Concept Map for Emerging Technologies for Learning

As part of my studies of Emerging Technology for Learning, I am required to develop a concept map of the course, which is illustrated below.

Emerging Technologies for Learning Concept Map

I was attempting to identify abstractions, themes, symmetry and an attractive arrangement for my concept map.  I gave up in the end after a few different versions, as it just all wouldn’t emerge for me.  This was partly due to the complexity of the topic and limitations of the concept mapping tool.

What I have produced instead is a concept map of the course topics most relevant to my particular context.  The nodes in my map represent the most important issues that affect my work in higher education.  Naturally not an exhaustive list as there are many other elements that could be added to my map, some of which are probably equally as important as those presented.  However, as I have previously mentioned, you could map to infinity and so you have to draw the line somewhere.

The major themes that I identified for my concept map are Learning, Technologies, Information, and People and Connections.

I placed “Learning” at the top of my concept map; really I believe that all nodes encompass and underpin learning.  Learning is the focus point of the map.  In a way, technology is also a focus point of the map, but only in the context of the course.  I did not enumerate the various online social services in my concept map.  I did have them there, but decided to remove them, as the services themselves aren’t specifically relevant to my context.  Technologies come and go, as we are in a time of perpetual change.  It is more important to recognise this and adapt, and knowing the affordances or action potential is the critical element.

Critical sub-themes in my map include literacies, connections, and engagement.

Literacy is a crucial element of interpreting information.  Not just in the language sense which became quite evident as part of these studies.  While I was aware of information literacy, the other literacies identified in the course broadened my perspective on this issue.  In particular, the information and digital literacies were of interest to me.  Dealing with abundance of information, learning to be social online, and learning technologies are so obvious, yet were not explicit in my thinking.

My previous experience and reading suggests strongly that interaction and engagement with other people is a crucial element to learning.  The ability to share and gain alternate perspectives broadens one’s knowledge.  This I have tried to capture in my map, and comprises a considerable portion of it.  I liked the idea of discerning between peripheral and central participants in online fora, and especially allowing ourselves to accept that peripheral participation is legitimate.  Being a lurker myself in many contexts, that discussion did highlight for me that while sounding sinister and seedy, being present by not necessarily contributing is not necessarily a bad thing.

I have to say that I have found the concept of the concept map to be a real eye opener and an effective way for me to make sense of complex thoughts.  I am a details oriented person and it can be difficult to see the big picture at times.  Using concept mapping, I can arrange details in a way that makes the bigger picture easier to see.  I will try to make greater use of this type of technology to organise my thoughts in future.

As always, I find studying at U Manitoba a very rewarding experience and this term was no exception.  Most particularly the cross-cultural mix and more global perspectives open my eyes more broadly – always a good thing.  There are sometimes a few language barriers, as education language can be quite contextual, and localised.  But again, the differences keep things very interesting.  I would love to visit Canada one day with my family, but I might make it a summer trip.

Metacognition as a concept map

So I have been recently introduced to Concept Mapping using the CmapTools developed by IHMC.

Thinking I should give this a go to see if it assists with understanding the big picture of complex concepts, I put it into action.  I have developed a concept map for metacognition, a topic of discussion in a course I am undertaking around emerging learning technologies.

My concept map follows.

Concept Map for Metacognition

First impression is that it is a slow process to develop the cmap.  Of course this could be related to the fact that I am new to cmapping and the cmapping tool I used.  I do think this type of technology has merit and I’ll persist to see whether any long term value emerges.

Philosophies of Technology – Technological determinism

This post forms part of a series, where I am attempting to identify my philosophies around teaching and technology, and reflect on the impact it has on my instructional design, as detailed in my initial post.

This third part of the series is focused on the philosophy of technological determinism.

Kanuka’s (2008) summary for a definition of technological determinism is explained as:  “Within this orientation [of technological determinism], technologies are viewed as causal agents determining our uses and having a pivotal role in social change.”  So to me, this implies that the technology itself is the focal point of the learner’s education.  Kanuka then goes on to explain that technological determinism is typically aligned with negative views of technology in education, to the extent that it actually harms the learning process, rather than supports.  Views on this point by Noble, et. al. (1998)  have been discussed by Kanuka where she says:

Noble and colleagues (Noble, 1991; Noble, Shneiderman, Herman, Agre, & Denning, 1998) have written extensively on the relationships between distance-delivered e-learning and de-professionalization of the academy.  These scholars are concerned about the erosion of academic freedom, and thus they are aggressive critics arguing that the expansion of distance-delivered e-learning as a leading-edge movement to commercialize education will work to de-professionalize faculty members and erode academic freedom (e.g., Noble, 1998).

Another view from a range of scholars as described by Kanuka question:

modern technologies and many condemn technology for disseminating an onslaught of incoherent and fragmented trivialities to the world at the expense of engagement, reflectivity, and depth.  They also argue that modern technologies and growing neoliberalism are creating a rising capitalistic climate that includes political-economic interests such as comodification, commercialization, and corporatization of education.

Ouch.  I wonder what they would make of my ranting here on my blog about their ideas – fragmented trivialities?   So from what I understand, those who are technological determinists are generally considered to be the ‘negative nellys’  – those who believe technology is the root cause of de-professionalism, erosion of academic freedom, and the proliferation of surface rather than deep learning.

Well this is certainly not me.  Thankfully, Kanuka continues:

The assumption underpinning these views is that technology determines our uses and impacts society – in a negative way.  Although not often given the label of technological determinist, scholars who view technology as influencing our education systems in positive ways also hold the same assumption that technology determines our uses and impacts society, but in a beneficial way.  In the area of e-learning, for example, Garrison and Anderson (2003) assert that educational technologies can transform the learning experiences in positive ways, resulting in increasing the quality of learning experiences.

So, while not typically identified as technological determinists, there are groups that share the view that technology determines our uses and impacts society, but instead in positive rather than negative ways.  Don’t you just love how people like to work in black and white, right and wrong.  Perhaps, just perhaps technology can be a negative or positive influence or even both, depending on the context.

Kanuka through her literature survey identifies a few examples of where technology as a causal agent has had a positive influence over education.  One in particular:

For example, Lapadat (2002) argues that with asynchronous text-based Internet technology, learners have the means to compose their ideas and thoughts into a written form of communication.  This, according to Garrison and Anderson, provides learners with the ability to critically reflect on their views, which is necessary for higher-ordered learning.

I wonder how using asynchronous text-based Internet technology for composing ideas and thoughts into a written form of communication is any different or any better to writing on a piece of paper?  Surely a learner can reflect just as well with pen and paper as they can with Internet technology?  Of course, using Internet technology can offers a significant sized audience and may cause one to think carefully about what they choose to write.  You would think this would apply to me.   Then there is the following point where Kanuka adds:

As these examples illustrate, both advocates and opponents of e-learning believe that e-learning technologies determine the uses and the agents.  In less bi-polar positions, this orientation also asserts that the effects of new media (e.g., social software) has influenced post-modern ideas.  Poster (1997), for example, puts forth the notion that the Internet has instantiated new forms of interaction and power relations between users, resulting in significant social impacts.  Nguyen and Alexander (1996) assert further that the Internet has produced new realities in our everyday lives.

It is the social aspects of Internet technology that is really making a positive contribution to education.

Kanuka concludes with the following which highlights the shortcomings of technological determinism as:

This one-dimensional view of technology suffers similar logistical problems with the uses- and social-determinist orientations.  Educators positioning themselves from a one-dimensional view of the impact of technology perceive the properties of a particular technology as having the ability to predetermine educcational outcomes.  Little, if any, attention is given to the effects of educational, social, and historical forces that have shaped both educational systems and educational technologies.

I this Kanuka makes a very good point here in that all these philosophies are very much one-dimensional, narrowly focused and oversimplified.  There are so many factors at play in education.  I can’t say that I subscribe to any one of these philosophies as an educator, although I will need to reflect on this further.  Something else that strikes me is that discussion around the positive or negative aspects of technology is focused on distance education and e-learning. It is as though technology and distance education are exclusively intertwined and not relevant for other modes of study such as face-to-face.

KANUKA, H. (2008) Understanding eLearning Technologies-in-Practice Throgh Philosophies-in-Practice. IN ANDERSON, T. (Ed.) The Theory and Practice of Online Learning. 2nd ed. Edmonton, AU Press.

Philosophies of Technology – Social determinism

This post forms part of a series, where I am attempting to identify my philosophies around teaching and technology, and reflect on the impact it has on my instructional design, as detailed in my initial post.

This second part of the series is focused on the philosophy of social determinism.  I commented in my initial post, the difficulty I have had with reading Kanuka article (reference at the bottom).  This part of the article was quite a handful.  I’m not sure if my interpretation below is correct or not.  Perhaps others have some insight into social determinism that may correct any misunderstandings I have.  Feedback is most welcome.

Kanuka introduces the concept of social determinism as: “… educators are concerned with the integration of technological artefacts within social systems and cultural cntexts.  This perspective emphasizes the way our uses of technologies are affected by the social structures and the social construction of technological artefacts.” This was the main critical failure identified by Kanuka in the uses determinism philosophy as I understand it. So with social determinism, the choice of technology is informed by the context in terms of society and culture.

Kanuka continues:  “Educators holding this view are concerned about the ways that social and technological uses shape the form and content of the learning experiences.”

So there is an acknowledgement that society and choice of technology affect the form and content of the learning experience.  This does sound sensible to me.

Kanuka then suggests that unless education providers learn to adapt and innovate in a marketplace of accelerating globalisation and increased competition, their long-term viability may be in jeopardy.  The solution she suggests from the social determinist is to “move to technologically innovative and consumer-oriented education.”

Here is a quote that I am not quite clear what she means.  Kanuka states:

These views rest upon the way technology is socially embedded and constituted.  In particular, social choices shape the form and content of technological artefacts (Dahlberg, 2004).  As with uses determinism, however, social determinism has logistical issues that are difficult to resolve.  Specifically, this orientation can lead to flawed understandings of educational technology, if developed without reference to user agency or material limits (Dahlberg).  The line of reasoning in this orientation – that technologies embody social choice – negates a multifaceted understanding of the place of agency in technological development … Social contexts do not simply manipulate education systems at will.  In our everyday lives, there is a dynamic mutual shaping between the social, technology, and users’ environments.

Yikes!  It is clear I am no philosopher.   I am guessing what Kanuka is saying is that technology is not socially embedded, but forms part of a 3-way relationship between sociality, technology, and the user agents, and the learning is shaped by all 3 aspects together.

The third instalment analyses technological determinism.

KANUKA, H. (2008) Understanding eLearning Technologies-in-Practice Throgh Philosophies-in-Practice. IN ANDERSON, T. (Ed.) The Theory and Practice of Online Learning. 2nd ed. Edmonton, AU Press.

Philosophies of Technology – Uses determinism

As part of my studies, I have been asked to identify my philosophies around teaching and technology, and reflect on the impact it has on my instructional design. We have been asked to read Kanuka (2008) as a source of information on various teaching and technology philosophies, and how they are often aligned.

I have to say upfront that I found this article incredibly difficult to read.  Kanuka’s writing style is very abstract and with absence of any concrete examples on which to relate to my own experiences.  Actually, there were a few analogies that were quoted from other authors.  This did help a little to understand the point she was trying to make.  So I have decided first to try and reflect on what I have read and see if I can explain in my own words, her definition of the 3 types technological philosophies relating to education:  uses determinism, social determinism, and technological determinism.

First cab off the rank is uses determinism.

Kanuka’s lead in sentence states:

In its simplest sense, this position [of uses determinism] emphasizes technological uses and focuses on the ways in which we use technologies within learning and teaching transactions.  In this approach, technologies are perceived as neutral tools and are simply devices that extend our capacities.

So the basis of uses determinism is that technology is nothing more than a tool that is used by learners to learn.  Kanuka goes on to say:  “As users, we determine the effects of technological artefacts.”

So my understanding is that uses determinism postulates that in designing technological artefacts for learning, the designer can create a learning environment with deterministic outcomes unaffected by the technology itself.

This view is elaborated through an analogy by Jonassen where she quotes from a paper written in 1996:  “‘carpenters use their tools to build things; the tools do not control the carpenter.  Similarly, computers should be used as tools for helping learners build knowledge; they should not control the leaner’ (p.4).”  Kanuka introduces another analogy by Clark with “In his writings, Clark claims, in part, that technologies are ‘mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition’ (1983, p.445).”

To me, these views/ideas seem quite bold, something Kanuka addresses later in the article where she states:

In particular, viewing e-learning technology as a neutral tool assumes that there is a technological fix for an educational problem.  This instrumentalist line of thinking assumes that technologies exist without social or political origins, and that uses and users are the casual agents in the production of social action (Lacroix & Tremblay, 1997) – often celebrating unconstrained consumer sovereignty, and resulting in instrumentalism and/or structuralism (Golding & Murdock, 2000).  The problem with instrumentalism is that there is an inclination to place emphasis upon the intentionality of agents, with an unbalanced focus on the interactions between the actors and the technologies.  As a result, educators tend to narrowly focus on the role of the agents and disregard the broader social structures and/or technological artefacts’ effects on the learning outcomes, leading to explanations that overemphasize the power and autonomy of actors.

Wow, this was quite a morsel to digest.   My interpretation is that the idea of uses determinism takes a simplistic view of technology as a tool and does not match real world complexity, especially in the years that have past since the ideas of Clark and Jonassen were published.  Especially today where such technology provides such a wealth of information and opportunities to share and collaborate with others.  There are so many aspects of modern day technology that is beyond the control of any one entity.  How do you control the actions of others using the same technology for example?  Equating modern day technology to a hammer is a gross oversimplification.

Kanuka concludes her discussion of uses determinism by saying that:  “The belief that individual actors have complete control over the effects of a technological artefact is a misguided and naive assumption.”  I would have to concur with that conclusion.  Uses determinism would not be my technology philosophy for learning.

The next instalment is discussion on social determinism.

KANUKA, H. (2008) Understanding eLearning Technologies-in-Practice Throgh Philosophies-in-Practice. IN ANDERSON, T. (Ed.) The Theory and Practice of Online Learning. 2nd ed. Edmonton, AU Press.

The Eportfolio Tug-of-war

Foreword

This blog post has seen me fall into old habits with my blogging.  It has turned into a very large document and has taken considerable time to write.  Not how I wish to blog.  My apologies if its too much to digest.

Damien.

Introduction

I have tried to capture a broad, but shallow dissection of ePortfolios based on my recent attendence at the second Australian ePortfolio Symposium (AeP2) hosted by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in February 2009, and a brief survey of literature.  One of my observations is that there are many stakeholders involved in ePortfolios, and a tug-of-war exists over ownership and control.  It seems to me that ePortfolios are trying to do too much.

This blog post introduces briefly the concept of ePortfolios, including definitions and example products on the market.  It then introduces the various stakeholders, and attributes goals/challenges to these groups in the use of ePortfolios.  I explain my perspective on the tug-of-war situation, and how it may undermine the entire concept.  The blog post concludes with a summary of my observations and my opinions on the future of ePortfolios.

What is an ePortfolio?

My organisation as far as I’m aware has done little if anything meaningful in the area of ePortfolios. Having only limited knowledge/understanding of ePortfolios prior to the Symposium, I did a little googling to find out more.

For those who appreciate concrete examples, rather than abstract explanations, here is a list of common ePortfolio software to check out.

• CareerHub
• Desire2Learn
• Mahara
• PebblePAD
• Sakai OSP

Visiting their websites will give you a quick mainstream view of what ePortfolios are.

Now onto the abstract by way of a definition by Jackie Miers of Magill Primary School in South Australia where she writes:

From my readings of various articles on ePortfolios, I have come up with a composite definition that I feel encompasses the views of most of the experts in the field.

An ePortfolio is a purposeful collection of work and information that:

• represents an individual’s efforts, progress and achievements over time
• is goal-driven, performance-based and indicates evidence of the attainment of knowledge, skills and attitudes
• includes self-reflection
• is a tool for facilitating life-long learning and career development

Note specifically that Jackie’s definition states: “…encompasses the views of most of the experts in the field…”  The concept and technology of ePortfolios is still very much in its infancy.  People (especially formal educators) are still trying to decide what they want to do with an ePortfolio, and also working out what is possible with ePortfolios.  This makes for a very erratic, chaotic time to attempt implementation of such a concept.  A dream for the early adopter, a nightmare for the cautious.  In fact, a colleague has highlighted an interesting and related point in his blog post Why am I a ePortfolio Skeptic? He draws attention to the ideas of Geoghegan (based on the work of Moore) where a chasm exists between the early adopters and the early majority.

During the Symposium, Wijnand Aalderinck and Marij Veugelers presented Creating sustainable ePortfolio development: An update from the Netherlands higher education community, with an international view.  Wijnand provided the following model from their early work on ePortfolios, which I have reproduced below:

Simple model for ePortfolios (reproduced from presentation of Wijnand Aalderinck - ePortfolio Symposium - QUT 2009)

As you can see, one size does not fit all.  This is an interesting challenge for those attempting to develop ePortfolio systems.  How a learners may wish to use an ePortfolio can vary greatly.

Another model that Wijnand illustrated during the presentation was that of the Balance Model.  The goals of the learning are central, and supported by learning activities, which are then supported by the learning environment.  This learning environment is supported by people, infrastructure, and management.

Balance model (reproduced from presentation of Wijnand Aalderinck - ePortfolio Symposium - QUT 2009)

Wijnand makes the explicit point that management support is crucial to the success of this model, but may be overlooked (or side-stepped).

The stakeholders

ePortfolio Stakeholders (Wijnand Aalderinck - ePortfolio Symposium - QUT 2009)

Wijnand introduced another interesting model illustrating the various stakeholders in ePortfolios as shown right.

Keeping in mind, this is from a Dutch perspective.  I have developed an adaptation of Wijnand’s model (below) which also includes the Government as a stakeholder.  This is particularly true of the England where the English Government announced last year it was developing a national database to track student results from the age of 14.  This was discussed at the Symposium, and there were many comments surrounding privacy, security and big brother.

Without this extreme, I believe that government policy will play a part in ePortfolio usage in some way. In fact, the first two recommendations to come out of the Australian ePortfolio Project’s (AeP) final project report relate to Government involvement and policy creation.

Adapted Stakeholders diagram

From my adapted diagram, you can see that governmental influence interelates with other stakeholders, and that research encompasses all aspects from all stakeholders.

The tug-of-war

The ePortfolio concept has many stakeholders – those who have a vested interest in its development.  Unfortunately, these stakeholders sometimes have competing goals.  This has resulted in a tug-of-war situation.

The ePortfolio (Okinawa) tug-of-war (http://flickr.com/photos/43277403@N00/1573849720/).

So what does this mean?  We have various groups competing with one another in influencing the design and implementation of ePortfolio to meet their own objectives.  Somebody inevitably will lose out.

I have composed a list of goals/issues/challenges around ePortfolios.  It is not an exhaustive list, but the key points that I have discovered in my short ePortfolio journey.  I have then mapped these goals/issues/challenges to the adapted stakeholder’s map to give a visual representation of the competing requirements of ePortfolios.

ePortfolio Stakeholders and their competing goals/challenges

Click the above image to zoom.

The mapping is how I see these goals/challenges aligned with stakeholders.  In particular, stakeholders with a primary interest of focus.  While privacy and security is mandated by government legislation, I have not added it to the Governmental domain because it is not a primary focus of that group in this context.  Of course, the mapping is from only my perspective.  I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules here, just generalisations.

Accreditation standards

Depending on discipline, some students require accreditation before they can practice.  This is true of medicine, psychology, law and so on.  ePortfolios could be one way that students can track their progress through their studies and check off the various benchmarks and attributes they require to meet accreditation.  It may also allow the exchange of this information with accrediting bodies providing a more efficient and authentic accreditation process.

Key Stakeholder:  Institutional, Educational

Sharing/publishing student achievement/credentials

By students documenting their lifelong learning achievements into an ePortfolio, it allows them to share their exploits with a world-wide audience.  The opportunity to forge relationships with others in their field (engage in communities of practice), or to promote themselves to employers is very attractive to students.  Of course, not all students are comfortable with exposing their achievements in this way.  This comes back to privacy issues (discussed later).

Key Stakeholder:  Educational

Institutional collaboration

Using ePortfolios, there is an opportunity for teaching institutions to more easily collaborate on a range of activities.  An example presented at the Symposium was the DEAMES (DEEWR EU Australia Mobilisation of Engineering Students) project (see 4.3.1.3 of the AeP Final Report).  This project is headed up by the Queensland University of Technology and seeks to support mobility of students, graduates and academics in the discipline of Engineering. One of the problems is that there are disparate accreditation bodies for Engineering worldwide and currently they are incompatible.  So the group wanted to develop double degrees in Engineering where students would complete a semester of their degree overseas in Germany which forms part of the European CLUSTER group of universities.  Likewise, students from the CLUSTER group in Germany would complete a semester in Australia. The goal is to have the students accredited by both the Australian and European accreditation bodies. They hope to facilitate this collaboration through the use of ePortfolios.

The mobility aspect would also apply to students moving between schooling, vocational educational training (VET), and higher education (HE), and so using ePortfolios would be one approach to better integrated relationships between these groups in support of lifelong learning (discussed below).

Key Stakeholder: Institutional

Government policy

As previously discussed, the English Government last year revealed new policy that would see the academic performance of students 14 years and over tracked in a central database by a unique learner number.

The AeP Final Report (2008, p. iv) includes the following two recommendations:

1. It is recommended that the government departments with responsibilities for education engage with peak industry, professional and employer bodies to develop a shared understanding of the potential of ePortfolio practice to articulate employability skills.
2. It is recommended that government policy recognise ePortfolio practice as a strategy to build an integrated relationship between higher education and the vocational education and schools sector, in order to support the individual’s lifelong and lifewide learning needs and to increase the potential for career progression.

Key Stakeholder: Governmental

Standards and interoperability

The whole idea of a standard is to reach agreement or consensus. Why is this so important for the data storage of ePortfolios?  Students can invest a significant amount of time in the development of their ePortfolio. They want to be sure that it is transferable to other systems and environments to faciliate their lifelong learning.  Refer to discussion on lifelong learning.  This is one very good reason, but not the only one.

There was a general disquiet surrounding the industry specifications supporting interoperability of ePortfolios.  A delegate at the symposium made the following statement:  “Standards take away from me – the way I work.”  Another delegate asked the question (which I have paraphrased):  aren’t specifications suppose to give me freedom, yet all they end up doing is constraining?

Standards and interoperability in education is just plain hard.  Education rarely fits into neat definitions, agreed best practices, or optimum solutions.  Education is ultra contextual – its just plain messy.  So how do you standardise messy?  That was rhetorical – I don’t have any insight there. There are so many stakeholders involved in ePortfolios, and there are so many definitions.  Those who develop the standards will do so from their own perspective.  Even if there is industry consultation, there is so much diversity that no one size fits all. A point highlighted by Wijnand in his triangle model of an ePortfolio.  If you do not fit within the view of the standards developers, then you will feel constrained and disempowered.

The EIfEL team blog has an article discussing the state of ePortfolio standards. Some of the more popular specifications discussed by the EIfEL team include:

• IMS ePortfolio (eP)
  
• IMS Learner Information Package (LIP)
• UK Leap
• HR-XML

One of the leaders from the above list of standards is The IMS Global Learning Consortium and their ePortfolio specification.  This is not the first time I have been exposed to the work of IMS Global.  In the past, I have conducted research in the area of computer aided assessment (CAA) and developed addendums to their Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) Specification.  That experience reminds of me of just how complex and detailed their specifications can be.  The current state of play sees the IMS’ ePortfolio specification as one of the main players in the specifications stakes.  Yet amongst the group, there was much disquiet about the effectiveness of this specification.  It was described as over-detailed, complex, and difficult to implement.  In fact, it was commented that there is a very limited number of products that adhere to the new specification.

At the Symposium, there was discussion on the need for more generic/simple specifications rather than the specific/detailed/complex specifications that currently exist.  The benefit of the more detailed complex standards is that they can make data more meaningful.  The benefit of the generic/simple specifications is it provides more freedom for diversity and would be simplier to implement.  An example of a generic/simple specification could be the use of the web 2 protocols, RSS and Atom (see Web 2.0 section).  Of course, this freedom does not come without a cost. By designing and implementing a more generic/simple specification, you are limiting the scope of what is standardised and so interoperability can once again suffer.  In my view, there needs to be a balance between these two end-points.

Key Stakeholders: Educational, Technological, Institutional, Governmental

Commercial and open-source products

This long standing battle in Information Technology also extends to ePortfolios.  The same old arguments are bantered about from both camps. Open source solutions are free and not constrained by the whims of any one vendor.  Commercial products have better support and are more enterprise level.  Really, these blanket arguments cannot be applied across the board of commercial and open source solutions.  Some open source solutions have excellent enterprise level support, while some commercial products have good TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and listen carefully to the needs of their customers and respond to changes well.  I spoke with a delegate at the Symposium who mentioned that his management exclusively use commercial products for their L&T.  While my own institution initiated a review of our LMS and decided to shortlist only open-source products for selection based on software licencing costs. I find it somewhat frustrating to hear the rhetoric of the purists, who believe commercial or open-source is the best way for everything and ignore anything else.  It’s very close-minded and short-sighted.

Two common commercial products are Desire2Learn and PebblePAD.  Two common open-source products are Mahara and Sakai OSP.

Key Stakeholder: Technological

Web 2.0

There has been a growing interest in the use of Web 2/Social networking applications to support learning and teaching.  There are many challenges to this approach, but there is great promise.  In fact, I can see considerable overlap between the ePortfolios and Web 2 approaches.  Yet, they appear to be in competition with one another.  You either do it with ePortfolios, or with Web 2.  One of the commercial ePortfolio products that I saw demonstrated at the Symposium discussed the idea of web 2 type interfaces to their system to be able to share syndicated data from your ePortfolio.  This I thought was a good start.  However, what about allowing data to come into your ePortfolio from other web 2 systems?  I don’t believe this was supported by the product.  To my way of thinking, it allows students/learners to use their own tools (something discussed in freedom/ownership vs. central control) to develop their ePortfolio, and then use web 2 tools to aggregate it into their ePortfolio and mash it up how they like.  This also feeds into the generic/simple specification approach discussed under standards and interoperability).

The opportunity of meshing web 2 and ePortfolios exist, but I believe it will be ignored as its not a priority of the top down group as discussed next.

Key Stakeholders:  Educational, Technological

Bottom up vs. top down motivation

The questions are: who is driving the need for ePortfolios and who has the most pull?

Tug of war from different contexts (http://flickr.com/photos/ames28/2669110959/)

Top down suggests governments and institutional management.  While bottom up suggests the learners and instructors. This epitomises the ePortfolio tug-of-war.  These groups have different perspectives on what an ePortfolio should be, so there are competing goals at play.

Those of the top down camp I believe are motivated by things such as streamlining administrative processes, improving institutional collaboration and gaining institutional competitive advantage.  The value to this group seems to be in the way information about students can be shared with government, industry and other institutions that is more meaningful and I fear a marketing tool to demonstrate institutional competitive advantage (discussed below).

While from the learners and teachers’ perspective, the value appears to be in things such as personal reflection on one’s journey and to gain perspective on where you are going (see career counselling below), and promoting your skills to an employer audience.

I’m sure there are other aspects that I have not covered, but this was the trend that I saw emerge from discussions at the Symposium, and the promotional material from the ePortfolio vendors.

For each group to maximise the effectiveness of the benefits they wish to draw from ePortfolios, the tug-of-war focuses around one particular aspect – control/ownership.

Key Stakeholders: Educational, Institutional

Freedom and ownership

Who should own an ePortfolio?  Who should have primary control over it?  The institition, or the learner?  Whomever has the primary control will be able to most influence its design to maximise their goals.

Academics at the Symposium made (paraphrased) comments such as:

“Students need to be able to choose their own tools.”

“Students need to be able to use what they are already using.”

“Institutions are responsible for guiding students in maximising its effectiveness for their goals, but ultimately it belongs to the student and they should be able to do with it as they wish.”

“The choice of whether to use an ePortfolio should be up to the student.”

These views does not fit well with the overarching goals of the institutions.

Yet, the products I saw at the symposium did not fit well with the comments made above.  They were the typical large integrated computer system and designed to integrate with learning institution systems, such as LMSes.

In my view, if the ePortfolio is optional, and students do not feel they have enough control or freedom to use it as they wish, they will probably not engage with it.  If they are forced to engage with it through policy, they will either work around it as best they can, or they will just go elsewhere.

Wijnand made the following point: we must seek balance between “free creative learning of motivated students” and “organisations capturing and controlling of student progress.”  I’m not sure trying to strike a balance here will generate a happy result for anyone.

Key Stakeholders: Educational, Institutional

Institutional competitive advantage

One of the salesmen for an ePortfolio product made the comment that there can be a competitive advantage to adopting their ePortfolio system and making is available for free to students who join the institution’s alumni.  The rationale is that it will maintain a link with the student after they have graduated in the hope that they will return to the institution when they decide to further their study.

It was also commented that having an ePortfolio system for students is a marketing tool to discern one institution from another.  Obviously this is very short-sighted as eventually all will have them in some shape or form.  This is all assuming that ePortfolios are what students want of course.

Key Stakeholder: Institutional

Career planning/Counselling

This is where I can see great value in an ePortfolio from an educational perspective.  Documenting your exploits as a students and plotting your progress is a great way to reflect on your journey.  It would be very useful for students to be able to work out where they want to go with the life.

Of course, there are other ways to do this besides an ePortfolio.  The weblog would be a classic example.

Key Stakeholders: Educational, Institutional

Educational design

There was a presentation at the Symposium which discussed the use of ePortfolios to support and enhance the first year student experience.  The presentation abstract highlights some of the exciting ways that ePortfolios can be utilised to support first year students:

• harnessing ePortfolio for entering self-assessment of knowledge, skills and attitudes
• enabling reflection on personal traits and dispositions
• embedding career modules and discipline reflections to mediate endemic course and career uncertainty
• harnessing early motivation and enthusiasm by making connections explicit between subject learning and the attainment of desirable employability skills (the latter as a subset of graduate attributes)

Some of the ePortfolio systems that I saw had integrated assessment systems where students could write a paper for example in their ePortfolio, and then links in the system would allow their teacher to assess it and store a grade.  I think this is another example of an ePortfolio system trying to do to much.

Key Stakeholder: Educational

Privacy/security

This was a big topic of conversation during the Symposium.  Given the nature of information being recorded in an ePortfolio, there is a clear justification for ensuring privacy/security.  However, whose responsibility is it? I guess it depends on who wins out in the freedom/ownership tug-of-war.  Privacy laws vary from country to country.  In Australia, the laws are reasonably firm in terms of maintaining privacy.  This is also true of the education sector.  In a time when online social networking is becoming a popular tool for learning, this presents some interesting challenges for educators in ensuring that student confidentiality is not compromised through these activities.  ePortfolios would certainly fall under this banner.

How much information a learner is prepared to make public about themselves is a very personal choice.  In fact, this is one challenge learners (and teachers) will face if attempting to use social networking software such as blogs.  It is especially true in an age where identity theft is as violating as someone breaking into your home.  The difference with identity theft is that the theft can continue over long periods of time as the thief uses your identity to steal from others, and in the process ruining your reputation.  It is vital that ePortfolios provide the appropriate security controls so that learners can set privacy levels that they are comfortable with.  Otherwise, there will simply not engage.

Key Stakeholders: Educational, Technological, Institutional

Lifelong/lifewide learning

Lifelong learning – the concept that learning occurs both formally and informally throughout one’s life, and is not limited to formal classroom or occupational settings.  There is also the aspect of learning skills to make you a lifelong learner – someone who can adapt to a changing world and be self-sufficient.

A new (to me at least) buzzword emerged known as lifewide learning.  I had to google this one and came up with the following definition:

Life-wide Learning (LWL) refers to student learning in real contexts and authentic settings. Such experiential learning enables students to achieve certain learning goals that are more difficult to attain through classroom learning alone. It helps students to achieve the aims of whole-person development and enables them to develop the life-long learning capabilities that are needed in our ever-changing society.

Oh I just love these buzzwords.

So I guess the point here is that ePortfolios can facilitate the learner’s journey throughout their life as they build a portfolio of life experiences, both formal and informal.  So it is important that their ePortfolio is able to grow and evolve over their lifelong journey.  This means it must be portable (refer to interoperability standards).

Interestingly, a parallel or overlap can be identified between the concepts of lifelong learning, ePortfolios, and Personal Learning Environments (PLE).  Thoughts I’ll try to capture in a separate blog post.

Key Stakeholder: Educational

Conclusions

From my education perspective, I think the greatest value of an ePortfolio is the ability of learners to reflect on their achievements.  It can assist with planning their future endeavours or to promote themselves to employers for example.  However, the tug-of-war between institutional and educational goals threatens to undermine the entire concept and make it unworkable for everyone.  What does it mean for those who lose the tug-of-war?

Who will lose in this tug-of-war (http://flickr.com/photos/missnewmexico2008/2582614711/)

If ePortfolios are hijacked by institutional needs, in my view it is unlikely that students will see value in engaging with them.  If they are not taken up by students, then it will clearly fail.  If the educational goals take precedence over institutional goals, then the concept may not reach its full potential.

I really wonder whether there is a happy middle ground between the needs of these two groups.  I wonder whether it is necessary to have one single monolithic system to support all functions desired by stakeholders of ePortfolios.  Why not support the educational goals through web 2 type technologies, which hand control and ownership to the learners, but can interface through simple standards such as RSS and Atom with administrative systems maintained by institutions?  This would mean a convergance perhaps of ePortfolios and Personal Learning Environments for learners, with links to institutional systems supporting other aspects of ePortfolios such as accreditation and institutional collaboration.  Want to prove to an employer that you have credentials, direct them to an institutional system that validates your qualifications.  Do this via your own PLE/ePortfolio using web 2 technologies.

Learning Designs – making them explicit

While reading through a paper on Cloudworks as presented at ASCILITE 2008 in Melbourne, I came across the following quote:  “Traditionally [learning] design has been an implicit process, how do we shift to a process of design that is more explicit and hence shareable?”  This is a very interesting observation and a good question.  Lets take a look at the first part of this quote, the statement:  “Traditionally design has been an implicit process…”  This to me says that developing a learning design is something that is logically planned and generated in one’s mind, but rarely formalised.  Formalisation in terms of documented in a way that shows the process of arriving at the learning design based on the learning problem.  In being a new comer to curriculum design, something of frustration to me is trying to identify processes and approaches to developing learning designs.  There is no pro-forma, procedure, or outline that I can follow that will help me develop learning designs.  Learning is very contextual, and a learning design for a particular learning outcome can be completely inappropriate for another.  One of my boss’ many rantings includes the concept of wicked problems.  The little that I understand of wicked problems, I think learning design would qualify.  I wonder if he (the boss) made this comment before? If so, sorry David.   Of course this is how I see things from a beginners perspective.  If this is not the case, please point it out to me.

Looking at the second part of this statement; “…how do we shift to a process of design that is more explicit and hence shareable?” this is where I see the major benefit of the research around Cloudworks.  The ability to identify a learning problem, and be able to search through designs of others that will help to solve this problem.  I can see this approach is synonymous to the open source movement in computer science – sharing in a community where everyone benefits from the work of the collective.

In addition to the service provided by Cloudworks, I have also discovered some other potentially useful tools to assist in the development of appropriate learning designs:  CompendiumLD and LAMS.

CompendiumLD

What is CompendiumLD?  The website describes it as:

… a software tool for designing learning activities using a flexible visual interface. It is being developed as a tool to support lecturers, teachers and others invovled in education to help them articulate their ideas and map out the design or learning sequence. Feedback from users suggests the process of visualising design makes their design ideas more explicit and highlights issues that they may not have noticed otherwise. It also provides a useful means of representing their designs so that they can be shared with others. CompendiumLD provides a set of icons to represent the components of learning activities; these icons may be dragged and dropped, then connected to form a map representing a learning activity.

CompendiumLD is still a prototype system, but the authors invite anyone to make use of it and provide feedback so it can mature in to a useful product for educators.  I hope to have time in the coming months to sit down with this tool and see what it can do.  I’ll be sure to share my experiences with it on my blog in the future if this eventuates.

LAMS

LAMS stands for Learning Activity management System and is described on its website as:

… a revolutionary new tool for designing, managing and delivering online collaborative learning activities. It provides teachers with a highly intuitive visual authoring environment for creating sequences of learning activities. These activities can include a range of individual tasks, small group work and whole class activities based on both content and collaboration.

LAMS is managed by Macquarie University in Sydney Australia.  Macquarie University has formed the LAMS Foundation to research into the impact and development of LAMS.

Conclusions

While there are technology solutions available to help develop and share learning designs, I think the process of developing learning designs is too complex to abstract into a canned procedure.  At best, you could develop a checklist of common errors or problems that should be kept in mind while developing or reviewing curriculum.  I did at one point attempt to create such a checklist, however I seem to have misplaced it.  If I can find it, I’ll post it to my blog.

Really, the only way to learn how to create learning is to be active, roll-up the sleeves and get into it.

Social Networking for Learning Designers – Cloudworks

I recently attended the ASCILITE 2008 conference in Melbourne Australia.  I attended a presentation discussing the notion of social networking for learning designers and a social networking application called Cloudworks.  The idea was quite simple – apply the concept of social networking to facilitate the sharing of ideas around learning designs.  Cloudworks is an initiative of the Institute of Education Technology at The Open University in the United Kingdom.  It is being funded jointly by JISC and The Open University.

In this blog post, I’ll provide a quick summary about the service and my view about its strengths and weaknesses.  For more detailed information about Cloudworks, visit the website.

Cloudworks Design Model

In a one-liner, I’d describe Cloudworks as a community blog, but customised to specifically support learning designers.  Not exactly earth shattering statement – it’s almost stating the obvious once you take a look.

The underlying model of Cloudworks is as follows.  There are five types of objects that are associated with the service as detailed by Conole, et. al. (2008).  They are:

1. Clouds:  These range from little snippets of practice or simple ideas of teacher practice, through to more detailed design plans – which might be in the form of visual design representation such as a LAM Six design sequence or a CompendiumLD diagram, or a text-based, narrative case study or pedagogical pattern.
2. Stormclouds: This is a new object we have added recently. Stormclouds are requests; articulating an educational problem that someone is seeking help on. For example a teacher might want to teach introductory statistics across a range of disciplines and request help on ideas for doing this. Alternatively a teacher might put in a stormcloud about how to promote learner-centred approaches to inquiry-based learning to encourage students to develop their scientific thinking skills.
3. Resources: These include learning objects, open educational resources, design templates and case studies, but also different ideas and approaches to thinking about design, and links to sites providing information on different tools and how they can be used.
4. Tools: These include Learning Design tools – that guide the user through the design process and pedagogy tools – which instantiate particular pedagogical approaches.
5. People and communities: Each user has an associated profile and any social objects they put in are automatically assigned to them adding value to their profile and illustrating in a dynamic way the evolving expertise of the system.

An additional object that appears to be new to the service and not discussed by Conole in their recent ASCILITE paper is a Cloudscape. This idea is analogous to photosets in Flickr, a social networking service around sharing photographs.  A photoset in Flickr provides a grouping mechanism for photos around a theme or event, and a photo can belong to more than one photoset.  A cloudscape is like a photoset, and a cloud is like a photo.  The same rules apply, a cloud can belong to more than one cloudscape.

Tagging

The service supports tagging, but with a twist.  The traditional folksonomy approach with tagging is very loose and unstructured.  Users generate their own tags and assign them in their own context.  Often this is relevant to others, but not always.  Cloudworks has added some structure to this meta-data by providing three categories in which to add tags: pedagogy, tools and discipline.  When adding your cloud (eg. idea/plans etc), you assign tags under each of those three categories.

People

There is no sociality without people.  The service provides an index of all users registered with the system, sorted alphabetically by first name.  You can also search for users using a generic search box found on all pages.  There is a limited profile for each user that includes their employer and a list of cloudscapes and people they are following, and who is following them.  The term following appears to be drawn from the same concept as used by Twitter.  In Twitter, you can submit very short descriptions about your current thoughts or activities.  To share these with your friends and peers, they follow you.  This means that when they login to the service, they can see comments that you have made along with anyone else they are following.  I can only assume that Cloudworks has adopted the same model for this concept as I have been unable to test it just now due to a login problem with my account.

The positives

Straight up, I can see this is a great idea, and I really hope it takes off.  The development team seem to have really done their homework when designing this service as evidenced by their research paper Cloudworks:  Social networking for learning design as published in the proceedings of ASCILITE 2008 in Melbourne.  This paper discusses the rationale behind the design, and they make a very important point.  They wrote: “Traditionally design has been an implicit process, how do we shift to a process of design that is more explicit and hence shareable?”  This comment deserved a blog post all of its own, but just quickly, being able to share learning designs much like what happens with open source software will create a real sense of community for learning designers.  This can only be a good thing.

The website is quite easy to use and navigate, and re-uses many of the same themes of other social networking services such as flickr and twitter discussed previously.  For those who currently use social networking software, it is particularly easy to get into Cloudworks.

I can see that this service is something that could be promoted to teaching staff at my own institution (CQ University) to try and engage teachers in conversation around learning designs, and to share and collaborate with one another.

Allowing comments on clouds is excellent.  This really facilitates the social aspect of the service and allows feedback and generation of further ideas around clouds.

Suggestions

Search

Conole, et. al. (2008) in their paper identified two key verbs for their service:  find, and share.  While I think the share aspect is pretty straight forward and flexible, the find aspect may need a little more work.  I have some ideas on how this can be improved, but of course like many perspectives, they are highly contextual and may not align with the larger group.

1. I can see that one of the major functions that I would like to have with this service is to find solutions to a learning problem. The service has clouds which are solutions, and stormclouds which are problems. But there doesn’t seem to be any meta-data that links these two together. As we all know, learning is highly contextual. What works for one context may not work for another, even if the learning objectives are the same. I wonder whether the application of a model such as TPCK to the meta-data of clouds and stormclouds would make it easier for these two objects to find one another?
2. The people page provides an alphabetical list of users on the service.  Sadly, this is sorted by first name.  From my perspective, many of these people will be researchers and likely will have published.  It is often easier to remember an author’s surname, rather than first name based on the number of times we have written citations to their work in our own papers.  So it would be a great idea to sort these on surname instead.
3. Another helpful function would be to allow browsing of users by their institution/employer.  You remembered speaking to someone from The Open University, but you cannot remember their name.  You are sure you will remember it if you see it.  So why not browse users by institution?
4. Provide more scope for users to build their personal profile in the service.  For example, allow users to nominate their areas of interest in learning design.  This would allow others with similar interests to form links and follow one another.

Share

While the share side of things is pretty good, there are a few things that might help improve the service.

1. First and foremost, RSS feeds.  To really be called a social networking service, you must have RSS so that the data can be mashed and re-used, otherwise it is really just another repository.  I can see on the What we are working on page that RSS feeds for cloudscapes, people and tags is coming.  Hopefully this will get a high priority.
2. Another idea which may belong to the long-term category is the ability to integrate Cloudworks with blogging services such that you can write your own clouds on your own personal blog and have it ping Cloudworks.  This way you can create your clouds using your own blogging tool, and use it to share your cloud with Cloudworks.

Conclusions

On the whole, I think this has the potential to be a great resource for learning designers and I really hope that it takes off.  I’ll try to add some of my own creations to the service when I have a moment.  I’d be interested to hear feedback from others on what I have done and how it could have been improved.

References

Conole, et. al., Cloudworks:  Social networking for learning design, Proceedings of ASCILITE, 2008, Melbourne.

Cloudworks, http://www.cloudworks.ac.uk