The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On
An MS-Word version of this essay is available at http://www.downes.ca/files/future2008.doc
In the summer of 1998, over two frantic weeks in July, I wrote an essay titled The Future of Online Learning. (Downes, 1998) At the time, I was working as a distance education and new media design specialist at Assiniboine Community College, and I wrote the essay to defend the work I was doing at the time. “We want a plan,” said my managers, and so I outline the future as I thought it would – and should – unfold.
In the ten years that have followed, this vision of the future has proven to be remarkably robust. I have found, on rereading and reworking the essay, that though there may have been some movement in the margins, the overall thrust of the paper was essentially correct. This gives me confidence in my understanding of those forces and trends that are moving education today.
In this essay I offer a renewal of those predictions. I look at each of the points I addressed in 1998, and with the benefit of ten year’s experience, recast and rewrite each prediction. This essay is not an attempt to vindicate the previous paper – time has done that – but to carry on in the same spirit, and to push that vision ten years deeper into the future.
New Technology
The development of new technology continues to have an impact on learning. While on the one hand, new technology allows schools and instructors to offer learning in new ways, educators nonetheless continue to face limitations imposed by technology, and sometimes the lack of technology. While access to the internet has increased greatly over the last decade, some schools continue to experience bandwidth shortages and most schools do not have enough computers for every student. Yet, this is changing, and the pace of this change will continue to accelerate.
Bandwidth
As administrators struggle against the demands video streaming and bit torrent networks place on backbones, it is hard to imagine saying that bandwidth will be unlimited. But from a certain perspective, from the point of view of most users, bandwidth is already unlimited, as they are able to share text, images and video with ease. The limit of 28K from ten years ago now appears laughable to most urban internet users, as broadband access allows downloads almost a hundred times faster. Applets are now commonplace, a video sharing site (YouTube) is the most popular destination on the internet, and video conferencing (through services such as Skype) is mainstream.
And access to bandwidth continues to improve. The employment of data compression technologies has almost been superseded by fibre-optics technology such as lightpath management. (van der Pol, 2007) Companies like Verizon are offering fibre-optics to the home. (Verizon, 2008) And while satellite internet did not revolutionize internet access, the spread of Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies created an essentially mobile internet, with Wi-Max, a long-range broadband wireless internet standard, poised to greatly extend that in the future. Bandwidth is in the process of becoming ubiquitous, and though we may complain about the price, it is already, relatively speaking, cheap.
Despite set-backs – for example, the lobbies by private corporations to prevent the deployment of municipal Wi-Fi – it is not unreasonable to expect that inexpensive wireless broadband will be ubiquitous in most populated areas. We can think of it as a service analogous to the deployment of mobile phone services today (and indeed, the providers of tomorrow’s broadband wireless may well be today’s mobile service providers.
Processing
Computers have as well become more reliable. It is hard to believe that only ten years ago we were upgrading from 75 megahertz processors to 100 or even 130 megahertz machines. The computer this is being typed on, a MacBook Pro, runs a 2.33 gigahertz duo-core processor. And its 3 gigabtye memory dwarfs the 16 (upgradable to 32) megabyte memory we used with our Pentium computers. And while the deployment of these 64 bit computers took rather longer than one would expect, they are beginning to be seen in the home and the office today. (Norr, 2006) Today, 128 bit processors are not really on the horizon, but computer capacity is continuing to increase through the use of multiple processors.
As a result of the use of multiple processors, computers themselves are becoming what might be called ‘platform neutral’. Computer programs are being designed to run in ‘virtual machines’ which can be carried from one hardware platform to another without adaptation. The Java Virtual machine (JVM) is one example of this, but so also are the ‘images’ produced by virtualization software such as VMWare or Parallels. And specialized computer languages, such as Erlang, are designed to operate in multiple processor environments. (Ericsson Computer Science Laboratory, 2008) These systems manage the interface between the operating system – whether it be Apple, Windows or Linux – and the underlying hardware, thus allowing the same system to be run on varying hardware configurations. The operating system, to these systems, is depicted as a disc file (or ‘image’). As a result, it is not unreasonable to imagine people carrying their ‘computers’ around on ten (or hundred) gigabyte Flash memory drives.
Virtualization will occupy increasing attention in the future. Why? “We see a large number of customers spending less than 30 percent of their IT budget on business priorities, and growth initiatives, and 70 percent or more on management and maintenance. With virtualization and with these broader transformational initiatives, you can really flip the ratio around.” (Gardner, 2008)
The combination of ubiquitous broadband and the portable operating system will result in the widespread popularity of what is currently being called ‘cloud computing’. The idea is that your computer, as a set of data files, is stored online. As such, it may be access from any hardware environment, including mobile or portable devices. Consequently a person will access their single computing environment from different devices while at home, on the road or in the office. This computer will, in turn, access data and applications provided by remote online services.
Storage
Storage is today widely available and relatively inexpensive. Once almost inconceivable, terabyte hard drives are now available in the local computer store for roughly two hundred dollars.
The rise of Flash memory – now available at 32 gigabytes and counting – and the minidisc used in some MP3 players will greatly accelerate the trend we have already seen toward specialization we have seen in the last decade. Flash memory is solid state, which means it consumes much less power and is much more compact than disc-based storage. Probably the most notable of the specialized computers, the iPod, has become one of the most popular consumer products of all time. Digital cameras have essentially replaced traditional cameras; Polaroid is ceasing production of instant film in 2009. (Winn, 2008) Other specialized computers, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), global positioning systems (GPS) and mobile phones, dominate the consumer electronics market.
Software
Software has also become more reliable, even though this has been obscured to some degree by the decade-long dominance of the market by Microsoft’s Windows operating system. As web-based applications become more widely available, however, more specialized and customizable operating environments will be available to users. Online storage and processing represent yet another virtualization of the computing environment, with the result that personal systems are simpler and more stable. Simple devices – from the One Laptop Per Child computer to the Asus Eee to the Nokia internet tablet to Apple’s iPhone now allow people to run complex software with very simple devices. (Arrington, 2008)
Indeed, it is arguable that we have already reached the upper limit of the large single-system software environment. A report from Gartner Consulting, for example, suggests that Windows Vista is collapsing under its own weight. (Dignan, 2008) Microsoft needs to virtualize Windows, to create versions tailored to different devices, simplifying the operating system providing a similar user experience across a wide range of products. Already, Microsoft is reported to be working on an ultralight version of Windows for the OLPC project. (Smith, 2008) Meanwhile, Nintendo is making the Wii gaming system a web application that streams videos from the BBC. (Waters, 2008) The distinction between ‘systems’ that characterized the Linux-Mac-Windows battles of the 90s and 2000s will fade into the background.
The best example of this may be seen at the Flickr website. You use a digital camera – a specialized digital computer with an optical sensing device – to take a photograph. You then upload the photo (often wirelessly) to the internet, storing it in your Flickr account. You then, using the Flickr website, access a separate application called Piknik to edit the photo – your photo data is actually sent from Flickr to Piknik, and you use Piknik servers to perform the manipulations. After returning your photo to Flickr, you employ yet another application that will print the photo and, combined with a shipping service, send you a nicely framed enlargement.
Specialization
Computers are becoming more specialized, and we are beginning to think of them as devices used for specific purposes – gadgets – rather than as computers at all. Pulse-monitoring devices, global positioning systems, toll system tags, e-book readers, writing tablets: all these and more are forming an increasingly large part of our landscape (for many many gadgets see websites such as gizmodo.com). Desktop computers themselves are shrinking as designers make them more portable and more energy-efficient. (Fried, 2008)
Computers – and more specifically, processors, storage devices and wireless communicators – are being embedded into everyday devices. Despite early hiccups, WalMart continues its drive to have RFID wireless transmitters embedded in all products it sells, for example. (Wailgum, 2008) These chips will be used to track inventory and facilitate check-out. Meanwhile, fads such as wearable computing come and go, harkening a day when our clothes will monitor our vital signs, keep track of where we’ve been, and function as camouflage or a computer screen. (Busari, 2008) Digital technology is becoming a part of our lives, embedded in everything, much in the way paper permeated the lives of earlier generations.
Widgets and Webtops
In 1998 I wrote that computer programs of the future will be function based, that they will address specific needs, launching and manipulating task based applications on an as needed basis. For example, I said, the student of the future will not start up an operating system, internet browser, word processor and email program in order to start work on a course. The student will start up the course, which in turn will start up these applications on its own.
The 2008 instantiation of this idea is the widget. A widget is a piece of code – typically written in Flash or Javascript – that resides on a desktop or web page and performs a specific function. (WebProNews, 2008) Thousands of widgets exist and may be found on download pages at places like Yahoo! and Apple or from specialized content sources such as national Geographic. (National Geographic, 2008) A widget obtains content from one website and displays it on another website. Often user interaction is provided – the user might type a term into a search widget, for example – and often some form of processing is requested at the remote website.
Widgets can be combined as a collection of services through web sites called ‘webtops’. These websites, such as PageFlakes and Netvibes, import content and services and arrange them on a page according to user settings and preferences. (Oehlert, 2006) Ands we can see learning management systems such as Desire2Learn adopt the same approach to design, creating personalized course home pages out of a set of associated widgets. (Weiser, 2008) It does not matter what operating system is used to view such pages because they are displayed inside the web browser.
Embedding
Computers – essentially, little processors with wireless access to the ambient internet – will be embedded in everyday products. I have spoken in the past about the fishing rod that teaches you to fish or the jar of strawberry jam that teaches you about jam, as well as the example from Bruce Sterling’s Distraction about the hotel that teaches you how to build it. (Sterling, 1999)
New Technology in Education
While technology changes rapidly, people do not. People want to use tools that look and feel like tools they’ve always used, and will tend to adopt tools only if they see a clear benefit either in productivity or in savings. (Starr, 2003) Since education is a domain that inherently involves people as both practitioners and clients, it seems clear that when we think about the adoption of new technology in education, we need to think as much about what people will want and are likely to do as about the new technologies that will be available.
In particular, education is fundamentally a process of communication (learning, by contrast, is fundamentally a process of growth). (Richter, 1995) As such, educators over the years have attempted to keep the use of tools to a minimum, and as invisible as possible, and to focus on the teaching. How many times have we heard the refrain that pedagogy should not be driven by technology?
When we example the teaching process – one that remains largely unchanged even through the first decade of the internet – we see this emphasis on dialogue and communication. And it should not be surprising that the first major type of technology to be adapted, the learning management system (LMS), was originally named ‘World Wide Web Course Tools’ (or WebCT, as we later came to know) (Goldberg, 1996). Basic technology, such as the book, the notepad, the blackboard, and the teacher were all either emulated or facilitated within WebCT.
The PAD (Personal Access Device)
In 1998 I wrote that ‘The PAD will become the dominant tool for online education, combining the function of book, notebook and pen.” The PAD, I said, would be “a lightweight notebook computer with touch screen functions and high speed wireless internet access.” I also said it would cost around three hundred dollars.
By 2008, the prescience of that prediction has been proven. Early tablet computers produced by QBE won Comdex ‘Best of Show’ awards in 1999 and 2000. (Viherlahti, 1999) In 2002 Microsoft released the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition to support tablet technology. (Thurrott, 2002) It included handwriting recognition and voice commands. Today, arguably, the tablet computer has become so widespread.
Of most significance, tablet computers have in recent years reached the price point predicted in my 1998 article. Probably the most notable of these is the XO Computer, but for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which was sold for just under $200. (Bsales & Bsales, 2007) Other computers selling for less than $300 quickly followed, including the Intel Classmate and the Asus EEE. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPod touch, ostensibly a music player but in fact a small wireless computer, was widely popular.
With slim, lightweight technology, truly useful and portable PADs will be widely available within the next ten years. We have already seen significant improvements in screen technology, including slim touch-sensitive screens. Wireless access and cloud computing make bulky storage devices unnecessary; what local memory is needed will be more than adequately managed using tiny flash memory chips. Improvements in battery life and solar power will mean that these low-wattage portable computers will run for days. They will, as I suggested before, come in all shapes and sizes, from a slim pocket version (much like the iPod touch) to a notepad version.
Display Technology
The same technology that makes PAD technology possible will continue to proper improvements in large screen displays (devices I nicknamed WADs (Wide area Displays) ten years ago).
The age of wide area displays has already arrived; with the conversion to high definition digital television in February 2009 (Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 2008) manufacturers have been selling wide-screen plasma and light emitting diode (LED) monitors. These distinct technologies have in common not only the ability to support flat monitors (as compared to the bulky cathode ray tubes used in traditional televisions) they also consume less power and produce less heat.
In the future, it will be common to see these large-area displays hanging on living room and classroom walls. Instead of being the size of small windows, they will be the size of large blackboards. They will be touch sensitive (or if not, connected to a pointer tracking system device similar to the ones being cobbled together for less than $50 by Wii enthusiasts (Lee, 2007)) or included with any of a number of children’s educational webcam games today (such as Camgoo, among many others).
Projection technology is also coming down in price and improving in power and portability. It is now not uncommon for people to build home movie theatres using computers or DVD plays along with a digital projector and wall or screen. And projection technology, combined with mobile phones, is touted in some circles as a wave of the future. (Tran, 2007)
Portable, Personal, and Global
The combination of portable and affordable computing devices, combined with widely available digital presentation tools, will make education genuinely personal and portable.
Imagine having in your hands a device on which you can not only write or type content, but which takes photos and records videos. Imagine further that this device contains easy-to-use but powerful photo and video editing software, and is additionally connected to a massive library of content made available through ambient broadband internet connections.
Moreover, imagine that any environment that contains a flat surface can become a teaching environment, one where your friends’ faces (or your parents’ or your teachers’) can appear life-size on any old wall or on a table surface as you converse with them from the next room or around the world. We have already seen how the availability of mobile telephones has transformed society in less than a generation. (New Media Consortium, 2008) Having much more powerful, much more expressive, communications technology available everywhere will have a similar impact.
It is important to think not simply about how these technologies will operate individually but rather about how they will operate in combination. A person will move content online and offline with ease. Software and multimedia will no longer be associated with hardware or other devices but will rather be associated with individuals and will express their personal preferences. We are already seeing this as people can download and carry their own portable applications around with them. (PortableApps.com, 2008)
Each person will have what may be thought of as a ‘profile’ of their own art, music and other media, which they have created themselves or with friends, along with records of their activities in various games and simulations (we see things like this already with applications like Launchcast) that take place both on and off line. (Breeding, 2005) They will be able to be in constant audio and video contact with family and friends, meaning that families and groups will never really be separated unless one of them chooses to be.
Presentation Software
The term ‘presentation software’ can be used to refer to applications designed to display learning material to students. (TechTarget, 2005) In the past, these learning materials were confined to physical media such as video tapes or CD-ROMS. And a lot of educational material continues to be presented in such formats today; any parent can describe the wide array of children’s titles available at the local software store.
Learning materials are now available online as well. Probably the most representative (and most saturated) market is the language learning market, where providers market audio and video clips, flash cards and memory aids, study guides, and much more. Additionally, numerous applications are marketed to parents of small children; these vary from quiz applications to games to online communities.
That said, the presentation software market has divided itself roughly into two parts. On the one hand, sophisticated tools have been placed into the hands of instructors and non-professionals to facilitate the creation of multimedia presentations. To name just a few, we could point PowerPoint, which allows instructors to create slides; to Audacity, which facilitates audio recording and editing, Adobe Premiere Elements, an inexpensive and accessible video editing tool; Camtasia, a screen-recording and video editing tool; and Second life, which enables people to create three-dimensional objects.
On the other hand, even more sophisticated tools have been placed into the hands of professional designers. In addition to professional versions of the content creation tools, programming studios and integrated development environments enable developers to create sophisticated games, simulations and other educational applications. Thus there is, at any given time, a professional educational content community that creates high-end and custom educational content and a non-professional community that creates (relatively) low-end and more personalized educational content.
This is a trend that is likely to continue, though it is also likely that the line dividing the professional from the non-professional community will become increasingly elusive over time. Generally, as a domain of software design becomes well known, sets of tools for content creation are developed, which in time become widely accessible. Several recent waves in technology are reflective of this trend.
The first of these is the notion of the ‘software object’. (Sun Developer Network, 2008)This concept, which in education became the idea of the ‘learning object’, emerged as a result of the idea that reusable software objects could be created. These objects – a ‘menu’ item, for example, or a ‘task bar’, were made available in drag-and-drop programming environments, such as the Windows .Net environment. (Downes, Learning Objects: Resources for distance education worldwide, 2001) The idea that educators could assemble learning materials out of predefined components has never been abandoned.
The second is the concept of ‘Web 2.0’ that has recently swept the internet. (O’Reilly, 2005) Web 2.0 is actually a cluster of technologies that combine to allow web sites to become interactive. At the heart of these technologies – things like Asynchronous Javascript and XML, for example – are collections of software applications called ‘frameworks’ that automate the way web software handles the storage and retrieval of data and contents. Early frameworks included Cold Fusion, WebObjects and J2EE. Web 2.0 emerged with the release of lightweight open source frameworks such as Ruby on Rails. (Poteet, 2008)
Games and Simulations
A great deal has been written in the last few years about educational games or, as they are sometimes called, ‘serious games’. (Eck, 2006) In 1998 I wrote that “educational software of the future will include every feature present in video games today, and more.” Though this hasn’t proven to be strictly true, it is largely true, and probably no more true than in the domain of games and simulations.
Though there are different types of games, including quiz-games and branching games, the sort of games I felt most appropriate to educational use were learning environments such as were to be found in games like Sim City or Sim Earth. These games, now known as ‘spreadsheet games’, involve the creation of a large body of interacting data sets. Players manipulate both data sets and interactions, and resulting data states create the gameplay. (Aldrich, 2005) (Kapp, 2005)
While the last ten years have seen a fair amount of attention paid to such games, through the development of modification kits for gaming engines such as Civilization, even more attention has been paid to another class of educational software, the simulation. Once used only for high-end training, such as for aircraft or helicopter pilots, simulations have become in recent years cheaper to produce and hence more accessible. These can be built from stand-alone programming libraries, but can also be developed from modified gaming engines. This, for example, is what the Canadian Forces did, modifying the popular SWAT ‘First Person Shooter’ into a collaborative training simulation. (Mahood, 2007)
The tools that we use today were in development in 1998 – multimedia or content engines such as PowerPoint or Director, development environments such as .Net, programming languages such as Java or Ruby, rendering systems such as VRML or SMIL. These now are disappearing into the background, while practitioners are working directly with content creation tools, both on the desktop and on the web.
The World Wide Web today contains millions, and maybe billions, of (what used to be called) presentations, ranging from blog posts to wiki entries to videos posted on YouTube to Flickr photographs to SlideShare slide shows. As complex multimedia presentations become more modular, as they come to be based more on things like objects and frameworks and modification kits, we will see the same phenomenon for game and simulation content, where millions of resources will create complex and rich materials where, formerly, everyone would have to make do with a relatively simple offering from a publishing company. (Downes, Places to Go: Apolyton, 2005)
In 1998, I wrote the following: “To give a student an idea of what the battle of Waterloo was like, for example, it is best to place the student actually in the battle, hearing Napoleon’s orders as they become increasingly desperate, feeling the recoil of one’s own musket, or slogging through the mud looking for a gap in the British cannons.” (Downes, The Future of Online Learning, 1998) Today we can say that the creation of such simulations will not be simply the domain of large production houses, but will rather be more and more the result of massive collections of small contributions from individual players. And that the creation of content – any content – needs to take this phenomenon into account, or be seen as abstract and sterile.
Interaction and Online Conferencing
In recent years educators have come more and more to believe that the presentation of educational content is but a small part of the learning process. To paraphrase the Cluetrain Manifesto, which came out roughly the same time as the Future of Online Learning, “all classrooms are conversations.” (Levine, Locke, Searls, & Weinberger, 1999) To that end, online conferencing in education has become important, not simply as a means to advance our knowledge of the subject area, but as a means to advance our understanding of communication using online technologies.
That said, online conferencing technology has become, for the most part, cheap and ubiquitous. The purchase of large-scale interactive television suites is largely a thing of the past, and while enterprise conferencing technology remains at a relatively high price point, effective and inexpensive technologies are bringing conferencing to the masses. The future will see a continuation of this trend, to the point where there will be little difference between taking part in an online conference and being in the same room.
Synchronous Conferencing
Though I stated in 1998 that interactive television “will be obsolete within five years” there is still a great deal of love bestowed on the technology at the corporate and governmental levels. The World Bank spent millions of dollars building ITV labs in developing nations, while companies invested additional millions in Polycom units. (Veldanda, 2003) Even as I write, development of high-bandwidth videoconferencing technology continues; we have an ‘Advanced Collaborative Environments’ in our own building. (National Research Council Canada, 2005)
These are slowly being replaced by desktop videoconferencing. Probably the most important aspect of this is the deployment of web cameras (or computer interfaces to video cameras, such as provided by Pinnacle) of suitable quality for large screen images. As well, software, such as XMeeting for the Macintosh, has been developed to allow computers to access the H.323 standard used by videoconferencing units.
We have also seen in the field of education the development of conferencing suites such as Elluminate or Centra Symposium. As I noted in 1998, people will want a system that transfers data as well as video signals. These applications do that, providing audio and video communication while also allowing application and desktop sharing, whiteboards and notes, polling, text messaging, and more.
While the systems typically used in an educational environment are commercial applications involving some cost, similar applications are rapidly becoming available for free to the average user. Launched in 2003 (and acquired by eBay in 2005), Skype provides free audio communication (and as of 2006, free video communication) to users around the world. (Skype, 2005) Moreover, open source conferencing suites, such as Dim Dim and WiZiQ, are emulating the function of commercial applications.
However promising it may be, the field of synchronous conferencing remains fraught with tensions between the conferencing community and the commercial providers of conferencing services. Telecom companies, especially, are concerned about losing toll traffic to free alternatives. Companies continue to offer proprietary (and non-interoperable) conferencing protocols. Even something as simple as an instant messaging standard has eluded the domain for many years.
Asynchronous Conferencing
If there is a contrast with the synchronous mode of communication, it is the asynchronous, which has blossomed in recent years. There is today almost no end to the conferencing options available to web users, with the result that the web is now an unparalleled richness of content.
Two major trends have characterized the last ten years of asynchronous conferencing.
First, as was easy to predict in 1998, the dominance of text-based content has given way to a much wider range of formats. Audio content became popular with file sharing and music content services, as well as with the rise of podcasting in 2003. Video content became widely available following the development of Flash video services and of sites like YouTube, which allowed users to upload and convert their videos. (Knowledge@Wharton , 2006) Flash has also been instrumental in the provision of other forms of content, such as slide shows, games, animations, and more. (Lamb & Johnson, 2006)
Second, and less obvious, was the evolution of asynchronous communication. In 1998 most people were still using traditional web conferencing systems such as the email mailing list or Usenet news systems. Early web conferencing systems followed the same format, taking the form of threaded conversations on web bulletin boards. This system was followed in just a few years by blogging. Messages were sorted chronologically by author, instead of by subject, and each person managed his or her own blog. Groups of people, meanwhile, congregated on content management systems such as Drupal or Plone. But as people drifted back to centralized sites, and as linking to other people became more important, sites that support social networks rose to prominence and people began to spend less time on places like Blogger and LiveJournal and more time on places like MySpace and Facebook.
There is clearly a role for hosted conferencing systems in the future, if only because people do not want to take the time and trouble to set up media processing software. But there will continue to be an evolution of the model as developers search for the right balance between social function and individual identity, between the common software platform and individual control. (White, 2006)
Conferencing Standards and Protocols
In conferencing we see a trend that has been resisted as must as it has been inevitable: that once content standards have been widely adopted for some type of medium, content expressed in that medium has become commoditized (that is to say, widely available at prices that approximate zero).
The first clear example of this is what we not think of as ‘plain text’ – the ASCII character code. It rapidly became the standard medium of communication online, in both email and message boards. In very few cases was ‘ASCII content’ marketable. Subsequently, HTML content was also widely (and freely) available. More recently, with the widespread adoption of the MP3 audio format, file sharing became widespread and the value of audio recordings online became negligible. (Przywara, 2008)
Efforts to monetize content have, in turn, typically involved the creation of proprietary content formats. Thus we saw, in the earlier days of the internet, the creation of locked PDF files. Or the development of Real Audio’s Proprietary Real Media format (backed by the Real Media store). Or the proprietary Skype audio format. Or, more recently, proprietary iTunes audio formats, and iPhone applications. Or even the proprietary text format used by Amazon in the Kindle, a device it intends to use to sell electronic books. (Gruber, 2007)
These two tensions come to a head in the domain of computer conferencing. The very act of communication requires a set of communication standards that anyone can use – a language, like English, or a medium, like paper. For people who wish their message to be heard (or read, or seen) these need to be widely available and easily accessible, to be (for all practical purposes) open standards. Thus, the push toward online conferencing is at the same time a push toward commoditized content. (Rossi, 2003)
In the end, the standards win, because, in the end, the people win. Societies – or groups, or communities – that sustain effective communication are more robust than societies that control it. There is a significant loss of efficiency in environments of closed, controlled communication. Thus, although artificial constraints will continue to be used maintain proprietary communications formats, the standards will win out.
Personalized Learning
We now have powerful and inexpensive computers we can sling over our shoulder or carry in our shirt pocket. (Yamamoto, 2006) These computers are connected wirelessly to the internet at bandwidths sufficient to allow instant multimedia communication anywhere on the planet. These computers will only improve in the years ahead, becoming faster, slimmer, and more affordable. And we are not at the point where we are seeing the possibility that education may be deeply personalized.
To date, much of our attention, even in the field of online learning, has been focused on a system of learning centered on the class or cohort: groups of students studying the same curriculum pace through the same set of learning activities. (Fenning, 2004) We continue to organize classes in grades, sorted, especially in the earlier years, by age. Time continues to be the dominant metaphor for units of learning, and learning continues to be constrained by time. As it was ten years ago, the model is that of a group of people starting at the same time, studying the same materials at the same pace, and ending at the same time.
And as I noted ten years ago, this model of education was adopted because it was the most efficient. (Hejmadi, 2006) While we want to provide personalized attention, especially to submitted work, testing and grading, learning is still heavily dependent on the teacher. But because the teacher in turn is responsible for assembling, and often presenting, the materials to be learned, customization and personalization have not been practical. So we have adopted a model where small groups of people form a cohort, thus allowing the teacher to present the same material to more than one person at a time, while offering individualized interaction and assessment.
What we have begun to notice with online learning, however, is a decreasing emphasis on this formal style of learning, and an increasing emphasis on what has come to be called informal learning. (Chivers, 2006) In the case of informal learning, students are not constrained by the limits of the classroom model. They can set their own curriculum and proceed at their own pace. (Moore, 1986) Learning can thus be based on a student’s individual needs, rather than as predefined in a formal class, and based on a student’s schedule, rather than that set by the institution.
Groups Versus Networks
The continuing trend in formal learning to structure learning opportunities as classes and cohorts requires explanation. Underlying the transition from formal, structured learning to more informal and more unstructured learning is not simply a technological change but also a social change. It is this change I have attempted in recent years to capture under the heading of ‘groups versus networks’. (Downes, Groups Vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues, 2006)
Traditionally, people have been seen to learn either as individuals or in groups. This characterization of organization is not unique to education; it is very common to talk of (say) the needs of the individual versus the needs of the state. This characterization, however, glosses over the possibility that there may be more or less cohesive ways of organizing people, thus allowing for a middle point between the individual and the group: the network.
Though networks have always existed, modern communications technologies highlight their existence and given them a new robustness. Networks are distinct from groups in that they preserve individual autonomy and promote diversity of belief, purpose and methodology. In a network, however, people do not act as disassociated individuals, but rather, cooperate in a series of exchanges that can produce, not merely individual goods, but also social goods.
Traditional learning composed of classes and cohorts operates more as a group than as a network. (Davis, 1993) Students pursue the same objectives employing the same methodologies. This is especially evident in corporate learning, where they are expected to share the same vision and to be pursuing the same outcomes. Learning in such classes is frequently collaborative, as students work in small groups to produce a common project or outcome. (Mohn & Nault, 2004) Interaction is structured and led by an instructor. Classes are closed; there is a clear barrier between members and non-members.
In the case of informal learning, however, the structure is much looser. People pursue their own objectives in their own way, while at the same time initiating and sustaining an ongoing dialogue with others pursuing similar objectives. Learning and discussion is not structured, but rather, is determined by the needs and interests of the participants. There is no leader; each person participates as they deem appropriate. There are no boundaries; people drift into and out of the conversation as their knowledge and interests change.
Learning Management and Competences
The ‘educational delivery’ (ED) system I postulated in 1998 became what we now know as the learning management system (LMS). However, unlike what was projected then, the LMS was not based on personalized learning, but rather, preserved the course management structure that prevailed in schools and universities. (Jarche, 2006) Indeed, early incarnations of the LMS were seen as extensions to the classroom, as evidenced by the name ‘web course tools’ (Web CT). That said, even in traditional educational institutions, the trend is shifting away from courses and toward topics. This is seen in the development of competence-based learning designs, such as in the TenCompetence project. (Kraan, 2006)
The idea of competences is that they are based on identifiable skills or capacities, and hence are not rooted in a body of content but rather in a student’s personal growth. (Karampiperis, Demetrios, & Demetrios, 2006) As such, students are able to select their own track or achievement path through a competence domain, as informed by their own interests, employer needs, or in the case of younger students, parental guidance. Each competence, meanwhile, corresponds to a selection of learning resources (and specifically, learning objects). (de-Marcos, Pages, Martinez, & Gutierrez, 2007)
It is not clear that such a system will meet the needs of learners. Insofar as this is a form of autonomous learning, it is not clear that it supports collaboration or cooperation. Moreover, it is not clear that an outcomes driven system is what students require; many valuable skills and aptitudes – art appreciation, for example – are not identifiable as an outcome. This becomes evident when we consider how learning is to be measured. In traditional learning, success is achieved not merely by passing the test but in some way being recognized as having achieved expertise. A test-only system is a coarse system of measurement for a complex achievement.
Personal Learning Environments
In the future, competences will be just one way (and an unusually employer-centered way) to select learning opportunities. What we will see, rather, is that the selection of learning opportunities will not be a stand-alone activity, but instead will be embedded in other activities. (e-Lead, 2008) One can imagine how players learn in the course of a game, for example. They do not first learn how to play the game, and then play it. Rather, they begin playing the game, and as they attempt to achieve goals or perform tasks, the learning they need is provided in that context. (Wagner, 2008)
The ‘personal learning environment’ (PLE) is a collection of concepts intended to express this idea. (Liber, 2006) The PLE is not an application, but rather, a description of the process of learning in situ from a variety of courses and according to one’s personal, context-situated, needs. The process, simply, is that learners will be presented with learning resources according to their interests, aptitudes, educational levels, and other factors (including employer factor and social factors) while they are in the process of working at their job, engaging in a hobby, or playing a game.
The environment that they happen to be in, whether it be a productivity tool, hobbyist web page, or online game, constitutes (at that time) the personal learning environment. Resources from across the internet are accessed from that environment: resources that conform to the student’s needs and interests, that have been in some way pre-selected or favorably filtered, and that may have been created by production studios, teachers, other students, or the student him or herself. Content – interaction, media, data – flows back and forth between the learning environment and the external resources, held together by the single identity being employed by the learner in this context.
In time, the learning management systems deployed by educational institutions will evolve into educational delivery systems usable by personal learning environments. They will, in essence, be the ‘remote resource’ accessed from a given context. Educational delivery systems will recognize the identity of the student making the request and will coordinate with other online applications (which may include commercial brokers, open resource repositories, or additional student records) to facilitate the student’s learning activity.
We might think that these educational delivery systems will be delivering learning objects. This is not entirely incorrect, although a learning object today has come to be seen as more like a unit of text in a textbook or a lesson in a programmed learning workbook. It will be more accurate in the future to say ‘learning resource’, since many such resources will be available that do not conform to the traditional picture of a learning object – and may be as simply as a single image, or as complex as a simulation or training module.
Content Versus Conversation
Our picture of learning technology today – whether it be an LMS like Blackboard or Desire2Learn, an authoring system such as Connexions, or a resource such as OpenCourseWare – is that learning systems are essentially content delivery systems. Hence, they are typically based on a publication model of storage and distribution, are institutionally based, and tend to focus on mass deliveries of common materials to classes or cohorts. We see this in the design of the system, the technical specifications (such as ‘content packaging’) and in their deployment.
The personal learning environment, however, is not based on the principle of access to resources. It should more accurately be viewed as a mechanism to interact with multiple services. (Milligan, 2006) The personal learning environment is more of a conferencing tool than it is a content tool. The focus of a personal learning environment is more on creation and communication than it is consumption and completion. It is best to think of the interfaces facilitated by a personal learning environment as ways to create and manipulate content, as applications rather than resources.
In particular, that the various channels created by the PLE enable is for a student to form a set of connections with a collection of individuals at any given point. In 1998, I referred to this as the Quest Model, based on the idea of ad hoc collections of people grouping together to solve puzzles in online multi-user environments such as Multi User Dungeons (MUDs). This model has become much more widespread, but no less ad hoc, as people today connect with each other to have distributed conversations, to create wiki entries, to collect resources in discussion threads, and like activities.
In the Quest Model, each achievement would become a part of a personal profile, a part of a learning record that would in turn inform future challenges. This idea is reflected today in the concept of the e-portfolio, where the products created through the process of engagement and interaction are stored and (digitally) mounted for display. We see today the idea of an e-portfolio taking hold outside traditional learning – people have their own blogs, their own Flickr photo portfolios, art projects on Deviant Art, game modifications, fan fiction, open source software, and much more.
The products of our conversations are as concrete as test scores and grades. (Ryan, 2007) But, as the result of a complex and interactive process, they are much more complex, allowing not only for the measurement of learning, but also for the recognition of learning. As it becomes easier to simply see what a student can accomplish, the idea of a coarse-grained proxy, such as grades, will fade to the background.
Connectivism
The educational institution is unlikely to disappear, but it is unlikely also to remain the sole locus of student learning. Educational institutions will need more and more to think of themselves as part of a larger system, and as their offerings as entities that will become a part of, and interact with, the larger environment. Consider, for example, the photo editor that connects to Flickr, described above. Now imagine what an art appreciation resource would look like, how it would interact with Flickr photos. (Unattributed, 2006)
Educational technologists should additionally not only think of themselves as building systems that contribute to the network of resources, but also of systems that draw from that network to create value-added resources. For example, a recent TED demonstration saw an application that created a three-dimensional composite image of Notre Dame Cathedral composed from thousands of Flickr photos. (Arcas, 2007) Educational institutions can in the same way create pictures of our understanding of other – less concrete – concepts that can be found in the thousands and millions of bits of content created by people around the world.
This is the fundamental understanding behind a learning theory developed to describe learning in networks, connectivism. (Siemens, 2004) The theory proposes that knowledge is contained, not merely in the bits of information transmitted to and fro as content and creations, but in the way these contents, and the people that create them, link together. Just as the activation of the pixels on a television screen form an image of a person, so also the bits of information we create and we consume form patterns constituting the basis of our knowledge, and learning is consequently the training our own individualized neural networks – our brains – to recognize these patterns.
The purpose of educational institutions, therefore, is not merely to create and distribute learning opportunities and resources, but also to facilitate a student’s participation in a learning environment – a game, a community, a profession – through the provision of the materials that will assist him or her to, in a sense, see the world in the same way as an accomplished expert; and this is accomplished not merely by presenting learning materials to the learner, but by facilitating the engagement of the learner in conversations with members of that community of experts.
Learning Resources
As discussed above, educational institutions will need to see themselves as providers of learning resources (and not merely learning objects). These resources will be online services that connect students with: learning content; games, simulations, and other activities; ad hoc communities of learners; and experts and other practitioners. They will be specialized multimedia content consumption, editing and authoring systems designed to facilitate a student’s ability to perceive and perform as modeled by experts in a community of practice.
These resources will not be inert content objects, but rather, will need to be able to learn about the environment they are being offered in, be able to learn about the student, and to get this information not just locally but from wherever it may be on the internet. Thus, such resources must be able to communicate state and other information to and from other (authorized) systems and services. They may, therefore, be fully-fledged web services, but they are just as likely to be lightweight applications depending on other simple services to do much of this work for them.
Today, institutions do not yet know how to deliver information to other systems. Beyond interlibrary loans, we have (at best) identity federation systems such as Shibboleth. Learning resource sharing networks, such as Globe, are small, ineffective, and exclusive. However, institutions are beginning to learn to prepare content for distribution through remote systems, such as the provision of lectures for delivery through iTunes University. Such systems will evolve over time into a mature system of open content distribution, facilitated through open access mandates, repository and other server software, and content and interaction standards.
Flow and Syndication
Understanding learning as ‘conversation’ (Sharples, 2005) also allows us to look at the management and distribution of learning resources a bit differently.
Today, as noted above, we tend to think of such resources as static and bibliographical, like books in a library, where contents are ‘published’ and then ‘stored’. This view is evident in much of the discussion that surrounds learning technology today. We think of work as being stored in a research repository, indexed and archived, in such a way that we can search for them, typically through a catalogue (or metadata) system, and retrieve them. (Barker, 2007) The major concerns of educators in this environment are things like persistence and provenance, copyright and reproduction. (Jantz & Giarlo, 2005)
In the networked learning environment, however, learning resources are best thought of not as content objects about a discipline that are retrieved and studied, but rather as words in a multimedia vocabulary that is used by students and teachers in an ongoing conversation within a discipline to engage in projects and activities. (Downes, The New Literacy, 2002) Content and learning resources, rather than being thought of as static objects, ought to be thought of as a dynamic flow. They are more like water or electricity and they are like books and artifacts.
The technology of learning – and of the web generally – is evolving to accommodate flow. (Jarche, Learning is Conversation, 2005)
Probably the most significant development in the last ten years has been the deployment of the Rich Site Summary standard – RSS – that allowed content creators to syndicate their writings and other creations. Using RSS feed readers, web users do not go to web pages or search for content, but rather, subscribe to RSS feeds and let the content come to them. (Downes, An Introduction to RSS for Educational Designers, 2003)
Most educators, and most educational institutions, have not yet embraced the idea of flow and syndication in learning. They will – reluctantly – because it provides the learner with the means to manage and control his or her learning. They can keep unwanted content to a minimum (and this includes unwanted content from an institution). And they can manage many more sources – or content streams – using feed reader technology.
RSS and related specifications will be one of the primary ways Personal Learning Environments connect with remote systems. To use a PLE will be essentially to immerse oneself in the flow of communications that constitutes a community of practice in some discipline or domain on the internet.
What It Isn’t
When people think of personalized online learning, they frequently think of adaptive systems, learning programs powered by artificial intelligences that test a student’s competence, formulate customized lesson plans based on those pre-tests, and then measure a student’s performance though a series of online activities. (Boticario & Santos, 2007)
While people will no doubt pursue solo learning activities (just as they, by themselves, read books today) this will not constitute the core of the learning experience in the future (just as reading books does not constitute the core of learning today).
Even though learning systems will be able to auto-grade tests, will be able to track progress through a set of learning activities, and will be able to facilitate a wide variety of measures, these results will not constitute, by themselves, ‘evidence’ of learning. Students will demand that there be a human element to evaluation, as they realize that their own performance is varied and complex, and may not be measured accurately by a machine, and employers and others will require a human element, because they will understand that humans devise endless schemes to ‘game’ or otherwise trick automated systems.
In the end, what will be evaluated is a complex portfolio of a student’s online activities. (Syverson & Slatin, 2006)These will include not only the results from games and other competitions with other people and with simulators, but also their creative work, their multimedia projects, their interactions with other people in ongoing or ad hoc projects, and the myriad details we consider when we consider whether or not a person is well educated.
Though there will continue to be ‘degrees’, these will be based on a mechanism of evaluation and recognition, rather than a lockstep marching through a prepared curriculum. And educational institutions will not have a monopoly on such evaluations (though the more prestigious ones will recognize the value of aggregating and assessing evaluations from other sources).
Earning a degree will, in such a world, resemble less a series of tests and hurdles, and will come to resemble more a process of making a name for oneself in a community. The recommendation of one person by another as a peer will, in the end, become the standard of educational value, not the grade or degree.
Time and Place Independence
The dependence of online on the computer over the last decade has masked the fact, but online learning is at heart a form of distance learning, and therefore offers as one of its primary advantages a form of time and place independence for the learner. Cloud computing and mobile computing will offer these forms of independence. They can, indeed, be thought of as offering a third, equally important, form of independence: device independence.
Time Independence
We are well used to the idea that students, whether working in traditional online courses or independently through informal learning, will access their materials and activities at any time of the day. They can work any day of the week, or if they are employed in agriculture or some other seasonal occupation, any time of the year.
That said, many institutions have, for administrative reasons, maintained the traditional schedule. Online classes still start in September, synchronous sessions are held once a week at a set time, and students are expected to maintain a traditional work schedule. But there is no academic or technological reason to stick to such a schedule, and we see learning events scheduled outside the institution, such as those run by Ed Tech Talk, run any time of the year and any day of the week.
It may take a larger cultural shift to shake the traditional institution’s understanding of, and dependence on, time. Classes and courses are still represented in calendars as ‘credit hours’, as though the ‘hour’ were a unit of knowledge or learning. Perhaps the most inventive way to escape this limitation is Google’s invention of the ‘Knol’, which it represents as a ‘unit of knowledge’. (Manber, 2007) Others identify the ‘smallest unit of learning’ with the ‘learning object’. (Christiansen & Anderson, 2004) Either way, time is ceasing to be an objective standard of learning.
That said, the possibilities inherent in the independence of time have yet to be explored to any significant degree. Learning today is presented either as scheduled – in which case the institution sets the time – or static, in which there is no scheduled time. The use of syndication technologies, however, creates many more alternatives. A learning resource, for example, can be defined either as an ongoing syndicated service – such as my own newsletter, or the audio feeds distributed by SpanishPod – or as a staggered distribution of resources, such as have been designed by Tony Hirst of the Open University.
Being able to time the distribution of resources is a significant advantage. It allows for presentations, interactions and other activities to be encountered dynamically during the course of days or weeks. This space can be used to pedagogical advantage in addition to meeting the student’s scheduling needs, facilitating ongoing practice and recall. Dynamic scheduling does not guarantee success – students may simply delete the material as it arrives. But having this level of control makes it more likely students will be able to attend to the material when it arrives.
Self-pacing in online learning, therefore, isn’t simply the learner picking up the work from time to time whenever he or she feels like it. It is rather the employment of various mechanisms that will enable work to be scheduled. Pacing continues to be important, even in instances of self-pacing. Being free to set one’s own schedule does not mean setting no schedule at all. Nor does it mean that the release of learning activities and content is not scheduled at all. It is, rather, a meshing of schedules.
One of the major reasons Microsoft Outlook continues to maintain a high level of use and acceptance is that it combines content – email messages – with calendaring. Products like Google calendar, Thunderbird, and evolution are slowly eroding Microsoft’s monopoly, and the employment of standards like iCal mean that events, like contents, may be syndicated. This allows events and syndicated contents to circulate within the same network, creating an association between time and content that is dynamic, fluid, and distributed. It will allow students to plan their days, and it will also allow them to participate, on impulse, in learning activities, via their RSS Events Reader.
Place Independence
Online learning stiff suffers from the misperception that it is about having students sit in front of their computer screen for extended periods of time. As a consequence, the idea that online learning might foster independence of place has been missing in much of the discussion of the field. Nor is current practice likely to change this, as we see online learning used to support in situ classes, and online learning consisting of long sequences of computer-based lessons.
That said, with the recent development of smaller and lighter wireless-enabled devices, we are approaching the era when online learning will also be seen as mobile learning. Students will be freed from the classroom, and freed from the stationary desktop computer. And as I said last time, true place independence will revolutionize education is a much deeper sense than has perhaps been anticipated.
In order to realize this potential, educators will once again need to get past the idea that learning is something (usually content) that is delivered to people. This is the mod
| Published by |
 |
Original source : http://xfruits.com/spallett/?id=46549&clic=2891020…