in LMS implementation, support, and administration—were combined with internal reports, meeting minutes, a literature review, and project management reports (Wise & Quealy, 2006). The report presented two broad approaches for LMS governance:

1. Top-down, command-and-control: Adopt a system, mandate its use, provide support, identify needs and support through new tools as needed (p. 18), and
2. Bottom-up, emergent: “moves governance into the unordered, ambiguous realm of social complexity” (p. 19) by offering support based on elements of use that emerge.

Governance styles must be aligned with the nature of intended learning. The adoption of technology for learning will differ based on faculty learning models and needs. Medical faculty will require different tools and approaches than Engineering or Arts faculties. To suppose on enterprise-wide model of LMS implementation and governance is to overwrite and obscure the multi-faceted nature of learning and knowledge acquisition (and creation).

The governance model utilized in the Melbourne-Monash report (Wise & Quealy, 2006) relied on ten key principles:

1. Lay solid foundations for management and oversight
2. Structure the board to add value
3. Promote ethical and responsible decision making
4. Safeguard integrity in financial reporting
5. Make timely and balanced disclosure
6. Respect the rights of shareholders
7. Recognize and manage risk
8. Encourage enhanced performance
9. Remunerate fairly and responsibly
10. Recognize the legitimate interests of stakeholders. (p. 24)

The inclusion of a structured process for LMS review, selection, and governance provides value to all stakeholders. A clear process of selection, preferably tied into the larger university vision of “what it means to learn, dialogue, reflect, and inquire,” ensures the selection process is not vendor-driven or focused on only one aspect of university operation (i.e., needs of the IT department, enrolment and registration, etc.). The needs and interests of learners, however, were not directly addressed in the Melbourne-Monash Report.

EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR)

Beyond merely defining a suite of tools, LMS evaluations should “focus on the processes that underlie creating, preparing, teaching, and taking a course” (Hanson & Robson, 2003, p. 2). Most selection reviews “have typically focused on comparisons of feature checklists and on costs, often narrowly defined as license fees” (p. 2). Additional consideration should also be given to the university’s definition of effective learning, pedagogical models, and larger visions for a changed society—contrast fostering critical thinking with developing learners for the workforce.

ECAR (Hanson & Robson, 2003) presented several guidelines, or steps, for selecting course management systems:

1. Determine process benefits (p. 3). This step involves determining critical processes, benefits, and features. For example, synchronous communication tools may be deemed as critical for extended education departments, while collaborative spaces (like wikis) may be important to on-campus only departments.
2. Assigning value to products and features (p. 4). Once learning processes have been defined, products and features are explored. Synchronous learning—in the above example—can be supported through a variety of tools—whiteboard, instant messaging, Skype (or other external voice over IP applications), or integrated tools such as
   Elluminate and Horizon Wimba.
3. Assigning costs (p. 6). Cost determination is complex. Due to established technology investments (for example, an existing LMS), costs involve more than determining license fees. Integration, support, and faculty training costs will comprise a significant part of the total investment.

Learning Management System Strategic Review

California State University (Adams et al., 2005) conducted an LMS review of Blackboard, WebCT Campus Edition, WebCT Vista, Desire2Learn, and open source systems Moodle and Sakai. After an initial review, all LMS were disqualified, except for WebCT Vista and Blackboard. WebCT Vista was ultimately selected.

Systems were disqualified for a variety of reasons including: previous scale of integration, incompatible with “campus data center standards” (Adams et al., 2005, p. 5), limited feature sets, limited ease of use, open source movement still in infancy, and lack of confidence in product support by an LMS vendor. Mention of learner/faculty concerns were largely ignored in the report. Brief mention was made of “ease of use,” eportfolios, and pedagogical flexibility, which is not defined (p. 7). Migration, training, history with vendor, and technical concerns formed the bulk of decision-making criteria.

Course Management System

University of Oklahoma (CMS Task Force, 2000b) expanded its search for an LMS by including a series of surveys from faculty and students. The survey questions focused on individuals selecting needed features to support learning. As with other surveys and assessments, learning remained vague, poorly defined, and disconnected from how the organization viewed teaching and learning. Faculty responses were particularly revealing of the emphasis on “what works for me” versus “how does this align with larger organizational learning objectives:”

1. Please keep WebCT! I have hundreds of hours invested in WebCT.
2. Most other universities in the Great Plains Consortium use WebCt so I have a preference for remaining with that system.
3. I have been using the blackboard system for past three years. I really enjoyed this system which meets all my needs. I hope this system can be kept.
4. Switching to new CMS is a time-consuming (and for some faculty) an overwhelming endeavour—so, please, please make this decision with the unconfident computer user in mind – not the power users.
5. I only use WebCT because I have no choice. (Faculty Overall Comments section)

Evaluation of Learning Management System Software

This report focused on “the issues or consideration for online pedagogy that impact on the selection of an e-learning platform” (Wyles, 2004, p. 4). The focus on pedagogy raised important questions:

1. What pedagogy will be used?
2. Will the pedagogy work over the internet?

Emphasis for the evaluation of these questions is based on Chickering and Ehrmann’s (1996) paper Technology as Lever. As mentioned previously, this report assumed that many of the tasks and goals of classroom activity can simply be transferred online. The growth of alternative models of online engagement, as well as parallel conversations found through use of blogs and RRS feeds—such as social bookmarking, tagging, social networks—reveals a dynamic where end-user control grows in prominence. The principles provided by many face-to-face to online transfers of principles or practices does not account for the transformative elements of online learning.

Laying aside the criticism presented, Evaluation of Learning Management System Software (Wyles, 2004) was particularly effective in matching tools (email, bulletin boards, chat, quizzes, tutorials, wikis, etc.) with the work of Chickering, Ehrmann, and Gamson. A critical concept was expressed in the report summary: “Educational institutions need more flexibility and control over their e-learning environments to enable different schools, programmes, course, or instructors to select and deploy the most appropriate e-learning tools suited to the pedagogy” (p. 6). Any LMS selection process should involve a similar match of functionality with the organization’s definition of teaching and learning.

Commonwealth of Learning: LMS Open Source

Open source tools like Moodle and Sakai continue to attract broad interest. The prospects of cost savings in license fees (though fee savings at this level may result in additional investment in maintenance and support) and potential for customization are attractive to organizations.

Commonwealth of Learning (2003) reviewed two open source platforms: ATutor and ILIAS. The methodology used was similar to other reviews listed previously (though focused only on open source options):

1. Develop evaluation criteria
2. Identify open source candidates
3. Filter candidates to produce a short list
4. Systemic evaluation of features
5. Systems evaluation of general criteria
6. Recommendation. (p. 3)

Criteria for selection included:

1. Features and functionality
2. Cost of ownership
3. Maintainability and ease of maintenance
4. Usability and ease of use and user documentation
5. Current user community
6. Openness
7. Standards compliancy
8. Integration capacity
9. LOM integration
10. Reliability
11. Scalability
12. Intellectual property security
13. Hardware and software considerations
14. Multilingual support. (pp. 4-6)

Absent from the selection list is a complaint levelled at other reviews: the act and process of teaching and learning are largely ignored in the pursuit of functions, features, integration, and a myriad of other organizational concerns. The very purpose for which an LMS should be selected seems to be a secondary concern in most evaluations of technology solutions. Obviously an LMS needs to be stable, effective (however that is defined), supported, and integrated with other tools. Yet the failure to first define organizational views of learning results in an unanchored and misplaced model of LMS selection.

Change Challenges

Vendor Lock-in

Vendor lock-in is prominent in the LMS space. Lock-in is described as: “a situation in which a customer is so dependent on a vendor for products and services that he or she cannot move to another vendor without substantial switching costs, real and/or perceived” (Wikepedia, 2006, ¶ 1). Due to a combination of proprietary software, weak
standards-adherence, and lack of foresight by colleges and universities, organizations are placed in a position where existing tools are weighted more highly due to financial and procedural constraints, rather than an evaluation on tool effectiveness for teaching and learning. For education institutions focused on innovating course design and delivery to align with rapid societal changes, lock-in is a significant barrier to the diverse options required to “seed, select, and amplify” (Johnson, 2001, p. 42) approaches to innovation.

Faculty Comfort

Learning management systems are still developing in functionality. The last several years has seen existing providers extend their toolset to include tools currently growing in popularity with many online learners: blogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networking. Blackboard (2006c) recently announced Blackboard Beyond Initiative to integrate Web 2.0 functionality to the system.

For many faculty members, the challenges of learning a new tool require a significant investment in time. Departments face challenges with the nature of content, often created to work within a certain LMS—standards
are generally loosely followed, and even where compliance exists, fine tuning is often required.

A Word of Caution

Educational institutions seeking to adopt an LMS should be wary of Blackboard and WebCT, which BB recently acquired. Blackboard (2006b) recently received patent approval for key components of an LMS and initiated a lawsuit against Desire2Learn. The anti-open competition stance has a potentially chilling effect on learning platforms and the development of the industry as a whole. The patent comes at a time when provosts (Jaschik, 2006) are increasingly acknowledging the value of open source and collaboration. The preservation of intellectual property is a cornerstone of academic advancement. Claiming the work of other researchers as one’s own is unacceptable in academic environments and should cause decision makers to reflect on the values and corporate commitment to the health of a discipline, by organizations seeking to close down innovations that have been publicly documented as collaborative in nature (Wikepedia, 2006).

Limitations of LMS Selection Models

The most prominent difficulty, or limitation of review models explored, was the lack of focus on, or connection to, broader organizational views of learning. Instead of learning driving the tool selected, the process of reviewing and selecting an LMS often resulting in a tool that served other organizational needs (student management, content creation, etc.) in advance of learning itself.

Numerous factors impact successful LMS implementation. Key stakeholders include: (a) administrators, (b) faculty, (c) IT and technical support, (d) learners, and (e) curriculum developers.

LMS reviews considered in this paper generally erred in selecting or attending to the needs of one stakeholder at the expense of others. In selecting an LMS., an argument could be made for the supremacy of learning and the quality of learning, as being the most significant element in technology-enabled education.

Within the span of a decade, an LMS has moved from a support tool to the learning process, to the guardrails of what is possible. For many institutions, management, not learning, has become the most prominent criteria in e-learning.

The enterprise-wide, controlled, centralized learning model serves a particular type of learning (often entry-level or foundational). As learners move beyond content consumption and into stages of critical thinking, collaboration, and content creation, LMS weaknesses become apparent. For this reason, the definition of a university’s learning philosophy is critical in guiding LMS activities.

Seeking Alternative Directions

Educator frustration with LMS views of learning is driving alternative views of learning. Instead of having the software define learning, organizations are beginning to first define learning, and then seek tools (and tool suites) to meet desired needs.

All learning management systems. are not alike, and they can be used in different ways. However, a common idea behind an LMS is that e-learning is organized and managed within an integrated system. Different tools are integrated in a single system which offers all necessary tools to run and manage an e-learning course. All learning activities and materials in a course are organized and managed by and within the system. Learning management systems typically offer discussion forums, file sharing, management of assignments, lesson plans, syllabus, chat, etc.

Recently, the emergence of social software has questioned the use of an integrated LMS. Today, only few social software tools are employed within existing learning management systems. The question is: Is the next step to integrate social software tools in LMS? Social software has initiated discussions about the extent to which tools should be separated or integrated in systems. (Dalsgaard, 2006, Integrating section, ¶ 1-2)

Koper (2004) described the allure and promise of alternative learning models not based on management, but based on increased learner control:

Self-organised learning networks provide a base for the establishment of a form of education that goes beyond course and curriculum centric models, and envisions a learner-centred and learner controlled model of lifelong learning. In such learning contexts learners have the same possibilities to act that teachers and other staff members have in regular, less learner-centred educational approaches. In addition these networks are designed to operate without increasing the workload for learners or staff members.

This model does not exclusively replace traditional learning approaches, but does provide greater alignment with the emerging work-life-learning triad. Instead of learning housed in content management systems, learning is embedded in rich networks and conversational spaces. The onus, again, falls on the university to define its views of learning.

Social Software and PLEs

Two key areas are gaining substantial attention: (a) social software, and (b) personal learning environments (PLEs). Social software and PLEs have recently gained attention as alternatives to the structured model of an LMS. PLEs are defined as: “systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning” (van Harmelen, 2006, ¶ 1).
PLEs “are about articulating a conceptual shift that acknowledges the reality of distributed learning practices and the range of learner preference” (Fraser, 2006, ¶ 9). A variety of informal, socially-based tools comprise this space:

(a) blogs,
(b) wikis,
(c) social bookmarking sites,
(d) social networking sites (may be pure networking, or directed around an activity, 43 Things or flickr are examples),
(e) content aggregation through RSS or Atom,
(f) integrated tools, like elgg.net,
(g) podcast and video cast tools,
(h) search engines,
(i) email, and
(j) Voice over IP.

The shortcomings of these approaches rest in their lack of integration and the control required by many universities. The experience of many educators parallels my own—learners are very active with technology, but once in an LMS space, they seldom do more than the minimum required (a particular concern in courses where dialogue and theory are important to explore). This may be a function of students taking on “the student role”—defaulting to passive behaviour—once in an academic environment. It may also be due to the change in behaviour expected by educators—where learners must leave their tools behind and adopt tools with limited functionality. For an individual used to Skyping, blogging, tagging, creating podcasts, or collaboratively writing an online document, the transition to a learning management system is a step back in time (by several years).

Recommended Process Forward

Different types of learning require different approaches. As educators, our selection of tools is determined by how we answer the question: “What types of technologies best suits a particular learning context?” (Sessums, 2006, Abstract, ¶ 1). Tool selection in advance of context determination eviscerates subsequent use and adoption. Learning management systems have been effective in eliminating the challenges faced by educators in selecting and aligning particular tools with particular tasks. Unfortunately, these systems have begun to determine options available for faculty and an institution.

Bates and Poole (as cited in Sessums, 2006) listed six characteristics for determining appropriate selection of technology:

1. Will selected technologies work in a variety of learning contexts?
2. How does it impact strategic, institutional level and tactical, instructional level decisions?
3. Do the selected technologies provide equal attention to educational and operational issues?
4. Will it take into consideration the affect of different media and technologies enabling an appropriate mix for a given context?
5. Are the selected technologies user-friendly, practical, and cost-effective?
6. Will the selected technologies be quickly out-dated, or will they be flexible and accommodate new developments? (Conclusions section, ¶ 2)

Universities and colleges need to explore broad applications of technology—beyond simple LMS implementations. LMS may well continue to play an important role in education—but not as a critical centre. Diverse tools, serving different functionality, adhering to open guidelines, inline with tools learners currently use, may be the best option forward.

The challenges of LMS utilization is compounded with ongoing changes in technology. E-portfolios continue to grow in prominence (Siemens, 2004a). Informal, life-long learning—validated or certified by educational institutions in the form of prior learning assessment and recognition—is developing in tandem with a greater societal shift. The rapid development of information (Lyman & Varian, 2003) requires a model that sees learning less as a product (filling a learner with knowledge) and more of a process of continually staying current and connected (learning as a process of exploration, dialogue, and interaction).

While desired, it is unrealistic to expect universities to shift significantly from an LMS to a PLE. Yet the trends occurring online (in relation to social software and Web 2.0 technologies—resources that are single-focus, connected, and two-way) are beginning to impact learner expectation. Many educators in the K-12 sector are adopting learner content-creation tools like blogs, wikis, YouTube, podcasts, and tagging. As these learners enter higher education, they may not be content to sit and click through a series of online content pages with periodic contributions to a discussion forum.

The following steps are recommended for moving forward with a broad review of learning technologies:

1. Involve all stakeholders (beyond simple surveys).
2. Define the university’s view of learning.
3. Critically evaluate the role of an LMS in relation to university views of learning and needs of all stakeholders.
4. Promote an understanding that different learning needs and context require different approaches.
5. Perform small-scale research projects utilizing alternative methods of learning.
6. Foster communities where faculty can dialogue about personal experiences teaching with technology.
7. Actively promote different learning technologies to faculty, so their unique needs—not technology—drives tools selected.

Create ongoing university teaching and learning technologies council to evaluate ongoing trends, successes, challenges, and needed adjustments to current path. Creating a vision for online learning requires sustained evaluation and monitoring to ensure the approaches to fulfilling the vision change as the context of implementation changes.

Conclusion

The complex process of teaching and learning requires complex, multi-faceted models of implementation. One tool will not meet all needs in all contexts. Changes impact and influence existing models—rendering yesterday’s solutions obsolete. In the field of learning, an adaptive model of technology selection and governance is required to ensure that all stakeholders’ needs are met. A solution today may not be accurate tomorrow. A sustained process needs to be enacted to align context changes with changes and approaches to learning methods and technologies available.

The university “must adapt, using technologies and models of understanding, in this case to reconcile teaching, research, IT, a changing environment, financial accountability and managerial models” (Wise & Quealy, 2006, p. 4). Learning management systems have a position in higher education (certain types of under-graduate level learning are more structured and focused on memorization or content exploration). To meet the needs of all learners in various stages of their education, a multi-faceted (holistic) view of learning must be considered. Increasingly, personal learning environments provide the tools and model to attend to the diverse learning needs of individuals
today.

References

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Blackboard. (2006a). Blackboard and WebCT merge. Retrieved October 1, 2006, from http://www.blackboard.com/webct

Blackboard. (2006b). Blackboard recently awarded patent on elearning technology. Retrieved October 12, 2006, from http://www.blackboard.com/company/press/release.aspx?id=887622

Blackboard. (2006c, March 1). Blackboard unveils Blackboard beyond initiative: Four bold inaugural projects will advance e-learning 2.0 vision. Retrieved October 12, 2006, from  http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/060301/0111604.html

Blackboard. (2006d). Why work with Blackboard? Retrieved October 12, 2006, from http://www.blackboard.com/company/partners/whyworkwbb.htm

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Common Wealth of Learning. (2003, July). COL LMS open source report. Retrieved October 12, 2006, from http://www.uv.es/ticape/pdf/Evaluacion_de_plataformas_libres2003.pdf

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- some differing views exist on how market share is defined, but—for example a CMS (course management system) definition would exclude enterprise-wide vendors like SAP (who are offering their own learning platform), resulting in a WebCT/Blackboard market share in excess of 80%.

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from http://docs.moodle.org/en/Online_Learning_History

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The highlight of the day, for me, was the opportunity to be a learner in a room of incredibly passionate and bright people. The typical rhetoric of educational reform was largely missing, with only the occasional references to softball items like NCLB, standardized testing, and industrial models of education. As a whole, I found the day to be a refreshing affirmation of the ideals of education, the value of committed and passionate educators, and the opportunities and affordances new technologies enable.

A rough summary of my talk:

[I took a slight detour at the start to respond to Jeff Jarvis' focus of education to mimic corporate models and respond to corporate needs. At least one person found this to be inappropriate, though as I read his reaction, I find he's talking about a different talk and a different person. Wish I could have been there to hear that talk . My primary assertion was that education requires the greatest opportunity for connection-forming and connectedness. Corporations have a sharp focus on revenue generation and profit-making, which by nature of this focus, constrains the array of potential connections in learning, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the corporate model in education].

Collapsing to Connections: reducing learning and knowledge to a unit of change

…a small world of confined information connections

Space influences permissible connections.

I was born in Mexico, in a small Amish-like community south of El Paso/Jaurez. While not geographically distant, the community represents a time shift of several centuries. I spent the first six years of my life in a society very different from what I have known since. Today, I live in Canada – proud home of gold-medal winning men’s and women’s hockey team.

I grew up in a small clustered community, largely devoid of external connections. Our community was without paved roads and electricity and many associated benefits. News and information traveled primarily through social systems..

I recall evenings sitting around an oil-lamp, listening to the conversations of adults. Even though I had only an anemic cognitive awareness of what was being discussed, I could share emotions. Joy. Fear. Anxiety. Laughter. Belongingness.

It was a good feeling to be sitting in the peripheral world of adults – a small social system for sharing ideas, feelings, and world events. The memory of the oil lamp is to this day revived in certain settings and by certain smells. The flickering shadows cast on walls, moving almost rhythmically with the tone and energy of the conversation. It provided a sense of the world as knowable, as predictable, and as structured.

This safe, structured reality shaped the types of connections that were possible to individuals. This environment was a fabrication of, and for that matter, a poor introduction to, the larger world. The social system provided safety, but simultaneously, fostered erroneous views of how the external view.

The flow of information was wonderful – tightly clustered social network. The validation of the accuracy of that information, however, was somewhat lacking.

Defined by connections

A community or group is defined by its connections – how people are connected to each other and to the world outside. Relationships aare tight-knit. Everyone knows everyone. Social circles, church, school are all part of our social networks, providing a shaping influence on possible connections we draw between concepts, information sources, world views, and even other people.

But the question arises as to who is able to define suitability of connections. In my youth, who determined that we could connect certain religious concepts to our use of agriculture equipment? Who decided that certain physical diseases were worthy of medical treatment? But mental illnesses were not medical issues, viewed instead as the world of spiritual agents?

When connections calcify and become dogma and rigid structure, they fail to represent the chaotic and continually shifting world outside.

To map at least partly to reality – the rapidly shifting world of education, commerce, and science – we require innovation and creativity; both of which are fundamentally about drawing novel connections. While growing up, a false boundary was drawn around what was knowable. As a result, all aspects of life were shaped by the known connections: cause/effect, identity/government, etc. The network – tightly nit and highly exclusionary – was the measure of our society. We could grow no more than the freedom of connectedness that we permitted through our social systems and norms. The soft comforting appeal of safety and security, to the exclusion of progress and accurate interpretations of the world around, was too strong a pull to ignore. The connections we form are, for us, reality.

Increasing information accuracy, decreasing social spaces

When my family moved to Canada in the late 70’s, the cognitive network established in Mexico prevailed. Yes, the setting had changed – sand and cactus were replaced by farmland and snow. The oil lamp no longer attended animated conversations. Instead a chandelier above the dining room table provided a uniformity of light. Social conversations, though not accentuated with dancing shadows and the scent of kerosene, still formed the basis for coming to know and coming to understand the world.

But the school system started to disrupt my notion of information accuracy. Unfortunately, in order to access more accurate information, and exposure to scientific thinking, I had to sacrifice the soft social structure that shaped who I was as a person, rather than only what I knew. The education system started to serve the role of filtering and shaping of ideas that had previously occurred through conversation in a trusted small group around a table.

Social and information systems in conflict

The primary information network for most people is tightly integrated with their social network. Cognitive engagement can be invigorating intellectually when information and system systems are aligned.

The solutions we need to address societies biggest problems – warming, population growth, poverty – will be found through serendipity, through chaotic connections, through unexpected connections. Complex networks with mesh-like cross-disciplinary interactions provide the needed cognitive capacity to address these problems.

Delcious, Myspace, Facebook, ustream, Ning, blogs, podcasts, and Twitter represent an acceleration of information and an integration with social systems. These tools permit socialization at a scale that matches traditional small groups and communities. Emerging technology offers a “binding back” to our social, networked, small-group past: a past centered on the social sharing of information and making sense of the world together.

In an odd twist, technology has become social. Technology – the dehumanizing agent of technique that Ellul warned about – is the nexus point for quality information flow (fast networks) and socialization (humanness)

Confinement of connections – which influence social cohesion and knowledge growth – are also a core problem in classrooms and education.

The beauty of chaos, of serendipitous encounters, of information clashing with information – is too often subverted to rule, to structure so that it can be better controlled.

We are our networks

The connections we participate in form our identities. We – you, I – know what our networks know.

Every expression is a point of connection

Every moment of transparent learning is a moment of teaching others

When we make our learning transparent, we become teachers.

Connections are all…

Fragmented information is woven and remade through global social interactions.

The breakdown of distance and the growth of the speed at which information flows in our networks, is fortunately balanced by the rise of tools enabling social connectedness.

We don’t, after all, make sense of our complex world as individuals. We make sense through connections…and these connections create our identity and help us to find our sense of belonging and our sense of humanity.

Systematized normalcy

Unfortunately, the return to sociality has not yet made its impact in education. Classrooms have become micro-communes – closed, clustered, and controlled.

Who permits which questions? Who controls the permissible space in which connections can be formed?

Fragmentation shatters traditional structure. It’s easy to fragment information and conversations. The difficulty arises when we try and weave it into a coherent narrative.

Our society talks too much about networks – the key point of focus should really be on connections. Networks, after all, are only a pattern of connections. What we most need is a unit of change that is under the control of individuals. A social network analysis reveals gaps, network structure, and information flow. This is valuable information for management and policy makers. It is weak as a system of personal control and contribution.

When we collapse learning and knowledge to connections, we affirm individual agency. In discussions of educational reform, it’s time to start thinking about appropriate points of focus and units of change. This is why I find much of the discussion of networks misleading. We can’t influence network development without paying attention to individual connections. And yet, surprisingly, very few conversations in educational reform are focusing on connections.

The very lessons of connect forming that we want our kids to know, also serve us in our exploration of the future of education. For example, which pieces of the future of education puzzle will we put together? How will we connect them? How will we weight evidence? How will we weight social elements?

A failure to connect

The Christmas day bomber, terrorist activities, and the financial meltdown share a common problem: information was there, but it wasn’t connected. Undiscovered public knowledge (Swanson), emphasizes the cost of information that is available, but isn’t connected.

Private Universe – a video documentary of Harvard grads, alumni, and faculty being largely unable to detail why we have seasons. Their views/assumptions were not shared and therefore shaped, guided, by social discourse and expert knowledge. The issue is one of conceptual failure – the inability on the part of individuals to share and shape their understanding of a subject through discourse with others. Erroneous or errant connections are pruned through social discourse.

The scientific method offers a response to faulty connections, offering a long history of creating a transparent structure whereby connections are validated and evaluated. What is permissible to be connected? Why? What are other views? At its core, the scientific method is a structured mode of analyzing the validity of connections between entities, correlation, and cause and effect.

Educators have the obligation to stitch together social and information systems, based on the smallest unit of change – namely, connections.

What does this look like in practice??

Connectivist Model of Learning is one that Stephen Downes and I have utilized since 2008 in CCK08, CCK09, and will be using in CK10 later this year. Dave Cormier and I will be offering a similar open version of Future Trends in Education course starting in April, 2010.

In these courses, our focus has been (will be) to disrupt the traditional concept of a course and the relationship between educator, learner, and content. Rather than the educator creating a narrative of coherence through a discipline, learners do this as part of peer participative pedagogical practice (Peter Piper picked…). The experience of wayfinding and sensemaking is shaped by social and technological connections. The educator still has a role, but one that is altered by the corresponding control shift to learners.

Conclusion:

When we distribute control, we also distribute responsibility. We can no longer blame others for systems that are not functioning well. We can’t blame schools. We can’t blame government. Or even corporations. We need to take up the responsibility trail that is created by control distribution.

Finding the smallest unit of change on which to build is important. Richard Feynman has stated “everything is made of atoms” as the single most important scientific knowledge we possess. While atoms have since been reduced to smaller and smaller entities, the concept of individual units of construction for the physical world is still consequential. I propose a similar collapsing to connections in education. We will only understand what we need to do with education and reform if we recognize the element of construction of the entire system.

What would a world of learning look like if it were based on a granular unit of change – like connections – instead of large impenetrable concept like “accountability”, “school reform”. How can we structure educational reform in such a manner that anyone can participate?

The big battles of history around democracy, individual rights, fairness, and equality are now being fought in the digital world. Technology is philosophy. Technology is ideology. The choices programmers make in software, or legislators make in copyright, give boundaries to permissible connection. Clustered, isolated information systems – such as I experienced in Mexico – are incapable of adapting and reacting to the external world. To collapse education, knowledge, teaching, and learning to connections is to give individuals the control and freedom needed to effectively change education.

And to change education is to change society.
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A quick note of thanks to TEDxNYED organizers (Dave Bill lists the organizers in the Thank You section of this post) – it was a wonderful learning experience.

What is the role of a teacher?

A teacher/instructor/professor obviously plays numerous roles in a traditional classroom: role model, encourager, supporter, guide, synthesizer. Most importantly, the teacher offers a narrative of coherence of a particular discipline. Selecting a textbook, determining and sequencing lecture topics, and planning learning activities, are all undertaken to offer coherence of a subject area. Instructional (or learning) design is a structured method of coherence provision.

This model works well when we can centralize both the content (curriculum) and the teacher. The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning. Simply: social and technological networks subvert the classroom-based role of the teacher. Networks thin classroom walls. Experts are no longer “out there” or “over there”. Skype brings anyone, from anywhere, into a classroom. Students are not confined to interacting with only the ideas of a researcher or theorist. Instead, a student can interact directly with researchers through Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and listservs. The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage.

Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on.

What is the impact of conversation/content fragmentation?

Traditional courses provide a coherent view of a subject. This view is shaped by “learning outcomes” (or objectives). These outcomes drive the selection of content and the design of learning activities. Ideally, outcomes and content/curriculum/instruction are then aligned with the assessment. It’s all very logical: we teach what we say we are going to teach, and then we assess what we said we would teach. This cozy comfortable world of outcomes-instruction-assessment alignment exists only in education. In all other areas of life, ambiguity, uncertainty, and unkowns reign.

Fragmentation of content and conversation is about to disrupt this well-ordered view of learning. Educators and universities are beginning to realize that they no longer have the control they once (thought they) did.

However, in order for education to work within the larger structure of integrated societal systems, clear outcomes are still needed. Growing accountability emphasis in all levels of education – primary, secondary, and post-secondary – suggests that the system needs to produce concise outcomes. Fragmentation, it would appear, pushes against this.

How can we achieve clear outcomes through distributed means? How can we achieve learning targets when the educator is no longer able to control the actions of learners?

The Knotted Ball of Education

Based on the courses I’ve taught with Stephen Downes over the last few years – CCK08 & CCK09 – I’ve come to view teaching as a critical and needed activity in the chaotic and ambiguous information climate created by networks. In the future, however, the role of the teacher, the educator, will be dramatically different from the current norm. Views of teaching, of learner roles, of literacies, of expertise, of control, and of pedagogy are knotted together. Untying one requires untying the entire model.

And that is precisely what I suggest.

In this short article, I’ll focus on one specific aspect of the knotted ball of education: the role of the teacher.

Given that coherence and lucidity are key to understanding our world, how do educators teach in networks? For educators, control is being replaced with influence. Instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network.

The following are roles teacher play in networked learning environments:

1. Amplifying
2. Curating
3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking
4. Aggregating
5. Filtering
6. Modelling
7. Persistent presence

Amplifying

Social media like Twitter provide a few examples of how teacher’s roles might change. Twitter has an option available to users called re-tweet (RT). This is essentially amplification. If one Twitterer posts a link to an article in NY Times, her followers may find the article useful and then respond by re-tweeting the article. Each RT amplifies the message. Even a handful of Twitter users, with say 20 followers each, can quickly spread a message to hundreds of people. Each RT amplifies the message much like an electronic amplifier increases the amplitude of audio or video transmitters.

In networks, teachers are one node among many. Learners will, however, likely be somewhat selective of which nodes they follow and listen to. Most likely, a teacher will be one of the more prominent nodes in a learner’s network. Thoughts, ideas, or messages that the teacher amplifies will generally have a greater probability of being seen by course participants. The network of information is shaped by the actions of the teacher in drawing attention to signals (content elements) that are particularly important in a given subject area.

Curating

Several years ago, I suggested curatorial teaching (10 minute presentation):

An expert (the curator) exists in the artifacts displayed, resources reviewed in class, concepts being discussed. But she’s behind the scenes providing interpretation, direction, provocation, and yes, even guiding. A curatorial teacher acknowledges the autonomy of learners, yet understands the frustration of exploring unknown territories without a map. A curator is an expert learner. Instead of dispensing knowledge, he creates spaces in which knowledge can be created, explored, and connected. While curators understand their field very well, they don’t adhere to traditional in-class teacher-centric power structures. A curator balances the freedom of individual learners with the thoughtful interpretation of the subject being explored.

While “curator” carries the stigma of dusty museums, the metaphor is appropriate for teaching and learning. The curator, in a learning context, arranges key elements of a subject in such a manner that learners will “bump into” them throughout the course. Instead of explicitly stating “you must know this”, the curator includes critical course concepts in her dialogue with learners, her comments on blog posts, her in-class discussions, and in her personal reflections. As learners grow their own networks of understanding, frequent encounters with conceptual artifacts shared by the teacher will begin to resonate.

In CCK08/09, Stephen and I produced a daily newsletter where we highlighted discussions, concepts, and resources that we felt were important. As the course progressed, many students stated they found this to be a valuable resource -a centering point of sorts. Criticism was directed at our curatorial activities with concerns voiced that we were only selecting resources that supported our views. This wasn’t the case. We drew attention to both supportive and critical views. However, The Daily was not the only source of information for learners in the course. In the Daily, we aggregated blog posts and twitter posts as well. More on that when we consider aggregation.

Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking

How do individuals make sense of complex information? How do they find their way through a confusing and contradictory range of ideas? To address this, I’ll turn to Darken’s concept of wayfinding. Darken’s work is based on large virtual worlds, but I think it translates well to the challenges we face in making sense of fragmented information. When I first started learning about the internet (pre-web days), I felt like I had stepped into a alternate realm with its own norms of behaviour and conduct. Bulletin boards and chat rooms presented a challenging mix of navigating social protocols while developing technical skills.

By engaging with these conversation spaces – and forming a few tentative connections with others – I was able to find a precarious foothold in the online medium. After a period of time, I was able to navigate the space fairly effortlessly. When a new technology appeared, such as blogs, my existing knowledge base enabled me to recognize potential uses. With a bit of background of html, ftp, and webhosting, I was able to use Pyra’s Blogger service to post to my own domain. I found my way through personal trial and error.

Today’s social web is no different – we find our way through active exploration. Designers can aid the wayfinding process through consistency of design and functionality across various tools, but ultimately, it is the responsibility of the individual to click/fail/recoup and continue.

Fortunately, the experience of wayfinding is now augmented by social systems. Social structures are filters. As a learner grows (and prunes) her personal networks, she also develops an effective means to filter abundance. The network becomes a cognitive agent in this instance – helping the learner to make sense of complex subject areas by relying not only on her own reading and resource exploration, but by permitting her social network to filter resources and draw attention to important topics. In order for these networks to work effectively, learners must be conscious of the need for diversity and should include nodes that offer critical or antagonistic perspectives on all topic areas. Sensemaking in complex environments is a social process.

Aggregating

Aggregation had so much potential. And yet has delivered relatively little over the last decade. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps RSS was too effective. Perhaps we need to spend more time in information abundant environments before we turn to aggregation as a means of making sense of the landscape. Pageflakes, iGoogle, and Netvibes have largely plateaued innovation in aggregation.

During CCK08/09, we used a variety of techniques to pull together fragmented content and conversations: Google alerts, Pageflakes, and grsshopper. The Daily included a list of blog posts tagged with CCK08/09 and any tweets with the course tag. But these are still rudimentary. Techmeme provides a slightly more sophisticated option of grouping broad themes. For the last seven years, I’ve held hope that information visualization (i.e. IBM’s ManyEyes) would provide a solution. After all, why should we do the heavy cognitive work when technology is uniquely suited to analyzing and generating patterns?

Unfortunately, visualization continues to be confined to what we input. I’d like a learning system that functions along the lines of RescueTime – actively monitoring what I’m doing – but then offers suggestions of what I should (or could) be doing additionally. Or a system that is aware of my email exchanges over the last several years and can provide relevant information based on the development of my thinking and work.

With the rise of social media, and with it the attention organizations pay to how their brand is being represented, monitoring services such as Viral Heat are promising. Imagine a course where the fragmented conversations and content are analyzed (monitored) through a similar service. Instead of creating a structure of the course in advance of the students starting (the current model), course structure emerges through numerous fragmented interactions. “Intelligence” is applied after the content and interactions start, not before. This is basically what Google did for the web – instead of fully defined and meta-described resources in a database, organized according to subject areas (i.e. Yahoo at the time), intelligence was applied at the point of search. Aggregation should do the same – reveal the content and conversation structure of the course as it unfolds, rather than defining it in advance.

Filtering

Filtering resources is an important educator role, but as noted already, effective filtering can be done through a combination of wayfinding, social sensemaking, and aggregation. But expertise still matters. Educators often have years or decades of experience in a field. As such, they are familiar with many of the concepts, pitfalls, confusions, and distractions that learners are likely to encounter. As should be evident by now, the educator is an important agent in networked learning. Instead of being the sole or dominant filter of information, he now shares this task with other methods and individuals.

Filtering can be done in explicit ways – such as selecting readings around course topics – or in less obvious ways – such as writing summary blog posts around topics. Learning is an eliminative process. By determining what doesn’t belong, a learner develops and focuses his understanding of a topic. The teacher assists in the process by providing one stream of filtered information. The student is then faced with making nuanced selections based on the multiple information streams he encounters. The singular filter of the teacher has morphed into numerous information streams, each filtered according to different perspectives and world views.

Modelling

During CCK08/09, one of Stephen’s statements that resonated with many learners centers on modelling as a teaching practice: “To teach is to model and to demonstrate. To learn is to practice and to reflect.” (As far as I can tell, he first made the statement during OCC in 2007). Modelling has its roots in apprenticeship. Learning is a multi-faceted process, involving cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions. Knowledge is similarly multi-faceted, involving declarative, procedural, and academic dimensions.

It is unreasonable to expect a class environment to capture the richness of these dimensions. Apprenticeship learning models are among the most effective in attending to the full breadth of learning. Apprenticeship is concerned with more than cognition and knowledge (to know about) – it also addresses the process of becoming a carpenter, plumber, or physician.

What cannot be communicated and understood by lecture and learning activities alone can be addressed through modelling by the teacher.

Persistent Presence

An educator needs a point of existence online – a place to express herself and be discovered: a blog, profile in a social networking service, Twitter, or (likely) a combination of multiple services. What do you do when you meet someone? Most likely, you search for them in Google. Having recently relocated to Alberta, I used Google to gain a sense of my children’s teachers, the social media network in Edmonton, colleagues at work, meetups, democamps, etc.

Without an online identity, you can’t connect with others – to know and be known. I don’t think I’m overstating the importance of have a presence in order to participate in networks. To teach well in networks – to weave a narrative of coherence with learners – requires a point of presence. As a course progresses, the teacher provides summary comments, synthesizes discussions, provides critical perspectives, and directs learners to resources they may not have encountered before. In CCK08/09, we used The Daily, the connectivism blog, elearnspace, OLDaily, Twitter, Facebook, Ning, Second Life, and numerous other tools to connect with learners. Persistent presence in the learning network is needed for the teacher to amplify, curate, aggregate, and filter content and to model critical thinking and cognitive attributes that reflect the needs of a discipline.

Still at the start…

I’m often surprised when I hear a declaration of web company’s birthday – Facebook at six years, Youtube at five years. It seems like these tools have been around much longer. Teaching and learning in social and technological networks is similarly surprising – it’s hard to imagine that many of the tools we’re using are less than a decade old (the methods of learning in networks are not new, however. People have always learned in social networks).

We’re still early in many of these trends. Many questions remain unanswered about privacy, ethics in networks, and assessment. My view is that change in education needs to be systemic and substantial. Education is concerned with content and conversations. The tools for controlling both content and conversation have shifted from the educator to the learner. We require a system that acknowledges this reality.

We cannot get away from systems. Even if we succeed in disrupting a particular system – say the classroom model of education – we will find ourselves confined by a new structure. What is needed is the right system for a particular era or context, not a lack of systems. As history demonstrates, even revolutionaries conserve.

A hurdle must first be overcome: the intent of any system is to normalize deviation. It’s tough to be a radical in society, for example, when you have been systematized through a mortgage, car payment, and the soft influence of social norms – i.e. what it means to be successful or well-regarded. Critical commentary is difficult because when we criticize “the system” we are in essence criticizing ourselves. By our daily actions, we reinforce the existing norms. So, in most cases, it is easier to deal with the irritants of how things are, erupt with the odd rant, but still generally play by the rules that are conducive to societal integration.

An approach of acceptance and integration is fine in many instances – especially when it meets the needs of the majority. Life is far less stressful when you’re not fighting against everyone. At a certain point, however, change becomes an obligation for self-preservation. And in extreme instances, change becomes a duty in service to future generations (such as civil rights movements).

A recap of the situation: systems normalize and we are biased in supporting existing systems because they form part of our identity. But, change is needed when a substantial mismatch exists between structures in society and the external reality or dominant ideology.

Many educators – the silent majority – are not pining for change. Funding for research and national innovation goals suggest existing universities will be here for a long (long) time. Based on my experience chatting with conference attendees and interacting with faculty, a compelling argument for dramatic change in education has not been made. Sure, we see people with mobiles, we might even post to Facebook, or we might read the odd ebook, use Google Docs, but beyond that, really, how big is the change we are talking about?

Change-blindness is related to our integration with existing systems. To step into unknown and uncertain spaces is a risk-taking action. Humanity is often more concerned about preservation.

How then can a school or university innovate?

All organizations need a new position: a provocateur (or director) of systemic innovation. The role of this individual is to specifically challenge which regular organizational activities no longer make sense and to recast policies in light of the affordances of networked technology. Many organizational policies and work routines reflect the trailing ideologies of a previous generations – a different society, a different set of needs. Innovation and adaptation are in order.

Think of a university. Do we need a bookstore? Do we need professor’s “course notes” for only $45? Do we need textbooks? Do we need lecture halls? Do we need face-to-face faculty meetings? Do we need courses? What about the current research grant writing process? Does that even make sense (especially from a perspective of time/resources invested to prospect of succeeding and length of time to required by the council to reach a verdict)?

We could get into class scheduling…or student fees…or the need for new building projects…or the administrative structure of universities…faculty unions…and so on. In each instance, many opportunities for innovation exist. But, absent someone being assigned the explicit role of thinking about innovation, most of us spend our time doing our work. And the daily drubbing drives out creativity to reflect on what we could do differently, what we could do better. Which is why we need an explicit focus on innovating the system itself.

Society itself is essentially a series of interlocking systems. Because we have an education system that takes care of young students for eight hours a day, both parents can work. Because we have some level of centralization of government in most countries, education systems are subject to governmental curricular and structural mandates. The book made the library. Society’s systems make the schools. More than any other element, this systemic inertia is responsible for limited innovation in education. All ideas are vetted by how they integrate with the system.

Different eras require different modes of thought and action. For example, in times of innovation in a sector – like computers in the 80’s or the web since 2000 – a blue sky mentality is needed. All things are possible. Limitations exist only in our capacity to visualize a new reality. Very few innovation push-backs are found in these periods. In a sense, these are the teenage years – our ignorance prevents us from listening to no-sayers. Other periods – such as the 50’s and 60’s in manufacturing – are periods of tweaking. The boundaries of a system are in place and systematization is the key focus.

In education we are today at the teenage years. We are at a point where we ought to be conceiving new models driven by the affordances generated by networks, technology, openness, and social software. Instead, many systems are at the equivalent stage of being pushed down the hall in a wheelchair at a senior care home.

I want to resist the mindset of measuring what is possible by the existing system.

Look at a few of the biggest technological “innovations” of the last decade: learning management systems, student information systems, interactive whiteboards, iclickers, and virtual classrooms. These tools integrate with existing systems, which is why they are successful. The systemic design of education, from curricular planning to delivery to evaluation, has not been recast in light of the web. Instead, the web has been recast in light of existing systems. In many instances, teaching and learning has been transferred to, instead of transformed by, the internet.

What is the impact of this mindset? When I present on alternative views of assessment and accreditation, or suggest non-course approaches to teaching, the inevitable push-back is “well that won’t work because of _____ aspect of the system”. Perhaps it is time that we turn our attention explicitly to working on, rather than in, the system.

Yes, working against a system is difficult. Sometimes even futile. I’m not suggesting that we “fight the man” and organize marches decrying the failure of the system. I’m suggesting something much more subtle: that we no longer allow systems-based arguments and criticism to dampen our creative exploration for what is possible in education. A period of “no boundaries” in our thinking. Forget even arguing against those who appeal to integration with existing structures. Just ignore those discussions completely. I’d like to focus instead on creating a compelling vision of what education could be given new technologies and almost global connectivity.

The timing is somewhat ideal. The growth of the internet, advancement in social media, frustration with quality of the current system (primary to university), reduced budgets, and greater awareness of the importance of creative and innovative thinkers, has created an almost perfect storm for reform. I doubt we’ll see, in our lifetime, similarly favorable conditions for change.

We are, after all, in the youth of educational reform. No point in spending it in a wheelchair or pushing around a walker.

Today, I fear, open education is beset with a more moderate spirit. People are trying to make a living off of being open – i.e. openness as a utility to advance a career, gain recognition from peers, or make money. This is fine. But it’s not what I’d expect in the early stage of a movement. Ideological purity in open education had a very short existence. Instead of building a future foundation, we see instead a foundation to serve for career advancement.

This was made rather clear to me in a recent exchange on Twitter. I posted a tweet (in response to Dave Cormier’s Top 10 of 2009) saying openness is a stage through which we pass…the real impact is systemic change. Things lingered for a day or so until Alec Couros asked for clarification and I responded by saying “look at open software – we are on the way out of that movement. it changed things systemically. that’s the real impact”.

Well, then the gloves were off.

Most people who contributed to the conversation, while questioning my mental acuity, were at least willing to discuss/debate (one individual, however, took the passive/aggressive stance of someone responding as if I had questioned the Pope’s religious affiliation). D’Arcy Norman finally suggested that the conversation wasn’t too productive on Twitter and that a blog post might be in order.

That’s how we got here.

Let me start by stating that “open” is a term that is now essentially meaningless. Apparently Twitter is open. So is Blackboard. And Facebook.

David Wiley states that open is a function of gradients (”a continuous, not binary, construct”). According to Wiley, openness is not an ideological concept, like democracy, but rather a functional or utilitarian construct: like a door or window being open or partly open. I can see the appeal of this view – the value of something is discovered in its implementation. But it seems wrong to me when applied to an ideological concept such as openness.

Let’s briefly consider the gradient view of openness. It’s like saying being alive is a gradient. We are more or less alive. That may be true. A teenager, not positioned in front of a PS3, may have more “life” than a senior. But really, at some point, being alive has a threshold. Is being on life support part of the construct of aliveness? Or is a window that is open precisely 1 mm open? In both cases, we could say, well, yes, of course the patient is alive or the window is open. But not at all in a way that we commonly associate with the concepts. And, in the case of a window, of absolutely no practical use for why we would want to have a window open in the first place. Seeing openness as a gradient in education is an accommodating approach, an act of moderation.

Even democracy – a much abused and increasingly meaningless term – still has some relevance. Most of us would not say that China is a democracy. Or that the USSR was. The gradient of democracy has a threshold.

On holding hands and running through meadows with our friends

Richard Stallman has been somewhat replaced by, or even written out of, the open source movement. Stallman was (and still is) an uncompromising radical. Or at least that is how the well established proprietary software field sees him. The open source movement developed in response to what others perceived as Stallman’s unpalatable views for mainstreaming openness.

(If you’re interested, I explored this in a bit more detail in Free and Open Source Movements, part 1 and part 2 (somewhat related: Why we should share learning resources).)

I’ve stated in the past that I’m concerned about open education suffering the fate of Stallman – marginalized because it is not palatable at the “power table”. I still think this is a valid concern. But we first need a Stallman in open education before we can even begin to marginalize him. We need an idealist that sets the stage for thinking and debate around openness.

Wiley suggests that: “If another person or institution’s approach to openness doesn’t help you meet your goals, then look for help somewhere else – don’t criticize them”.

I disagree. We should criticize. We should debate. By not criticizing gradient views of openness, by failing to establish a solid foundation on which to discuss openness, we are providing an ideology for our generation, not one that serves as a future-focused movement. Openness is a hard topic to discuss ideologically because it’s important. Yes, pragmatics are easier. But pragmatics have a short life span.

Open source is often presented as a methodology, not an ideology – i.e. open source is an approach of collaborative work, shared creation, continual iteration (insert your favorative Torvalds or Raymond quote of bugs, many eyes, cathedrals, bazaars, release early/often, etc.). But openness is not a methodology. Openness is an ideology along the lines of democracy. It is worthy of theoretical discussion. And various modes of implementation should be subject to debate and criticism.

Interlocking, self-enforcing systems

We are at a point where the system of education, in spite of pundits proclaiming otherwise, is still firmly entrenched in the large interlocking systems of modern society. While we are seeing some change around the edges in online learning, this change is largely prohibitive of broader systemic change.

Ultimately, openness will be translated into systems. To a degree, we’re already seeing this. It’s Fad-wagon jumping. Just like the “green movement”. I’m sick of commercials with new cars driving through lush forests, suggesting that if only I buy their vehicle the world will be greener. Green is treated as a utility to sell vehicles. For many companies in the educational field, open is the new green: use it to sell your product.

Why is an ideological position on openness important?

Reality has a way of eroding the ideologies at implementation. In the US – and around the world, for that matter – numerous organizations exist to preserve democracy, individual rights, etc. This is necessary because theoretical ideals are shaped (altered) in the grind of reality. Sometimes this is necessary – eras change, values change. Sometimes, however, we must – through sheer will and stubbornness – bend reality to the ideals that have been thoughtfully debated.

If our foundation of openness is what we see today – where obviously closed systems like Blackboard and Facebook are called “open” – then I’m concerned about what openness will mean in the near future. At our current pace, openness will soon be indistinguishable from utility and monetization. While we often hear criticism of Stallman’s inflexibility, he has done more to advance openness by not accommodating than he could have possibly done by assuming a moderate or even commercial stance.

In education, open source is taking a back seat. Educators are using tools like Ning, Blogger, Facebook, and SecondLife, with little or no consideration to ideological openness. Pragmatics reign.

The open source movement is riding on the successes of the late 90’s, early 2000. Innovation has shifted to proprietary systems. Other than the usual reference to LAMP, what major new open source initiatives have gained attention in the last five years? Almost every popular software/technology developed during this time is not open source: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, Kindle, etc. The only tools that readily come to mind are Wordpress, and to a lessor degree, Drupal.

Kinda-open tools rely on trust between the company and the user. But terms of use can change quickly. Yes, a public outcry has caused Facebook to step back from initiatives like Beacon and Amazon to apologize for deleting 1984 from Kindles. But the outcry of the masses is hardly a suitable basis on which to build openness. With each attempt at reducing our personal freedom (such as the recent soft-forced transparency in Facebook), we risk becoming acclimated. This seems to be Facebook’s approach – try something, weather outrage, implement it (i.e. status updates from several years ago).

Most of us have become satisfied with “free” in terms of cost, not in terms of code. In this regard, I often reference Mark Pilgrim’s post on “free enough”:

WordPress is Free Software. Its rules will never change. In the event that the WordPress community disbands and development stops, a new community can form around the orphaned code. It’s happened once already. In the extremely unlikely event that every single contributor (including every contributor to the original b2) agrees to relicense the code under a more restrictive license, I can still fork the current GPL-licensed code and start a new community around it. There is always a path forward. There are no dead ends…It’s not about money; it’s about freedom.

Where does this leave us?

Google has defined openness in their organization:

There are two components to our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology includes open source, meaning we release and actively support code that helps grow the Internet, and open standards, meaning we adhere to accepted standards and, if none exist, work to create standards that improve the entire Internet (and not just benefit Google). Open information means that when we have information about users we use it to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information.

Google is not interested in openness beyond a utilitarian view. In fact, Google is the ultimate user of openness – they proudly proclaim that they are “built on openness” and that they are “the largest open source contributor in the world, contributing over 800 projects that total over 20 million lines of code to open source”.

Why are they doing this?

For competitive reasons. If Google found the best leverage in competition with Microsoft (and others) on a proprietary premise, they would willingly pursue it. Google is direct in stating that they feel “openness will win”. For Google, openness is a lever of competition, not a principle to be pursued in its own right. If, and when, a different basis for competition is discovered, openness will take a back seat. The goal, after all, is profit.

What should we be doing?

I’m unsure. Openness should mean something. It should be driven by ideology, rather than convenience. As a foundational principle in education, openness should be discussed, critiqued, encouraged, and aggressively preserved. Or perhaps, openness can best be conceived as the cloth on which the patterns of education are stitched.

Obviously some type of definition of openness in education would be helpful. What does it mean to be open? What is an open methodology? What does openness look like in relation to technology, information, learning content, administrative systems (transparency of the student record and related data collection by an institution), and pedagogy?

On one level, it would be helpful if we were able to provide commentary on the degree to which an institution is open (an Openness Ranking?) by looking at their use of open source software, open scholarship, licenses applied to content, etc. Despite its failings, PISA is still capable of making its way into policy discussions and decisions.

Do we need an EFF-like organization that preserves openness? An advocacy group?

Do we need greater formalization and promotion of openness within education? Or will openness as an ideology have little or no traction outside of a small group of marginal fanatics?

The uncertainty on how to organize ourselves is precisely what has caused openness to veer to the pragmatic. Why spend days, even months, debating seemingly insignificant details of openness? Why not just produce something and share it in any manner you wish? Why not just let openness evolve as it is?

Robert Hutchins has stated that “the death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment”. A similar concern exists for openness in education.

The quality of our thinking in these still early stages of openness will produce future systems and related affordances. The Federalist Papers, for example, were important in shaping the future of the Western world. Much of the debate could be treated as irrelevant and inconsequential. But the time spent in establishing idealistic roots – rather than pursuing more readily achievable pragmatic goals – has paid substantial dividends.