McLuhan’s Tetrad

McLuhan’s Tetrad comprises 4 laws of media that can be used to analyse the effects of technological change on society, rather than the causes.

Timothy Kraft describes the tetrad as:

Enhance
The technology must enhance some capability of the person. The medium is an extension of the person.

Retrieve
The result is a retrieval of some earlier service or capability that was lost and is now brought back into play in a new form.

Obsolesced
What is pushed aside and made obsolescent.

Reverse
If the new media is taken to extreme what will result that reverses the original characteristics of the media when it was first introduced.

While the first three of the tetrad seem quite obvious to me, the fourth, “reverse” has troubled me somewhat.  McLuhan suggests that a medium “overheats”, or reverses into an opposing form, when taken to its extreme.

Reading articles of how people have interpreted and applied reversal to other medium has caused some confusion, as I think many who have written about the Reverse law of the tetrad may have misunderstood its meaning.  Or perhaps it is just different interpretations of what McLuhan defines as the reversal.  Or more likely, maybe I have it all wrong. After reading through some of the Canadian Library Archive notes about McLuhan’s work, and listening to a radio interview with Nina Sutton in 1975, it became more clear to me.  McLuhan says that when a medium is pushed to extremes, it reverses or flips into an alternate form.  In an excerpt of an interview with Nina Sutton hosted on the Library and Archives Canada webiste, McLuhan discusses the revolution of the steam printing press to the telegraph press.  When the telegraph press emerged, the way that people wrote for newspapers changed immediately and flipped.  The type of writing that was required for the telegraph was inverted so that all the very important information was transmitted first sentence, and then all the other information followed in order or most importance.  This was due to the risk of the transmission being interrupted, so that the critical information had the lowest risk of being lost.

The misunderstanding of the Reverse is derived from the word “extreme”.  I wonder whether the flipping or reversing is not a result of extremes of adoption as seems to be alluded in examples online such as here or even here where the more it is used, a flipping effect occurs. I take from McLuhan’s examples, the demonstration that it is extreme changes to the medium, rather than the application thereof that is the catalyst for the reversal.  I don’t know whether this is significant or not.  The flips that McLuhan speaks of are in response to extreme changes in the medium, that then have extreme impact on their use.  So the flipping of the steam press was a result of introducing the telegraph press, rather than changes in how they used the original steam press or how much the stream press was used.

A different take on an analogy for McLuhan’s press example for flipping or reverse, is with the mobile phone as described by Library and Archives Canada.  Mobile phones changed things a lot and brought to prominence aural communication, over written anywhere anytime.  However, the mobile phone taken to extremes saw the advent of SMS texting, which became very popular and evolved as a result of the high cost of mobile telephony.  SMS Text Messaging quickly became much more frequent than mobile phone calls.  So the mobile phone taken to the extreme (at the time) has flipped the prominence of aural communication to short written messages, perhaps akin to the telegraph.  Of course mobile phones have evolved considerably more since text messaging, and McLuhan in his radio interview with Nina highlighted the fact that there has been many “flips” in the printing press leading up to the 1975 interview.  So extremes seem to be able to persistently take on new heights again and again, flipping as they evolve.

Looking at internet technologies is considerably harder than the examples of printing presses and mobile phones, because the rate of change is significantly faster, and because of the modern convergences of technologies.  I also wonder whether many of these technologies have not yet reached the extremes necessary to cause a reversal.  Dan Pontefract’s article highlights the following reversals for Learning 2.0 as a medium:

• Everyone is an expert
• Content & opinion overload
• 90-9-1 hypothesis
• Time mismanagement
• Learning groupthink
• Loss of certified company staff

I suggest that each of these items is part of the extends or enhances category.  These are aspects of learning 2.0 that are enhanced, intensified, made possible, or accelerated as a result of the learning 2.0 medium’s introduction.  They are just some of the negative outcomes that sit along-side the positive ones, and likely emerged around the same time.  In other words as learning 2.0 extended positive things like formal classroom/eLearning, Social Networking/Web 2.0, Traditional Corporate University, and so on, it also extended the everyone is an expert paradigm, content & opinion overload and so on.

So what would I consider the reversals for learning 2.0?  Well I guess it depends on context.  My context in higher education and curriculum development appears different to Dan’s article which uses terms such as training which makes me think of VET type education rather than education via the academy.  This assumption may be incorrect of course.  Nevertheless, from a university context, the first thing that comes to mind in terms of pushing learning 2.0 to the extreme is the explosion of the MOOC concept.  Within higher education, MOOCs have flipped the learning 2.0 medium by breaking the mould of the traditional university course as being closed and elitist, to open and accessible.  It is the MOOC that has pushed learning 2.0 to extremes that has caused this flip, rather than the amount of people engaged in learning 2.0 in higher education.

The idea of the reverse law sings to the swings and round-a-bouts we see in technological circles.  McLuhan’s tetrad is a fascinating construct for analysing the influences of technology on society.

 

McLuhan says the medium is the message

McLuhan is probably most popularly known for his theory succinctly posited “The medium is the message”.  Federman offers a very clear explanation of this concept in his article “What is the meaning of the medium is the message?”  Federman explains that McLuhan considers the medium in quite broad terms, more so than perhaps first impressions give of this famous statement.  In particular, McLuhan considers anything that is an extension of ourselves as a medium.  So medium is more broad than human communication, and can encompass any technology that extends our physical and intellectual essences.  Federman puts it well when he states: “… since some sort of change emerges from everything we conceive or create, all of our inventions, innovations, ideas and ideals are McLuhan media.”

There are examples of “the medium is the message” everywhere in modern society.  For instance, the rise of social media has seen changes in television entertainment programs.  While in the past, some programs might have had a “mailbox” for you to post a letter or more recently an email, containing your thoughts and opinions on a matter, there would then be a delay until the next broadcast where these letters would be selectively read on-air.  In the past year or two, more new and diverse approaches to interacting with audiences have occurred afforded by social media.  Twitter was one of the first medium’s to be used to facilitate “talk-back” or back-channels for live television programs, typically syndicated across the bottom of the television screen.  Question and Answer from Australia’s national broadcaster, The ABC famously (within Australia) use the QandA hashtag to denote tweets relating to the political television program.

 

 

In the past week, Australian television programs are now making use of a service called zeebox.com.  This provides even tighter integration with the television format where the television programs can have their own “space” within the zeebox medium itself – the cloud service.  It is also mobile enabled so viewers can participate in television programs no matter where they may be viewing them.  It is also an approach to stem the flow of viewers resorting to digital video recorders to playback television programs, and skip the ads while they are at it.  The use of social media offers an incentive to be present at the live broadcast, and consume those wonderful advertisements that keep the television network executives happy.  McLuhan is quoted in Federman as saying “a ‘message’ is, ‘the change of scale or pace or pattern’ that a new invention or innovation ‘introduces into human affairs.’”.  This change in television programming would have been an unintended consequence of social media at inception. There are many other examples that demonstrate McLuhan’s theory.

OERs: Publishing Software – Open source or Open API

This blog post relates to my study of Open Educational Resources as part of my Emerging Technologies for Learning Program of study at the University of Manitoba.

I have been asked to comment on the use of “free” open source applications in the context of OERs.  I blogged about this just recently.  My classmate, Stu has responded to the same question in his blog post where he discusses the virtues of open source software in the creation of content in Education. Comparisons have also been drawn between the virtues of open source software, and open educational resources.  It is true that there are some similarities in the spirit of each of these models of publishing and sharing.  Like me in my blog post, Stu highlights the benefits of free technology such as Google Apps in education. However, a clear distinct needs to be made – Google Apps is not open source software.

Google Apps is part of a new breed of software known as cloud computing software.  It brings new ways of sharing and re-using information.  While in spirit, cloud computing software appears to be “open source”, it is in fact typically “open API“.  So what is an API?  In short, it is a published and standardised way for computer programs to interact with one another, typically on the web.

An example will do well here.  Consider flickr.  There are many different software products for uploading your photos into flickr. Each of these products uses the Flickr API to login to your flickr account, select your photo files, tag them, title them, and upload them into Flickr, and so on. Google has similar APIs for interacting with their Google Apps services, and in fact most of their cloud services.

While the API is open and anyone (who is authorised by the service provider) can write programs to interact with the service, the service software programming source code isn’t is open.  So it’s behaviour cannot be changed or extended or adapted for other contexts.  It also means that if the service provider decides to change the terms of the service (Ning) or simply decides to shut them down (ask Google Wave customers about that), then you are out of luck.

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PLEs and PLNs

This blog post relates to my study of CCK11.

What are the downsides? (http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf)

As a learning platform that is by definition always evolving, a PLE requires students to engage in ongoing decision making to maintain, organise, and grow their learning environments.  The process of self-directed learning requires a degree of self-awareness, and it must be given time to mature.  Some students, however, may have never taken the time to think about their own metacognition or to reflect on how they learn best.  These less experienced students may not be ready for the responsibility that comes with building and managing a PLE.

Interesting, and a serious downside indeed.  Managing one’s own learning is not a trivial task – it’s a big responsibility.  Is it reasonable to expect that everyone be able to manage their own learning to this level of detail?  A noble vision, but is it practical or reasonably attainable, or simply a fairy-tale view of education?  Let me explain my context, and why I believe this downside is understated, and why I don’t believe this ideal is realistic in a global way – a panacea.

I’m from Australia.  Higher education in Australia is partly funded by the Australian Government.  Students pay a portion of the tuition fees, and can defer their payments until after they obtain a job.  In the meantime, the tuition debt only grows inline with the CPI.  In other words, Australian tertiary students do not pay interest on their loans, and only pay a proportion of the overall costs which are subsidised by the Government.  Tertiary education in Australia is very accessible. Given this accessibility, and the diminished cost to the individual, there is greater diversity in the motivations of students in Australian higher-ed.  The fall-out from failure isn’t as significant as other countries where the individual bears the burden of the full costs of their education.  Don’t get me wrong, I think we have an outstanding system in place, that provides equitable access to higher education.  You don’t have to be wealthy to have a go in Australia.

I’m getting to the point… promise.   Take the following quote from a blog post I wrote some time ago, where I was reflecting on the book Teaching for Quality Learning at University, written by John Biggs.

Biggs introduces two student characters that represent two distinct groups of students that comprise a class.  They are also featured in a short film titled Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding.  Their names are Susan and Robert.  Susan is the typical academically minded student.  She comes to classes prepared, including pre-reading class materials, reflection on this material, and questions about her understanding of it.  Then there is Robert.  Robert is characterised as a student who is there out of necessity rather than desire.  He only wants to achieve sufficiently to be able to get a good job.  The course he is doing may not have been his first choice.  He comes to class with little preparation or prior reflection.  He hopes to rote learn and memorise to be able to pass his course.  These two characters form the cornerstone of his theories into the effectiveness of active versus passive learning.

Not all students are motivated in the same way when it comes to managing their learning.  Robert is not so interested in managing his learning – its about hoops to jump through to get his piece of paper (qualification).  Constructive Alignment, a theory by John Biggs suggests amongst other things that learning must be active – it is all about what the students do.  This in my opinion has merit, but like all theories, is contextual.  That aside, Biggs believes that you can create learning situations that force students such as Robert to be more active learners. As John puts it in an epilogue to the Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding Video (Part 3):

Thus we see that alignment throughout the system is based on the relevant constructive student activity.  In our “apply” example, the intended learning outcome, the teaching/learning activities, and the assessment task are all focused on that single verb “apply”:  we have woven a constructive web from which students would find difficulty in escaping without learning.

However, this method of making it difficult for students to escape in my view can often lead to task corruption.  It astounds me what lengths students will go to to avoid doing something if their heart just isn’t in it.

When I reflect on my early teens as an undergraduate student, my level of maturity and my motivations at the time were not conducive to learning management.  I was more interested in drinking, girls, and having fun.  I’m not suggesting that all teenagers are this way, but I don’t believe I was unique either.  Only when I commenced my Master degree, in my mid-20s did I become mature enough to take on the responsibility of managing my own learning.  This is evident through my improved GPA.   At the time, the web 2.0 revolution had not yet hit mainstream and many of these ideas had not yet been conceived (Oh I’m getting old).

Some may be able to manage their learning using a PLE/PLN, and I see PLE/PLNs as but one way of student learning.  We must remember the crucial point that whatever we do, it must fit the context.  Forcing students to create their own PLE/PLN and be able to manage their learning through this personalised environment is thwart with danger.  Even if you spend the time developing students’ abilities to manage their own learning, doesn’t mean that they will actually do it.

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.

My Personal Learning Environment

I have been assigned the task of mapping out my personal learning environment.  So using the IMHC Concept Mapping Tool, I have created the following map.

I have to say that I am not really happy with this map.  The thing with concept mapping is it is difficult to know when to stop, as you can map to infinity.  It lacks structure and abstractions, has duplication and is frustrating me.  I will need to think it through some more to see if there is a better way to represent my personal learning environment.  This while a start, is far from a true and accurate representation.

More to come…

Connectivism and the importance of context – an example

I have just read a post by George Siemens where he answers the question:  “What is the unique idea in Connectivism?”

My article is related to my participation in my University of Manitoba studies of Instructional Design.

One aspect that George has highlighted in response to the question is the following:

4. Context. While other theories pay partial attention to context, connectivism recognizes the fluid nature of knowledge and connections based on context. As such, it becomes increasingly vital that we focus not on pre-made or pre-defined knowledge, but on our interactions with each other, and the context in which those interactions arise. The context brings as much to a space of knowledge connection/exchange as do the parties involved in the exchange.

This point, along with the others highlighted in the article swished around in my mind, and got the usual nod of “okay I suppose this makes sense”.  However for me, I prefer to deal in the concrete, rather than the abstract.  Examples, examples, examples!!  I find philosophical writing very difficult to digest.

Interestingly, I believe an example that may support George’s point was provided in one of the comments at the conclusion of the article, and a rather unexpected one at that. Of course, I could have misinterpreted the meaning of this point, and so my example may not be appropriate.  Please correct me if I have the wrong end of the stick.

The comment that I am referring to is the one posted by Catherine Fitzpatrick, where she doesn’t mince words in her assessment of George’s writing:

One exercise I will assign to you for your homework in this course, which will make up 10 percent of your grade average, is to take an essay like this and stop using references to other writers, waving icons and badgets around.
The average intelligent college-educated reading person such as myself can be expected to know who Spencer, Dewey, and Piaget are, and what they represent, although they may want to peak back at Wikipedia. But many of the others are insider’s baseball and obscure and dense.
A sentence like this: “Social learning theory. Here we can draw from Bandura’s emphasis on self-efficacy, Bruner, Vygotsky, and others” — is completely opaque, show-offy, and therefore stupid. It conveys nothing. Unless we are one of the 6-7 really nerdy obsessives working with you in your institute on these ideas, or in some other e-learning collective that things these folks are the cat’s miaow, we won’t understand the references. Sure, we can, like good little Googlers, go read this: http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/BanEncy.html But what do YOU Mean to say about it? You might wish to spell out, rather than cryptically reference, what is is YOU mean to say about this concept.
Thus, a paragraph like no. 5, “Concept of Mind,” could easily add 3-4 sentences and tease out what is important about “Weicks’ papers on heedful interrelating.” Showy cataloguing of other sources that resonate with your own thinking don’t make for an interesting paper. Spelling them out coherently would.
Re: “the fluid nature of knowledge”. When are you content to let a text *stay put* and become immutable, and be held on deposit for accessing throughout the ages?

When I first read this post (and after I stopped grinning from it’s indignant tone), it started to resonate with me (sorry George ).  However, the following statement by Catherine made clear to me what is going on:  “It conveys nothing. Unless we are one of the 6-7 really nerdy obsessives working with you in your institute on these ideas, or in some other e-learning collective that things these folks are the cat’s miaow, we won’t understand the references.”  I can only speculate that the “show-offy” references described by Catherine have been examined in greater detail within the course context in which the post was written, and are therefore more meaningful to the students in the course, than the greater world audience.  Herein lies the example of how I see context being just as critical to the knowledge exchange as the participants themselves.

I am reminded of a discussion I had around the idea of targeted audiences for blogging.  Perhaps getting off track with the intent of this post, but aside reading if anyone is interested.

So, now I’ll ask a question.  Have I understood the intent of George’s point around context as it pertains to connectivism?  I’d like to hear people’s thoughts.  If I have missed the point, does someone have an example to illustrate it?

Damien Clark.

Draft Introduction to Learning Plan for Web 2.0

I am developing an online course in conjunction with the PLE@CQUni project.  Following is an initial draft introduction for my learning design blueprint as part of my study of Instructional Design in Adult Education course.

My main concern with my plan is cognitive load, especially when learners have limited time.  I am thinking an approach to helping with this is to space out the course so there is less time pressure.  Hopefully this can be done in such a way that the learners do not lose their way.

Any feedback is most welcome.

Web 2.0 for Life Long Learners

Brief description and overall objective

The objective of this course is to expose teaching academics to social networking technologies, and to explore ways in which social networking tools can improve their learning and teaching practices through the lense of the seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education (7PGPUE).

This course introduces teaching academics of undergraduate and postgraduate courses to social networking concepts, technologies, and practice delivered online and supported by face-to-face classes.  Initially, the learner is guided through a series of activities that promote collaboration and reflection on the very technology they are learning and using.  Learners will then begin to reflect on the 7PGPUE and evaluate their own learning and teaching practices with an eye for how these social networking technologies may enhance their course designs.  It is expected that learners will develop their own simple personal learning environment (PLE) as a product of the course, and will be able to introduce the same type of intervention to a small aspect of their own course.

Description of learners, their context and that of the instructors and institution

Learners of the course will be primarily teaching academics, mostly those responsible for course management and development in a university context.  They will be of diverse ethnic backgrounds, attitudes to technology and teaching disciplines.  Most learners will be located on a single campus, while a small few learners may be sparsely located over 9 alternate campuses scattered across the country.  Learners are likely to have significant demands of their time in their day-to-day work commitments, and may need to dedicate some personal time to see the course through to completion.  The course will be voluntary, so it is expected that learners will be largely engaged and motivated to learn.  Technical skills will vary greatly among the cohort from laymen to experts.  It is expected that all learners will have access to high-speed Internet access, at the very least from the workplace, though dial-up Internet will be sufficient for most aspects of the course.  The course will be facilitated through web 2 technologies only, so despite the institution having an LMS, it will not be required for this unit.  The instructors will have a similar context to the learners, also with varying technical and instructional design skills.

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.