Half Empty? Half Full? Half There?
I want to write a bit of a reflective note about the Open Course concept.
I came into this, not particularly skeptical, but uncertain of what to expect. "Course" and "curriculum" both carry connotations of paths to get you somewhere. Conventional wisdom as bound up in the outcomes that pervade the current education system dictates that you (as an expert) define what you want learners to know, then how you're going to teach them, then how you're going to be sure that they've learned what you've taught.
This is obviously very different. Ostensibly Dave and George decided they we going to teach us about Education Futures and futures thinking, but it's becoming pretty obvious that the pack is straying. Irmeli Aro talks about the pattern of "coming out" in an open course and it seems to me that part of the "coming out" has to do with the group fragmenting and recoalescing around self-identified points of interest. The question I have at this point is how many of the 700-odd original enrollees are still engaged, and what has kept them there.
I'm continuing to participate because I'm as interested in the open course model as in educational futures, probably more so. I am also learning a lot about any number of online resources and emerging technologies. I'm thinking about how I can move something of my experience here into an environment where predefined outcomes are the norm (i.e. teaching preservice teachers).
I am very interested in what I call "critical knowledge building" which brings the primarily cognitive focus of Scardamalia and Bereiter's knowledge building framework ( http://ikit.org ) to issues of social justice and the affective in education. I think there are fertile possibilities in connecting the open course framework and the knowledge building idea of posing problems and letting them shape how the "course" proceeds. My doctoral work focused on community, agency, and ideas as three meta-principles of knowledge building and I can see their importance in this open course as well.
One thing in particular that I find hugely problematic about this course is the primitive nature of the environment in which we're working. It's as much a barrier to working together as it is facilitative. I am reminded of the comment about golf sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill: "Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose."
6 comments so far:
jasonkgreen says: Primitive Environment
You write:
"One thing in particular that I find hugely problematic about this course is the primitive nature of the environment in which we're working. It's as much a barrier to working together as it is facilitative."Particularly as someone who is thinking of using Drupal for a project, I'd ask you to elaborate. What about the environment is primitive? I'd especially like to know what you think is missing. What would need to be added to make the environment effective?
amcauley says: Less Primitive Environment
Here are five things I think would make this environment more effective:
1) Integration of graphics into posts. It's painful to have to put futures maps, for example, into another environment. Ideally, the environment would provide integral support for the concept maps themselves, not just images of them.
2) Alternative presentation modes for posts, such as allowing them to be displayed by title in order to provide an overview of the discussion without having to scroll down a series of long posts.
3) Navigation which facilitates moving between one part of the course site and another. It may be my primitive understanding of this particular system, but I find myself constantly retracing my steps through the hierarchy to pursue new postings or material I want to re-read.
4) A simple way to make connections across blogs, discussions, etc. to synthesize new knowledge. How can I connect something I'm writing now with two or three contributions by others without laboriously having to relocate them? Right now I feel like I'm working in vertical, tenuously connected silos, constantly having to climb out of one before I can get into another.
5) My contributions should be improvable, that is, if someone makes a substantive comment on a contribution, I should be able to revise my contribution to reflect the change in my thinking. [Hmm... I think I just found out how to do that...]
I'm only a casual Drupal user, not a designer or coder, so I may be wrong in assuming that these are problems with this instance of Drupal, not of the platform as a whole.
I'd love to hear more about your project as you may find Drupal just fine for it.
dave.cormier says: Each of those improvements
Each of those improvements are very possible with drupal... actually, some of those things are in this system right now. The big issue is that with functionality, comes complexity and then the design of the site becomes of filter
While you cannot do some of the complex technological processes you've described, people HAVE been able to participate... and a simple link outside of this site is very possible. My default for a large installation is to allow people to use the wide web for complex processes to make this system as open and accessible as possible. This is why there is no wysiwyg interface, even though i could just turn it on...
My hope, (and my experience with large public installations where you can't help each individual), is that this will keep the filters to a minimum. Geeks can always find good places to do cool stuff.
amcauley says: How closed is open?
Hmm... interesting perspective.
It actually has a parallel to the Nunavut MEd program where we made the deliberate decision to take a pass on the java-based, gosh-oh-wow, wysiwyg interface for Knowledge Forum and focus on use of the somewhat clunky, web-based interface. We knew, though, that all our participants had very limited online experience (esp. for learning), that the Internet connections were erratic at best in Nunavut, and that many would be using older computers. It's also important to note that we even though we lost some of the potential for visualization, we retained 90% or more of the overall functionality. Moreover, should participants have wanted to, they could have elected individually or collectively to use the more advanced interface. The choice remained theirs.
I've been thinking about this a fair bit lately because I think in the next iteration we'll start with the more advanced interface, the reasons being partly the positive student reaction to the collaborative environment and partly because I have a philosophical bias against reducing things to the lowest common denominator. The latter comes from hearing too many K-12 educators saying, "I didn't know they could do that" when their students rise to challenges or opportunities to which they had previously been excluded.
The question I find myself asking at this point is the extent to which defaulting to the simplest version of the system and offloading complex processes to the WWW restricts access to those processes to the geeks who "can always find good places to do cool stuff".
suifaijohnmak says: About Education Future
I have followed part of the conversation.
Using a course to discuss about education futures do require some consensus on the process to adopt. This is quite a challenge as some participants might have a "best practice" approach or experience in such education future research, whilst others might be figuring about how such "wisdom of the crowds" approach could work. The various suggestions of using Delphi, Drupal, etc. are examples of tools and techniques. However, would this way of discussion be confined to a networking approach where the discourse stays at the "theoretical level" if no consensus are made? It would be very difficult to form into groups to actually implement those suggested drupal research.
A course which is decentralised is great for brainstorming ideas, generating possible scenarios of education, and sharing and debating different ideas and models, but could be difficult to come up with a pattern of education future which is reflective and evaluative, unless there are concrete adaptive evaluation tools which could be developed or emerged out of the network.
As every participant has his/her own views, perceptions, and experience about education, so such evaluations may only make sense if individuals are to formulate their visions of future. This could be achieved by individuals sharing such visions in their blogs, followed by further conversations in the forum to share and reflect on, so as to arrive to some common themes and pattern that networkers could recognise.
About the course:
I think it depends on what individuals want to achieve through such a course, based on negotiations amongst the participants, rather than the pre-determined outcomes of the course, which are highlighted as what is expected from the course, if the course designer and facilitator wishes to achieve an optimum outcome which is based on network principles. However, if you want to discuss the education future using a formal or "traditional" approach of defining the objectives first, then certain levels of facilitation and structure would be needed, in order to guide the participants through a Delphi or Drupal approach towards "best practice". One could also relate to the Horizon Report which provides some framework on how technology enhanced education could be envisioned.
Would participants view these "framework" or "suggested best practice" as constraints or too limited in the sharing of views? Or would they value the suggestions as "expert" views towards best practice? We are aware that education future is both complicated and complex in nature due to the uncertainty future. Without considering the cultures, contexts, and local needs, it wouldn't be easy to come up with any concrete ideas about what may be best about our education system. This is both a challenge and opportunity for participants and facilitator to share their "international perspectives" based on global network.
So, would it be important to reconsider what is important in the design of a course using a network structure first? This would enable each of us (facilitator and participants) to rethink what it means when discussing an important, though complex subject.
What are the needs and expectations of participants when engaged in such an open network structure? What motivate them to explore about education future? What are their utopian view of education future? Have they already got such visions? What are the context of such visions? What are the implications?
In summary, I don't see it easy to share an open and complex topic on education future based on a network/course hybrid approach.
Further discussion and sharing may be based on (a) what an open course could offer in the discussion of education future, (b) how such discussion could be consolidated, and researched with the possibility of group research and research community, (c) the merits and demerits of using such approach in tackling complicated and complex topics.
I have written a post on future education in http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/future-of-education/
John
alexpreal says: "Course" may not be the right term(?)
Hello,
First I must confess I'm a dabbler due to the "step-aside" researcher bias & some health trouble :). Sorry for plunging in.
From this shadowy & possibly selfish position, I follow with deep interest what George Siemens, Dave Cormier & Stephen Downes do, besides professional interest, for the generosity of sharing extensively their time & expertise and the courage of doing so; regardless of whether I agree or don't with their different perspectives.
Reading this thread & the other George has blogged about, I wonder about the underlying preconceptions of "course" which have arisen in terms of structure and contents. Aren't some (or all) participants building on the more traditional patterns they may deal with on a daily basis? Should this experience have been termed "seminar/workshop/think tank", etc. would have it led to similar readings?
A potential limitation I feel re Connectivism & radical constructivism is that the freedom of openness could involve the pervasive effect of hypothetical knowledge loops getting re-produced as participants are constrained by their own socio-cultural backgrounds (in the amplest sense)and thus, though perceiving advancement & particularly the rewards of socializing, may not take learning further without some help once the loop is in place. (?) Just food for thought.
As a sociologist I'm thrilled by "trends" and careful about findings and projections, which can be less definite as some could think. I believe ongoing discussions already provide interesting input for research at least in terms of discourse analysis.
Cheers,
Alex