Group items tagged

From observations on PLENK it seems that for networked learning to be successful, people need to have the ability to direct their own learning and to have a level of critical literacies that will ensure they are confident at negotiating the Web in order to engage, participate, and get involved with learning activities.

People also have to be confident and competent in using the different tools in order to engage in meaningful interaction. It takes time for people to feel competent and comfortable to learn in an autonomous fashion, and there are critical literacies, such as collaboration, creativity, and a flexible mindset, that are prerequisites for active learning in a changing and complex learning environment without the provision of too much organized guidance by facilitators

barriers to the creation of content and information

This timeline has enabled anyone with access to an internet connection to create and share information.

The barriers of expense and technical expertise - such as printing presses - are now lowered to the ease of creating a blog or podcast.

validating information accuracy

increased ease of content creation is the ability for conversations to occur,

in both real and delayed time, on a global level. Through tools such as mobile phones, Skype[2], video conferencing, instant message, and microblogging tools such as Twitter[3], conversations are no longer confined by space and time

For many individuals, the reduced cost of information communication technologies reduces the economic barrier of participating in global conversations.

While technology is the undercurrent that has influenced much of the development in society and our ability to communicate, share, and create content, technology creates a different dimension not fully reflected in those advancements.

unattainable due to cost and access

Knowledge - the core product and source of engagement in education - has become increasingly fluid

What we have here is a transition from a stable, settled world of knowledge produced by authority/authors, to a world of instability, flux, of knowledge produced by the individual. (p. 207)

Border-less education - such as is evident by global universities like Open University (UK) and Athabasca University (Canada) Private for-profit - as defined by organizations such as University of Phoenix and Laureate Education Corporate universities - such as Defense Acquisition University. (Scott, 2002, pp. 4 - 5)

vital combat of lucidity

his era of complexity, or as defined by Barnett (2004) - supercomplexity - requires a transition from an epistemological to an ontological emphasis. The development of specific skills and mindsets becomes as critical as, or even more so, than the possession of existing knowledge.

adoption of innovation and systemic views of change.

A view of change is required that moves beyond Christensen's (1997), Moore's (1999), and Senge et al.'s (1999) models and begins to addresses the impact of trends and innovations on the spaces and structures of learning.

New trends drive innovation

when educators, school systems, and research groups begin to adopt new approaches for learning.

Yet, in spite of small-scale innovation, new methods typically do not result in new spaces and structures of learning. As noted by David (1990), new innovations are adopted in the context of existing physical spaces.

Given the opportunities of technology to extend access to content, experts, and peer learners, does an existing classroom model still make sense? Do one-instructor classrooms need to give way to more diverse approaches of many instructors and many peer learners? How should curriculum be developed? How much structure needs to be applied to this type of model in the development of curricula and in the planning of instruction? Does instructional design similarly need to be rethought?

complex problem solving through collaboration, and new relationships between educational institutions and society are all possible as systems ch

catalyst and push-back factors

Social pressures were building that resulted in the eventual eruption of political reorganization.

Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition

Yet learning occurs in many places, formats, and process

limitless dimensions exist in our learning (

n addition to formal education, learning occurs through games and simulations, mentoring and apprenticing, performance support at the point of a learning need, self-learning that arises through critical and creative thinking, communities of practice and personal learning networks, as well as the many informal learning situations that arise through conferences, reading, volunteering, and hobbies.

(a) long-term trends influencing information creation, interaction, and technological change; (b) the nature of systemic change; and (c) the multi-faceted, dimension-less nature of learning. Consideration can now be given to a creative exploration of what educational structures might look like if created on the premises presented thus far.

Space - whether physical or virtual - can have an impact on learning. It can bring people together; it can encourage exploration, collaboration, and discussion. Or, space can carry an unspoken message of silence and disconnectedness. More and more we see the power of built pedagogy (the ability of space to define how one teaches) in colleges and universities. (para 1)

carrier of patterns of previous reasoning

hierarchical mindset exists with regard to educational content

classification schemes of individuals such as Aristotle and Linnaeus

The multi-faceted aspects of learning - the criticality of context, the importance of social interaction and negotiation, the need for active "doing" - are all of such nebulous character that they fail to avail themselves to classification

structure content and interaction into hierarchical structures.

an environment that fosters and supports the formation of communities and networks (Siemens, 2003).

suggests a certain view of

learning

Learning is seen as bounded, structured, managed by a single expert (the teacher),

different affordances

ecology of learning with

They arise in a space that both supports and confines their creation. The last decade has generated much thought on networks. A range of researchers from physics, mathematics, and sociology (Barabasi, 2002; Watts, 2003; Wellman, 1999) have explored the nature of networks and how they are a central component in all aspects of society, biology, and physics. The centrality of networks as an organizing scheme is also reflected in education, teaching, and learning (Siemens, 2006) under the concept of connectivism. Connectivism is essentially the assertion that knowledge is networked and distributed, and the act of learning is the creation and navigation of networks. The distributed nature of knowledge and the growing complexification of all aspects of society require increased utilization of technology to assist our ability to stay current, manage information abundance, and solve highly complex problems.

Davidovitch (2007) suggested, "The call for a new pedagogy to accompany new instructional technologies, however, has largely remained unanswered."

duplicate the structure of a classroom, little innovation is seen

pedagogy of oppression

discussion of participatory pedagogies

Learners are able to contribute to existing curricula.

progressively rigid intellectual property laws or increased emphasis on learning outcomes

an attempt to create an educational system that recognizes the fluidity of learning and knowledge,

When a transition is made to networked models of learning, learners are able to form relationships with peers and experts from around

MIT's OpenCourseWare

A fluid network of relationships

Accreditation is a value statement.

learner has sufficiently engaged with the knowledge of a domain to be worthy of a particular designation

Some prefer a high degree of social interaction, while others prefer a more individual approach.

The motivation of peer-contact and schedule of learning activities and events may provide critical support to ensure learners do not drop out of their

Existing services like Diigo[8], Amazon[9], Digg[10], and StumbleUpon[11] provide a glimpse of what a rating system might

brokering

funding model of universities relates to providing support for educators and i

societies to participate in the information and knowledge age. The critical challenges facing humanity are many. A highly connected and well educated populace appears to hold the greatest prospect for meeting these challenges.

e primacy of the educator and the role of the learners as receptive agents

learning management systems

Subscription fees to

as a source of guidance

In my last post, I introduced Helsper and Enyon’s (2009) idea that exposure to, and experience using, various digital technologies can have more of an influence that generation age on determining whether a person has the characteristics of a digital immigrant or a digital native. Of course, nothing is ever so clear cut. In his blog, Wesley Fryer discusses this, and expands the immigrant vs native classification into four categories, as shown below.

Goodyear, Carvalho and Dohn (2014, p 140) state that networked learning “ is no longer exotic”, however, I would argue that this very much depends on on one’s own perspective, which in turn would be shaped by personal experience and knowledge (aka the whole digital landscape debate).

(see Koutropoulis, 2011) Prensky’s division

about herself in the capacity of being a student,

smiss this message

postal correspondence

three (or more) overlapping generations

mass media including television, radio and film.

interactive

Indeed, though the authors of this paper are not in complete agreement about this, it is possible to think of pedagogies (considered as the processes and methods used in an attempt to bring about learning) as technologies, integral parts of a technological assembly that must work together with all of the other technologies to bring about a successful outcome

technologies evolve not through adaptation but by assembly, incorporating pieces of earlier designs

We will see that the ubiquitous capacity of the Internet is creating very profound opportunities for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of all three pedagogical models.

instructional designer

positivist research paradigms and methodologies.

From behaviourist pedagogy emerged the cognitive learning theories that focus on how processing within the individual brain effects comprehension, understanding, storage and retrieval of information. Cognitive pedagogies arose partially in response to a growing need to account for motivation, attitudes and mental barriers that may only be partially associated or demonstrated through observable behaviours – yet they are directly linked to learning effectiveness and efficiency.

empirical testing

Methods that relied on one-to-many and one-to-one communication were really the only sensible options because of the constraints of the surrounding technologies.

“scientific models”

that guided the development, application and assessment of learning.

CB-based distance education is often developed in the suggested order

The model begins with designers selecting instructional goals. Instructional designers identify goals in discussion with subject matter experts with an eye to finding deficiencies in learners’ behaviour that can be rectified by new learning.

This is particularly salient when applied to a new generation of large scale MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)

ext and usually multi-media learning content. The effort and cost of “developing and selecting instructional

creation of brainstorming lists of possible goals, documentation of subject matter priorities, flow charts, gathering of lists

Today each of the instructional design activities (see figure Figure 1) is enhanced by a host of Web 2.0 tools.

f primary use are distributed text tools such as Google Docs, DropBox and wikis

As importantly, collaborative work and negotiation is not confined to text. Collaborative graphic tools, concept and mind mapping tools allow graphic representations of ideas and processes.

Low cost distributed project management tools allow teams to design, create, produce and distribute content at costs much lower than in pre internet days.

gh quality content defines CB models of distance education, its effective management and control is extremely important

the capacity to re-use content created by others is compelling – if not without its challenges.

multiple ways of sharing content

blogs to Facebook to YouTube and content management systems

Perhaps of deeper concern is the reluctance of distance educators to consume and customize content already created by others.

Many content developers define and pride themselves on the production of quality content – not by the consumption and customization of works that they did not produce.

The final affordance of the net – with tremendous, if as yet little demonstrated capacity to improve CB distance education pedagogy – is learning analytics.

mining information about patterns of behaviour in order to extract useful information about learning which can then be applied to improve the experience.

In this model, CB pedagogy may be adapted to service the unique learning needs, style, capacity, motivation and goals of the individual learner.

strive to create instructional designs that change and morph in response to individual learner’s needs and behaviours.

Open Learning Models (Bull & Kay, 2010; Kay & Kummerfeld, 2006) increase learner control and understanding of the system. Open models can also be used by teachers and other support staff to better understand and respond to individual learner needs, although there are potential and as yet unresolved issues with making such models intuitive to understand and control effectivel

important source of data to constructing the model is the user’s current and past activities with content in the learning context.

data minin

data mining

From the brief examples above we can see how technologies and especially the Net afford multiple ways in which CB pedagogies and related instructional designs are enabled, enhanced and made more cost effective.

MOOCs

CB models are inherently focused on the individual learner. While there is a tradition of cognitive-constructivist thinking that hinges on personal construction of knowledge, largely developed by Piaget and his followers (Piaget, 1970), the roots of the constructivist model most commonly applied today spring from the work of Vygotsky (1978) and Dewey (1897), generally lumped together in the broad category of social constructivism.

groups of learners, learning together with and from one another.

Social-constructivism does not provide the detailed and prescriptive instructional design models and methodologies of CB driven distance education.

efines social constructivist learning contexts as places “where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their guided pursuit of learning goals and problem-solving activities

eachers do not merely transmit knowledge to be passively consumed by learners; rather, each learner constructs the means by which new knowledge is both created and integrated with existing knowledge.

New knowledge as building upon the foundation of previous learning Context in shaping learners’ knowledge development Learning as an active rather than passive process, Language and other social tools in constructing knowledge Metacognition and evaluation as a means to develop learners’ capacity to assess their own learning A learning environment that is learner-centred and recognises the importance of multiple perspectives Knowledge needing to be subject to social discussion, validation, and application in real world contexts (Honebein, 1996; Jonassen, 1991; Kanuka & Anderson, 1999).

learning is located in contexts and relationships rather than merely in the minds of individuals.

leave more room for negotiation about learning goals and activities among teachers and students.

less prescriptive

Social-constructivist models only began to gain a foothold in distance education when the technologies of many-to-many communication became widely available,

that being the loss of freedom associated with a commitment to meeting at a common time.

Time constraint issues are especially important to distance students, most of whom are juggling employment and family concerns in addition to their formal course work.

ata mining and learning analytics are not only used to support independent study based on CB models but are being utilized to support and enhance group work.

extract patterns and other information from the group logs and present it together with desired patterns to the people involved, so that they can interpret it, making use of their own knowledge of the group tasks and activities” (Perera et al., 2009).

LMS Moodle

Standard Moodle analytics allow teachers to view contributions or activities of individual learners

Google Analytics

Constructivist pedagogies use the diversity of viewpoints, cultural experiences and the potential for divergent opinion that is best realized through interactions with group members from other cultures, languages and geographies.

Naturally, technological affordances of most relevance to constructivist pedagogies focus on tools to support effective establishment, operation and trust building within groups. The technologies that support rich social presence, including full range of audio, video and gestures, are associated with enhanced trust development and increasing sense of group commitment

connectivism

learning is the process of building networks of information, contacts, and resources that are applied to real problems.

communities of practice

Connectivist learning focuses on building and maintaining networked connections that are current and flexible enough to be applied to existing and emergent problems.

capacity to find, filter and apply knowledge when and where it is needed

The crowd can be a source of wisdom (Surowiecki, 2005) but can equally be a source of stupidity

iticism of connectivism as being merely an extension constructivist pedagogy and those who argue that it is not really a complete theory of learning nor of instruction

gain high levels of skill using personal learning networks that provide ubiquitous and on demand access to resources, individuals and groups of potential information and knowledge servers. The second is the focus on creation, as opposed to consumption, of information and knowledge resources.

Bloom’s (1956) cognitive taxonomy place creation at the highest level of cognitive processing

elies on the ubiquity of networked connections – between people, digital artefacts, and content, and thus can be described as a network centric pedagogy and thus may be the first native distance education pedagogy, without previous instantiation in classrooms.

Effective connectivist learning experiences demand that learners have the tools and the competencies necessary to effectively find, sort, evaluate, filter, reformat and publish content on the net.

hese capacities rely on effective tools, high skill levels and a developed sense of network efficacy.

individuals and groups are helped to create and continuously augment, adapt and use a personal learning environment (PLE)

second key defining characteristic of connectivist pedagogy is the import placed on creating, sharing and publishing learner artefacts.

Connectivist learning designs, like constructivist ones, often involve collaborative or cooperative work between many learners. However, contribution often grows beyond the group to further encourage collaboration across time and space.

eyond the tools of creation instantiated within a PLE is an understanding of the technical and legal means to distribute work, while maintaining appropriate privacy levels and not infringing on the copyright nor plagiarizing the work of others.

The only solution to the privacy dilemma is to let each student and teacher set the level of access that they feel is most appropriate for them and more explicitly for the nature of the content being distributed.

Privacy concerns are also being recognised by the social networking giants.

Connectivist designs also involve the discovery of and contribution to new learning communities.

Learners are encouraged to make themselves, their contributions and their personal learning environment accessible to others. T

create and rate bookmarked resources t

hat others find useful, document their learning accomplishments via blogs, and share their discoveries and insights via micro blog feeds. In this manner they create and sustain learning networks that begin at the course level, but grow and evolve as the course of studies ends.

the emphasis is far more on the individual’s connections with others than with group processes designed to enhance or engender learning.

arder to apply analytics than in the more contained contexts of CB and social constructivist models.

There is no central course, few common materials, no central binding point where interactions can be observed apart from each individual learner.

edagogy is, at heart, entirely focused on the individual learner.

The bottom three of Blooms original levels of learning – acquiring knowledge, coming to understand something or some process and applying that knowledge to a context – are clearly within the domain of CB pedagogies.

Moving up to the analysis, synthesis and evaluation levels brings us to the need for social perspective. This is often acquired through group and networked interactions characteristic of constructivist and connectivist pedagogical models.

Creation can be entirely original or as is more usual, creation involves the building upon, reinterpretation and contextualized application of older ideas to new contexts. Creation, the highest level of cognitive functioning usually requires mastery of the lower levels but, in addition, requires at least a small flame of creativity and insight.

Obviously the focus of connectivism with its inherent demand for students to create and distribute for public review and augmentation, fits well with the final creation level of the revised taxonomy.

here are many domains of knowledge in which creation of new knowledge is of much less importance than remembering and being able to apply existing knowledge.

No single generation has provided all the answers, and each has built on foundations provided by its predecessors rather than replacing the earlier prototype (Ireland, 2007).

As new technological affordances open up, it becomes possible to explore and capitalize on different aspects of the learning process.

For each mode of engagement, different types of knowledge, learning, and contexts must be applied.

students be skilled and informed to select the best mix(es) of both pedagogy and technology.

from the student-content interactions of cognitive-behaviourist models to the critical role of student–student interaction in constructivism, and finally, to the deeply networked student–content-teacher interrelationship celebrated in connectivist pedagogie

which students become teachers and teachers become students,

Connectivism is built to some degree on an assumption of a constructivist model of learning, with the learner at the centre, connecting and constructing knowledge in a context that includes not only external networks and groups but also their own histories and predilections.

he late Boston scholar Father Stanley Bezuska assembled a series of humorous quotes (see http://www.slideshare.net/committedsardine/funny-predictions-throughout-history) illustrating the doomsday predictions of teachers as they have been forced to deal with educational technologies.

Both these examples illustrate how students are taking control of their learning with the result that many currently perceived novices are actually becoming silent experts in how, where, and by whom they want to be educated (Alexander, 2003; Schmidt et al., 2009, on the emergence of peer-to-peer interaction)

t continues to play an important role in network forms of sociality because of the essentially one-to-one edges between nodes that lead to what Rainie and Wellman (2012) refer to as “networked individualism”—

However, one of their defining characteristics is that their members are, in principle and often in practice, listable.

People may be unaware that they are part of a set (e.g., people with a particular genetic marker), or they may identify with it (e.g., people who are fans of football or constructivist teaching methods).

Group-oriented systems tend to provide features like variable roles, restricted membership, and role-based permissions. Network-oriented systems tend to provide features like friending, linking, and commenting. Set-oriented systems tend to provide tools like topic- or location-based selections, tags, and categories.