Toward Personal Learning

Reclaiming a role for humanity in a world of

commercialism and automation

Stephen Downes

National Research Council Canada

p.2

p.3

Toward Personal Learning

Reclaiming a role for humanity in a world of commercialism and automation

ISBN: not yet

Version 0.9 – July 14, 2017

Stephen Downes

Copyright (c) 2017

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p.5

Introduction

In the five years after Connectivism and Connective Knowledge was posted we saw the

phenomenon of MOOCs appropriated and commercialized, the rise of artificial intelligence,

analytics and personalization, and the ubiquity of mobile devices. It’s all pretty much what was

predicted, and yet the reality feels so different. We’re not in an age of breathlessness and hope,

as we were even in 2012, we’re in an age of anger and cynicism.

This book reflects that. Many of the articles in the first half talk about the idea of the MOOC,

looking more deeply into the concept, expanding on the idea of open online learning and open

courses. Then, as most of the rest of the education technology world moved into learning

analytics, I focused my attention on what I’ve come to call personal learning. This is not the

same as personalized learning, and I draw the distinction several times, in several ways. And so

over time I’ve focused not on better ways to automate education, but rather on ways to employ

automation to make education better.

The result is another 750 page book, for which I deeply apologize. But don’t worry, it’ll go so

fast it only feels like 550. As before, it’s a collection of blog posts, published articles, transcripts

from talks, some interviews (I’m saving most of those for a separate volume, one day), diagrams

and images, and photos. Unlike the previous book, this one is organized chronologically, so you

can feel the development of thought over time. And as the title suggests, it’s unfinished business.

I’ve tilted at the windmill of personal learning a number of times over the last decade, and the

book reflects the challenges rather more than the successes.

Why personal learning? As a philosopher at heart, I could have chosen to devote my efforts to

any number of significant problems. The neural networks which have become commonplace

today could have captured my attention, as they have for so many others; this would certainly

make sense given my own intellectual history. I could have focused even more deeply on the

core idea of connective knowledge. I could perhaps have looked more deeply at scientific

method in an era of discovery through the process of design.

But each age sets its own priorities, and personal learning I think captures what is important

today.

The first is the idea of autonomy in a connected world. We are reaching the end-game in the

century-long struggle between individualism and collectivism. I reject both, and essentially for

the same reason: they reject the humanity of individuals. Individualism rejects the humanity of

the other, while collectivism rejects the humanity of the self. Neither respects the idea that for

society to succeed and for knowledge to grow, we must respect both the humanity of the self and

the humanity of the other.

p.6

A second is the idea that we need to reorganize knowledge in such a way as to better prepare

people for a complex and changing world. I capture this with the idea of critical literacies, which

in turn shape how I think we should approach knowledge and learning. And it also speaks to the

idea of learning not simply as the acquisition of content, but of the idea of learning as growth and

development – the fullest expression of our humanity. This certainly isn’t an observation unique

to me, but it’s something we need to recall and grab onto.

A third is the tension between commercial good and social good, especially with respect to open

learning and open content, but also with respect to society and values generally. We have nearly

reached the point, I think, an idea, innovation or invention s ‘good’ only if it can be

commercialized. I have resisted that, and advanced the idea of knowledge and innovation for the

social good. The increased commercialization of society is, I think, part and parcel of the

increased dehumanization of society.

I’m calling this book version 0.9 for one simple reason: the references, some 700 of them (maybe

more). I’ve carefully collected the URLs but it would take the rest of the year for me to look

them up and present them nicely the way I have for the first 50. So I’m learning them as they are,

with an invitation to readers to contribute a page or two, or maybe an article or two, of updated

references.

p.7

Contents

Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 5

Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 7

Experts and Empowerment ........................................................................................................... 20

Transparency, Radical or Otherwise ............................................................................................. 23

Connectivism as Epistemology ..................................................................................................... 25

Feelings of Science ....................................................................................................................... 29

New Forms of Assessment: Measuring What You Contribute Rather Than What You Collect .. 35

Computer Use Guidelines ............................................................................................................. 41

The Robot Teachers ...................................................................................................................... 42

K-12 MOOCs and Communities .................................................................................................. 53

Questions from Students at Vancouver Island University ............................................................ 56

Sharing in a competitive environment ...................................................................................... 56

Responsible Internet Use .......................................................................................................... 58

Cloud Computing and Learning Theory ................................................................................... 60

A Level Playing Field ............................................................................................................... 61

The Content on Websites .......................................................................................................... 63

Innovative Tools ....................................................................................................................... 64

Implementing Online Learning ................................................................................................. 65

Being a Philosopher ...................................................................................................................... 68

The ‘Course’ in MOOC ................................................................................................................ 71

Improving Canadian Post-Secondary Education .......................................................................... 75

1. A National Strategy............................................................................................................... 75

2. Making Teaching Central ..................................................................................................... 76

3. International Expansion ........................................................................................................ 76

4. Accountability Benchmarks .................................................................................................. 77

5. Canadian Online Platforms ................................................................................................... 78

Learning in the Digital Age: The Reality and the Myth ............................................................... 81

The Paradox of Democracy .......................................................................................................... 93

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Free and Not Free........................................................................................................................ 100

People Don’t Need Experts; They Just Need Someone Who Knows ......................................... 105

What Makes a MOOC Massive? ................................................................................................ 107

Sustainability and MOOCs in Historical Perspective ................................................................. 109

Evaluating a MOOC ................................................................................................................... 132

The Quality of Massive Open Online Courses ........................................................................... 134

What is a MOOC? .................................................................................................................. 134

The Purpose of MOOCs.......................................................................................................... 138

MOOC Success Factors .......................................................................................................... 141

Measuring Success .................................................................................................................. 147

Assessment in MOOCs ............................................................................................................... 151

MOOC – The Resurgence of Community in Online Learning ................................................... 155

What is a MOOC? ................................................................................................................... 155

Massive ............................................................................................................................... 156

Open .................................................................................................................................... 157

Online .................................................................................................................................. 159

Course ................................................................................................................................. 160

MOOC Pedagogy .................................................................................................................... 161

Neurons ............................................................................................................................... 161

Language ............................................................................................................................. 162

Aggregation......................................................................................................................... 163

Remixing ............................................................................................................................. 163

Repurposing ........................................................................................................................ 164

Feeding Forward ................................................................................................................. 165

The Purpose of a MOOC ........................................................................................................ 166

Learning .............................................................................................................................. 166

Connectivism ...................................................................................................................... 167

Participants .......................................................................................................................... 167

Learning, Again .................................................................................................................. 168

The MOOC as Community ..................................................................................................... 169

Online community .............................................................................................................. 169

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Community of Practice ....................................................................................................... 170

Peer Community ................................................................................................................. 171

Playing ................................................................................................................................ 171

Learning Communities........................................................................................................ 172

Growth ................................................................................................................................ 173

Threats and Opportunities ....................................................................................................... 173

Francophone Communities ................................................................................................. 173

Mosaic ................................................................................................................................. 174

Identity ................................................................................................................................ 175

Immersion ........................................................................................................................... 176

Provider ............................................................................................................................... 176

Discourse............................................................................................................................. 177

What’s Ours ................................................................................................................................ 178

What I Wish I Had Learned in School ........................................................................................ 182

Connectivism and the Primal Scream ......................................................................................... 185

Motivation ............................................................................................................................... 185

Cognitive Load........................................................................................................................ 187

The Competent Self ................................................................................................................ 190

Novices and Success ............................................................................................................... 192

Failure ..................................................................................................................................... 193

Connectivist Literacy .............................................................................................................. 195

The Role of Open Educational Resources in Personal Learning ................................................ 197

The Idea of Openness.............................................................................................................. 197

The Challenge: Making Things Unfree .................................................................................. 200

Dimensions of Openness......................................................................................................... 201

MOOC Design Principles ....................................................................................................... 204

Evidence of OER Production and Use .................................................................................... 206

The (Open) Language of Learning ......................................................................................... 209

‘Completely Wrong’ But Not in Error ........................................................................................ 214

Two Comments on Open ............................................................................................................ 216

Response to David Wiley........................................................................................................ 216

p.10

Responses to a discussion forum on the future of OERu........................................................ 217

On the Three or Four Problems of Connectivism ....................................................................... 219

Concepts ...................................................................................................................................... 229

Connective Knowledge and Open Resources ............................................................................. 231

The Theory of Connectivism .................................................................................................. 231

Connectivism and Practice ...................................................................................................... 232

Open Online Educational Resources ...................................................................................... 232

Definition of OER ................................................................................................................... 233

Massive Open Online Courses ................................................................................................ 234

cMOOCs and xMOOCs .......................................................................................................... 235

MOOCs and Development ...................................................................................................... 236

gRSShopper ............................................................................................................................ 237

MOOC Pedagogy .................................................................................................................... 238

Assessment and Credentialing ................................................................................................ 239

Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 239

A Few Words on ePortfolios....................................................................................................... 241

Strive Less, Share More .............................................................................................................. 243

MOOCs Will Ultimately Play a Transformational Role ............................................................ 246

Learning and Performance Support Systems .............................................................................. 249

Program Overview .................................................................................................................. 249

The Skills Challenge ........................................................................................................... 249

Learning and Performance Support Systems ...................................................................... 250

Program Design and Scope ..................................................................................................... 250

Core Commercial Technologies ......................................................................................... 251

Common Platform ............................................................................................................... 251

Capability Development ..................................................................................................... 252

Implementation Projects ......................................................................................................... 252

Presentation to UNCTAD's advisory group on "Developing skills, knowledge and capacities

through innovation: E-Learning, M-Learning, cloud-Learning” ................................................ 254

Access ..................................................................................................................................... 254

E-Learning .............................................................................................................................. 255

p.11

Massive Open Online Course ................................................................................................. 256

Open Educational Resources .................................................................................................. 256

Sustainability........................................................................................................................... 257

Publications vs Community .................................................................................................... 258

Formal and Informal Learning ................................................................................................ 258

Learning and Performance Support System ........................................................................... 259

Options .................................................................................................................................... 260

Scaling Up ............................................................................................................................... 261

Publishing ............................................................................................................................... 262

Personal Learning Records ..................................................................................................... 263

Credentials .............................................................................................................................. 265

Community Assessment.......................................................................................................... 266

One Sentence .......................................................................................................................... 267

Standardization ....................................................................................................................... 267

Economists and Education .......................................................................................................... 269

Like Reading a Newspaper ......................................................................................................... 272

The MOOC of One ..................................................................................................................... 275

Connectivism as a Learning Theory ........................................................................................... 286

What is a Learning Theory ..................................................................................................... 286

What is Learning? ................................................................................................................... 287

How Does Learning Occur?.................................................................................................... 288

Building on the Theory ........................................................................................................... 289

Mass Collaboration Workshop ................................................................................................... 291

Introduction to the Workshop - Ulrike Cress .......................................................................... 291

A Brief History of Mass Collaboration ................................................................................... 291

Gerhard Fischer ....................................................................................................................... 293

Mass Collaboration as Co-Evolution of Cognitive and Social Systems ................................. 295

Individual vs Collaborative Information Processing .............................................................. 296

Wai-Tat Fu – Illinois ............................................................................................................... 297

Collective Knowledge in Social Tagging Environments ........................................................ 299

A socio-cognitive approach for studying and supporting interaction in the social web ......... 300

p.12

Network analysis of mass collaboration in wikipedia and wikiversity .................................. 302

Is there a peer effect in knowledge generation in productive online communities? The case of

German Wikipedia .................................................................................................................. 303

Where do we go from here? Teaching, mentoring, and learning in the games and

crowdsourcing era ................................................................................................................... 304

Language Technology for Mass Collaboration in Education ................................................. 305

Understanding and Bridging the Wikipedia Language Gap ................................................... 307

Mass-Collaboration as a basis for procedures for e-participation .......................................... 310

Summary Discussion .............................................................................................................. 313

New Learning.............................................................................................................................. 314

New Knowledge...................................................................................................................... 315

New Students .......................................................................................................................... 315

New Software.......................................................................................................................... 316

New Media .............................................................................................................................. 316

New Writing............................................................................................................................ 317

New Internet............................................................................................................................ 317

New Parents ............................................................................................................................ 318

New Universities ..................................................................................................................... 318

The Achievement Gap ................................................................................................................ 320

The Facebook Research .............................................................................................................. 322

Beyond Free ‑ Open Learning in a Networked World ................................................................ 325

What is the Problem Online Learning Seeks to Solve? .......................................................... 325

Institutional Priorities: Why Universities Create MOOCs ..................................................... 326

The Call for Alternative Resources and the Patent/Copyright/Trademark Threat ................. 329

Open Content, Open Networks – and Commercial Resistance ............................................. 333

MOOCs as They Were Designed ............................................................................................ 335

Beyond Institutions Personal Learning in a Networked World .................................................. 347

Introduction: What learners Need ........................................................................................... 347

Thinking in Models: for Design, for Learning….................................................................... 349

What are models? ................................................................................................................ 349

Models are not Reality ........................................................................................................ 351

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New Versions of Old Models ............................................................................................. 352

The Right Model is No Model ............................................................................................ 353

Content .................................................................................................................................... 355

Too much content? .............................................................................................................. 355

Personal and Personalized................................................................................................... 356

Autonomy vs Control .......................................................................................................... 357

Complexity, Cause, and Murmurations .............................................................................. 359

A Reclamation Project ............................................................................................................ 359

Reclaim what? ..................................................................................................................... 359

Reclaimed learning is network learning ............................................................................. 360

Technology Behind the Reclaimed Web ............................................................................ 362

Social Networks and Neural Networks ............................................................................... 363

Network Learning ............................................................................................................... 365

Cooperation ......................................................................................................................... 366

A New System of Learning..................................................................................................... 367

Beyond Assessment - Recognizing Achievement in a Networked World ................................. 376

What constitutes success? ....................................................................................................... 376

What We Need ........................................................................................................................ 378

Traditional approaches to assessment ..................................................................................... 379

Confusing the outcomes of education with the process of education ................................. 379

Making Stuff Up: Mental Processes ................................................................................... 381

Making Stuff Up: Competencies ........................................................................................ 383

Alternative Credentials ....................................................................................................... 384

What Are We Validating? ....................................................................................................... 385

Understanding ..................................................................................................................... 385

Knowing and Doing ............................................................................................................ 385

Grading/What is assessment? ................................................................................................. 388

A Recognition Task ............................................................................................................ 388

What We Reveal ..................................................................................................................... 389

Ethical issues ....................................................................................................................... 390

Options ................................................................................................................................ 391

p.14

Personal Privacy.................................................................................................................. 392

A New System of Assessment ................................................................................................ 393

How does it work? .............................................................................................................. 393

How Do We Know This Will Work? ..................................................................................... 395

Who Pays? .............................................................................................................................. 396

The Chinese Test Example ......................................................................................................... 405

Bader A. Alsaleh, Summary Notes ............................................................................................. 408

MOOCthink ................................................................................................................................ 411

Positivism and Big Data.............................................................................................................. 413

Constructivism and Eliminative Materialism ............................................................................. 416

More Than Apps and Gadgets .................................................................................................... 420

Knowledge as Recognition ......................................................................................................... 422

Proposition .............................................................................................................................. 422

Philosophical Enquiry ............................................................................................................. 422

Logic ....................................................................................................................................... 423

Scientific Philosophy .............................................................................................................. 423

Metaphysics ............................................................................................................................ 424

Toward a Theory of Knowledge as Recognition .................................................................... 425

E-Portfolios and Badges Workshop ............................................................................................ 428

Igor Balaban - Europortfolio Community and Portal ............................................................. 428

Serge Ravet - Mturity Matrix .................................................................................................. 429

Janet Strivens - Competency Framework ............................................................................... 429

Marcelo Fabian Maina (in place of Lourdes Gardia).............................................................. 430

Anastasia Economou, EUfolio, by video ................................................................................ 430

Ilona Buchem, CreditPoints with OpenBadges ...................................................................... 432

Eric Rousselle, CEO, Discendum, Inc .................................................................................... 433

Rheingold, Lewin, Stevenson .................................................................................................... 435

Howard Rheingold .................................................................................................................. 435

Lisa Lewin - Pearson .............................................................................................................. 437

Mark Stevenson ...................................................................................................................... 439

Open Education, MOOCs, and Opportunities ............................................................................ 441

p.15

Reusable Learning Resources ................................................................................................. 441

Open Education Resources ..................................................................................................... 441

Content Syndication Networks ............................................................................................... 443

Learning Technologies at the National Research Council ...................................................... 443

Massive Open Online Courses ................................................................................................ 444

The Structure of a MOOC....................................................................................................... 446

Next Generation: Personal Learning Environments ............................................................... 447

Learning and Performance Support Systems .......................................................................... 449

Advanced Services .................................................................................................................. 450

The OOC ..................................................................................................................................... 451

Becoming MOOC ....................................................................................................................... 454

Ten Key Takeaways from Tony Bates........................................................................................ 459

From MOOC to Personal Learning............................................................................................. 466

A Lexicon of Sustainability ........................................................................................................ 475

OER Business Models: A Debate ............................................................................................... 479

Your Mission .......................................................................................................................... 479

Defining OER ......................................................................................................................... 481

Closing Statements.................................................................................................................. 485

The Power of Reuse: Wikipedia in Action ................................................................................. 487

My Viva ...................................................................................................................................... 492

Mark Surman on Open Education and the Open Internet ........................................................... 507

Research and Evidence ............................................................................................................... 513

The Study, and Other Stuff ......................................................................................................... 527

Whether or not the study he published was bad ..................................................................... 527

The Other Stuff ....................................................................................................................... 530

What I Learned from Philosophy ................................................................................................ 533

Precision .................................................................................................................................. 534

Structure .................................................................................................................................. 534

Syntax and Semantics ............................................................................................................. 535

What are 'Things'? ................................................................................................................... 537

Theories and Models ............................................................................................................... 538

p.16

Thought is Associative ............................................................................................................ 540

Born Free ................................................................................................................................ 541

Value ....................................................................................................................................... 542

Justice ...................................................................................................................................... 543

In Sum ..................................................................................................................................... 545

Experts and Authority ................................................................................................................. 546

Scaling the Heights of Language, Its Learning, and Its Teaching .............................................. 555

That Old Canard .......................................................................................................................... 559

Role for Educators in MOOCs .................................................................................................... 561

Analysis and Support of MOOCs ............................................................................................... 566

What Else Can Work At Scale? And Techniques from Social Media ........................................ 569

Ought and Is ................................................................................................................................ 573

What I Learned Using Paypal ..................................................................................................... 577

Personal and Personalized Learning ........................................................................................... 580

New Models of Open and Distributed Learning ......................................................................... 583

From Passive to Active ........................................................................................................... 584

From Formal to Informal ........................................................................................................ 586

Open and Distributed Learning ............................................................................................... 588

Open Licensing ....................................................................................................................... 590

E-Learning 2.0 ........................................................................................................................ 592

Social Learning ....................................................................................................................... 594

Personal Learning ................................................................................................................... 597

Connectivism .......................................................................................................................... 599

Massive Open Online Courses ................................................................................................ 600

The MOOC Model .................................................................................................................. 603

Learning Environments ........................................................................................................... 604

Looking at the Future of Online Learning: a rejoinder to Contact North 2016 Repor ............... 606

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 606

Seven Key Technology Patterns ............................................................................................. 607

Five Key Features of Online Learning Which Technology Patterns Will Enable .................. 610

Institutional Context for the Development of Online Learning .............................................. 612

p.17

Transformations in Students, Programs, Teaching and Learning, and Policy and Government

................................................................................................................................................. 615

Policy and Government........................................................................................................... 620

What Do Colleges and Universities Need to Do? ................................................................... 622

Emergence / Recognition ............................................................................................................ 631

Emergence............................................................................................................................... 631

Types and Tokens ....................................................................................................................... 634

The People’s Manifesto .............................................................................................................. 638

The Audience Experience ........................................................................................................... 639

Assessing MOOC Quality in Terms of Provider and Participant Objectives ............................. 644

Summary ................................................................................................................................. 644

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 644

Institutional Policy Frameworks ............................................................................................. 644

Corporate Academic mix ........................................................................................................ 645

The changing boundaries of the MOOC target ....................................................................... 645

Designing learning environments ........................................................................................... 646

Bridging the academic divide ................................................................................................. 647

The Importance of Faculty in the Higher Education Experience ............................................... 649

1. New Forms of Learning ...................................................................................................... 649

2. The Changing Shape of Learning ....................................................................................... 649

3. New Technologies Changing the Landscape ...................................................................... 650

4. Learning in the Future ......................................................................................................... 652

5. The New Role for Faculty................................................................................................... 653

How the Internet May Evolve ..................................................................................................... 656

Ascent from Social Media .......................................................................................................... 662

In Defense of Ascent ................................................................................................................... 666

Presentation ............................................................................................................................. 674

Book ........................................................................................................................................ 675

Tool ......................................................................................................................................... 676

Person ...................................................................................................................................... 676

Diversity and Diversity Training ................................................................................................ 678

p.18

1. Ideology of Diversity .......................................................................................................... 678

2. Groupthink .......................................................................................................................... 680

3. Ill-defined ............................................................................................................................ 681

4. Lazy Cultural Relativism .................................................................................................... 682

5. Not an Intrinsic Good? ........................................................................................................ 682

6. Diversity as Conservatism .................................................................................................. 683

7. Diversity does not lead to increased productivity ............................................................... 685

9. More harm than good .......................................................................................................... 686

10. No evaluation .................................................................................................................... 687

Overall..................................................................................................................................... 688

Institutions and Openness ........................................................................................................... 689

Setting Up the Discussion ....................................................................................................... 689

Institutionalized....................................................................................................................... 690

Learning Technology .............................................................................................................. 692

Pirate Libertarianism ............................................................................................................... 693

Making it Work ....................................................................................................................... 695

Open Practices ........................................................................................................................... 696

On Teaching Critical Thinking ................................................................................................... 705

Wiley’s Misguided Advocacy..................................................................................................... 710

My Workflow.............................................................................................................................. 713

Detecting Fake News .................................................................................................................. 714

Open Learning in the Future ....................................................................................................... 718

Who Will Produce? ................................................................................................................. 718

What Will Resources Look Like? ........................................................................................... 719

How Will They Be Sustained? ................................................................................................ 719

How Will People Find Resources? ......................................................................................... 720

How Will Resources Be Used................................................................................................. 720

Is Technology Making Us Smarter? Yes! ................................................................................... 723

We Are Not Agreed .................................................................................................................... 725

Open Learning, Open Networks ................................................................................................. 738

Preliminaries: Openness.......................................................................................................... 738

p.19

My Current Work .................................................................................................................... 739

New Developments ................................................................................................................. 742

MOOCs ............................................................................................................................... 742

Personal Learning ............................................................................................................... 743

Distributed Social Networks ............................................................................................... 744

Cloud Infrastructures .......................................................................................................... 746

Immersive Reality ............................................................................................................... 747

Personal Learning Environments ........................................................................................ 749

Robot Tutors ....................................................................................................................... 751

Challenges ............................................................................................................................... 752

A Final Note ............................................................................................................................ 756

p.20

Experts and Empowerment

We all, as David Wiley writes1, want to empower learners. While we read a great deal these days about education as job training and workforce readiness, what we really want to be able to do is

to enable each person to make his or her way in the world, to pursue their own good in their own

way.

This, to me, involves reducing and eventually eliminating their need to depend on experts. As I

imperfectly expressed the point the other day, "It’s about actually empowering people to develop

and create their own learning, their own education. So not only do they not depend on us for

learning, but also, their learning is not subject to our value-judgements and prejudices."

Unfortunately, this is often read as a casting of the student into the world to rely solely on their

own devices. David Wiley echoes the sort of misinterpretation of this view that is common:

"It is hard to imagine any form of learning that does not involve an expert – except pure,

unguided, trial-and-error discovery learning. Without reference to any person – or any

artifact created by a person – of more experience than ourselves, all learning would be

maximally inefficient. We would each be left to rediscover the entirety of physics from

scratch. And the entirety of music theory. And the entirety of every other field, without a

conversation or a textbook or a Wikipedia article to guide us.”

Such a proposition is absurd, and as it is absurd one should conclude (I would hope) that it is not

the proposition I am arguing for.

So let me be clear: in the world as I understand it, there are more than two options. There is an

option somewhere between "depending on an expert" and "left to rediscover the entirely of

physics from scratch."

And - to be clear - a great deal of 'expert content' exists. There is not only the aforementioned

Wikipedia, there are also academic publications, magazine and newspaper articles, open online

courses, blog posts, NASA videos, TED talks, and a host of additional educational content.

Indeed, in today's environment, and for the foreseeable future, we are virtually swimming in

educational content. It would be rash, irresponsible, and unthinking to say that a person should

1 David Wiley, 2012. Wishing I Understood. Iterating Toward Openness.

http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2280

p.21

not consult any of this when learning physics or any other discipline. So, that is not what I am

saying.

What I am addressing with remarks like "we should not depend on the expert" is the stance that

ought to be taken by the learner with respect to the learning material extant on the web and

elsewhere. And I mean this two distinct but related ways:

- first, the learner should not accept the report of the expert uncritically. Expert advice on any

given subject may not merely be misleading or misinformed, it may also be offered out of

context, it may be outdated, it may be misunderstood, and in some cases it may be malicious.

Examples of any of these cases may be found in abundance, especially on today's polarized and

politicized media environment.

- second, the learner should resist the characterization of certain sources, certain perspectives,

and certain content types *as expert*. While once we may have been able to rely on peer and

publisher review to verify the authenticity and accuracy of the information, this is no longer the

case. Moreover, an increasing body of verifiable and reliable information is being published

outside traditional channels.

These two conditions amount to the assertion that the learner should take what amounts to a

critically reflective stance with respect not only to expert content but with respect to all content.

Maybe there was once a day when we could trust expert opinion, but today we live in an

environment where not only can we not trust the experts, we cannot even trust that the people

offered as experts in fact are experts.

This is an important point. While it is common to use terms like 'elite' and 'expert'

interchangeably, they are in fact distinct concepts. To call a person an expert refers to their

knowledge. A person is an expert in a discipline if they have a deep knowledge of the field, a

base of experience in the field, and can talk about matters related to the field rationally and

reasonably. But to call a person an 'elite' refer to their position in a community or society. A

person who is elite will have accumulated a disproportionate amount of power, wealth or

influence.

Sometimes a person will be elite as a result of their expertise. If we speak of, for example, "elite

scientists", we may be referring not to the richest or most powerful scientists, but those with the

most expertise. But in practice we are rarely so precise. And so the word 'elite' even in a

scientific discipline may refer not to those with the greatest knowledge, but to those with the

most power and influence.

My own experience in life is that the people who become elite do not always become so as a

result of their generosity, but rather as a result of their parsimony. They achieve their status as

elite not by sharing but rather by hoarding. Such members of the elite carefully cultivate a

culture of dependence. By ensuring that their followers depend on them for knowledge, influence

p.22

and wealth, they augment their own position in society. The parsimonious elite are not interested

in the empowerment of their students. They are greedy, selfish and self-interested.

Not all members of the elite are parsimonious, and not all experts are members of this elite. But

the membership is sufficiently large that a learner ought not, as a general policy, place oneself in

a position of dependence on experts. With every word of advice received, the learner must be in

a position to ask whom the advice is intended to benefit. And the learner must be in a position to

seek alternative sources of expertise, to weight options, and to decide what to believe for him or

her self.

What is significant, to my mind, is that by being able to adopt such a critical stance with respect

to expertise, learners are not only much better able to vet for themselves the reliability and

authenticity of a piece of expert advice, they also acquire the capacity to look beyond a smaller

set of 'trusted sources' and cast their gaze across the wider information landscape, as they will be

able to select the reasonable and reliable even from such nontraditional sources as discussion

lists, blog posts and alternative media.

It's like being able to read. Before we could read, we had to depend on the priest to tell us what

the book said. After we learned how to read, not only could we see what the book says for

ourselves, we can also read other books that may say different things. Being able to read not only

increases our understanding, it increases our power to choose what will inform that

understanding.

From my perspective as an educator, we should not be like the educator who reads to people, and

who builds a large hall and charges fees in order to have people come to us to listen to use read

to them.

Nor should we be like the educator who reads to people for free. This does not achieve our aims.

'Giving content for free' does not reduce the need for people to depend on a reader. Rather, it

creates a new problem, that of sustainability - how are we to pay people who read for free?

We should be like the educator whose primary interest is in teaching people to read, so they do

not need to come to us at all, so there is not only no need for a hall and for fees to be paid, but no

need for our particular expertise, because everyone can have it.

Moncton, Canada

May 8, 2012

p.23

Transparency, Radical or Otherwise

Responding to Doug Johnson2 , who in turn is responding to Miguel Guhlin3 , who has made his RSS work4 again. :)

My managers and co-workers read my blog (though not as speedily as I would like). My mother

reads my blog. So I don't "write as though" they read it; I write knowing they read it. They all

know I am fallible, that I sometimes have bad days, that I'll call someone out if they deserve it,

and (most importantly) that I'm passionate and care about my work. Which makes most mistakes

permissible.

I gripe where the griping will do the most good. If necessary, I'll redact names - my long tirade

about my doctor didn't need to name the doctor, but it still needed to be said (and was probably

read by him). I've written of the incompetence of our provincial government, just before the

election in which it was defeated. I'll say good things where they're warranted - but the main

point is, if I ever want to see my ideas implemented locally, I have to write about what's

happening locally. (I find my influence on the global arena to be pretty minimal).

I sometimes write for edited publications, but I don't like it when they edit my work. Part of this

is my own style - I really hate revisiting work I've already written. But part of it is aesthetics - I

find first draft work a lot more authentic, if rough around the edges. Some people think by means

of writing; me, I write in order to express my thinking. These are two very different acts. My

employers have reacted negatively to my blog in the past, so it's hosted on my own server, which

I pay for myself, and any other concern is relegated to our common understanding that I enjoy

freedom of speech, even as a member of the public service (I add in passing that I am amazed at

how many Americans say they can't say this or that for fear of reprisals, all the while

proclaiming to be the most free people in the world).

I do write out of goodness, but it's not a stance I take in order to make the rest seem acceptable. I

honestly believe that what I have to say is good and that I am producing good in the world by

expressing it. This hasn't always been the easiest thing to believe. I have, as a matter of fact, been

writing since I was young, but until I was 23 or so my writings remained mostly private. When I

started university I joined the student newspaper, and had a very solid shell of shyness to

2 Doug Johnson, 2012. Radical transparency or TMI? Blue Skunk Blog. http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-

skunk-blog/2012/7/11/radical-transparency-or-tmi.html

3 Miguel Guhlin. Jellyfish Blogger - Radical Transparency. http://www.mguhlin.org/2012/07/jellyfish-blogger-

radical-transparency.html

4 Miguel Guhlin, 2012. RSS Feed Problems - Please Read Subscribers!. http://www.mguhlin.org/2012/07/rss-feed-

problems-please-read.html

p.24

surmount. I still grill myself on a regular basis: am I relevant? Is what I say accurate? Do people

care?

So - this is the thing about transparency. It requires a lot of courage on the part of the person

being transparent, but it requires more that the people observing understand that they are viewing

a real person, with real faults, real opinions, real ideas and real fears. We harm ourselves and

each other by assuming that everybody must conform to some sort of magazine-perfection.

Moncton, Canada

July 12, 2012

p.25

Connectivism as Epistemology

Responding to questions from Vance McPherson

1) What is your response to Rita Kop's suggestion that connectivism is a new

epistemology but not a new learning theory?

As I understand Rita, she understands the pedagogical aspects of connectivism to have already

been present in constructivism, and hence, connectivism is not proposing something new when it

comes to giving guidance to instructional staff. There are overlaps to be sure, however:

- criticisms of a teaching practice, which may be grounded if working in a constructivist

perspective, are not grounded in a connectivist environment. For example, I responded to

criticisms from Heli Nurmi several times in this fashion.

- there is a universalist aspect to constructivism that is not present in connectivism; to be a

'theory' requires statements of general principles of teaching, and connectivism mostly

doesn't have these

- and related, constructivism depends on intention in a way connectivism does not - it

supposes that people are consciously building or constructing knowledge, whereas in

connectivism this is not required

Connectivism is definitively a learning theory, or more accurately, incorporates learning theories

(specifically, theories about how connections are formed in networks). It suggests some teaching

theories (I have capsulized them as 'to teach is to model and demonstrate' and suggested that

connectivism argues for the creation of an immersive learning environment).

But all of that said, whether connectivism is a new theory of epistemology or pedagogy is

irrelevant to me and I don't spend any time worrying about it. I often preface my remarks with

the sentence "everything I have to say has been said (often better) by someone else."

2) My understanding of connectivism is currently as both epistemology and learning

theory, which presupposes that it has ALWAYS been correct and is not contingent upon

modern technological developments to "work." Rather, technology casts light upon the

nature of the model. But many authors are suggesting that the application of the learning

theory is primarily to technology-based learning. What's your take on this?

It has always been correct (insofar as it has components that say anything is 'always' the case).

Networks have always learned. Humans have always been a network (at least, since graduating

from single-celled organisms).

Other aspects of the theory change over time. At the deepest level, the principles for stable

(dynamic, learning) networks - autonomy, diversity, etc - are probably reasonably constant over

different types of networks.

p.26

But the sort of environments that create learning vary greatly - the sort of environment that

produces a modern information-age knowledge-worker for example varies greatly from one

which would produce a skilled bow-maker in the middle ages.

Additionally, with the development of technology, new types of networks have come into being.

While human commerce has always formed a network, it has been a relatively simple network

and certainly a slow-moving one. There's only so much connecting that can take place via

personal communication and the Royal Mail. Technology greatly accelerated the size and speed

of the human network, producing in a way not previously possible more observable properties of

a network (for example, cascade phenomena as an idea or meme propagates through the

network).

3) M. K. Dunaway (2011) recently published a paper in Reference Services Review,

where she describes connectivism as claiming that knowledge emerges from an

individual's learning network as connections are recognized. If I'm understanding your

position correctly, then Dunaway's description is inaccurate in placing the locus of

knowledge with the individual learner's recognition patterns, and not in the network

itself. But I may also have not correctly understood you, her, or both. Could you steer

me straight on this?

I would have to read Dunaway to be able to provide a reasonable response - if you could link me

to a copy that would be helpful.

That said - 'recognition' is a core thesis of my own theory. To 'know' x is to be capable of

*recognizing* 'x'. To recognize 'x' is to assume an appropriate neural configuration when

presented with an 'x', where 'appropriate' may be described in any variety of manners. I

sometimes talk of 'knowing' 'x' to having the right 'feeling' when represented with 'x', a feeling of

recognition. To 'recognize' is a property of a successful network.

Additionally, networks exhibit patterns or regularities. For example, a weather network may

exhibit a characteristic 'storm front' or a mumuration of blackbirds may display shapes in the air.

In my own work I often use examples like 'faces on a TV screen' or on the surface of Mars.

These patterns in a network are phenomena that exist *only* as things that are recognized. To

say a pattern 'x' exists in network 'y' requires a perceiver 'P' presented with 'y' and who

instantiates an appropriate network state (a 'familiar feeling', a 'habitual reaction', a 'recognition')

when presented with (a perspective of) 'x'.

4) I sometimes get the impression that you and George Siemens are not exactly on the

same page when it comes to the epistemological aspects of connectivism, which of course

would be perfectly fine in the context of a dialogic process, but I wondered if you'd care

to comment on this.

p.27

George and I have our debates. My sense is that he is much more concerned with the pedagogical

aspects of connectivism while I am much more interested in the epistemological aspects.

Philosophically, George is a realist while I am more of an idealist - that is to say, he is more

likely to say the phenomena we observe (be they chairs or colours or shapes and movements) are

'real' while I (for reasons just stated) say they require a perceiver.

One more thing, something of a comment. You've described semiotic processes

(language, symbols) as epiphenomena of networks, but not essential to them. This

reminds me a lot of Stephen Jay Gould's idea of "spandrels." I thought it was interesting

because one of Bill Kerr's beefs with connectivism seems to be that there is not a good

evolutionary / biological explanation for how connectivism is possible. But I think that,

on the contrary, connectivism, if correct, would prove conclusively Gould's spandrel

hypothesis, which is widely accepted in evolutionary biology circles. Just a thought.

I have described the patterns we perceive as supervenient on the phenomena that produce them.

So that does make them epiphenomenal in a way.

The whole question of an evolutionary basis for connectivism is one I have not considered. But I

think there's a good basis for such an argument. A network is at heart a recognition system; it

responds in consistent ways to complex and variable phenomena. It embodies the capacity to

adapt to change. The more complex an environment the more likely that a network, rather than a

simple innate instinct, would ensure survival.

A language I think emerges quite naturally out of this. Given that humans have the capacity to

make noises and gestures, and that these would be consistently produced given certain

phenomena, it would not be long before the adaptive advantage of communication ensured its

adoption. Most - if not all - of actual language is (in my mind) learned. But there is no question

that the networks we are born with at birth are sensitive to the sounds and movements made by

people like ourselves.

That said: language (as an entity) is a *social* phenomenon, not a personal phenomenon.

Language is stigmergic. As Wittgenstein would say, there is no private language. Not because of

some 'private language argument' (I think this is a recreation of Wittgenstein's thought after the

fact, and not core to what Wittgenstein had to say) but because the properties of language -

specific words (the associated sounds and symbols, and conventional meaning or reference),

grammars and syntax, works in literature and art that constitute paradigms, etc. - are physical

phenomena, present out there in the world and not in the humans that speak and write it.

Is language a spandral - an accidental artifact of evolution? In one sense no - I think a look at

language after the fact shows how important it has been to survival. But in another sense no - it's

not an artifact of evolution at all, as it is not a property of individual humans.

p.28

But should investigation show a particular innate sensitivity to some aspect of language - a

'mirror neuron for syntax', say, that might be a spandral. That might be a selected preference for

a particular aspect of language that *could* have been different (you could have an equally

effective language without it) but was the way it was, and was selected for. It might show up in

the way, say, an innate preference for the colour red might have - as an aid to identifying

dangerous stuff in the world, which in an alternative history could well have been blue or green

(think Vulcan) or whatever.

Good questions, interesting discussion, thanks. I will post these to my weblog, if you don't mind.

Moncton, Canada

June 17, 2012

p.29

Feelings of Science

David Hume's philosophy of morality is distinct from most approaches in that it does not

postulate some set of principles or criteria for moral behaviour.

Rather, he argues that we are governed by a 'moral sense' that tells us when an act is right or

wrong. "Extinguish all the warm feelings and prepossessions in favour of virtue, and all disgust

or aversion to vice: render men totally indifferent towards these distinctions; and morality is no

longer a practical study, nor has any tendency to regulate our lives and actions." (Hume, Of

Morals5)

The idea here isn't that Hume is arguing for some sort of moral relativism and 'anything goes',

though he has often been mischaracterized that way, but rather that other putatively ''objective'

measures of morality are crude instruments, and that our own sensations are fine-tuned detectors

of moral nuance that can be developed, through practice and experience, into reliable measures

of morality.

It's a bit like the difference between monitoring the gauges on a dashboard and a driver feeling

how the car responds to the road around corners and while braking. An experienced and sensitive

driver can tell if there's something wrong with the car well before any objective instruments can

because the car doesn't 'feel' right.

Note again that this isn't an 'anything goes' theory of auto mechanics. There is an objective fact

of the matter as to whether the car is performing badly or not. But this fact is not equated with

dashboard monitor readings, or indeed with any particular measure that can be determined a

priori. Prior to an actual breakdown or measurable malfunction, it's no more than wear and tear

in a car's engine the human mind can sense well before any more coarsely-tuned measuring

device can.

This sort of judging appropriateness by feeling isn't limited to ethics and auto mechanics. Rob

Cottingham posted this cartoon6 today and then discussed how he came to produce it: 5 David Hume. 912 Reprint Of The Edition Of 1777. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Project

Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4320/4320-h/4320-h.htm#2H_SECT1

6 Rob Cottingham, 2012. ROFL? No, RSID (Ruminating Silently In Despair).

http://www.robcottingham.ca/cartoon/archive/rofl-no-rsid-ruminating-silently-in-despair/

p.30

He writes, "For me, the trick is to not overthink it, because that’s a sure route to paralysis...

ultimately, the goal is to create the cartoon I want to make, and then reach more of the people

who will enjoy that cartoon." In a cartoon there can be a million variables that go into the

definition of 'good' and the cartoonist does not create a cartoon to specifications, but rather,

works by feel.

These considerations emerged today as I discussed the concept of a connectivist research

methodology with Sheri Oberman. Now I hadn't really thought in such terms about connectivism

- I remarked that I see myself as more akin to an explorer than an experimenter, and that my

p.31

methodology is based more in Paul Feyerabend7 than in anything else: "The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious.

It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the talents of man and of the circumstances

which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the

rules is bound to increase our professional qualifications at the expense of our humanity."

But again, this isn't an 'anything goes' methodology, and Oberman is right, I think, to suggest that

a connectivist methodology would be based in some significant way on connections. And when I

reflect on my own practice it does seem to me that my own work is based in forming connections

- though, more specifically, it is based in acting as a node in a network, and not in network-

forming per se (I think the concept of 'building networks' is a bit misleading; if we want to be a

part of a network we must be in the network, as a node, and not outside it, as a god).

But what would that methodology look like? Again, I could probably draw out some criteria -

I've talked about the importance of autonomy and diversity, etc., in the past, and these qualities

certainly characterize my own practice. And perhaps, after the fact, you could measure my own

research performance against, say, an 'autonomy index', and determine to what degree I practices

and promoted autonomy in my own work.

But that's not how I actually evaluate my own work. It's not that the criteria are wrong. It's that,

first of all, the criteria that determine whether my work was a success or not do not emerge until

later, and second, even then, I evaluate my work according to how it feels against any such

criteria (indeed, it would drive me crazy to try to evaluate against such criteria).

For example, the Skype conversation I had this morning, and practices like that Skype

conversation (I have another in less than half an hour, and routinely have short conversations

where I talk to people interested in this and that). I'll pose one 'research' question: should I record

them? (Another: should I blog about them after? Etc.) I don't record them because I want the

conversations to feel more like practice rather than performance. Is this a correct methodology?

What would tell me whether it was? I won't know until some time in the future the basis on

which these conversations were a success or otherwise. But I do know I have a pretty

good feel for such things, so I that's what I use.

Would it be better if there were some criteria against which I made my decision whether or not to record? No,

because the success of the conversation is based in much more than whether or not it is recorded, and so any such

standard would be artificial and arbitrary. And, in some important respects, wrong.

Obermann mentioned knowing whether a dance is successful. It's the same sort of thing, again. I

know whether I am dancing well by how it feels when I'm dancing. If I'm feeling awkward, not

knowing where to put my feet, unsure if I'm holding my partner properly, and all the rest (and I

7 Marxists.org. Paul Feyerabend (1975) Against Method: Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/feyerabe.htm

p.32

speak from experience here) then I know I am dancing incorrectly. By contrast, if these concerns

fall by the wayside and I feel only a smoothness of motion and attachment to my partner, then

the dance is progressing well.

Now, a couple of things. I could assess my dance against a dancing design pattern, consisting

(for example) of a series of step marks imprinted on the floor (kind of like the old 'figures' 8 in figure skating). This would certainly be objective, and measurable. But it would be incorrect - I

could dance poorly even while hitting every step, and dance well even though missing the mark.

Indeed, the point of the dance is do no more than to merely replicate a best practice, it is to take

it and make it something more.

Again, though, note that this is not an 'anything goes' theory of dancing. Nor is it even a theory

that supposes that my own standard of 'good' dancing is static (and hence, forever primitive). As

I dance, as I watch other dancers, as I discuss dancing with my dance partner (or with total

strangers I've bumped on the dance floor) my sense of dance becomes more refined. What I feel

changes. What used to feel pretty good now seems to me to be slow and simplistic. As I evolve, I

strive to be a better dancer, and my sensation becomes one of detecting this improvement in my

dance.

This is an important point. One of the fundamental difficulties with the empirical sciences is that

the science of measurement - which is what we need in order to obtain experimental results -

is itself an empirical discipline, and itself subject to amendment and improvement over time.

Nowhere is this more evident than in personal perception - our tastes in music when we are

young are (typically, and with some caveats) laughable when we are older. Did I really buy

that Bay City Rollers album9? Yeah - I did.

The literature of aesthetics is full of references to things like the refined palate in wine tasting,

the expertise of the chef in cooking, the appreciation of a master carpenter for a fine mortise and

tenon. People who study colour closely are able to distinguish differences in tint and tone that

will escape a novice. Our quality of experience improves over time, and it does so because our

capacity to perceive nuance, distinction and difference is improved, and this reflects the impact

of hundreds of thousands of individual experiences over time on our mind. Our brains, quite

literally, become shaped into better perceivers ( given the appropriate practice and experience).

As this is true of individuals, so it is true of the assessment of science and research in society

generally. For while on the one hand we have today a trend toward objective criteria-based

assessments of research and science, a connectivist approach (if there were one) would suggest

8 Wikipedia. Compulsory figures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_figures

9 Wikipedia. Once Upon a Star. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Star

p.33

that the acceptance of a research methodology or a specific research program is an emergent

phenomenon describable only in terms of that programs placement in the wider network?

What does that mean? One way of stating it is that society as a whole feels good about a given

program, and senses discord about another. Think of the sort of social approbation or revulsion

we feel for certain moral or immoral acts - there is for example in Canada a certain crime of

murder and dismemberment that has just been committed, and there is a widespread sense of

revulsion regarding the fact that it was recorded and posted on the internet. This isn't a matter of

voting or counting individual preferences, or of violating some guideline, law or precept; it's

more like a whole body response to the phenomenon.

What constitutes it? Well precisely it is the set of interactions each of us with the others, the call-

in radio shows, the blog posts, and the rest, combined with our inner sensations about the act as

they are expressed in a myriad of ways, some not even connected to the act (that's why simply

counting votes would be inappropriate; it completely misses the changed way we regard each

other in the grocery store, a change imperceptible and almost unidentifiable, but if you were

sensitive to it and looking for it, you might say you saw it there).

This form of social perception is the ultimate judge of the adequacy of any research program (or

musical taste, or dance moves, or cartoon, or any of the rest of it). Again, it is not an electoral

process, nor a market behaviour (quite the contrary; these are mass phenomena intended and

designed to magnify the needs and interests of individual members of society, rather than to

reflect the sense of society as a whole).

And - importantly - like personal perception, social perception is itself subject to refinement and

improvement. It's as Richard Duscho writes10, "the proper game for understanding the nature and development of scientific knowledge is engagement with the ongoing pursuit and refinement of

methods, evidence, and explanations and the subsequent handing of anomalies that are a critical

component of proposing and evaluating scientific models and theories."

The mechanisms we use to validate are - or ought to be - similar to those used to validate great

cuisine, or dancing, or auto mechanics. Both society as a whole and experts in particular play a

role. Society probably defines relevance - and again, relevance may not be immediately apparent.

Most of society understands this, and we have always kept a place for abstruse researches, not

because we understand them, but because we don't. Experts in the mean time are needed to

distinguish the gold from the dross, the genuine from the imitation; their own inner sense of the

discipline has been finely honed.

10 Richard Duschl, 2008. Science Education in Three-Part Harmony: Balancing Conceptual, Epistemic, and Social

Learning Goals. Review of Research in Education, Vol 32, Issue 1, pp. 268 – 291.

http://rre.sagepub.com/content/32/1/268.full

p.34

We need both, and we need these to be undefined, rather than specified in terms of some sort of

code of guidelines or best practices or whatever, not only because such are hopelessly inaccurate

abstractions on the judgements that are actually made, but also because by their very nature they

are resistant to the sort of growth and personal development every society needs. When societies

learn to feel and not just to measure, arts and sciences flourish; when they return to standards and

specifications, they have lost that capacity, and a decline has begin.

Moncton, Canada

June 1, 2012

p.35

New Forms of Assessment: Measuring

What You Contribute Rather Than What

You Collect

Once again, as we do at the start of every school year, we are hearing about the rampant cheating

that goes on, especially online, but in fact, everywhere, and without remorse or regret.

As Nikhil Hoyal writes, "Cheating is an epidemic in schools across the nation. A

2010 survey11 of 2,000 Stuyvesant students revealed that more than 72 percent of students copied their homework from others and about 90 percent of seniors cheated on tests12."

In the past I've commented on the likelihood that students will emulate their role models, and so

if there is a cheating epidemic in schools, it is likely the result of a cheating epidemic in society

in general.

So I've linked to articles with titles like "'Cheating culture' finds corruption everywhere in U.S.

society13." It reads: "Enron. WorldCom. Halliburton. These names are indelibly associated with ethics violations that have shaken the American economy and captured headlines in the past few

years."

The cheating hasn't stopped with this 2005 article, and it's not limited to the U.S. Indeed, in the

wake of the 2008 crash and findings of widespread manipulation of things like the stock market

and key interest rates14, it appears that cheating has become mainstream. No wonder our students find cheating to be the most reasonable response to assessment and evaluation.

I have often wondered what society would look like if we took wealth out of the equation. What

would it look like, say, if we limited salaries to a million dollars a year, corporate incomes to

11 The Editorial Board, The Spectator, 2012. This Was Probably Plagiarized.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120702073832/http://stuyspectator.com/2012/03/11/this-was-probably-

plagiarized/

12 Amanda Ripley, 2011. Testing Around the World. NBC News Education Nation.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111025083409/http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=344AE6BA-

FB34-11E0-B00E000C296BA163

13 Patrick O’Kelly, 2012. 'Cheating Culture' finds corruption everywhere in U.S. society. Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/books/article/Cheating-Culture-finds-corruption-everywhere-in-1137391.php

14 Mark Scott, 2012. Interest Rate-Fixing Scandal Puts Barclays at Risk With 2 Ratings Agencies. New York Times.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/attention-turns-to-barclays-future/

p.36

$100 million, and set corresponding limits on the accumulation of wealth (to reduce

the hoarding15 that is wrecking our economy)?

Perhaps we can get some sense of this by taking the traditional incentives out of education.

Typically, students perform tests, write essays, or complete projects for grades from instructors.

Cheating occurs when they perform something other than the intended task in order to produce

the result - copying answers, for example, in order to achieve higher grades than they would have

earned on their own.

Even when the incentive is minimal, when we set up learning based on grades accumulated in

the traditional way, it leads to cheating. Thus we see recent lamentations in Forbes16, the Chronicle17 and others "concerning recent articles18 on cheating and skepticism19 of online learning," according to Dick Lipton20.

The response from companies like Coursera and Udacity was predictable: an honour code21

prohibiting multiple identities (and authentication22 if that doesn't work), the long-standing idea of mastery learning23, or creating24 in-person testing centres. And if none of that works, "the online exams are regarded as “practice” insofar as not counting toward a certificate of value."

To me, this is a failure of imagination. Surely, both in schools and society, we can do better than

the dog-eat-dog accumulation of numbers representing real or fictional value for power and

15 Bloomberg, 2012. Mark Carney ‘dead money’ warning targets Suncor, Teck ...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-24/carney-dead-money-warning-targets-suncor-teck-corporate-

canada.html

16 George Anders, 2012. How Would You Like A Graduate Degree For $100? Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2012/06/05/udacity-sebastian-thrun-disrupting-higher-education/

17 Jeffrey R. Young, 2012. Cheating Goes High Tech. Chronicle of Higher Education.

http://chronicle.com/article/Online-Courses-Can-Offer-Easy/132093/

18 Freakonomics, 2012. How to Cheat in Online Courses. http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/06/08/how-to-

cheat-in-online-courses/

19 David Youngberg, 2012. Why Online Education Won't Replace College—Yet. Chronicle of Higher Education.

http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Online-Education-Wont/133531/

20 RJLipton+KWRegan, 2012. Cheating Or Mastering? Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP

http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/cheating-or-mastering/#comment-24130

21 Udacity Legal Information, 2012. Udacity. http://www.udacity.com/legal/

22 Phil Hill, 2012. Four Barriers That MOOCs Must Overcome To Build a Sustainable Model. E-Literate.

http://mfeldstein.com/four-barriers-that-moocs-must-overcome-to-become-sustainable-model/

23 Wikipedia. Mastery Learning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning

24 Udacity, 2012. Udacity in partnership with Pearson VUE announces testing centers.

http://blog.udacity.com/2012/06/udacity-in-partnership-with-pearson-vue.html

p.37

profit. Surely we can reflect the achievement of individuals in some way that does not resemble a

big stack of stuff.

The first thing that both the financial system and the grading system devalue is the worth of

assistance and generosity to others. Oh, sure, there is a token 'charitable donations' check-box in

your income tax form. But imagine your income went up if you gave time, money or resources to

charity, even if you were living on social assistance!

In the schools, too, there is no reward for helping others (indeed, it is heavily penalized).

Suppose educational achievement was measured at least partially according to how much (and

how well) you helped others. The value of the achievement would increase if the person is a

stranger (and conversely, decrease to zero if it's just a small clique helping each other) and would

be in proportion to the timeliness and utility of the assistance (both of which can be measured).

The financial system also values mass. That is to say, it favours the creation of consolidated

institutions that act as a single entity. There is limited incentive to work with others - indeed, it is

often more worth your while to go to court against long-standing business partners25. A limit on corporate size, by contrast, would create an incentive to cooperate with others. Changes in patent

and trade law would make costly lawsuits counterproductive.

But all this is for naught if people have been educated since birth to engage in cutthroat

competition with each other. Sure, we hear about fair play, but it is so rare that organizations like

the Olympics issue special awards26 when it happens. Far more often students see cheating27, doping28, and plain bad manners29. Indeed, they learn it doesn't even matter30.

Suppose instead students were rewarded for cooperation. Not collaboration; this is just the

school-level emulation of the creation of cliques and corporations. Cooperation, which is a

common and ad hoc creation of interactions and exchanges for mutual value. Cooperative

25 Associated Press, 2012. Apple calls for ban on Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Fox News.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/08/27/apple-calls-for-ban-on-samsung-galaxy-smartphones/

26 Olympics, 2012. Decathletes Ashton Eaton and Curtis Beach receive Fair Play awards.

http://www.olympic.org/news/decathletes-ashton-eaton-and-curtis-beach-receive-fair-play-awards/172328

27 Chris Chase, 2012. Gold-medal swimmer admits to cheating in 100 breaststroke. Yahoo Sports.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/cheater-swimming-gold-medalist-admits-taking-

illegal-kicks-162450535--oly.html

28 Rick Maese, 2012. USADA strips Lance Armstrong’s titles, bans him from cycling. Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/usada-strips-lance-armstrongs-titles-bans-him-from-

cycling/2012/08/24/d6f7d382-ee04-11e1-afd6-f55f84bc0c41_story.html

29 BBC, 2012. Olympics badminton: Eight women disqualified from doubles

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19072677

30 Kurt Badenhausen, 2012. Why Lance Armstrong Still Matters. Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/08/24/why-lance-armstrong-still-matters/

p.38

behaviours include exchanges of goods and services, agreement on open standards and protocols,

sharing of resources in common (and open) pools, and similar behaviours.

Imagine receiving academic credit for contributing well-received resources into open source

repositories, whether as software31, art32, photography33, or educational resources34. Imagine receiving credit for long-lasting additions to Wikipedia or similar online resources (we would

have to fix Wikipedia, as it is now run by a gang of thugs35 known as 'Wikipedia editors'). We can have wide-ranging and nuanced evaluations of such contributions, not simple grades, but

something based on how the content contributed is used and reused across the net (this would

have the interesting result that your assessment could continue to go up over time).

Society does not in general reward contributions to the public good. Indeed, quite the opposite -

in order to earn profit, corporations and individuals bribe36 governments to act against the public

interest37. Companies are more interested in seeing services privatized38, instituting user fees39, or other measures designed to wring wealth40 out of what might otherwise be a universal program. As for long range public good, such as environmental protection41, or society-

wide public good42, such as energy and information access, more money is to be made ignoring the public good than supporting it.

31 Github. https://github.com/

32 Deviant Art. http://www.deviantart.com/

33 Flickr. Explore / Creative Commons. http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

34 OER Commons. http://www.oercommons.org/

35 Nicholar Ciarelli, 2011. The Myth of Wikipedia Democracy. The Daily Beast.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/11/28/wikipedias-attack-dog-editors.html

36 Kumar Vikram, 2012. Bribed transport officials let rogue trucks unleash on Delhi roads. India Today.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/bribed-transport-officials-let-rogue-trucks-unleash-on-delhi-

roads/1/214754.html

37 Gidi Weitz, 2012. State Set to Close Landmark Bribe Case Against Former PM Ariel Sharon. Haaretz.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/state-set-to-close-landmark-bribe-case-against-former-pm-ariel-

sharon.premium-1.460846

38 Paul Krugman, 2012. Prisons, Privatization, Patronage. New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/opinion/krugman-prisons-privatization-patronage.html

39 Keith Jones, 2012. Quebec: Thousands protest Liberals’ tuition hikes, user fees and privatization. World Socialist

Web Site. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/queb-a24.shtml

40 Stephanie Simon, 2012. Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 Market. Reuters.

Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/private-firms-eyeing-prof_n_1732856.html

41 Robert F. Moore, 2012. Coal vs. EPA: Profits, jobs shouldn't trump public health. Lexington Herald-Leader.

http://www.kentucky.com/2012/08/20/2304892/coal-vs-epa-profits-jobs-shouldnt.html

42 Lim Guan Eng, 2012. "Piratization" of Penang port: Don't just talk, come clean - Guan Eng tells BN crony.

Malaysia Chronicle. https://web.archive.org/web/20130401003940/http://www.malaysia-

p.39

Imagine it was the opposite. Imagine private enterprise and individuals were rewarded for

supporting the public interest - suppose, for example, they were rewarded according to the actual

good they produced, after they made the investment, rather than through some contract or billing

system. Imagine a phone company made money, not from privatizing the telephone system, but

by adding value to the existing public system. Imagine rewarding energy companies for

producing the more environmentally sound energy43, not the cheapest.

There is, again, no reason why public service cannot be incorporated into individual assessment.

Adding value to fire and police services by means of monitoring and reporting (not the piece-

work model of something like CrimeStoppers44, but actual prevention), supporting environment by counting birds, sampling water, servicing sports events by acting as a timer or umpire - all

these can add to a person's assessment.

I'm not thinking of the simple sort of tasks grade school students can perform. Indeed, a person

hoping to attain a higher level qualification would need to contribute to the public good in a

substantial and tangible way. Offering open online courses (that are well-subscribed and

positively reviewed by the community) should be a requirement for any graduate-level

recognition. The PhD used to be about offering a unique research contribution to the field; now

it's about paying tuition and being exploited as a TA.

These three things - helping others, being cooperative, contributing to the public good - are

obviously not easy to assess. To be sure, it's far easier to ask students simple questions and grade

the number of correct responses. But asking students simple questions, far from measuring

putative 'content knowledge', is really an exercise in counting without any real interest in what is

being counted. It acts as an invitation to cheat, as it places self-interest ahead of the values it is

actually trying to measure.

This list of three types of assessment is intended only to stimulate thought. No doubt there are

many other forms of assessment along similar lines, all based on measuring what you contribute

rather than what you collect. And until we begin measuring achievement - and wealth - in this

way, we cannot expect better than dysfunctional students and a dysfunctional society.

Moncton, Canada

chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=37307:piratization-of-penang-port-dont-just-talk-come-

clean-guan-eng-tells-bn-crony&Itemid=2

43 http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/08/recap-u-s-wind-energy-layoffs-continue-in-

colorado-iowa-as-federal-policy-uncertainty-continues

44 http://www.canadiancrimestoppers.org/

p.40

August 27, 2012

p.41

Computer Use Guidelines

Responding to Alfred Thompson's Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics45 : Leaving aside the questionable wisdom of framing generic advice within a construct specific to a

certain religion...

The commandments say, essentially, "don't take or use other people's stuff without permission,"

which is OK in itself, but the way it is repeated over and over reveals an unhealthy fixation on

property rights, to the exclusion of almost all else.

Here's my version:

- don't use computers to hurt people

- respect people's privacy

- don't take or use other people's stuff without permission

- be truthful in your communications

- don't send people unwanted messages

- don't write malicious or destructive code

- be generous and share what you create

- turn off the power when room and computer are not in use

Have I missed any?

Moncton, Canada

August 29, 2012

45 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2012/08/29/ten-commandments-of-computer-ethics.aspx

p.42

The Robot Teachers

"Can you recommend a good doctor?" This is the final question in an article by Tony Bates46

about teaching, and it frames the debate nicely. We would be very disinclined to turn over the

healing profession to automation, and in the same vein, should be equally hesitant when it comes

to teachers.

My first thought on reading the question was, "they're all good." Obviously there is some

variation between doctors - and I had a dentist once the year before his retirement I would not

recommend to anyone - but the difference is slight, especially when compared to the difference

between having a doctor and not having a doctor.

The quality of doctors is a combination of the educational system and the character of the

individual who graduates from it. We live here in a society that values excellence in the

professions, and highly skilled and motivated individuals join the professions. In Canada, this

also includes teachers, mostly, and as a result, we have one of the best educated societies47 in the world.

But it's funny. Medicine, of all the professions, is one of the most dependent on computers,

machines and robots. From x-rays and MRIs to the monitoring devices of ICUs to electronic

patient records (a work still in progress) to all manner of diagnostic and treatment systems. I take

pills manufactured by robots (and dispensed by computer), my breathing at night is managed by

a computer, the lenses on my glasses were shaped by an automated grinding system, and I get

robocalls to remind me that I'm scheduled for a checkup next Tuesday at nine.

So we have two sides to this. On the one hand, in education, we depend on the professionalism

of our teachers, and trifle with that at our peril. We depend on their education being excellent,

and on their passion and motivation. On the other hand, if our doctors were as hesitant to employ

technology as our teachers sometimes are, our lives would be measurably shorter and

inestimably less comfortable and less secure.

So, while I understand what motivates Tony Bates to express such concerns regarding the

automation of education, by the same token, I am wary of arguments that recommend we stop

using the robots and the computers.

46 http://www.tonybates.ca/2012/08/31/my-summer-paranoia-computers-will-replace-teachers-in-higher-

education/

47 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/canada-is-not-becoming-outclassed/article4082381/

p.43

Here's Tony Bates: "He (his editor) wanted me to change what I was writing to make the case

that computers can replace teachers in higher education." Why? "He told me that his CEO and a

number of CEOs from other companies all thought this was the right way to go, and were trying

to influence the market to accept this."

And this brings in the other side of the debate about health care: privatization and corporate

control.

In Canada we have a public health care system. Like our education system, it is one of the best in

the world. Outcomes are comparable48 to those in the Unites States, and frequently better, and Canadians spend about half as much on health care. Wait times are comparable49 and, of course, nobody is turned away at the door of a Canadian hospital because everybody in the country has

insurance.

By and large, Canadians feel a conversion to an American-style system of privatized health case

would be a disaster, even with the salve that is Obamacare. This isn't a close election-style

preference. Polls show that 94 percent of Canadians50 prefer the public health care system. Even while Canadians face a barrage of contrary media (for example, from the Fraser institute) they

aren't buying it. They can see the horror stories from south of the border, and express51 an almost zero desire to switch. Who52 can blame them?

This is the sceptre Tony Bates faces in his dream. It is the conversion, erosion and eventual

destruction of one of the best public education systems in the world, under the guise of

automation. It is the eradication of the professional that we today call 'teacher' or 'professor' and

his or her replacement with the educational equivalent of an automated food-services operator

asking "would you like fries with that?"

The results of such a system would be predictable, and again, one can point south of the border

for evidence of that possible future. Though Americans pride themselves in having the best

48 http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1

49 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2008/12/19/healthcare-wait-times-us-vs-canada/

50 http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/884001/support-for-public-health-care-soars-94-of-canadians-including-

conservatives-choose-public-over-for-profit-solutions

51 http://healthcoalition.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/NANOS-EN.pdf

52 http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/15/life.expectancy.united.states/index.html

p.44

education system in the world, it just isn't true53. What can be expressed with statistics54 is also experienced by Canadians as fact. It is perhaps shameful to admit, but Canadians have long made

sport55 of the low level of American education. It's the whole health thing all over again.

The explanations are myriad56. There is the income gap, which is much larger in the U.S., and reliable the best predictor of educational outcomes. There are structural and institutional factors -

the wealthier districts tend to get better schools and more funding. There are cultural factors - in

some cultures, we are told, education and achievement are valued more highly than in others.

There are those who blame the teachers and teachers’ unions (though of course teachers in

Canada are almost 100 percent union).

Most of these factors, though, are mitigated, if not eliminated entirely, with public support for

education. Again, it's like health care - yes, poorer people in both Canada and the U.S. are likely

to have lower health outcomes, for a variety of reasons. But in Canada, poorer people are less

likely to delay a visit to the doctor, less likely to allow an illness to become too serious to treat,

less likely to die an early death.

Similarly, where education is a public good, the causes of low educational outcomes are

mitigated. Funding between wealthier and poorer districts, instead of varying by parental

income, is more or less equivalent (though the rich even in a public system extract a

disproportionate share). Poorer people, in a public system, are more likely to be exposed to

positive role models and to acquire the values of professionalism, passion, motivation, and the

rest. And of course in a public system poorer people fund themselves - at least some of the time -

in an environment that is informationally rich and intellectually challenging.

If the rest of the automation of education is to undercut education as a public good, Canadians -

and society in general - have a great deal to worry about. And it is clear, as Bates shows, that an

organized campaign is underway to create this outcome.

Bates again:

 xMOOCs and automated marking and peer review57 to get around the awkward point that one instructor cannot provide adequate feedback to thousands of students.

53 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h__uutzcQXc

54 http://www.all4ed.org/files/IntlComp_FactSheet.pdf

55 http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-7111005509913775935

56 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achievement_gap_in_the_United_States

57 http://www.tonybates.ca/2012/08/05/whats-right-and-whats-wrong-about-coursera-style-moocs/

p.45

 the Republican Party of Texas whose election platform contains the following58 (p. 12):

"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills

(HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs..."

 the California two year college system has undergone nearly $1 billion of cuts59 since 2008, resulting in a waiting list of 470,000 students who cannot get into classes

 Stanford University has just created a new Vice-Provost for Online Learning60, who turns out to be a computer scientist

 the Ontario government is looking for more ‘productivity’ from the post-secondary

institutions61, and is asking how online learning can lead to improved productivity.

This is just a small sample of the evidence he could have assayed to make the case that

automation is being used as a mechanism to privatize the educational system.

And again, probably every educational blogger experiences that gentle but incessant pull to write

about and support initiatives that lead toward a privatized system. Want to get on TED62? Don't

support public education - instead, talk about how business and the markets can do it better.

Want to get hired to write for Britannica63? Espouse the market-based perspective. Want to win an award? Check the gotchas64. Want to give your blog a boost? Be65 an Apple Educator or Google Certified Teacher. Want to be known as supporting 'free education'? Support the

58 http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012Platform_Final.pdf

59 http://www.tonybates.ca/2012/08/29/californias-two-year-college-system-in-deep-trouble/

60 http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/online-learning-office-083012.html

61 http://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/pepg/publications/DiscussionStrengtheningOntarioPSE.pdf

62 http://www.ted.com/talks

63 http://www.britannica.com/blogs/authors/

64 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/education/archive/2012/03/09/how-to-win-microsoft-education-partner-of-the-year-

2012.aspx

65 http://wirededucator.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/the-google-teacher-academy-the-apple-distinguished-

educator-program/

p.46

commercialization66 of educational resources. Want Shuttleworth67 or Hewlett68 money for your educational support or research project? Support the commercialized69 approach.

There is an ongoing and incessant campaign afoot to privatize education. In the United States,

education is almost the last bastion of public expenditure. In Canada, both health care and

education face the forces of privatization and commercialization.

The results are wholly predictable. In all cases, the result will be a system that favours a small

moneyed elite and leaves the rest of the population struggling to obtain whatever health and

education they can obtain with their meagre holdings. As more wealth accumulates in the hands

of the corporations70 and the wealthy71, the worse health and education outcomes become for the less well-off in society.

But here's where the challenge arises for the education and university system: it was designed to

support income inequality and designed to favour the wealthy.

(Indeed, from my perspective, one of the greatest scams72 perpetrated by the wealthy about the education system is that it has a liberal bias73. But if you separate out social issues

- beliefs74 concerning "'multiculturalism, immigration and racism' (the most common category chosen by colleges), or 'environmentalism, animal rights and food'" - and focus exclusively on

questions of economy and distribution of wealth, the purported liberal bias disappears.)

Examine the structure of the traditional university system, especially as instantiated in the United

States, but also to a certain degree in Canada and many other nations. Admission is regulated

66 http://freeculture.org/blog/2012/08/27/stop-the-inclusion-of-proprietary-licenses-in-creative-commons-4-0/

67 http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/

68

http://www.hewlett.org/grants/search?order=field_date_of_award_value&sort=desc&keywords=&year=&term_n

ode_tid_depth_1=All&program_id=87

69 http://www.edexcellence.net/

70 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-23/31-trillion-dollars-hidden-in-tax-haven/4147114

71 http://www.mybudget360.com/top-1-percent-control-42-percent-of-financial-wealth-in-the-us-how-average-

americans-are-lured-into-debt-servitude-by-promises-of-mega-wealth/

72 http://sixthestate.net/?p=6354

73 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/16/liberal-bias-has-tainted-schools/?page=all

74 http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/21/liberal-book-bias-summer-reading-national-association-scholars/

p.47

by tuition75, and in the most elite institutions, the tuition is the highest76. The recent British experiment in voluntary moderation was a failure77. Admission in private universities is also enabled by legacy78, the result of favours granted by and to alumni of the university. There is in addition a bias in elite universities toward graduates of a small number of preparatory schools79.

In this sort of environment the preferred model of learning is very personal and very

professional. Having a teacher or professor in this sort of environment is less like dealing with a

hospital or clinic, and more like having a personal physician. It's all hands-on, it's all very close,

supporting and caring. And it is very effective, at least, from the perspective of securing

positions of power, privilege and wealth. The associations80 created here last a lifetime, and are parlayed into wider influence81. Want to go to Davos82? Say the right things, support the right causes.

So long as this is what educators believe they provide, they will serve as agents for the

commercialization and privatization of their own discipline, rather than as protectors of the

public system.

That's why I'm so concern about the turn taken in the article written by Tony Bates. Here he is

again:

To successfully achieve such learning outcomes, learners either have to be incredibly

self-motivated and already highly knowledgeable (i.e. already well educated), or they

need an environment that supports the development not just of these outcomes, but also

the development of their thinking and decision-making. This requires fostering or

supporting their motivation to learn, dealing with gaps in knowledge or lack of learning

skills, providing timely feedback, and above all providing guidance, criteria and direction

75 https://plus.google.com/103605590434772742623/posts/Xt4LShqGRQC

76 http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities

77 http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/03/universities-welcome-flexbility-triple-fees

78 http://ivysuccess.com/washingtonian_legacy.html

79 http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/29/best-prep-schools-2010-opinions-private-education.html

80 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones

81 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group

82 http://www.weforum.org/

p.48

to ensure that they meet the necessary standards to operate effectively in the real world.

This is what I call teaching, and much if not all of it is difficult or impossible to automate.

This is the model of the private education, of the personal physician, of the service reserved for

the elite, not the least because we cannot afford to provide it for everybody. And this is a key

point of this article: so long as we cling to this as the model for education, we push it toward

privatization.

To be sure, Bates is aware of this, I would think.

Yes, this was possible 50 years ago because we had an elite system, and few students per

professor. Now we have, especially in North American Tier 1 public research

universities, very large classes and many students per professor (made worse in first and

second year by tenured professors focusing mainly on research and graduate education).

So we have fallen back almost completely on ‘instruction’ rather than on ‘teaching’ in

undergraduate programs.

And he is quite right. The system has drifted from the prep-school and Ivy-League model of

learning, has drifted away from the boardrooms and warrens of Cambridge and Oxford, to

resemble something much more structure, must less personal, much more 'outcomes focused',

and much less attractive. It has devalued the role of the teacher and professor, relegating them to

the role of tutor or instructor or semi-professional support system. In universities, much of the

teaching is done by underpaid graduate students. In the public school system, teachers are under

increasing pressure, facing lower pay. Even their pensions are under attack.

No, it is not a good system, and simply taking this and automating it is not a solution. And Bates

is quite correct to warn of the most likely outcome: an in-person education system granted to a

small number of people who actually attend these elite universities, and a mostly or fully

automated system sold like CDs and television programs for the rest of us. We - those of us who

are not in the one percent - would be reduced to being educated vicariously through others.

We know this model fails. " For over 30 years computer scientists, working in the field of

artificial intelligence, have been trying since then to improve on ‘programmed learning83’, which failed to deal adequately with the development of cognitive thinking skills beyond the level of

comprehension and memory." Yet this is the sort of education being designed today though

systems such as adaptive learning systems84 and common core. This is the sort of system 83 http://www.gsis.kumamoto-u.ac.jp/en/opencourses/pf/3Block/07/07-2_text.html

84 http://www.atp.nist.gov/atp/97wp-lt.htm

p.49

intended to be supported by learning analytics85. And yes, the Coursera, Udemy, MITx and similar initiatives are the means to this end. A Netflix for learning. An Amazon for achievement.

Except that it will sell a hollow dream, as the divisions between those who are genuine

participants in academic and literary society, and those who are not, will be permanently

established.

To be sure, this must be understood: this is as much a political outcome as an economic outcome.

Those of us who end up on the wrong side of the vicarious education divide are and will be shut

out not only from positions of wealth and power, but from any role or say in the definition of

knowledge, intellect and culture. Those people we read, those influencers of public opinion,

those who are credited with discovery and celebrated as innovators and inventors - they will all

come from the in-person side of the vicarious divide. Political discussion, literature, culture -

these are and will be shaped in the interests of, by and for, those with wealth and power. Dissent

will not be suppressed, because it will no longer be necessary; dissent will no longer be

possible86.

If we cannot have an educational system that was designed by and for the industrial age, with

classrooms and textbooks and standardized curricula, then neither can we have the education

system that existed before that age, with professorial discussion circles, individual advisers and

mentors offering support and collegiality, personal instruction, guidance, criteria and direction.

We must move beyond what we have if we are to have a public system worth keeping, but not in

a direction that further reinforces the divide between a high quality education for some and a

facsimile for the rest of us.

I think there is only one way to achieve this: to develop teachers and instructors as a professional

class at the service of a public education system, leveraging and working within a technological

environment equally accessible and supportive of all. Not programmed learning, but also not the

private-school education taken to be the high standard of learning today. Something better.

Let's first look at the recommendations offered by Tony Bates:

 using online learning, rather than building new campuses or physical facilities, to expand

access.

 use of shared materials, and not just open educational resources, but developing courses

or programs that can be used across several institutions.

 economies in the delivery of programs by maintaining content quality through the use of

tenured or research professors for the design and development and monitoring of course

85 http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/08/25/what-are-learning-analytics/

86 http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/f/frank-dissent.html

p.50

delivery, but reducing delivery costs through the use of well-trained online adjunct

professors and automated marking where appropriate.

 course designs that move the work away from the instructor to the student. Examples are

collaborative learning, development of self-management learning skills, problem-based

learning.

This is the traditional system, with some technological enhancements, where education is still

considered to be 'delivered' by means of 'programs'. It will not work, no more than a model of

'delivering' health care through 'health programs' would help a society be healthier (as evidenced

by the failure87 of the HMO model, which is exactly that).

We have to stop thinking of education as a delivery system. We have to start thinking of an

overall publicly-accessible and supportive educational environment.

It's not about duplicating the success of the private school approach that has characterized the

design of 'the best' education through the last century. It's about making that advantage

irrelevant. It's about making it so you can't get anything more if you take the personal-physical or

personal-teacher approach, because everybody already has access to the best. And - like live

music - is we want we can sample it from time to time in person, because it's fun.

We must develop the educational system outside the traditional system because the traditional

system is designed to support the position of the wealthy and powerful. Everything about it -

from the limitation of access, to the employment of financial barriers, to the creation of exclusive

institutions and private clubs, to the system of measuring impact and performance according to

economic criteria, serves to support that model. Reforming the educational system isn't about

opening the doors of Harvard or MIT or Cambridge to everyone - it's about making access to

these institutions irrelevant. About making them an anachronism, like a symphony orchestra, or

a gentleman's club, or a whites only golf course, and replaced with something we own and

build for everyone, like punk music, a skateboard park, or the public park.

So what does a technology-enable 'public education health system' look like? As I said, it will be

staffed by education professionals, and ultimately the design will be largely informed by these

professionals, as once having taken over management of the system for themselves, they can

begin to implement reforms that make educational sense, rather that follow prewscriptions

employed by economists or put in place for political reasons.

Education professions in this model may be affiliated with institutions, but are also regarded as

providers in their own right. People in the community may access education either through the

institution or directly through the professional. They don't 'enrol' in a particular institution, or

87 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/medimedia/managedcare_201204/#/26

p.51

'belong' to a class or curriculum, though they may tend to favour one institution or one

professional. As with the health system, (at least in Canada) they can attend any institution they

want, and have a wide choice in the educator they want. They may from time to time seek the

assistance of specialists, for particular needs (for example, language training or compliance

training).

What is most important is how education is thought of in such a system. It is not something that

is 'delivered' or 'transferred' from an institution to a person. An education is property of a person

('property' in the sense of 'quality' or 'attribute', not in the sense of 'ownership' or 'possession')

just in the same way as health and fitness are properties of a person, something they have all

their lives, something they develop and grow and maintain, something they

are themselves ultimately responsible for.

Just as a healthy person needs affordable and accessible food and water, housing and

transportation, so also an educated person needs learning resources, intellectual challenges, role

models and examples, employment and invigoration. They need, in the words of Seymour

Papert, hard fun88. There are many ways this can be provided in a technologically advanced society - transmission (via books and videos) and programmed learning are only two

possibilities, and (probably) the most minimally effective of those.

In this model, the public education system isn't something you put aside 18 years your life to go

to and 'access', no more than a child spends the first 18 years of his or her life in a health

institution developing strength and fitness. In this model we find much more interesting, varied

and engaging pass-times for children and young adults, integrating them more and more into the

wide web that is society as a whole. Yes, children and young adults continue to have role models

and mentors, but they only model in which every child can have access to this is one

where every adult is in a position to fulfill this role.

The way we need to design such as system - and we need to begin designing it now, before the

privatizers destroy what we have - is to begin designing educational professional support

systems: the array of software and services we would want an educational professional to have at

his or her fingertips on an as-needed bases.

We need also to begin designing the educational resource support system for individual learners,

including access not only to free or easily affordable educational resources - the learning 'bread

and butter', so to speak - but also learning environments, network support structures, and access

to learning inside work and other environments. I have spoken in the past about treating

educational resources as a utility like water or power; we need to begin building this utility and

88 http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html

p.52

putting it to work in hospitals, courts, manufacturing plants, parks and museums, and any other

place people get together to work or play.

We will gradually begin assessing individuals by what they do and what they contribute, rather

than according to what they earn or what they take. Systems that make this sort of assessment

possible will need to be designed, and incorporated into the tools we use to make hiring

decisions. (It would be the opposite of a phenomenon happening today, using a person's credit

score to evaluate insurance or employment prospects - again, a measure intended to entrench the

rich.)

And we need to put into place mechanisms of association that undercut and make obsolete the

associations formed by the elite in their private institutions - the networks of connections that

serve as alternative fora for political opinion, language, culture and dissent. These networks - of

which the connectivist courses are early prototypes - will replace the Skull and Bones and similar

societies, making them obsolete and ineffective.

And finally - we need to begin to define what we mean by a professional educator, a person who

is the steward of this system and who accepts, as an individual responsibility, the support and

maintenance of a high level of general education and intelligence, for all members of a society,

in support of the individual and social good. I suggest it is a role that has very little to do with

content delivery, very little to do with standardized curriculum, very little to do with textbooks

and classrooms, and is only orthogonally attached to educational institutions.

And it will not be performed by robots.

Moncton, Canada

September 2, 2012

p.53

K-12 MOOCs and Communities

Responding to questions from Paul Genge:

My question is about what tools do you think I should use to connect students with genres

or communities of practice based on their personal interests

The short answer is, whatever tools the experts are already using (presuming they have formed a

community of practice of some sort, which is increasingly likely). Different disciplines interact

in different ways, and ultimately people wishing to join these communities will ned to use

whatever tools they use.

I can see the question from the perspective of what tools might be employed to prepare someone

for success using whatever tools will eventually be used. This is a list that probably changes

every year. Currently, I would be stressing reading and viewing (through learning resources,

video sites and the like), content creation (through blogs or video production or something

similar), interaction (through social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook), immersion (in

games or simulations) and community development (through wiki or other cooperative authoring

sites). This list could probably be refined, but I think it’s a good start.

Connecting to communities of practice is problematic in terms of content, most will be

blocked because the wholesome nature of that experience cannot be controlled.

That may be, but I consider this to be an educational practice that needs to be reassessed. I think

we’re going through a period of time in which we are over-protecting children from

‘unwholeseome’ influences. This is impairing their education. I think that in time as children

who have grown up with the internet become parents we will have a more open attitude to what

children can see and read.

I've checked some of the more progressive schools and can't find many people in the k-12

environment who are even talking about these ideas, which I'm sure will inform

educational practice in the future.

Yeah, I wonder about that. There is an aspect of progressive education which depends heavily on

close supervision and control; even as students are being challenged and encouraged to excel and

respond to challenges, this is happening in a closed and protected environment.

I think progressive education of the future might be more rough-and-tumble. I think of Teemu

Arina from Finland talking about how he created his own business at age 15. You can’t create a

business in a closed environment, and yet we want to encourage activities like this. Getting

students into the community, even young children, means stepping back a bit from the

constraints we’ve placed on them.

p.54

I read about parents driving their children to and from school, to protect them from the dangers

of the city. I can’t fathom that.

Do you think I should seek out individual communities of practice around each student's

interest, connected to a cross curricular theme that a couple of my colleagues and I have

come up with?

No. Let them find these communities themselves. Give them the tools they need to seek out and

find community on the internet, and have them report on what they’ve found (so you can take

action if they have a run-in with extremists) but generally let them find their own way.

I don’t think there’s going to be a nice pairing between communities of practice and curricular

relevance. But again, if I had to choose between the two, I would choose the communities. Yes, I

recognize that there are institutional challenges here. In the long run, educational professionals

will be reactive – instead of bringing students to content and community, students will seek out

whatever matches their own interests, and educators will supplement and support this work with

resources from the curriculum, social- and content-related advice, and safety and supervision.

Have you heard of anybody having curated genres that work for k-12 students in any

way? Would MOOC's work for this or are they pretty traditionally structured with a

content laden syllabus? A MOOC that seeks to develop some of the literacies you spoke

about in your talk would be interesting if you know of anything like that.

I haven’t seen anyone curating work appropriate for K-12 students in this way, though I know

that vast quantities of K-12 appropriate work have been created and indexed in various content

websites. I couldn’t even begin to attempt a cataloguing of that work, but observe only that none

of it was designed for MOOCs because it all pretty much predates them.

Having said that, a MOOC organized for the purposes of K-12 education would be a fabulous

idea.

I would organize these MOOCs around themes – for example, building qudrocopter drones, or

harvesting honey from community-based hives, or environmental monitoring of a local

waterway, or community court reporting, or … well, you get the idea. There are tons of such

communities already on the web – a MOOC could form a nice bridge between them and students

in classes. I would set up the MOOC to be persistent – that is, the same MOOC would run year

after year, so there is an archive of information. Inside the MOOC there can be specific time-

limited ‘classes’, which would help create and support networks. I think there’s a huge potential

for experimentation here.

Again, if it were me, I’d set up the framework, and see whether students couldn’t organize their

own MOOCs. And once they had done so, I’d join in the MOOC as a student, and model

participation in a MOOC, bringing in resources and contributing to discussions.

p.55

I just wonder if you study just these high end spikes are your results generalizable to all

of the others who practice that activity. Will our students need to be in the top quintile of

whatever field they choose and therefore need to find that affinity group where their

passion will get them to that high level and therefore find success in life.

That’s a great question. My feeling is that the MOOC approach (again, thinking of a MOOC as

an interconnected community of people creating and sharing) would appeal to all people. But

this would of course be subject to confirmation in practice.

What we have seen in the MOOCs we have run so far is a clustering of very interested, active

and motivated people at the centre, surrounded by a less connected set of observers and less

active contributors, and surrounded by a corona of lurkers. This is what may be called ‘legitimate

peripheral participation’; there’s no problem inherently with lurking. But it seems likely this

structure would be reflected in K-12 practice, and that those who are lurkers would be the less

able students, and vice versa. This would be less idea, as it would become self-reinforcing. So I

think there needs to be enough MOOCs so everyone can be at the core of one or another MOOC,

and there need to be attractors in MOOCs that draw these peripheral participants in closer. I

don’t think that’s a problem that has been solved yet.

I think the demonstrated learning and feedback of students and parents would

demonstrate the power of these ideas

I agree, but I also think there’s a matter of setting expectations too. Student learning, properly so-

called, might not be any better in a MOOC, and if they become deeply engaged in a project,

might actually be impaired. I can easily imagine a student becoming totally engaged in, say, a

science project, and ignoring, say, geography class. I think that what a student would learn about

science – not formulae and theorems, but actual practice, interaction among practitioners, and

even the ‘feel’ of what to look for in a scientific environment, would be greatly enhanced in

these communities, but the impact of this learning might not be observable for years, especially

if it is not actively being measured.

Concordant therefore with the introduction of MOOCs I think it will be necessary to introduce

alternative forms and systems of assessment. I’ve talked about this

elsewhere.89 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2012/08/new-forms-of-assessment-measuring-what.html

I hope this helps.

Moncton, Canada

September 17, 2012

89 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2012/08/new-forms-of-assessment-measuring-what.html

p.56

Questions from Students at Vancouver

Island University

I received a flurry of questions on some articles on my website yesterday, questions from

students at Vancouver Island University. Rather than attempt to answer them individually, I'm

grouping there here.

Sharing in a competitive environment

Breanne, Sonny and Marieke asked, " we wonder how as teachers around the province create

content, do we set up a sharing network when there is a strong competitive nature, and enable

all instructors to share? " Similarly, Ben, Tracy and Kim asked, " How do we change the culture

of competition that is present in delivery of online content, to make it more of a collaborative and

open process? "

I would have liked to have heard more about the competitive nature of teaching in this

environment. It could perhaps have to do with teachers' being ranked or given performance

pay90 according to student outcomes, or some other competitive measure. Perhaps it has to do with schools competing91 against each other for funding, as occurs under legislation like No Child Left Behind.

Or, it may have to do with competition between students, as suggested by studies92 that argue that this sort of competition produces higher test scores (but, it appears to me, lower retention

rates). Or perhaps they are thinking of themselves as future academics promoting competing

theories and seeking to fund competing research agendas.

Speaking generally, I think that a perspective that views everything as a competition is limited

and mistaken. It is clear that in many cases, including the four scenarios just described, there are

instances in which every person in a group working together will achieve greater outcomes than

a person working with nobody else. This is the economic basis for corporate organization and

division of labour, as well as the formation of societies and communities.

By the same token, I think that views opposing competition altogether are equally mistaken.

Beyond the highly impractical matter of obtaining collaboration in all things, and the desire of

90 http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/6711917/Performance-pay-talk-for-teachers-is-flawed

91 http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-district/2012-background.pdf

92 http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP85.pdf

p.57

people to pursue their own good in their own way, competition creates conditions under which

different approaches and different hypotheses can be tested. Without competition there would be

no evolution and no growth.

So the question is, in all four scenarios, not how we can eliminate competition and foster an

attitude of collaboration, but rather, what degree of competition is appropriate in such scenarios,

and how does the practice of sharing resources reconcile with that degree of competition.

I think that recasting our perspective on competition is important. Typically, competition is

represented as competition against each other. We think of examples such as games or, in a

jungle "red in tooth and claw," a battle to the death. But this is only one perspective of

competition, a highly artificial one, and one that is limited in scope.

By far the greater range of competition, and (in my opinion) all forms of competition that realize

greater economic benefits, are cases where the individuals competing compete not against each

other but against some third party, ideally a non-human agent. In many sports, such as darts or

archery, the battle, as they say, is "with yourself". In other endeavours, the competitors attempt

to achieve some outcome in a hostile environment.

In this model of competition, it is not the diminishment of another that is the objective, but the

augmentation of personal score. This is especially the case if the potential competition is not a

single entity or team, as it is in artificial situations, but a large number of competitors, as is the

case in more realistic environments. Though it may appear that you are in competition with the

gas station across the street, you are in fact attempting to raise your own revenue, and this

depends on the heath of the community as a whole. This is the basis of cluster theory93, which attempts to convince businesses, even competing businesses, in a community to work together

and build their strengths.

And this is the basis behind cooperative theories94 of education. The premise is that students can learn more individually while working together than they could working as individuals in

competition with each other. Cooperation is not simply the absence of competition (which is why

studies that use the Herfindahl index95 are fallacious). It is the employment of mechanisms that promote interactions among individuals to create an environment that supports greater

achievement for everyone.

93 http://www.isc.hbs.edu/econ-clusters.htm

94 http://www.co-operation.org/?page_id=65

95 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl_index

p.58

For a typically Canadian example, consider the case of clearing the snow on the outdoor rink.

One individual could skate better than another if he is able to clear some snow and the other

cannot. But he cannot clear the whole rink without exhausting himself. But if everybody

cooperates to clear the whole rink, then everybody skates better, even the person who could clear

a section of rink for himself. This may reduce his effectiveness against the other individuals in

the rink, but will increase his effectiveness in the wider would of skating. Indeed, unless the

entire rink is cleared, he will not be able to compete outside his own rink at all!

So the argument to be made is, even if a condition of competition exists, if we analyze the nature

of the competition, we can show that individuals who share resources are more likely to be

successful than those who do not share resources. Cultivating a practice of sharing increases the

baseline, so everybody is capable of that much more, which is useful in every form of

competition except a direct personal combat between two adversaries.

Indeed, even boxers train together, teams play exhibition games against each other, and all share

their understanding of the game with the wider community, both to promote the game, and to

encourage the development of new players.

Responsible Internet Use

Andrew and Behn ask, " How do we ensure that when we give students the ability to blog/post

that they will do so in a mature and focused manner, most importantly the younger students? "

My first inclination is to ask, "what do you mean by responsible?" The word 'responsible' is one

of those code-words that hides a whole range of preferred behaviours, from respecting copyright

to keeping the language clean to refraining from bullying and hurtful behaviour to staying on

topic, sitting up, and paying attention.

I further would want to ask, "what do you mean by responsible for young children?" When I ask

this, I suggest that we need to be careful not to expect a level of behaviour that is unreasonable.

We don't expect children to assemble in small groups, chat politely, and discuss the topics of the

day in hushed and respectful tones while they're out on the playground. We expect rowdy, noisy,

boisterous behaviour - and we even think this is good for them!

So that's my first reaction to the question. My second reaction is that people don't learn what

they're told, they learn what they're shown. It has always struck me as ironic that politicians who

live one day away from indictment for fraud or tax evasion or whatever speak piously about the

crime rates of about cheating in our schools.

p.59

How many teachers tell their students to blog without giving them examples of what good (age-

appropriate) blogging looks like? When I wrote about educational blogging96, I advised that the best first step was to have potential future bloggers begin by reading other blogs. This is not

simply because the best blogging is in response to something else (though it it), it's because

people learn from examples of good practice.

If we don't show children examples of good blogging, they will learn from and emulate the

Simpsons, Fox News, the Jerry Springer Show, and similar unhealthy examples. The last thing

we want our students to do is to behave like adults! Teachers who want their students to blog

should begin by blogging themselves, and to develop their blogging tastes by linking to and

talking about the examples of good blogging they find in the world.

Finally, my third response to this question is to question the emphasis. While there are obviously

limits we want to set - we don't want them to use their blogs to promote hatred97 (and violence in the Middle East), and we don't want them to use their blogs to share songs (and be sued for

millions98 by the music industry) - it is unclear why we would make the focus on internet use

'responsible behaviour'.

To me it is far more relevant to think about how we can use blogs and the internet to promote

creativity, to promote lively interaction, to promote fun and games, to promote following one's

interests and engaging with the wider community. While behaving responsibly obviously forms a

part of this, it is in the greater scheme of things a smallish part.

I think there's something wrong with an attitude that begins with a perspective along the lines of

"how can we control this to prevent the bad" rather than one that begins "how can we support

this to extend the good". Most of the bad could probably be dealt with if we would only set some

good examples ourselves, and the rest can be dealt with on an as needed basis.

The whole process of setting expectations is essential - but it's so much more powerful when

expressed in terms of what you can do, as opposed to being framed in terms of what

you can't do. Good learning empowers; it doesn't needlessly constrain.

96 http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/educational-blogging

97 http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-09-15/internet/33862102_1_anti-islam-film-nakoula-muslim-

world

98 http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/legal-and-management/ray-charles-estate-sues-singer-s-children-

1006649952.story

p.60

Cloud Computing and Learning Theory

Laura and Margot ask, " We're part of Vancouver Island University's graduate program in Online

Teaching Development and are wondering how you see cloud computing shifting online learning

models/theories. "

I would begin by observing that the role of theory, properly so-called, is vastly overstated in

education, and therefore would express the hope that cloud computing makes this a but clearer

and more obvious.

The vast range99 of educational theories should by itself show us that something is amiss. In physics we might disagree about the nature of gravity, but nobody disputes whether it exists. In

education, there would be schools of thought devoted to the idea that gravity is a sham and that

we ought to be studying natural motion100.

I don't think that the shift to cloud computing carries with it a substantial change in theoretical

perspective in and of itself, but I think it's a part of a wider change in perspective from education

being a domain that studies how we teach others to a domain studying how we teach ourselves.

Because of information and communications technologies, the ways people teach and learn are

becoming more visible, and hence, easier to study and emulate. As a consequence, not only can

people learn for themselves, people can learn how to teach from others, with a result that the

overall practice of teaching and learning are themselves changing in ways we can observe and

study.

It may be premature to predict the science of learning that will eventually result from such

observations, but it seems clear that the scholarship that leads to such a science will change.

Closed and tiny studies measuring incremental improvements in 'performance' as demonstrated

in pre- and post-tests of a single mid-west American classroom will no longer form the basis for

theory and practice.

Quite the contrary. Many of the innovations will come from outside traditional scholarship. For

example, few (if any) scholars predicted the Khan Academy, and most would have railed against

the possibility, much less the educational effectiveness, but the success and widespread

popularity of the initiative helped spawn a new approach to online learning and threatens to

overturn what scholars believed they knew about the field.

99 http://www.learning-theories.com/

100 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics

p.61

Educational theorists sometimes like to pretend that they101 are doctors102 and physicists and to study learning in fine-grained detail, but unlike doctors, they do not even know what they are

studying, cannot agree on what counts as evidence, and have no generally accepted measure103 of what counts as 'improvement', much less 'good', in educational practice. And while doctors and

physicists are at least willing to admit they are facing chaotic phenomena and to re-calibrate

practice, educational theorists continue to play104 in the Newtonian world of objects and causes.

In the years to come, we will re-conceptualize the role of the educator105, and step back from a perspective of education as a domain in its own right, with a set of competing paradigms, and

reimagine learning as a complex phenomenon lying at the intersection of disciplines such as

health and nutrition, psychology, perception and memory, communications technology and

social network theory.

Educators themselves will be professionals well educated in the above disciplines, functioning

primarily in a support role (as do doctors and psychologists today) helping people manage their

educational health and development in an information- and learning-rich environment. This isn't

just a consequence of the move to cloud computing, but the move to cloud computing is a major

part of this.

A Level Playing Field

Jane, Kevin and Michael ask, " How can we ensure that all students have the basic skills,

equipment and competencies to use DL, bring all learners up to a level playing field... ie:

software and hardware? "

This is actually a multi-part question that has no answer.

It's multi-part in the sense that it asks about two very different things, about the "basic skills" and

"competencies", first, and about "equipment", "software and hardware", second.

And it has no answer because there is nothing anyone can do to "ensure" that all students have

these, particularly for a wide definition of "all". Our best efforts may leave some children

unprepared and under-equipped. We need to ask not how we can guarantee an optimal outcome,

101 http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/

102 http://www.cochrane.org/

103 http://www.downes.ca/post/60

104 http://www.projectpro.com/icr/research/di/summary.htm

105 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/the-role-of-the-educator_b_790937.html

p.62

but rather, what steps we can take to work toward that outcome. It's a small shift in perspective,

but an important open, because it changes us from a perspective of managing and evaluating

others, to a perspective of being change agents in our own right.

When we talk about the two parts, "skills" and "hardware", we need to ask a similar sort of

question in each case: what counts as "basic", "adequate", "essential", and the like? These are

both moving targets - especially when it comes to technology. What counted as "basic" just a

couple years ago is considered "inadequate" today. Do your students have LTE wireless106? Too slow! They must replace their iPhones107 today! (Just kidding) I have taken a stab at what I think are the essential skills with my account of the critical

literacies108. These are not the same as your typical definitions of either critical thinking, literacy in general, or computer literacy. I've tried to aim at a level that lies below those, to take into

account varying languages and forms of representation, communications technologies and

paradigms, and the rest.

I think that the best mechanism for ensuring that students have these skills is to expose them to

progressive environments where these skills are valued, can be obtained, are reinforced through

practice, and have pragmatic outcomes - for example, in gaming and simulation environments. I

wrote a bit about this here109 and here110 in recent days.

As for the technology (and actually, as to the education in general), I think that we need to be

looking at policies that range well beyond education in particular. It has to do with the goals of

education. Consider what Pasi Sahlberg has to say about the state of education in Finland111: Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of

the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never

excellence. It was equity... In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that

schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics.

106 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_%28telecommunication%29

107 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443696604577647921448070082.html

108 https://plus.google.com/109526159908242471749/posts/ZNMHUM6cRb9

109 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2012/08/new-forms-of-assessment-measuring-what.html

110 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2012/09/the-robot-teachers.html

111 http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-

success/250564/

p.63

Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological

counseling, and individualized student guidance.

Ensuring children have access to technology means, in short, making it a priority. There is

nothing particularly challenging about the concept, in the sense that we know how to do it and

have a good sense of what it would cost. The challenge lies in the belief that somehow still

prevails in some communities that education is a competition, and that you should reward the

winners and drop support for the losers.

The Content on Websites

In a related question, Wendy asked, " We thought, though, that adults are more discerning when

it comes to weeding through the vast amount of information on the internet, and youth tend to

believe everything they see and read. Do you have any strategies to ensure that students evaluate

the validity of content on the web? "

My first reaction to this question is that the bulk of misleading content112 on the web comes from adults, and that it is adults who are mostly misled113 by this content.

I wrote an article a few years back, Principles for Evaluating Websites114, which outlines the major ways people can evaluate online information for themselves.

Having said that, I think the most important thing is to be careful not to foster an attitude in

children that they can or must believe everything they are told. This actually runs counter to

some educational practices, where they are intended to absorb information uncritically, and

where the only educational value lies in demonstrating how well they have remembered what

they have been told.

Even if it is true that constructivist methodologies teach less efficiently (and I have my doubts

about this) these methodologies have the advantage that they require students to build their own

knowledge piece by painful piece. There is now a penalty for being misdirected, and that is that

it will be more difficult to build on false information wrongly believed.

112 http://www.foxnews.com/

113

http://www.alternet.org/story/154875/the_science_of_fox_news%3A_why_its_viewers_are_the_most_misinform

ed

114 http://www.downes.ca/post/4

p.64

Placing students in environments where the more important skills are to solve problems,

communicate with others and create solutions will reinforce in them the values of critical

evaluation, inference from evidence and experience, and deductive reasoning.

Take computer programming, for example. You might be able to teach a person more quickly

how to write a REST interface by giving them sample code and describing what to do - this is the

'worked examples115' model. But these skills do not transfer to downloading and installing a security certificate - there's simply no conceptual overlap between the two. But if the REST

assignment requires that students learn for themselves from examples and dialogue on the

internet, they will not only learn REST interfaces, but also what to trust and what not to trust in

online internet chatter about computer systems, which in turn will help them assess political

discussion (say) more critically.

That's the thing with education. What we think is the 'outcome' of the process is never really the

outcome. If you simply case whether or not they learn how to code REST interfaces, that's all

they will learn. But if you want them to acquire a wider range of skills, you need to place them in

a more challenging environment (and then encourage cooperation so they have a decent chance

of success in that environment).

Innovative Tools

Suzi and Michelle asked, " What innovative eLearning tools do you consider leading the way in

the next 5 years? "

I think Google's announcement116 that most campuses are not using Google cloud technologies, as well as their release of a course-building tool117 last week, point significantly to the direction of online learning in the future, particularly when you add to this things like Stanford's new

platform118, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs119), and even my own gRSShopper120

115 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worked-example_effect

116 http://www.downes.ca/post/59069

117 http://edudemic.com/2012/09/google-course-builder/

118 http://www.downes.ca/post/59055

119 http://www.downes.ca/post/59014

120 http://grsshopper.downes.ca/

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application, are pointing the way. These are all variations on the theme of the personal learning

environment121 (PLE), and I think that this - or something like this - is the wave of the future.

It is important to understand that a PLE might be nothing more than your browser. At its core,

the PLE is a mechanism for accessing a wide variety of cloud environments, including, but not

restricted to, the Google cloud. And add to that what will in the future be considered essential

personalization aspects - your personal educational record, your portfolio, and other personal

metadata. Here's my presentation122 on personal learning environments (plus some volcano footage). Enjoy.

It's hard to overestimate the impact of this new approach. Last weekend I spent all day Saturday

studying security certificates for websites. In my email the other day I received an offer from

Coursera to enrol in a course on programming for IOS platforms that I seriously considered

joining (even though it would cost $40). I've been reviewing a huge pile of information from

James O'Reilly on a simulation platform hosted on Steam called Garry's Mod123. I taught myself webcasting124 and this hobby led me to an extensive examination of K-Pop125.

Given the means, and given the ability to follow their own interests and passions, people will be

able to give themselves a deep, invigorating custom education in pretty much whatever they

want. This changes the very foundation of education, and is doing so at an increasingly rapid

pace.

Implementing Online Learning

Justin, Jane and Jean ask, " How will brick and mortar schools in British Columbia successfully

integrate the principles of online learning, given the obstacles of teacher training and the cost of

equipment upgrade and management? "

When you put the question like that, my answer is, "very badly." When means (once again) we

need to examine just what is being said in the question.

121 http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-personal-learning-environments

122 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/245

123 http://www.facebook.com/groups/garrysmod.education.training/

124 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2011/01/live-skype-on-radio-ds106.html

125 http://www.downes.ca/page/160

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There are four parts to this question: what it is to 'successfully integrate', what the 'principles of

online learning' are, what the 'obstacles of teacher training' and finally, the 'cost of equipment

upgrade...'.

The first part contains within it a presumption that what is currently being done is more or less

correct, and that online learning is something that will simply be added or 'integrated' into what

is already being done. But in fact, I think it will replace what is already being done.

Let me demonstrate what I mean by analogy. Imagine that the great new technology wasn't

computers, imagine it was 'field trips'. Suppose we decided for one reason that field trips should

become an important part of education. Would we 'integrate' field trips into the class? Not really

- you can't teach math while on a field trip, and you can't go on a field trip while you're teaching

math - and efforts to combine the two will be strained an ineffective.

No, what would happen instead would be that field trips are gradually introduced. You might

take an hour a week the first year, a day a week the second year, three days a week by year five,

and have a 100% field trip-based education by the time you were done. Things like 'math class'

and 'chem lab' would disappear and the much more effective methodology would replace them

completely.

This is what I see happening with online education. I see it as gradually replacing traditional

classes. Indeed, I see it as getting students out of those classes and into the community. This

might happen only for a few hours at first, but over time, all traditional educational activities will

be replaced with computer (and teacher) supported activities using computer technology to

support participation in real world communities and activities.

So, next, what are the principles of online learning? I think it's a mistake to suppose that there

are principles, properly so-called. I think that online learning encompasses a range of behaviours

that are not governed by principles but are more like a skill or a profession. To learn online is to

interact with an environment the way a surfer interacts with a wave or a doctor interacts with a

patient.

The best way to obtain these skills is to practice. That is not to ignore theoretical background -

even doctors have to study the books - but it means that the bulk of one's education is spent

attempting to do the sort of things they are trying to learn to do, and beginning this process from

a young age. So, say, when a kid says, "I want to be a firefighter," the result of this is that he

actually spends some time in a fire hall learning how it's done. No, we don't send him into

burning buildings, but he does learn how to put out fires using real fires. And where better to

learn this than with firefighters?

Is teacher training an obstacle to this? I think that thinking of it as 'training' is an obstacle. I think

that thinking of teachers as production workers or semi-skilled staff is an obstacle. I think that a

lot of the 'training' teachers get - in, say, educational theory - is an obstacle. But I think that

p.67

advanced and professional education for teachers is not an obstacle, but rather, a necessary

condition for making this happen.

Which leads, finally, to the cost of equipment upgrades, which I addressed briefly above, but

which I'll revisit briefly.

In matters concerning expenditures the problem for the most part is not that we do not have the

money, but rather, that the proposed expenditure is not a priority.

In some cases, we literally do not have the money. Canada probably has the technical capacity to

send an astronaut to Mars, but we don't have the financial resources (at least, I don't think we do

- I could be wrong about this). But for most everything else we could do in society, the mosy is

there, but is being spent on other things.

I will highlight just two expenditures to make the point: F-35 fighters126, and the frigate127

construction program. Between the two of them expenditures total about $50 billion. We could

give every man, woman and child an iPad for that money, and stock them full of educational

content. We won't do that because we have determined that the marginal improvements in

security these military acquisitions would produce are more important.

But that said, in the end, education is expensive. Providing an education is expensive. What we

need to do, if we can, is to put the conditions in place where people are able to provide their own

education. Yes, we need to put into place programs that ensure maximal equity. Yes, we need to

ensure that teachers can respond to individual needs with professional responses. But in the end,

the best and only way to address cost issues is to eliminate the cost, and to empower individuals.

Moncton, Canada

September 16, 2012

126 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/05/14/pol-f35-auditor-general-at-committee.html

127 http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/19/pol-shipbuilding-announcement.html

p.68

Being a Philosopher

My response to a comment from Pandora on a post about philosophy128

"Isn't philosophy taught mostly like read this, talk about it, write about it, argue about it."

Yes, but it's how these are taught that results in the benefits. For example:

- "read this" - means more than 'skim' or even 'read like a novel' - we are taught to analyze

structure, examine context, find voice, and more - what some call 'close reading', except for a

philosopher, it becomes second nature

- 'talk about it" - means more than chat or describe experiences - it means learning to be an

'active listener', able to rephrase and reinterpret, to adduce information, to describe clearly, to

again be sensitive to context, to be concise and clear

- 'write about it' - but again, this is more than just jotting down your thoughts; philosophers are

expected to have a clear structure, to be precise about the use of terms, defining them where

necessary, to write logically clear (and hence grammatically correct) sentences, etc.

- 'argue about it' - and again, this doesn't just mean defending your view (or as more frequently

happens, restating it over and over) - it means responding to objections, examining evidence for

and against, offering forms of inductive reasoning, inference to the best explanation, and more

"perhaps you learn there are no right answers just right ways of deriving answers... "

More importantly, I think, you learn that what counts as an answer really depends on the

question, what makes an answer correct really depends on the evidence, and what counts as

evidence really depends on what you're looking for.

It's not so much that there are no right answers - if there weren't, we wouldn't be able to function!

It's that our answers are right 'to a degree' and 'from a certain perspective'.

I'll give you an example. One belief we used a lot when I studied philosophy was the belief that

the ground won't open and swallow you up the next step you take. We believe this is true, heck,

we *know* this is true, and as I say, we couldn't walk down the street unless we did.

And yet... and yet... always in the back of a philosopher's mind there's the possibility that

something else might happen. And as it happens, just a couple weeks ago, reality triumphed over

logic, not once, but several times:

128 http://www.downes.ca/post/59097

p.69

- Girl Swallowed By Pavement In China129

- Man dies after falling in a sinkhole in China130

- Another person being swallowed by an unexpected hole131

So, now we know that the ground can disappear and swallow you whole. Philosophy is about

dealing with that - being able to cope in a world of imperfect information, imperfect reasoning,

imperfect people.

"I wonder why epistemology and logic isn't seeded into more research methodology

courses."

So do I. Half the difficulties I face in talking about education lie in explaining to people why

their conception of knowledge isn't sufficient to represent the complex phenomenon they are

trying to explain. Yes, people learn things. No, knowledge isn't just stored in their minds like

blocks of facts.

"Is the problem schools promoting the benefits of the study of philosophy that you have

to think?"

Yeah. The problem is that philosophy is hard; it's easy to address the central problems of

philosophy - morality, justice, knowledge, death, taxes - at a certain level. But beyond that level

most people (rightly or wrongly, and we could debate that) simply hold firm to a belief, and will

not yield to further argument.

It's fair enough; people don't want to have their beliefs challenged, and they don't want their

children to challenge their beliefs, because they have too much other things to do with their lives.

I can respect that.

Learning to be a philosopher is learning how to comprehend what people might believe even if

those beliefs are not well founded, understanding *why* people might hold those beliefs, getting

along with them anyways, and looking forward to a world in which the quality of beliefs and

belief-formation gradually improve.

Moncton, Canada

September 19, 2012

129 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-yWnOZ3bE

130 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-yWnOZ3bE

131 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YumfxuERFgk – this video has disappeared from YouTube

p.70

p.71

The ‘Course’ in MOOC

A discussion taking place on the OER-Forum Discussion List132.

Abel Caine wrote133,

"I have to intervene with the developing country perspective. Millions of smart,

motivated children/students for many reasons do not complete regular school or

university. Given the opportunity, these learners have a burning desire to 'complete' the

course. "Well-designed and smartly-delivered" MOOCs with a valid, transferable

certificate of completion (learning experience) may be 1 viable solution. I hope new

global initiatives such as Education First will take this into account."

Andy Lane wrote,

"Yes participants whether they complete or not can gain from the experience but we also

know that many can be adversely affected by the experience through a sense of failure or

lack of esteem. I have no issue with low completion rates as long as people do not claim

that this is widening participation amongst the currently disenfranchised as I suspect most

who complete MOOCs are already adept learners with plenty of privileges. At the UKOU

we have struggled to support those suffering multiple deprivations in terms of access to

education and the resources needed to support that education."

With respect to cMOOCs, the student experience is more like joining a community than working

their way through a body of content. In this sense, the concept of course completion doesn't

really make sense - what is it to 'complete' joining a community? You are more or less engaged

with the community; you are more or less engaged with the material.

John Sener wrote134,

"I agree with Stephen's observations in that it is unrealistic to expect high completion

rates from MOOCs because of their structure. However, this structural characteristic is

one of several reasons why MOOCs are better seen through the lens of open learning

resources rather than open educational resources IMO. Perhaps the "C" in MOOC should

be changed to mean "Community" in that case, because the concept of "course" does

imply a sense of completion, i.e., something > with a beginning and an end which is

132 http://lists.esn.org.za/pipermail/oer-forum/

133 http://lists.esn.org.za/pipermail/oer-forum/2012-September/001589.html

134 http://lists.esn.org.za/pipermail/oer-forum/2012-September/001583.html

p.72

determined by an entity besides the learner. (Or change the name to MOOLE where LE =

Learning Experience.)"

Here's why the C in MOOC continues to stand for 'Course'. A MOOC typically has a fixed start

and end date. Between those dates there is a fixed series of events. I characterize them has being

similar to a 'course of lectures' in the traditional sense135 (eg.

http://archive.org/details/lecturescourseof02younrich ). Today, of course, they're not necessarily

lectures any more. But the idea of a series of events structured around a topic continues. Hence, a

MOOC is a 'course'. But again, it doesn't make sense to talk about 'completing' a MOOC, even if

it is structured around a series of events, because again, like a community, you can dip into these

events as much or as little as you want.

It's like watching a TV series. We don't typically talk about 'completing' a TV series (though you

can do that if you want; last year I watched all 134 episodes of Xena; I 'completed' the series (it

took me half a year)). Even if there is a story arc across the seasons of a series, we typically feel

satisfied watching an episode at a time, and enjoy chatting about the episide with our friends. We

do not - nor should we - feel we have somehow been deficient if we miss an episode; we can

always go back to it or (eventually) pick it up on Netflix.

John Sener wrote a longish post saying, among other things,

"Education requires societally-defined expectations (at worst, imposed one way; at best,

negotiated between the learner and society through its proxy institutions), but if "you can

dip into these events as much or as little as you want," then that's learning -- user-defined

and driven. Non-user-defined learning outcomes mean a less open, less MOOC-like

experience.

"Calling MOOCs courses also fosters an expectation of moving through an entire "series

of events structured around a topic" to an end which involves recognition (certification,

grades, etc.) of completion based on satisfactory demonstrated performance of something

gained (knowledge, skills, attitudes, etc.) related to that topic, and usually a

comprehensive or broad rather than selective mastery of that topic."

John's post has two major objectives. First, it seeks to establish a certain definition of 'course' and

'education'. And then it uses those definitions to argue that MOOCs should not be called courses,

and that people do not obtain an education from them.

135 http://archive.org/details/lecturescourseof02younrich

p.73

The basis for these definitions of 'course' and 'education', according to John, is that the terms

create certain expectations - the use of 'course' suggests they will be like what he calls 'traditional

courses', and the term 'education', he writes, " requires societally-defined expectations."

I do not accept these definitions of 'course' and 'education', and John has not offered any

compelling reason to accept them, except that he suggests people have these expectations.

Perhaps some people have these expectations, but clearly not everybody does.

This is especially the case with the term 'education'. John suggests it entails " requires

substantive interaction with designated knowledgeable facilitators (instructors, TAs, field

experts, etc.)." But few, if any, define education in terms of the process; they define it in terms of

the achievement. And this achievement need not involve tests and certificates. When Abraham

Lincoln taught himself to read and write and to be a lawyer, we say he earned himself an

education, not a learning.

And it is also the same for the term 'course'. I have already given an account of the traditional

meaning of the word course, and this traditional meaning in no way entailed classes and lessons

and tests and certificates. The formalized concept of the course is a recent invention, designed

for a specific purpose, and today obsolete.

What MOOCs have demonstrated is twofold, and these speak directly to our understanding of

how we may obtain an education, and how we may be recognized for it:

First, MOOCs taught us that rather than depend exclusively on "knowledgeable facilitators

(instructors, TAs, field experts, etc.)," which are very expensive, a community working together

can support itself. This is in fact how professionals further their own education, is common

practice in existing instututions of higher learning, and now possible to the larger population via

self-organized online communities (especially those formed around a series of learning events).

Second, MOOCs taught us that an education - properly so-called - may be obtained in this

manner, and the learning thus obtained demonstrated and recognized via the production of

artifacts and actions related to the subject of the learning; there is no prior set of learning

objectives nor formal test (both of which can be, and routinely are, subverted) but rather a

mechanism of recognition via participation.

These features satisfy quite well the meaning and usage of the terms 'course' and 'education', and

they do so in a way which not only empowers students and enables them to design their own

education, it does so in a way such that all members of society, and not merely those with

wealthy and supportive parents, can engage and learn in the most challenging and professional

environment possible,

Indeed, I would turn John's argument on its head. I challenge that the artificial forms we have

come in recent decades to call 'courses' and an 'education' are outright fabrications, plasticized

p.74

facsimiles of the real thing to be offered at the greatest fee the market will bear to an unwitting

public, while those who can afford it continue to have their much less formal and much more

rewarding education at elite institutions.

What you have when you assemble an education filled with structured courses, formalized

exams, and high-priced credentials, is a potemkin village, a cargo cult experience in which

people attending Your City High School or the University of Your State act out as though they

were graduating Eton or Radcliffe and Harvard or Yale but merely go though the motions, obtain

a piece of paper, and move on with their lives not realizing they have been cheated out of what

could have been a worthwhile education.

Ask anyone. Ask them what they valued from school and university: was it the learning

objectives, midterm tests, and the accumulation of course credits? Or was it working on the

student newspaper, participating in drama society, organizing a rally, or setting up a student

enterprise? Or even leaving it all on the sprts field or spending it all at the student pub!

No, I do not yield the ground regading the terms 'course' and 'education'. I take them back from

the institution, and I return them to the people.

Moncton, Canada

September 28, 2012

p.75

Improving Canadian Post-Secondary

Education

We can read about 'five ideas to reform post-secondary education in Canada in a University

Affairs article136 by columnist Léo Charbonneau. The strategies (proposed by a Globe and Mail reporter in a now-paywalled column) are old canards, and I'll debunk them one at a time.

1. A National Strategy

Every time the subject of education reform in Canada comes up someone calls for a national

strategy. Thus we are told "Canada 'is unique in its failure to develop a national approach to

universities and colleges.'"

As Charbonneau says, "It’s not going to happen, period." Education in Canada is a provincial

responsibility; the federal government has no interest in intervening (nor should it), and the best

the the Council of Ministers of Education Canada137 could come up with was the Canadian

Council on Learning (CCL), a $64 million bonfire made of money.

More to the point, though, the presumption that a national strategy would make things better

needs to be deflated. Look at our national environmental protection strategy - is it somehow

better because it's federal? I would be inclined to say it isn't138. How about national trade strategy

- are we doing better because it's federal? Arguably not139.

Things don't get better just because there's a national strategy. They get more centralized, and

that means, when they go wrong, they go wrong all over the place, and there's no way to

demonstrate a better alternative.

136 http://www.universityaffairs.ca/margin-notes/five-ideas-for-improving-canadian-postsecondary-

education/comment-page-1/

137 http://www.cmec.ca/en/

138 http://o.canada.com/2012/10/22/its-open-season-on-canadas-waterways-is-your-favourite-lake-or-stream-

protected/

139 http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/trade-pact-too-secretive-175193001.html

p.76

2. Making Teaching Central

This is another one of those things that comes up every time someone raises the subject of post-

secondary education reform in Canada. It's hard to resist.

But I have a radical alternative suggestion: make students central. Make learning central. Or even

more to the point, make access (by everyone!) to learning central.

As Charbonneau says, "good teaching requires resources, particularly human resources. This

means hiring more full-time, tenure-track faculty. Who’s going to pay for that?" The answer, we

know, is all of us, through our taxes, and students, through their tuitions.

Again more to the point, though, why is it that the professors are central to the system? Yes, I

know, they're the ones who provide the teaching, but (speaking very frankly now)

they're employees. We wouldn't even be hiring them unless we wanted some sort of result. It's

the result that's the important thing, not the process.

The slogan 'make teaching central' is based on the presumption that the only way to effectively

and efficiently provide a post-secondary education to the mass of Canadians is to offer (good old

traditional) teaching. But we know (from experience) that this means rationing post-secondary

education to those who are good enough or (more often) those who can afford it.

I say, make learning central. Explore alternatives. I have no issue at all with the money we spend

on post-secondary education; I'd go to the wall to defend it. But make that money count. Find

ways to help Canadians educate themselves, and throw down the barriers to learning.

3. International Expansion

The call to 'expand internationally' rarely has any educational intent; it is usually intended as a

way to raise money for our cash-starved system by enticing people (well, rich people) from

China and India to pay premium tuition fees.

When I was president of the Graduate Students' Association at the University of Alberta one of

my greater privileges was handing out cheques of $435 each to international students, their share

of the tuition-fee lawsuit we won against the university. These cheques were more than an

international student working as a graduate assistant earned in a month.

Some of these students made real sacrifices in order to study in Canada. Others, though, were the

beneficiaries of corrupt governments or simply their nations' respective one-percenters.

Canada's legacy shouldn't to leverage its educational attainment by squeezing poor nations for

everything they can afford. Our legacy should be one or generosity, not parsimony.

p.77

That's why, when a former president of the NRC came through our offices, I declared my

mission to be to extend free learning to every person in the world (to his credit, the president

didn't flinch, though the Director-General accompanying him just about had a heart attack).

The idea of opening campuses abroad is a non-starter, especially in a world that is

shifting away from campuses. These maybe worked back in the days when the American

Universities were being established. Today they're just the educational version of McDonalds,

fast-food-learning that the local poor cannot afford.

I do, however, support Charbonneau's suggestion of "a Canadian version of the Erasmus140

student exchange program that would entice students to do a term abroad or even elsewhere in

Canada." I've always thought this was one thing Australia did really well, sending its students

and staff around the world to gain experiences and ideas (I've seen less of it recently).

Of course, we had such a program, at least inside Canada. It was called Katimavik141. The federal government ended funding for it last year.

4. Accountability Benchmarks

The old accounting maxim is, of course, "what is measured can be managed," or some such

thing. The idea is that you don't know whether your policies are having any effect unless you

measure outcomes. That's an idea that sounds fantastic in theory. In practice, it often fails.

Here's why: measurement is, at best, only the first step in a feedback loop. For measurement

to mean anything at all, it needs to progress through some mechanism (aka 'management', though

if you skip management and go directly to staff, then it becomes 'formative' assessment - same

theory, though) that reforms behaviour in such a way as to influence the outcome in the desired

direction.

This raises two questions: first, are you measuring the right thing? And second, does the

feedback mechanism produce the right result? In many cases, the answer to both questions is 'no'.

The reason is that most measurement systems, when implemented, are based on short

term measures, such as grade scores. But education is a long term phenomenon.

A lesson taught at the age of three results in a behaviour at the age of 23. You can't effectively

measure the behaviour 20 years later, so you test whether the lesson was learned at age three.

Which it may well have been - even if it was the wrong lesson. An intolerance or a prejudice

140 http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme/erasmus_en.htm

141 http://www.katimavik.org/

p.78

taught at a young age is an undesirable outcome, but testing mechanisms have no way to detect

for and correct this.

Our demographic and economic data today are in effect measuring the effectiveness of the

education system of the 1970s and 1980s. These data show (to me, at least) that while we

excelled in the teaching of the arts and sciences, we were weak in literacy and severely lacking in

ethics and policy. These failings (not test scores) should be fed back into our understanding of

the school system.

But, of course, as Charbonneau points out, while our national government should"adequately

fund a robust education division at Statistics Canada," we've seen instead "recent cutbacks142 at the federal agency." We've seen funding for other research, such as by the Higher Education

Quality Council of Ontario143, curtailed. Much cheaper to advocate standardized tests - it's quick cheap data. Useless, maybe, but the portions are huge.

5. Canadian Online Platforms

I have long argued for a JISC-style144 mechanism in Canada that offers access to services,

innovation, research and support. This includes, but is not limited to, online platforms. These

calls have met with pretty much zero traction (at least we have innovative provincial agencies,

such as B.C. Campus145, in some regions).

But even with this recommendation, we have to be careful. The last thing we need is, say, a

nationally-mandated learning management system (it's bad enough that there are some

provincially-mandated LMSs). Putting that much purchasing power into the hands of a single

agency is a recipe for corruption at worst and golf-course-ware (*) at best.

But there are many things we could support nationally and/or provincially here in Canada. Open

up our library and museum collections. Open up a place were teachers and students can upload

(and find, and use) learning resources. I've worked on various projects like this over the years -

for example, eduSource146 - but they all founder at the rock of commercialization.

142 http://www.universityaffairs.ca/margin-notes/statistics-canada-discontinues-key-source-of-canadian-faculty-

data/

143 http://www.heqco.ca/en-CA/Pages/Home.aspx

144 http://www.jisc.ac.uk/

145 http://www.bccampus.ca/

146 http://www.downes.ca/post/15

p.79

We should have set up a system such that any teacher or student could set up an email list if they

wanted, open a discussion group if they wanted, could host an online course if they wanted, set

up a blog or wiki if they wanted, etc. Setting up and maintaining these basic services could (and

would) be the basic platform for much more robust development and experimentation in online

learning.

But - again - there is a big difference between mandating this for use, and making this

available for use. But that is the difference between a national 'strategy' and a national

'infrastructure'.

And Finally

My take is that there isn't a whole lot wrong with education in Canada - after all, our high school

graduates are demonstrably among the best educated in the world, our post-secondary system

teems with creativity and inspiration, and our society as a whole has developed into a peaceful,

kind, tolerant and prosperous home for all of us. Pretty good metrics, if you ask me.

The only major problem is that there isn't enough of it - too many people still miss out. People in

rural regions are not able to access the diverse range of programs and services available in the

cities. First Nations people miss out on even more (and have poor ('national standard') housing,

economy and health care to deal with as well). At the post-secondary education the investment is

large and getting larger, both in terms of time and money - too much effort is spent sustaining the

system, while not enough attention is paid to the needs of students and (especially) potential

students.

And it's too expensive. Again, I do not begrudge the funding, but I do not agree that costs in

education (and especially tuitions) should continue to rise so much more quickly than the

inflation rate. We need to find ways to ease the cost pressures - but not by limiting access to the

most eligible and not by privatizing core components of the education system (when we think

about where privatizing book and journal publication got us, one would think that current

excesses in academic publishing are a knock-down argument against privatizing any other part of

the system).

I do not believe in the wisdom or efficacy of trying to reform the system, especially when that

reform comes from the top. I think we (developers, educators, policy-makers) need to work

around the edges, supporting and developing creative and innovative programs. Some of these

programs should support free and open access to learners in Canada and around the world.

Others should support other agendas - it is folly to think that my vision of education is the only

vision that should be acted upon.

And let me clear about this, too - I loved university. Compared to the misery that was high

school, it was academic paradise. I want to preserve what was insanely great about the

experience - I want to preserve the madness and creativity and late-night sessions and arguments,

p.80

I want to preserve the exposure to new ideas and cultures, the time to read great books (and these

days, to watch great movies and videos), to be influence and challenged by music and art and

culture and sports. Turning this whole experience into one in which the economic imperative

prevails cheapens and destroys it: I want learning to be about developing into the most skilled

and interesting person you can be.

University may not be for everyone but something like it should be for everyone. I know, there

are many people out there who have far better things to do than to study - but learning is about

far more than studying. People in their late teens and 20s who are not at university should have

alternatives, things like (and I'm just thinking out loud here) rock camps, machineries (places

where people assemble to work on - and create - machines), bakery and culinary schools (as at

the colleges), and so much more.

(*) 'Golf Course Ware' is educational technology that is marketed to executives, usually at

highbrow events on the golf course, rather than to teachers and learners who actually have to use

the resource.

Moncton, Canada

October 23, 2012

p.81

Learning in the Digital Age: The Reality and

the Myth

Presented to Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age: Myths and Reality,

Tallinn, Estonia, Estonian e-Learning Development Centre, April 13, 2012.

Let me tell you story147 of the great bear. It's a story from First Nations People who lived near

where I was born in Canada, the Iroquois people. It's a story from long ago.

They didn't have very much. They had a small community around a campfire. They lived

on deer and rabbit.

Time passed and a great bear came to plague their campground. Every day when they

woke up, they could see the tracks of the bear around their campsite. The bear was eating

all the game, eating all the deer, eating all the rabbits. The people began to starve.

They sent hunters out to shoot the bear, but when they shot bows and arrows at the bear,

the arrows just bounced off. The bear would kill the warriors. One or two would straggle

back and say, "The bear killed us." They were getting desperate and they didn't know

what to do.

Finally, three warriors on the same night had the same dream. They said, "I dreamed that

I killed the great bear. I dreamed that we went together and we shot the bear. The bear

bled and the bear died."

The chief decided that it's a spirit dream; it must be true. He sent the three warriors, even

though they were his best three warriors.

They went out and they shot the bear. They were able to draw blood. They chased the

bear. The bear was bleeding. They continued to chase around and around, but they never

caught the bear.

To this day, when you look up in the fall sky, you can see the stars, three hunters chasing

the bear. You know that they're chasing the bear because the leaves all turn red, which is

the blood of the bear that they shot.

It's through the creation of myths that we talk to each other. Our myths are not just explanations

of where the stars come from or why the leaves turn red. They're the expressions of the full range

of human emotion, from human reason to irony, to anger, to argument, to explanation.

We speak in myth because reality is ineffable. It cannot be expressed in words. All language is,

as in the first instance, based in myth, based in some idealization, some abstraction.

147 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/294

p.82

We forget this. We think today as though what we say expresses reality in some way. It's as

though our words were fully and literally true, but this is seldom the case. Even the words

themselves are metaphors, capturing reality through myth.

You might think, how can this be? When you look at language itself, you can see this. There's a

French word, croc. I'm picking French because it's not English and it's not Estonian. It's neutral.

You can think of your own language and see if this is true.

We have the French word croc, which means tooth or fang, something crooked, something

hooked. We have the idea of the crocodile, an animal with fangs. We have in French the idea of

crochet, and to crochet is to create a rug using hooks. We have the idea of entre crochet in

French, between the brackets, between the hooks. You have crochet a bouton, or button hooks,

the things you use. Or, in French, a crochet du gauche, a right hook.

You see this over and over, in French and in other languages, how the single root morphs and

twists. The single concept creates the image that underlies all of our concepts into the future.

We comprehend the future in terms of what we understand today. This is the basis of the origin

of these myths. This is really important to understand.

When we start talking about what cannot be known we lose our place or we experience only

confusion. We are lost in a swirl of chaos. It's chaos that, in fact, characterizes all reality.

We project our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, our features onto the chaos. This is how we

understand the chaos. We look at the chaos and we see ourselves. In seeing ourselves in the

chaos, we comprehend the chaos, but it's a myth. A lot of the time these patterns, these

projections, are primal and basic like bears, like tragedy, like fangs and hooks.

At the same time, as we try to comprehend the future, we also make the future. We strive to

make tomorrow safe and comfortable as it was for us in the past, or at least a mythical past -- a

hearth, a home, a story, a family, a community. Another myth.

Sisyphus, you may know, sought to cheat death and he succeeded.

But he was caught by the gods and punished by being sentenced to push the boulder up

the hill forever.

When he gets the boulder to the top of the hill, of course, the boulder rolls down the hill.

He goes down the hill after it, and has to push the boulder up, and so on for the rest of

time.

"The Myth of Sisyphus," it's very famous, very well known.

When we worry about the future, when we worry about the Internet, when we worry about

e-learning it's not because we don't know what to expect, it's not the unknown. It's because when

we project into the future, we project a future like "The Myth of Sisyphus." We project a future

that has been taken away from us by some nameless form, e-learning, and replaced with

pointless labour at the service of the gods.

p.83

In a future that's constantly changing, a future that we can never comprehend, a future where our

degrees mean nothing a year or two years after we got them. That's a future we saw described

just yesterday. It appears to be a future where we have no hope like Sisyphus.

In such a scenario, e-learning does not appear to be a solution at all. Rather, it seems to be a

surrender, a ceding of our authority, our independence and our autonomy.

One thinks of Adam Curtis' videography "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace." If

you're not familiar with it, I certainly recommend you look it up and set aside several hours.

What Curtis is saying is the Internet age brings us into an age where we lose our independence

and autonomy and become parts in this large machine, that our contribution to knowledge is

beyond our control, that there is no room for the individual, the thinker, the creator, the idealist.

The only future is the one that's created as society as a whole that is, as Curtis says, all watched

over by these machines.

Some would have a say it's a future that we have to accept. Camus would say, "The struggle

itself is enough to fill man's heart." One must imagine Sisyphus as happy.

These days we say, "Well, at least Sisyphus has a job." We forget. We forget that Sisyphus

achieved his objective. He set out to defy death, and in the end that's what he got, but it was at

the cost of eternal labour. It's this cost that makes us wary.

When people point to things and say, "It's just a myth, you're wrong," it's almost like they're

asking us to surrender to this inevitability like Sisyphus. What we hope and dream has no

meaning or, worse, will be realized and shown not to be gold, but to be worthless dross.

It's funny how most myths seem to finish this way. The hunter forever chasing the golden bear,

Sisyphus forever pushing the boulder up the hill.

For all that, we never stop creating these myths. We never stop trying to understand the world,

trying to comprehend the world by drawing pictures, telling stories and imagining what it could

be.

Steve Wheeler tells us the idea of the digital natives or the net generation is a myth. Of course it's

a myth. It's just a story that Don Tapscott tells and you should not believe that what Don

Tapscott tells is true. It's a myth. We shouldn't think of it as true.

It's also a way of understanding the world and that's the value we need to draw from it. It's a way

of saying that our children are different from us. They have different experiences, they have

different ways of seeing the world, they are different people.

Simply saying, "This is a myth," washes all of that under the bridge, reassures us that our view of

the world is on solid ground. Why worry about change? It's all just illusion, it's all just a myth.

You may have dreams, but the reality is it's all just a myth.

We are warned by the story of Adam and Eve; we are warned by the story of Prometheus, who

stole the secret of fire from the gods, to be aware of the dangers of too much knowledge. As

Plutarch, so we are told, says, "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."

p.84

Again, we can look at these myths as not-real representations of the story of creation or the story

of the discovery of fire. Or we can look at these myths as cautions, not against education in

general, but against a certain approach to education.

We can see these myths as telling us, with some clarity, that knowledge is not something simply

to be consumed, like an apple, that knowledge is not something that can be stolen from the gods

like fire. I thought Christian Port yesterday expressed this really well. I think we were all

interested to hear his presentation.

"Imagine," he said, "we built a robot." I love the myth making in the middle of a talk.

"Imagine," he said, "we built a robot and sent it to a planet where there's something we

need like some ore. We programmed the robot, the more you mine the better you feel."

Remember that?

The robot learns, over time, to know itself. It comes to realize that there's a button that

makes it feel better, so instead of learning how to mine the ore, it learns how to press the

button.

Port asks, "What is it that motivates a human being to develop, to move on?" He says, "It's in the

central nervous system where we get dopamine. We press the dopamine button and the outcome

becomes a culture of cheating." It's like artificial sweetener. It's like caffeine. I love caffeine. It's

like drugs, it's like green, it's like Facebook friends, it's like e-learning.

The concern that e-learning is this thing that our myths warn us about. It's a shortcut. It's the

pressing of the button. It's the activation of the dopamine, but it's not really the learning.

What is this feeling? It gives us a confused feeling. The myth gives us two elements. It's an

expression of what we want, but it's a warning about getting what we want too easily.

Steve Wheeler talking about myths, I counted seven in all. I probably could have kept going.

You analyze his talk; all of his myths really are cautions against the easy score.

Consider what he says about learning styles. They're a lot of nonsense. You'll read that. There's

all kinds of studies that say learning styles are nonsense.

He says, "There is one true thing. There are as many learning styles as there are people. The

problem," he says quite accurately, "with learning styles is they try to pigeon-hole students into

categories. They try to define students by the activities you impose on them based on what you

believe as teachers."

If we think about learning styles as the magic shortcut to more effective learning, we are

deluding ourselves. Even if it is true that people learn differently, and it is true that people learn

differently, we don't achieve magical results simply by catering to that.

A learning style isn't a shortcut to memory because learning isn't about remembering at all. It's a

myth, but it's useful. It's a myth that tells us, that warns us, that not all of our students are the

same. They're not going to react the same, and most importantly, they're not like us.

p.85

There's a deeper lesson here that Wheeler touched on when he noted that learning styles motif

had been visited over and over by people like Mumford and COLT. We could add Gregorc,

Myers-Briggs. We can also add that the stage-based learning models, Piaget, Bloom,

method-based approach in Gagne, or I saw this morning the SECI model from Nonaka and

Takeuchi -- I'm never good at pronouncing names -- described by Carayannis.

All of these things where learning is described by slicing and dicing, categorizing, drawing into

stages, outlining a process. It's the same model in each case where we're taking something very

complex and trying to find little bits in it. We're going to try to study these little bits, these little

segments, these little categories and that will be the shortcut to understanding the difficult

process of learning.

It's modeling. That's fine if we understand that modeling is myth making. In general, the

approach of trying to pigeonhole students, pigeonhole stages of learning or whatever leads to

methodology. It leads to, on the one hand, a struggle to understand the world, albeit without

science, and on the other hand, an attempt to realize our objectives more simply, more easily, an

attempt to create a shortcut.

It's nonsense to say that there are no categories. There are categories. The world is filled with

categories. What it's nonsense to say is that these categories are fundamental to learning, that

they express the fundamental nature of perception. It's nonsense to say this categorization will,

by itself, magically lead to some new understanding as though our mythical categorizations

somehow expose the nature of reality.

We do not make things simpler by multiplying entities. We do not make things clearer by

breaking them down into parts, though we are tempted to do so.

Today's candidate for breaking things into parts and making them simpler, so-called, is

competencies, as though we can understand the really difficult nature of mathematics by

understanding 10 subsets of mathematics or whatever. In my mind, searching for competencies is

taking one really difficult problem and breaking it down into 10 really difficult problems.

Another myth. I was up this morning preparing this presentation, watching the news in English.

You may have seen this if you were listening in English.

You may have actually seen this commercial from DuPont and this is a quote. "The need for

science-based solutions is more pressing, as is the collaboration to find them. Coming together is

how we will better protect the Earth and the billions on it."

So says DuPont. So says, in her own way, Alison Littlejohn. She tells us, "People first connect,

then they consume and use the knowledge, then they create new knowledge, an artefact, a

conversation, a trace, etc."

She gave us the use case of Sally, the new chemist, who has to create a new substrate for drilling

a new type of rock. I don't know what that means because I don't know much about drilling. She

needs to create a new tech. I'm drawing that from "Star Trek."

She says that you draw from a whole range of different resources. You also draw from

knowledge of different range of people and, at any point, you may be working as an individual,

p.86

group, network, collective, etc. You connect, create, contribute, or you join with others with

similar goals. This turns out to be central to the presentation.

"What are the binding forces," she asks, "that draw people or resources together?" Via social

constructivism, people communicate via knowledge objects. People communicate working in

networks, etc.

I'm sitting there. I'm asking myself, how do I understand this? I can't understand it literally. She's

talking about binding forces that draw us together as though we must succumb to being joined

together by some external force like what, gravity?

The myth somewhere through the talk has become the reality. She says, "We need something, an

object, that brings people together, but what is this object? In turning, we use a goal as that

object." I loved this. I really did.

There's in English two words, objective and objective, and object and object. You can have an

object, which is a thing, or you can have an object, which is a goal. You have the same word

with two different meanings and it's interesting to see how the two different meanings slide

together here.

We have very traditional outcomes of this, various social objects such as work or learning

activities, reports, patient health case report, common problems, learning goals, things that would

be familiar to us from 20 years ago. The myth making has served its purpose and brought us

back to the comfortable and familiar.

There's another myth you may be familiar with. It's the story of King Midas.

King Midas was a very greedy king, as you know, and was granted a wish based on a

most thoughtless fantasy that everything he touches turns into gold.

Of course, he starts turning things into gold.

Everything seems really good until his daughter comes for a goodnight kiss. He gives her

a little kiss and his daughter turns to gold.

As the web page where I got this from, "Freezes solid like an Oscar statue." I love the

way they use metaphor in order to describe a myth.

Midas pleads to the gods for nullification. He's able to wash away his gift and lives a

virtuous life thereafter.

We can read the myth very superficially. You don't always want what you wish for, or some

things are worth more than gold.

I draw a slightly deeper lesson, or at least to me it's deeper. I'm going to say it's deeper because

it's me. We often hear about gold of one sort or another described as a prescription for

everybody.

I was thinking of Stephen Harris's school and these terms that he described it just before this talk.

Imagine if everybody had Stephen Harris's school. Would that even be possible? Would it make

p.87

sense or would it bankrupt the education system? Can you imagine the furniture companies

giving every school furniture? Who would they sell to?

It's not just that. In the North American context, there's this idea that everybody should learn

science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or the so-called STEM courses, but if

everybody learns science and technology, nobody's an artist.

It's not that there's no art in the world after that, there's no conception of art. There's no way to

represent art because we've lost the words. It does not scale, cannot scale.

The principle of the categorical imperative tells us when somebody prescribes something as a

solution, to imagine everybody in the world adopting that solution and then to ask whether it

makes sense.

Everything turning to gold does not make sense. Everything turning into that one special school

does not make sense. Everything turning into science, technology, engineering and mathematics

does not make sense.

Sameness is a myth. Sameness is the shortcut. We think, we are tempted to think, if everything

could be the same, it would be so much easier. It's inevitable, as we learn from Prometheus, that

in our efforts to make everything the same, we destroy everything that we value and we come to

discover that sameness is meaningless without that value.

It's classic myth formation. The approaching presence of some evil or danger, globalization, the

end of energy, I don't know, too many penguins. The only way to respond to that danger is to

become part of the whole, to work as a team, to subsume our personal interests.

Why, I would ask, should we suppose that sameness or subsumption to the whole will solve the

problem? Why is the push to collaboration, shared objectives, shared goals, somehow the answer

to whatever it is that's coming on us?

There was a comment. Somebody made a comment in the session just before this one. There are

too many convening theories, incommensurable vocabularies, and we could solve this if we had

one vocabulary and one theory. That would fix that.

I remember the RSS standards wars of the latè80s, early `90s. RSS was a syndication format

and there were too many different flavours of RSS.

Somebody said, "Let's create a new standard and there will be just one standard covering them

all. We'll call it Atom." Then after that we had RSS and Atom, two different standards.

Then somebody said, "Let's create one standard that will bridge the gap between RSS and

Atom." Then we had three standards, and so it goes.

The attempt to standardize creates multiplicity. Myths of conformity, as though conformity

makes better.

In 1793 they came up with the idea of interchangeable parts. Eli Whitney first put this into

practice in the manufacture of muskets. Saying this really worked, it created more guns. We had

p.88

the idea that in the long run, if we have sameness of production, all the changes that need to be

managed by management.

Here's something from Duncan Kennedy. "Legal education is training for hierarchy. Because

students believe what they are told explicitly and implicitly about the world they are entering,

they behave in ways that fulfill the prophecies the system makes about them and the world. This

is the link-back that completes the system. Students do more than accept the way things are and

ideology does more than damp opposition. Students act affirmatively within the channels cut for

them, cutting them deeper, giving the whole patina of consent, and weaving complicity into

everyone's life story.

It's Sisyphus all over again. Sameness simply brings us back to doing the same thing over and

over again at, if you will, the behest of the gods. If we lose our difference we lose our meaning.

George Orwell put it well. "It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete

soaring up terrace after terrace 300 meters into the air. From where Winston stood, it was just

possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering the three slogans of the party.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

Sameness breaks down the distinctions we need even to have a goal, or an ambition or a dream.

An Indian legend, again.

I'm sure you're all familiar with this legend, the six men of Hindustan who went to see the

elephant. The problem was, these men were blind and so they could not see the elephant.

Each man touched the elephant.

One man touched the side of the elephant and said, "It's huge like a wall."

Another man touched the tusk of the elephant and said, "It's sharp like a spear."

Another one touched the ear of the elephant and he said, "It's flat and floppy like a leaf."

Another one touched the trunk of the elephant and he said, "It's like a snake."

The myth ends with these men fighting amongst each other, each of them sure because

they had the experience for themselves of what the elephant was like.

Of course, as the myth tells us, none of them were wrong, but none of them were right.

It's interesting where Janssen is talking about in omnia, talking about it being lifelong learning,

serendipity, but also entrepreneurship, e-learning, m-learning, etc., helping people meet their

goals. She points to, I think quite correctly, adding value by combining competencies.

She said, "In Nokia, they hired only engineers and that's where their problem started." What they

tried to do instead was to bring together people who were young, people who were old, people

who were students, people who were professionals. I think that was a good idea.

p.89

The idea here was that people would do their learning in context, so it would have real meaning

for them. They would have opportunities to succeed and to fail, where the intent was to bring out

the expertise in everyone, the different types of expertise.

The other side of her story was that these teams were to be entrepreneurial. They were to create

entities that would compete in a marketplace. We have also in this picture this myth of the

marketplace, this myth of the commercial approach solving the problems that the management

approach cannot solve. It's the invisible hand of the marketplace, the myth created by Adam

Smith. Surely, we don't think that this is real.

I ran in my newsletter just the other day a report showing that study after study has looked for

evidence that the marketplace moves forward toward some advantage, some stable position,

some progress, but there is no built-in advantage to the invisible hand of the marketplace. The

invisible hand of the marketplace is a myth. There is no guiding hand. There's just chaos.

Here's a model for understanding this chaos. It's just a myth, but it's a good myth. It will help us

see through some of these other myths. It's called the TIMN theory, tribes, institutions, markets

and networks. It describes the evolution of organization over the years. It may well be familiar to

many of you.

It also describes forms of learning. When you think of tribes and apprenticeships in the same

light, institutions representing the model of professors, scholars and scholarship. Markets

representing the model of arguments, debate, the clashes of ideas, classes, categories and

theories, etc., and networks as communications. I put in my notes here creativity.

The first two models are built on a kind of sameness, the sameness of genetics, the sameness of

family. The last two are based on types of diversity. One type of diversity results in Atomism.

The other type of diversity results in networks.

Putting somebody into entrepreneurship programs is putting them into competitive markets. It's

preparing them for, I would say, the world of the 1990s, the world before the Internet, the world

before we began communicating with each other in these networks.

It's interesting. Steve Wheeler talking about the flipped classroom, talking about the real flip, the

flip toward what he called bear pit pedagogy, having them fight it out, debate it, arguing from

both sides.

I listen to that and I think of the competitive market approach. Having students argue and debate

is like having students try to create companies, try to compete against each other and, again,

preparing for the market model of the 1990s.

What I want to say about myths is the same thing that I want to say about learning. It's that the

content of the story is, for all practical purposes, irrelevant. That doesn't mean that there's no

content. It just means that the content is the thing that moves the learning forward.

What matters in learning is not what is said, but how it is said. As McLuhan would say, the

meaning is, in fact, in the message or, maybe to paraphrase him a bit, the meaning is in the mode

of the message.

p.90

The TIMN model, again, different ways of teaching. The tribe model, story by the campfire. The

institution model, a lecture by a university professor. The markets model, a shouting debate. The

network model, a conversation.

People like Weinberger and others tried to say this in the "Cluetrain Manifesto," markets are

conversations. What he should have said, in my mind, is that our markets are becoming

networks. Competition is becoming conversation.

Networks aren't a shortcut, either. Networks aren't the magic solution any other than markets are

the magic solution, any more than professors are the magic solution. Networks have to avoid two

forms of what might be called network death.

On the one hand, collapsing into sameness. That might be called the collaborative

principle where every entity in the network becomes the same and, consequently, all dialogue, all

meaning, ceases.

On the other hand, the network has to avoid disintegration into atoms. That might be called

the competitive principle where the network falls apart. Both the social and the individual are

forms of network death. What we want is that happy middle ground where the network is

dynamic and capable of reacting, adapting and adjusting to the future.

I've tried to describe in my own work methodological principles that allow networks to do this.

Of course, these are myths as well, but they're practical myths. As long as we don't think of them

as describing reality, we can use them the way we can use other myths. The principles are

autonomy, diversity, openness and interactivity.

It's interesting when we look at the myths, when we look at the myths that I've talked about so

far in this talk, that in many cases, arguably all of the cases, the myths are warning us against

abandoning diversity, against abandoning openness. They warn us against trying to make

everything the same. They warn us against trying to determine the objectives, the goals, the

values of people.

In my own work with a number of my colleagues, people like George Siemens, David Cormier,

Rita Kop and others, we've created a type of online learning called the MOOC, or massive open

online course. What a MOOC is, is a recognition. It is first of all a recognition that there are no

shortcuts, that we are not going to try to design e-learning as simply a faster way of cramming

content into people's heads.

That would be failing to heed the lessons from the past, the lessons that go all the way back to

Prometheus, Sisyphus and the rest. A MOOC in the parlance of this talk is about creating a

future, not succumbing to it. Kristjan Korjus talked about the open organization of the students at

Tartu. This is the same principle, only applied to a single course.

Success in the course is what you determine it to be. Participation in the course is what you want

it to be. There is no content in the course. There are topics. We talk about different things. Each

week we may bring in a guest or we may talk about some concept or idea, but it's a lot like the

artist that was described, I forget which talk it was. I think it was Stephen Harris's.

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The artist, instead of teaching his students how to paint, went to the class and painted and led his

class all the way through the process from painting all the way to hanging it in the gallery. Yeah,

it was Steve Harris.

The content is like that. It's what the instructor does, but it's not something that the student has to

consume and memorize. There is no content or, conversely, there's too much content. The

student needs to navigate or learn to navigate through this by connecting with themselves, by

connecting with other people.

The idea here isn't to teach content, but to start as a starting point for our thinking. You might

ask, what's the purpose, what's the objective if there is no content? There is no purpose. There is

no objective. More accurately, each person decides what their own purpose is. The idea here is to

promote diversity and promote autonomy.

There is a process that we talk about and recommend. It's only talked about and recommended,

it's not required, of aggregation, remix, re-purpose, feed forward. Very similar to what Alison's

proposal talked about, but without filtering, without creating, without evaluation.

I was going to say I’m more interested in people creating, but that would be incorrect. I’m more

interested in people conversing with each other, using objects to express their hopes, their fears,

their ideas, their dreams, creating their own myths.

Not pedagogy, there is a way of talking about the skills that would be required to flourish in such

an environment. I sometimes talk about them under the rubric of critical literacies.

They range all the way from the skills involved in arguing, as Steve talked about, to skills

involved in recognizing patterns, motifs, principles, organizations. Also, the pragmatics, the use

of symbols and images, the context, the placement, and the frame in our world view and

understanding change, dynamics, evolution, and prediction in this environment.

These are skills you don't get in front of a classroom, say, "OK, we'll start with skill number one,

part A." These are skills you acquire only in an environment where you see them and you

acquire them by doing them, by practicing in them, by conversing, using the language in which

these skills demonstrate success.

I'll finish off with one more myth.

It's a story by Arthur C. Clark called "The Nine Billion Names of God."

There were some monks in the Himalayas. They'd been working for the last 300 years

and they developed a new language. They're laboriously writing down, one by one, each

of the nine billion names of God.

It's calculated it will take them another 13,000 years to finish.

When some Westerners arrive at their monastery and they talk about computers, the

monks think and the Westerners think this could be a really good shortcut.

We could get the computers to write out all the names of God for us. That's what they do.

They set up computers.

p.92

The Westerners are very careful because what's going to happen after you write out the

nine billion names of God? Well, nothing.

The Westerners set up the computer to print out the names of all the nine billion names of

God, but to finish printing only after they've left so the monks won't be mad at them.

The story ends with the Westerners are climbing down the hill and the computer finishes

churning out all the nine billion names of God.

They're walking down the mountain. They look up and, one by one, very simply, the stars

are all going out without any fuss.

I was thinking about Arthur Harkins' talk, cyborgs and preparing for the Information Age,

preparing for the 1970s, and thinking about preparing for an age when computers take over.

That's the future I was asked in the previous session, what's the future you most fear? It's the

future where the nine billion humans are each, one by one, replaced by a computer.

It's conceivable. We can think about it, but you know that there's a new myth here as well.

The myth is that, one by one, each human is replaced by a machine, nine billion of them. After

all this time, the machines are able to have perfect conversation with each other, no ambiguity,

no misunderstanding, an ideal language, complete comprehension. They discover with all the

humans gone there's nothing left to talk about.

We can imagine a future filled with machines. We can't imagine a future without meaning. We

have to continually hope for the impossible, not the possible, because if our ambitions were

actually achieved, it would be a disaster.

Tallinn, Estonia

October 29, 2012

p.93

The Paradox of Democracy

During my days as a student activist studying philosophy in Alberta one wag described me as "a

moderate socialist and a radical democrat."

That description is probably still apt 20 years later. The bulk of my work in online learning and

media is dedicated toward the idea that people should be able to manage their own lives and their

own futures.

But the phrase 'radical democrat' was and still is the source of some ambiguity. By 'democrat' I

do not mean, of course, affiliation with the Democratic party in the United States. Rather, it

means 'supporter of democracy', whatever that is.

Modern democracies consist of two parts:

 a mechanism enabling the majority to plan and carry out a form of self-governance for a

region or nation as a whole, and

 a mechanism defining and ensuring the protection of basic rights and privileges accorded

to all members of society.

Most people not surprisingly focus on the first part of democracy. Some even deride the second

under the heading of 'judicial activism', as though democracy should only be defined by the

former.

But I have never believed that a simple counting of votes is sufficient for the governance of a

region or a nation, not the least because of the likelihood of what Mill calls the 'tyranny of the

majority', but also because the majority is simply unable to govern without these basic rights and

privileges.

In modern democracies, one way we determine the will of the majority is by means of the vote

(it may surprise people to know that this is not the only way to determine the will of the majority;

a reading of Rousseau on 'the general will'148 for example reveals a more organic alternative process; others, by contrast, cite the 'invisible hand'149 of the marketplace).

The premise behind the exercise of the vote is that it reflects the opinions of an informed

citizenry. What constitutes 'informed' has varied over the years. Voting was once limited to

landowners, a privilege still enshrined in bodies such as the British House of Lords and the

Canadian Senate. It was also at different times limited to free persons, to men, and today, to

148 http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050715-16.htm

149 http://plus.maths.org/content/adam-smith-and-invisible-hand

p.94

adults over a certain age. Robert Heinlein has suggested150 it be limited to those who serve in the military.

The need for this is found in a two-part argument formed by Thomas Jefferson151:

 "Compare again the ferocious depredations of their insurgents, with the order, the

moderation and the almost self-extinguishment of ours. And say, finally, whether peace is

best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people."

 "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their

interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very

high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the

preservation of our liberty."

It is a reflection at once of both Hobbes and Locke, the idea that peace in the land is ensured by a

government that serves the will of the people, and that it is through this desire for peace that

people will participate in, and support the mechanisms of, that government.

But this, in turn, depends on the people actually desiring something worth desiring. Here

is Heinlein152 again:

"What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always

vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that

he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread

and Circuses.’"

Two dilemmas occur. The first is created when a person's self-interest is contrary to the interest

of the interest of society as a whole. The classic instance of this is criminal behaviour, but in a

democracy, many forms of self-interest are legal, even encouraged, even though they act against

the interest of the whole.

The second is created when a person is mistaken about what lies in his own best interests.

History is replete with examples of people acting, en masse, in a manner that harms their own

well-being and security. And individual cases of self-harm or self-defeating behaviour exist in all

societies. As Mill153 would argue, no person is best served by bread and circuses, but often, this is what they want.

150 http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf

151 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21002/21002-h/21002-h.htm#385

152 http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/205.Robert_A_Heinlein

153 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34901

p.95

In my own discussion of autonomy154, I describe four major areas in which a person can enjoy more or less self-governance:

 the capacity to know - this includes being in a position to have relevant experiences, the

capacity to reflect on those experiences, and to do so independently of incentives or

coercions

 the capacity to act - this includes flexibility and mobility, the absence of legal constraints,

barriers and locks, and the resources and entitlements necessary to make action possible

 the range of behaviour - this is described by media of expression, association and

transmission of ideas, background noise, tolerance and quality of choices

 the capacity to have an effect - described by the audience for an idea or its efficacy, as

well as the nature and extent of improvements possible

In a simple democracy government by the votes of the majority, we can observe ways in which

individuals, as well as the majority, are limited in their capacity to know, decide and act.

In a full and complete democracy, individuals would have the widest degree of autonomy

possible, in a manner consistent with the autonomy of other members of society, in order to

define and pursue their own best interests, and as necessary the best interests of society.

But it is clear that the protection and enhancement of this autonomy is not enabled by the simple

process of voting alone (indeed, if even at all). For we find ourselves in a paradox: we need to

vote to ensure the greatest degree of autonomy for ourselves, but we need the greatest autonomy

for ourselves in order to show us how to vote.

We can see in any election (including the present American election taking place today) ways in

which the autonomy of the voters is subverted, and hence, their ability to act in the best interests

of either themselves or society:

 the information they receive is controlled and manipulated, they are unable to reason

effectively on that information, and they are subject to rewards of government spending

and coercion through loss of employment

 individual mobility is limited, both internationally, by means of immigration restrictions,

and nationally, by means of limited access to social services and health care; a person's

first interest, in most democracies today, is employment and personal welfare

 the right to associate and demonstrate is increasingly limited by police powers, while

one's individual voice is being managed via copyright and trade restrictions, and limited

access to the press and popular media

154 http://www.downes.ca/post/54222

p.96

 the desires expressed by individual votes, and the mass of votes, are being subverted by

influences placed on elected officials

In other words, it is not simply that people vote for bread and circuses, it is that, often, bread and

circuses is the best they can get, because of the circumstances they find themselves in, and their

inability to demand, and get, more.

This is why - and how - I am a radical democrat. My commitment to democracy extends well

beyond support for the mechanisms of democratic decision-making, but additionally, to

mechanisms and measures supporting the greatest degree of autonomy and self-governance

possible.

In this (ironically and perhaps to some rather surprisingly) I am affiliated with the most

conservative and libertarian voices in society today.

Where I differ is that I do not define 'intrusion' in our lives narrowly as 'government intrusion',

first, and second, I do not define 'autonomy' simply in terms of my own individual autonomy, but

in a manner that promotes the autonomy of all persons equally.

For if one of us is not free, none of us is free.

In this, therefore, my support for democracy hinges on two elements that are very similar to

Jefferson's two major points.

 The need to meet the basic conditions of autonomy for all of us, including a robust

definition of rights that includes both the means and capacity to act and make decisions

freely, and

 The need to enable for each person the capacity to become critically literate, that is, to be

able to reason cogently and arrive reliably at those measures and conclusions most

reflective of his or her self interest.

The former requires a charter of rights and freedoms that goes well beyond the 'bills of rights'

that would be granted to people already in possession of the means to act upon them. 'Freedom

of the press' is meaningless if one cannot own a press; 'freedom of speech' matters not at all if

there is no means to be heard.

In practice, I support something like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights155. And in particular, I aver that no person can be free if he or she lacks sustenance and nourishment,

housing, clothing, education, a sense of belonging, and a sense of meaning or purpose. If a

155 http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

p.97

person, or people, live in poverty, none of us is free. As Foucault might say156, the rich are as bound by the trepidations of the poor as are the poor. Or as Chandler might say, when people are

poor, you always have to watch your back157.

We cannot be free if we are in want; we cannot form the conditions for self-government from the

condition of poverty.

With regard to the second, I have discussed elsewhere the needs of critical awareness and

reflection under the headings of various types of literacy158. And I have described, in much more general terms, what people need to learn159. In both cases, the objective is to develop a capacity to perceive accurately, to reason with clarity, and to act with foresight.

Ultimately, my understanding of democracy is one in which the emphasis on decisions taken by

majority vote decreases and finally wanes to almost nothingness.

The need for a vote, after all, represents and reflects an incapacity on the part of the electorate.

In the first instance, the vote reflects an incapacity to govern at all. The vote is, in the first

instance, not an opting between ideas, but rather, a selection of representatives who will do our

governing for us. It reflects a time and an era in which the process of governance required more

travel and more time than any of us could afford.

This is a time that has arguably already passed. Modern communications technology makes most

travel unnecessary. And today's legislators have had to spend so much time learning how to

campaign, raise money, and earn our vote, that they are barely more capable of representing our

own interests, even in complex matters, than we are ourselves.

And in the second instance, it reflects an incapacity to resolve through more gentle means the

tensions and conflicts that flare in modern society. The vote represents a form of conflict, one in

which the ballot has replaced the bullet, to be sure, but one in which existing market or legal

mechanisms do not enable people to govern themselves directly.

And, in a final paradox, the tensions and conflicts being addressed in the ballot box today

revolve around the question of whether there should be democracy at all. They revolve around

the persistence of poverty and resistance to the efforts to alleviate it. They revolve around the

156 http://foucault.info/documents/foucault.omnesEtSingulatim.en.html

157 http://www.baas.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=230%3Aralph-willett-hard-boiled-

detective-fiction&catid=18&Itemid=11

158 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/233

159 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/things-you-really-need-to_b_788989.html

p.98

persistence of ignorance and resistance to the efforts to educate. We are not now debating the

question of what kind of society we would like to have, we are debating the question of whether

we want to have a society at all.

Democracy, predictably, is unable to resolve the paradox of its own existence. In an existential

incompleteness theorem, it is unable to determine whether democracy is, after all, the best form

of government. And perhaps most damaging, it is unable to ensure its own existence. Democracy

tolerates, at best, and encourages, at worst, the prevalence of poverty and the subversion of

reason that give society a reason to exist.

For my own part, the resolution of the paradox lies in the explicit rejection of the proposition that

some people are more important, or more valuable, than others. Or, more positively, an explicit

endorsement of Kant's maxim160 that very rational being has intrinsic and not merely instrumental value, that to treat a person as a means to some end is to deny their essential

humanity.

Some people arrive at this maxim from religious reasons161. "Not even one sparrow dies and falls on the ground without God noticing it." For me, the import of Kant's maxim lies in the nature of

society itself. A society that subjects its members to arbitrary and discriminatory treatment

cannot sustain. Such a society exists in a state of perpetual war with itself, a draining of wealth

and resources that ultimately leaves nothing but death and stagnation.

So today people vote, and exercise what limited social autonomy they have in their grasp. But in

their vote, they should see the need for a wider democracy, one in which the vote is no longer

necessary, but rather one based on a mechanism of exchanges of mutual support and benefit, a

society defined not by cartels and cabals and conflict, but where sustenance and prosperity are

ensured through cooperation, through exchanges between equals to their mutual benefit.

In other words, the reason we have a democracy at all is that at some level we believe every

human being has the same basic worth. We understand that this sense of a basic equality is

necessary for us to have a society at all, and that having a society is our best and only hope of

having and sort of existence worth having.

That's why I'm a moderate socialist and a radical democrat. I believe this last is not negotiable. I

believe that the basic equality of individuals in our society is all that protects us from the abyss,

that the chains that bind us will, unless unshackled, be the weight that drags us down into

oblivion.

160 http://bellevuecollege.edu/artshum/materials/phil/Updegrove/Fall05/100/EthicalTheoryofKant.htm

161 http://www.onlythebible.com/Bible-Gems/how-much-are-you-worth.html

p.99

Moncton, Canada

November 6, 2012

p.100

Free and Not Free

Everton Zanella Alvarenga tossed a hand-grenade into the OER discussion group: "An

interesting text by Stallman... On-line education is using a flawed Creative Commons

license162 ... 'the CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-NC-SA licenses, as they are today, should be avoided.'"

When I asked Richard Stallman about the use of open licenses for educational materials, first he

complained because I didn't use the word "free", then he said that he wasn't interested in

educational content, that his arguments applied specifically to software. Clearly his views have

been modified since then, as this post attests.

Without extending this into a full-blown debate, as I have already written at length about this

elsewhere:

 licenses that allow commercial use are less free than those that do not, because they allow

commercial entities to charge fees for access, to lock them behind digital locks, and to

append conditions that prohibit their reuse

 works licensed with a Non-commercial clause are fully and equally open educational

resources, and are in many cases the only OERs actually accessible to people (because

the content allowing commercial use tends to have costs associated with it)

 the supposition that works that cost money can be 'free' is a trick of language, a fallacy

that fools contributors into sharing for commercial use content they intended to make

available to the world without charge

 the lobby very loudly making the case for commercial-friendly licenses and

recommending that NC content be shunned consists almost entirely of commercial

publishers and related interests seeking to make money off (no-longer) 'free' content.

The problem with this is the Flat World publications or the OERu assessment scenario - content

deposited with the intent that it be available without cost is converted into a commercial product.

It's not free if you can't access it. Content is different from software, it can be locked (or

'enclosed') in ways free software cannot, without violating the license.

In sum, this discussion would be better conducted without further debated about which open

license 'is best' and especially with fervent declarations in favour of commercial-friendly

licensing. The suggestion that the free sharing of non-commercial content is not 'practical' is not

Stallman at his best, and is refuted by the experiences of millions in the field.

162 http://stallman.org/articles/online-education.html

p.101

Wayne McIntosh objected, "Stephen, your assumption is incorrect with reference to access to

learning materials and the OERu assessment model.."

Again, not to pursue the argument regarding the One True License beyond reason in the present

forum...

 I very specifically referred to OERu assessment, not content, and assessment will cost

students $1000 for a typical 5-course semester

 I have been following and commenting on WikiEducator and OERu since the beginning,

and have expressed my concerns in this regard on numerous occasions

 In particular, I expressed my concerns regarding the 'logic model' employed by OERu, as

well as the 'founding partners' methodology, both of which entrenched educational

institutions as an essential part of the process,

 No mechanism for recognition of learning exists, or was even contemplated, other than

institutional recognition, which as noted, carries a significant financial burden

I have no objection to the mechanism whereby OERu converts OERs it receives for free from

volunteers into revenues for universities. What I object to is the ongoing campaign by OERu

staff to depict non-commercial OERs as 'non-free' and to lobby for their exclusion from the

definition of 'free educational resources'. I wish to pursue my support of OERs in such a way that

does not impose significant cost on students. To this date, the best and only mechanism for

ensuring their use of OERs remains genuinely free is through the use of the NC license.

As an aside: there is always in this context a reference to the 'original' version of open source

licensing, and of course Stallman's four freedoms. I would like to point out that open source

licenses existed before GPL, and open content licenses existed before Creative Commons. Until

the intervention of staff from large U.S. universities (Berkeley-Stanford-MIT-Harvard) these

licenses required that distribution be unencumbered with cost. It is only with the intervention of

staff from these institutions that 'free' comes to mean 'commercial'.

Again: people may attach licenses allowing commercial use to their work if they wish. I have no

objection to this. But such people should cease and desist their ongoing campaign to have works

that are non-commercial in intent, and free in distribution, classified as 'not free'. Content

that cannot be enclosed within a paywall, and cannot be distributed with commercial

encumbrances attached, is just as free - indeed, more free - than so-called 'free' commercial

content.

Also...

To follow up on some points made by Rory:

Content (under whatever license) is 'enclosed' when it is contained behind a barrier such as

proprietary encryption, a digital lock or a paywall. Enclosure does not restrict the content itself,

p.102

but restricts access to the content; access is granted (typically under some other name) only via

some concession, such as payment, or provision of personal information.

To my understanding, all of Flat World's content will now be enclosed behind a paywall. OERu

assessments enclose assessment content. This mailing list (OER-community) encloses content

behind a subscription requirement (I can't even link to discussions in my newsletter; all non-

subscribers see is a barrier).

Enclosure is an important concept because it leads to 'conversion'. The process of conversion is

one where what was once a resource that could be freely accessed is (for all practical purposes)

accessible only through a barrier of some sort; in other words, the content is free, but has been

effectively completely enclosed. This is what happened (for example) to many UseNet

newsgroups. It almost happened to Wikipedia, and would have happened, has Google not

intervened.

Having said that, let me be clear how perspective plays a significant role in the free / not-free

debate:

 from the perspective of someone who already has the content, the content is 'not free' if

there are limitations on the use of that content, including the right to sell it

 from the perspective of someone who does not already have the content, the content is

'not free' if there are barriers preventing the person from accessing the content (note that

the putative assertion that the content 'could be made free somewhere' does not constitute

a removal of the all-too-practical barrier

It is not to me surprising that the people with wealth - namely those in U.S. universities - could

view 'free' from the perspective of those who have the content. But I speak from the perspective

of one who does not have access to the content. And my argument, in a nutshell, is that the

second perspective is just as valid as the first (even though the second perspective cannot afford

lobbyists).

Content behind barriers - for example, content that is being sold - is 'not free'. This perspective

matters. For 99 percent of the world, it's the only perspective that matters.

And finally

Totally agreed with David Wiley: "It would be great if the world were simple enough that One License to Rule Them All could exist, but it doesn't."163

163 http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2611

p.103

It needs to be recognized that for many people, 'open' and 'free' do not mean 'commercial'. For

many people, the idea of 'selling a free resource' is a contradiction in terms. For many people,

access to the resource, rather than making money from it, is the primary concern.

I don't wish to continue restating this (though it seems the campaigning from the CC-by people

against NC is endless). I would simply urge UNESCO to respect the wishes of those people who

are not commercial publishers or multi-million-dollar educational institutions, to recognize the

intent of people creating NC-licensed resources to ensure they can be accessed for free, and to

recognize resources licensed with a NC clause as OERs with equal standing.

This is consistent with the 2012 Paris declaration, which I remind people, refers to OERs as

"teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the

public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use,

adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." (My emphasis)

Ilkka Tuomi wrote, “Logically, CC-BY-NC is a subset of CC-BY. In this sense, it is more

restricted.”

Not so. No entity in the set “CC-BY-NC” is also in the set “CC-BY”.

It’s a trick of the way CC licenses were originally formulated. The designations in fact mean:

 CC-by-Commercial (CC-by-C)

 CC-by-Noncommercial (CC-by-NC)

So as you can see, the two sets are disjuncts, specially, not-C and C

The creators of CC treated ‘Commercial’ as the default. There’s no reason why they should have

had to do this. They could have established the licenses the other way (indeed, the way I would

have done it):

 CC-by – allows all free uses, ie., no limitations on access and distribution

 CC-by-C – allows commercial vendors to restrict distribution contingent upon payment

In fact, each of CC-by-C and CC-by-NC create restrictions. They create different sets of

restrictions, which may be more or less limiting, depending on your perspective.

The ‘commercial-by-default’ world in which we live is something recent and something that has

been created through the use of language and the setting of assumptions. The creation of a ‘non-

commercial’ clause is a way of setting ‘commercial’ as the default. It makes it seem as though

‘commercial’ implies no additional restrictions. But it’s just a trick of language, just a trick of

perspective.

That’s why it’s false and misleading to say that ‘CC-by-C’ is ‘more free’, and why people

shouldn’t do it.

p.104

Moncton, Canada

November 27, 2012

p.105

People Don’t Need Experts; They Just

Need Someone Who Knows

This164 is a really good analysis. I think you correctly identify the missing bit – helping students over those rough patches.

Interestingly, to my mind, although the problem of understanding and responding to a student

question is an almost intractable problem for machines, it is generally pretty straightforward for

humans. So what we have tried to do with cMOOCs is connect people with the humans they

need to connect with to get over the rough patches.

You don’t need an expert for this – you just needs someone who knows the answer to the

problem. So we have attempted to scale by connecting people with many other students.

Instructors are still there, for the tough and difficult problems. But students can help each other

out, and are expected to do so.

An example of what I mean: I just purchased a new xBox and a copy of MLB 2K12, which is a

baseball simulator. My first effort to pitch saw me walk most of the batters, throw numerous wild

pitches, and finally get out of the inning only after giving up 14 runs. The problem was, I didn’t

know what to do; the MLB 2K12 instructions are far too vague, and if there’s in-game help,. I

haven’t found it.

I don’t need an expert in MLB 2K12 to show me how to pitch. I just need someone who knows

what to do. Someone who can say “Well you move this control here then here and you’re trying

to line this up with that.” Million s of people know the answer to this question. but I’m connected

to none of them. Indeed, I don’t even need then to do the actual explaining. They simply need to

recognize what my problem is, then point me to a video or instructions that outline the solution.

Machines will eventually be able to do this, but they will first need to master natural language

processing. This is going to take a while. In the meantime, if we want massive learning, we need

to structure learning in such a way as to make asking questions easier, and as necessary, to

provide more incentives to people to answer them.

I don’t think the xMOOCs are ever going to do this, because their focus is on placing all the

emphasis on the expertise of the instructor. To the extent that they respond to this need, they will

become cMOOCs. But to the extent that cMOOCs become viable, the value proposition behind

164 http://mfeldstein.com/where-xmoocs-and-adaptive-analytics-both-fail-for-now/

p.106

the elite universities is weakened. People don’t need experts; they just need someone who

knows.

Moncton, Canada

November 27, 2012

p.107

What Makes a MOOC Massive?

Responding to a LinkedIn Discussion. 165

When people ask me what makes a MOOC 'massive' I respond in terms of the *capacity* of the

MOOC rather than any absolute numbers.

In particular, my focus is on the development of a network structure, as opposed to a group

structure, to manage the course. In a network structure there isn't any central focus, for example,

a central discussion. Different people discuss different topics in different places (Twitter, Google

Groups, Facebook, whatever) as they wish.

Additionally, my understanding is that for the course to be a *course* it has to be more than just

a broadcast. Otherwise, 'Adventure Planet' is a MOOC. Or National Geographic Magazine is a

MOOC. A course actually requires these interactive and skills development activities, rather than

simply consumption of content.

So what is essential to a course being a *massive* open online course, therefore, is that it is not

based in a particular environment, isn't characterized by its use of a single platform, but rather by

the capacity of the technology supporting the course to enable and engage conversations and

activities across multiple platforms.

In the first connectivist MOOC, for example, we have 170 individual blogs created by course

participants (in Change11 we had 306 feeds). What made the course a MOOC is that these

contributions were comprehended as a *part* of the course, and were all accessible to course

participants, either directly, through the newsletter, or through alternative syndication using an

OPML list.

Similarly, there wasn't just a Twitter conversation, or Second Life event, that happened

coincidentally with the course, but rather, these events outside the 'main platform' were construed

as part of the course, and comprehended in the course description, relevant links, newsletters,

etc.

The big danger, to my mind, in a large online course is that through strong group-formation

activities, it can become a small online course. This happens when a central clique or insider

group is formed, or where you have inner circles and outer circles. The inner circle, for example,

165 http://www.linkedin.com/groups/When-can-MOOC-be-considered-4652870.S.204279532?qid=0ecad02c-560e-

4de0-ba19-6e01b792bb8a&trk=group_most_popular-0-b-

ttl&goback=.gde_4652870_member_204279532.gmp_4652870

p.108

might expect and demand preferential access to and individual attention from the course

facilitators.

When this happens the dynamics of the course change - for example (and not these are my

observations and opinions, not hard established fact) the primary value becomes cohesion and

agreement, rather than diversity and distinct perspectives.

When the course functions as a small group, there is an expectation that everyone will agree on

the course content, objectives, and domain of discussion. But, in fact, to be a massive course, it

must needs respect a wide variety of individual objectives, perspectives on course materials, and

opinions about relevant topics of discussion (not to mention technological platform and language

of 'instruction').

Consequently, when I have been asked in the past what number a course needs to attain in order

to be considered 'massive', after providing the caveat just given above, I provide the figure of

150, Dunbar's Number, as the cut-off line.

Now to be clear, this would refer to *active* participants, and not merely the number of people

who signed up. Thus for example the course that has 170 active blogs *does* qualify, while

CFHE, which had 83 blogs, is on the cusp (it would need another 70 people active on other

platforms, such as Twitter or Google Groups).

Why Dunbar's number? The reason is that it represents the maximum (theoretical) number of

people a person can reasonably interact with. How many blogs can a person read, follow and

respond to? Maybe around 150, if Dunbar is correct. Which means that if we have 170 blogs,

then the blogs don't constitute a 'core' - people begin to be selective about which blogs they're

reading, and different (and interacting) subcommunities can form.

I sketch the difference between 'groups and networks' in this diagram166 -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/252157734/

Moncton, Canada

January 17, 2013

166 http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/252157734/

p.109

Sustainability and MOOCs in Historical

Perspective

Presented to Simposio Internacional Estado Actual Y Prospectiva De La

Educacion Virtual, Bogota, Colombia, Asociación Colombiana de Instituciones

de Educación Superior con Programas a Distancia y Virtual, November 15,

2012.

Thank you everyone. Buenos Dias. It's a genuine pleasure to be able to be back in Bogotá, back

in Colombia, and to be able to speak with you today. I have good memories of my time in

Colombia, and I'm adding to those memories with this trip.

Today I want to take you through a bit of a historical journey. We're going to talk about the

factors that led to the development of the Massive Open Online Course and Connectivism and

the new phenomena in learning today. But, a few preliminaries before I start the talk, because it's

all about open education. :)

This presentation is available now at that website167. The slides are already posted on the website so you can download them at any time. They're pretty close to what I have here. I was making

some last minute changes during the introductions.

There will be audio recording as well on this site. And I know that they are recording video back

there but I always like to do things myself as well. So I'm recording video off of my own

computer and I'm just using Google Hangout168 so it's free.

And because I can, I'm broadcasting this talk, using a YouTube live video stream, to people

around the world. I have no idea how many people are watching this, probably not that many,

maybe none. But the idea is that it's possible.

Online learning begins in the 1980s, it begins in the 1990s and it's born out of two major things.

And like the strands of DNA we will see these things repeated through the history of online

learning. The first basis is in distance learning. Distance learning is the idea of learning that takes

place outside the classroom at any time, at any place. Distance learning therefore required the

167 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/304

168 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuu5H3btQTk&list=UU6mk-

nJCobXFBXE9AUZtDzQ&feature=player_embedded

p.110

creation and distribution of learning content, of course packages that would support independent

study.

The other basis for online learning is the traditional classroom, learning that we all grew up with,

where there is a class, a cohort of students, who go through a body of content or a curriculum,

who interact with each other when they conduct activities and conduct projects.

We see the two major sides here. We see the content side, and we see the interactivity side. And

there are two major pedagogies of online learning when they're born out of these two bases.

There is a transmission model of learning that is born in more transactional distance learning,

distance education. It has its origins in communications theory, and it's about the integrity of the

message being sent from the professor to the learner and being able to be sure that what was

received by the learner was the same message that was sent by the professor.

We also have a more recent theory, constructivism, which has so many varieties I cannot count

and won't try, but it's based essentially on the idea of social interaction, negotiation of meeting,

finding a common ground, and a model of learning where learners construct their own model. So

the content models of distance education with the course packages and the content would follow

the transmission models, and the class-based interactive models, which follow the constructivist

model.

In the mid-1990s, people began to develop learning management systems. I'm sure you're all

familiar with learning management systems.

It's a basis in technology that we all understand and we're all more or less comfortable with.

Companies like Blackboard and WebCT and Desire2Learn started companies, commercial

enterprises, based on the idea of managing online learning.

They had these two different models. They had the model of the course packages, and they had

the model of the classes. WebCT in English stands for "Web Course Tools." It was intended to

be a set of tools that a classroom instructor would use, but it was adapted to distance learning.

In addition to this commercial stream, we had the open-source stream and, most especially,

learning management systems called Moodle, which I'm sure you may be familiar with, and

Sakai, which is less common, but was created by a consortium of American universities.

So we had two models for learning management systems. One model where the company, and

Blackboard began this way, would post all of the technology on their site, and you would buy the

service from them.

Or the other model, where you would obtain the software and install it and complete the work

yourself and host it on your own website. You see what's happening here, underlining these

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already, we're beginning to get the basic building blocks of technology and pedagogy in models

of online learning.

For the rest of this stuff, you'll see more and more of these building blocks being added and

interconnected. As my wife likes to say, "It's all a great tapestry."

Early online learning featured conferencing and this, of course, would be the interactivity type of

online learning. I remember in the 1990s taking a massive Internet course "Welcome to the

Internet" and it was delivered by email. I would sign up for it. It was based on a mailing list.

Thousands upon thousands of people would receive emails every few days introducing them to a

new aspect of the Internet. It was my first experience with massive online learning.

There were also conferencing systems, early conferencing systems. Early discussion board

systems. People would log on and leave messages. Simple to be able to use that technology. We

began to see systems like FirstClass developed specifically for online learning. Here are

technologies that may not be familiar with you because they're so old. They disappeared almost a

decade ago but they were important elements in the development of the Internet we have today.

Of course, we had instant messaging. I remember using ICQ. In English, it stands for "I seek

you." ICQ. Get it? Very clever. That was copied by AOL instant messaging and Microsoft

messenger. My ICQ number was 1287181. It was one of the earliest. I was so proud of it, a low

ICQ number, and then the company went away.

At the time, things began to be more formalized and an idea came out, partially out of the United

States, partially out of Canada, mostly out of the military and the aviation industry, to create

something called learning objects. The idea of a learning object was to patent some educational

content, digital content, in a standardized way. There was something called LOM, Learning

Object Metadata, that was used to describe these objects.

The intent here was to create a system whereby educational resources would be discoverable,

sharable, and interoperable, where we could have a common pool of learning resources that these

technologies could draw upon. This is a very significant development and people today say

learning objects were a waste, but they were not a waste because they established the

fundamental principles of educational objects, educational resources, and the sharing and

distribution of these resources.

Then the IMS, the Instructional Management System consortium, based mostly in the United

States but with participation around the world, built a series of standards around learning objects.

One of these was content packaging. Content packaging was a technical way to represent the

original distance education course packages. Learning design was an attempt to emulate what

was called programmed learning in the course packages, a way of leading the student through the

materials one step at a time. It was the idea of managed learning or learning management.

p.112

Over time, the concept of learning objects and learning object repositories lead to the idea of

learning object repository networks. We can picture this really simply in our head. We think of

learning objects as objects, maybe like books, maybe like Legos, maybe like flowers, whatever.

A repository is just a place where we keep a whole bunch of them. The idea is we create our

learning object and we store it in the repository.

Over time, as different institutions developed their own repositories, to encourage the idea of

sharing, they created repository networks. I spent a number of years in Canada with people from

across the country building a repository network of Edusource. Edusource no longer exists,

sadly, but the idea was interesting and we learned a lot during it.

One of the things we learned was the tension that exists between open online resources and

commercial resources. When you're creating a network of repositories, how do you enable

sharing freely while at the same time allowing commercial resources to remain commercial and

not shared in the way music was shared? This was early 2000/2001/2002. Content producers

looked at things like Napster and music sharing and they were having heart attacks.

One of the reasons why our repository network failed was because of the constraints that

commercial publishers wanted to place on it. There's a fundamental dichotomy between open

content sharing and commercial markets and that's what we were experiencing in repository

networks.

There were also open content repositories developed around this time. The Open Archive

Initiative (OAI) created software and a set of specifications for uploading and downloading

objects from repositories. That was taken by MIT and turned into something called DSpace. That

exists even to this day. It's used mostly for academic publications, not so much for learning

objects and learning resources. That's because academic publications is a big industry, learning

resources not a big industry. So far so good? Excellent.

It's like this story. We progress through and bit by bit we're adding elements to the mix here. It's

important to see this not just as a history but as a cataloging of the elements that are going into

contemporary online learning. Here's another major element, and this element was developed

around the same time as the learning management systems and around the same time as the

learning objects, and that is the idea of learning communities.

I remember doing a talk169 about Etienne Wenger and mispronouncing his name the whole way through. That was the first talk I recorded on audio so the evidence falls into the saying,

"Sometimes there are mistakes you cannot escape." The concept of the community of practice is

169 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/102

p.113

important. It actually has its origin in the philosopher Thomas Kuhn who talked about networks

of researchers who shared a common paradigm.

Kuhn is most famous for the idea of scientific revolutions, but equally important, I think, is his

characterization of what he called "normal science." What "normal science" is, and I should

probably put it in quotation marks, what "normal science" is is not simply the facts and the data

related to a discipline. Physics, the discipline of physics, is not simply about the formulas but it's

the vocabulary, it's the interaction, it's the shared assumptions, it's a common understanding of

what evidence is important and what evidence is not important. It's the dialogues. It's the feel for

what it is to be a physicist.

Kuhn used to say that the knowledge of being a physicist isn't the material at the front of the

chapter; it's knowing how to solve the problems at the end of the chapter. It's a way of seeing the

world and being able to solve the problems is demonstrating that you see the world in the right

way.

This is a kind of learning that is generated not through transmission, not even through knowledge

construction, but through something else. The ideas of community and practice are important and

the fundamental building blocks to the concept of learning that we have today. Like everything

else, there were the, what would we call them, open communities of practice. We've heard so

few formal accounts. There's almost no history of them.

Then there were the more commercialized communities. I remember being hired by the

University of Alberta to create a commercial community practice called MuniMall170 and it was modeled on a book called "Net.Gain" by Hagel and Armstrong. The idea of this online

community was that it would be like a shopping mall. A shopping mall of physics or, in my case,

a shopping mall of municipal governance.

The idea was content providers would share their resources or, more accurately, sell their

services and their resources, and participants, people who work in that community, would

interact with each other. The interaction part of MuniMall worked really well and, in fact, the

community lasted for 10 years from the original design. The commercial part, not so much.

Interesting lessons.

As we began to see more of these connections, we began to see learning objects. We began to see

online communities that look like shopping malls. We began to see content packaging. There

was a stream of thought based on the idea of open source software, based on the idea of open

sharing and open content. It came, over time, to be called Open Educational Resources. This

name, Open Educational Resources, was formalized by the UNESCO in the early 2000's.

170 http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/munimall-a-review

p.114

The idea represents educational content that is shared openly. They came up with an early

version of open content and an open content license and the idea here is that a person or a

company or a university would create an educational resource like a learning object (but maybe

not a learning object; we don't need to be that particular) and would attach to it a license that

allows it to be shared freely. The resource has two parts, the content of the resource and the

license.

A major initiator of that support for open educational resources, I'm sure many of you are

familiar with this, is Creative Commons, and, in just the same way, Creative Commons is a way

of attaching a license to a piece of content to allow that content to be freely shared. This is really

important. It's really important because the default assumption for content is that content is

privately owned and cannot be shared. In my mind, that's the single largest barrier to open

learning as of today, the default assumption that open learning is illegal, and so we need the

licensing to make open learning legal.

If it was up to me, it would the other way around. If it was up to me, content would be free by

default but if you attached the license to it then it would be commercial, but people don't agree

with me on this. It's interesting, though. I look sometimes at the roots of open content licensing

and creative comments and think that open licensing and Creative Commons come out of the

same place that open source licensing comes out of, places like Berkley, places like Stanford,

places like MIT.

At MIT, I give a talk and saw Richard Stallman's office with a paper handwritten his name on the

door (since he's not that permanent). It's interesting that this perspective, that the default is

commercial, and the exception is open, has its origin in these major commercial American

universities. We will come back to that.

My involvement in open educational resources, aside from producing them, producing

photographs, producing reporting, whatever, was in the area of sustainability. I did a study171 for OECD on models and sustainability of open educational resources. This is where the thread of

sustainability enters the picture. Hasn't been in the picture so far. We've had the thread of

opening resources versus commercial resources or open source software versus commercial

software, but now we have this idea of sustainability, which is almost like the middle ground.

The core idea of sustainability is, if you have or if you want to produce open educational

resources, how do you pay for them? That's a good question. I analyzed a few different models

of sustainability that existed at the time. This is a quick summary. That picture looks much nicer

on my screen.

171 http://www.downes.ca/post/33401

p.115

One model, and this is a model that's actually in the field of academic publishing, is called the

Gold model. It's a model where the author pays a fee in order to publish the resource and then the

publisher makes the resource available. There are some journals, academic journals, that operate

along this principle. I don't know of any educational resource initiative that operates on this

because I haven't seen a big willingness on the part of people who create educational resources to

pay for their publication.

It happens informally a lot. I pay for my own website. In a way, that's an author pay system.

People pay for their own Internet access and that's kind of like an author pay system. There's

certainly an element of author contribution here. The size of that element of author contribution

tells us how accessible the market to create open educational resources is for people. People

don't often think about that.

Another model that's very popular in the United States is the foundation model. You have the

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, you have the Wellcome Trust, you have the Bill and

Melinda Gates Foundation. There's the Shuttleworth Foundation and there are many other

foundations. What these foundations do is contribute money to develop the development of

learning resources.

The thing with the foundation model is, foundations run out of money or foundations stop

providing money. So when you're funded by a foundation, you are always faced, at the end of

this funding, with the question now of "How do we become sustainable?" About half the time

what happens is the open educational resource becomes a commercial resource.

I just spoke of David Wiley. He was involved with a company called Flat World Knowledge.

Flat World Knowledge was intending to publish learning resources for free and they would make

their money on the printed version. Only recently, Flat World Knowledge announced they would

no longer publish learning material for free. There would now be a fee, but they would be

competitively priced. This is a pretty common sort of thing.

Here's the public service model, and that's actually mostly my model (where I work). That's

where government pays for the cost of the infrastructure and the cost of ongoing support. It'd be

very similar to the public broadcasting model. Is there a public broadcasting in Colombia? There

is? It's one of these things I should check before I do my talk. In Canada we have the CBC,

which is a publicly funded radio, television, and Internet broadcasting. Just as an aside, it should

be available here - if you want to hear great new Canadian music go to CBC Radio 3.. Fabulous.

I hope it's available here. I listen to it all the time. It's all independent Canadian music. It's like

the open educational resources of the Canadian music industry. I love it. That's an aside.

Finally, there's the community model. The community model is very important because the

community model taps into the idea of the community of practice and it taps into the idea of the

people who consume, to use a bad word, that consume the resources are also the people who

produce the resources.

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In the end, this is the model that I recommended to OECD. The pro-commercial organization

promptly rejected it, but the model is that people create their own educational resources. People

create their own educational communities. One of my major arguments for this is, in the long

term it's the only truly financially sustainable model, the community based model of resource

production. Any other model, I think, will eventually lead us to a commercial model.

We have, now, this other piece of the puzzle. Around that time, things really became interesting

because the idea of consumers producing their own content was found not only in learning but in

the Web as a whole. In English there's a term "prosumer." It's a combination of the term producer

and consumer. Is there a similar term in Spanish? Sorry? Prosumiero? I'll work on the

pronunciation of that after the talk.

This is happening around the middle of 2005, 2006. People were now gaining access to websites

and web services that allowed them to create their own content. These are all sites you're familiar

with. Blogger.Right? Blogging exploded. People don't talk about blogging so much now but

there's a lot of blogging happening right now. YouTube. Right? Remember when everything was

YouTube? YouTube was going to change the world? It actually did change the world in many

ways. I'm using YouTube now. Hi, YouTube people. A site I use a lot to store photos, because I

take a lot of photos, is Flickr.

It's interesting because these content sharing sites adapted an innovation that was created by the

instant messaging services. Remember I talked about ICQ? The way ICQ worked was you have a

list of friends. AOL called them buddies (typical AOL casual language). I don't know what MSN

network called them because I never used MSN network. The idea is you would have a list of

friends. When we started using systems that allowed us to create our own content like blogging

systems we imported this idea. The original version of blogging was something called the

blogroll. I don't know if there's a Spanish word for that but in English it's the blog roll. It's a list

of blogs that you read.

Also in other things, content sharing sites like what came to be called social networks the list of

friends almost became more important. What you had was a combination of content creation and

a list of friends. Everybody focuses on the social of social networking, but the content creation is

equally important. Facebook is the world's largest repository of photographs. People don't realize

that. They should because they've been uploading them like crazy.

A content sharing network like Twitter borrowing from SMS, which is why they use 140

characters. With these kind of services comes a bit of an evolution in our understanding of what

a website actually is. It used to be all about presenting content. Web 1.0, that was old learning.

That was the content based paradigm. Web 2.0 became about interaction and communication and

it made us think about content a bit differently.

p.117

Content is very important. It became data. Content was something that was stored in a database

and then presented in different ways or shared or manipulated around what was called the mash-

up.

The mash-up, what you'd do is take content from one database and content from another

database and mash it up. You would take Google Maps, for example, and a list of every

Starbucks and create a map with all the Starbucks on it (which I never use because I hate

Starbucks). In Canada we have Tim Horton's coffee.

What's interesting is these websites became places not only where you shared data, they became

places where you manipulated data and created new data. Websites actually became like little

programs, like little applications. There was a slogan, "the Web as platform." That phenomenon

is still very much at work today. Every website you go to almost is a platform of some sort.

Different platforms, different ways of doing things, but what they are all doing is integrating

data. All of them, except old websites that were created in 1995 and nobody's done anything with

them since.

Here's what I worked on. This is a version of Web 2.0, a version of the whole idea. What I would

do is, I would take data from different websites in a data format called RSS and all you need to

know about RSS is it's content computers can read. That's all you need to know. I would take

that content and I would use my computer programs to join it and use my computer programs to

filter it and produce output. That's pretty handy.

I started, for example, and I did create a single feed (which is what the output is called, a 'feed'),

a single feed of all the content about a certain subject. I have one you can look at it now, I'll do it

right now, listen to the music, on www.mooc. [indecipherable 0:42:21] . It looks like a great site,

that I write every day, but I don't. I read it. It's pretty interesting. I don't do a thing to create it. It's

just aggregated content on the subject of MOOCs joined together and then output as a newsletter.

This is an incredibly powerful technology. I cannot emphasize how powerful this technology is.

It puts into the hands of people the capacity to create qualitative resources, the capacity to bring

resources from wherever they may be on the Internet and create a single resource. Or the

capacity to create a single web page that is dynamic, that is always current, and draws on data

from different places.

If you go look at a weather page they operate in the same way. Exactly the same way. There are

hundreds of weather stations around the world and they pull these weather stations, the content is

in a certain code, they decode the content, and then they present the information. That's how

weather sites work. This leads us directly to the concept of connectivism.

You see how easy this is? We've gone from connecting content, connecting content, to

connectivism. The idea here now is that we have all of these resources, all of the content

produced by all of the people on their blogs, on YouTube and Flickr accounts, wherever, and you

p.118

can have all of these people with lists of their friends in social networks maybe or as email

contact lists or whatever. They create this network. We have the technology now, finally, to join

all these things together.

Connectivism is the theory of education that you come up with when you think about how

education can work using this connected technology. The term, of course, derives from George

Siemens who wrote an important paper called "Connectivism" and he describes connectivism

pretty much as a pedagogy.

The phrase, "I store my knowledge in my friends," is one of the slogans from his original

characterization and the idea is I do not need to memorize everything I know, in other words I

don't need to know everything I know, I simply need to know where to find it. It's a new type of

skill. It's the skill of creating networks and traversing networks. It's a new kind of understanding.

My contribution to connectivism is the depiction of knowledge as a network state. What I mean

by that very precisely is to know something is to be in a certain connected state. That's kind of a

hard concept, in one sense, but it's an easy concept in another sense.

To know something, in my theory, is to be able to recognize it. That's how I know Diego when I

see him. He doesn't wear a name tag, although if I did that's how I would recognize, but I look at

him, I see his face, I do this. Sorry, I'm just kidding. I recognize him.

That's how a physicist solves the problem at the end of the chapter. The physicist looks at the

problem and recognizes "Oh, it's that kind of problem." What is that recognition? What is that

capacity? We, as humans, are composed of a network as well. It's a neural network. You have, I

don't know, 100 billion neurons. These neurons are all connected to each other.

To learn is to create those pathways between neurons. To know something is to have a certain set

of connections. What happens technically and literally? When I recognize Diego certain

connections fire in my brain. Those connections are created from previous experiences. That's

how I created them. I got out there, I went to Columbia, I saw Diego, I walked around, I talked

with him for a while. I'm not very good with faces so it took several visits. I formed the neural

network in my mind.

What's interesting about connectivism is that societies learn that way, too. Societies have

knowledge that way, too, and this is what George was seeing. George was seeing social

knowledge. I see personal knowledge. It's two different kinds of knowledge but it's created the

same way.

In society, we connect to people and we connect objects like learning objects, like flowers, like

maps, like YouTube videos, like photographs, like pictures of my cat. We connect all of these

together. What a society knows is expressed by those connections. Society learns by creating

p.119

new connections. There is some knowledge that only a society can have. It's knowledge so large,

so complex, no individual person can have it.

There are examples all around us of that kind of knowledge. Look at this room. Could any of you

or any one person build this room? Not possible. Nobody could know that much, especially if

you include the computers and the software on the computer and all your clothing and all the

wiring and the lighting systems and the translation booth and the knowledge of two languages to

make that work. No one person could do it, but collectively, or maybe more accurately

cooperatively, all of us together, through interaction, create the knowledge that is represented by

this room.

This phenomenon of creating knowledge in an object is called ‘stigmergy’ in English. I have no

idea what that would be in Spanish. It's the same thing for an anthill. An anthill shares

knowledge one ant to the other by creating physical artifacts. A scent, a tunnel, an object left

behind. That's how ants communicate, using objects.

We have this picture of connectivism. We have this picture of learning as connecting, as

knowledge, as a network of connections. We have this idea of learning as immersion into an

environment. What we want to do, what we want to happen, is for people to recognize.

We know that we cannot create recognition just by telling people things. You cannot create

recognition just by describing. Sometimes people can recognize me by description, but generally

it doesn't work very well.

In order to recognize you need to be in the situation, you need to be practicing with the materials

that you want to be able to recognize, the type of material. There's a whole complex series of

connection through inferences that we make. Jay Cross characterize this as informal learning,

and what is informal learning? Informal learning is learning that you conduct for yourself,

through your interactions in a community. That's a model that should by now in this talk sound

very familiar.

What Jay is adding to the concept of informal learning is that now there's no structure, now

there's no organization, now there's no professor. People learn for themselves and they design

their own learning. This was demonstrated, and I thought demonstrated very effectively in the

EduCamps at the edge of [inaudible 0:53:10] here in Columbia. It's a model that's been replicated

elsewhere, where the idea is you bring people together, and you don't have a formal agenda of,

"First we'll learn this. Then we'll learn this. Then we'll learn this."

What you have scattered around in a room are different stations. People who have knowledge go

to these stations and share that knowledge. People who need knowledge go to these stations and

listen to the people who have knowledge.

p.120

Except they don't just talk and listen, they actually have whatever it is that they're interested in

right in front of them. They can learn to create blogs by creating blogs, learn to record audio by

recording audio. The structure is not defined. There is this concept, and this is what EduCamps

come out of, this concept of conference that is generally called barter camps.

A barter camp is simply a room, or a series of rooms, and a starting time. You say, "We will

have a barter camp at such and such a place at such a time." You might suggest a topic, online

learning, audio recording, high definition photography, whatever.

People arrive in the room, and if they have something they would like to share, they write it up

on the wall. If people are interested in learning about that, they sign up for it. If you put

something up on the wall and nobody signs up for it, that's fine. You go somewhere else, and you

learn from someone else.

There is no preset structure there. The idea of running these barter camps is, "Whatever we

talked about was the right thing to talk about. Whatever the outcome was, was the right

outcome." It's the idea that, when people interact together in this kind of environment, in this

learning environment, they are able to self organize.

They are able to prioritize their own learning. It's a very interesting and different educational

experience, and it gets you right into the community that you are trying to learn about. The

technological equivalent of the barter camp is the personal learning environment.

This is a diagram by Scott Wilson who works in Great Britain. The idea of the personal learning

environment is that you treat the entire word as your learning environment. Then you connect to

different kinds of resources. You can connect to blogging sites, photo sites, learning management

systems, to-do lists, videos, your own website, Facebook, Twitter, whatever you want. The actual

technology is RSS or other standards similar to RSS.

The same sort of bringing together of content, that I described earlier, happens in a personal

learning environment. Learning as a whole in this model, becomes a network created by

hundreds, thousands, millions of individual personal learning environments.

Our learning network is, each one of us connected to our list of friends, our list of learning

resources, our list of activities. Connecting to them, making new connections, interacting,

creating this new interaction. By this interaction, by a creating these connections.

Into that mix now, comes the idea of open courses. If you think about it. Here's our personal

learning environment. Here's a learner, a student, a person who wants to learn. All of these

around the student, are open educational resources. If you organize them a little bit, or even just

create an environment for them here, and called it a course, now we have an open online course.

The idea here is, that an open online course is composed of. Well, I'll come back to that,

whatever a course is composed of, but the important thing is that it is open. That anybody in the

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world can access that course. Without paying money, without filling in a form, giving your email

address, and your telephone number, and your dog's birthday.

Open courses have a long history. Open courses began to exist in the idea of "OpenCourseWare"

created by MIT. Yes, the same place that we got Creative Commons from.

We get a number of initiatives. MIT OpenCourseWare, and then there's the OpenCourseWare

Consortium of various universities producing the same thing.

What this is is all materials that you would need in a course, the readings, the curriculum, the

problem sets, maybe some videos, etc.

Connections is the same thing. It was created at Rice University. What they did is they created an

environment that course authors could enter and use to create their open courses. Pretty

innovative. A lot like Blogger, only for courses.

OpenLearn is an initiative of the Open University of Great Britain -- still exists, very important,

very widely used -- that has complete course packages.

You remember at the start of this topic, talking about the two models of distance education? One

model was the content model. This is the twenty-first century version of that model.

Edith, a self-standing course package, is programmed learning. It takes you step-by-step through

the material.

We have the commercial models, we have the publicly supported models. We also have the

sharing or open-source models. I mentioned three here, WikiEducator, Curriki, and Wikiversity.

They are all initiative that use a wiki, which is simply a website that anybody can read and

anybody can edit. They use these websites to create courses or to create curriculum.

The model they follow is Wikipedia, only they use the Wikipedia model, instead of creating an

encyclopedia, they create coursework. Good idea.

David Wylie -- remember him? -- created a wiki for his course in open educations, the course

that he taught at Utah State University and, later on, at Brigham Young University. The idea that

he had was to make the course materials that he was offering his class not just readable, but

editable by anybody.

Reinhard Weiner wrote up a whole bunch of his classes for him. Well, I didn't write the whole

class, but I wrote bits and pieces and added stuff and gave myself all kinds of credit.

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Man 1: Good tip.

Stephen: Alec Couros, who's an instructor in Saskatchewan, Canada, launched open courses and

what he did is he opened up his online communications environment. He was using, and still

uses, I think, a product called Illuminate. Today it's called Blackbird Collaborate.

What he did is he said, "I'm having my course in Illuminate at such-and-such a time. My class,

from here in Saskatchewan, will join me, and anyone else in the world who wants to join me can

do so as well.

Now, that was pretty cool. His [indecipherable 1:03:09] and there's people from around the

world were sitting in on Alec's classes and interacting and discussing the topic of the day.

If you think about it, it was a way of giving the students in his class a way to become a part of a

wider community. They wanted to learn of it, because now, instead of just talking to each other,

they started talking to experts around the world.

That also happened in David Wylie's class. Now, instead of just getting content from the

professor, they were getting content from anywhere around the world.

What's really cool here, I think, is by opening the content and opening the interaction, we're

almost able enough to blend these two major threads of distance learning, the content and the

interaction. Opening them both, we can make them both work together just in the same way we

did with e-learning, just in the same way we did in things like [indecipherable 1:04:27] and

informal learning. Now we're doing this in an institutional environment.

The very first Nice chain to be called massive open online courses. When you first look at them,

they're a horrible mess. What they are really is a combination of all of the things that I've been

talking about so far in this talk. All of the different pieces of the puzzle come together to form

these massive open online courses.

The very first MOOC was hosted by George Simmons and myself. It was called "Connectivism

and Connected Knowledge" and we launched it in 2008. This picture is a representation created

by one of the students in the class. It was a representation of a class. We didn't do this. We

couldn't do this.

The idea here of MOOCs is to take the concept of open content, the concept of open interaction

and open community, and the concept of open classes and bring them all together. That's exactly

what we did.

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We offered it out of the University of Manitoba. It was a credit course and the students who were

enrolled in the University of Manitoba needed to do some assignments and we opened it up to

anyone in the world and we had nearly 300 people join us and that was a real surprise to us.

That's when open online courses became massive open online courses.

How did we design this? Remember, we are creating a network and remember that to learn is to

create a network, knowledge is the state of the network. I asked what constitutes successful

knowledge, successful networks? That's a good question. We all know about networks that can

fail. The power grid is a network. When we have a blackout it fails. A community of people is a

network, but if a disease comes through and wipes out half of the population that's a failure.

These things are called cascade phenomenon. What it is is the network is effected by a force that

attacks every entity all at once and it leads to segmentation and network fail. A viral idea or a

piece of propaganda is a cascade phenomenon. You have an idea. It can be something simple like

a tune, like a [indecipherable 1:07:55] tune maybe. They were pretty viral. One person says it

and then two people and four people and eight people and eventually everybody's singing a hit

song.

An idea like racism. Again, one of these viruses that starts in one place and they can spread

through society as a cascade phenomenon. It's an example of network failure. You need to design

networks so that they can grow, so that they can adapt, so that they can change, so that they can

learn. Just the same way as humans. You need to design humans in the same way except you

don't get to design humans. It's hard. You don't really get to design societies, either. They're too

large for one person to design.

What you do is you can design the pieces that go together. You can design the properties that,

when combined, will lead to more effective network. This is what I call the semantic principle.

Sorry about the name. What these are, are my idea of principles of successful networking. I don't

pertain that they're necessarily true or that all of these can only lead to work but they are what I

see at this point in time from my vantage point.

Autonomy, diversity, openness, and interactivity. Diversity. You think about a network, you

think about a successful network. A successful network is made of pieces that are different from

each other, not the same. Imagine you had a conversation where everybody said the same thing.

Imagine you had a debate where everybody had the same idea. These would not be productive.

They would not lead to anything interesting. Networks need diversity.

Networks need individuals with different points of view. One of the things that we really tried to

promote when we designed our MOOCs was to promote the idea that people would read

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different things and not the same things. We did not have a single assigned text. We had 100.

Nobody can read 100 texts but you would pick and choose from those texts and then everybody

would have a different perspective and that's how we had interesting conversations.

Openness. We need to be open to new information. Closed systems become stagnant. Closed

systems literally choke on their own waste. The system has to have input, has to have output.

Raw materials that come in, finished product that goes out. The idea here is for any

communication to happen there needs to be an open flow from one entity to the next entity. This

is why so often we find openness in conflict with commercialization, because commercialization

very often, not always, but very often is based on a model of closing what was previously open.

Autonomy. This is a hard principle for many people to accept, but it's the idea that each

individual manages his or her own learning. As John Stuart Mill said, "Each person in a society

perceives his own good in his own way." This is essential to produce diversity. This is essential

to produce communication and interaction. It is essential to support learning.

If you do not have autonomy then the knowledge of one becomes the knowledge of everyone. If

the one is corrupt then everyone is corrupt. Autonomy is what protects the system from cascade

phenomena that damage the network as a whole.

Finally, interactivity. This is the idea that I was talking about earlier that knowledge is created by

the interaction between the members. It's really important to think of this because in traditional

learning, remember the transactional theory of learning where the knowledge is in the head of the

professor and then will be put into the head of the student. This model isn't like that. In this

model, the knowledge is created by the interactions.

When we interact with each other, we as a group, or maybe not a group, but we as a network will

create knowledge that only the networks could create because it's too large for any one

individual. Then each individual in the network will look at that knowledge that we created and

learn their own thing from it. All of us together form a society. That society is greater than any

one of us. Then each of us individually draws an individual meaning, individual knowledge,

from that society.

That gives us a story about MOOC pedagogy. That gives us a story about self-directed, informal

learning where the process is informal rather than the content, where the emphasis is on selecting

these resources, finding these resources, creating them, mashing them up, mixing them, using

them to communicate with each other.

The pedagogy of MOOCs is the pedagogy of immersion into a community, of interaction with

that community. The technology supporting the MOOC is the technology that has been used to

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support these learning object repositories, these social networks and social networking sites,

these individual places where you can create content, these RSSs that join content together.

Think about the sort of content repositories you have now. One famous content repository that,

all at once, was called the Khan Academy. All the Khan Academy was, originally, was a bunch

of individuals. Very badly done, but well enough done that they worked. They weren't produced

by a professional corporation. They were produced by some guy who knew a little math and

physics and wanted to share. That was our learning object repository.

It's not a horrible institution that created objects anymore. It's a community based model. When it

began, Khan Academy was a community based model. Then the Gates Foundation got a hold of

him and it's not community anymore. It moved into a different model which will eventually lead,

in my mind, to commercialization.

There are different technologies. There are a huge, huge range of technologies today for creating,

updating, polling, and sampling these repositories. I mentioned Sword, which is a deposit for

polling contributed content to a repository, Core, which is a way to connect repositories, and

Saw. This top is too short to allow me to even begin to list these, but, trust me, there is a lot of

technology for creating and linking repositories.

Interesting work that is about to begin, that is beginning, is our ability to build personal learning

environments and MOOCs that tap into repositories. This is software I built in order to do this

task. It's called Grasshopper. The model is really very simple. You get input from community,

input from content. You put it into a database. You turn your content into data. You mix it and

mash it up and then you send it forward as email letters, as web pages, or as RSS or other feeds

that will feed into somebody else's Grasshopper.

This is also a model of the activity that individuals are expected to perform when they take a

MOOC. Aggregate, re-mix, re-purpose, feed forward. That is the pedagogical design of a

MOOC, at least the MOOCs the way they should be. In this environment, we are working with

open content and it works best with open content. As soon as we put a barrier then your

aggregation and re-mixing begins to fail.

We also opened not just the content, we opened the instruction itself. We opened the way we

organize our courses. We combine our courses in a wiki. We opened up the course sections. The

year 2008 we did two sessions a week. We had several hundred people at first join these. It got

kind of chaotic but that was fun. Different degrees of openness lead to different types of open

educational resources and different kinds of open courses.

James Taylor or Jim Taylor from the University of Southern [indecipherable 1:19:47] has come

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up with what he calls a logic model, which is neither logical or a model but I digress. I'm

kidding. Talking about different aspects of openness. Accessing open educational resources.

Accessing open support via volunteers. This is what I would call accessing the community,

interacting with the community.

Open assessment. This is the next stage of these open online courses is open assessment. Then

finally, open credentials, open degrees. There are degrees of openness here beyond what we have

experienced thus far. We've begun to explore them in the MOOCs that we've begun following

up.

In CCK09, our second MOOC, much to our surprise, the students from CCK08 came back and

then, even more to our surprise, they started teaching the course. We had competing teachers of

the same course. It was all very interesting. Jim Grim's course, DS106, and I can do a whole talk

on that, several talks, had an emphasis on projects and creativity. DS stands for digital storytime.

It's about how you use different media to tell stories. They explore different types of media in

different ways of telling stories.

He opened that up and what he opened up was the list of assignments that he gives students. He

said, "I don't want to be the one to decide on the assignments. You," to the world, "you come up

with assignments and then the students will do them." people from all around the world

suggested different assignments and it became creative channels. It was amazing. It was

wonderful.

Another course we did was critical literacies. That focused on the underlying skills because one

of the common comments we have is people need to have certain literacies, certain basic

abilities, in order to be able to learn for themselves. I gave a talk and asked could we use a

MOOC to teach how best to use a MOOC? We use a MOOC to help people learn basic skills.

It still is inclusive, I think, although we learned a lot. I started in 1995 with something called

"Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies" as my first open content. This whole idea of critical

thinking and critical reasoning has been something interesting over the years. This is the latest

phase of that. I think, personally, that we can indeed use distributed, open, online learning in

order to foster the skills needed.

You need to think of this as a process where people learn through immersion and they learn good

argumentation through immersion. They can learn how to spot good resources through

immersion. It's exactly how somebody learns how to make a salad or cook a steak. You put them

in a kitchen, you tell them to do things, they begin to do things, they watch the master, and

eventually they become it. It's the same with critical thinking. It's the same with critical limits.

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After we had been doing MOOCs for three years, commercial MOOCs came on the scene. The

first one that was launched was the Stanford AI course last year. It attracted, I don't even know

what the real numbers were, but something like 160,000 registrations. I think something like

40,000 people finished the course, I think. I don't know.

Different sources have different numbers. The main message here is the numbers are huge. Then

there were commercial spin-offs from this based on models like Khan Academy, based on the

traditional elements model. The idea is they would be MOOC companies. They would offer

courses that were very similar to the Stanford AI course.

The Stanford AI course was not a MOOC the way we did it.

The Stanford AI course was the course materials and the course sessions open and accessible

online. Then assignments were given. What they added, which I thought was really interesting,

was automated evaluations of submitted assignments. I find it very interesting that this model of

content-focused MOOCs, which is what they are, they're content-focused MOOCs, there is no

element of community in them, these models came out of the same places as creative comments,

as MIT open source.

They come out of MIT, Stanford, Harvard, the large commercial US universities. There's a

certain way, a certain approach, that they have.

Now, we're in a world of MOOCs and certainly in my world, and maybe in your world, when I

read about educational technology today everyone is talking about MOOCs. MOOC this, MOOC

that. We offered a MOOC on the future of higher education. I was at a website. Here it is again.

www.mooc.ca. If you go to that you will find links to hundreds, maybe thousands, of MOOCs.

MOOCs of the connectivist model that we use, we call them CMOOCs, MOOCs of the MIT,

Stanford nexus or XMOOCs, MOOCs that are network based like the ones that George and I

built, MOOCs that are task based like Jim Grune's DS106 with all the projects and assignments,

MOOCs that are content based like Stanford AI. Of course there are other [indecipherable

1:27:17] .

The future of MOOCs...I'm really sorry about this diagram. That's me drawing by hand inside the

Illuminate environment, but it's a visual representation of the future of MOOCs. At the center,

because there is a historical origin of this, are the content based XMOOCs. Around that center is

the network, the community of practice, the interaction and participation. All of the elements that

went into making the C, the individual creations, the sharing, the aggregation, re-mixing, re-

purposing, forwarding. None of that is in the center. All of that happens outside of the center.

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In a university context, none of that is in the university. All of that happens outside the

university. Outside of the CMOOC are the web services that people use. Twitter, Facebook,

RSS, Google Plus. Hi, Google Plus people. Delicious. Outside all of that is open assessment.

Open assessment may be priority assessment, it may be open assessment as in Indiragandhi

national open university. It may be testing. There's a site called Brain Bench that does online

testing. It may be [indecipherable 1:29:03] badges. This is the least well defined, but you can see

this ecosystem being formed.

This ecosystem is the future of online learning. So where are we going? I'm almost done with

this talk. This is the good part so hang up your phones. What's coming very soon, maybe even

tomorrow, who knows, I don't know, but soon, open educational apps. Of course. They're based

on the app store model. What is the app store? The app store is an object repository. That's all it

is, filled with products because it's commercial.

We're moving to an environment, especially looking at Android, where there are open apps

already available. There are a lot of commercial applications. If you're wondering about the

future of books, the book becomes the e-book becomes the app. Instead of buying a physics text

book you will buy a physics app. That's the content. You still need the community around that.

MOOCs, with access to app repositories, people will use different apps, they're already

beginning to use them, to create other apps and to share. That's why you need open apps, so

everybody can use them. These, in turn, as they get more and more interesting, educational

content will be supported by things like IMSs, learning technology integration. All that is is

language that allows one app to launch another app.

Remember back in the 1990s we used to have launchers. Now we have learning technology

interaction. The idea is if you have a learning resource and you have access to online MOOCs

and that learning resource wants to start a chat you use LTI and starts the chat. If you use the

same resource on a different MOOC you use LTI to launch a different chat. It's a bit

complicated, well, it's a lot complicated. In essence, it is a way one thing can launch another

thing the same way even though it's not the same as the first one. That wasn't clear at all. It's an

app launcher. With the app launcher in MOOCs, an open app market will emerge.

Here's the same concept represented visually. You see how bad the text based engine is. You

have all these different kinds of systems, your learning management systems that I talked about

at the start, MOOCs, and they use something like a launcher, LTI, so launch, eliminate, or big

blue button or a PhD application or perhaps a spreadsheet or widget. The idea of LTI is that it is

connecting distributed applications to educational worlds.

The next step is we move beyond the idea of stand alone courses at all. This is already beginning

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to happen. When it hits it's going to be this huge wave. Right now, the model is a course belongs

to a university or a course belongs to a college or a course belongs to a school. What if it didn't?

What if the course was just out there? Then the university accessed the course as an external

resource?

That's what's happening. That's what the course server model is. They have a very narrow

definition of a course, but basically you have a course and then all of these university partners

access this course. If you have one course being accessed by a university, why not by two

universities? Why not by three universities?

Even better, why not have the people of one university communicate with the people in the other

university? Why not have these people communicate with the wider community? You have this

idea of the course at the center, it's that same picture we had earlier, the badly drawn picture, the

course at the center shared by different universities. It becomes the nexus for a community, the

nexus for a community practice, around that particular course.

In the far future, courses will be out there on their own. They'll have their own management,

their own structure. Or maybe not. They might just be a self-organizing community that a

university taps into. You sign up for physics at MIT and your professor say good, sign up to the

global physics community network. That's your course. Interesting. Makes you wonder why

you're paying MIT $35,000 a year. Assessment models are going to change dramatically.

Now already, today, there is commercialized assessment that stands apart from courses. Here is

the model. Again, this is part of the courses and part of the university's plan. You sign up for

your course at MIT. The professor says, "Here is the worldwide physics community. Go there,

learn something, come back to me."

You go there. Now you're in the worldwide physics community. You're interacting with all the

people and you're learning from learning objects and watching videos and then you go back to

the MIT professor and the MIT professor says, "OK. Now we have an assessment for you." He

sends you to the Washington Post Kaplan assessment service. You do your assessment and then

Kaplan sends back your assessment results to MIT and MIT gives you a degree and you've just

received an MIT education. Only $34,000.

In the far future, this model would be subverted because people will realize that it is ridiculous.

In the far future, the idea of an assessment service will make less and less sense because you

have been participating in MOOCs. You have been participating in your community. You have

shared your content, your communication with other people. You have made connections. They

know you. They know your ideas. You begin to develop a reputation in that community.

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That reputation in the community is your assessment. Right now it's very simplistic. We have

clouts that counts the number of Twitter followers and says if you have a large number of

Twitter followers you must be very intelligent. Pretty stupid. Pretty simplistic. That's what killed

my clout. Imagine if you're using big data network analytics so that if you write a post or you

create some content a system can track the ripple effect of that content through the network. It

can see the influence that you have, can see the push back that is created, which is also good.

You want people not just to agree with you but to disagree with you. The worst thing that can

happen is if you are ignored. Seeing who is listening to you, seeing who is arguing with you,

seeing where you place in that network. Where you place is a set of coordinates. That set of

coordinates is a grade. That's assessment of the future. Almost done.

Sustainability. How on Earth are we going to pay for this? $34,000 MIT degrees is not going to

work. There are many, many people now attempting to defend traditional education with

traditional classes and traditional universities and at the top you have MIT and Stanford and all

the same people who take these ideas and commercialize them. Then you have your mid-level

universities like University of Alberta, University of Toronto, and then you have Frank's Garage

College or whatever.

This model won't work. This model will be replaced, must be replaced, by a community based

model and the reason for that is in the long term it's the only sustainable model. It's the only way

to pay for a system that enables everybody to be educated.

What you're going to see developing over time, what we are already seeing develop over time, is

this community infrastructure. This is very often the part that is going to be provided by a social

service or a government entity.

Some entity with the resources to create a communications infrastructure and the interest to see it

happen. Governments understand the need for communications infrastructure and the need for a

certain level of education that is provided for everybody. That's why your government has

invested so much in education. That is why my government has invested so much in education.

There is a dramatic relation between education in society and the level of achievement and the

standard of living in that society. This is why governments find this so important and why, in my

mind, they should find it even more important than they do.

You will have a commercial layer. It would be foolish to think there would not be specialist

commercial services and there will always be competition between these services and the

government infrastructure. That's just a little bit at the center.

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The vast bulk of learning will be these communities that are created. It doesn't show up well on

that slide. I should rewrite that slide. The vast bulk of education will be content communities

where learning content is created by the learners themselves and then shared with each other.

It's an iterative process. It's a process that actually feeds into the professional domain of activity.

I'll give you an example of what I mean. Climate monitoring will be something that is very

important to people in the future. What is the air temperature, what is the rainfall, what is the

wind? You need to get very good, very precise data from a wide number of locations. It's not just

at the airport.

People that are experts in climatology would design this system. Professors will be involved.

Designers, instrument designers, will be involved. The guy who goes out and installs the weather

station will be involved. Students, as well, will be involved. Individual students will play

individual roles.

The way to think of climate monitoring as a profession is to think of it as this large network with

the experts very tightly connected and interacting at the center and then loosely connected to

professionals and then more loosely connected to technicians and then even more loosely

connected to students. But everybody playing a role in the actual work of measuring the climate.

You don't have the artificial climate student center and then the real climate. Everybody's

involved in actual climate measuring, actual climate modeling, actual climate predictions.

Learning becomes a member of the profession. Being a member of the profession means being a

learner in that profession. Everybody learns, everybody teaches, everybody creates, everybody

consumes. As a whole, you create an educational system out of this.

At the edges, the very edges, you have commercial media, you have commercial support, you

have products that people buy, Internet access, computers, things like that that have to be paid

for. At the center you have the government infrastructure, the core that makes the entire system

possible. The bulk of learning in this model is the big middle, the donut that is composed of all

of society. That isn't an actual model. I just made it up. I just made up that analogy, but that is the

model. That is my talk.

Those are flowers. I don't know what they're called, but I thought they were interesting. They

were just on the road. Thank you so much for your kind attention and your patience. I know we'll

have interesting discussions about these concepts through the day. Thank you very much.

Bogota, Colombia

March 7, 2013

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Evaluating a MOOC

I was asked (along with Dave Cormier and George Siemens):

How might it be possible to show that cMOOCs are effective for learning, in the sense of

providing evidence that institutions might accept so as to support opening up more

courses to outside participants (a la ds106, Alec Couros' EC&I 831, etc.)? Or, more

generally, providing evidence that participation in and facilitating cMOOCs is worthy of

support by institutions... What I'm looking for are criteria one might use to say that a

cMOOC is successful. What should participants be getting out of cMOOCs?

I think the best way to understand success in a MOOC is by analogy with, say a book, or a game,

or a trip to the city.

The person taking the MOOC is like a person reading a book, playing a game, or taking a trip to

the city. It is impossible to talk about 'the objective' of such an activity - some people want to

learn something (and others something else), others are doing it for leisure (and others as part of

their job), others to make friends (and others to get away from their friends for a while), etc.

If we were a commercial enterprise we could focus on sales. Then we could focus an ad

campaign on the actual reasons people take MOOCs - but we wouldn't need to worry about

whether they were met, only about whether our advertising enticed people to pay the fee. But I

think that's a pretty narrow criterion for success.

I would adopt George's suggestion, and look to the institutional goals for offering MOOCs. But

again here we find a wide array of interests: some want to use MOOCs as advertising, to entice

people to enrol in other courses; others want to experiment with new methods of delivering

learning; others want to support products or services they sell; still others want to serve a social

good and provide free learning from the community. Each objective will have its own metric for

success.

My own response treats a MOOC for what it is: a network. I then ask whether it satisfied the

properties of a successful network. I can do this from two perspectives: first, from a process

perspective; and second, from an outcomes perspective.

The process perspective asks whether the MOOC satisfied the criteria for successful networks.

Of these, the most important are contained in what I call the Semantic Condition, which ensures

that the MOOC remains a living system. The semantic condition contains four parts: autonomy,

diversity, openness, and interactivity. The MOOC is assessed against each of these and a degree

of compliance may be found.

The outcomes perspective looks at the MOOC as a knowing system. By that what I mean is that

the MOOC should exhibit network properties on a macro scale - in other words, that we should

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be able to say things about the MOOC without reference to particular individuals in the MOOC.

This is to treat the MOOC as an entity which perceives, or which learns, as a whole. These

things are emergent properties, for example, emergent knowledge or emergent learning. Did the

MOOC as a whole produce some new insight, or recognize some new phenomenon in its area of

study?

MOOC success, in other words, is not individual success. We each have our own motivations for

participating in a MOOC, and our own rewards, which may be more or less satisfied. But MOOC

success emerges as a consequence of individual experiences. It is not a combination or a sum of

those experiences - taking a poll won't tell us about them - but rather a result of how those

experiences combined or meshed together.

This may not reflect what institutional funders want to hear. But my thinking and hope is that

over the long term MOOCs will be self-sustaining, able to draw participants who can see the

value of a MOOC for what it is, without needing to support narrow and specific commercial or

personal learning objectives.

Moncton, Canada

March 18, 2013

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The Quality of Massive Open Online

Courses

Published as The Quality of Massive Open Online Courses in International

Handbook of E-Learning Edited by Badrul H. Khan, Mohamed Ally, Volume 1

Theoretical Perspective , Routledge, Mar 22, 2015.

In this short contribution I would like to address the question of assessing the quality of massive

open online courses. The assessment of the quality of anything is fraught with difficulties,

depending as it does on some commonly understood account of what would count as a good

example of the thing, what factors constitute success, and how that success against that standard

is to be measured.

With massive open online courses, it is doubly more difficult, because of the lack of a common

definition of the MOOC itself, and because of the implication of external factors in the actual

perception and performance of the MOOC. Moreover, it is to my mind far from clear that there is

agreement regarding the purpose of a MOOC to begin with, and without such agreement

discussions of quality are moot.

Let me begin, then, with a statement describing what I take a MOOC to be. I will then address

what I believe ought to be the purpose of a MOOC, the success factors involved in serving that

purpose, the design features that impact success, and finally, questions regarding the

measurement of those features.

What is a MOOC?

The term MOOC as is commonly known stands for ‘Massive Open Online Course’. There have

been numerous efforts recently to define each of these four terms, sometimes, as I observe

here172, in such a way as to result in an interpretation opposite to the common understanding of

the term. Thus in some case a MOOC is being thought of as a smallish closed offline (or hybrid)

ongoing activity. This, for example, is what we see in the phenomenon of the “wrapped”

MOOC173.

To my own mind, we should be relatively rigid in our definition of a MOOC, if for no other

reason than to distinguish a MOOC from the myriad other forms of online learning that have

172 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-great-rebranding.html

173 http://mikecaulfield.com/2013/04/04/oers-rule-moocs-drool/

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existed before and since, and hence to identify those aspects of quality that are unique to

MOOCs. Hence, a MOOC is to my mind, defined along the following four dimensions:

Massive – here I attend not to the success of the MOOC in attracting many people, but in the

design elements that make educating many people possible. And here we need to keep in mind

that to educate is to do more than merely deliver content, and more than to merely support

interaction, for otherwise the movie theatre and the telephone system are, respectively, MOOCs.

My own theory of education is minimal (so minimal it hardly qualifies as a theory, and is almost

certainly not my own): “to teach is to model and to demonstrate; to learn is to practice and

reflect.” Thus, minimally, we need an environment that supports all four of these on a massive

scale. In practice, what this means is a system designed so that bottlenecks are not created in any

of the four attributes: modeling, demonstration, practice, and reflection.

To offer a simple example: an important part of reflection is the capacity to perform and then

discuss performance with others. If each person must perform and discuss the performance with

a specific person, such as the teacher, then a bottleneck is created, because there is not enough

time to allow a large number of people to perform. Similarly, if each performance and discussion

involves the entire class, the same sort of bottleneck is created. Hence, in order for a course to be

massive, performance and reflection must be designed in such a way that does not require that

certain people view all performances.

Open – I have had many arguments with people over the years regarding the meaning of ‘open’,

and these arguments have most always (to my perception) involved the other people attempting

to define ‘open’ in such a way as to make ‘open’ mean the same as ‘closed’. There is, for

example, the famous distinction between free as in ‘ gratis’, and free as in ‘ libre’.174 In education

there is in addition a definition of ‘open’ which is neither gratis nor libre, but instead refers to

‘open admissions’, or the removal of any academic barriers to participation in a course or

program.

For my own part, the meaning of ‘open’ has more to do with access to a resource, as opposed to

having to do with what one can do with a resource. The definition of ‘free software’, for

example, assumes that the software is already in your possession, and defines ways you can

inspect it, run it, and distribute it, without limitations.175 But this definition is meaningless to a

person who, for whatever reason, cannot access the software in the first place. The more

common and widely understood meanings of ‘free’ and ‘open’ are broader in nature, more

permissive with regard to access, and more restrictive with regard to the imposition of barriers.

174 http://www.sparc.arl.org/publications/articles/gratisandlibre.shtml

175 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

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In particular, something (a resource, a course, an education) is free and open if and only if:

- the resource may be read, run, consumed or played without cost or obligation. This addresses

not only direct fee-for-subscription, but also enclosure, for example, the bundling of ‘free’

resources in such a way that only those who pay tuition may access them

- there are reasonable ways to share the resource or to reuse the resource, and especially to

translate or format-shift the resource (but not necessarily to be able to sell or modify the

resource)

Having said that, as George Siemens and I discussed the development of MOOCs in 2008, we

were conscious of and communicated the fact that we were engaged in a progression of

increasingly open access to aspects of education:

 first, open access to educational resources, such as texts, guides, exercises, and the like

 next, open access to curriculum, including course content and learning design

 third, open access to criteria for success, or rubrics (which could then be used by

ourselves or by others to conduct assessments)

 fourth, open assessments (this was something we were not able to provide in our early

courses)

 fifth open credentials

It is worth remarking that by ‘open’ we very clearly intended both the aspects of access and

sharing to be included; what this meant in practice was that we expected course participants not

only to use course resources, curriculum, etc., but also to be involved in the design of these.

Hence, for example, before we offered CCK08, we placed the course schedule and curriculum on

a wiki, where it could be edited by those who were interested in taking the course (this was a

strategy adapted from the ‘Bar Camp’ school of conference organization and the EduCamp

model as employed by Nancy White and Diego Leal).

It is interesting to contrast our approach to ‘open’ with the “logic model”176 devised by James C.

Taylor177 and eventually adopted by OERu which preserved the openness of resources and

courses, but kept closed access to assessments and credentials. Such courses are not to my mind

‘open courses’ as a critical part of the course is held back behind a tuition barrier. Exactly the

same comment could be made of ‘free’ courses that entail the purchase of a required textbook.

The fact that some part of a course is free or open does not entail that the course as a whole is

free or open, and it is a misrepresentation to assert such.

176 http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/Logic_model

177 http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/e-jist/docs/vol10_no1/papers/full_papers/taylorj.htm

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Online – I mentioned above the phenomenon of ‘wrapped’ MOOCs, which postulate the use of a

MOOC within the context of a traditional location-based course; the material offered by the

MOOC is hence ‘wrapped’ with the trappings of a more traditional education. This is the sort of

approach to MOOCs which treats them more as modern-day textbooks, rather than as courses in

and of themselves.178

But insofar as these wrapped MOOCs are courses, they are no longer online, and insofar as they

are online, they are no longer courses. So whatever a ‘wrapped MOOC’ is, it is not a MOOC. It

is (at best) a set of resources misleadingly identified as a ‘MOOC’ and then offered (or more

typically, sold) as a means to supplement traditional courses.

For a MOOC to be ‘online’ entails that (and I’ll be careful with my wording here) no required

element of the course is required to take place at any particular physical location.

The ‘wrapped MOOCs’ are not MOOCs because you cannot attend a wrapped MOOC without

attending the in-person course; there will be aspects of the MOOC that are reserved specifically

for the people who have (typically) paid tuition and are resident at some college or university,

and are physically located at the appropriate campus at the appropriate time. Just as being online

is what makes it possible for these courses to be both massive and open, being located at a

specific place makes the course small and closed.

But by contrast, this does not eliminate MOOCs that include or allow elements of real-world

interaction or activity. Our original CCK08 MOOC recommended (but did not require) in-person

meet-ups, for example, and these were held at various locations around the world. MOOCs such

as ds106 require that a person go out into the world and take photographs (for example). In any

online course there will be a real-world dimension; what makes it an ‘online’ course is that it

does not specify a particular real-world dimension.

Course – before we launched our first MOOC both George Siemens and I were involved in

various activities related to free and open online learning. George, for example, had staged a very

successful online conference on Connectivism the year before. I had, meanwhile, been running

my newsletter service for the educational technology community since 2001. Each of these was

in its own way massive, open and online, but they were not courses. There is obviously some

overlap between ‘course’ and ‘conference’ and ‘community’, and people have since suggested

that there could be (or should be) massive open online communities of practice179 and of course

there could – but they are not MOOCs.

178 http://hapgood.us/2013/01/28/both-moocs-and-textbooks-will-end-up-courseware/

179 http://moocop.wordpress.com/

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To be clear: I am very supportive of the idea of massive open online communities, but the

MOOC is a different entity, with its own properties and role in the environment. And

specifically:

 a course is bounded by a start date and an end date

 a course is cohered by some common theme or domain of discourse

 a course is a progression of ordered events related to that domain

Why insist on these? Aside, that is, from the pedantic observation that if you call something a

‘course’ then it ought to have the properties of a course?

My own observation (and I was reluctant at first to create a ‘course’ precisely because of the

three limitations just specified above) is that the creation of temporary and bounded events

allows for engagement between communities that would not normally associate with each other.

Courses are a way of, if you will, stirring the pot. By creating a limited and self-contained event

we lower the barriers to participation – you’re not signing up for a lifetime commitment – and

hence increasing accessibility.

In a sense, the same reason we organize learning into courses is the reason we organize text into

books. Yes, simply ‘reading’ is useful and engaging, and widely recommended, but ‘reading a

book’ is defined and contained. A person can commit to ‘reading a book’ more easily than to

‘reading’, especially if by ‘reading’ we mean something that never ends.

Hence, massive open online learning that is not bounded, does not cohere around a subject, and

is not a progression of ordered events, is not a course, and outside the domain of discourse.

The Purpose of MOOCs

The first reaction is to suggest that the purpose of a MOOC is to help someone learn – they are,

after all, courses. But purposes are never so easily transparent, and education is a domain that

defines opacity, and to the combination does not easily yield to a simple statement of purpose.

Addressing the purpose of a MOOC as ‘learning’, for example, does not begin to address why

some person, organization or association would offer a MOOC, beyond at least those early

MOOCs that were offered as much to explore the possibilities of the format as much to attain

any educational objective.

The purpose of MOOCs offered by a commercial entity such as Coursera, for example, is to earn

revenue (and beyond that, advance the Coursera brand to enable future courses to also make

money). Meanwhile, the purpose of an institution offering a MOOC through Coursera may be

multifaceted and nuanced. Consider, for example, the statement that “This is truly in the spirit of

what we’re supposed to do in higher education, which is providing education and

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experimentation,” from Cole Camplese at Penn State.180 Compare with what Keith Devlin says:

“What I see is the true democratizing of higher education on a global scale. And in today’s world

– global village, Flat World, call it what you will – I think that is exactly what we (i.e., the entire

world, not just the highly privileged US) will need.”181

Even a focus on why students subscribe to MOOCs will not be revealing. Consider what the

founders of Coursera say about most students who sign up: ““Their intent is to explore, find out

something about the content, and move on to something else,” said Ms. Koller. Adding tuition

fees changes the dynamic, as does adding credentials at the end of the course. Coursera has

learned it can earn money charging for authentication services182, which satisfies both its need to

make money, and a student’s need for a certificate (though at the expense of no longer being free

and open).

Doing what he does so well, Curt Bonk has compiled a list of twenty “types, targets and intents”

of MOOCs183, including the following:

 high scoring or impressive MOOC participants get admissions privileges, job interviews,

or points if they later apply for a particular degree program, certificate, internship, or job;

 loss leader - give away one course in every department or program as a means to attract

new students to that major, program, or department;

 religious revival MOOC;

 bait and switch MOOC - use it as a means to sell a product or to turn the audience on to

something else.

It becomes clear through reflection that MOOCs serve numerous purposes, both to those who

offer MOOCs, those who provide services, and those who register for or in some way ‘take’ a

MOOC.

The original MOOC offered by George Siemens and myself had a very simple purpose at first: to

explain ourselves. The topic of ‘connectivism’ had achieved wide currency, and was the subject

of the online conference mentioned earlier, and yet remained the subject of considerable debate.

What was it? Was it even a theory? Did it even apply to education? Was it founded on real

research, or was it simply made up? We believed we had good answers to those questions, and

180 http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2013/04/19/Penn_State_expands_to_offer_Coursera_courses.aspx

181 http://devlinsangle.blogspot.ca/2012/11/mooc-lessons.html

182 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/08/coursera-begins-make-money

183 http://travelinedman.blogspot.ca/2012/06/twenty-thoughts-on-types-targets-and.html

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the curriculum was designed to lead participants (and ourselves!) through a clear and articulate

answering of them.

As we began to design the course (and in particular, as I began to use the gRSShopper

application184 I had designed to support my website and newsletter) it became clearer to both of

us that the purpose of the course was also to serve as an example of connectivism in practice.

After several years of describing the theory185 186 we began to feel some obligation to

demonstrate it in practice. So the course design gradually began to look less and less like a

traditional course, with topics and readings arranged in a nice linear order, and more like a

network, with a wide range of resources connected to each other and to participants. And the

course became much less about acquiring content or skills, and much more about making these

connections, and learning from what emerged as a result of them.

The participants in our MOOCs also demonstrated a similarly wide range of motivations. We

had several participants who were in the course for the research opportunities it offered (and

people like Jenny Mackness187, Frances Bell188 and Sui Fai John Mak189 have become voices in

their own right in the field). Others came with the intent to learn about connectivism, to

supplement their existing studies in a masters or PhD program. Others joined in to participate in

what they saw as an event, others to make connections and extend their social network (or as it

came later to be called, their ‘personal learning network’190). At least one (and maybe others)

came with the specific intent of discrediting connectivism (and in passing, to call George and

myself “techno-communists”).

Even if we limit our focus to what is putatively the primary function of a course, to teach, it

becomes difficult to identify the purpose of a MOOC. Much has been made of MOOC

completion rates191, with the (generally implicit) suggestion that completion is in some respects

tantamount to learning. However, it could be argued that enabling a person to sample a course

184 http://grsshopper.downes.ca/

185 http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

186 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/connectivism-and-connecti_b_804653.html

187 http://jennymackness.wordpress.com/

188 http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/902/1664

189 http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/

190 http://www.schrockguide.net/creating-your-pln.html

191 http://augmentedtrader.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/about-mooc-completion-rates-the-importance-of-

investment/

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and withdraw without having lost thousands of dollars of tuition is a success. Moreover, different

people want to learn different things: some about what connectivism is, some, how best to

criticize it, some, whether it even makes sense to their own experience.192

And there are different senses of learning. In one sense, to ‘learn’ is to acquire some knowledge

or skill, and it is this sense of learning that is most often associated with education, and

especially formal education. But there is an equally valid sense of learning, where the objective

is to achieve some outcome or complete some task, what Rogers (2006) calls “task-conscious

learning”193. This sort of task-focused outcome is much more common in informal learning; it is

the sort of learning I do, for example, when I dip into Stack Overflow194 to learn how to set the

value of a field before submitting an Ajax form.

It becomes clear that we cannot assess the purpose of a MOOC qua MOOC by assessing the

reasons and motivations of the people taking them, nor even by assessing the reasons and

motivations of those offering them. What makes a hammer a good hammer isn’t whether it

fulfills the reasons and motivations of the people using the hammer, because these people use it

variously as a screwdriver, bottle opener, doorstop, weapon, wrench, general-purpose machine

repair device, and as an implement for driving nails, screws, tables, pegs and other objects into

various sized holes. A MOOC, similarly, may be a very good or very poor PR device, may

transmit content very well or very poorly, may advance research a lot or not at all, all depending

on who is using it, how they are using it, and why.

MOOC Success Factors

The primary criticism of what I will address in this chapter is that success is process-defined

rather than outcomes-defined.195 Without outcomes measurement we cannot measure success, we

can’t focus our efforts toward that success, we can’t become more competitive and efficient, we

can’t plan for change and improvement, and we can’t define what you want to accomplish as a

result. All this is true, and yet there is no measure of outcome or success that can be derived from

designer and user motivations, or even from the uses to which MOOCs are put. The only

alternative is to identify what a successful MOOC ought to produce as output, without reference

to existing (and frankly, very preliminary and very variable) usage.

192 http://helistudies.edublogs.org/

193 Cited here: https://plus.google.com/102352099876644260792/posts/isymGxiZ1Ly

194 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2405190/jquery-set-ajax-return-value-in-form-field

195 http://www.tdcorp.org/pubs/Outcomes_Measurement_Article.pdf

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These outcomes are a logical consequence of the design of the MOOC. The same is true of a

hammer. This tool is defined as a hand-held third-class lever with a solid flat surface at the

business end. Anything that satisfies these criteria will, as an outcome, have the capacity to drive

a nail into a piece of wood (whether or not any hammer is ever used in this fashion). It has to be

under a certain weight to be hand-held, above a certain mass, and of a certain length, to be a

lever, and of certain material and design to have a hard flat surface.

When we are evaluating a tool, we evaluate it against its design specifications; mathematics and

deduction tell us from there that it will produce its intended outcome. It is only when we evaluate

the use of a tool that we evaluate against the actual outcome. So measuring drop-out rates,

counting test scores, and adding up student satisfaction scores will not tell us whether a MOOC

was successful, only whether this particular application of this particular MOOC was successful

in this particular instance.

The design of a MOOC is, in the first instance, as described above: it is a massive open online

course, and the design is successful to the extent it satisfies those four criteria, and unsuccessful

to the extent that it doesn’t. That said, however, there are many ways to create a massive open

online course, and within that domain, some may be more successful than others. So we need to

look at why we designed and developed the MOOC the way we did – why we made it massive,

open, online and a course, as described above. Why this model, say, and not a traditional online

instructor-led class, or an open online community, or any of a dozen other combinations?

What I begin with is the observation that each person has a different objective or motivation for

taking a course, and has different needs and objectives (it’s a lot like dating that way – we think

that everyone wants the same thing, but we find in practice that everybody wants something

slightly different). We looked at what we called ‘sifters’ and ‘filters’ to create learning

recommendation systems, resulting in work I presented at MADLat based on collaborative

filtering. “Collaborative filtering or recommender systems use a database about user preferences

to predict additional topics or products a new user might like.”196 There are different ways to

approach this problem; I adopted what we called ‘resource profiles’ to characterize resources and

make them accessible within a learning resources network.197 Since the work of filtering and

selecting could now be done by the metadata, I turned to the question of what would constitute a

successful network, which I addressed in 2005.198

Partially influenced by earlier work I had done in networks (and especially the work of Francisco

Varela) it was clear to me that the objective wasn’t to connect everything to everything, but to

196 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/90

197 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/85

198 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/32

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achieve an organization199 in such a way as to support cognition. The work of Rumelhart and

McClelland suggested ways this organization could be defined in terms of nodes and

connections200 and learning mechanisms to achieve what Churchland and others called

“plasticity”.201 The structural properties I described in 2005 were drawn in large part from

documents describing the design principles behind the internet. Finally, remarks by Charles Vest

about the American university system led me to formulate what I now call the Semantic

Principle, also in 2005202 which crystalized as the ‘Groups and Networks’ presentation in new

Zealand.203

At the risk of repeating myself, let me say here that the Semantic Principle consists of four major

elements: autonomy, diversity, openness, and interactivity.

Before discussing each of these briefly, let me describe the outcome a network design

embodying the semantic principle will achieve. Such a system is not static; it is dynamic. It is

self-organizing, and creates these organizations in response to (and as a reflection of)

environmental input. It can be thought of as a highly nuanced perceptual system. Over time, it

acquires a state such that it can (if you will) recognize entities and events in the environment as

relevantly similar204 to those it experienced in the past, and respond accordingly. This knowledge

is characterized as emergent knowledge205, and is constituted by the organization of the network,

rather than the content of any individual node in the network. A person working within such a

network, on perceiving, being immersed in, or, again, recognizing, knowledge in the network,

thereby acquires similar (but personal) knowledge in the self.

Or, to put the same point another way, a MOOC is a way of gathering people and having them

interact, each from their own individual perspective or point of view, in such a way that the

structure of the interactions produces new knowledge, that is, knowledge that was not present in

any of the individual communications, but is produced as a result of the totality of the

communications, in such a way that participants can through participation and immersion in this

environment develop in their selves new (and typically unexpected) knowledge relevant to the

199 http://www.enolagaia.com/Tutorial1.html#Org&Str

200 http://www.amazon.com/Parallel-Distributed-Processing-Vol-Foundations/dp/026268053X

201 http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Realism-Plasticity-Cambridge-Philosophy/dp/0521338271

202 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/109

203 http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/252157734/

204 http://www.downes.ca/post/212

205 http://www.kakihara.org/papers/Kakihara&Sorensen_JGITM.pdf

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domain. A MOOC is a vehicle for learning, yes, but it acts this way primarily by being a vehicle

for discovery and experience (and not, say, content transmission).

Not every MOOC will produce this outcome, nor will this form of learning be experienced by

every participant (particularly those who sample and leave early) but to judge from the

commentary the experience of new and unexpected emergent knowledge is common and

widespread (206 207 208 209 among many others).

Let me now turn to the four success factors that I argue tend to produce this result. My purpose

here is not to describe each in any detail – I have done that elsewhere – but rather to consider

each as a success factor, that is, to consider how each design elements contributes to this result.

Autonomy – this is essentially the assertion that members of the network (in this case,

participants employ their own goals and objectives, judgments and assessment of success in the

process of interaction with others. This is reflected, for example, in Dave Cormier’s assertion

that “you determine what counts as success in a MOOC.”210 A collection of people working in a

MOOC should be, for example, thought of as cooperating, rather than collaborating, because

though they will exchange value and support each other, each will be pursuing his or her own

objectives and depending on their own means and resources.

In our MOOC it was important that we not tell people what they ought to learn or what lessons

they should take home from the presentations we made and the conversations we led. People

perceive what they are looking for, and often only what they are looking for, and our well-

intentioned attempts to guide their cognition could just as easily lead to participants missing the

information most important to them. Similarly, we did not attempt to define how participants

should interact with each other, but instead focused on supporting an environment that would be

responsive to whatever means they chose for themselves.

Without autonomy, a MOOC is not able to adapt to the environment. Rather that enable each

person to allow his or her unique perspective or point of view of the world to influence the

course design or organization, they would instead reflect the perspective or world view of some

organizer telling them what their objectives should be, what they should learn, what counts as

success. It is important that each person respond to the phenomena – the communications of

206 http://hybridclassroom.com/blog/?p=743

207 http://ivarsadventures.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/my-educational-dream-is-coming-true-with-mooc/

208 http://edwoodworth.wordpress.com/category/mooc-journeys/

209 http://digitalopened.blogspot.ca/2013/04/open-education-open-university-h817open.html

210 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8avYQ5ZqM0

p.145

others – in their own way, positively or negatively, in order to generate a unique structure or

organization.

Diversity – this is a natural consequence of autonomy, and in addition a success factor in its own

right. While we typically think of diversity in terms of language, ethnicity or culture, for us

diversity applied to a broad range of criteria, including location and time zone, technology of

choice, pedagogy, learning style, and more. Participants, for example, could experience the

course as a series of lectures, and some did, but many skipped the experience. Others treated the

course as project-based, creating artifacts and tangible products. Others viewed the course as

conversation and community, focused on interaction with other participants.

The major concern with diversity so broadly construed is that some people might be seen as

‘doing it wrong’. We were, for example, criticized for offering lectures, because it did not follow

good constructivist pedagogy; our response was that connectivism is not constructivism, and that

it was up to those who preferred to learn through constructivist methods to do so, but not

appropriate that they would require that all other participants learn in the same way.

Additionally, it should be noted that it did not matter whether some particular pedagogical

choice was in some respects a failure, since the perceptual recognition that it is a failure

constitutes success in its own right.

Without diversity, it is not possible to contemplate the possibility of a network having different

states, or different types of organization. A collection of entities that is not diverse is inert, or

worse, overly reactive, in that a change in one becomes a change in all. In a computer, we expect

each bit of memory to contain different values of one or zero over time than others, for

otherwise, our computer could do nothing more than blink off and on and off again. Any sort of

complexity requires diversity, and any sort of learning requires complexity.

Openness – this is the idea that the boundaries of the network are porous and that the contents of

the network are fluid. In practical terms, it means that participants of the course are free to enroll

or to leave as they wish, and to move in and out of course activities equally freely (I once

remarked211 to ALT that what made my talk a success was defined not by the fact that they were

all here, but by the fact that they could all leave (but hadn’t)). Openness also applies to the

content of the course, and here the idea is that we want to encourage participants not only to

share content they received from the course with each other (and outside the course), but also to

bring into the course content they obtained from elsewhere.

Openness is necessary because – as the saying goes – you cannot see with your eyes closed. An a

priori condition for the possibility of perception is openness to perceptual input. Learning

requires perception, not only of the thing, but also of its opposite. If we were not open to the

211 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/113

p.146

perception of evil, we would not be able to define good. If we are not open to the possibility of

failure, we are not able to achieve success. We obtain these experiences through openness, by

being open to other ideas, other cultures, other technologies, other people. The free flow of

people and information through a MOOC is as important as the organization of the people

therein.

An interesting side-effect of openness is that there is no clear line dividing those who are in the

course and those who are not. The course resembles not a solid sphere but rather a cluster of

more of less loosely associated participants (and resources, and ideas). In a connectivist course,

for example, lurkers are seen as playing as equally important and valuable role as active

participants. Off-topic discussions are not distractions but are rather seen as valuable outcomes.

As members of the Bar Camp and unconference movement would say, the people who are there

are the right people, and the outcome of the event was the right outcome.212

Interactivity – through the years I have used various terms for this fourth element, including

‘connectedness’ and ‘interactivity’ but none of them suits exactly what is meant by this concept.

It is not simply that members of the network are connected with each other, and that interaction

takes places through these connections. It is rather the idea that new learning occurs as a result of

this connectedness and interactivity, it emerges from the network as a whole, rather than being

transmitted or distributed by one or a few more powerful members.

Another way to understand this property is to see it as the stipulation that the graph of network

interactions or connections is not a power law distribution. In a power law distribution, one or a

few members receive most of the connections, creating what I’ve called the ‘big spike’213, and

the each of the majority has only a few connections, resulting in what many people have called

‘the long tail’214. This formation commonly occurs in dynamic networks, the result of what

Barabasi215 identified as selective attraction: newcomers to the network tend to link to those

people who are already popular, resulting in their disproportional growth in popularity.

Networks characterized by a big spike and long tail are not response to their environment, and

can over-react to small stimuli, resulting in cascade failure and eventual network death.216 A

more balanced (and dare I say, egalitarian) distribution of connectivity gives the network

212 http://www.openspaceworld.com/brief_history.htm

213 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/37

214 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

215 http://www.amazon.com/Linked-Everything-Connected-Else-

Means/dp/0452284392/ref=la_B001IGQIYW_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366838681&sr=1-1

216 http://www.downes.ca/post/53882

p.147

resilience, and the influence from one perspective cannot become disproportional simply because

it came from an influential node. Each signal (each idea, each resource) must face not one

challenge but many challenges as it is propagated, person to person, through the network.

Measuring Success

To turn, then to the actual measurement of quality in a MOOC: it is necessary in the first

instances to point out what ought not be taken into account, but because these elements are not

important – they are – but because these elements are not relevant to the evaluation of a MOOC

as a MOOC.

Paramount among these are evaluations consisting of evaluations of the quality of the course

materials used in the course, the sort of evaluation that might be provided, say, by a peer review

process or learning resources review process, such as might be undertaken by a project such as

MERLOT.217 These evaluations examine the resources created for the MOOC or (in fewer

instances, if any) at the materials shared among each other by participants in the MOOC, and

assess such criteria as clarity, accuracy, usability, or engagement.218 Similar (or slightly varying)

criteria are used to evaluate other aspects of courses, such as the facilities, the instructors, and the

students themselves.

Such evaluations miss the point for several reasons:

 an evaluation of the parts isn’t the same as an evaluation of the whole. A strong course

can be created out of arguably inferior, even defective, materials, if the course is

organized appropriately (or, as Hemingway might say, the secret to writing is to create a

perfect image out of banal and even defective sentences).

 even in cases where the parts are important, it is not often the case where better quality

results in better outcomes; even a resource that is only average will suffice when the

alternative is nothing at all, or as I once tweeted, what we usually need is not someone

who is an expert, just someone who knows.

 similarly, what counts as quality in one context will be perceived as a weakness in others;

an explanation that is complete and accurate may be incomprehensible to a beginner.

 and most importantly, the learning that happens in a MOOC is not a consequence of the

learning materials, or even the instruction, it is a consequence of an immersion in an

interactive community and will result from what emerges from that interaction.

217 http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

218 http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet24/kay.pdf

p.148

Yes, we can evaluate based on some banal criteria – the website was always down, the text was

too scrambled to read, the video was in Farsi – but these, insofar as they render the MOOC less

successful, can be traced as failures of one or more of the success criteria described in the

previous section.

The evaluation of each of the four criteria can be mapped against elements of the course, and

then checked off like a counter. For example, we could list the fifty-five resources employed in

the course, and count the number of resources that are free and open (in the sense I described

above). But this is in a sense misleading; it makes a course that depends on a key closed resource

seem to be 98 percent open, while at the same time it makes a course that had one participant

post a lot of Amazon links (to books, which you must buy) seem like it was 50 percent closed.

Neither estimation would be correct, but numbers know no context.

Properties like autonomy, diversity, openness and interactivity are not properly discerned by

counting, but by being recognized. In this way they are a lot like other properties, like freedom,

love and obscenity. A variety of factors – not just number, but context, placement, relevance and

salience – come into play (that is why we need neural networks (aka., people) to perceive them,

and can’t simply use machines to count them.

That said, there is a purpose to checklists and rubrics, and that is to ensure that there is nothing

omitted from consideration. Even experts depend on checklists, and they are critical in

environments such as hospitals and airplanes. As mentioned previously, we see what we expect

to see, and checklists remind us what to expect to see.

At this point it would be reasonable to countenance a variety of features of MOOCs, and assess

each for autonomy, openness, diversity and interactivity. For example, consider the question as

posed to each of the following elements of a MOOC:

 content selected by the instructor (is it open? Is it diverse? etc.)

 the online platform used by participants

 the authoring environment(s) used by participants

 communication of daily news and announcements

 guest speakers and interviews

The difficulty with such a checklist is that it can easily become endless. And while posing these

questions can be useful when selecting technology or when designing the course, they become

less useful as an evaluation rubric after the fact.

So, a suggestion: think of the course as a language, and the course design (in all its aspects)

therefore as an expression in that language. This can be applied as broadly or as narrowly as one

wishes, and for the present purpose, can be used to frame an assessment of the quality of an

entire MOOC in a single pass.

p.149

In consideration of the use of digital artifacts as language (for example, ‘speaking in

LOLcats’219), we can identify the different dimensions of literacy. Based on work in language

and linguistics over the last century, I have identified six major dimensions of literacy: syntax,

semantics, pragmatics, cognition, context and change.

It is important to understand that these are distinct from different types of literacy. For example,

there has been a great deal of attention paid recently to ‘digital literacy’220, along with numerical

literacy (or ‘numeracy’221) along with traditional language-based literacy. We can imagine many

more types of literacy: performance, simulation, appropriation, and more, for example. There’s

emotional literacy, financial literacy, and social literacy. Each of these (according to my account)

constitutes in its own way the learning of a language. Each of these languages has its own

literacy, and literacy in that language may be defined across the six dimensions.

Indeed, I have commented in the past, and it is relevant to point out now, that the act of learning

a discipline – a trade, for example, or a science, or a skill – is more like the learning of a

language than it is like learning a set of facts. Yes, there is an element of memory, but the bulk of

expertise in a language – or a trade, science or skill – isn’t in knowing the parts, but in fluency

and recognition, cumulating in the (almost) intuitive understanding (‘expertise’, as Dreyfus and

Dreyfus would argue222). This sort of fluency is acquired by immersion in a language-speaking

community (of which a MOOC is a characteristic example) and described by the six elements of

literacy listed above.

An evaluation of the quality of a MOOC, therefore, after we have passed beyond the gross

characteristics of being massive, open, online, and a course, is an assessment of the resulting

course as a network and from a linguistic perspective. Now again, this is a rubric, not a

checklist. It is not intended to define a MOOC as ‘49% successful’ on the basis of that

percentage of boxes being checked. It is an aid, used to assist a person who is already fluent in

MOOC design (or at least, in the domain or discipline being studied) recognize the quality (or

lack of quality) of a MOOC.

This rubric thus consists of a set of 24 elements: each of the four success criteria, across each of

the six dimensions if literacy. Some of these will be more difficult to comprehend than others,

and each will have to be considered at some length before anything like a common

219 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/233

220 http://neverendingthesis.com/doug-belshaw-edd-thesis-final.pdf

221 http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/cbs_supportnumeracy.pdf

222 http://www.sld.demon.co.uk/dreyfus.pdf

p.150

understanding is achieved, but the checklist serves as a starting point, and the hard empirical

work can now begin.

So, for example, when I think back of the CCK08 course, and the other MOOCs we designed,

one of the questions I could ask (among the 24) is ‘openness-syntax’. Openness is the quality I

described above, and the question here is how well it applied to the forms, rules, regularities,

patterns and operations in the course. This, in turn, leads to basic questions like: could URLs be

shared? Is the login form accessible? Are there hidden or unstated regulations or criteria? This

list, clearly, would be different for each course, because each course consists of a different set of

forms, rules, regularities, patterns and operations. It’s not a question of whether this is the right

set of rules or regularities, or whether one set of rules is better than another (that’s like asking

whether Spanish or Portuguese is the superior language). It’s a question of whether the language

of the course can be learned.

So there are 23 other sets of questions, each equally important, and this is neither the place to

describe them in detail nor even to attempt to enumerate them (and they are more productively

considered as separate and individual cases, rather than as a set).

To conclude, I will add some caveats.

The discipline of education is as a rule overly fond of taxonomies and distinctions. The

taxonomies and distinctions offered in this discussion are the least important aspect of the

discussion. In all cases, the taxonomies have been developed in order to enable inferential work

to be performed. It doesn’t matter whether we divide the properties of successful networks into

‘autonomy’, ‘diversity’, etc., whether we focus on learning rules (Hebbian, Back-propagation,

Boltzmann) or whatever, what matters is that the design principles of MOOCs are those that

reliably result in successful networks, where success itself is a matter of empirical observation,

convention and use. The same with respect to the elements of literacy.

And similarly, with respect to this presentation, it is not the content of what is asserted here, it is

the fact of the assertion and the manner of the investigation, which should be taken to serve as a

model or demonstration of thinking about quality in MOOCs, and not a definitive statement of it.

Moncton, Canada

24 April, 2013

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Assessment in MOOCs

I was asked: " I was wondering how they might work with the Humanities, as I teach Seventeenth-

Century Literature, Shakespeare and other related subjects, which require research papers and

final examinations. I can see using MOOCs for people who simply have a (non-credit) interest in

these subjects, but I can't see myself marking 5,000 term papers, and a similar number of exams.

Multiple-choice evaluation, as in science, is easily taken care of electronically, but not in

humanities. I am sure this looks like a naive question, but I think MOOCs are a wonderful idea

for people who simply wish to enrich their knowledge, and would like to know a little more about

them. "

First of all, the MOOCs I have worked on have not focused on assessment - they have been

courses, yes, with a small number (20 or so) taking them for credit, but the vast majority of

participants auditing. So the question of marking term papers never came up. And like you, I

would not contemplate multiple-choice exams in humanities and literature courses.

If you really need assessment, a few solutions have been proposed and, to a limited extend, tried

out:

 automated essay assessment - this is not as far-fetched as it may seem, though it's not

necessarily a cure-all. Automated essay assessment needs to be seeded with a large

number of already-marked essays; on being given this seed, it extracts the properties of

high-quality essays, and then matches new essays to those properties. There's a really

good essay describing the process here: http://mfeldstein.com/si-ways-the-edx-

announcement-gets-automated-essay-grading-wrong/223 Here's another article224:

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/2013/04/12/mooc-moments-essay-grading-software/

 task-completion - another form of automated assessment is based on task-completion or

success-based metrics. The best example of this is Codeacademy.

http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0 It's a bit like programmed learning

http://www.gsis.kumamoto-u.ac.jp/en/opencourses/pf/3Block/07/07-2_text.html where

people can be stepped through the material soliciting active learner responses; "The

extent of a learner's understanding is ascertained from what is demonstrated in the

responses." In many casdes, this can be supported through a form of self-assessment,

using simple techniques such as flash cards and more complex techniques such as sample

223 http://mfeldstein.com/si-ways-the-edx-announcement-gets-automated-essay-grading-wrong/

224 http://tlt.its.psu.edu/2013/04/12/mooc-moments-essay-grading-software/

p.152

responses to questions; the participant can determine for themselves whether they passed

and can move on.

 peer assessment - essays are graded not by professors but by other course participants.

This would require that each essay be graded by a largish number of other participants,

otherwise, the grading would be no better than random. How large is enough? It might be

too large, especially when you account for people who grade without reading, people who

grade based on poor criteria, etc. Peer grading can work really well for blog posts and

discussion lists, where it can be managed with a simple thumbs-up thumbs-down metric.

Here's an example: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/education/colleges-turn-to-

crowd-sourcing-courses.html?_r=0225 And the fact of being graded by peers often spurs

people to greater accomplishment. There's some discussion of peer grading here:

226http://degreeoffreedom.org/moocs-and-peer-grading-1/ And here's a critique of the

technique: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/03/05/essays-flaws-peer-grading-

moocs227

 network-based grading - in this model, individuals are not graded by means of grading

individual pieces of work, but rather are graded according to network metrics; the idea is

that quality work will produce quality network metrics. The model is not unlike that

pioneered by Klout228 http://klout.com/home which counts the number of Twitter

followers, Facebook likes, and similar indicators, to produce a single Klout score.

The problem with Klout is that it is simplistic and easily gamed. Nonetheless there is potential

for a more fine-grained assessment to look at how ideas created by one person propagate through

a network, to look at whether a person's reading recommendations have become influential, and

similar less obvious measures. These can be pretty fine-grained, based on semantic analysis.

Here's a simple example, of a Twitter scanner that looks for instances of bullying (obviously,

something that would lower the person's score)229: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-machines-

scour-twitter-bullying.html And here are some links to research by my colleagues at NRC on the

analysis of sentiments and emotions in online postings: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~saif/230

225 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/education/colleges-turn-to-crowd-sourcing-courses.html?_r=0

226 http://degreeoffreedom.org/moocs-and-peer-grading-1/

227 http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/03/05/essays-flaws-peer-grading-moocs

228 http://klout.com/home

229 http://phys.org/news/2012-08-machines-scour-twitter-bullying.html

230 http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~saif/

p.153

Each of the last two methods run some risks:

 the "blind-leading-the-blind" phenomenon, whereby the collection of participants in a

course can elevate myths about the subject matter to the status of fact (I remember

instances from my childhood, where the position of "backcatcher" became a baseball

position, and "touching iron" became a foul in basketful).

 the "charlatan" phenomenon - Students not already expert in a subject matter may

mistakenly believe that one of their member is an expert.

For these reasons, I have always recommended that a MOOC seek to attract not only students

and novices in a discipline, but also practitioners and experts in the discipline. Such people will

quite rightly gain the greatest 'authority' according to peer or assessment measures, and as a

result, their actions (such as relaying an idea, passing on a link, etc.) will gain more weight,

shifting the outcome of peer or network based assessment to one based more on credibility.

The difficulty lies in attracting these people, who are often very busy, to a MOOC. This is one of

the benefits of scale; a very large MOOC is more likely to attract experts (and the presence of

experts is more likely to increase the size of the MOOC). But experts aren't likely to attend a

carefully choreographed "Intro to Victorian Literature" course; it's all very old and familiar to

them. The model of learning needs to changed to involved the experts.

This is what we attempted, with some success, in our connectivist MOOCs - rather than set it up

as a series of lessons, we set it up as a series of discussions. The experts would participate at a

high level, often interacting mostly with each other, while participants at other levels observed

and were able to emulate this practice. Yes, we did provide scaffolding, to help the novices get

into the flow of the discussion, but the scaffolding did not become the course.

Another model of MOOC addresses the issue by sharing the assessment.

The "distributed MOOC" is essentially a MOOC that is shared by a number of institutions

(again, this was something we attempted in the earliest connectivist MOOCs). Today this is

sometimes being called a 'wrapped MOOC'. The idea is that some of all of the MOOC contents

are shared by members of classes from any number of institutions. Participants interact with each

other, and follow online events and resources together. Each, though, is subject to individual

assessment by their home institution, which may attach whatever rubric to the material they

wish.

A final option is to bypass grading entirely, and let a person's outcomes stand on their own as

evidence of accomplishment in the course. this is the objective of portfolio-based courses, more

common in the arts and writing, but also increasingly popular in the sciences, and especially

design, engineering and computing. The idea is essentially that a person presents an artifact that

can be studied directly by potential employers. This artifact may or may not be subject to peer

grading, which may produce a course score. But the course score is secondary to the artifact

p.154

itself. Here's a quick guide to portfolio-bases assessment231

http://www.unm.edu/~devalenz/handouts/portfolio.html

One of the advantages of portfolio-based assessment is that it removes the ambiguity inherent in

grades that result from tests and assignments. Here, for example, is an article describing how

portfolio-bases assessment can help parents see directly how well their children are

performing.232

http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=495 Portfolio-

based assessment is often based on matching production to rubrics; this example233

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17457074 demonstrates portfolio-based assessment in

medicine.

Moncton, Canada

May 4, 2013

231 http://www.unm.edu/~devalenz/handouts/portfolio.html

232 http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=495

233 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17457074

p.155

MOOC – The Resurgence of Community in

Online Learning

Presented (in French) as MOOC - La résurgence de la communauté dans

l'apprentissage en ligne at le Réseau d'enseignement francophone à distance

du Canada (REFAD) in Edmunston, NB, May 30, 2013. Published (in Italian) as

La rinascita delle comunità di apprendimento in rete in the Italian Journal of

Educational Technology (formerly Tecnologie Didattiche) 165-172 Sept 30,

2014.

In this presentation234 Stephen Downes addresses the question of how massive open online

courses (MOOCs) will impact the future of distance education. The presentation considers in

some detail the nature and purpose of a MOOC in contrast with traditional distance education.

He argues that MOOCs represent the resurgence of community-based learning and will describe

how distance education institutions will share MOOCs with each other and will supplement

online interaction with community-based resources and services. The phenomenon of 'wrapped

MOOCs' will be described, and Downes will outline several examples of local support for global

MOOCs. The implications for the French-speaking world of distance education will be

considered, and Downes will outline strategies and examples of the use of MOOCs to promote

linguistic diversity.

What is a MOOC?

Thank you, it is a pleasure to be able to be here today. [slide 1 – MOOC Wordle]

My objective in this talk is to address how the massive open online course (MOOC) will impact

the future of distance education, and in particular, strategies and examples of the use of MOOCs

to promote cultural and linguistic diversity.

The proposition I will offer is that MOOCs give us a new way to understand learning, and hence,

a new way to understand certain types of learning, such as for example learning that supports

diversity in language and culture.

234 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/317

p.156

To be clear, my expertise is in the field of open online learning, and not in the field of cultural

and linguistic diversity. So my talk can only carry the discussion a certain distance. My hope is

to offer a starting point for this discussion.

And I want to be clear that when I talk about a MOOC, I am talking about a different kind of

learning. Most of you will be familiar with the traditional online course, which is based on the

presentation of content and information, and based on a clear curriculum which is to be learned.

And the MOOCs you may have read about in the newspaper, the online courses offered though

American universities such as Harvard and Stanford and MIT, these MOOCs are also examples

of traditional online learning, with content and curriculum.

My understanding of the term ‘MOOC’ is a bit different; it is derived from a theory of learning

based on engagement and interaction within a community of practitioners, without

predetermined outcomes, and without a body of knowledge that we can simply ‘transfer’ to the

learner.

And my understanding of the term ‘MOOC’ is based on five years of experience developing and

offering MOOCs, from the very first MOOC, “CCK08”, created by George Siemens and myself

in 2008, and run a total of four time in the years following, to MOOCs in personal learning

environments, critical literacies, and more.

So, first I will talk about what I mean by a MOOC and expand a bit on MOOC pedagogy. Then I

will talk about the outcomes of a MOOC and the purpose of offering or taking a MOOC. Then I

will address the relation between MOOC and community, and finally I will make some

observations and offer some examples showing how MOOCs can promote cultural and linguistic

diversity.

To begin, then, with the definition: The term MOOC as is commonly known stands for ‘Massive

Open Online Course’. That gives us four terms: ‘massive’, ‘open’, ‘online’, and ‘course’.

There have been numerous efforts recently to define each of these four terms, sometimes in such

a way as to result in an interpretation opposite to the common understanding of the term. To

some people, a MOOC may be thought of as a small, closed, and offline.

In my opinion, we should be relatively rigid in our definition of a MOOC, if for no other reason

than to distinguish a MOOC from the other forms of online learning that have existed before and

since, and hence to identify those aspects of quality that are unique to MOOCs. Hence, a MOOC

is to my mind, defined along the following four dimensions:

Massive

Here I mean not necessarily the success of the MOOC in attracting many people, but in the

design elements that make educating many people possible. And here we need to keep in mind

p.157

that to educate is to do more than merely deliver content, and more than to merely support

interaction, for otherwise the movie theatre and the telephone system are, respectively, MOOCs.

My own theory of education is minimal. It is so minimal it hardly qualifies as a theory, and is

almost certainly not my own: “to teach is to model and to demonstrate; to learn is to practice and

reflect.”

Thus, minimally, we need an environment that supports all four of these on a massive scale. In

practice, what this means is a system designed so that bottlenecks are not created in any of the

four attributes: modeling, demonstration, practice, and reflection.

To offer a simple example: an important part of reflection is the capacity to perform and then

discuss performance with others. If each person must perform and discuss the performance with

a specific person, such as the teacher, then a bottleneck is created, because there is not enough

time to allow a large number of people to perform.

Similarly, if each performance and discussion involves the entire class, the same sort of

bottleneck is created. Hence, in order for a course to be massive, performance and reflection

must be designed in such a way that does not require that certain people view all performances.

You may ask, why would it be necessary for a course to be massive? Indeed, this seems to run

against what we know of teaching and learning, where we want smaller class sizes and personal

attention from an instructor. And this is quite true, if we think of ‘massive’ in the sense of ‘mass

media’ or ‘mass lectures’. These become ineffective precisely because they become impersonal.

But at the same time, if we depend on individual tutoring to propagate and promote any sort of

culture, whether it be the culture of physicists or the culture of francophones, we will find

progress in promoting that culture slow and expensive.

What we are attempting to repeat on a massive scale in a MOOC is not the delivery of instruction

or the management of learning resources. We are trying to emulate, on a massive scale, these

small-scale and personal one-to-one interactions. It is this interaction that is the most significant

in learning, but also often the most important, and for a course to be truly massive, it must

enable, and even encourage, hundreds or even thousands of these small interpersonal

interactions.

Open

I have had many arguments with people over the years regarding the meaning of ‘open’, and in

my opinion these arguments have most always involved the other people attempting to define

‘open’ in such a way as to make ‘open’ mean the same as ‘closed’.

There are different senses of the word ‘open’ in education. The word ‘open’ is a single word in

English that corresponds to three separate words in French:

p.158

First, there is the sense of ‘open’ as in ouvert. This is the sense of ‘open admissions’ in

education, where there are no academic barriers to admission to a course.

Second, there is the sense of ‘open’ as in gratis. This is the sense of ‘open access’, where there is

no fee or tuition or subscription charge required in order to access a resource.

Third, there is the sense of ‘open’ as in libre. This is the sense of ‘open educational resource’,

where a resource that one has accessed to may be reused in any way desired, without limitations.

For my own part, the meaning of ‘open’ has more to do with access to a resource, as opposed to

having to do with what one can do with a resource. The definition of ‘open source software’, or

‘free software’, for example, assumes that the software is already in your possession, and defines

ways you can inspect it, run it, and distribute it, without limitations.

But this definition is meaningless to a person who, for whatever reason, cannot access the

software in the first place. The more common and widely understood meanings of ‘free’ and

‘open’ are broader in nature, more permissive with regard to access, and more restrictive with

regard to the imposition of barriers.

In particular, something (a resource, a course, an education) is free and open if and only if:

- the resource may be read, run, consumed or played without cost or obligation. This addresses

not only direct fee-for-subscription, but also enclosure, for example, the bundling of ‘free’

resources in such a way that only those who pay tuition may access them

- there are reasonable ways to share the resource or to reuse the resource, and especially to

translate or format-shift the resource (but not necessarily to be able to sell or modify the

resource)

Having said that, as George Siemens and I discussed the development of MOOCs in 2008, we

were conscious of and communicated the fact that we were engaged in a progression of

increasingly open access to aspects of education:

 first, open access to educational resources, such as texts, guides, exercises, and the like

 next, open access to curriculum, including course content and learning design

 third, open access to criteria for success, or rubrics (which could then be used by

ourselves or by others to conduct assessments)

 fourth, open assessments (this was something we were not able to provide in our early

courses)

 fifth open credentials

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And by the term ‘open’ we very clearly intended both the aspects of access and sharing to be

included; what this meant in practice was that we expected course participants not only to use

course resources, curriculum, etc., but also to be involved in the design of these.

Hence, for example, before we offered CCK08, we placed the course schedule and curriculum on

a wiki, where it could be edited by those who were interested in taking the course (this was a

strategy adapted from the ‘Bar Camp’ school of conference organization and the EduCamp

model as employed by Nancy White and Diego Leal).

It is interesting to contrast our approach to ‘open’ with the “logic model” devised by James C.

Taylor and eventually adopted by OERu which preserved the openness of resources and courses,

but kept closed access to assessments and credentials.

Such courses are not to my mind ‘open courses’ as a critical part of the course is held back

behind a tuition barrier. Exactly the same comment could be made of ‘free’ courses that entail

the purchase of a required textbook. Just because some part of a course is free or open does not

entail that the course as a whole is free or open, and it is a misrepresentation to assert such.

Why make our courses open? Think of a course as like a language. If a language is closed, it

dies. If people are not allowed to speak it, it dies. To enable people to genuinely participate in the

culture of a discipline, whether it be physics or chemistry or political science, the content and the

materials of the discipline must be open.

There is the danger that a cultural or linguistic group will retreat into itself in the face of this risk.

I look, for example, at the state of publishing in communities like Finland or Sweden, and find

that open access is very limited, as the publishers imagine that there is no other place for Finnish

or Swedish speakers to turn. But they do turn, as we know, to open online content in English.

Online

I have noticed recently the phenomenon of ‘wrapped’ MOOCs, which postulate the use of a

MOOC within the context of a traditional location-based course; the material offered by the

MOOC is hence ‘wrapped’ with the trappings of a more traditional education. This is the sort of

approach to MOOCs which treats them more as modern-day textbooks, rather than as courses in

and of themselves.

But insofar as these wrapped MOOCs are courses, they are no longer online, and insofar as they

are online, they are no longer courses. So whatever a ‘wrapped MOOC’ is, it is not a MOOC. It

is (at best) a set of resources misleadingly identified as a ‘MOOC’ and then offered (or more

typically, sold) as a means to supplement traditional courses.

For a MOOC to be ‘online’ entails that (and I’ll be careful with my wording here) no required

element of the course is required to take place at any particular physical location.

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The ‘wrapped MOOCs’ are not MOOCs because you cannot attend a wrapped MOOC without

attending the in-person course; there will be aspects of the MOOC that are reserved specifically

for the people who have (typically) paid tuition and are resident at some college or university,

and are physically located at the appropriate campus at the appropriate time.

Just as being online is what makes it possible for these courses to be both massive and open,

being located at a specific place makes the course small and closed.

But this does not mean MOOCs cannot include or allow elements of real-world interaction or

activity. Indeed, the best use of a MOOC does entail some offline real-world activity.

For example, our original CCK08 MOOC recommended, but did not require, in-person meet-

ups, for example, and these were held at various locations around the world. MOOCs such as

ds106 require that a person go out into the world and take photographs (for example).

In any online course there will be a real-world dimension; what makes it an ‘online’ course is

that it does not specify a particular real-world dimension. I will talk much more about this in a

few minutes.

Course

Before we launched our first MOOC both George Siemens and I were involved in various

activities related to free and open online learning.

George, for example, had staged a very successful online conference on Connectivism the year

before. I had, meanwhile, been running my newsletter service for the educational technology

community since 2001. Each of these was in its own way massive, open and online, but they

were not courses.

There is obviously some overlap between ‘course’ and ‘conference’ and ‘community’, and

people have since suggested that there could be (or should be) massive open online communities

of practice and of course there could – but they are not MOOCs.

There is also some overlap between the concept of the ‘course’ and the ‘course package’, as in,

for example, the self-paced self-study online learning packages first distributed on paper (and

with audio tapes) by distance education institutions. Here, the overlap is so great, they are often

misleadingly called ‘courses’ instead of ‘course packages’.

To be clear: I am very supportive of the idea of massive open online communities, and I am also

supportive of the use of course packages, but the MOOC is a different entity, with its own

properties and role in the environment. But a course is an event. A community is not and event.

A course package is not an event.

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And specifically:

 a course is bounded by a start date and an end date

 a course is cohered by some common theme or domain of discourse

 a course is a progression of ordered events related to that domain

Why insist on these? Aside, that is, from the pedantic observation that if you call something a

‘course’ then it ought to have the properties of a course?

My own observation is that the creation of temporary and bounded events allows for engagement

between communities that would not normally associate with each other. Courses are a way of, if

you will, stirring the pot. By creating a limited and self-contained event we lower the barriers to

participation – you’re not signing up for a lifetime commitment – and hence increasing

accessibility.

In a sense, the same reason we organize learning into courses is the reason we organize text into

books. Yes, simply ‘reading’ is useful and engaging, and widely recommended, but ‘reading a

book’ is defined and contained. A person can commit to ‘reading a book’ more easily than to

‘reading’, especially if by ‘reading’ we mean something that never ends.

Hence, massive open online learning that is not bounded, does not cohere around a subject, and

is not a progression of ordered events, is not a course, and outside the domain of discourse.

MOOC Pedagogy

The way we set up a MOOC is to define a six or twelve (or even thirty) week course of readings,

each on a different topic, progressing through a domain of enquiry. We also hosted online

seminars, many of which featured guest experts from outside the course.

But there the similarity with a traditional course ends. We do not require that people study the

readings; these are optional. Rather, what we are saying through this structure is that we, the

course authors, will be studying these materials. And people are welcome to come along for the

ride.

What is important about a connectivist course is not the course content. Yes, there is some

content -- you can't have a conversation without it -- but the content isn't the important thing. It

serves merely as a catalyst, a mechanism for getting our projects, discussions and interactions off

the ground. It may be useful to some people, but it isn't the end product, and we certainly do not

want people to memorize it.

Let me explain why we take this approach.

Neurons

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Our thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that

learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks. Knowledge, therefore, is

not acquired, as though it were a thing. It is not transmitted, as though it were some type of

communication. You can’t ‘promote’ something simply by assembling course packages and

sending them out into the world.

The things we learn and the things we know are literally the connections we form between

neurons as a result of experience. The brain is composed of 100 billion neurons, and these form

some 100 trillion connections and it is these connections that constitute everything we know,

everything we believe, everything we imagine.

And while it is convenient to talk as though knowledge and beliefs are composed of sentences

and concepts that we somehow acquire and store, it is more accurate -- and pedagogically more

useful -- to treat learning as the formation of connections.

From the perspective of the course, what it means is that the process of taking the course is itself

much more important than the content participants may happen to learn in the course. The idea

of a connectivist course is that a learner is immersed within a community of practitioners and

introduced to ways of doing the sorts of things practitioners do, and through that practice,

becomes more similar in act, thought and values to members of that community. To learn

physics, in other words, you join a community of physicists, practice physics, and thereby

become like a physicist.

Language

It is, indeed, like the learning of a language. It is possible to learn a language in theory, by

studying books, as though one would study Latin. But to learn a language fully it is essential to

immerse oneself in the day-to-day activities and culture of the people who speak it.

Again, it is tempting to say that there are certain things that people learn when they learn a

language, that there is some content that is essential to being a speaker of that language. The

meaning of words, for example, or the conjugation of verbs. But this is misleading and wrong.

Dictionary meanings and verb conjugations are, at the very best, an abstraction of the much more

complex set of practices, attitudes and beliefs common among physicists. Because it is an

abstraction, such a description cannot be accurate, and may actually mislead people about what

being a physicist actually entails.

A person who merely knew the content supposedly taught and tested for at a language academy

would feel grossly out of place in a gathering of physicists. It's like knowing the words but not

knowing the tune.

So what a connectivist course becomes is a community of educators attempting to learn how it is

that they learn, with the objective of allowing them to be able to help other people learn. We are

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all educators, or at least, learning to be educators, creating and promoting the (connective)

practice of education by actually practicing it.

In practice connectivist teaching and learning consists of four major sorts of activities (and

remember, this is just an abstraction, not a definition; just a starting point, and not 'content' to be

remembered):

Aggregation

The point of offering a course at all is to provide a starting point, to provide a variety of things to

read, watch or play with. There is a lot of content associated with the course, everything from

relatively basic instruction to arguments and discussions to high-level interviews with experts in

the field.

The course is composed not only of recommended readings but also articles, videos and

recordings made by course facilitators, blog posts, images, videos and other recordings made by

course participants, collected tweets from Twitter, bookmarks from Delicious, discussion posts,

and whatever else we can think of.

What we have experienced after delivering a half-dozen MOOCs is that we have to tell people at

the start of the course to pick and choose what they will read, watch or participate in. Again and

again, we have to stress that there is no central content to the course, that each person creates

their own perspective on the material by selecting what seems important to them.

Again, if we draw the comparison to learning a language, it is like telling a person to pick and

choose from real books, real newspaper articles, and real conversations.

From the perspective of the course provider, what is important at this point is that there

actually be a rich range of resources, open and freely accessible, that can be used by course

participants. In any course, in any discipline, I am looking for a wide range of resources, and

encouraging course participants to do the same.

The key here is diversity. This includes diversity of format: we want texts, videos, animations,

games, seminars, and anything else, because people prefer to use different media. But it also

includes different languages and perspectives. In any MOOC – and not simply MOOCs

designated as French-language, it would be relevant to include French-language resources.

One of the things I have learned in learning more than one language is that each language views

the world differently, represents the world differently.

Remixing

The next step is to draw connections. The idea is to associate the materials (or parts of the

materials) with each other, and with materials from elsewhere.

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There are different ways to associate materials -- typically we look for some sort of

commonality, such as a term, reference, topic or category. Sometimes we look for a fit, as though

one thing follows from another. There are no rules to association, and part of learning is to get a

feel for what goes with what.

The main point here is to encourage people to keep track of this. We suggest that they keep

records on their computers of all the documents they've accessed, perhaps with summaries or

evaluations of the material. Or, better yet, they can keep a record online somewhere. That way

they will be able to share their content with other people.

In the course we make some specific suggestions:

 Create a blog with Blogger. Go to http://www.blogger.com and create a new blog. Or, if

you already have a blog, you can use your existing blog. You can also use Wordpress

(http://www.wordpress.com) or any other blogging service. Each time you access some

content, create a blog post.

 Create an account with del.icio.us and create a new entry for each piece of content you

access.

 Take part in an online discussion. You can, for example, join a Google group and

exchange thoughts with other course participants, or use the discussion forum provided in

the course's online environment.

 Tweet about the item in Twitter. If you have a Twitter account, post something about the

content you've accessed.

 Anything else: you can use any other service on the internet -- Flickr, Second Life,

Yahoo Groups, Facebook, YouTube, anything! Use your existing accounts if you want or

create a new one especially for this course. The choice is completely yours.

What we are encouraging here especially is a mixing of diverse cultures. We are not trying to

create a blend, but to highlight the distinctive perspective offered by each. You can see here that

an ideal MOOC requires participation from different societies and different linguistic groups.

People often ask whether there are any French-language MOOCs and French-language learning

resources, and this is a fair question. For me, though, the deeper question is whether there is any

French-language culture attached to existing courses.

We saw this in our connectivist MOOCs through the activities of the Spanish-speaking

community, the ‘ connectvistas’, who would organize their own events, in their own language,

online and offline, around our open online course. And their perspective became an

important part of our online course, and Spanish ideas and culture became a part of the subject

matter itself.

Repurposing

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We don't want participants to simply repeat what other people have said. Learning is not simply

a process of reception and filtering. It is important to create something, to actively participate in

the discipline.

This is probably the hardest part of the process, and not everybody will participate at this level

(we remind participants, you get out of the course what you put into it; there's no magic here).

But it is important to remember that creativity does not start from scratch. There is this myth that

we stare at a blank sheet of paper, and that ideas then spring out of our heads. But it's just a

myth. Nobody ever creates something from nothing. That's why we call this section 'repurpose'

instead of 'create.'

The materials were aggregated and remixed online are the bricks and mortar that can be used to

compose new thoughts and new understandings of the material. What thoughts? What

understanding? That is what we are creating in the course.

Repurposing is often a process of translating – taking an idea from one culture and representing

it in the forms and idioms of another culture. This may be as simple as translating a block of text

into a picture, or as difficult as representing a complex idea in another language.

Part of the reason why I am presenting this talk in French is to learn French, and this process

(this is now my fourth French-language presentation) has taught me more than years of classes.

But the other part of the reason I am presenting this talk in French is to learn more about the

subject of the presentation.

If you're thinking that this isn't really very new educational theory, you're right. It is old. It forms

the core of the concept we now call 'apprenticeship', and has been formally described most

recently as 'constructionism' by the people like Seymour Papert.

What this isn't is a short cut. People learn through practice, and so this practice forms the core of

connectivist pedagogy.

Feeding Forward

We want participants to share their work with other people in the course, and with the world at

large. Now to be clear: participants don't have to share. They can work completely in private, not

showing anything to anybody. Sharing is and will always be their choice.

And we know, sharing in public is harder. People can see your mistakes. People can see you try

things you're not comfortable with. It's hard, and it's sometimes embarrassing.

But it's better. You'll try harder. You'll think more about what you're doing. And you'll get a

greater reward -- people will see what you've created and comment on it. Sometimes they will be

critical, but more often they will offer support, help and praise.

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But even more importantly, it helps others see the learning process, and not just the polished

final result. My ambition to speak in public in French, for example, was prompted by a talk given

by Doug McLeod to a national conference on learning networks. I could see that something like

this can be an important step in mastering a new skill.

You know this, I don’t need to tell you this, but I’ll say it anyway: when you speak or write in

your own language, in a public domain, about some topic or discipline, what you are saying is

“my language encompasses that discipline.”

It’s not simply that there is a French culture, full stop. It is that French culture encompasses

physics, and chemistry, and economy, and even (I’m sorry to say) political science. But more, it

is to say that a part of the domains of physics and chemistry and political science are formed

from, and informed by, French culture.

The philosophers know this well. Can you imagine philosophy without the contributions of

Descartes and Pascal and Camus and Sartre and Derrida? Can you imagine philosophy without

the influence of the language on their contributions?

The Purpose of a MOOC

Let me return to the idea of using massive open online learning to promote French language and

culture.

There is a challenge inherent in the idea of saying the purpose of a MOOC is to promote culture

or that the purpose of a MOOC is to promote some idea or concept. It ties into the idea that the

purpose of a MOOC is to help someone learn. It is, after all, a course. But purposes are never so

easily transparent.

Organizations have multiple motives when they offer MOOCs. Thus Coursera, for example, may

want to support learning, but it is also a company that wants to make money at the same time. A

cultural organization may want to promote an idea, but it will also have financial needs, and will

soon search for business models to sustain its online course.

Organizations offer MOOCs in order to serve other objectives. Cole Camplese at Penn State

talks of “providing education and experimentation.” Keith Devlin refers to “the true

democratizing of higher education on a global scale.”

But people do not take a MOOC in order to satisfy the purposes of the MOOC provider. A

person does not enroll in a Coursera course because he wants Coursera to make money. Nor does

a student enroll at Penn State in order to give professors a way to experiment on them.

Learning

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It is tempting to say a person takes a course to learn something. But even this can be misleading.

Consider what the founders of Coursera say about most students who sign up: “Their intent is to

explore, find out something about the content, and move on to something else.” So says Daphne

Koller.

Adding tuition fees changes the dynamic, as does adding credentials at the end of the course.

Coursera has learned it can earn money charging for authentication services, which satisfies both

its need to make money, and a student’s need for a certificate (though at the expense of no longer

being free and open).

Many students would skip the course entirely, and proceed straight to obtaining credentials, as

they do when they buy a degree from a degree mill.

It becomes clear through reflection that MOOCs serve numerous purposes, both to those who

offer MOOCs, those who provide services, and those who register for or in some way ‘take’ a

MOOC.

Connectivism

The original MOOC offered by George Siemens and myself had a very simple purpose at first: to

explain ourselves. The topic of ‘connectivism’ had achieved wide currency, and was the subject

of the online conference mentioned earlier, and yet remained the subject of considerable debate.

What was it? Was it even a theory? Did it even apply to education? Was it founded on real

research, or was it simply made up? We believed we had good answers to those questions, and

the curriculum was designed to lead participants (and ourselves!) through a clear and articulate

answering of them.

As we began to design the course (and in particular, as I began to use the gRSShopper

application I had designed to support my website and newsletter) it became clearer to both of us

that the purpose of the course was also to serve as an example of connectivism in practice.

After several years of describing the theory we began to feel some obligation to demonstrate it in

practice. So the course design gradually began to look less and less like a traditional course, and

more like a network, with a wide range of resources connected to each other and to participants.

And the course became much less about acquiring content or skills, and much more about

making these connections, and learning from what emerged as a result of them.

Participants

The participants in our MOOCs also demonstrated a similarly wide range of motivations.

We had several participants who were in the course for the research opportunities it offered (and

people like Jenny Mackness, Frances Bell and Sui Fai John Mak have become voices in their

own right in the field).

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Others came with the intent to learn about connectivism, to supplement their existing studies in a

masters or PhD program.

Others joined in to participate in what they saw as an event, others to make connections and

extend their social network (or as it came later to be called, their ‘personal learning network’).

At least one (and maybe others) came with the specific intent of discrediting connectivism (and

in passing, to call George and myself “techno-communists”).

Even if we limit our focus to what is putatively the primary function of a course, to teach, it

becomes difficult to identify the purpose of a MOOC.

Much has been made of MOOC completion rates, with the suggestion that completion is in some

respects tantamount to learning. However, it could be argued that enabling a person to sample a

course and withdraw without having lost thousands of dollars of tuition is a success.

Moreover, different people want to learn different things: some about what connectivism is,

some, how best to criticize it, some, whether it even makes sense to their own experience.

Learning, Again

And there are different senses of learning.

In one sense, to ‘learn’ is to acquire some knowledge or skill, and it is this sense of learning that

is most often associated with education, and especially formal education.

But there is an equally valid sense of learning, where the objective is to achieve some outcome or

complete some task, what Rogers (2006) calls “task-conscious learning”. This sort of task-

focused outcome is much more common in informal learning; it is the sort of learning I do, for

example, when I dip into Stack Overflow to learn how to set the value of a field before

submitting an Ajax form.

It becomes clear that we cannot assess the purpose of a MOOC qua MOOC by assessing the

reasons and motivations of the people taking them, nor even by assessing the reasons and

motivations of those offering them.

All that can be said is that the purpose is that it is based on the idea of creating a MOOC. It is

based on the idea of creating an open online course designed in such a way as to support a large

(or even massive) learning community.

That is, it is the properties of a MOOC, and not the content per se, that make it worth creating.

We do not create a MOOC to send a message; the MOOC is the message. So we would not, for

example, create a MOOC in order to support a culture or a community; a MOOC is the culture or

community. A MOOC may be a very good or very poor PR device, may transmit content very

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well or very poorly, may advance research a lot or not at all, all depending on who is using it,

how they are using it, and why.

The MOOC as Community

Just as a language is more than the words and sentences, and a culture is more than clothing and

dances, education is not merely the acquisition of new information and skills.

To become educated in a discipline is to learn the habits, patterns, ways of thinking and ways of

thinking characteristic of that discipline.

Although we learn what we learn from personal experience, we usually learn what we learn from

other people.

Consequently, learning is a social activity, whether we immerse ourselves into what Etienne

Wenger called a community of practice (Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning

and identity, 1999), learn what Michael Polanyi called tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1962), and be

able to complete, as Thomas Kuhn famously summarized, the problems at the end of the chapter.

(Kuhn, 1962)

Learning is a social activity, and that is why the picture of distance learning wherein each person

studies from their own home, supported by a personal computer and desk videophone, is wrong.

To be sure, there is room for home study, but people, and especially children, need community as

well. It is because of this that MOOCs in the future will emphasize community much more than

is perhaps imagined today.

It is the creation of this community, rather than the curation or transmission of any sort of

content, that constitutes the core activity of a MOOC. The content is what we call the

‘McGuffin’ – it is an object of interest, that attracts our attention, but which could be anything.

For our discussion it is relevant to focus on two major types of community of significant

importance to MOOCs. Both are relevant to MOOCs, but in very different ways. One is the

‘online community’, while the other is the ‘peer community’.

Online community

The online community is what we might call an interest-based communities. They are formed

around a topic of interest, a profession, or a domain. They are similar to Etienne Wenger’s

‘communities of practice’, though I think that my own sense of the concept may be wider than

Wenger’s.

Interest based communities are collections of people who, although they may be geographically

dispersed, share a common location on the internet. This location is created and defined by the

shared interest people have with each other.

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Now, to be clear: this shared interest may have to do with an offline interest. Indeed, most of

them are. So online communities form around offline activities such as hockey or baseball, real-

world pursuits such as business or biology, around hobbies and crafts, and even around a town,

village or high school.

We see these everywhere. Gardeners hang out at gardenweb. Computer geeks hang out at Wired.

Educational technologists have found a home in the Google+ Ed Tech group. Across the internet,

thousands of topic-specific communities have been formed, some around websites, some in

social networking services, some using tools like WordPress or Skype.

With today’s focus on MOOCs and social networking sites (such as Facebook and Google+) the

discussion of community per se has faded to the background. This perhaps resembles the way

corresponding community networks have been swallowed and anonymized by these branded

commercial services.

Online educators will find themselves building interest based communities whether they intend

to do this or not, because the mechanics necessary for the creation of an online topic based

community are present in the structure of almost any online course.

In order to create a online based community, one only needs a topic, a group of geographically

dispersed people interested in that topic, and a means of shared communication, such as a

discussion list or online chat.

What will change in the future is that online educators will better learn how to foster and nourish

online communities. They will want to do this because, the greater the dedication to the

community, the greater the dedication to learning, since learning is the shared experience which

defines this community.

This is what connectivism brings to the table. This is what MOOCs bring to the table.

Community of Practice

The factors which contribute to a successful online community are to some degree known,

though that said much more empirical data needs to be collected. But in general, one of the keys

is ownership. By that, what I mean is that the members of the community play a key role in

shaping the community. For a community is not a broadcast medium.

It is not a place where the organizer provides material and the members consume it. It is a shared

and constructed environment, where the members along with the organizers play roughly equal

roles in content creation.

Wenger’s characterization is informative. Communities form around a topic of interest – the

‘domain’. They engage in community activities – as he says, “members engage in joint activities

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and discussions, help each other, and share information.” And they share a practice – a repertoire

of resources, a vocabulary, common stories, common methodologies, common ways of

approaching a problem. (Wenger, Communities of practice: a brief introduction, 2004)

Learning in the community of practice takes the form of what might be called ‘peer-to-peer

professional development activities’. Rather than formalized learning, members help each other

directly. We discovered this in Alberta when we studies how professional town managers learn:

we discovered they call each other up on the telephone. (Stefanick & Lesage Jr., 2005)

In an educational context, what this means is that a lot of the learning - and learning materials -

will be those constructed by the students themselves. We begin to see this with the use of

discussion lists in online courses, but also in the creation of topic-based web pages (and other

resources).

MOOCs – at least the way we create MOOCs – build on this. The MOOC is for us a device

created in order to connect these distributed voices together, not to create community, not

to create culture, but to create a place where community and culture can flourish.

Peer Community

The peer community by contrast almost by definition cannot be formed over the internet. These

are the communities that form in our neighborhoods, at church or schools, or in the community

centre, the tavern or the grocery store.

They will exist because people need a pat on the back, a (physical) shoulder to lean on, a

drinking buddy, an opponent to play squash, somebody whose physical presence, for one reason

or another, matters.

And they need a physical environment, which may include sports facilities, an industrial arts

shop, a gym, a golf course, or even just a field with four bases and a baseball or flat sheet of ice

and a puck.

They are first created through proximity, being composed of people who live in the same

neighborhood or who go to the same school. Over the longer term, we may say, they are just

people who meet by happenstance, and find an affinity for each other.

While online communities depend on a topic or area of interest to exist, peer communities can be

topic neutral; even if members share an interest in sports or science, it is physical proximity

which causes the community to exist.

Playing

While online communities are topic-based, peer communities are activity based. An online

community may convene to talk hockey, while a peer community will convene to play hockey.

Online community may consist of your friends. Peer community consists of your neighbours.

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This creates great variety in membership. One person may be a scientist while another may be an

artist. While online communities consist of geographically dispersed members, peer based

learning communities exist in some particular geographical location.

A peer learning community will be that group of people attending a particular school or learning

centre. People become members of the community because of a shared location, workplace,

cultural background, religion, or language, and because of shared experiences in online learning.

While people in a topic based community, for example, will discuss this or that monograph or

expert in the topic, people in a peer based learning community will discuss this or that institution,

interface software, or community events.

Peer learning communities are vital to learning because they provide a safe environment in

which to learn. A person does not feel adrift on the internet when working in a community of

people facing similar needs and challenges. Though each may be pursuing a different educational

goal, their overall objective and means of travel is the same, and thus they offer mutual support,

encouragement, and reassurance.

Learning Communities

At university I may have studied philosophy, but like so many other university students I

obtained my real education through social interaction. In my case, it was at the offices of the

Gauntlet, the student newspaper, where I spent more time than I ever did in the classroom.

My most direct interaction with peer learning communities as an educator came when I was

working in the Canadian north - the learning centre in Fort St. John, in northern British

Columbia, or the fishers' retraining centre, a block away from the urban aboriginal training

centre, fostered by the New Westminster School Division. The Sunrise Project, based in Slave

Lake, Alberta. Or the South West Indian Training centres in Sioux Valley and Waywayseecappo,

in rural Manitoba.

It is the sort of success that was replicated across the country with the Community Access Points.

This was a project that did more than merely provide internet access, it created a common

location for people interesting in technology and computers (and blogs and Facebook).

People talk of ‘learning communities’ but strictly speaking there is no such thing as a ‘learning

community’ – save, perhaps, the strained and artificial creations of educational institutions that

try to cram classes into collectives, creating personal relationships where none naturally exist.

Rather, people learn in communities, and what would make any given community a ‘learning’

community or otherwise is whether people in the community learn more or less well. A

francophone contribution would consist of both support for online community as well as support

for peer community.

p.173

Growth

It should be a truism today that communities are grown rather than constructed. Sharing and

learning cannot be “legislated into existence.” (Dube, Bourhis, & Jacob, 2006) The desire for

autonomy comes part and parcel with some of the perceived benefits of learning and growing in

a community: safely, security, and privacy.

In the field of learning especially, there is a great deal of attention paid to what it is members

have in common that facilitates the creation of a community – whether it be common educational

needs, common age or locale, common sets of values, or even more theoretical entities, such as

common objects, domains of discourse, or understandings.

The value of a community, however, and especially of a learning community, comes from the

diversity in the community. Students gather around an instructor precisely because the instructor

has knowledge, beliefs and opinions that the students don’t share.

They gather around each other because they each have unique experiences. Fostering a learning

community is as much a matter of drawing on the differences as it is a matter of underlining the

similarities.

Threats and Opportunities

There is both risk and opportunity in this model for specific cultural and linguistic groups such as

the francophone community.

Provider institutions may be located anywhere. MOOCs serve a global audience. We are seeing

this trend develop already. Even today, I see course announcements posted almost daily, on new

MOOCs rather from individual universities or via EdX or Coursera. It is now possible to take a

course on almost anything from almost anywhere in the world.

The risk is of course the same as is created by any mass media, that the largest culture will come

to dominate social and political institutions by weight of number and prevalence on mass media.

And this is in fact what we have seen in the area of MOOCs. The language of instruction has

been until recent years almost exclusively English.

Francophone Communities

One of the few francophone MOOCs, and probably the best-known, was the MooC ITyPA

(Internet : Tout Y est Pour Apprendre) offered predominately through l’École Centrale de

p.174

Nantes235 (http://www.itypa.mooc.fr/node/29) and Thot Cursus (www.cursus.edu), a french-

speaking website dedicated to education and digital culture.

Another francophone MOOC was the recently completed "ABC Gestion de

Projet".236 http://www.educavox.fr/innovation/pedagogie/article/quatre-semaines-dans-un-mooc

The School of Law at the Sorbonne is offering a MOOC called « Sorbonne droit » on the

mechanisms of organization and operation of businesses, a six week course starting in

September.237 http://www.e-cavej.org/5/73/le-cavej-mooc-sorbonne-droit.html

The only university currently offering MOOC in French through Coursera is the Ecole

polythechnique fédérale de Lausanne. The course introduces students to Java programming in

French.238 (www.coursera.org/epfl).

With my colleagues at the University of Moncton, I will be participating in the creation of a

French-language MOOC on Open Educational Resources, to be offered in cooperation with the

OIF, next fall.

Francophone peer communities active in global MOOCs ensure that even in Anglophone

MOOCs, a francophone community and contribution is present. But potential students are now

faced with a wide range of open online educational opportunities. My own web site, mooc.ca,

lists hundreds, maybe thousands, of open online courses.

It is not enough to offer courses and programs online in French, in my opinion. The French

language and culture belongs in all courses and communities, even those that are predominately

English.

Mosaic

The MOOCs George Siemens and I have designed and developed were explicitly designed to

support participation from a mosaic of cultures. Other, more traditional, MOOCs make it more

difficult, but the key to participation in these is to convert a static one-language presentation-

mode course into a thriving multilingual and multicultural community.

235 http://www.itypa.mooc.fr/node/29

236 http://www.educavox.fr/innovation/pedagogie/article/quatre-semaines-dans-un-mooc

237 http://www.e-cavej.org/5/73/le-cavej-mooc-sorbonne-droit.html

238 www.coursera.org/epfl

p.175

We see this more widely in other online courses through the ‘meet-up’. A good example of this

is the Denver Francophone Group.239 http://www.meetup.com/The-Denver-Francophone-

Group/ Or the Austin French meetup club.240 http://www.meetup.com/austinfrenchlanguageclub/

It seems so little. What is being done to support these groups? What resources are available, what

online courses in the French language?

Why is this important, particularly in the context of fostering language and culture?

It is worth noting that theorists of both professional and social networks speak of one’s

interactions within the community as a process of building, or creating, one’s own identity.

Wenger, for example, writes, “Having a sense of identity is a crucial aspect of learning in

organizations. Consider the annual computer drop at a semiconductor company that designs both

analog and digital circuits. The computer drop became a ritual by which the analog community

asserted its identity. Once a year, their hero would climb the highest building on the company's

campus and drop a computer, to the great satisfaction of his peers in the analog gang. The

corporate world is full of these displays of identity, which manifest themselves in the jargon

people use, the clothes they wear, and the remarks they make.” (Wenger, 1998)

Identity

And meanwhile, danah boyd, studying the social community, writes, “The dynamics of identity

production play out visibly on MySpace. Profiles are digital bodies, public displays of identity

where people can explore impression management. Because the digital world requires people to

write themselves into being, profiles provide an opportunity to craft the intended expression

through language, imagery and media. Explicit reaction to their online presence offers valuable

feedback. The goal is to look cool and receive peer validation. Of course, because imagery can

be staged, it is often difficult to tell if photos are a representation of behaviors or a re-

presentation of them.” (boyd, 2006)

In both of these we are seeing aspects of the same phenomenon. To learn is not to acquire or to

accumulate, but rather, to develop or to grow. The process of learning is a process of becoming,

a process of developing one’s own self.

We have defined three domains of learning: the individual learner, the online community, and

the peer community.

239 http://www.meetup.com/The-Denver-Francophone-Group/

240 http://www.meetup.com/austinfrenchlanguageclub/

p.176

Recent discussions of MOOCs have focused almost exclusively on the online community, with

almost no discussion of the individual learner, and no discussion peer community. But to my

mind over time all three elements will be seen to be equally important.

At university, I became not so much a philosopher, though that was my formal education, but

rather, a journalist, which is the community I became a part of.

Immersion

MOOCs are communities in which learners can immerse themselves and grow into something

new. Previous experience suggests that these will be places where they can create and where they

can project – not “serious games” but “modding communities”, not “reading groups” but “fan

fiction”, not “educational simulations” but “LAN parties”.

We might also define three key roles in online learning: the student, the instructor, and the

facilitator. The ‘instructor’ is the person responsible for the online community, while the

‘facilitator’ is the person responsible for the peer community.

Of course, the ‘instructor’ and the ‘facilitator’ are abstracts. We think of them as one person, but

in fact these roles are fulfilled by teams of people working together to orchestrate the experience

of community.

The talk of ‘star instructors’ without reference to the wider facilitation is as nonsensical as

talking about ‘movie stars’ as being the entire film industry, without regard to directors, camera

operators, distributors and movie theatre managers.

The ‘star’ is yet another McGuffin – of no great importance, but some candy designed to attract

us to the event.

In traditional education, the two communities exist as a single entity. The same institution which

produces the online instruction is also the institution attended by the student. For example, if I

say I am taking a course from the University of Calgary, what I mean is that the course

instruction is being delivered by the University of Calgary, and also that the University of

Calgary provides the facilities where I receive that course instruction.

Provider

In the future, host and provider institutions will increasingly be different institutions. One

example of this is course brokering, wherein the course I am taking may have been developed

by, and even instructed by, a University of Calgary instructor, but is being delivered at Red Deer

College. Thus, when I take the course, I use Red Deer's classrooms, computers, and facilities

even though the course is a University of Calgary course.

p.177

The recent MOOCs offered by companies like Coursera and Udacity have commercialized

course brokering. They take a course offered by one university and make it available to other

institutions to host in on-campus peer communities.

Of course, this is a model that the K-12 community has employed for any number of years. It is

common to see a single course taught from one location and delivered to other locations by

means such as video conferencing and interactive environments.

And, one would expect the same phenomenon to extend into the French-language community, to

see local support offered in French-language communities for participation in online courses

offered in a variety of languages at a variety of locations around the world.

So, things are changing. The francophone world is taking up the potential of

MOOCs.241 http://cursus.edu/dossiers-articles/articles/19487/2013-annee-des-moocs-francais/

We read from people like Mario Asselin a call for open online French-language

learning.242 http://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/mario-asselin/gratuite-

universite_b_2475352.html?just_reloaded=1

Discourse

But I would ask, with equal relevance, where is the French-language community itself? Where

will I see the French-language contribution to physics and philosophy, botany and political

science? It will not be enough simply to author content and offer courses. The place for French is

in the middle of these domains, in discourse and discussion on a global stage.

Yes, content and courses are necessary. But what is needed more than anything is French-

language participation in the discourse itself, that idea that, for any online course, any online

community, the French culture and language has a place there, belongs there, and is necessarily a

part of that course and that community.

Edmunston, Canada

June 3, 2013

241 http://cursus.edu/dossiers-articles/articles/19487/2013-annee-des-moocs-francais/

242 http://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/mario-asselin/gratuite-universite_b_2475352.html?just_reloaded=1

p.178

What’s Ours

As it was purchasing Tumblr, Yahoo was also quietly making changes to the Flickr photo

sharing service. Flickr has been one of Yahoo's few success stories recently, and this was the

first major revision to the site in a number of years.

The change came without warning, it dramatically changed the look at feel of the site, it changed

the emphasis from sharing and community to photo browsing, and it upset a lot of people.

Like Jenny Mackness243, I've been a member of the site since the beginning, have become a 'pro'

(ie., 'paid') member, and have thousands upon thousands of photos stored on the site. And my

issue with the changes are similar to hers: it’s like hanging too many paintings on a wall in an art

gallery, and 'Collections’ no longer show on the opening Flickr page.

And most importantly, "the worst thing about these changes is that they have decreased and

diminished my sense of ownership over my own photos, since I no longer have a choice about

how they should be displayed" It's not as bad as Google+, which has been "auto-enhancing" (ie.,

wrecking) my photos, but it's bad enough.

And she adds, "What Flickr hasn’t seemed to recognize is that they have ‘meddled’ with my

identity." This was the part I thought244 she got exactly right.

But Alan Levine responds245: "I disagree- Jenny gets a lesson that third party sites are not 'ours'.

If they do their job well it has that sensation."

And he has a point, of course. Spaces like Flickr and Facebook and Google+ and Tumblr

belongto large corporations who offer us certain services in exchange for the right to monetize

our creativity and attention. From time to time they will allow us to pay for extensions to that

privilege, which is how I can to pay Flick for 'pro' membership and Google for 100 gig of 'cloud'

space.

And of course, these spaces are not ours, which is what in turn motivates things like the Domain

of One's Own246 project, which exists thanks in no small part to Levine's own efforts. In the past 243 http://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/whose-flickr-is-it/

244 https://twitter.com/Downes/status/341326527134310400

245 https://twitter.com/cogdog/status/341335029009506304

246 http://academics.umw.edu/dtlt/2012/08/28/documenting-a-domain-of-ones-own/

p.179

I've supported the idea, and I still do, because, as we have just seen, these large corporations that

give us a place to put our stuff are fickle.

That said, I have no illusion that hosting my own domain and server an all the rest of it will free

from such fecklessness. It simply moves it back a level.

For example, the ISP on which I hosted my own server has been purchased three times since I

started with them (which is how I find myself a SoftLayer247 customer without even trying).

Everything about my service (and most importantly, the Linux configuration support, which has

long since vanished) has changed.

At home, I found myself viewing advertisements inserted248 into my web stream by my internet service provider (which also admitted to 'traffic-shaping'249 and of course bandwidth limits).

Though I don't think it does this any more (I'm not sure, because I bolted from the service as

soon as I could) I get the same sense of my personal space being violated.

And of course there's the wireless internet access industry, a collection of companies that have

proven manifestly unable to resist250 no-cancellation policies and excessive roaming fees, and the platforms on which smartphones run, which enforce monopolies like the iTunes store or Google

Play. Having iTunes deleting your music251 or Google Play banning updates252 certainly feels like a violation.

Even if I were to construct my own internet backbone and manufacture my own computers, our

economy is so interlinked that fickle behaviour on the part of one corporation or another

(perhaps the power company, perhaps the government) will intrude on my space. Because, in the

end, everything I own, everything I create, everything I see, is obtained from, and at the

discretion of, corporations and service providers.

This is not sour grapes; it's just a fact. It's no more or no less a fact that that I buy my food from

restaurants and grocery stores, my clothing from Mark's Work Wearhouse253, my water from the

247 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftLayer

248 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3679/125/

249 http://www.markevanstech.com/2007/04/13/rogers-its-bandwidth-management/

250 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6862/125/

251 http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=394843

252 http://www.dialaphone.co.uk/blog/2013/04/30/apps-banned-from-bypassing-google-play-updates/

253 http://www.marks.com/

p.180

City of Moncton and my gas from Enbridge254. It would be ridiculous and futile to attempt to provide all these things for myself; it makes much more sense to do what I do well, get paid for

it, and purchase these services from others.

But with these purchases and exchanges of services, I have come over time to have certain

expectations. Indeed, it is impossible to build a reliable network of goods and services if these

expectations are not met. I do not expect my food to poison me, I do not expect the power or gas

to stop functioning for no good reason, and I would consider it an affront if the City came along

and said it was rezoning my property and neighbourhood to heavy industrial.

No, I don't own any of these things, but they all taken together form part and parcel of my life,

my livelihood, and yes, even my identity.

So Jenny Mackness is not wrong to complain about sudden and unexpected changes in service

delivery, not least in one she pays for, but also one in which she exchanges other value (such as

her creativity and attention) for services. There's no reason why web services should be any

different in this way from the newspaper or the gas company.

We need to become more clear about this. More and more of our digital world is moving into the

cloud. Software we used to buy and install, like Photoshop, is now a service255. That's fine (if expensive) if we can control our software. But if we start getting upgrades without being asked,

and if our computers and other tools suddenly start performing in erratic and unexpected ways,

or if we suddenly lose features (like Google Reader, or anything useful in Apple iMovie), then

the loss of control we feel is real.

The software and digital content industries as a whole will have to be very careful. They have

already tricked people into believing they are purchasing 'licenses' and not actual products, even

when those products are shrink-wrapped and stored on DVDs. This resulted in significant push-

back as people lost the right to copy, trade or resell their purchased product. But at least if the

product changed they could keep the old one.

Now they will not even give us the product itself. They'll change it whenever they want. Terms

of service, cost increases, usage caps - we've already seen that the industry will do whatever it

wants if it feels it can wring a few extra dollars out of the service. The users - as we well know -

are not the customers. The only people corporations answer to are the shareholders.

That's why we need to push back. These services are beginning to play an essential role in our

lives. Just as the gas company cannot by law turn off the heat in winter, just as banks by law

254 http://naturalgasnb.com/CMS/en/home/whatisnaturalgas/theenvironment/environmentalimpact.aspx

255 http://lifehacker.com/what-photoshops-move-to-the-cloud-actually-means-for-y-494225482

p.181

cannot charge more than a certain rate of interest, just as telephone companies by law must allow

you to keep your number when you switch service, there is a growing need for an understanding

that people demand, and must receive, a certain consistency in online environments.

Last week I linked to an article launching a campaign for a "people's terms of service." 256 I commented, "Some of the terms that would be highlighted are laudable - the idea that such

agreements could not be arbitrarily changed, that producer data collection practices would be

transparent, that companies would respect user copyright, and that industry standard data security

measures would be in place."

But I didn't like the mechanism, and I noted that companies will simply ignore these provisions.

What might be needed I think is something rather stronger. So, here's the message to Flickr, the

new owners of Tumblr, and the other vendors making a lot of money hosting our stuff and

providing services online: if you can't behave, people will push back. Because they do feel their

sense of identity is being infringed upon.

This sort of dissonance is real. How do you think the people who purchase Joe Fresh felt when

they saw their favorite shirt among the wreckage of the Bangladesh sweatshop257? Companies can get away with a lot. But when they start messing with people's sense of self, they are starting

to tread dangerous ground. It might be something as simple as they way we are able to display

our images online. But I think we know, intuitively, that if we can't even control that, then there's

a lot more serious stuff behind the scenes we can't sway at all, and it begins to gnaw at us, bit by

bit.

Moncton, Canada

June 3, 2013

256 http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/05/fighting-facebook-campaign-people%E2%80%99s-terms-service

257 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/05/02/business-loblaw-mimran.html

p.182

What I Wish I Had Learned in School

School for me was not really a pleasant experience. Oh, sure, it had its moments, but it was a

struggle. On the one hand, we had the typical high school curriculum, which was about as

exciting as paste, and on the other hand, we had the Darwinian social environment red in

metaphorical tooth and claw. I didn't fit in either academically or socially, and when I got out of

there, it was like a great weight had been lifted from me.

So it's hard to know exactly how to respond to this request: " The idea is pretty simple, we think

that as the world becomes more complex, the formal education system is having a harder and

harder time keeping up. Plenty of people are spending plenty of cycles looking for answers, but

what we really want to do is ask a more fundamental question, 'What do you wish you had

learned in school?' We think that by collecting people's personal stories, we can start to develop

useful insights and perhaps even come to a few conclusions. "

I guess my first, cynical, response the the question would be, "I wish I had learned how to

escape."

I read today about things like Class Afloat258, which is a high school taught on a tall ship,or the Bronx High School of Science259, a so-called magnet school dedicated to (not surprisingly) science, or the Perpich Center260 for Arts Education, and so on and on and on, and I wonder, why couldn't I have been afforded any of those opportunities. But that's not what happens when you

grow up in a small farming community in rural Ontario.

Certainly, I tried to make the most of my high school education, doing things like Reach for the

Top and model parliament (where I was the leader (and only member) of the Fascism Reform

Party) and band and drama and all the rest of it. I reveled in projects I could design for myself;

the teachers gave me quite a bit of latitude, and I would write to embassies and government

departments and such for raw materials.

What would I have done in an environment where I could program computers and build robots

and write blogs and fly quadrocopters? Or maybe my school would have been one of those

where all this was tantalizingly out of reach, my internet access a small-town trickle of

connectivity, the movie-making and the podcasting and robot-fighting something that people at

Gloucester and Nepean and Lisgar did, not us out in the country at Osgoode Township (though

258 http://www.classafloat.com/

259 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bronx_High_School_of_Science

260 http://www.mcae.k12.mn.us/ahs/ahs.html

p.183

now Metcalfe is an increasingly-nice suburb of Ottawa, and we might not have been able to

afford to live there).

So anyhow, would I have liked to have learned all those things? Well, in the 70s, definitely yes -

coming out of high school in 1979 already knowing to program a computer or build a robot

would have been a huge advantage. Today, though, it might seem more like vocational

education, kind of the 21st century analogue to the courses where the industrial arts kids learned

to work on electrical circuits and car motors (you know - the advanced tech of the 1930s).

If I were in school today I'd probably be wanting to learn about carbon fibres and nanotubes and

capacitors, genetic creation and manipulation, bioengineering, and all that sort of stuff. I'm not

sure - I only know that some of this stuff exists, I'm not sure exactly where it's at and what you

can build (or grow) in a high school science lab, but it would be fun to be 15 again and exploring

these frontiers. Except that... I hated being 15, and I could wait to get out of there.

I wish we had had a track team at high school. We didn't have individual sports; we had only

teams - football, soccer, hockey - and you had to make the team, which meant being able to get

in the practice, which didn't work well for people like me, partially because I delivered papers

every day and didn't have time for that, and partially because I really didn't like these other

people very much (especially in places like soccer fields and locker rooms). But I could run,

especially long distances - I once clocked a mile in less than five minutes (4:45 to be precise).

But there was only soccer, and I rarely got to play.

Maybe "what I wish I had learned in high school" should have a category for stuff I actually

learned, but wish I hadn't. Like the survival skills I needed to get through classes and after-

school activities, for example, the reptilian flight-or-flight response that follows me to this day,

the alternating thick and thin skin needed to ignore remarks but be keenly aware of when they

might escalate into some sort of physical attack.

Maybe what I wish I had learned in high school would be those smooth social skills that the best

of us in society display. Watching DARPA's Kathleen Fisher on video last week261, for example, I was struck by her geniality and the comfortable manner in which she worked the room and

traversed some difficult material. I'm sure we all know those people, they are the ones who

always seem to be at ease, comfortable with themselves, able to reach out and really

communicate with other people. But you don't see that a whole lot in the smaller and less well-

off communities; it feels like the sort of thing you have to be in a position of advantage to be able

to develop. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

261 http://www.downes.ca/post/60594

p.184

I don't think people understand the difference between growing up on the inside and growing up

on the outside; certainly people who are on the inside don't see it at all, and the people on the

outside sometimes sense it, but what can they do?

Take smoking, for example. That's another thing I guess I wish I hadn't learned in high school

(though to be quite honest, I guess I actually learned it working at the racetrack in grades 11 and

12, serving drinks in the box lounge). Smoking is a poor person's disease. The people on the

inside, for whatever reason, grew up in an environment where you just didn't smoke, but all the

working people smoked. You pretty much had to. That was in the 70s and 80s, of course; I'm

sure that's all changed now. But there are plenty of other examples like that.

I don't regret not being born into a home where I always knew I would be going to Yale and

teaching at MIT or maybe Stanford. I would have become a different person. It was enough my

parents gave me the expectation that I would go to university, and the tools that would help me

succeed. And I've always known since those days that what distinguished me from them was not

some aspect of my education, nor my innate intelligence, nor my work ethic nor my compassion

and dedication, no, none of that, nothing but simple facts of birth and social standing.

Yes, I sometimes wish I had learned to escape - but if I had ever gotten that wish, I would never

have seen life on the outside, and never sensed the urgency of doing something once I got

through university and was in a position to do some good in the world. So I guess that's not what

I wish for.

I guess I wish I had learned integral calculus. Yeah, that would have made all the difference.

Moncton, Canada

June 14, 2013

p.185

Connectivism and the Primal Scream

Keith Brennan writes a well-thought-out and evenly expressed criticism of connectivism as it is

applied in connectivist MOOCs. It's worth taking the time to read it in full before proceeding

with this post: here it is262.

His argument is based on his experiences in cMOOCs and he says it's best described like this:

To learn in a cMOOC you need to connect.

To connect in a cMOOC you need to learn.

There's a lot built into that simple formulation, and I'll take the time to unpack some of it in this

post. But to frame my own response, let's consider the analogous state of affairs in traditional

education:

To learn in traditional education you need to be able to read.

To be able to read in traditional education you need to learn.

This is why the provision of education, especially adult education, in less well-served regions is

such a challenge. It's what I faced personally as a classroom instructor teaching critical thinking

in the north. How can you get your students to do anything if they can't understand the points the

author expresses on a page?

Well, you can't, of course, and consequently I spent a significant proportion of my time in these

communities teaching people how to read - not how to pronounce the letters and say sentences

aloud, but how to read in the sense of understanding what the author was trying to say and how

he or she was supporting, explaining or defining it. It wasn't easy and we spent a lot of time at it.

Now Brennan's argument is about a lot more than this, and we'll move carefully through his

observations. But it's important to understand from the outset that connectivism - at least the way

I do it - is to a certain degree a response to the same set of problems faced by students in

traditional education.

Motivation

From this introduction Brennan moves to a discussion of motivation.This is the real beginning of

the argument; everything to this point simply sets the stage.

He writes,

262 http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Guide_to_the_MOOC_Novice.html

p.186

"At the core of what I think Connectivism might be missing is this idea: Motivation is the

engine of effort, and the sense of self is the ticking heart of motivation... One of the most

important aspects of the learning experience is motivation. And one of the most important

aspects of motivation is our sense of our own capability, and our sense that the

environment we are learning in will allow us to achieve."

Interestingly - and, given all that I've written on the subject, a bit ironically - he cites Albert

Bandura on the relation between motivation and self-efficacy.

"Self-efficacy is one of Bandura’s ideas, and is, he says, the greatest predictor of student

success in learning. It's something Connectivist theory (but not all Connectivist

practitioners) largely ignores. Self-efficacy is our belief that a task is achievable by us,

and that the environment in which we are working will allow us to achieve that task. It’s

that ticking heart that measures out the motivation in us."

Let's take the following points as points of agreement: self-motivation is important to learning,

and a sense of self-efficacy is important to learning. In short, in order to learn, you have

to want to do it, and you have to think you can do it. Beyond that, though, I think we can identify

some points of departure.

In particular, when Brennan writes about the relation between motivation and learning, he is

thinking of a particular sense of 'learning'. Because, all things considered, motivation and self-

efficacy are neither necessary nor sufficient in order to support learning. A child, placing his

hand in the fire, learns not to do it again, so we have learning without either motivation or self-

efficacy. A passenger in a crashing airplane reads a pilot's manual trying to avert disaster; he is

certainly motivated, and may even think he can succeed, but here we have a case where both

motivation and self-efficacy may not be sufficient.

Why is this important? The sort of learning Bandura's observations apply to is the sort of

learning where there is a body of knowledge that is clearly defined and set before the person in a

circumstance where, as often as not, the person might be doing something else, or want to be

doing something else. When learning isn't something the person isn't naturally or by

circumstance driven to do, we need to appeal to motivation.

And in such appeals, one factor - but hardly the sole factor, nor possibly even the most important

factor - is self-efficacy. Certainly, thinking you can do something plays a major role in your

desire to do it, but also, you have to feel that it is worth doing. Indeed, if something

is really worth doing, you might try to do it even if you're not sure you can.

Brennan writes,

Self-efficacy is, in part, the story students tell themselves: I am going to succeed. I am

going to fail. This is beyond, beneath, or within me. But as educators, we help shape that

p.187

script. We set tasks that are challenging, and achievable, and we create environments that

allow achievement to happen.

In connectivism (at least the way I do it) we recognize that the teacher plays a much smaller role

in 'shaping the story' than is usually supposed, and much of what the teacher does to 'shape the

story' actually defeats the ultimate purpose.

Very rarely does a teacher simply set out a task that the student can simply choose to do or not

do. When teachers set tasks, there is almost invariably an element of coercion involved - you

need to do such-and-such a task in order to pass, in order to earn a credential, in order to get a

job. Teacher's create motivation by creating artificial sense of urgency - the contemporary form

of teaching people to swim by tossing them into the water. Whether the student wants to learn is

irrelevant.

Entire structures of courses, programs and schools of study have been built around this basic

coercive premise, so much so that we can almost pretend that the student is engaged in the entire

enterprise completely voluntarily. We even see the (facile) notion of 'learning contracts' that

supposedly express this sense of voluntary participation, but which as contracts are negotiated

between two very unequal parties. And the more the teacher sets the task - however well-

intentioned - the less self-efficacy the student feels.

In connectivism, participation is presumed from the outset to be voluntary. Students bring their

own motivation with them. We don't create conditions of coercion, so we don't have to employ a

variety of motivational techniques to compensate for a student's loss of self-efficacy and

motivation in an environment of compulsory learning.

I have often argued, you only need to motivate people when you're trying to get them to do

something they don't want to do. Think how much damage is done to the cause of learning when

education begins with that premise. My attitude is that the objective of an educational system is

to help people do want they want to do, for themselves, rather than a mechanism that gets people

to do what we want them to do, for us.

Cognitive Load

Brennan gives us the standard definition of cognitive load:

Cognitive load is the amount of information we can take in, process and retain. It's

probably fixed, and not that large (between 3 and 9 pieces of information, depending on

who you listen to, and how difficult or new the task is).

p.188

The concept - at least the way Brennan uses it - is related to the associated concept of flow263: Both concepts have to do with the relation between the difficult of the task (and in some cases

the relevance of the task) and the outcome. Hence we read in Brennan, " Too high a Cognitive load decreases a student’s sense of self-efficacy. Too low triggers a boredom threshold that tends

to stimulate disengagement."264

The two concepts are not exactly the same; there are some important differences that don't really

come out in Brennan's presentation, and they play out in educational theory differently. But we

can let that pass, and focus on the next step, which (Brennan characterizes as) the relationship

between prior knowledge and cognitive load.

Novices in an area have high cognitive loads, and, typically low Prior Knowledge (the

idea that what we already know has a powerful determining effect on what we can learn,

and how quickly). This is key. It is variable amongst students generally. And it must be

flexibly designed for, or we risk failure. Cognitive load and Prior Knowledge are why we

tend to teach absolute novices using techniques and contexts that are different to the ones

we deploy for absolute experts, and why we avoid exposing novices to too much chaos.

In the criticism of connectivism, this argument has two tangible consequences:

263 http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/flow-a-measure-of-student-engagement/

264 http://cogtech.usc.edu/publications/clark_yin_yang.pdf

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First is the suggestion that connectivist courses throw novices into the work at too high a level;

there is no scaffolding to help novices learn to follow the information being presented at such

complexity and high rates of speed.

Game designers and user experience interface artists know this principles well. One of the major

reasons for Google's success is that novices can enter into the system in a very gentle way: they

can begin with search, and bit by bit, be drawn into Google's much more extensive

ecosystem. Civilization (the game) works in the same way - at the 'novice' level you have

advisors to help you, and you can succeed without mastering trade routes and religions, but at the

higher levels (like 'deity') you have to manage all aspects of the game.

The problem is, if the educators do this, you lose the ability to do it for yourself. There's nothing

more frustrating for me as a learner to find that either (a) the educational designer has thought

too little of me, and made the learning too slow and dull, or (b) the designer didn't think of me at

all, and didn't provide any introductory guides or starter kits. I've encountered both online, and

frequently.

At a certain point in a complex world a learner has to be able to set the bar for him or herself, to

set the challenges appropriately, and find the relevant resources. The more an instructional

designer does it for you, the less able you are to do it for yourself, and ultimately, the less useful

the resource would be. That's why it's better to present the learner with a range of resources

around a topic, and have them pick the ones most suited to them, rather than to try to pick the

best resource (or to arrange the subject matter into tiers, or any of the usual forms of structured

instruction provided in traditional learning).

If Google tried to organize the internet into some sort of 'difficulty level' for you, the results

would be endlessly frustrating. The presumption that the instructor or the learning designer is

more likely to be able to select material and work at the right level is difficulty is probably

misplaced. Every minute spent by any person either bored to tears or frustrated to tears in a

traditional classroom is evidence of that fact.

The second consequence is that, in a connectivist environment, there are many distractions (such

as the need to navigate all the social software) that add to the cognitive load, making it more

difficult even to learn simple elements. "In Connectivism, the distributed platforms, the

networked nature of learning, the requirements for metacognition, digital literacy, the new tools

and techniques add significantly to the novice's cognitive load."

This has less to do with the 'flow' picture of cognitive load, and more with the idea that there is a

limited to the amount of information any person can process, and that therefore any information

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that is not 'on task' is in a certain sense wasted. This is why we are advised265 (for example) not to add distracting graphics or background music to educational materials. We can think by

analogy of how distracting signs and displays on a highway make it harder to focus on driving

safely, especially if they begin intruding into our perspective.

But if this thesis were completely true, there would never be any word problems in mathematics,

engineering or physics, because the cognitive load involved in reading the text, comprehending

the worlds, and translating them into the theorems being learned are extraneous to the theorems

themselves, and hence, make them more difficult to learn.

But we know we need word problems, for two reasons: first, theorems in mathematics,

engineering or physics do not exist independently of context, and a full understanding of them

involves understanding them as they are applied; and second, learning a theorem isn't simply a

matter of remembering it, it is a matter of recognizing when and where it is appropriately

applied.

Even the most basic elements of what we learn exist in a network, and therefore their placement

in a network, for example, in a social network environment, isn't an accidental and incidental

feature of their presentation, irrelevant to their being learned, but is rather an essential feature of

the concept, without which it cannot be fully learned at all.

To put the same point even more bluntly - part of what a concept P means is what P means on

Twitter, and if you cannot access it on Twitter, then you are unable to fully comprehend what it

means. Learning to navigate the social media, the language, the conventions and even the

idiosyncrasies of a discipline are all part of what it is to learn a discipline; connectivism

recognizes this and explicitly accounts for this, while traditional education barely recognizes the

concept of context-sensitivity at all.

The Competent Self

Brennan then turns to four ways educators encourage or undermine self-efficacy. The first two

are related:

1. Physical and psychological responses - We reassure students, so that their fears, anxieties

and uncertainties are, largely, allayed.

2. Encouragement and persuasion - Good educators provide encouragement, and verbal

persuasion, which can increase a student’s self-efficacy.

These, writes Brennan, are almost completely ignored in connectivism: "Classic Connectivism

disregards the theories involved here (constructivism, behaviourism, cognitivism) as outmoded.

265 http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/19/3/143.short

p.191

Educators should be absent, or at most facilitators and not teachers. And peer rewards, or the

rewards of social engagement, are not considered to be the primary drivers of motivation."

First of all, as I have so often argued, connectivism is not constructivism - there is no obligation

for the educator to be absent, and he or she should feel free to 'teach', to 'preach', or make their

presence felt in the course as much as they wish, the only limitation being that this presence is as

a participant and not an authority figure.

But more to the point, if people come to depend in general on educators, and only educators, for

reassurance and encouragement, then they will be sorely unprepared for life. One of the ways a

connectivist course becomes massive is that it eliminates the psychological dependence on the

instructor and encourages participants to learn to depend on each other for these necessary

supports.

The next two points speaks to the role of the educator in the course:

3. Vicarious experience - our sense of our own capability increases when we see people we

consider similar to ourselves achieve at a task

4. Mastery experiences - Mastery experiences provide students with the greatest boost to

self-efficacy they will encounter in an educational context.

Actually, I think our own sense of capability increases when we see anyone complete the task.

This first tells the student that it can be done, and equally important, offers important clues

regarding how it can be done.

Traditional educators talk about the value of the worked example266, and you can see its application here. It's reassurance that the solution isn't found by magic, that an application of

knowledge and method can result in success, and that success has a recognizable form.

This is a role of an educator that I have emphasized a lot - the idea that the role of the educator is

to model and demonstrate. The idea here is that the student experiences vicariously success in

the field by watching the expert do it, and eventually to do it themselves.

The danger here, though, writes Brennan, is that what the expert does may be too difficult for the

novice to master:

"Participants may self-blame, feel inadequate, or possibly, in extreme cases, undergo

aspects of depression. Design for experts, and invite novices, and watch novices get shot

266 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worked-example_effect

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out of the sky. The burning wreckage 267 you can see trailing off the back as they quit is self-esteem."

Agreed. But if you hide the expert performance entirely, you never see the point of the exercise

in the first place. You have to show the whole spectrum, from novice performance, to expert

performance. It's a lot like a Karate tournament or highland dance competition, where they start

with the young children first thing in the morning and continue through the day finishing with

the adult championships at a gala in the evening.

But that's exactly what a connectivist course looks like, and exactly what a traditional

course does not look like. In a connectivist course, you can see everyone from beginner to

master, and all stages in between. When you perform, you perform for everyone. You don't set

yourself up to compare yourself only with expert performances, or only peer performances.

And, most importantly, you don't 'design for experts' or 'design for novices'. You create an

environment in which all levels can participate with equal facility, where people at lower levels

can learn from those who are more experienced, and where people of almost all experience levels

(and not just the instructors and experts) can provide examples, advice and encouragement to

those just learning.

Novices and Success

Brennan summarizes:

Connectivism, as a theory, generally does not provide support for, or recognition of, prior

knowledge, cognitive load, or novice issues, or recognise particular novice needs, even

though individual connectivists sometimes do, or try to. It fails to structure experiences to

follow that moving target. Its lens does not focus. Difference is blurred, and opportunity

is lost. People fail.

The core idea being expressed here is that novices need support of various sorts, and because

connectivism does not provide this, or even acknowledge the need, people fail.

Yes, people fail. But I think connectivism actually does a better job supporting the progression

from novice to expert stage than traditional learning.

Here's why: connectivism does not treat people as novices their entire lives.

At a certain point, we want people to stop being novices, and to start being self-motivated and

self-managing learners. They're going to have to do this in a world where knowledge changes

267 http://cogtech.usc.edu/publications/clark_yin_yang.pdf

p.193

rapidly, where it's less and less certain, and where the availability of formal education or support

in an environment can't be counted on.

Ideally, they should stop being novices some time before tenth birthday. They should stop being

novices somewhere around the time they able to acquire the ability to read, infer, navigate and

socialize.

The idea that we are treating university students and adults as 'novices' is, to my mind, appalling.

If a grown adult still requires a teacher to provide encouragement and support, positive role

models, to select resources and scaffold learning experiences, then that speaks to the substantial

failure of the traditional system of education. To my mind, it is as astonishing a failure as it

would be if adults expected their teachers to read the lessons aloud to them.

Failure

This brings us to the final topic, the underlying thread that has permeated this discussion, and yet

gone undiscussed: the concept of failure.

Just what is it to 'fail' in a connectivist course? Maybe the problem with Brennan's criticism as a

whole is that he is defining forms of success and failure that are not inherent to connectivism at

all.

Let's look at his examples of failure:

 The failure to be a node, or the failure to connect - "All of my peers are nodes! Look at

them connect! Everyone else seems to be succeeding! Why am I not?... Some people

aren't actually nodes. If I type a 140-character message into Twitter and don't know how

to use a hashtag, can anyone really hear me tweet?"

It's hard to imagine how a person see other people connecting without being connected to them

themselves, but let's leave that internal inconsistency aside and treat this as a general problem.

And as a general problem, it's faced by every person in the world whether or not they are

learning in a connectivist course.

We can read268, for example, that one of the best predictors of success at an elite university (after getting in) is one's ability to form and work in study groups. Connecting is a necessity in every

form of education, but while in traditional education this is learned only tacitly, if at all, it in

connectivism it is addressed explicitly.

 Too high cognitive load, and no assurance, or anxiety relieving measures. “New to

Connectivism and social media? Here's 300 tweets, 700 Google+ posts in your inbox, 70

268 http://entertolearn.byu.edu/content/study-groups-secret-success

p.194

blog posts, and a Java-enabled seminar software environment you'll need to calibrate

your laptop to access (on a MAC we call that an adventure!), using totally unfamiliar

software! Say hello to the LMS too! First task due yesterday, create a digital artefact

using a piece of software you've never encountered!”

When I look out my window I see several hundred trees (and a crow). I can pick out the one dead

tree, the one white spruce, the tree closest to me, the tree about to fall down, and the crow. Why

is this significant? Well it's not, really, except to point out that an inability to deal with a large

number of things is an artificial and self-inflicted incapacity (albeit one your traditional teachers

may have helped you acquire).

The rational response to so much data is, first, don't read it all, and second, don't think yourself a

failure if you haven't. The idea is to pick and choose, to focus. This is the first skill in any

discipline - it is what helps us understand what is important and what is just noise. Children learn

this, but somehow, by the time we're adult educators, it has been trained out of us.

Every single connectivist course I have ever offered has begin with advice about what to do with

so many posts and messages. It's the first thing you read.

It isn't failure if you don't read everything, if you don't do everything. That's a very industrialist

consumption-based model of learning (and of the world generally). Success or failure is found in

the quality of the experiences you do choose to have, and are reflected in your own assessment of

yourself, not against some arbitrary and impossible external standard.

 Decentralise the learning process to a degree where clarity and structure require skills

you don't have to access the information you need. “Four different platforms! The

information is out there! Somewhere! Choose your own path to it! In Connectivism, no

one can hear you scream! (If you don’t tweet it with #helpImdrowninginthefreedom)”

Cities have the same problem. The people are located in different buildings, all over the place,

and you can't buy gas and engine oil in the same place you buy perfume (well, except at

Wal*Mart).

The more pressing question is why your desire for 'clarity and structure' require that things be

more or less centralized, and already organized for you. the very first lesson of Taoism is that all

such organization is artificial and contrived, so you may as well learn to seek and master

organizing the world for yourself.

Four different platforms? At least they're all in a computer - can you imagine if you had to

navigate the intricacies of a cafeteria, a gymnasium, a scientific laboratory and a theatre all in the

same day! Oh, wait...

More seriously - an inability to navigate across different websites is a form of literacy, analogous

to being able to live in a city, go from classroom to classroom in a school, or read English as

p.195

written by four different authors. Except that - you don't have to navigate four platforms.

Connectivism is about choice. If it really bothers you, pick one platform and stick with it.

The presumption here is that there is some McGuffin, 'the information', that is Out There

Somewhere. But that presumption is mistaken. Each person is expected to have a different

experience, which may be as broad or as narrow as they choose, and whatever 'structure and

clarity' they achieve is based on that experience - and not somehow 'wrong' if it doesn't

encompass all perspectives on all platforms.

 Tasks that are too complex with no guidance in how to achieve them. “Everyones a node!

Connect to learn! Setup your blog, crosspost to Google+ and socially curate to Diigo

while using Audacity to post a podcast to Tumblr! That’s updated on Twitter! I’ve done

my bit. Now learn!”

This may resemble Jim Groom's ds106 course, but not a connectivist course.

The problem here is one of mistaking a menu for an obligation. Sure, in traditional education,

we've acquired this sense that anything set before us by an instructor is a requirement (and will

be on the test, otherwise, why would it be presented?) but in a connectivist course such items are,

at best, suggestions.

Brennan says, "if we unlearn the hard fought lessons of the past we fail our learner." But it would

be easier all around, especially for the learners, if the learners would unlearn the 'lessons'

inflicted on them by teachers who through they were doing good, but who were leaving their

students woefully unable to cope with a 21st century world.

Connectivist Literacy

Brennan to the contrary notwithstanding, we have thought about these things, written about

them, even offered a course (Critical Literacies) in them, to explore how connectivist literacies

can be developed employing connectivist methodologies.

"Connectivism’s assumptions -- we are all digitally literate nodes, knowledge is in the

network, we are all motivated, have good learning strategies, and information sifting

abilities, and can cope with multi-platform information streams, in an environment where

instruction is at most facilitative, but probably absent -- mean that the sensitive design of

experience that engages prior knowledge, motivation, confidence level, and student need

is absent, and not possible."

These aren't assumptions. They are literacies. They are to connectivism what reading and writing

and 'rithmetic are to a traditional content-based education.

And - in my view at least - a connectivist approach is uniquely able to develop them in

people as literacies.

p.196

The key is to stop thinking of these as content to be mastered, and to start thinking them as skills

to be practiced. There isn't some point of success or failure in any of these, you just do them -

like talking to your friends, like walking from class to class - until it becomes second nature.

Indeed, so long as you think of knowledge and learning as something to be acquired and

measured and tested - instead of practiced and lived and experienced - you will be dissatisfied

with connectivist learning. And - for that matter - there's probably a limit to how far you can

advance in traditional education as well, because (to my experience) everybody who achieves a

high degree of expertise in a field has advanced well beyond the idea that it's just information

and skills and things to learn. Kind of like Dreyfus and Dreyfus said.

Anyhow, that's all for today.

Moncton, Canada

July 25, 2013

p.197

The Role of Open Educational Resources

in Personal Learning

Published as The Role of Open Educational Resources in Personal Learning in

Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Educational Resources:

Innovation, Research and Practice, Rory McGreal (Editor), Wanjira Kinuthia

(Editor), Stewart Marshall (Editor), Tim McNamara (Editor), 207-221, COL,

Athabasca University, 2013.

Abstract

In this paper two perspectives of open educational resource are considered, one from the

perspective of a person who owns or produces the resource, and the other from the perspective

of the person who requires access to the resource. The former model, it is argued, does not take

into account the various dimensions of openness, and is vulnerable to various ways of closing

access to resources.

In an effort to address the barriers to open education, a new form of online learning, the ‘Massive

Open Online Course’, was developed by the author and his colleagues. The MOOC is designed

according to the principles of self-organizing networks of entities. A series of MOOC-based

courses have been offered since 2008. An observation of these courses shows widespread

production and use of open educational resources within these courses.

It is suggested that by understanding the use of open educational resources as ‘words’ in a

language used by participants in a MOOC to communicate with each other we can explain the

role of OERs in personal learning. A course offered as a MOOC is instantiates the properties of a

self-organizing network and as a result is resistant to the forces that limit the effectiveness of

traditional OERs.

The Idea of Openness

The central argument of this paper can be summarized as follows: learning and cognition take

place in a network, and networks need to be open in order to function, therefore, learning and

cognition need to be open.

To the former point we address the major tenets of the pedagogical theory known as

connectivism (Siemens, 2004). “Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos,

network, and complexity and self-organization theories… The starting point of connectivism is

the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations

and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning

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to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows

learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.”

As Siemens writes, “A network can simply be defined as connections between entities.

Computer networks, power grids, and social networks all function on the simple principle that

people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole.”

Connectivism as it is typically presented encompasses the description of learning as it occurs in

two major types of network. First, it describes the conditions conducive to learning in a synaptic

network, as is characteristic of the human brain. (LeDoux, 2002) Second, it describes the

conditions conductive to learning in a social network, as is characteristic of a learning

community. (Watts, 2003)

To the latter point we address the need of entities in the network to be able to communicate in

order for the network to function. A network is not simply a system in which the entities are

joined or related in some way. For a connection to exist, it must be possible for a change of state

in one entity to result in, or have as a consequence, a change of state in another entity. In a

simple case, for example a Hopfield net, one entity in the network may exhibit an excitatory or

inhibitory effect on the other. (Hopfield & Tank, 1986)

Openness, then, is in the first instance the capacity of one entity in a network to change or

influence the state of another entity in the network. However, in the fields of content

management and online learning, the concepts of ‘open’ and ‘open educational resources’ have

had a much wider connotation.

Much of what is written with respect to open content and open systems is derived from Richard

M. Stallman’s original definition of what he called “free software” as four elements (Stallman,

1994):

 Freedom to run the software

 Freedom to study the software

 Freedom to distribute the software

 Freedom to modify the software.

This is a definition that has carried over into the open educational resources (OER) movement.

David Wiley’s original open content license, for example, as based on “the premise that non-

software content – specifically educational content – should be developed and shared in a spirit

similar to that of free and open software.” (Wiley, 2003)

Definitions based on Stallman’s four freedoms, however, may be open to challenge. When

people talk about open source software they talk about openness and freedom from the

perspective of the person who already has the software, who already has it in their hands and

wants to do things with it, like read it, share it, or modify it. And anything that restricts what they

p.199

do with it is considered an infringement on the freedom. It gives the user the flexibility to do

what they need in order to get work done.” (The Debian Foundation, 1997)

The difference between these two models comes to a head with respect to commercial use.

According to some, a license that prohibits the sale of software is a limitation on its freedom.

The Debian Foundation, for example, argues, “There is no restriction on distributing, or even

selling, the software. This last point, which allows the software to be sold for money seems to go

against the whole idea of free software. It is actually one of its strengths. Since the license allows

free redistribution, once one person gets a copy they can distribute it themselves. They can even

try to sell it.” (The Debian Foundation, 1997)

But what of people who do not have the software, and need the software? The four-freedoms

definition of freedom begins to change because, from the perspective of someone who does not

have the software, freedom would be open access to the software with no restrictions. Anything

that infringes on that open access is a restriction on their freedom.

In my contribution to an Open Educational Resources debate hosted by UNESCO I described an

alternative approach to open licensing. (Downes, 2011) I described my own content license,

which was in turn derived from the licensing practices of George Reese, the creator of the

Nightmare MUD Library. The licensing arrangements for MudLibs were created, not with coders

and programmers in mind, but with MUD players. As George Reese writes,

“Since all drivers except DGD were derived from LPMud 3.0, they all require a copyright at

least as strict as that one, which basically states that you can use the server as you like, so long as

you do not make a profit off of its use. Most current servers have much more strict and explicitly

copyrights. On top of that, many of the mudlibs which exist also have similar copyrights. To

require money of your players is therefore a violation of international copyright laws. DGD

requires licensing through a third party company.” (Reese, 1998)

As I noted in the UNESCO debate, Lars Pensjö, who wrote the original LPMud (Bartle, 2003, p.

11) in 1989, wanted to ensure free access to MUDs for the players. As the original MUDOS

license stated, “Permission is granted to extend and modify the source code provided subject to

the restriction that the source code may not be used in any way whatsoever for monetary gain."

(mwiley, 1999) As the discussion makes clear, this is not a prohibition against the recovery of

reasonable expenses. It is intended mostly as a prohibition against one person using another

person’s work for profit.

The importance of this has become clearer 20 years later with when we look at what has become

of the online multi-player role-playing environment. The license conditions weren’t respected.

As Richard Tew (Donky) writes, “That's the thing with releasing mudlibs, people make a few

trivial changes and then decide that it has changed so much that it is effectively something

completely new.” (Tew, 2010) After appropriating the idea and (often) the source code, the

p.200

commercial sector came to dominate the world of multi-player role-playing games. Today, if you

want to play, you pay.

It is not necessary to establish that one or the other of these interpretations is ‘correct’ in order to

establish that there are different meanings of the term “open” depending on one’s perspective. So

the question is, what is the correct perspective to be looking at, or looking at the issue from, in

the context of learning, and online learning in particular?

The Challenge: Making Things Unfree

As noted above, it may be argued that the non-commercial condition attached to an open license

means that the content isn’t really free. But from another perspective, it can be argued that if

someone is charging money for access, then the content is not free, neither free in the sense that

it does not have to be paid for, nor free in the sense of being able to use it as one wishes.

A common response from the defenders of commercial use has always been that the content is

always available for free somewhere. For example, D’Arcy Norman can be found arguing that

commercial use “does nothing to push content into commercial exclusivity, and I would argue

gives a relief valve against it – the original content is always available for use, re-use, etc…

without having to give a penny to the opportunistic monetizer(s).” (Norman, 2010) So it doesn’t

matter if, say, Penguin sells a copy of Beowulf because Beowulf is in the public domain and

readers can always get it for free somewhere else.

Against this response it may be observed that when there is commercial use of free resources

there is significant motivation to prohibit or prevent the free use of these resources. So even if

theoretically it is the case that there could be free copies of Beowulf, the commercial publishers

of Beowulf may devise mechanisms to prevent or discourage access to the free version. As a

result, an entire infrastructure has been created, drawing on community support to foster the

creation of open content, and then leveraging market mechanisms to commercialize this content.

For example, my own study of models of sustainable open educational resources and what I

found was that most of the projects that produce open educational resources are publishing

projects. (Downes, 2007) The resources are coming out of either commercial publishing houses,

or universities that traditionally feed materials into commercial publishing houses, or

foundations. And the different models for the sustainability of open educational resources were

all based around that paradigm.

So for example there is the endowment model. This model is used by the Stanford Encyclopedia

of Philosophy. A sum of money is invested and draws interest, and the earning from interest are

used to publish the resource. (Loy, 2009) Another is the membership model, where fees for

membership in a consortium are charged, and members participate in the creation of the

resource.

p.201

Another model is the donation model. We see Wikipedia using the donation model. National

Public Radio uses the donation model. And again, it’s based on this idea that there will be some

organization that does some publishing.

But even if you have these free resources hanging around commercial publishers still manage to

get you to pay for them. And there’s a variety of ways they do this:

But when people pay for memberships they usually expect privileges, and that typically means

some sort of privileged access.

 Lock-in - If a user is locked into a certain technology, such as, say, iTunes, or the Kindle,

then the material which would normally be available for free is, within that environment,

only available at a price.

 High bar - Stringent but unnecessary conditions make free distribution unaffordable. For

example, a service might require that learning object metadata, which has 87 or so fields,

must be filled in for it to be registered. The commercial publisher can afford to hire

someone to sit there and fill metadata fields, but free content providers don’t have that

kind of resource..

 Flooding - Another way of making users access the commercial content rather than the

free content is ‘flooding’. This can be observed by doing a search at Google for

information on popular topics of learning – language learning, for example. The listings

are flooded with search-engine optimized commercial resources, to the point that any free

resources have been pushed far down the list.

 Conversion – Providers give users a free resource, and then convert it to a commercial

resource, and then get them to pay for it, because they’ve become dependent on the free

resource and can’t bear to be without it.

There can be disagreement with the details of this characterization, but it becomes evident from

the proliferation of such practices that there is an entire economy of free, of commercial, of

publishing, of subscriptions, a whole infrastructure which is surrounding the idea of putatively

open educational content. It’s open educational content “to a degree, with restrictions, if

circumstances permit, using certain technologies.” Otherwise we’re strangled in the whole –

well, as the picture goes, the interests of industrialization, work, images, etc.

And that’s the story of open educational resources. Understanding the numerous other

dimensions of openness also helps us understand additional ways the resources can be unfree.

Dimensions of Openness

In our work in connectivist courses, George Siemens and I have depicted the progression of

openness in three major stages:

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 First of all, openness in educational resources

 Secondly, open courses, and then

 Third, an as yet unrealized openness, openness in assessment. (Downes, Notes on open

government, open data and open pedagogies , 2011)

This is similar to the five stage ‘logic model’ proposed by James C. Taylor (Taylor, Open

Courseware Futures: Creating a Parallel Universe, 2007) and later adopted by the Open

Educational Resources University (OERu) (Day, Kerr, Mackintosh, McGreal, Stacey, & Taylor,

2011):

 Learners access courses based on OER

 Open academic support by ‘Academic Volunteers International’

 Open assessment by participating institutions

 Participating members grant credit for courses

 Students awarded credible degree or credential

In these two models we see three distinct forms of openness: of access to learning resources, of

instruction, and of assessment and credentialing. Sir John Daniel, the former president of the

United Kingdom’s Open University, describing ‘dimensions’ of openness, refers to the openness

as related to openness of access or admission to a university program, open resources, and then

openness in being able to determine your own educational progression, your own course of

studies. (Daniel, 2011)

Additional literature brings to bear discussion of additional forms of openness. In order to

understand the importance of openness to networks in education, we may identify these

systematically.

Open Curriculum – The list of topics to be studied, or competencies to be acquired, or

methodology by which learning is to be achieved, may be a more or less open resource.

Arguably, MIT’s OpenCourseWare was as much an advance in open curriculum as it was open

courseware, as it now became evident to all just what MIT students studied in order to obtain

MIT degrees. The South African Curriculum Wiki, no longer extant, was an early example of

this. (Richardson, 2005)

Open Admission – Open admission, as documented above, is a process whereby a person is not

required to offer evidence of previous academic standing in order to qualify for access to a

learning opportunity.

Open Standards – In education there’s a variety of standards intended to facilitate how we

describe, how we discover, and how we reuse educational resources. The central of these is

called learning object metadata, or LOM, created originally by the Aviation Industry Computer-

Based Training Committee (AICC), and then passed on by Instructional Management Systems,

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or IMS, and then standardized under IEEE, and then really standardized under the ISO standards

organizations.

But there are other standards as well: Learning Design, Common Cartridge, and Learning Tools

Interoperability. The United States military, under the auspices of Advanced Distributed

Learning (ADL) came out with the Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model (SCORM),

which is the standard in commercial online learning.

In some cases these standards are what typically be called ‘open’, while in others they are more

proprietary. IMS, for example, supports itself with a membership system. Members that pay fees

have access to the standards ahead of their formal release. IEEE by contrast posted the Learning

Object Metadata standard openly while it was still being discussed and decided upon, but

charges a fee for the finished product.

Open Source Software – Open Source Software has had a significant impact on online learning.

Widely known is Moodle, a PHP-based open source learning management system created

originally by Martin Dougiamas with the support of thousands of volunteer programmers.

Moodle is small, portable, and useful for colleges and schools. By contrast, the open source

Sakai was built by a consortium of universities as part of MIT’s Open Knowledge Initiative and

is a large suite of enterprise software.

Other open source education projects include Elgg, which is an open source social network

software for learning, Atutor, LAMS (Learning Activity Management System), School Tools,

and more types of software are available at Schoolforge or Eduforge

Open source software is released under one or another type of open source license. To

overgeneralize, one sort of open source license, such as the Berkeley Software Distribution,

allows open source software to be integrated into commercial while the other, such as the GNU

General Public License, does not. In practice, open source software licensing is a thicket of

options and permutations.

Open Educational Resources – More specific to most of the papers in this volume are the open

educational resource projects themselves. Here we list just a few of them. One of the earlier

ones, and certainly the most famous, most heavily promoted, is MIT’s Open Courseware project

(OCW). Something that’s also received a lot of attention recently (because he appeared on the

TED videos) is the Khan Academy, which is a whole series of YouTube videos on mathematics,

physics, and similar science and technology subjects. MERLOT is a project that was created by a

consortium of North American educational institutions.

These are just a few of dozens of projects that have been set up specifically to create educational

materials for distribution for free (or some version of free) to people around the world.

p.204

The licensing of these resources, in order to make them available for use and reuse, was based on

the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which covered documentation associated with

open source software. The GFDL did not allow for some types of restrictions, most notably, the

‘non-commercial’ restriction.

More recently we’ve had Creative Commons, and Creative Commons is now arguably the

dominant mechanism for licensing open educational resources, and indeed, for licensing open

content of any sort. Devised by lawyer Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons provides the

licensor – the person who owns the material – with a series of choices allowing the author “some

rights reserved. These include the non-commercial clause, an attribution requirement, share-

alike, and a no-derivatives clause.

By far the most popular form of Creative Commons license is the one that I use, “Creative

Commons By Non-Commercial Share-Alike,” which means that I want to be attributed, I don’t

want the content to be used commercially, and I want it to be shared under the same license that

it was obtained under.

Open Teaching or Tutoring – Open teaching is the provision of live access to teaching activities

or resources. As access to a TED video, for example, might be access to the resource, being able

to watch a TED talk live – whether in person or online – is access to open teaching (though, of

course, TED learning opportunities are manifestly not open). Open tutoring extends this idea to

include openness of interactivity with the instructor or tutor.

MOOC Design Principles

It is evident from the discussion thus far that though much of the attention focused around open

learning has been on the publication of open educational resources, there are different

perspectives and a range of types of openness to consider.

The concept of the Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, was designed with these wider

considerations in mind. It therefore focused not on the narrow question of licensing and

distribution of course materials, but on the wider question of promoting and preserving openness

across all dimensions.

In order to best accomplish, the MOOC is designed as a network, rather than as a linear

progression of subject materials or curriculum. In this way, all aspects of the course are

distributed across all participants, rather than centralized into a single location.

A network is composed of a set of entities (also sometimes called ‘nodes’ or ‘vertices’). Entities

form connections (also called ‘edges’) with each other. The internet, for example, is a network,

and network course design parallels that of the internet. (Spinelli & Figueiredo, 2010) The

‘vertice’ and ‘edge’ terminology is from graph theory, from which the course design is also

derived. (Diestel, 2010, p. 2) Networks of connected entities can arguably perform cognitive

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functions, and correspondingly ‘connectionist’ computer systems are intended to emulate the

functioning of a ‘neural network’ such as the human brain. (Stufflebeam, 2011)

These principles have been described in previous work (Downes, Learning Networks: Theory

and Practice, 2005) and may be summarized here as follows:

- decentralization – connections are organized into the form of a mesh, rather than the hub and

spokes more characteristic of a hierarchy

- distribution – the representation of concepts or ideas is not contained within a single node, but

is distributed across a number of nodes

- disintermediation – direct communication from node to node is possible and encouraged

- disaggregation – nodes should be defined as the smallest reasonable component, rather than

being bundled or packaged

- dis-integration – nodes in a network are not ‘components’ of one another, and are not depicted

as being organized as components of a ‘system’

- democratization – nodes are autonomous, and a diversity of node type and state is expected and

encouraged, membership and communications in the network are open, and meaning is generated

interactively

- dynamism – the network is a fluid, changing entity and demonstrated plasticity - the ability to

create new nodes and connections

- desegregation – though the network may exhibit clustering, there is nonetheless a continuity

across the network, as opposed to a strictly modular design

Employing these principles an organization was developed that created several types of entities:

persons (i.e., people registered for the course), authors (i.e., creators of learning resources), posts

(entities created by course authors), links (entities created by persons and authors), files (audio,

video or slide multimedia) and events.

The course proceeds by means of seeding the network gradually through time with posts,

encouraging persons to connect with these resources and with each other through the creation of

posts and links, connecting participants in real time via hosted events, such as online lectures by

guest speakers, and the creation and capturing of multimedia files.

That the MOOC, as described, constitutes a network structure becomes evidence through

analysis of the structure of the MOOC. Illustrated below, for example, is the structure of the

initial seeding provided by course facilitators:

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Figure 1. Network structure of a MOOC. X28’s New Blog, 6 September, 2008. (Melcher, 2008)

The deployment of a MOOC as a learning environment has been documented in numerous places

elsewhere (Kop, Fournier, & Mak, 2011); what is important in this enquiry is the role being

played by open educational resources in the course structure to produce the dimensions of

openness described above.

Evidence of OER Production and Use

There is significant evidence extant that one of the primary activities of participation in a MOOC

is the use, reuse, and production of open educational resources, so much so that the pedagogy of

the MOOC is also referred to as the “pedagogy of abundance.” (Kop, Fournier, & Mak, 2011)

As demonstrated in Kop and Fournier’s analysis of a recent MOOC, ‘Personal Learning

Environments, Knowledge and Networks (PLENK) 2010’, participants submitted numerous blog

posts, and their discussions around these posts took the form of a network, as may be seen here:

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Figure 2. PLENK participation rates. Figure 3.Connections between participants in a

discussion. (Kop & Fournier, 2010)

In the more recent #Change11 MOOC (http://change.mooc.ca) we see even greater levels of

creating and communicative activity. The chart below measures cumulatively the number of

feeds, the number of blog posts, and the number of Twitter posts made by course participants, as

well as the level of participation by sign-ups and newsletter subscriptions:

Figure 4. #Change11 participation rates. See

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aoxh9wWyk71HdGtEYXFfXzdON3Fvb3h2WH

FJbTBxMkE&hl=en_US#gid=3

Note that day-by-day counting of blog and Twitter posts started in early December, and by that

time had already numbered in the thousands, including 1422 blog posts. As the course

progressed through to January, the numbers of each steadily increased, showing a continued

engagement and production of course artifacts.

Preliminary analysis of the #Change11 suggests that, as in the case of previous MOOCs, a

substantial number of external learning resources are being referenced and linked. Half way

through the #Change11 course, for example, the participants in their 286 feeds had linked to

5,150 media artifacts, as evidenced from this course environment printout:

p.208

Figure 5. #Change11 media artifacts.

Participants are reading each other’s blog posts, both directly and through the email newsletter

distribution. Through the newsletter, we can count the number of times readers followed through

to the blog post itself, and as of the half-way point we note more than 30 posts having more than

100 click-throughs each (see http://change.mooc.ca/popular.htm).

It is important to take note of two salient features of this activity. First, none of it is assigned

reading, nor does any of it appear in the course syllabus. Contents in the MOOC software are, as

noted above, separated between what administrators provide to seed the course, and what

participants contribute themselves. And second, all of it is hosted, and obtained from, sources

external to the MOOC environment, which – because it is openly accessible – makes it all open

educational resources.

Adding up these numbers (noting that they do not include comments on blog posts or material

referenced in those comments, nor materials read or referenced in venues outside the course

environment) and not including Twitter posts gives us 6472 open educational resources

implicated in the course thus far. Granted, a significant number of these (and especially of the

media resources) will be trivial. The picture is nonetheless one of significant dynamic creation

and exchange of open educational resources.

The PLENK course and #Change11 course are not anomalies. Other MOOC courses also result

in the creation and exchange of artifacts in this way. It will be the subject of further research to

identify factors impacting the nature and rate of artifact creation and exchange. But it’s clear it

can be significant.

Jim Groom’s ‘Distributed Storytelling 106’ course uses the tag ‘#ds106’, and a Google search on

‘#ds106’ (as of this writing) yields more than 200,000 results. The ‘assignments’ page, where

students’ work is aggregated from external sites where it has been posted, contains almost 7,000

items (699 pages of ten items each as of this writing; http://ds106.us/page/699/

It is clear from these examples that when a course is designed according to network principles,

and hence as a MOOC, the role of open educational resources changes dramatically. Far from

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being published materials created by academics and authors and merely consumed by course

participants, they begin to become the way in with these course participants communicate with

each other, and as a consequence, their use and exchange numbers not in the single digits, but

rather in the hundreds or thousands.

The (Open) Language of Learning

And this very point, this very distinction is the distinction between what we might say are old

and new depictions of open educational resources, or educational resources generally.

The picture presented above of open educational resources as things that are published, things

that are presented by publishers in a very formal manner, probably charged-for and commercial,

is the old static coherent linear picture of the world. It’s not the model that we want to use for

open educational resources, because it’s not applicable in a network learning environment.

And that brings us back to what we want to think about in open educational resources. Open

Educational Resources are a network of words that we use in whatever vocabulary we’re using to

conduct whatever activity it is that we’re doing or that we’re undertaking. They are the signals

that we send to each other in our network.

If that is so, then what openness means in the context of open educational resources is whatever

is meant by openness in a network, where we think of openness in a network as the sending of

these signals back and forth, the sending of these resources back and forth.

We need to think about open educational resources not as content but as language. We need to

stop treating open educational resources or online resources generally as though they were

content like books, magazines, articles, etc., because the people who actually use them – the

students and very often the creators – have moved far beyond that. Each one of these things is a

word, if you will, in this very large post-linguistic vocabulary. They are now language. They are

not composed of language, they are language.

And that’s why they need to be open.

Suppose that everyday words that people wanted to use like, say, ‘cat’ – to pick a word at

random – were owned by, say, Coca-Cola. Now we have allowed a certain limited ownership of

words in our society, but by and large we can’t own words. We can’t own the use of words to

create expression. And even more particularly, imagine if we had to pay royalties to use certain

letters. So you could only use the letter ‘o’ if you paid money to Ford. You could only use the

letter ‘i’ if you paid money to Apple. The effectiveness of language would be significantly

impaired.

And the thesis here is that the effectiveness of language would be impaired in exactly the same

way the effectiveness of communication would be impaired, in exactly the same way the

effectiveness of a network is impaired if you break down or block the links between entities.

p.210

The use of open resources in a MOOC is clearly that of a language, where the resources are the

‘words’ sent back and forth between participants in a dense network of communication. It

becomes clear that measures that would impair the flow of these ‘words’ would damage this

communication, and render mute the MOOC itself.

We can, indeed, map the openness of a MOOC – which is open by design – to the various

dimensions of openness mapped above.

In a MOOC, the curriculum is the construction of the MOOC itself – the lists of links to

individual feeds, posts and links, and other resources shared in the course. Opening these lists

makes the structure of the MOOC transparent, and also allows people to participate in the

MOOC without ever actually registering in the MOOC (this is a dimension of MOOC

participation that has yet to be explored) and creates what amounts to open admission.

The MOOC is built using open standards to facilitate communication and content sharing.

Because there is a great diversity of platforms and languages in a MOOC, common aggregation

formats are used, and the deployment of open source software (gRSShopper for PLENK and

#Change11, WordPress for DS106) allows new standards or extensions to be implemented as

needed. They also allow participants to create their own MOOC applications or interfaces.

The most obvious dimension of openness in a MOOC is the sharing of open educational

resources, but it’s important to recognize that the facilitators, by participating in this network of

interactions, open their instruction as well. They do this by interacting bilaterally or with a group

with participants in the MOOC, and by creating recordings or broadcasts of these interactions so

they may be shared with other participants.

Finally, by virtue of its structure and its sharing of resources in a network environment, a MOOC

is resistant to the sort of enclosure that afflicts traditional OER publishing.

Because there is no single environment, and because the MOOC consists essentially of a network

of connections between autonomous entities, there is no mechanism for creating lock-in. Any

technology employed by a person engaged in a MOOC could be easily exchanged for another

supporting the same standards; any content provided by a participant could be exchanged for

another.

The network structure of a MOOC also resists the privileging of certain content with high-bar

qualifications needed to enter the network. Any participant in the network may contribute

content, and as communications may be direct from person to person, there is no intermediating

structure to impose a high bar.

Similarly, the flooding of search results and other centralized points of access is no longer an

effective strategy for commercial media. Communications are exchanges of content between the

participants, and not passive access of media from a centralized repository or store. Hence, there

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is no list to be flooded, and no mechanism to impose undesired content into the perspective or

point of view of the participant.

Finally, the means for conversion are minimal. A MOOC isn’t a single entity on which one can

become dependent, it isn’t located in a single place and doesn’t require a key piece of

technology. Consequently, there is no means to force a person to pay for access to a MOOC, or

any component of a MOOC.

Understanding open educational resources as though they were words in a language used to

facilitate communications between participants in a network should revise our understanding of

what it means to be open, and what it means to support open educational resources. It is clear,

from this perspective at least, that openness is not a question of production, but rather, a question

of access.

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p.214

‘Completely Wrong’ But Not in Error

David Wiley writes269,

A careful reading of the post he links to, however, shows that this is completely wrong.

The problems described in the post are the result of two issues: (1) Reusers of CC BY

licensed research articles are not obeying the terms of the open license, and (2) There is

some confusion regarding who should pursue legal action against those who are not

obeying the terms of the license.

I'm not addressing (2) at all, save to observe that if it is a person pursuing legal action, they will

most likely be crushed by a corporation. I don't think there's any dispute there.

With respect to (1) Wiley does not state exactly what "terms of the open license" are being

violated. I argue "none" - which of course is my point, and leads to the "I told you so". But what

terms does he think might be being violated? Reading the original post offers several

possibilities:

- the suggestion that 'By' requires that the publisher be named (which in this case might be PLOS

or whatever). But if you read https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode270 section 4.b you see the wording of 'and/or' is being used, which has the logical status of 'OR' (as opposed

to XOR, or exclusive OR). That means the condition is satisfied if ANY ONE of the disjuncts is

satisfied. The author is named, and hence the disjunct is satisfied. So it's not this.

- the suggestion that the reprinter should have published the CC license URL, as indicated in

section 4.a of the same license, where it says, "You must include a copy of, or the Uniform

Resource Identifier (URI) for, this License with every copy of the Work You Distribute or

Publicly Perform." This one is a bit trickier. CC-by is not viral; there is no 'share alike' clause

attached. So presumably there is no requirement to license the reprinted version as CC-By. The

wording of 4.a seems to suggest that the CC-by license is viral, "You may not offer or impose

any terms on the Work that restrict the terms of this License or the ability of the recipient of the

Work to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the License."

Now if he wants the basis of his response to me to be that CC-by is viral, or that CC-by is the

same as CC-by-SA that's fine, but I think the statement of that argument should be clearer

(minimally, the statement of that argument should exist).

269 http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2917

270 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

p.215

- the suggestion that the use violates some additional license terms imposed by PLOS. But the

document cited http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/license/271 is not actually a 'PLOS

license', it is a page that is 'about' the CC-by license, and could hardly be taken to define it. The

BioMed Central license https://www.biomedcentral.com/authors/license272 isn't a CC license and thus outside the domain of this discussion.

Given all this, it is reasonable to believe that the reprinters thought they were working within the

limitations of the CC-by license, that they were IN FACT working within the bounds of that

license, and that therefore they were not, as he suggests, "not obeying the terms of the open

license."

Maybe he meant something different, but it would be necessary for him to at least state what it

was in order for me to evaluate the claim.

The second part of the post (presumably still showing I am 'completely wrong') asks, "How does

adding the NC or SA clauses magically either (1) correct user behavior or (2) identify who

should pursue legal remedies against those misbehaving users?"

I do not suggest that adding the 'NC' clause serves to identify who should pursue legal action, so

any discussion of (2) is irrelevant. The NC cause does not suggest who should take legal action

(though common sense would suggest that it is the copyright owner who should take legal

action).

With respect to (1), I actually did offer an argument, but it is not restated nor refuted here. I

argued (and maintain here) that the addition of the 'NC' clause creates risk. True, it doesn't

prevent bad behaviour on the part of publishers. But it creates the greater possibility of a lawsuit

if the publisher reuses the material, because the publisher is more clearly violating the license by

offering the previously free material available for commercial sale for material gain.

This argument may not be persuasive to Wiley; I recognize that. But when I am called

'completely wrong' I think minimally there's an onus to acknowledge that I at least made the

argument, and offer some sort of token refutation.

Moncton, Canada

September 4, 2013

271 http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/license/

272 https://www.biomedcentral.com/authors/license

p.216

Two Comments on Open

Response to David Wiley

His post273

Which initiatives that use “open” properly would you suggest the whole world read about

instead of the Fauxpen Education Alliance? 274

I don't want to be a self-promoter, but...

I have planned and run all my MOOCs openly since 2008. Moreover, they have all been run

using open source software (Perl Artistic/GPL) which has been available on my website and on

Sourceforge since then.275

But everyone - *everyone* - has jumped on the Coursera / Udacity / EdX bandwagon, not

because they're open, not even because they're better, but because they're part of that Stanford /

Harvard / MIT nexus. The willingness of people (and media, and funders, etc etc) to run toward

these initiatives, simply because they're from elite US universities, is what leads to these new

versions of open.

Meanwhile I get flack from the Creative Commons community because the CC license on some

of my writing is 'not open enough', because I don't (and couldn't if I wanted to) allow my work to

be scraped and sold by content-farms. You can take my work and do whatever what you want

with it (but you can't lock it behind a wall forcing people to pay thousands to see your annotated

version of it).

So I think that the promoters of open need to look closely at what motivates them and what

projects they support, and perhaps be less willing to jump on the next media meme because it

pushes pageviews and signups, and examine the sort of software and content environment they

want 'open' to really be.

To me, open isn't about the money (and it's precisely when it *does* become about the money

that it becomes converted and corrupted). Open is about creating and sharing. Open isn't about

elite universities and "the best professors in the world". It's about everybody being able to be a

learner, and a teacher, and a member of the community.

273 http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2922

274 http://blog.udacity.com/2013/09/announcing-launch-of-open-education.html

275 http://grsshopper.downes.ca/

p.217

I'm just saying. I'm not bitter, I don't even care - I'm just observing that people get the 'open' they

deserve.

Responses to a discussion forum on the future of OERu.

The discussion276

- What is the OERu point of difference and does it need one?

The primary (and perhaps the sole) point of difference between OERu and the other initiatives is

the manner of course construction, using the wiki and (mostly) volunteer labour. Perhaps

secondarily, the fact that OERu materials can be reused, though reuse permissions vary through

the open online learning community.

- What differentiates the OERu collaboration from xMOOCs?

Strictly the reuse permissions. The 'logic model277' employed by OERu is (more cynically) also employed by, say, Coursera.

It may be that there is an argument to be made for the gretaer quality or usefulness of learning

materials created collaboratively in a wiki environment, but as OERu has focused more and more

on its university "founding partners" it becomes more like Coursera, and less like Wikipedia. In

my view.

- What has contributed to the uptake and global interest in the cMOOCs and xMOOCs?

Marketing.

CMOOCs were around for a while without making a huge impact (though they were influential

pedagogically). It is with Stanford's AI course - and the support of the Stanford media machine -

in 2011 that the format became popular. The marketing was so influential that they were actually

given credit for inventing the form, though we know that both MOOCs and OERu were around

before Coursera.

- What does this mean for OERu?

It's running behind in a race against well-funded marketing machines. No doubt board members

on OERu "founding partners" have wondered why they weren't "involved in a MOOC'. OERu is

not sufficiently 'more open' to attract notice from the supporters of xMOOCs, at least, not in the

276 http://scope.bccampus.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=16804

277 http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/Logic_model

p.218

popular media and public opinion. Initiatives like Wikiversity and Curricki find themselves in

the same position.

I don't think 'being a wiki' open education initiative will be sufficient to attract long-term interest

(though this should not deter OERu and WikiEducator members from continuing to create and

contribute valuable online learning materials). It will probably create funding pressures for

OERu, as "founding members" look elsewhere to join the MOOC bandwagon.

Should OERu brand itself as a MOOC initiative? I don't think so - it would be like trying to

retroactively give itself credit for being a part of a movement it wasn't a part of (like the way

Alison is saying it created the first 'MOOCs' in 2007 because it released some 'openish' learning

content).

But I think OERu can draw on its superior pedagogical knowledge and offer a more substantial

learning experience than the Video+quize format of the xMOOCs. Maybe cMOOC people and

OERu people should talk more.

- Are there other contemporary developments which the OERu network should take into

account?

Well, yeah. Can it get past the concept of a 'class' and 'university credit' (ie., the old-fashioned

and not very open logic model) and embrace a model of learner-driven education? Can it nurture

(and support existing) domain-specific communities with the sharing of resources, practices, war

stories, activities, etc?

Before MOOCs became large the same community was talking about the concept of personal

learning. The institution-based OERu model is a step away from that (as are the institution and

course-centric MOOCs, both 'c' and 'x'). Can OERu find a way to merge collaborative

(cooperative) community with personal learning?

- What questions should the OERu network be asking to inform its future?

To me, the central (and existential) question always facing OERu (and WikiEducator) is: who

does OERu and WE serve? Who is intended to be the ultimate beneficiary of these initiatives?

When a person contributes content to WE, who are they trying to help?

As the emphasis of WE has shifted over time from open learning to founding partners, the

answer to this question has become murkier. When we see initiatives like Coursera and Udacity

launch, it becomes relevant to ask how different OERu is from either of these. I'm not saying

they are the same. But the difference is far less clear after the 'logic model' than it was before.

Moncton, Canada

September 18, 2013

p.219

On the Three or Four Problems of

Connectivism

Marc Clarà and Elena Barberà have advanced at least two articles now where they argue that

there are three problems with connectivism. One of these is Learning online278: massive open online courses (MOOCs), connectivism, and cultural psychology (Distance Education, 34:1, 129-136). The other, behind a paywall, is Three problems with the connectivist conception of

learning279 (Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. DOI: 10.1111/jcal.12040).

Matthias Melcher280 was good enough to point out some of the problems with the latter article, including some noteworthy misquotations. In this post I would like to respond to the substantive

criticisms, of which there are four:

 connectivist ideas have been widely and rapidly disseminated, but without the academic

control procedures which the development of a learning theory needs to ensure rigour and

systematicity in its postulates

 the 'learning paradox.' This paradox, first posed by Socrates (Plato, 2002), can be applied

to connectivism as follows: How do you recognize a pattern if you do not already know

that a specific configuration of connections is a pattern?

 connectivism underconceptualizes interaction and dialogue, by understanding it as a

learner’s connection to a human node in the network.

 connectivism is unable to explain concept development... if a concept consists of a

specific pattern of associations, how can it be explained that the concept develops but the

pattern of associations remains the same?

To address the first issue, it seems to me there are two ways to respond to such a criticism: first,

to embrace the requirement, but then to point out that it has been met; and second, to reject the

requirement. I would like to do both.

Specifically, I would argue that literature related to connectivism has undergone peer review.

According to Google Scholar281 I have an H-index of 22 and i10-index of 31. This listing does 278 http://unescochair-elearning.uoc.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Clara-Barbera_2013_learningOnline_DE.pdf

279 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12040/abstract

280 http://x28newblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/connectivism-must-abandon-its-ideas/

281 http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Uz8GKA0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

p.220

not include my work published in academic books (for example, 'The Role of Open Educational

Resources in Personal Learning', in Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and

Practice282, published this year by Athabasca University Press). It's true that I mistreat my publications terribly, and that I should maintain my publications page283 a lot more carefully, but it's false to say that my work has not been subject to academic scrutiny.

But I would also argue that the requirement that this work be subject to (the traditional) peer

review process is misplaced. It is arguable that this process could be replaced with a much more

effective process of post-publication review. The idea is that academic and other works are

published openly, and then weighed not by an anonymous panel of two or three referees, but by

the whole academic community. As Jane Hunter writes284, "Open, post-publication refereeing removes barriers for readers and authors alike, and it refocuses the role of peer review from, at

its worst, a behind-the-scenes variety of censorship to, at its best, the process of expert criticism

and advice."

Finally, there is the undercurrent to the authors' remarks to the effect that connectivism would be

in some important way different if it were subject to the peer review process, to the effect that it

would ensure rigour and systematicity in its postulates. This is precisely one of the reasons I am

cautious (if not to say outright sceptical) of the process of review and revision in academic

journals. While I seek clarity and precision in all I write, I do not see connectivism (or any other

theory) as a set of postulates, entailments and confirmations. Systematicity is for robots.

Now let us address the second issue, specifically, the suggestion that you cannot recognize a

pattern if you do not already know that a specific configuration of connections is a pattern. In

'Learning Online' Clarà and Barberà tie it to a serious issue specific to connectivism: "This

theoretical problem causes an important learning problem in cMOOCs: Many learners, especially

those who do not have high self-regulation skills, feel lost and without any direction and

support.

The argument as originally posed in Meno285 and elsewhere in Plato's writings does not attach to patterns specifically but to the forms of matter (such as, say, a triangle), colours, and even

intangible properties such as justice and virtue. How could we recognize them, if we are not

taught? But if they are not taught, do they cease to exist? Obviously not, therefore, the forms,

282 http://www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/pub_PS_OER-IRP_web.pdf

283 http://www.downes.ca/me/publications.htm

284 http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00063/full

285 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1643/1643-h/1643-h.htm

p.221

colours, justice, virtue, and everything else we perceive must exist in what we have come to call

a 'platonic' or ideal state.

In the 'Three Problems' paper Clarà and Barberà argue there are "two basic solutions to the

paradox":

 Either, first, to follow Kant, and accept that we have access to these concepts innately, as

argued recent theorists such as Jerry Fodor and Jean Piaget.

 Or second, to follow Hegel, and "accept that a representational means can be shared by

two or more people, so they can use it together." Thus we reach Vygotsky's zone of

proximal development, based on the idea that "while one of the participants in the agency

may not be able to use the means on their own, they are able to use it in the joint activity,

in collaboration."

This statement of the dilemma may appear intuitive, because it seems to suggest that we must

learn of a concept internally or externally. That does seem to cover all the options.

Philosophy, though, does not reduce to a choice between Kant and Hegel (thank goodness). The

two options provided by Clarà and Barberà can be supplemented with many more possibilities. I

will adduce two, one internal, and one external.

 Internally, we can appear to examples of self-organization. Simple systems composed of

interacting entities can form and reform into patterns. Consider, for example, the

computational model called 'the game of life' 286, which shows how complexity can develop out of simple rules.

 Externally, we can learn through direct perception or recognition. For example,

consider J.J. Gibson's theory287 of direct perception." The neural inputs of a perceptual system are already organized and therefore do not have to have an organization imposed

upon them."

The point here is that there are many ways for concepts to arise in the mind; they don't need to be

delivered fully formed either by innate knowledge or through shared representations. This is a

good thing, for if we learned of concepts only through the two mechanisms proposed by Clarà

and Barberà, then we would be faced with a problem of infinite regression, for there would be no

means through which these concepts could be discovered in the first place.

286 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcuBvj0pw-E

287 http://www.igs.net/~pballan/Gibson%28chapt13,1966%29.htm

p.222

In connectivism we talk quite a bit about how (what Clarà and Barberà call 'concepts') arise in

the mind (and in networks generally). Learning theories, ranging from simple Hebbian288

mechanism to complex Boltzmann engines289, create and modify connections between entities.

There is a vast literature devoted to learning rules290. I think we can regard 'the learning paradox'

as definitively solved.

The claim made by connectivism in this regard is that learning is a process of pattern

recognition, nothing more or less. The warning inherent in connectivist theory is that there is

no apriori privileged set or type of pattern that may be learned: so while you may think that you

are presenting shapes to learners, they may be learning to recognize colours. And that any pattern

inherent in your teaching - including bad habits, prejudice, whatever - will also be learned by the

people watching you.

Finally - to be clear - talk about "recognizing" a pattern does not involve some homunculus

inside our head doing some conceptual work. The phenomenon of pattern recognition is a well-

known property291 of neural networks. The point I make is epistemological: what makes something a 'pattern' is the fact that it is recognized by neural nets. There is no apriori set of

entities, 'patterns' (or 'concepts', or whatever) that must somehow acquired and placed in the

mind.

The third issue raised is based on the contention that connectivism underconceptualizes

interaction and dialogue.

To set up this discussion, Clarà and Barberà first offer a simplified action in a network, then

offer the following critique (as quoted from the Three Problems paper):

 [first] the connectivist scheme of the network does not permit any (human) node to which

the learner connects to be conceptualized as part of learning but not part of the connective

pattern of which knowledge consists,

 [second] a binomial conceptualization is too simple to characterize the complexity of

connection states in a network, especially if human nodes (interactions) are involved,

[and]

288 http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Hebb/

289 http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Boltzmann_machine

290 http://www.uotechnology.edu.iq/dep-

eee/lectures/4th/Electronic/Software%20&%20intelligent%20system/1.pdf

291 http://www.engineering.upm.ro/master-

ie/sacpi/mat_did/info068/docum/Neural%20Networks%20for%20Pattern%20Recognition.pdf

p.223

 [third] the problem is not only the simplicity involved in characterizing the state of

interaction, but the very fact that interaction is thought of as a state.

In all of these it is apparent that Clarà and Barberà are confusing the concept of a connection

with the concept of an interaction. The two are very different.

A connection is a state. Roughly speaking, it is a communications channel that exists between

two entities such that a change in the state of one entity can result in a change in the state of the

other entity. Usually, we depict these channels as physical, for example, the axons of a neuron,

or a telephone wire carrying signals.

Connections can be extremely complex; there is no requirement whatsoever that they be two-

state on-off types of things. Connection strength can vary, the frequency of signals can vary, the

nature of signals can vary, there may be multiple strands and different types of connection

between two nodes (hence, I can send George an email and a Tweet). The nature of the states of

the nodes can be variable as well. A signal from one node to another may have a cumulative

effect, triggering a reaction only after a tipping point is reached, for example.

An interaction is the actual event where a change of state in one entity takes place with the result

that a change of state in the second entity takes place. We may also think of an interaction as a

mass noun, referring to a set or a series of such changes of states. Again, we usually think of an

interaction as something physical, for example, a signal sent down a communications channel.

So there's no sense in which connections and interactions are simple, but that does not address

the problem posed by Clarà and Barberà, because there is something else they're after. We have

to tease it out a bit.

When we look at the first objection, "as part of learning but not part of the connective pattern of

which knowledge consists," what they appear to be appealing to is the lack in connectivist

theories of learning of a sense of aboutness. When one person teaches another person about

France, we interact only with the other person, and not with France. But in learning, we are not

learning about the other person, but about France.

So the criticism is essentially that connectivism doesn't have a built-in semiotics. It doesn't have

a sense in which a communication between two entities is about a third entity. And it's true that

representation in communication doesn't work this way in connectivism. Rather, connectivism

works according to two principles: direct representation, and distributed representation.

 Direct representation is the idea that the signal is its own message (think of it as a

corollary to Gibson's direct perception). We can think of this along the lines of the

p.224

concept of content addressable memory292 in computer science. The message is its own content. True, we as a sender may intend the message to refer to or represent some object

or entity, but what is in fact received is only the sentence itself, which must carry all its

representational content with it.

 Distributed representation is concepts (for lack of a better work) are stored not as single

entities in the mind, but as sets of connections between entities, so they exist not just in

one place, but in many places. What's significant here is that the same set of

connections is used to store not one but many concepts (indeed, all concepts). So when

the set of connections defining one concept is changed, so also is the set of connections

defining many other concepts.

The combination of direct representation and distributed representation together do the same job

that semiotics does: it explains how we can learn one thing through reference to another. A

person says the word 'Paris' to me; the sound of this word stimulates a part of my neural net,

initially, that part associated with the word 'Paris' but ultimately, that part associated with a

variety of other concepts ('City', 'France', etc.) all of which are composed (partially) of

the same connections.

Communication and interactivity are useful in learning because they enable us to make

connection s between entities we might not have made through direct experience. A person may

never visit Paris in a lifetime, and no that the Louvre is located in Paris only through the repeated

association of 'Louvre' and 'Paris' in sentences uttered by others.

The claim made by connectivism is that communication is non-semantical. Or as McLuhan

would say293: the medium is the message. It doesn't 'stand for' something else; it is what is being communicated. The warning in connectivism is this: we cannot assume that the person receiving

the message embodies the same intent (the same mental world of objects and concepts and ideas)

as the person sending it. Communication is a complex process because, in order for anything to

(if you will) 'mean' anything, a great deal of background needs to be in place. So much so, in

fact, that it's doubtful that any two people ever mean exactly the same thing by any two instances

of the same word.

We won't say the question of meaning and messaging are definitely solved. But there is certainly

a story here; connectivism is not silent on the issue, as Clarà and Barberà suggest, but makes

some assertions that can (and should) be investigated and empirically tested.

292 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_addressable_network

293 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw

p.225

Let me now turn to the fourth issues, which is essentially, that connectivism cannot explain

concept development. "If a concept consists of a specific pattern of associations, how can it be

explained that the concept develops but the pattern of associations remains the same?"

For example, write Clarà and Barberà, consider "Piaget’s work on the matter in question, in

which he established four basic stages, the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the

concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage."

In the first instance, I would respond that Clarà and Barberà have confused naming with identity.

Their question is analogous to asking, "how can you explain how a river develops, and is yet the

same river?" For example, they might expand, "we can identify the tributary stage, the feeder

stage, the meandering stage, and the delta stage."

Looking more intently at their objection, we can see the problem built into the formulation: when

they state that "a concept consists of a specific pattern of associations" they suggest that it can

never change. It is as though a 'river' were defined as the water in it at any given point in time,

which while strictly true (for it would not be a river without the water) is nonetheless a definition

of 'river' that would be unworkable.

But there is nothing in connectivism that asserts that a concept consists of a specific pattern of

associations. Quite the opposite. What we consider a 'concept' is instantiated in one person by

means of a completely different set of associations than in another person, and in that person the

same concept may be instantiated by changing associations over time. What makes a set of

associations, say, the concept 'Paris' is simply (and only) the fact that it is this set of connections

that is activated when the person hears or reads the word 'Paris' (or visits the city, etc).

So how does our understanding of the world evolve over time? In the 'Three Problems' paper,

Clarà and Barberà offer three alternatives (and again I quote): either

 concept development occurs because of the biological maturation of computational

structures, [or]

 some processes are maturational, such as decentering, and others are educational, such as

equilibration, [or]

 learning drives or causes development, so that learning in a ZPD becomes development

when psychological functions become autonomous.

And they write, "If a concept is a set of associative connections, how can it be explained that the

psychological nature of the concept changes but the pattern of the associative connections

of which the concept consists does not?"

p.226

The simple explanation for concept change is plasticity 294. This is the phenomenon whereby the nature and number of neural connections changes over time as a consequence of experience. But

while explaining conceptual change, plasticity by itself doesn't explain what Clarà and Barberà

are trying to describe.

Their concern is more metacognitive. It has to do with the attitudes and perspectives surrounding

a concept, rather than the concept itself. This comes out when they describe a person's relation to

their family. "the concept is not the same when I am 4 as it is when I am 20; psychologically, it

functions in a very different way." Note that this isn't simply a case of the family changing; the

family may grow by several more children and still be the same family, but that's not the

problem. Rather, it has to do with the role the concept plays in the person's life, and

consequently, their varying attitude toward it.

Having made this observation, it becomes evident that the three alternatives offered by Clarà and

Barberà are all unattractive. What are the causal mechanisms that lead one to regard a family

from a sensorimotor perspective when young, and from an operational perspective when older?

Indeed, what does that even mean?

But connectivism does explain these things, and it does so in a manner that does not leave us

wondering about the underlying causal structures. Concepts evolve because concepts do not exist

in isolation in the mind; they are interwoven with other concepts. The concept itself may be

entwined with one set of associations at a younger age, and a very different set of associations at

an older age, so the concept's role changes - it is implicated in different thoughts, different ideas,

different actions.

The claim made by connectivism is that concepts are plastic; that the associations implicated in a

concept at one time will be different from those at another time, as the entire network of

connections grows and changes. The warning offered by connectivism is that these changes

inform our own understanding as well as our students, so that (for example) what is intuitive and

obvious to us, is murky and mysterious to another, or what is important and urgent to them may

be seen as trivial and irrelevant to us. And further, that while this represents change, it does not

necessarily represent progress or development.

To wrap up, Clarà and Barberà conclude their paper with some surprising assertions. These are

worth commenting on briefly.

First, they write, the problems "should warn scholars and educators against uncritically assuming

the theoretical postulates of connectivism, and encourages the search for a stronger theory of

294 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

p.227

learning (which does not necessarily mean a completely new theory) to explain and foster

network based learning."

Nowhere is it asserted that anyone should uncritically "assume the theoretical postulates of

connectivism." Quite the opposite; it is iterated on numerous occasions that these are offered

tentatively, that they are subject to empirical verification, and that they should be questioned and

challenged. Connectiovism is not a religion; it requires neither faith nor belief.

If by "stronger" they mean "better", then if such a theory is found, then by all means people

should embrace it. But researchers should be cautioned against embracing a theory simply

because it makes wider or more sweeping explanatory claims. "The devil made me do it" is a

theory that is much stronger than connectivity, explaining as it does all evil in the world, but it

would serve poorly as a basis for learning research. The parameters for explanatory

success295 are well-known, and the maximization of parsimony296 is only one such.

Second, they write, "Downes’s four defining characteristics of a MOOC (autonomy,

connectivity, diversity and openness) and the eight principles proposed by Siemens(2005a) are

pedagogical in nature and fully assumable by a large number of learning theories."

Nowhere in connectivism is this denied. There is no requirement for one theory to be completely

different from its predecessors; that would be an odd (and inconsistent) view of science and

research. Indeed, it should be clear that the four principles I describe were borrowed liberally

from a talk by Charles Vest297 in 2005; he was describing the principles for the success of the American university system, and I employed the same terminology for networks. It is also worth

nothing that some of these are also employed by James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds298.

They cite a number of places where some of these concepts arise, and specifically reference Ivan

Illich, and then say, "Connectivism emerged later as an attempt to theoretically explain why and

how those principles work." While Siemens can speak for himself, I can only say that my own

motivations for pursuing this line of thought had nothing to do with Ivan Illich. This is not to say

I do not respect his work tremendously; I do. But my motivations and foundations can be seen

quite clearly in my PhD dissertation proposal299, and Illich is nowhere to be seen in it.

295 http://psych.csufresno.edu/psy144/Content/Science/characteristics.html

296 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

297 http://www.downes.ca/post/34186

298 http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/

299 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2009/03/tnp-1-introduction.html

p.228

Finally, they argue, "MOOCs and their pedagogical principles should therefore be regarded as an

object of study, independent of connectivism, which, in turn, should be regarded as an

approach (one among others) that tries to explain what happens in a MOOC."

People should feel to study MOOCs however they wish. It is a matter of empirical fact that

MOOCs have evolved beyond their original roots as instantiations of connectivist theory; many

of them (for example, the video-and-test offerings found in Coursera) are developed along

explicitly instructivist lines. Suggesting MOOCs should only be understood from a connectivist

perspective makes no conceptual or empirical sense, and nobody would argue for it.

Moncton, Canada

October 3, 2013

p.229

Concepts

On 2013-10-12 9:02 AM, Matthias Melcher wrote:

If we consider, on one hand, all the aggregated connection patterns that make up a simple

concept or word in an individual, and OTOH, in a society or a community of practice, we

consider the small part of knowledge of that society that roughly corresponds to one term

used by this community, can we say that these two are very similar, except for the

notorious 3rd person vs. 1st person distinction?

(If the question is not relevant for you, please feel free to just tell me, because even this

would already be a valuable hint.) We need to be more precise about what you mean

when you say "can we say that these two are very similar".

If you mean "the concept of 'Paris' in an individual is similar to the concept of 'Paris' in a

society", then although there is an overlapping association with the word and sound 'Paris' I have

no reason to think that a person's concept and society's concept is similar at all. But even here, it

depends on how we define 'similar'... my own thinking of 'similarity' is roughly the same as

Tversky's feature-based analysis of similarity, however I additionally incorporate a concept of

salience, following Stalnaker's employment of the term in modal logic. But what is a 'feature', in

this analysis? In a human, a feature is an aspect of sensory awareness, what the positivists would

have called a 'sense datum' (but without the presumption of logical atomism; it's just a sensation,

a percept, not an atomic proposition). What would society's analogous 'sense datum' be? How

does a society perceive? I would be interested in an answer to that question.

If you mean "the notion of a 'concept' for an individual is similar to the notion of a 'concept' for

society" then I would agree. A concept in an individual - loosely speaking - is a subset of the full

set of connections in the human brain (and to 'think' of the concept is to have at a given time that

subset, or a sufficient part of that subset, electrochemically activated (ie., 'spiking'). A concept in

a society is the same sort of thing - depending on how exactly we want to construe it, it is the

connection of a subset of the set of all individuals in society (*), and society 'thinking' of the

concept is the activation of that subset, or a sufficient part of that subset. For example, a concept

similar to 'rage against the machine' might be active when enough people open their windows

and shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." The spreading of a meme (see

my paper 'Hacking Memes') through speech, print, artifacts, text, etc., is an instance of society

'thinking' of a concept. Though tat said, probably social concepts are far more complex than that

- it is very unlikely the concepts a society 'thinks' are very similar to the concepts an individual

thinks (as I suggested in the first paragraph).

(*) We can have different accounts of 'social concepts' depending on how we define the concept

of a social 'node'. If we define it as individuals only, then a concept requires the activation of

individuals, and would be expressed eg. by what individuals say, do, etc. - a 'culture' on this

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account is essentially a set of social concepts. If we expand our set of individuals to include

artifacts, then we can have a much wider sense of social concepts, particularly when the artifacts

are not simply static, like books and paintings, but dynamic and interacting, like stock futures,

financial exchanges, highways systems, etc. We can extend the idea of social concepts by a third

degree is we allow the set of individuals to include non-physical entities, such as words and

concepts; now the set of interconnected entities includes the associations of words and other non-

physical entities with each other (though this would have to happen in a physical substrate).

If this isn't clear to this point, stop here, because the next bit will really mess you up.

It's this: no set of connections, or activation of a set of connections, is inherently a 'concept'.

What we call a concept (and similarly, what we call an 'idea') does not exist inherently in nature,

but exists only insofar as it is perceived and recognized as such. For example: a set of points on

the surface of Mars might be connected and inter-related, and when the light shines on them,

activated (by reflecting light), and hence form the physical conditions necessary to instantiate a

concept. But it takes a third party - specifically, another set of connected entities (a neural

network, in this case) - to recognize that this set of points on Mars looks like Jesus, and hence

instantiates the concept 'face of Jesus'. An entity (or set of connected entities) X is 'recognized' as

the concept P when perception of X causes a sufficient set of activations of a network to cause

the full set of activations of the connections constituting P to occur in the neural network. Or to

make the same point more colloquially: a bunch of mountains on Mars is called 'the Face of

Jesus' when a person looking at the light reflecting off the mountains sees enough of the face to

think "hey, that's the face of Jesus."

What we call consciousness or sentience is the capacity to do this in ourselves, that it, the

activation of a set of connections in one part of our brain is sufficient to cause the recognition

process to happen in another part of our brain. So we have the perception of some orange in a

background of green, and this causes the full set of connections constituting the concept 'tiger' to

be activated more deeply in our brain. (It can also work in reverse: when the connections

constituting the concept 'tiger' are activated, for whatever reason, we can sometimes have the

experience of perceiving orange and black stripes).

So why am I hesitant to use the word 'concept'? It's simply because the word 'concept' has so

much baggage attached to it. People see the word 'concept' and they start thinking of

intentionality and meaning, things out there in the world, sets o logical propositions, models, and

more. There is an entire set of (fictional) artifacts built around the concept of 'concept', and I

don't mean any of them when I use the term.

Moncton, Canada

October 12, 2013

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Connective Knowledge and Open

Resources

The following is a set of responses to interview questions I answered over the weekend. The

interviewer was from China, and I understand the content was published in China, but beyond

that I have no information.

The Theory of Connectivism

Chinese readers firstly know you and George Siemens by the theory “connectivism”. How did you start your cooperation initially? What is the background (or reason) you create this theory?

Can you introduce the meaning of connectivism and illustrate its characteristics in details?

That’s a good question, and I don’t really know the answer to it. George and I have been

exchanging email since the late 1990s – we each had our own online newsletter (mine

was OLDaily, his was called elearnspace). We read each other’s work, talked about the same

subjects and encountered each other at conferences. And we had very similar perspectives on the

nature of online learning.

To me, the theory is and always has been ‘learning networks’. This is a play on words: it is in

part a theory about using networks to support learning, and in part a theory about how networks

learn. For me, this is based on an associationist philosophy of knowledge, and rooted in

connectionist theories of artificial intelligence. I wrote a long PhD proposal on it in 1990300.

When I began working on online learning, I brought this theory with me. It led me to propose

content syndication networks in education, and to embrace social media in education. I outlined

my theory in the paper ‘Learning Networks’ in 2004301 and George wrote his important paper

also in 2004.302

He came up with the term ‘connectivism’. I think it is derived from the term ‘constructivism’.

His version of connectivism is much more socially oriented than mine, much more about social

networks. Mine is rooted in artificial intelligence and neural networks.

Either way, the underlying propositions are the same. A person’s knowledge is the state of

connectivity in their mind – the connections between their neurons – and to learn is to form or

300 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2009/03/tnp-1-introduction.html

301 http://www.downes.ca/post/20

302 http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

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reshape these connections by strengthening or weakening them through interaction and use. It’s a

theory where we grow knowledge, rather than acquiring it, where we learn by immersion in a

field of study rather than by being told about it.

Connectivism and Practice

The “connectivism” is extended to the whole world recent years, how did you combined it with

practice in a subsequent study ? Can we think OER is an effective way to implement the theory?

The practical implementation of connectivism is the massive open online course, or MOOC.

George and I developed the first MOOC in 2008, called ‘Connectivism and Connective

Knowledge’. It was intended very deliberately to be an example of the theory we had formed

over the previous four years, and not simply a place to talk about it.

The key aspect of the CCK08 MOOC was that it was distributed – that it, it was not based on a

centralized core of content, and it was not located on a single website. Rather, we encouraged

people to create course content and to contribute to the course through their own websites,

through discussion groups, communities, and other forum they chose. We had about 170 blogs

created to support the course, and we aggregated these using RSS – content syndication

supporting online learning.

The CCK08 course and all the other courses we have developed since have been based on open

educational resources (OERs). We use OERs as a way to talk about the concepts and ideas in the

course. They may be papers, lessons, diagrams and images, videos, or anything else. What was

most important what that they were sharable – we needed to be able to move them from one

location to another in our distributed course.

The course as a whole was formed in the structure of a network. The OERs were the signals

being sent back and forth between individuals in this network. The knowledge created in the

course was the result of this interaction, and not the content of the interaction.

Open Online Educational Resources

From your web & blog, we found you were a passionate advocate of OER, can you share with us

your first experience about open online educational resource? and the purpose and meaning of

the action at that time?

I knew about open educational resources before anyone knew what the term meant. By no means

am I alone in this. It has always been common for teachers and instructors to create and share

learning materials. It is only with the arrival of the internet that we could do so globally.

It’s really hard for me to find a ‘first’ instance of experience with OERs, but if I was forced to do

so I would probably say it was my ‘Guide to the Logical Fallacies’. You can still see this guide

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today303 and it was created in 1995. I created the text for it when I was teaching at Grande Prairie

Regional College in 1994, because my students needed a good way to think about logical

fallacies. I was trying to get them to spot fallacies by recognizing them, by seeing signs that

would remind them of common patterns of argument.

When I moved to Brandon and began working at Assiniboine Community College, I converted

the guide into HTML and posted it on my brand new web site. It was partially to share the

content with the (small) internet community, and mostly to show people at the college what

could be done with the web. It led to our first web-based course a year later.

This was before Creative Commons or OERs, and only a few years after Richard Stallman

created GPL. But there was still a sense in the community that there should be a type of licensing

that allowed people to use content for free. I attached such a license to my Guide to the Logical

Fallacies – it was modeled on George Reese’s license for the Nightmare Mudlib software

package.

Definition of OER

You have your own definition of OER which is apart from the official definition, can you explain

it? And talk further about the role of OER in personal learning?

When I’m asked to define OERs I use the UNESCO definition, which is, “teaching, learning or

research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license

that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution.”

Generally, when I think of OERs, I think of digital resources, simply because non-digital

resources cannot be shared in the manner envisioned in the definition.

In addition, my definition of ‘teaching, learning or research materials’ is

a functionalist definition, rather than an essentialist definition. That is to say, I do not believe it is

the nature of a resource that makes it a ‘teaching, learning or research material’, but rather,

its use.

This is significant because some people say that OERs must have a certain format or

construction – for example, they must have learning objectives, or an instructional focus, or a

mechanism for assessment, or some such thing. I don’t agree with this. If a resource, whatever it

is, is used to support teaching, learning or research, it is by that fact an educational resource.

Finally, when I employ the term ‘free use, adaption, and distribution’, my sense of the word

‘free’ includes the sense of ‘without cost’. Many supporters of OERs argue that the license must

303 http://www.fallacies.ca/

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allow commercial reuse, including sale or subscription fees. I don’t agree with this. If someone

wants to license their material to permit commercial use, I have no objection, but for me, ‘free

learning’ does not have a price tag attached.

There has been in the past some efforts made to define a type of open license that would apply

specifically to educational use. I have opposed this because such a definition would define

educational use as use by a college or school. But to me, the great strength of OERs is that they

enable a person to learn without relying on an educational institution. OERs become, as I said

above, the vocabulary learners can use to talk with each other about a certain domain. In this

sense, OERs ought to be freely usable, and sharable, not only by institutions, but more

importantly, by students and learners.

Massive Open Online Courses

We all know you are the originator of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), what’s your

perspective on OER’s potential impact on MOOCs? Can you summarize the major elements of

MOOCs?

The major types of MOOC are the cMOOC, which wqe created, and the xMOOC, which is the

sort of MOOC offered by Coursera, Udacity, and the like. The difference is that a cMOOC is

designed as a network, as I described above, while an xMOOC is based on a central course site

and content that will be followed by all students.

The xMOOC, in other words, is like a traditional college or university course. It typically

requires that custom content be created, and is therefore very expensive to build. Costs can run

into the tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes this is necessary, if for example you are creating

a MOOC in a new subject area or new language. But often, the content already exists on the

internet as OERs.

In a cMOOC, we begin with the presumption that the content exists out there somewhere. So

when the MOOC is set up, we begin with what is a bare outline, usually just a list of topics and

ideas. Course participants begin by reconsidering this outline – not everything will suit everyone,

of course, but nobody has to do everything. Then, as the course progresses, participants

(including the instructor) find OERs from around the internet and link them to the course.

Note that this use of OERs is very different from the traditional online course. In a traditional

course, or an xMOOC, all the content is brought into the central website and incorporated as a

part of the course. Not only does this create a lot of work, it also raises licensing issues, as you

are now copying or republishing the content. In a cMOOC, though, we leave the content where it

is, and simply link to the content. So a cMOOC is not a package, like a traditional course, it is a

network of related and connected content.

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Sometimes this content will be found on the internet, but just as often it will be created by course

participants. That’s why it’s important to have a mechanism – like RSS – to link different

websites together. So in any given week of the MOOC, participants will be able to read text and

watch videos that were either found on the internet, or to read text and watch video that was

created by participants in the course.

What, then, are the major elements of the course? In one sense, they are whatever the course

participants want them to be. In another sense, the major elements are:

 The course participants, including the instructor

 Resources. Either found on the internet or created by participants

 A mechanism for linking participants and resources with each other

It’s this this third part that traditional courses and xMOOCs lack. Because they are centralized,

everything is brought into the course site. But in a cMOOC, we use a system that connects

people.

In our courses, we used the gRSShopper application that I created.304 t can be used as an RSS

aggregator to harvest resources found or suggested by participants. It also harvests Twitter

messages and discussion board posts. It then organizes these resources, most commonly as a

daily newsletter, which is then distributed to participants. They can either subscribe by email,

reads the RSS version, reads the website, or follow the course on Twitter or Facebook.

cMOOCs and xMOOCs

Could you analyze the differences between cMOOCs and xMOOCs305? As the commercially

driven, xMOOCs explode in popularity very quickly, how do you think about the limitation of its

development in the next level? And what’s the development space of cMOOCs?

Well as I mentioned already, the xMOOC is centralized and the cMOOC is distributed. The

xMOOC has a core content that everyone follows, while the cMOOC has a wide ranging

network of content which people browse through and sample according to their own interests.

But more than that, the pedagogy of an xMOOC and a cMOOC is different. The xMOOC is

typically based on the transmission model of instruction. That is to say, the instructor will

attempt to take some knowledge he or she has, and through a process of communications,

transfer it to participants and students. Success in this kind of course occurs if the student’s

resulting knowledge resembles or (ideally) is identical to the instructor’s knowledge.

304 http://grsshopper.downes.ca/

305 http://www.blogger.com/null

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In a cMOOC, by contrast, an immersion model of instruction occurs. That si to say, the instructor

creates or sets up an environment similar to one in which the students will want to be successful.

The instructor will model correct or successful behavior in the environment. Because the

environment is dynamic and continually changing, the students will not be able to replicate the

instructor’s knowledge, but instead will have to generate his or her own strategies. Success in

such a course occurs if the student is able to successfully navigate the environment without

scaffolding or support from the instructor.

The different is like, on the one hand, telling a person how to swim, and having them repeat that

information back to you, and putting a person in the water and showing them how to swim,

eventually letting them go to swim on their own.

There is room for both types of instruction. But in any field, students will have to graduate from

the simpler transmission mode of instruction to the more complex immersion mode of

instruction.

MOOCs and Development

In your article you mentioned MOOCs306 provides a fair opportunity to learn, and it eliminates one of the great advantages the wealthy have always enjoyed over the poor. Can we think it

bring great impact on developing countries’ education?

In the recent Times Higher education article George Siemens talked about students in India

telling him their lives had been changed by Coursera. I can easily believe this. The traditional

form of learning requires schools and professors and facilities and resources. The cost is

enormous compared to what the provision of internet access costs. Whatever people can learn on

their own is that much more countries do not have to hire professors to teach them.

A lot of people argue, correctly, that you cannot have a full education without in-person

instruction, hands-on experience, and even the social contact you get with other students in a

school, college or university setting. They are quite right. But the point here is, we do not need to

set up all education in this way. And there is a great deal people can learn on their own.

We’ve seen this in India, even before Coursera. Many major software companies are built using

Indian programmers. These people taught themselves on the internet. They accessed open source

learning materials, they participated in online discussions and in online communities, they

created software working on open source development projects, and through interaction and

immersion, they developed their own software development skills. On their own, without college

306 http://www.blogger.com/null

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or university. Now they compete worldwide – I just took part in an online WizIQ session,

through a very nice collaboration tool built and run by Indian software engineers.

Not every nation will focus on software, but every nation will focus on maximizing the amount

of learning a person can do on his or her own. This creates tremendous opportunities for

developing nations, because if they can enable their citizens access to these online resources, in

their own language, then they will be able to develop skills equal to those in more industrialized

countries.

Yes, this by itself will not be enough. But it significantly improves the capacity and opportunity

for developing nations.

I should add, it’s not MOOCs specifically that create this capacity. It’s open online learning

generally. MOOCs are just one way to structure and deliver educational experiences.

Development communities – such as open source software communities – are another way. The

main and underlying element here is open access to learning resources and community. Open

access to learning networks, in other words.

gRSShopper

We know you develop the gRSShopper application, can you introduce and explain how that

affects MOOCs?

I have already described the functionality of gRSShopper. The way to think of it, and similar

applications, is as an open content distribution system.

This is important. It is not enough simply to have open educational resources. If nobody can find

them, if nobody can access them, they serve no useful function at all. If a person creates an OER

and has no way to distribute it to students who are interested, the OER is not very useful.

gRSShopper employs open syndication standards – specifically, RSS and Atom, along with open

APIs and other mechanisms, to create this distribution network. In a MOOC, the network is

created specifically for a given course, but gRSShopper is designed to support open content

distribution and syndication generally.

People who used Google Reader or who use Feedly or Evernote or similar tools are accessing a

similar capacity. When we use channels like RSS, we do not need to depend on publishers or

distributors to find and package information for us.

In the past, I used gRSShopper mostly to distribute content – to make my own RSS feeds and my

own email newsletters. When I first started work on it, there weren’t any good ways to do this –

people were building RSS feeds by hand. Over time we saw Blogger and WordPress and

Livejournal developed, and RSS feed generation was automated, but I still needed the

registration and email newsletter function. And none of these supported aggregation – the RSS

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readers and blogging engines were always separate products. So gradually it became my

integrated tool that did everything.

It was this all-in-one functionality that made the first MOOC possible In this one tool I had a

mechanism that would collect student postings and make links to them available to everybody

else, in whatever format they liked. Without this tool, our course would have looked like any

other course, and would have been nothing special. And when – inevitably – someone mass-

marketed an open course (like Stanford AI) there would have been no alternative model to

compare it against.

MOOC Pedagogy

You mentioned a paradox that the more autonomous, diverse and open the course, and the more

connected the learners, the more the potential for their learning to be limited by the lack of

structure, support and moderation normally associated with an online course. Do you find

the appropriate solution or approach for this problem later? Whether the learning analytics(LA)

can be think as problem-solving techniques?

Well the reason why their learning is limited by the lack of structure is that they have never

learned to be able to learn for themselves in an environment that lacks structure. This makes

them unable to function in most environments, not just MOOCs, with the result that even after

completing their education they still have a great deal of learning to do in the workplace or the

community.

Most educational institutions – and most corporations, and governments – respond by creating

more structure, so people are more easily able to cope. And there is certainly a merit to this

approach; when we want large numbers of people to be able to do something, the more clearly

defined the structure, the more likely they will be successful. But this works only so long as the

structure can be clearly defined. And in most of what happens in the workplace or the

community, this becomes impossible.

Take transportation, for example. The most structured system of transportation employs buses or

trams moving at predefined times. This works for as long as transportation needs are limited. But

if people have more complex needs – they need to deliver milk, for example, or they need to go

into the country – then the bus and tram system is inadequate. So we have to adopt a less

structured system, such as the automobile, and teach people to manage their own transportation

for themselves. Even with cars and trucks, there’s still structure – there’s still roads and traffic

regulations and signals. But the denser and more difficult the traffic, the more ineffective such

structures are, and people have to learn how to self-organize in traffic. Exactly the same is true of

learning.

Right now, we have a basic learning system. We put people into schools and colleges and take

them through predefined routes. But if we say we do this because people cannot learn for

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themselves, we are fooling ourselves. People will have to learn how to learn for themselves,

because our learning needs are becoming as complex as our transportation needs.

So how do we approach this. Rita Kop and I looked at one way of doing it, using a MOOC to

help people learn the basic tools of learning – the course was called Critical Literacies and it was

a mixed success. I do intend to try it again, because I think that the basic tools for learning – the

critical literacies – are just like the basic tools for traditional learning, like reading and writing,

and can be (must be) taught and learned at a basic level of education, with children, as a platform

to support future learning.

Assessment and Credentialing

With respect to actual assessment and credentialing, there are two basic approaches, except

learning analytics, your mentioned your own approach-a network clustering approach, can you

explain it for us?

I can sketch the idea, but it’s important to understand that it’s an idea that needs a lot of

development, and that other people probably have a greater grasp on this idea than I do.

It’s a two-step process. In the first step, we identify what the competencies are that constitute

expertise in a given area of study. In the second step, we compare an individual’s performance

against that expertise.

What makes the method I propose different is that I propose to use network analytics for both

steps. This is importantly different because the competencies won’t be typical competencies,

which can be expressed as a proposition (like: ‘staple two pieces of paper together’) but will

rather be a complex collection of network behaviours that can be described in words. So people

won’t be able to just imitate the right words, they will have to be able to master the actual

performance.

Recommendations

Finally as the end of this interview, can you talk about technologies that will impact the

development of MOOCs in the future? And make some recommendations for the development of

China’s MOOCs?

I have never even been to China, so I am very hesitant to make recommendations for the

development of China’s MOOCs, except to offer wide platitudes: don’t close your options,

embrace a diversity of approaches, focus on helping people learn for themselves, and develop a

culture of sharing and cooperation. But you know all that.

Every technology will impact the development of MOOCs in the future, but we can probably

reduce them to three major types of impact: carbon, carbon, and carbon.

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First, carbon will play a key role in the development of super-strength materials for construction,

etc. Carbon-fibre already has a wide variety of applications (my laptop, a Lenovo, made in

China, is made from it). Carbon fibre redefines where and how we can build computing power

into things.

Second, carbon will impact power and information storage. Carbon nanotubes, graphene

supercapacitors, etc., will enable powerful computers to hang on the wall, be read like books or

worn like clothes.

Third, carbon-based life (such as genetics, organic computing, crops, seeds and medicines) will

inform the nature of computing in the future. Connectivism is only the first iteration of this. A

next-generation version of connectivism will envision the develop of learning from the creation

of network structures to the organization of knowledge in forms resembling DNA.

Moncton, Canada

October 20, 2013

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A Few Words on ePortfolios

I was asked, I think that it would be of a great interest that you (as a world wide reference in

education) can write a very brief review (between 200-300 words) about your vision regarding

ePortfolios.

(Graphic: Helen Barrett307)

ePortfolios have been around for a number of years now and we're beginning to see how they

may be applied in learning and development. An ePortfolio is a collection of digital materials

uploaded by a student to an e-portfolio repository; the repository owners can then make this

material available publicly to prospective employers or clients, as requested by the student. A

good example of such a system is the Desire2Learn ePortfolio system308. A good ePortfolio

system will not only allow storage and sharing, but also interact with social networks and support

comments and annotations.

307 http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/index.html

308 http://www.desire2learn.com/products/eportfolio/

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As Helen Barrett illustrates (see above) on her ePortfolio website309 the role of ePortfolio has

developed in two major directions over the years. On the one hand, the portfolio may focus

predominately on learning and reflection. Such a portfolio may come to resemble a student's

journal or sketchbook. On the other hand, the portfolio may be used primarily for evaluation and

assessment, becoming more a documentation of achievement that a personal workspace. As

Barrett notes, the former model focuses on the ePortfolio as process, while the latter

contemplates the ePortfolio as product.

In recent years discussion of ePortfolio has been eclipsed by the excitement around massive open

online courses (MOOCs). I think this is a mistake. It is important to encourage students to create

and share their own work. That said, the focus on taking many courses from multiple providers

makes it difficult to reply on a single provider's ePortfolio service. Increasingly, students will

have to manage the hosting of their online portfolios on their own.

In the MOOCs we have offered over the years, such as Connectivism and Connective

Knowledge (CCK08), we approached this issue by encouraging students to use their own blogs

or websites. In this case, the primary function of the central course management system was not

to create and store student ePortfolios, but to aggregate from them and to facilitate the sharing of

their contents with other students. In this light, a worthwhile project developed at University of

Mary Washington called "a domain of one's own" is probably the modern version of

ePortfolios.310 It encourages students to establish their own web presence independently of

service providers.

Increasingly in the future students will be responsible for managing their own online learning

records and creative products. Though they may use a variety of services - such as Blogger,

Flickr, YouTube, Google Docs, and more - to store their work, they will need to manage these

resources, index them, and enable access to them. This will enable them to balance between the

process-oriented and product-oriented aspect of their work. This will become important as

employers will over time rely less on tests and formal assessments, and will instead look for

tangible evidence of personal achievement in web-based repositories. Maintaining an ePortfolio

will become tomorrow's equivalent of achieving certification and polishing up one's resumé.

Moncton, Canada

October 23, 2013

309 http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/index.html

310 http://umwdomains.com/

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Strive Less, Share More

I was asked by Jane Wilde311:

Would you be willing to give us a brief response to any one of the following questions. I

know each is potentially big, and we don't want to impose. So maybe you could answer

with the first thing that comes to mind.

1. What is one skill/attitude/habit of mind that will benefit educators as they strive to

be effective and relevant to today's learners (and why)?

2. What skill(s)/attitude(s)/habit(s) of mind can we (educators) help foster in our

students so that they can become connected learners?

3. What strategies do you recommend to an educator who wants to become a

connected learner?

Actually the same answer applies to all three questions.

What is one skill/attitude/habit of mind that will benefit educators as they strive to be effective

and relevant to today's learners (and why)?

In a word, sharing. Or generosity. Or giving without thought of reward.

I once read a piece of advice to seminar and plenary speakers which said, in effect, "love your

audience." It's attributed to Luciano Pavarotti. " Some singers want the audience to love them. I love the audience."312 The idea here is that the secret to successful performance is to give

without reservation. I talk about the same concept here313 in a summary of a talk by Michael Wesch. "...Diana Degarmo. She was talented, but inexperienced. She was horrible for the first

three weeks, and then became a rock star and went almost to the end. They asked what happened.

She said, her hairdresser said, "Love your audience and they'll love you back." Instead of

focusing on self, she focused on the beauty of the audience and the whole event.”

The idea of giving yourself over to the performance of whatever you are doing without

reservation is actually very old. It can be found, for example, in the Buddhist concept of

mindfulness. As the Wikipedia article314 (accurately) summarizes, "Enlightenment ( bodhi) is a state of being in which greed, hatred and delusion (Pali: moha) have been overcome, abandoned

311 http://esmequnhua.blogspot.ca/

312 http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/luciano-pavarottis-secret-for-online-success/

313 http://www.downes.ca/post/53377

314 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

p.244

and are absent from the mind." And it is reflected in Taoist tradition. "Therefore the sages place

themselves last but end up in front, are outside of themselves and yet survive. Is it not due to

their selflessness? That is how they can achieve their own goals." Tao Te Ching, ch.

7315 Even Leviticus (19:17)316: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

We see the concept a lot in the literature and lore of performance317 in the idea of giving yourself over completely to your performance, without worrying about making a fool of

yourself. Cynthia Heimel318 says, "When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot

on earth. So what the hell, leap." The best performances come when people think least about

what they will earn for themselves, when they feel they have nothing to lose, when they commit

themselves fully to what they are doing. The same applies in athletics, and in work. Devoting

yourself completely to helping the other succeed is what builds success in yourself.

From the perspective of education, the same principle applies. And yet it's so hard to find in the

literature. This page319 has '30 tips for storytelling' and not one of them talks about actually giving yourself over to the idea of delivering the maximum good to the listeners. It's full of "tips

and tricks" but these so often serve (and fail) as substitutes for authentic caring about the

outcome. When telling a story to children (or to anyone) the practice of completely immersing

yourself in the story, becoming the voice of the characters, and listening to yourself with the

children's ears, is paramount. It not merely improves your performance, it makes you care about

whether the story is of any value at all, and to navigate the story, and yourself, toward that end.

It's not about 'the moral of the story' - that's usually the message you want to pass on. It's about

how best to serve the needs of this child in this moment.

In my own work, I seek (often imperfectly) to accomplish the same objective. It is not merely a

sideline, but a priority, to share the work I do. This comment, for example, will be posted on my

blog, where it will be read by people who will think it useful, people who will think it stupid, and

people who will wonder why I would bother posting it at all. I can't care about what they will

think of me for posting it. What I care about is that it is a full and honest expression of the work

that I am doing - in this case, offering an answer to a small group of graduate students studying

new media and educational practice. Look around, and the examples of great web practice you

see are also examples of this principle - Randy Pausch's last lecture320, for example, as a gift to his children. "If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams

315 http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm

316 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+19%3A9-18&version=ESV

317 http://blogs.citypages.com/gimmenoise/2013/10/sexy_delicious_interview.php

318 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/26680-when-in-doubt-make-a-fool-of-yourself-there-is

319 http://www.teachthought.com/literacy-2/30-storytelling-tips-for-teachers/

320 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

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will come to you."

Strive less. Share more. If you express this principle in your own life, it will be replicated many

times in the lives of your students.

Moncton, Canada

November 3, 2013

p.246

MOOCs Will Ultimately Play a

Transformational Role

This is my contribution to the WISE online debate - you can find other contributions here321 .

The democratization of the MOOC cannot be underestimated

We have reached the point in the history of MOOCs where the initial excitement is waning and

people are beginning to ask questions about whether MOOCs will play a useful role, much less a

transformational one, into the future. This comes as record numbers of MOOCs are being offered

by numerous providers MOOCs have become a worldwide phenomenon, with Britain's

FutureLearn launching in beta and the first Arabic MOOCs coming online.

The criticisms surrounding MOOCs are based in fears that they will replace professors with

technology, concerns that the social and personal aspects of learning will be lost, concerns about

the need for MOOC participants to be self-motivated and academically ready, and concerns

about the high dropout rates all MOOCs have experienced. While some early experiments in

certification have been started, there is also widespread skepticism that MOOCs can provide a

route to traditional academic credentials.

These criticisms, far from identifying where MOOCs will fail, offer glimpses into the future of

MOOCs. For while we may agree that these are weaknesses of the current model, the fact is that

the advantages of MOOCs make it more desirable to press forward with the concept, rather than

abandoning it and returning to traditional online and classroom-based courses and programs.

The first advantage is accessibility. As the name 'Massive Open Online Course' suggests,

MOOCs are available to everyone, requiring only an Internet connection (now 40 per cent of the

world’s population, according to the International Telecommunications Union). Even if

certification is not available, the fact that participants do not need to pay tuition makes them

especially attractive to people outside the traditional university audience. As evidenced by the

hundreds of thousands of people registering for courses like Stanford AI (artificial intelligence),

there is significant demand for open access to higher education content.

As important to accessibility is flexibility. People can, for the most part, pick their own time to

study. Even if students miss the live online presentations, they can view the recorded archive.

They can study the material at their own pace, and even if they fall behind, they can continue to

321 http://www.wise-qatar.org/edudebate-moocs-disruptive-learning

p.247

access content, work through the examples and assignments, and continue to learn from the

course.

The community that develops around MOOC courses has made MOOCs attractive to students

worldwide. In 'connectivist' MOOCs, such as those offered by George Siemens and myself, this

interactive community is actively encouraged and content contributed to such diverse sites as

Blogger, Tumblr, Moodle forums and Twitter feeds is harvested and shared with course

participants. In the case of video-lecture based MOOCs, such as those offered by Coursera,

communities have developed outside the official channels, as participants meet with each other

and discuss the course in their own space.

This democratization of the MOOC cannot be underestimated. It represents a transition in the

management of learning from a centrally administered service, such as offered by a corporation

or university, to a distributed and essentially unmanaged form of cooperation on the part of

students themselves.

And this is what points to the most important element in the future of MOOCs. Today MOOCs

are hosted by Coursera or Udacity are based at universities. But over time, they will develop

their own presence and their own existence. Take, for example, the Stanford AI course, or the

Introduction to Complexity course offered by Melanie Mitchell. While at the moment they are

strongly associated with an individual university, over time on sites like Complexity Explorer

they will forge their own identity, separating themselves from their university origin.

What will happen in such a scenario is that one course may be offered by several universities.

There is no reason why the complexity course could not be shared by MIT, Stanford and the

University of Calgary, with local services (such as tutorials, labs and social events) being

provided by host institutions, while the content, community and activities are based in the online

environment. In the past I have referred to this as the 'online-host provider framework'.

Some pundits have begun to discuss the 'flipped MOOCs', wherein the online MOOC offering is

'wrapped' by the trappings of a traditional course. But this should not be confused with the host-

provider framework, where the academic content is defined and provided exclusively by the

MOOC providers. Participants will obtain certification from the MOOC provider, which may be

converted into local credentials - but the local credentials will be viewed skeptically if not based

in the course certificate.

In any case, over time the importance of credentials and certificates will decline. What MOOCs

offer is a place and a mechanism whereby individual students can participate in activities and

events related to a discipline, work through challenges posed by the course with other members

of the community in an online environment accessible worldwide (much like the way open

source software works today). These activities leave digital traces, and future employers will not

look so much at credentials as they will depend on intelligent software which harvests these

traces and constructs a digital profile of prospective employees.

p.248

This changes the debate regarding participation and completion rates and even motivation and

academic skills. Instead of being requirements imposed by providers on students (usually as a

means of assessment for credentials) they will become optional, something students can use to

advance their own profile, but not in any way essential aspects of a course. Again, consider the

case of open source software (OSS) - a person can contribute as much or as little as they wish,

and there's no sense to be made of OSS 'completion rates' or any such thing.

When we view MOOCs as a means of obtaining an education, and establishing a track record,

rather than as courses leading to credentials, our original hesitation about the perceived

weaknesses of MOOCs can be overcome. The democratization of learning will lead to large and

small online courses provided by a range or providers - from major universities to governments

to oil companies - but it will be students themselves who decide whether to participate, and

whether these courses are worth their time.

Moncton, Canada

November 6, 2013

p.249

Learning and Performance Support

Systems

This post is to introduce you to our Learning and Performance Support Systems program, a new

$19 million 5-year initiative at the National Research Council that I will be leading.322

If I had to depict LPSS in a nutshell, I would describe it as a combination of the MOOC project

we've been working on over the last few year, as well as our work in Personal Learning

Environments (PLEs). The objective is to build a system where individuals can access, and get

credit for, learning from any education provider at all, whether from home, the workplace, or at a

school.

What follows is a version of the case we presented to NRC senior executive in order to have this

program approved. They supported our proposal, and for the last few weeks I have been engaged

in developing the program implementation with a large team of NRC colleagues.

Program Overview

The Skills Challenge

Despite existing levels of unemployment in Canada, more than a quarter million jobs go unfilled,

many because no candidates can be found. The Canadian Oil and Gas (O&G) sector alone loses

an estimated $4 billion per year due to skills shortages. Canada’s O&G sector will need 105,000

new recruits in this decade, including some 30,000 to fill newly created positions.

Similar skills shortages have been reported in other sectors, such as biotechnology and

engineering. In Canada, there are 25 job groups that consistently show signs of skills shortages.

These groups represent 21% of employment in Canada, they experience an unemployment rate

of less than 1%, and show an annual raise in wages of about 3.9%, more than double that of the

overall economy.

Training current and prospective employees is time-consuming and expensive. Although

advanced learning technologies are available, the bulk of training continues to be offered in the

form of in-person courses. These courses are typically quite short, ranging from one day to a

week, and are expensive, often costing several thousand dollars, not including transportation and

time off work. Many of them are in the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services sector.

322 http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/solutions/collaborative/lpss.html - I led the program from September, 2013 to

April, 2016.

p.250

Though there are significant opportunities for growth, Canada’s training and development

industry is fragmented, with no clear leader, and is subject-focused, with limited competency

development and management capabilities. Companies in this sector lack the research depth to

advance and grow into new markets. Expansion internationally is difficult without a clear

innovation advantage.

Learning and Performance Support Systems

The LPSS program will deliver software algorithms and prototypes that enable Canada’s training

and development sector to offer learning solutions to industry partners that will address their

immediate and long term skills challenges. In the short term, LPSS will respond to the immediate

needs of industry with existing tools and technologies on a research contract or fee-for-service

basis. In the long term, working with strategic industry partners, LPSS will develop a learning

and performance support infrastructure that will host and deliver the following key services:

 learning services and a resource marketplace, providing content and service producers

with unfettered access to customers, and employees (and prospective employees) with

training and development opportunities;

 automated competency development and recognition algorithms that analyze workflows

and job skills and develop training programs to help employees train for specific

positions;

 a personal learning management tool that will manage a person’s learning and training

records and credentials over a lifetime, making it easier for employers to identify

qualified candidates and for prospective employees to identify skills gaps;

 and a personal learning assistant that enables a student or employee to view, update and

access training and development resources whether at home or on the job, at any time.

The LPSS infrastructure includes underlying technologies to support these services, including

identity and authentication services, cloud access and storage challenges, personal records and

credentials, document analysis and analytics, and interfaces to third-party services such as

simulation engines and other advanced training support services.

Program Design and Scope

The LPSS is designed along three technology thrusts. In the first of the two program phases the

Program leverages NRC’s existing technologies to execute short term projects while at the same

time developing the basis for longer term agreements negotiated with strategic partners. In these

short term projects, NRC helps industry provide personalized access to learning resources and

services to existing and potential students and employees.

The second phase begins when NRC has signed its first agreement with a strategic partner

specifying the development and transfer of underlying LPSS technology from NRC to the

p.251

partner(s). At this point, development of commercial services based on the Common Platform

begins, in accordance with the signed agreements.

This model is based on the understanding that small projects move quickly while larger

agreements require more time to negotiate and finalize. It enables NRC to respond to industry

demand immediately with funded, targeted and focused projects, while at the same time

supporting a sustainable program strategy.

The figure below provides a simplified view of the various elements that are considered within

the scope of the Program (denoted by elements in orange or surrounded by an orange outline).

Figure 1 – LPSS Platform Overview

Core Commercial Technologies

Core commercial technologies combine to create an overall LPSS platform through which the

services described above (section 1) can be offered. The purpose of the platform is to create

LPSS services to interact with existing third-party services, including advanced algorithms and

modules developed in other NRC programs.

Development of the LPSS platform will thus focus on three major thrusts that will be pursued

during the two distinct phases of the Program.

Common Platform

LPSS will partner with technology companies and end user clients to fund and develop a

Common Platform and set of basic applications to enable a first version of end-to-end LPSS

functionality. The Common Platform itself will consist of: a learning application for industry

staff and their customers; data and information harvesting services; data and information

synchronization services across platforms; and a common industry marketplace for training

resources and services.

p.252

The purpose of this thrust is twofold: first, to develop the necessary software and specifications

for the overall learning resource delivery system, and second, to generate a user base including

both resource providers and prospective clients accessing the platform. To this end, LPSS will

support the hosting of implementation projects throughout the Program’s duration.

Capability Development

This second thrust consists of five major projects identified as client priorities. Each of these

projects extends the functionality of the Common Platform.

Learning as a Cloud Service – will create a distributed learning layer, which is a mechanism for

working with data no matter where it is stored, through desktop, mobile and other devices.

Resource Repository Network – will create a resource graph of learning/training resources data

from multiple sources and multiple formats including live and dynamic data such as workplace

data, plant instrumentation, or market information.

Personal Learning Record – will define how we represent, capture, and leverage user activity,

including ratings, test results, performance measures, and the like, in a distributed learning and

work environment.

Automated Competence Development and Recognition – whereas existing recommender

systems depend on manually defined metrics and taxonomies, this system will detect new and

emerging competences and automatically assess employee performance.

Personal Learning Assistant – will develop an integrated learning appliance, a mechanism for

looking up or finding references or resources inside other programs or environments.

Each of the projects within the second phase of Thrust 2 represents investments ranging from

$1.5M to $2.5M.

Implementation Projects

In this thrust, the Program consolidates development, deploys training, and realizes efficiencies

by the end of year five. While there is no individual project associated with this thrust, its

purpose is to make clear that all projects will include a stage where technologies are delivered to

partners and clients, and that this process needs to be articulated from the start of the Program.

The scope of this thrust extends to the development of IP tracking mechanisms, draft and

approval of technology transfer agreements, negotiation and maintenance of licensing

agreements, adaptation or installation of technology in client software are systems, and other

client support as needed.

Moncton, Canada

December 4, 2013

p.253

p.254

Presentation to UNCTAD's advisory group

on "Developing skills, knowledge and

capacities through innovation: E-Learning,

M-Learning, cloud-Learning”

Presented to the Advisory Group on Developing skills, knowledge and capacities

through innovation: E-Learning, M-Learning, cloud-Learning, Geneva,

Switzerland, by Google Hangout, United Nations Committee on Trade and

Development December 10, 2013.

Access

I'd like to begin323 324 with the issue of access. This is not where I usually begin a talk, because

the main thing, I have to say, about issues of access is that's, to be outside the scope of the areas

that I work in. But from the perspective of the learner, the online learner, there are two major

323 https://tft.unctad.org/?page_id=2012

324 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/333

p.255

forms of access that need to be considered. First of all, there is technological access, ranging

from power to Internet access, to mobile delivery.

The main thing that, I want to say, there is that there is a very large difference between any sort

of access, and all-the-time broadband access and that this degree of access might facilitate a

difference in your ability to enjoy and use e-Learning.

As well as digital access, I want to talk about cognitive access, because this is equally a factor in

online delivery. In particular, we face issues of, not only literacy, but also, digital literacy, that is,

the ability to actually make use of the online learning materials that are made available to you.

As well, people are facing issues finding time to learn. We've discovered in recent offerings of

online courses, people started out enthusiastically, but are unable to finish the course because

they've run out of time.

As well, there is the idea that, learning is something that needs to be valued. This is something

that does not come from the online course, or even the online environment.

This is something that is created by the community, the child's parents, or leaders in the

community, the idea that learning and scholarships are something to be valued, and something to

be pursued.

E-Learning

You're probably familiar with traditional e-Learning. e-Learning looks at the online course, as a

course.

What I mean by that is the traditional college/university course. Indeed, e-learning in many

respects begins as a set of course tools for web support. That's what the original learning

management system was: course outlines and tests and things like that that the instructor could

put online.

From this early beginning, they began to put course content online, which typically consisted of

a text and perhaps some images and graphics. Only after this, do we move into the idea, of

learning design and pedagogy, which is drawn primarily from the field of distance learning,

where courses are rounded up as packages, or what we might call program texts, designed to lead

the student through a course of instruction.

As e-learning developed in the late 1990s, early 2000s, the online course almost began to

resemble a book, where the structure of the book was the structure of the pedagogy, and where

course content was contained in small learning objects, which were digital materials of chunked

content intended for discovery, reuse, and application in multiple online learning environments.

p.256

Web course tools, then became mechanisms for collecting, packaging, and presenting these. The

course, as a result, began to resemble a publication. You begin to think in course packages

complete with content, learning design, everything you need for an online course.

Massive Open Online Course

The Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, is a bit of a reaction to this. It is, in many ways, an

unbundling of this traditional course design. I'll talk about that as we go along.

Very briefly, what I mean by a Massive Open Online Course, is a course that satisfies each of

those four terms. You've heard from Google and others about EdX, and Coursera, and the rest,

and I caution that many of these online courses do not satisfy all four of these criteria.

By massive, I mean, massive by design, capable of handling large numbers of students, but not

necessarily actually reaching them. The idea is to build into the design the elimination of

bottlenecks or choke points that would make it difficult to deal with very large numbers of

participants.

By open, I mean, open across many dimensions. Open, not in the sense of anybody can enroll,

but open, in the sense of the content is free and open to use, to reuse, and there aren't limits on

the use of the course materials.

Online, obviously means online. That does not mean that all course activity must take place

specifically, and only online, but that there are no necessary elements of the course that must be

taken offline. Put more plainly, you do not have to show up at a certain university campus, at a

certain time and place, in order to pass a course.

By course, I don't mean course as in course package, in the sense we've just discussed, but rather

course in the sense that it has a start date and end date and a sequence of materials in the middle.

Open Educational Resources

The Massive Open Online Course in the sense should be thought of as a form of Open

Educational Resource. This Open Educational Resource is a concept that was identified and

named by UNESCO in 2002 or 2003325. The idea of an Open Educational Resource is that it's a

digital resource that can be used to support learning.

325 http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-

resources/

p.257

Now, there is some dispute about the educational in Open Educational Resource, and we could

have a long digression here, but what's important is that, it can be used to support learning. In a

sense, any digital resource can be an Open Educational Resource.

As Open Educational Resources have been developed, they've been used to form courseware and

this, in the traditional sense that I discussed earlier. An example of that is Open Education

Resource University (OERu), created by the Commonwealth of Learning, which is made up of

what is called anchor partners, universities from various commonwealth countries.326

The idea is that, courses are created as course packages using open educational resources. These

course packages are offered by different universities for a credit degree.

They follow what is called the logic model, as created by Jim Davies from the University of

Southern Queensland. The idea is that you go through stages of openness, from open content, to

open learning design, to open educational activities and classes, through open assessment, and

open credentialing.327

Now OERU does not go all the way to the top. Credentialing in the OERU level is closed to all

but the participating universities, but with the idea of progression (through types of openness) is

a well-established model.

Sustainability

With open educational resources comes the concept of sustainability. The concept of

sustainability refers to the capacity of those supporting resources to continue to fund the

productions and distribution of these resources. Models of sustainability328 can be broken down

to the commercial models and the non-commercial models.

The commercial model includes the end up selling of extended services, the use of the platform

for advertising and marketing, or to support a product, or to support a labor force. So, in all of

these cases, the resource will be paid for by some commercial entity, and that commercial entity

will expect some return on that initial investment.

Non-commercial models include public knowledge such as, the models provided by public

broadcasting corporations such as, TVC, BBC and National Public Radio.

326 http://wikieducator.org/OERu

327 http://wikieducator.org/OERu/Logic_model

328 http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/36781698.pdf

p.258

They also include the charity model. OECD released a report called "Giving Knowledge for

Free"329, which really depicts OERs as charity. A third model is based on a foundation or the

community such as, the Apache Foundation, the Wikipedia foundation and the open source

model, where the costs are borne by the community that is interested in releasing the software.

Publications vs Community

Now, in the study of open educational resources, which I did a number of years ago, for OECD, I

looked at the different models of openness, and it seemed to me, at that time, and stills seems to

me, that the open model of educational resources themselves significantly acts as a sustainability

model.

In a sense, there are two ways of producing an educational resource, which we might distinguish:

the publications model and the community model.

In the publication model, a contractor is hired, or in some author is engaged, to produce the

resource. Sometimes it is a university, sometimes it is commercial publisher, sometimes it is

private contracting firm. The idea is that, first the resource is produced, and then it is distributed

as a part of a course.

In the community model, the idea is that the community benefits from both the resource and the

production of the resource for itself. One example of this is the student produced resources,

where students themselves create the resources that will be used in their courses. This is the

model that I advocated to the OECD, and forms the basis of the massive open online courses that

we have offered.

This is a major difference between the courses we offer, and those produced by Cousera, edX

and the rest. These courses use a publisher model of open educational resources, as opposed to a

community model open educational resources.

Formal and Informal Learning

This also points to a significant difference in use application, of open online learning. There are

many reasons to take a MOOC. And for the purpose of this discussion, I distinguish two major

types. First of all, learning in order to know, and second, learning in order to do.

These characterize the differences between formal and informal learning.

329 http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/givingknowledgeforfreetheemergenceofopeneducationalresources.htm

p.259

In formal learning, the course is defined by the content. While in informal learning, the course is

defined not by the content, but rather by the desire of the interest of the user in accomplishing

some task or some goal external to the course.

So, there are two different definitions of success. In one case, the formal learning case, success is

demonstrated by mastery in the material. But in the case of informal learning, success is

demonstrated by completing the task.

This creates a different source of support and a different source of authority for each of the two

models.

In the formal learning model, support is intended to be derived from the professor, or the

institution offering the course, while the community model receives an example of mutual

dependence, and indeed, impendence, for support comes from the community that made the task,

and the environment in which the person is working.

Now, in the creation of open line courses, this need for support, I would argue, creates one of

these bottlenecks that we are trying to avoid with the design mass of open online courses. And

there is a lot of talk about the need of the instructor to be present, with the interaction between

the student and instructor, or a student and a team of teaching assistants, or whatever.

This contrasts with the community model, where support is distributed across the community of

learners. And it is this distribution of the support, which eliminates the bottlenecks that are

inherent in the formal courses.

Learning and Performance Support System

The technology and support that completes the provision of delivery of open online courses, that

is to say, what I am describing in the sense to the community model, can be described within a

rubric of a program that, we in NRC, are undertaking what is called a learning and performance

support system. This will be a $19 million, five-year program. This program is divided into five

major components.

First of all, access to resources or repositories of resources. Here, I refer not to specifically

ordinary published materials because that is the model of the formal course. But rather the

productions created by the surrounding the student learner.

It also involves the cloud storage infrastructure, In most applications of cloud infrastructure in

an educational context the student’s cloud, is managed by, or is essentially the property of, the

institutional host of the course. However, what we are looking at is this cloud infrastructure

managed by and operated by the student. And this creates the question of synchronization, across

multiple cloud providers.

p.260

If you look at that, for example, there are many available cloud providers such Google Drive,

Dropbox, Box, Cubby, and the rest. A personal cloud is a method of managing access to

synchronization of their materials in this cloud infrastructure. Also, this cloud infrastructure

serves in turn, as a portal for their E-portfolio, or collection of materials that they created.

There's still a lot of discussions with E-portfolio, and the focus here is to manage on personal,

rather than institutional basis, on the portfolio. The major components of informal learning, and

personal online learning is the personal learning record - this could be a whole-talk in itself.

Delivery, need to be enabled in a variety of environments and there's a lot of talk about mobile

devices. But, in my perspective, this is one and for many platforms which learning needs to be

available. This leads to the concept of the personal learning assistant.

In particular, we would speak the idea of projecting learning resources, and projecting learning

resources means, making content services available, wherever the person is, whether it be a

laptop, desktop, a mobile computer, working with a tool or appliance, working with software

system, or any other vehicle. There is a wide range of possible support.

Finally, in the LPSS, or Learning in Performance Support System, is analytics, competence and

assessment, and this is essentially the application of artificial intelligence, and the pattern

recognition to identify the ways in which a person can become competent at some skill or task,

and the gap between where they are, and becoming competent.

Options

Finally, I just want to talk about the model of delivering this type of learning. One model is

associated with the Udacity model which is to give up and focus on corporate learning. Of more

interest is the Coursera option, but it's only part of the way toward the solution.

The Coursera option is essentially first of all, to focus on the provider, as offering a unique

experience. But secondly is the promotion of the creation of learning communities. Now,

Coursera has set-up a set of physical learn communities around the world. This is based mostly

at US Consulates and similar sorts of infrastructure provided by the American Government

around the world.330

I think, full support of a community-based model of all online learning is to follow what we

might call, 'The Triad Model', or "The Host-Provider Framework,” Where, the MOOC stands as

an independent entity, not belonging to any particular institution, which can be thought of as an

event hosted by an online community practice, that start/stops dates and contents in the middle.

330 http://www.downes.ca/post/61316

p.261

Where experts, or people who are in active in the field, make presentation, provides resources,

and generally serve as a focus or an attractor to bring people to the event.

The host is the learning community itself. This maybe online. But very often this will be a

physically-based community, where a mutual support network is created for people in the

community to talk about, and discuss among themselves, to create resources for this online

course.

Host communities may be online, or may be community based groups or a combination of both.

The idea in here is that the community brings a part of itself into the community-based open

online course. So course becomes, not only a method of propagating and distributing learning, as

though it were a publication or a book, but rather an mechanism for sharing and exchanging

information and learning, and creating new learning in the model of conversation in the

community.

That concludes my talk, I'd be happy to entertain any questions or comments that you may have.

Audience Member: I don't think you can see me, but I'm particularly interested in books right

now, I'm doing a feasibility study for OECD which is examining how as an organization that

could use massive online courses for its own knowledge production, examination and so on.

I have two questions. One, is on your perspective on MOOC aggregators so the course has new

densities and so on. Except for the xMOOCs.

Is there, from your standpoint, a comparison to be made between these aggregators and what

else are there and read other sort of journal publishers have done, by basically claiming content

produced by universities, by researchers and then selling that content to the same universities,

and the same institutions libraries? Just to get your perspective on that.

Thinking and listening to my second question, which is, what would be your advice or

recommendation where an organization wants to develop, that makes the decision to develop a

massive open online course.

Does an organization today, this is a non-profit organization. Does it need the organization or

the partnership with a formal learning institution or a higher education institution, in order to

deliver on a promise of not to be scaling up and opening up knowledge and learning? That's my

second question.

Scaling Up

I'll answer your second question first, because it's easy. The answer is no. What really matters is

that the organization is able to engage on the community, that is interested in learning, in some

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way, shape or form. If it was an organization like OECD for example, which just released its

PISA results.331 Just as an example.

OECD could easily create a MOOC around the results by setting up a series of discussions, five,

six, seven discussions like people who are involved in the case study creating online event and

then encouraging the creation of community supported resources around that.

And any organization can do this. It doesn't require educational institutions; it requires mostly

some technical smarts, and the idea, that contact of creating that resource. In any open online

course created this way you can use open-source technology.

We use technology that developed, but you don't need to use that. You should use, for example,

WordPress with the BuddyPress plugin, in order to create a community and aggregate content

across that community. I can go into that in a lot more detail, but the short answer is that the idea

of a PISA MOOC.

It would not be for people to master the material or learn all of the content. It would be a way for

people to get together, to explore the idea of these, and to develop their own thoughts and their

own ideas around it.

And people would draw from it, different senses, different communities, different learnings and

application of that learning.

Publishing

To answer the first question, it's really hard to distinguish between platform, Udacity, Coursera

and the like. The model is...and it's interesting the question was phrased in comparison with a

publishing model where professors, universities are invited to contribute their material to a

publication, which in turn sells them access to their own material.

The difference between this and Coursera or Udacity is that the publishers are selling the content

back to the institution, what they are doing is selling access to the platform in which the content

is located back in the institutions.

Technically, in a sense, it's not a case of selling the institutional content back to itself. But that

might just be accomplished in any case by sleight of hand. My own preference, and people have

heard me express this a lot, is for institutions to manage and publish their own content, their own

learning content, their own academic content, their public relations content. There are many good

reasons for this, and they are mostly significantly, this content for some raw material on open

331 http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results.htm

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online course, potential raw material maybe in open online courses, created in many different

ways.

If the content is made available for free, then it can be re-used by people offering online courses

where they're first setting up an open online course and inviting participants to populate that

course useful converted materials, simply by linking to it. This greatly reduces the cost of

production and greatly facilitates the ease of creating a course, not just by your academic

institutions, but by any institutional provider around the world.

One of the ways I like to talk about this, and it's an alternative way of thinking about this, is that

the academic content that is produced by professors, and universities, and institutes, and the like,

is not content to be learned and retained by the learners or students, but rather becomes the words

in a vocabulary that they use in order to communicate with each other.

Instead of sending sentences, in text, to each other, they send content which they refer to and talk

about to each other, and very often content which they modify, and recombine or mash up with

other content, to each other.

This content becomes the raw material, not just for the production of other courses, but for the

conversations that people have among each other. It is for this reason that open online content is

really essential in order to support a community-based model of online learning.

It is for this reason that I found myself, as have many others, butting heads against the

publishers, who choose to put a subscription or other barrier in front of this content. What they're

doing when they do this, is that they're creating barriers to the conversation that happens between

academics and between students with academics and with each other. It makes conversation

impossible.

Audience Member: I have one question, Stephen, from my side. You mentioned something about

the personal learning record. Just try to enlighten my mind, because this could be like medical

stuff. How do you see, what is your vision about it?

Personal Learning Records

There's definitely an overlap in the concept between the personal learning record, and the

personal health record. One of the important elements here, and I'll start with that, because as I

think it characterizes it, is that the personal learning record needs to belong, essentially, to the

individual holding the record.

It's not some other institute's record of your learning. It's my record of my learning. This record

would need to be able to be supported, or substantiated with reference to individuals, so at least a

part of the personal learning record would consist of links to credentials, academic or otherwise,

that are held by other institutions.

p.264

Much like your wallet contains a driver's license, which is connected to a record in the

government department for transportation, certifying that you're able to drive, and contains some

insurance record which is connected to an insurance company record, which is a statement of

their policy.

What's important here is that, like your wallet, it's personal. You don't show it to people. Other

people can't look at it without your permission. You show it only to people that you want to see

it.

The other aspect of the personal learning record is that, it contains links, references, and

metadata regarding your performance. This would refer directly to evidence of that performance

in the form of an e-portfolio or records in academic content service providers, et cetera.

In its widest sense, the personal learning record will keep track of all of the learning that you've

done. This is the basis of a lot of analytics that providers of the MOOCs and learning

management systems will talk about, where they talk of tracking a student's performance.

The difference between a personal learning record and a platform-based analytics, is that a

personal learning record, can extend beyond the limits of the platform.

While a platform, such as an LMS, can only analyze your performance inside the LMS, a

personal learning record would look at your work inside the LMS and would look at your work

in social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or whatever.

It would look at your work in application programs such as Word, PowerPoint, et cetera. It

provides a comprehensive picture of your own personal performance. This is why it's very

important that access be restricted and security managed, so that your record remains personal

only.

The thing is, this can be used as the basis of what we might call personal analytics, as compared

to platform analytics, creating a network of voluntary exchanges of information, about personal

performance and academic achievement among a community of learners, to create analytics

based on the whole person in comparison with relevant information, to other members of the

community, or of other members in the community.

Audience Member: I don't know if you can answer this question, but you were talking about the

difference between formal learning and informal learning. You were talking about the fact that

the formal learning part is more about, how do you define success is by people completing the

course, the formal course.

I wonder, because we had someone from Google just before you. We were talking about that,

saying that open learning is the news. It seems that people are not really so much interested in

getting a certificate of the courses they have done.

p.265

I wonder if you had any sense of this evolution, or do you know the percentage of...are people

interested in this completion course or certification anymore or not?

Because in the UN system, we are very much into the formal learning approach and the very

formal certificate approach of credentials, or maybe compliance legislation. We don't have it

good so far, sometimes. I wonder what's your knowledge about that.

Credentials

I think, probably the major observation of massive online courses has been that, their completion

rates are low, and therefore certificates are offered for completion of the course. The certificate

rate is low.

A big part of this is caused by the phenomenon of drop-ins, or tourists as they're sometimes

called, people who just look at the course because they're interested in the content of the course,

but they don't have the intent of moving from start to finish.

I will say that, the model of learning, where you proceed through course material from start to

finish, and complete with some sort of a capstone exercise, such as a test or a presentation or

project of some sort, is a very common model in learning.

It's a common model that characterized e-learning for many years. This model is well-known.

The difference between MOOCs which follow this model, and traditional online courses is

actually pretty minimal, the only difference being that the content available to MOOCs would be

openly accessible.

Generally, there tends to be a limit or a restriction on completion or certification. As I

mentioned, OERu requires that you enroll at the university to receive the capstone. Coursera has

a model where they verify a person's identity for a fee, and that's how you get your certificate

there.

I think there is demonstrated interest in obtaining the certificates. It's not the majority of

participants, but it's a significant, non-negligible number of participants. I'm thinking of a graph

that was drawn by Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein.332

Looking at the size of these populations, and as I recall the graph in my mind, it's in the 15

percent range, plus or minus ten percent of people who were interested in the certification.

332 http://mfeldstein.com/insight-on-mooc-student-types-from-eli-focus-session/

p.266

This is especially the case, among that population that is outside Western Europe and North

America, and where there are significant challenges to employment, and where even something

like the Coursera certificate, say, would be a significant advantage in obtaining a job.

We do see this and that explains quite reasonably why certificates of completion are of interest to

organizations such as UN. Where do I want to go with that?

Community Assessment

From that perspective, I think, Massive Open Online Learning forms a better alternative than the

traditional system, but not a dramatically better initiative because the need for certificates faces

the same barriers of technological and cognitive access.

It faces the same sort of bottleneck in terms of evaluation and assessment of the credential. The

more you attempt to assess a credential, the more time and labor intensive it becomes, and that's

a real concern.

Just to put this in context, and to explain partially why, I think that the open community-based

model will ultimately be a better alternative, I think we're right at the point where, instead of

evaluating learners by capstone exercises or credentials, we'll be able to evaluate people

according to their portfolios, and according their performance in open online networks.

You see this in communities like the open-source software community already, where people are

able to demonstrate their leadership capabilities and their software capabilities in an open

community and can obtain employment, by that means.

This is true for Google... we might have mentioned that Google, in particular, has been known to

hire people directly out of open source projects, for example people who created Mozilla

foundation on the basis of the work that they've done in this environment.333

With intelligent analytics, and with learning and performance data shared in an open online

environment, it will be possible to create a learning profile of people, drawing on their personal

learning record, such that we no longer need these credentials offered by an institution, but rather

only need the actual evidence of their performance, in order to create a comprehensive picture.

I think, we're looking at a coming sea change in the nature of assessment and certification. It's

not here yet. It's going to take five or ten years, but I think it's definitely coming.

Audience Member: I don't see any more questions from the floor, but just one sentence can

sum up your vision or... I know it's hard, but just so we can go through.

333 http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2005/01/4549-2/

p.267

One Sentence

I think that the future of education is in people working communities to provide their own

learning, as opposed to having their learning provided for them by publishers or institutions.

How's that?

Audience Member: I just have one comment, which concerns the ISO norms in terms of

accreditation. We haven't been mentioning it and I'm wondering if someone could. We are not

very aware of this inside of the WFP. We know that this has been an initiative. What is actually

your experience concerning this?

Standardization

Stephen: I now know, what you mean by ISO. I would say ISO. It points to, even if you're using

the same language, the problem of translation.

There's a lot about ISO I don't know. I'm familiar with the ISO metadata for learning, I forget the

exact...it's LMR - Metadata for learning resources, which is a classification, a categorization

scheme. 334

I would not be surprised if there were other ISO standards that I'm not aware of, but I'm going to

be careful and say, I don't know the full range of ISO standards with respect to learning, because

ISO is just so huge. It's a question of standardization of quality in general.

It's expressed not only by ISO but also, for example, in initiatives like Common Core in the

United States and even to some degree in the PISA evaluations which are setting baselines for

math, language and science learning (Interestingly, not art, geography, or history, but that's a

different issue as well).

It does point to the danger of standardization, and the danger is probably most characterized by

the difference between formal and informal learning.

That is, this standardization presumes that everybody has the same objectives, the same

understanding of quality, the same concept of mind. That's true of formal learning but it's less

true of informal learning.

Standardization implies in many respects, that there is a definition of quality that can be created

for a particular set of resources or a particular domain, and again, that's not necessarily going to

be the case in informal learning.

334 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_19788

p.268

That is not to say that, there is no distinction between quality and lack of quality, but rather that

quality is a relative property. Quality is in many ways in the eyes of the beholder, and in the case

of education, the beholder includes not only the student but the education provider and the

society in which the education is provided. If we look at the different values of different

societies, we see that there's going to be a very different understanding of quality.

In my own case, I like to distinguish for the purpose of standardization

between syntactic and semantic activities.

Syntactic activities refer to the mechanics of the interaction. We think of plumbing. Think of the

pipe fitting, the size of pipes, the gauge of the thread, and material used in pipes. These standards

are made, in order to make sure that pipes fit together with each other.

Electricity has standards regarding wattage, amps, the gauge of wires, the width of the light bulb

that screw into the light socket, et cetera. This is to make sure the light bulb fits into the light

socket. The standards do not address what you run through the pipes, mostly.

It certainly does not address what you use the water for, what you use the liquid for. The

standards do not address what you're going to light with the light that you're lighting. In cases of

meaning, value, content, et cetera. I don't think that they can apply standards.

In cases where you're dealing with semantic elements of learning, I think that it would be a

mistake to establish standards, because each person approaches semantics from a slightly

different perspective. That, I think, is the role of standardization, where can I identify my syntax

mechanism for interaction.

I think, they're really important, but where we're looking at communicating values, I think, we

need to look at other non-standardized approaches. It would be a community kind of approach

where these things are determined as a result of interaction among people operating in and

information network, and that's a short version of a very long concept.

Moncton, Canada

December 10, 2013

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Economists and Education

Fred M Beshears writes, " Here's an upcoming panel discussion335 that might address some of the issues we've been discussing. It will be interesting to see if the idea of 'Open Education' becomes

linked to the idea of 'Free Trade' ".

Does he mean the 'free trade' where corporations and capital are free to move about the world

seeking the lowest possible wages and benefits while citizens are locked in their own countries

by passport, visa and immigration laws that make it impossible for people to leave the

sweatshops and migrate in search of higher wages?

Does he mean 'free trade' where commerce is governed by documents hundreds of pages thick

and which can only be understood by lawyers, and even then only after jurisprudence, such as

the case of NAFTA?

Or even the idea that 'education' is a commodity that ought to be produced and protected and

bought and sold as though it were property? Because I'm not sure economists can see it in any

other light.

Indeed, instead of asking how economists should consider campus course import and export

policies, wouldn't it be more relevant to question why economists have any influence on

education, articulation or matriculation policy at all? After all, degrees and certifications

shouldn't simply be things bought and sold on the open market - should they?

Steve Foerster writes336, " I'm with you on the immigration issue, and agree that regardless of

what it's called, if something is long and hard to understand then it's almost certainly a way to

protect well connected companies rather than really being a free trade agreement.

" I believe that most economists would look at education not as a commodity, but as a service.

And it certainly can be provided like any other service, although people with different first

principles will disagree whether it should. I don't think economists have all the answers, but in

areas where they know what they're talking about it's unwise to disregard them. "

I agree that " in areas where they know what they're talking about it's unwise to disregard them."

No doubt they understand currency exchanges. But they do not understand education.

335 http://www.us-jpri.org/en/week_201402.html#event7

336 http://innovationmemes.blogspot.co.uk/2014_02_01_archive.html

p.270

'Teaching' is a service. An 'education resource' is a commodity. But 'education' and 'learning' are

neither commodities nor services. You can't buy a 'temporary PhD in Astrophysics' the way you

can buy a temporary tattoo.

Economists get this sort of thing wrong a lot. Other things that are neither commodities nor

services are 'climbing a mountain', 'true love', 'health', 'a positive outlook', etc.

The reason economists aren't able to deal with this is that they cannot be expressed in monetary

value, not because they're priceless, but because they cannot be counted.

Even the word 'commodity' has suffered from this sort of myopia - it originates from the Latin

from Latin commoditatem (nominative commoditas) "fitness, adaptation, convenience,

advantage," from c ommodus "suitable, convenient", but only in the 15th century with the rise of

mercantilism does it come to mean, "benefit, profit, welfare;" and later "a convenient or useful

product."

You can't count 'fitness' or 'adaptation', you can only count the proxies for these, and economists

over time have come to value these proxies so thoroughly they do not even equate terms like

'education' and 'learning' with their original meanings.

That is why when we read people like Kevin Carey we read a lot about test scores, about

institutions' ranking on league tables, about the value of a degree, and such.

A bank or a business can be judged to be 'successful' by economic metrics, but I think few would

judge the 'success' of Harvard or MIT in their respective communities in terms of the money they

make or even the earnings people accrue from having attended them. When I visited Harvard, I

went there to soak in the weightless atmosphere, not to count bricks.

Economists are the logical positivists of social and cultural theory. They believe they have been

able to identify a strictly rational path from observations to principle. But along the way, they

have lost the concept of 'value', rendering it a useless reduction into purportedly theory-neutral

'observation statements' and hypothetical-deductive models. Economists should read Quine337.

But, of course, they don't. There's no money in it.

I wouldn't complain, and would be happy to pat economists on the head, just as I do logical

positivists and behaviourists, and say "there there, that's a good boy," but they have inserted their

way into political and policy discourse, creating a misguided and generally harmful social and

political theory, often known as 'capitalism', into common convention and culture.

337 http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

p.271

But as my friend Graeme Decarie writes338, "Government is a social institution, not a financial one." It may make sense for a business or large corporation to achieve 'success' through the

reduction of others (aka 'the competition') to poverty, but government and society cannot

function this way.

Economists talk and act as though we will accomplish nothing if what we accomplish is not

measurable, because progress toward that 'accomplishment' cannot be tracked. In a business

environment, where we are exchanging value and money for accomplishment, this makes sense.

To a person cycling on a lonely dead-end forest road, this simply seems confused.

And hence, talking about education in the same terms as 'free trade' comes to make sense for

them, while to any more knowledgeable observer the identification of these two very different

things is at best a dog whistle and at worst a conceptual howler.

And that is why there is no merit to debating an economist on education or learning policy. It's

like debating a True Believer. As Bill Nye found339, after a certain amount of discussion you ask your opponent "what would change your mind about this?" and the answer comes back,

"nothing."

I put it to economists, what can you prove? They spend all their time coming up with

explanations about the past. What can they really predict? All these interventions that they

propose - programmed learning, class size rationalization, anti-teachers' unions, high-states

testing, educational league tables - all these seem to have, when tried, a negative impact on

learning. If chemistry or even education were wrong so frequently, we would be comparing them

with phrenology and astrology, not discussing whether we can design a society based on such

principles.

I've stopped reading people like Kevin Carey. If I want to read about numbers, I can consult a

calculator.

Moncton, Canada

February 24, 2014

338 http://themonctongrimes-dripdrain.blogspot.ca/

339 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j8Babr_n4w

p.272

Like Reading a Newspaper

I've stated this in many times in talks and interviews, but I can't find it anywhere in my actual

text-based materials, so let's get it on the record so people can have something to cite, should

they want to.

It has to do with MOOC completion rates, and the oft-cited criticism that MOOCs have low

completion rates. Here's a citation340:

The average completion rate of xMOOCs is 7.6%, with a minimum of 0.67% and a

maximum of 19.2%. The 19.2% appears to be an outlier from Ecole Polytechnique

Fédérale de Lausanne, although it may be worth figuring out how they got their rate so

high.

Other people have argued that there is a very large number of people who sign up and never

return, and that completion rates are much better if we look at the number of people participating

after the first rate. But that's fine; let's stipulate that completion rates are abysmally low.

My response is that this argument misunderstands the nature of MOOCs (and certainly, MOOCs

as we've designed them in the connectivist world).

The traditional course is designed like a book - it is intended to run in a sequence, the latter bits

build on the first bits, and if you start a book and abandon it p[art way through there is a real

sense in which you can say the book has failed, because the whole point of a book is to read it

from beginning to end.

But our MOOCs are not designed like that. Though they have a beginning and an end and a

range of topics in between, they're not designed to be consumed in a linear fashio the way a book

it. Rather, they're much more like a magazine or a newspaper (or an atlas or a city map or a

phone book). The idea is that there's probably more content than you want, and that you're

supposed to pick and choose from the items, selecting those that are useful and relevant to your

present purpose.

And so here's the response to completion rates: nobody ever complained that newspapers have

low completion rates. And yet no doubt they do, probably far below the 'abysmal' MOOC

completion rates (especially if you include real estate listings and classified ads). People don't

read a newspaper to complete it, they read a newspaper to find out what's important.

340 http://mfeldstein.com/the-most-thorough-summary-to-date-of-mooc-completion-rates/

p.273

This, indeed, is the model for most media, and most things. I've made similar analogies many

times:

 nobody says the restaurant has failed if a person doesn't eat all the foods in a buffet

 nobody says a map has failed if a person doesn't look at or reference every street name in

the gazetteer

 nobody says that a hockey or football game is a failure if you didn't watch every play

from every player beginning to end

 nobody says a grocery store is a failure because a person doesn't complete the food

selection available

 nobody says a television channel is a failure if people don't watch the entire run of

p[programming from sign-on to the national anthem

 nobody says a Lego set is a failure if a person does not build every model in the

guidebook

It's actually very rare to find media of any sort that is intended to be consumed in its entirely.

Most of the time, in most things, we pick and choose what is important to us. That is the normal

mode of interacting with content, and it is the normal mode of interacting with a MOOC.

I know that the book-people think completion is very important. But theirs is in fact a very small

words. And even in the case of books, nobody thinks a library a failure if you don't read

everything in the collection, or an author a failure if you don't read their entire corpus. And just

so with MOOCs.

Update March 23, 2014 - some Twitter interactions

@mweller Mar 21: Like reading a newspaper - @downes with a nice MOOC analogy (blogged

partly at my request, ta Stephen) http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2014/03/like-reading-

newspaper.html …

@mdeimann Mar 21: but still such an argument does not work for education where there is a lot

of obligatory content to know.

@mweller Mar 21: yes, i don't think Stephen is saying all education needs to be this way, but for

moocs as he envisages them

@mdeimann Mar 21: ok MOOCs should not be portrayed as an opposite to trad. education but as

vehicle that helps engaging people into it.

@downes Mar 22

Why? Why shouldn't MOOCs, especially as I see them, not be considered an alternative to

traditional education? People talk of necessary content that must be learned. Even given this,

why can't a MOOC provide it? Why must we be led? Moreover, where is the argument that there

p.274

is core content that must be learned in any (let alone all) courses? The lack of common standards,

and difficulty transferring credit, argue the is no core content, and if not cMOOCs can replace

traditional ed.

@mdeimann Mar 21: but still such an argument does not work for education where there is a lot

of obligatory content to know.

@mweller Mar 21: yes, i don't think Stephen is saying all education needs to be this way, but for

moocs as he envisages them

@mdeimann Mar 21: ok MOOCs should not be portrayed as an opposite to trad. education but as

vehicle that helps engaging people into it.

22 Mar 2014 @downes

Even if these are pre-requisites there isn't eactly one way to study them, not exactly one body of

materials to study. and even if there is exactly one way to study (still not granted), the evidence

is most universities get it wrong... I recall my own calculus class in uni, for example - a prof with

a thick accent, an impenetrable text, chaotic tutorials. But in fact, knowledge has neither an

internal order nor a socially constructed order; there are at best conventions...

Moncton, Canada

March 21, 2014

p.275

The MOOC of One

Presented as The MOOC of One at International Academy of Technology,

Education and Development (IATED), March 10, 2014, in Valencia, Spain.

I want to talk about the MOOC of one341. What I mean by that is I want to talk about the

development of the MOOC or the Massive Open Online Course. I'm one of the people who

designed the concept originally in 2008. I want to explain myself so that you know what we did

and why we did it. And I want to lead into a discussion of what will follow, what the next

generation technology will be to follow after the MOOC.

I want to do a bit more than that. I want to begin this conference challenging you to rethink some

of your perceptions about what it is to teach, what it is that an education is supposed to provide.

We have this picture in our mind that an education is to shape or to transform, or in some way

make somebody something, whether that somebody be a doctor, whether that somebody be a

responsible member of society, whether that somebody be employed or an entrepreneur.

I want to begin by asking the question, "What does it mean to be one person?" What does it

mean to be, say, Valencian? What does it mean to be a doctor? We have this intuitive idea that

we think we understand when we begin to educate someone, we're going to make somebody a

doctor, but what does that mean? I'm not sure we even know, and a major part of the reason we

developed the MOOC is to challenge our thinking around some of these ideas.

In the traditional course, and that includes the traditional online course as well as the traditional

offline course in traditional education (Pape342 talked about it as well) we have this idea that there is the authority at the center who will throw content at you - lots of content, piles of books,

piles of video, and hope some of it sticks.

Even the MOOCs, the Massive Open Online Courses, that have followed the MOOCs that were

developed by George Siemens and myself, the courses offered by Khan Academy, Coursera,

Udacity, Udemy, and the rest are all based on the idea of some body of content.

Is being one being the same? That's kind of a hard question. It's not even clear what I mean when

I ask that. Let's take doctors. Does being a doctor mean having exactly the same knowledge as

every other doctor? No.

341 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/336

342 https://www.linkedin.com/pub/pape-samb/7/627/7b2

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Pape told us quite reasonably, different people work in different contexts. If they all had the

same knowledge they might be useful in one place, perhaps New York General Hospital, but not

useful in another place like Moncton General Hospital where I live.

Two contexts, two ideas of doctor. Just throwing content at people, cannot be sufficient to create

doctors. It's the same with being a Valencian, or being a pine tree, or being anything else. It's not

just being the same thing. Is everybody in Valencia the same? As I walked all around the city

yesterday, I can tell you they are not!

What is it to be a Valencian? Think about that. If we're trying to promote cultural awareness say,

"What does that mean? Do you have everybody memorize the Valencia song?" No. George

Siemens and I created the MOOC, the Massive Open Online Course, to challenge some of these

ideas.

People often ask us, "What do you mean by MOOC?" We say, "Well, Massive Open Online

Course." They say, "No. What do you mean by MOOC?"

What I mean is massive, not massive in the sense that we saying not or that we reach 1,000,

10,000, 1 million people. Anything can be massive in that way. Sea weed is massive in that way.

What I mean is massive by design, massive in the sense that it can continue to scale without

losing its essential shape.

In a typical course, the more you scale, the more you begin to depend on the central professor,

the more elevated the central professor gets, and at some point, you have this iconic figure at the

front of the room talking to all the masses. That becomes something very different from

education where it was just and your friends figuring out how to put a truck together.

Education changes. Traditional education changes when you make it massive. We wanted to

design a system that could scale without changing the nature of learning.

Open, by open, we meant free, gratis, en français and libre. Free as in beer, free as in open, free

as in the doors aren't closed. Free, as in you can do what you want with it.

By online, we meant online. The reason why we meant online is because we understood that if

we required somebody to actually physically attend our classroom, people in Africa, and people

in India, and people in Europe would not be able to take their course, and we wanted them to.

And course is certainly an odd thing, but a course is something really, very simple. A course is

something that begins, something that ends, something that has a topic, and that's about it. You

might ask, "Well, why courses? Why not communities, video collections or whatever?"

We wanted to have something small that you can involve yourself in without committing

yourself to for the rest of your life. You join a community, you're stuck with it, but the course,

you have the happy knowledge that eventually this course will end, and you're out of it.

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This is what our Massive Open Online Course looks like. Our Massive Open Online Course has

a little website in the middle, but mostly what the Massive Open Online Course is about is the set

of interactions between the participants.

What we've done, very deliberately, in our open online courses, is to create this kind of network

structure, so that the promotion of information, the distribution of content, is a very, very

minimal part of what the online course is.

We've done a number of courses in this model. We began with the course called 'Connectivism

and Connective Knowledge 2008,' and that's popularly known as the first MOOC. It became

massive only by accident. We set it up, we expected about 22 students. We got about 2,200

students. We were very surprised by this, particularly since the topic isn't exactly widely

popular. 'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge' who signs up for that? Artificial

intelligence, yeah, I can get that.

We did more courses. We did one called "Personal Learning Environments Networks and

Knowledge," PLENK. George named that course. I had nothing to do with it (the name). We had

a 30-week marathon course called "Change," in which we learned that 30 weeks is too long to

have a Massive Open Online Course. We had one on the future of higher education. We did that

one with the Chronicle of Education, EDUCAUSE and the Gates Foundation. That was very

short course. It was over before it even started.

Right now we've just, in the past week, launched a course in French, a French language course

called REL, Ressources Educatives Libres, Open Educational Resources 2014343. We have about

1,000 people attending this course.

We've got some experience behind this. We're beginning to figure out what it is that makes a

MOOC work, what it is that makes a MOOC not work. We've applied these lessons to open

online learning generally.

One of the things I've learned to expect in the first weeks of every single course that we offer are

complaints. So many complaints the first week.

"Reading this course is like reading a dictionary," they say. Or there's always someone, "I can't

find anything. Where's the nice, easy navigation?" Or there's always someone, "I don't know

what to do. Tell me what to do. I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do."

Always people complaining. "There's too much content to read." I say, "Well, pick something

then, and read that." "Just pick something." "No..."

343 http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2014/02/rel-2014.html

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[laughter]

In a sense, I don't blame them. I get it. It's confusing. It's hard. It's awkward. It would be so nice

if we just gave you a series of videos and told you "Follow this path. Do this thing. This is the

process. That's what we all want."

Instead we give them this. Look at that mess. That's the course we designed out of the box, and

then we told our students -- our participants, as I prefer to call them -- to take that, and add on to

that, however they wanted.

We did not want to tell them what to do. We had people create groups in Second Life. This was

back in 2008. Second Life was still a thing. We had people create Google Groups in the REL

course. That's happening right now. There are Google Groups set up. There's a Facebook group

that's set up. There's a Twitter hashtag that people follow.

People spin off and create their own communities, their own version of this course. I try to

convince Robert, who's my partner, Robert Gregoire, in presenting this course: people never go

to the website. And it's true. They don't go to the website. They're too busy taking the course to

go to the website.

People want process. Let's think about that. Is that how we become 'one'? Is that how we become

a doctor? If we do the right things in the right order, that will make us a doctor. Does that seem

right?

There's a whole school of thought, or multiple schools of thought, out there in the world. In the

history of philosophy, different ways of defining identity. Operational. You are such-and-such if

you do this kind of operation in this way.

Telephone operators are like that. I guess they don't do that anymore, but there used to be people

in telephone offices that connected lines for you. They did everything very precisely, in the right

way. I'm showing my age here.

Sometimes people define somebody in terms of the function or the purpose or the similarity of

method that they use. We wonder is that what we mean. Is a doctor just a person who does things

in the doctor method?

No. Not really. That's not really what we're training them to be. So there's got to be something

more to learning to be a doctor than just serving the right function.

What about teleological? We hear this a lot. The course should have objectives, and if you satisfy

those objectives, you will thereby have become a doctor or a Valencian or a pine tree or

whatever.

But that doesn't work either. You can have all the objectives in the world, but still not be the

thing that you wanted to be. Why not?

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Philosophers have worried about this long before I have. There's a guy call Thomas Nagel. He

looked at theories of identity based on operation, or function, or objective, or goal. He said,

"These are empty because they miss the aspect of what it feels like."

I think that's pretty important. To be a Valencian is to feel like a Valencian. Isn't it? I don't really

know what that feels like, because I know I'm not one.

He wrote a paper, Nagel did, called "What Is It Like To Be a Bat?344" That's really interesting because we could do everything a bat does and still not know what it's like to be a bat, because

there's a certain sense in which it feels like something to be a bat.

There's a whole basis for definitions of educational method based on feel like this. It's the idea of

creating the experience of being such-and-such. You want to teach somebody to be a doctor?

You create the experience of being a doctor. You want someone to be an entrepreneur? You

create the experience of being an entrepreneur, very much like what we just heard.

There's a lot of merit and a lot of validity to that. This is where we see theories like discovery

learning and experiential learning coming into play. I happen to think there's a lot to the idea of

having the experience.

Thomas Kuhn -- who wrote "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" -- when he was asked,

"What is to be a physicist?" He said, "Well, it's not knowing a whole bunch of things. It's seeing

and feeling the world in a certain way. It's knowing how to answer the problems at the end of the

chapter."

The problems at the end of the chapter never have anything to do with what's inside the chapter.

If you've ever taken physics, you know what I mean. They're tests of a way of seeing the world,

not just a reciting of facts.

What is it to create a doctor? What is it to create a Valencian? We create the experience.

I saw them doing that. In Valencia yesterday, I walked around the city, and in the air, they are

throwing firecrackers and lot of firecrackers and having celebrations and eating in the sidewalk

cafes in great big pans of paella. People are in the city learning what it feels like to be Valencian.

We have that aspect because it's a really important aspect in our MOOCs. The idea of creating

this underlying network or layer of support that gives people the interaction and the experience

that they need to have in order to feel like what it is to be such-and-such.

344 http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil1000/Nagel.pdf

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Our first course, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2008, it was about being an

educational technologist (we love recursion). We are teaching people how to be like us.

What we tried to do is create this experience and what it's like to be an educational technologist.

We built the resources and we have people create their own resources. We set up this whole

dynamic web.

From a provider perspective, this all makes a lot of sense. If you're seeing this from the

perspective of the institution giving the learning, we're really on to something here. We have the

students create content, we have students who are receiving content.

We have some course content that we're throwing into the mix. We have maybe events,

recordings, all the elements there in our course of a whole community, really. Our course could

be Valencia. It isn't obviously, but it could be.

All the structures are there, the experiences, the ways of speaking, the conversation with each

other, the doing things, the making things, of finding your path around the city, all of that. We

have created the experience of being an educational technologist. That's what we tried to do in

the course.

But that's not enough. It turns out that our feelings are notoriously unreliable. I feel like I'm a

doctor. I'm not.

Think about personal identity. What makes you, you? Most people say, I feel, I have my

memories. I have my thoughts, my stream of consciousness. Of course the first question that

comes up is what happens to you when you're sleeping then? Where do you go? The feeling of

something disappears. Our memories go away. What happens to them when we're not having

them? Do they no longer exist? Simply, our sensation of the experience is not enough. We need

to build more into it.

I'm glossing over a lot here. There have been over the 20th century two major approaches to this

question, which I'll call 'The Big Answer' and 'The Small Answer'. Yes, I made those terms up at

about 2 AM last night, and I'm very sorry. Now you know what I do the day before a talk.

The Big Answer is this. We have the experience. Think of it as a movie screen or a computer

screen. It's in my head. We have the experience and what creates that experience is we turn the

camera out into the world and our experience is of the world.

What we're doing as students is trying to make sense of that experience. That's an approach to

education based in semiotics, in meaning, in context, in representation and it's an approach to

education based on not just what we feel, but objective external fact. There is a lot of sense to it.

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This is where we get things like social constructivism or even empiricism or logical positivism

where there is learning. We are trying to construct, or make sense of, or make meaning out of the

perceptions that we have out there of the world. That's the Big Answer.

I'm glossing over very quickly here, but this is fun.

What's the Little Answer? Instead of the camera pointing out there, you turn the camera in and

point it in here. Why not? Here are our experiences. Whether we're pointed out there or pointed

in here we know, we're going to see the same thing.

The littler answer is we're trying to make sense of our own awareness, our own cognition, our

own understanding. The Little Answer is based on a primacy of reason, it's based on critical or

digital or whatever literacy's. It's based on the idea that we can look at whatever our mental

contents are and make sense of them.

Education is a process of making sense of these things. Sounds great. Social constructivism,

neuro-constructivism, it's a very popular approach to learning, so much better than dumping

content on people, so much better than trying to make people just do the right functions, so much

better than just experience, because now our experience has a context and a frame.

A significant part of the educational world is in agreement with this, and they have good reason

to be. Frankly, this is where I think George Siemens is. George Siemens is smack dab in the

middle of the Big Answer.

I think that his version of connectivism is social constructivist of some sort with a network

overlay. I take it a step further, because here is my problem: there is no one to do the

constructing.

Think about it. Here is my screen, here is my camera pointed out, pointing in. Who is doing the

making of meaning? There isn't some other little guy looking at all my perceptions, figuring

things out, because then he would have to have a camera too to look at my perceptions.

That's the problem with social constructivism. There is no constructor. There is no person other

than the learner themselves to do the constructing. There is no little man, there is no

camera. That picture I just gave you, the Big Answer and the Little Answer - take the camera

away. There is no camera. There is no one to construct our representations for us.

Now I've just destroyed every educational theory there is, what's left? I'm very sorry about.

What's left is this screen, except it's not just a screen. That's an idea from the 1,600s, this idea that there is this tabula rasa on which you have senses that make little impressions.

Actually, this is a very special kind of screen we have, which is our mind, our brain. It is in fact a

self-organizing network. Interestingly, so is Valencia, and interestingly, so is a group of crickets

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and indeed, pretty much any large number of things than can interact to together, are

self-organizing networks.

They are at once perceptual systems and reasoning systems. There is no constructor. The thing

that has the feelings is also the thing that organizes the feelings. That makes sense doesn't it?

I know, I've got to tell you more of a story than it. I've got to prove it with numbers and logic.

I've got to show you working examples. I get that. It's a half hour talk. You'd have to give me

some slack.

How do these self-organizing networks work? There are some design principles that make good

ones as compared to bad ones. What's a good one, what's a bad one, we can talk about that.

In general, human neural networks, student educational experiences, the cities, ecosystems and

anything else you want to create a network out of work better if they satisfy the following four

criteria.

Autonomy, the individuals in the network makes their own decisions.

Diversity, being one isn't about being the same. Let me repeat. Being one isn't about being the

same. Being a Valencian isn't about being the same, being a pine tree isn't about being the same,

being a doctor isn't about being the same. Diversity, in fact, is what makes being doctors

possible.

Interactivity, the knowledge created by a network is created by the interaction between its

members and, as we would say, is emergent from its members and is not simply the propagation

of one person's opinion to another, to another, to another, to another. Everybody contributes

together to make knowledge.

There is no one person out there who is the person in charge of what it is to be a Valencian. This

concept is ridiculous.

This is why when Pape says, everybody has something to contribute, everybody has something

to contribute, because what it means to be a Valencian is determined by the totality of activities,

thoughts, expressions, being of every single person in that city.

You take one person away, Valencia is different. Kind of an important realization. Your

approach to learning changes when you realize that.

Finally, openness, because networks cannot work if they are closed. Networks cannot work if

there are barriers to communication, if there are barriers to entry, if only some kind of messages

are allowed.

These are the design principles. You don't have to like them. It's an empirical matter as to

whether or not networks that have them function better. My proposition is take a bunch of

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networks, test them against these principles. You will find that they worked better if they're

going to shape these principles. Don't trust me. Go test it.

That leads us to this concept of personal learning. What is personal learning? We talked about

MOOCs, talked about it open online learning, all of that. I'm going all way from massive courses

to talk about individual personal learning. Why? Because the approach of a MOOC is based on

the idea that individual people as defined by that screen, that's self-organizing screen are taking

the course. This is the thing.

When we design these MOOCs, we realized every single person taking our course is going to be

different. Some use Internet Explorer, some of them use Firefox, some use Opera, who knows

why, some even use Safari (and nothing works in Safari! [laughter]). Different languages,

different cultures. Some people want to get the knowledge, some people want to socialize, some

people want to meet other people.

We had one person in our first course, the sole purpose of their membership in the course was to

call George and I techno-communists. That's what they wanted to do. That's cool. We've gave

them their chance and they did that and everybody went on their way. The whole idea of the

MOOCs the way we built it is based on the idea that each person is a self-organizing, perceiving,

and reasoning system of neurons (and the course as a whole each person is a self-organizing,

perceiving, and reasoning system of people).

In our MOOCs, there's no constructor of things. MOOCs (and people) are self-organizing

networks that process and organize perceptions in a natural automatic way given that they are

provided proper nutrition, diversity, openness, autonomy, and the rest.

From the student's perspective, if they're taking the MOOCs - reflect on your own experience

here for a second - they're right at the center. Goodness, they might even be taking more than one

MOOC at a time. From different institutions at the same time, I know it's heresy but they might

be doing that. They might be communicating on WordPress or on Flickr delicious, posting

videos on YouTube, but they're always at the center of their Internet sphere.

That's basically how we, in developing the next phase - remember I promised a new technology

after MOOCs - but here is what it looks like. It's really MOOCs Mark II, but now we're telling

the story from the perspective, not of the education provider, but from the perspective of the

individuals who are participating in the learning.

We understand that they are perceiving and reasoning self-organizing networks. They will be

coming into this with that capacity, but with those needs, and therefore what we're attempting to

do, we're creating something called learning and performance support system (I'm really sorry

about the name) to provide that measure of support.

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In practical concrete terms, technological terms, and I can only gloss over this at the center is

a personal learning record where a person keeps their learning records and everything related to

do with their learning.

We have support for a r esource repository network to access all of these resources out there in

the world. A personal cloud to allow them to store their photos, videos, et cetera, wherever they

want.

A personal learning assistant (no we don't mean an iPod, no we don't mean an app) - what I

mean is a way of projecting the capacities of this system of the personal learning environment

and of the associated learning resources, MOOCs, et cetera into whatever environment they find

themselves. Maybe it's into a mobile phone, maybe it's into a computer, maybe it's into a car.

I like to tell the story of a fishing rod. The fishing rod is very smart. It's connected to your LPSS,

to your personal learning environment, and your fishing rod would help you learn how to fish,

and it will complain if you do it improperly. Fishing rods are known for having short tempers.

And for what we call an automated competence development and recognition which is a long

way for understanding and again come back to a path here. Understanding what the gaps are in

our knowledge, what resources we need in order to obtain the knowledge, obtain the resources,

become the kind of person we want, help us self organize into being whatever it is that we're

trying to be.

There's some more organized description of the same project. The blue things there are the

reserach projects that I've showed you, research repository networks, and the rest. We're working

with different organizations and companies to provide extensions of the service and we're

working with education providers and the rest of the Internet in order to connect up the learning

resources that are available around the world, from different MOOCs and different learning

providers into each individual person's personal learning environment.

So what is it to be 'one' after all that?

In a sense, to be one is to know that you are one, to know that you're a doctor, to know that you're

a Valencian.

But what does that mean? If you look at how these self-organizing, perceiving, reasoning

networks worked, basically what they are - and I'm glossing - they're pattern recognizers. Now

that's a simple two word explanation and more complex functionality, but it will do.

So, if you're Valencian (are any of you Valencian here? How many of you are Valencian? One,

two, three) you recognize that building (don't you? I assume you do because you're really a bad

example if you don't) and the point here is that there isn't some sort of set of conditions, set of

sameness, functionality, all that big long, long definition, et cetera. You look at the building you

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recognize it. How does that happen? Because you're self-organizing, perceiving, reasoning

neuro-network is the kind of think that recognizes things.

How does one doctor know that another person is a doctor? The doctor recognizes another

doctor. To be one is to know. To know that one is a doctor, a Valencian or whatever is to

recognize that they are. It's a matter of pattern recognition, a perceptual property.

And finally to be one is to be you. Now, everybody talked about massive open online learning. I

don't care about the massiveness of open online learning. It's important - that there are seven

billion people in the planet, whatever we do has got to work for everyone of them - but it's only

going to work for every one of them, one person at a time. There's no other way of doing it.

There's no other way of doing it because there's no other way that's going to be genuine. There's

no other way that's going to be effective. What makes the MOOCs special is that each person

taking the MOOCs makes it their own. They create and shape their own learning according to

thier own needs and their own interests, their own values, their own objectives. And that to me is

what learning and education is all about.

So I hope you're thinking about these things. The different ways of knowing how something is

one, the different ways of knowing whether you've trained someone to be a doctor, incultured

them into being a Valencian, or just persuaded them to recognize pine trees.

Think about these things as is hear the presentation and think about the views of learning in

education underlying the different presentations that you'll hear over the next three days. These

slides and way too many more presentations are all available on my website and I thank you for

your kind and patient attention.

Valencia, Spain

March 25, 2014

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Connectivism as a Learning Theory

I think the students in the Building Online Collaborative Environments Course have an almost

impossible task. Here is their effort345 to prove that connectivism is a learning theory.

"Connectivism has a direct impact on education and teaching as it works as a learning

theory. Connectivism asserts that learning in the 21st century has changed because of

technology, and therefore, the way in which we learn has changed, too.

"Not too long ago, school was a place where students memorized vocabulary and facts.

They sat in desks, read from a textbook, and completed worksheets. Now, memorization

is not as prevalent because students can just “Google it” if they need to know something."

Though this is not very accurate, in fairness it was an impossible task because of the readings

they were assigned (Verhagen’s criticism346 of connectivism and Siemens’ response347 to Verhagen) and because the context appears to be the application of learning theories in

the classroom348.

Verhagen's criticism is an early and not particularly well-informed criticism, which Siemens

does a reasonable job refuting. But if the sort of perspective of connectivism that you're given is

one where 'you look up answers through your network instead of remembering them' then your

understanding of connectivism will be significantly limited.

What is a Learning Theory

So in this post, let me clear, first, about what a theory actually is, and then let me outline the

ways in which connectivism can be thought of as a learning theory.

To start then: theories explain. They're not handbooks or best-practices manuals. They're not

taxonomies, in which a domain of enquiry is split into types, steps or stages. Theories

answer why-questions. They identify underlying causes, influencing factors, and in some cases,

laws of nature.

345 http://spring14-bce-01.wikispaces.com/Group+A+6-A-1

346 http://www.scribd.com/doc/88324962/Connectivism-a-New-Learning-Theory

347 http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism_self-amused.htm

348 http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2007/02/connectivism-in-classroom.html

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Explaining why learning occurs has two parts: first, describing what learning is, and second,

describing how it happens (or what causes it to happen). Both parts are important. Theories may

be as deeply divided about what something is as they are in how it happens.

A learning theory, therefore, describes what learning is and explains why learning occurs. It is

not a teaching manual or a set of pedagogical best practices. You don't 'apply connectivism in the

classroom' (though you might apply an understanding of connectivism in the classroom).

What is Learning?

According to connectivism, learning is the formation of connections in a network. The learning

theory, therefore, in the first instance, explains how connections are formed in a network.

But think for a moment about how this contrasts with the theories of learning offered by other

theories. For example:

 in behaviourism, learning is the creation of a habitual response in particular

circumstances (or as Gilbert Ryle would say, to learn is to acquire a disposition).

 in instructivism, learning is the successful transfer of knowledge from one person

(typically a teacher) to another person (typically a student).

 in constructivism, learning is the creation and application of mental models or

representations of the world.

As you can see, these are very different stories about what learning is. This is why it's diffiocult

to compare theories of learning. The vocabularies are different, and they are talking about

different things. Thomas Kuhn called this the incommensurability of theories.

As you can see, connectivism says that learning is something very different from what is

described in other theories. This is one reason we say connectivism is a learning theory: the

vocabulary of learning it employs is in some ways importantly incommensurate with that of

other theories.

When I say of connectivism that 'learning is the formation of connections in a network' I mean

this quite literally. The sort of connections I refer to are between entities (or, more formally,

'nodes'). They are not (for example) conceptual connections in a concept map. A connection is

not a logical relation. It is something quite distinct.

In particular, I define a connection as follows (other accounts may vary): "A connection exists

between two entities when a change of state in one entity can cause or result in a change of state

in the second entity."

Why is this important? Because it captures the idea that connections are something that we can

observe and measure (they're not a black box), and because it captures the idea that networks are

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not merely structures, but also that they enable (what might be called) signalling between

entities.

How Does Learning Occur?

The question of how learning occurs is therefore the question of how connections are formed

between entities in a network. There is a deep and rich literature on this topic, under the heading

of (not surprisingly) 'learning theory', though most of it is published outside the domain of

education. The first chapter available here349 provides a good overview.

The literature describes either actual networks of neurons ('neural networks', such as human or

animal brains) or simulations of these networks ('artificial neural networks'), which are created

using computers. In both cases, these networks 'learn' by automatically adjusting the set of

connections between individual neurons or nodes.

This is a very different model of learning from that proposed by other learning theories.

 In behaviourism, learning takes place through operant conditioning350, where the learner is presented with rewards and consequences.

 In instructivism, the transfer of knowledge takes place through memorization and rote.

This is essentially a process of presentation and testing.

 In constructivism, there is no single theory describing how the construction of models

and representations happens - the theory is essentially the proposition that, given the right

circumstances, construction will occur.

To be fair, a long discussion here would be required to talk about constructivist accounts of

model or representation formation. This is a weakness of constructivist theories - there's no

particular means to determine which constructivist theory is actually correct.

And this points to an underlying weakness of all three approaches: they all involves, ultimately,

some sort of black box beyond which no further explanation can be provided. How does reward

stimulate behaviour? How is transferred information stored in the brain? What is a model

and how is it created?

In my talks I've presented four major categories of learning theory which describe, specifically

and without black boxes, how connections are formed between entities in a network:

 Hebbian rules - 'what fires together wires together' - neurons that frequently share the

same state then to form connections between each other

349 http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/neural-networks-and-deep-learning-first-chapter-now-live/

350 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

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 Contiguity - neurons that are located near to each other tend to form connections,

creatinhg a clustering effect

 Back Propagation - signals sent in reverse direction through a network, aka 'feedback',

modify connections created by forward propagated signals

 Boltzmann - networks seek to attain the lowest level of kinetic energy

The actual physical descriptions of these theories vary from network to network - in human

neurons, it's a set of electrical-chemical reactions, in social networks, it's communications

between individual people, on computer networks it's variable values sent to logical objects.

These are the actual learning theories. Connectivism essentially collects these theories together

into a single package as a mechanism for explaining how connections are formed in a network.

Building on the Theory

These are the foundations of connectivism as a learning theory.

As you can see, it has nothing to do with 'looking up the answer on Google' or any of the surface

characteristics commonly associated with it.

A connectivist view of the world is very different from one found in other theories.

For example, to the question what is knowledge a connectivist will talk about the capacity of a

network to recognize phenomena based on partial information, a common property of neural

networks.

Connectivism proposes therefore what might be called 'direct knowledge', following the work of

people such as J.J. Gibson. This is very different from what might be called 'indirect knowledge',

which is based on the creation of models or representations using an internal (and possible

innate) language or logic.

Consequently, a connectivist account of literacy will be very different from that found in other

theories. These theories are essentially language-based and are concerned with the coding and

decoding of information in such a language. Major principles will revolve around syntax (aka

grammar) and meaning and truth (aka semantics).

A connectivist account of literacy reinterprets both syntax and semantics, looking well beyond

rules and meaning. In my 'Speaking in LOLcats' presentation, I propose a six-element

connectivist account of literacy, one that also includes elements of cognition, context and

change.

Additionally, the question of how we evaluate learning in connectivism is very different. Rather

than focus on rote response, or on manipulations inside a model, a connectivist model of

evaluation involves the recognition of expertise by other participants inside the network.

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In connectivism, the principles of quality educational design are based on the properties of

networks that effectively respond to, and recognize, phenomena in the environment.In various

works, I have identified these as autonomy, diversity, openness, and interactivity. These are very

different from standard accounts of quality.

With each of these aspects of connectivism being identified and developed, it becomes

increasingly apparent that a connectivist sees learning very differently from those who follow

other theories.

They see a person learning as a self-managed and autonomous seeker of opportunities to create,

interact and have new experiences, where learning is not the accumulation of more and more

facts or memories, but the ongoing development of a richer and richer neural tapestry.

They understand that the essential purpose of education and teaching is not to produce some set

of core knowledge in a person, but rather to create the conditions in which a person can become

an accomplished and motivated learner in their own right.

Moncton, Canada

April 21, 2014

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Mass Collaboration Workshop

Introduction to the Workshop - Ulrike Cress

Why a workshop in mass collaboration? Recent mass phenomena: Wikipedia, tagging, blogging,

Scratch, massive open online courses and connectivism, citizen science, maker-space.

Who is creating these? Nature article on massively collaborative mathematics (see the wiki

PolyMath).

How do we describe these phenomena? Is it just aggregation? What role does coordination play?

Is it a mass phenomena? Is it an emergent phenomena? Is it collective intelligence? And what are

the processes behind this?

In science we need new methods for this. Previously, we would passively observe - but now we

want people interacting. We have to try and find what these methods can do.

Can we design mass collaboration? Is it just something that self-starts, or can we create this?

CSCL 2013, we brought together people to talk about this. This led to the larger workshop we

are hosting today.

A Brief History of Mass Collaboration

Allan Collins, Northwestern University

Homo sapiens traded with others many miles away, while Neanderthals did not. Trading leads to

specialization, which is the first basis for mass collaboration - it leads to people getting better at

producing things, via division of labour. This altogether creates a virtuous cycle of increasing

trade, specialization and learning.

The next major development is the development of cities. Geoffrey West - when creativity is

measured by patents, by researchers, etc., a city 10 times larger is 17 times as creative. Examples

of hotbed communities include Cremona, Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Marshall's theory of hot spots: these areas exist for three reasons:

- pooled resources - workers and firms are drawn to these places

- specialized products and services - for example, hairdressers and agents in Hollywood

- 'ideas in the air' - information and skills flow easily between people

Brown and Duguid on Silicon Valley - 'The Social Life of Information' - there are these

'networks of practice' across firms, eg. sofwtare engineers, LAN designers, etc. So knowledge

flows across firms to find its most successful niche. Even where there are failures, that seeds

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different companies in the Valley. People can see what's doing, what's doable, and what's being

done.

The third major development was the invention of writing and printing. Writing allows you to

share ideas at a great distance and hand down ideas to later generations. It is what makes 'study'

possible (Walter Ong) which is critical to science, history and geography. Printing led to the

spread of books and universal literacy.

The world scientific community, fourth, created a set of norms and a set of structures. For

example, scientific meetings like this foster interaction among scientists. It produced scientific

journals to spread findings and ideas. And it produced government support, because the more

science you have the more invention you have. Scientific norms include: objectivity, replication,

equal standing, and sharing of data.

Clay Shirky, in 'Here Comes Everybody', argues that the internet and the web are making it

much more possible for all sorts of new ways to collaborate to occur. Here's the list:

- web communities: Xanga, fan fiction, Scratch

- collaboratories - share tools, data, designs

- digital libraries: videos, satellite data, models

- public repositories: Flickr, YouTibe, Wikipedia

- collective action: Twitter, Facebook

- crowdfunding: ArtistShare, Kickstarter

- MOOCs: Coursera, Udacity, edX

- Games: Foldit

- Open source: Linus, Wikipedia

Shirky makes the point that weird and risky ideas have a much better chance of taking hold and

that 'collaborative entrepreneurs' like Linus Torvolds and Jimmy Wales can succeed. This

process, he writes, undermines existing hierarchy - eg., 'Voice of the Faithful' - which responded

to the Church's suppression of the priests molesting young people - it is only something that

happens in this particular communications world.

I would like to thing the ideas Seymour Papert and Ivan Illich are now more likely to be brought

to fruition - for example, the 'Samba Schools' where people teach each other in Brazil. Schooling

segregates us, it creates peer culture. Illich wrote of of (a) resources everybody could have a hold

of, which is what collaboratories enable; (b) skill exchanges where people who had expertise can

share it with others; (c) peer communities.

As you get more and more collaboration, you get a speed-up of innovation. This leads to what

Toffler called Future Shock.

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Gerhard Fischer

Center for LifeLong learning & Design, University of Colorado, Boulder

There are two types of problem transcending individual human minds or individual disciplines:

- problems of magnitude which individuals and even large teams cannot solve and require a

contribution from all stakeholders, for example, Scratch, Wikipedia, 3D-Warehouse

- problems of a systemic nature requiring the collaboration of many different minds from

different backgrounds, for example, approaches to lifelong learning, aging population, etc.

For example, an article from Axel Pentland (MIT) in Der Spiegel asking the question, where

does mass collaboration start? At six people, at 60 people? Units with more people than the size

of a mid-sized city are difficult to organize with today's technology.

So, what is the research methodology here: from how things are, to how things should be. Marx:

philosophers interpret the world in different ways, but what matters is to change it. So, how do

we study how things could be? This requires theoretical frameworks going beyond antidotal

(anecdotal?) examples helping to interpret data in order to understand the context- and

application-specific nature of mass collaboration.

People have employed new media in learning organizations as gift-wrapped around our existing

understanding of learning and education. But we need a rethink: "distance education is not

learning in a classroom at a distance." We evolve new forms of learning. For example, we define

rich multidimensional landscapes of learning. Eg. 'how' - in a classroom the instructionist domain

scales well, but problem-based learning does not scale. (Say).

Looking at the shift from consumer cultures to cultures of participation, where everyone can

participate in personally meaningful problems. The Encyclopedia Britannica is an example of

consumer culture; but Wikipedia is an example of a culture of participation (of course, we should

differentiate between different levels of participation). Other examples: iTunesU, YouTibe,

Encyclopedia, PatientsLikeMe, Scratch, Stepgreen, SketchUp and 3D Warehouse.

Two different models for knowledhe construction and sharing:

- model-authoritative (you first filter, then you publish - the output filters are not needed because

the content is authoritative);

- model-democratic (you publish, and then you filter - you need better output filters to (eg.) find

the information).

We had a research project that analyzed the SAP Peer Community Network (SCN). It was

designed to help companies know what they know. What is the 'tea time' for mass collaboration

networks? Some of the dimensions investigated included:

- responsiveness

- engagement intensity

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- role distribution

- reward mechanisms

Another project: the CreativeIT wiki - in which we learned that most wikis are dead on arrival.

You see this a lot - they set up a wiki where everyone contributes, but you go back 6 months, and

there's nothing there. Our wiki - we put a lot of effort into it, we seeded it, and it did not take off.

So we are studying why this is the case.

There are ecologies of participation - we can find clearly identified roles, from project leadre and

core members out to bug reporter, readers and passive users. (SD - and then there are a series of

mechanisms designed to move participants up one level of participation).

So we turn to MOOCs - the hype is that MOOCs will revolutionize higher education. There is

both over-hype, but also under-estimation of MOOCs. So what did MOOCs contribute? They

generated discussion transcending the narrow confines of academic circles, they represented an

innovative model that shook up models of learning and institutions, and they might force

residential research-based universities to focus on core competencies.

But we need frames of reference on MOOCs: many of them are looked at by econonomic (scale,

productivity, cost) and technology perspectives. But another perspective: global versuss local.

MOOCs can reach out beyond national boundaries. In the US you have miles per gallon, while in

Europe it goes litres per 100km. Now if you think about mass collaboration and trying to create a

common understanding among people, this is probably a common problem. (SD- yes!)

We worked on the Environment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) - we created 'reflection

spaces' where people could act on what they were reflecting. But we found there were only 12

people around the board - what about mass collaboration? Perhaps a virtual equivalent to the

face-to-face meeting? This would fit the mass collaboration paradigm. Then you can have the

local one having theirs, but you could collaborate with people in Costa Rica.

So - what are the open issues.

- can there be a lower limit for the number of participants? Is this number context-dependent?

- is there a difference between collaboration, cooperation, coordination, participation, etc.?

- in MOOCs (often with over 10K people) - does any mass collaboration take place among the

participants?

- does any mass collaboration take place in Facebook and Twitter? If no, hat are the future

developments to create mass collaboration?

- is there 'participation overload' in the way there is information overload?

- is active participation in whatever form an absolute prerequisite for mass collaboration

- are there problems society is facing that make mass collaboration an necessity?

- what is the role of personal idiosyncrasies?

In summary: mass collaboration and education is an important theme for further research.

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Mass Collaboration as Co-Evolution of Cognitive and Social

Systems

Ulrike Cress

Mass Collaboration is typically presented as an artifact - for example, Wikipedia. So we see

mass collaboration as a conflict of two systems, a cognitive system and a social system. The

cognitive system is autopietic - is exists through its own operations, it operates by a process of

meaning, and is operationally closed; thoughts build on thoughts.

On the other side, the social system is also seen as a system, but it operates not through thinking,

but through communication, which entails a reciprocal understanding. It happens between

people, but it is stimulated or irritated by its environment. It as a system tries to make meaning -

it processes information, some things become central, others things die out - it's the the system

that decides over time.

These systems interact - both systems can be an environment for the other, both systems can be

irritaed by the other. Each can stimulate the other's development. This co-evolution - both

systems develop each other. How do we study these systems?

1. Wikipedia - how it operates, how it builds meaning. For example, the coverage of Fukishima

(Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant). Point of reference: the Wikipedia 'norms' - neutral point of view,

citations from authority, etc. In the first 9 days: 1200 edits, 213 substantial. 194 had a reference,

19 did not. For the references, some came with a reference, some were added after the fact.

There were only 4 deviances from neutral point of view, an these were deleted almost

immediately. So the principles were followed.

The quality of the constructed knowledge - by day 9, according to experts, the Wikipedia was a

balanced and objective presentation of what happened (even though most authors had no formal

knowledge in engineering or nuclear power). So, laypeople wrote the article, but as a collective

the social system could make meaning.

2. What triggers co-evolution? The difference between both systems - how they are able to

irritate each other. There must be a difference between the personal and the social system. We

ran a test where a person and the system had different 'pro' and 'con' arguments for an issue.

What we found was that a middle level of incongruity created the most change (and the most

learning).

3. Large-scale study of Wikipedia - to confirm this result. Eg., a domain 'traditional and

alternative medicine'. We found about 45,000 articles (via machine larning) - these were being

modified by a large number of people. We created article profiles to determine whether articles

were more or less in favour of alternative medicine. We could also do the same for the authors.

We could thus calculate the incongruity between the author and the article.

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When authors started working on articles, they were at a middle level of incongruity. So the most

productive activity took place at the middle level. It is the incongruity that triggers co-evolution.

This created productive heterogeneity. But there's an optimal level of heterogeneity. If a person

wants to change the system, he/she much adapt to the system. Hence mass collaboration is not

free or not democratic at all. If you bring in an idea that is not accepted by the system you will

have no impacted on the system.

Individual vs Collaborative Information Processing

Aileen Oeberst

There is a great deal of literature about the benefits of collaboration, but from psychological

literature we know that individual information processing is biased. Does this bias level out in

collaboration? Or does this translate to collective bias. Or does it become more extreme?

So, for a bit of research, we took as a question, whether individual biases are mirrored in

collaboratively authored Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia has of course strict rules such as

verifiability and neutral point of view. These rules are intended to prevent bias, and they're pretty

good, but there is a concrete counterexample.

The bias is hindsight bias. We say 'we could have foreseen this'. The bias is, your perception

after the event is different from what they were before the event. In hindsight, the likelihood,

inevitability and foreseeability of an event is always increased. Take Fukushima. Or the Turkey

coal mine disaster. People try to explain these things, to make meaning out of them. So you

selectively focus on information that is consistent with the outcome of the event, and ignore the

information that would have spoken for a different outcome.

Hindsight bias has been repeatedly demonstrated. Once you know about it, you see it repeatedly

in newspapers. It's widespread, difficult to avoid, and people usually are not aware of it. So it is

reasonable to assume that hindsight bias is shared by Wikipedia authors, and that it enters into

Wikipedia articles. So is there evidence for hindsight distortion in Wikipedia articles?

The method was to find things where an article existed before the event. For example, there was

an article about the Fukushima power plant. They were analyzed to ask 'to what extent does the

article suggest the event was likely to happen'? The number would be the same if there is no

hindsight bias. But there was a significant increase. Of 17 events, 6 or 8 events did not have any

tendency at all, while the others demonstrated a range of between factors of 1 to 7. Eg., before

the accident, there's a small 'accidents' section, after te event, there was a large selection of

design issues and risks (mostly from data that existed before the event).

So why select these and not other references. First, because it added to the explanation. But also,

there was a selection based on relevance.

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Limits: we can't conclude that all of Wikipedia is biased, nor say we've found an overall pattern.

There is a substantial number of articles without any tendency.

A second study looked at more events, including both unknown (disasters, etc.) and known (eg.,

elections) events. Categories included disasters, decisions, elections, personal decisions, etc. The

same mechanism for evaluating the events was used. What we see is that only for disasters do we

see the significant hindsight bias.

So: there was no hindsight bias based on whether the event what known in advance or not. Nor is

there a general hindsight bias. But there was a hindsight bias for disasters. But - in hindsight -

this makes sense. They have considerable impact. You would like to prevent them. So they elicit

a particular need to be explained. And this creates a search for antecedents.

Future work: to example whether collaboration increases bias, whether using biased resources

increases biases, looking at other biases (eg., ingroup biases, such as distorted representations of

their own group - is there a difference of representation in different language versions in

Wikipedia? eg. Manypedia analysis of the 6-day war in different languages).

Wai-Tat Fu – Illinois

From Distributed Cognition to Collective Intelligence

Perspectives, from cognitive science, and from HCI/CSCW. How do we define success in mass

collaboration? How do we define success for a cognitive system? Perhaps in a competition, eg.

Deep Blue versus Kasporov. The outcomes were controversial - Deep Blue did win. But also the

process - did the program just do search? A human can evaluate 100 times fewer moves than the

machine. But maybe the outcome is not what we like to consider success.

Physical Symbol System - cognitive computations involve operations of symbolic structures in a

PSS. How about collaboration? Maybe we can expand from computations inside-the-head to

those that involve multiple heads (cf Andy Clark's 'extended mind' theory) (cf also 'the Siemens

answer' in connectivism - SD)

So, why does search become important? Cognitive computations *always* involve search. All

computations are local in the sense that there's no what what happens here will impact something

else. When local computations need more information it needs to know where this information is

and how to access it. And local symbol structures make heuristic search possible. What matters

most is whether you have enough local symbol structures that make such a search possible.

(By putting these terms all in computational terms that means you can actually implement them.)

So - even though you have local computation, you always have to access the symbol structures

from a distance ('distal access'). The crux of th argument is this: local to distal access to

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information. This has to keep on going until you've found the distal symbol structures that you

need. This local to distal symbol processing is they key to intelligence.

Examples:

Chess: from 'Deep Blue' to 'modern' chess programs. They represent a shift from searching for

massive numbers of moves, to 'intelligent search' - learning from a lot of patterns. 'Success' is

defined by how much searching the computer does *not* have to do.

Web information search: based on representations of web data, so you don't have to search every

listing. The agent needs 'knowledge' to choose the right action based on local information, and

local information has to have sufficient structures to enable this.

(Video - Aibo robots playing soccer - better 'square robots' actually passing the ball - (Stone and

veloso video))

How do robots know how to do that? There must be some kind of rules to tell them what the

others are doing. So what sort of rules should we pay attention to? You have to have some kind

of model for what the other person's doing.

So - for collaborative systems - what kind of rules do we want people to have, and what kind of

rules might we want to impose?

Successful collaboration involves local to distal heuristic search processes to achieve a set of

goals. ie., using local information, each agent needs to infer how to find the information.

Eg. in mass collaboration - we look at how multiple minds collectively 'search' for information,

where knowledge is a set of symbol structures that allow efficient search.

Eg. in animals, success depends on how well they can exploit the local-to-distal symbol

structures.

Eg. cognitive psychology / science - success depends on how well knowledge is structured.

Eg. sociology - network analysis shows the importance of networks, of nodes and edges, where

success depends on crucial network structures.

Another example: Wikipedia. Wikipedia has very good local structures. The problems with

Wikipedia that the structures seem very local - the method for linking is perhaps too stone age -

they don't provide much local information for assessing the right distal knowledge. So the

challenge is: how to make local structures more coherent and local. Eg., maybe by having

individuals provide semantic structures.

An example of such an approach is social tagging. These generate local structures, but not

enough to help access distal information. And again, the challenge is, how to improve it.

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Hypotheses:

- local-to-distal heuristic search plays a central role in collaboration/cooperation

- social technologies that support collaboration will benefit from design features that facilitate

generation of local-distal structures to support distal search

Question: what is 'distal'? We have distal processes, search, structures, etc...

What we have locally is a symbol: the distal is whatever it stands for.

Question: the argument depends on the idea that success is how easy it is to access the thoughts

of another person.

Interesting concept: tagging recommendations

Proposition (from Ulrike): intelligence is 'metaknowledge' (not in the sense of 'knowing how to

know' but in the sense of having higher order mental structures or representations (but does mass

collaboration require some sort of collective intelligence?))

Collective Knowledge in Social Tagging Environments

Joachim Kimmerle, KMRC

Even though it is hard to find good definitions of knowledge, most psychologists would agree

that knowledge is an internal mental representation of external environments. This may seem to

be contradictory to the idea of 'collective knowledge', but the point of this presentation will be

that the concept makes sense. In collective knowledge, large groups of people externalize their

representations into digital artifacts. An example is social tagging networks.

Background: there is a huge quantity of information on the web - this makes it hard for users to

find the best resources for adequate navigation, but at the same token, the web can trigger

learning. So in our work we examined the potential of social tagging, and the impact of

individual and collective knowledge on social tagging systems.

Prior to the experiment, literature background: Information Foraging Theory (2007, Fu and

Pirolli) describes how individuals select links and forage for information. Users have to choose

between different links and navigation paths. The 'information scent' is the perceived usefulness

of the resource. This information is scent is based on 'the semantic memory' (my quotes - SD).

There are cognitive models of semantic memory - eg. Anderson, 1983; Collins and Loftus, 1975.

Chunks are connected to other chunks; connections may have different strengths.

Also, some background on tagging: this is the practice of annotating resources with keywords

(aka 'tags') on sites like Delicious, Flickr, etc. People use tags in order to structure, organize and

refind resources. Social tagging aggregates the tags of all users (Trant, 2009; Vander Wal. 2005).

The resulting collective tag structure represents the collective knowledge. Note that coordination

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here is not really needed, in contrast to other systemss of mass collaboration. The tags establish a

network of connections among the resources and the tags, and among the resources themselves,

and the users who read them. These associations are represented in 'tag clouds', in which the font

represents the strength of the links in the tags.

In our experiments - interested in independent variables (individual strength of association,

collective strength of association) and dependent variables (navigation, incidental learning). The

topic in question: wine from the country of Georgia (this topic is chosen in order to prevent

people from having preconceptions about the topic). (Surprisingly, 10% indicated they had prior

knowledge on this topic, so they were not used in the experiment). We measured hiow people

tagged, and how they clicked on the tags, and what region of Georgia they would select if they

wanted typical wine from Georgia. People tended to click on the larger tag (ie., the tag with the

higher association strength). (Some discussion here of whether they were just clicking on the

biggest links.)

Spreading activation theory: the activation of one chunk leads to the activation of associated

chunks. (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971). This was the subjected of a secondary piece of

knowledge. Again people were recruited via Mechanical Turk and eliminated people who had

prior knowledge of Georgian wine. The secondary association was based on wine colour

(specifically, 'white wine') and the question was, was white detected as 'typically Georgian', and

aromas associated with white and non-white wines. Again, people selected the bigger link.

So: individual and collective associations are both relevant. Navigation and learning are linear

combinations of both types of associations. And (as a consequence?) People internalize

collective knowledge - they do not use it only to select which links to click, but they seem to

acquire some knowledge about the topic.

Comment: but how is this different from just reading a text? And what is the role of agency?

Response: I don't think it is completely different - when you read an article, I understand some, I

don't understand some, I try to use it - I would lable this a collaborative process. The 'collective'

aspect of social tagging basically comes from what the technology does.

A socio-cognitive approach for studying and supporting

interaction in the social web

Tobias Ley

We want to talk about how we can make massive social network data work for us. The focus

here will be a tagging system, and in particular a system for recommending tags.

We need a good understanding of the cognitive mechanisms involved in producing and

consuming the data, and you need system affordances that facilitate its use. These affordances

describe the coupling points between humans and machines. They have typically been studied at

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the individual level (eg., the door handle) - it's a concept that sits between these things., ie., you

have a door handle, but then you have a cognitive representation of it.

Affordances are socially constructed and can be created by aggregating social signals (eg.,

cowpaths). Similarly, in social systems, affordances can be the result of aggregated behaviour.

We want also to talk about what we can do to make these systems work better, eg., via

recommendation systems.

This whole system can be viewed as a distributed cognitive system, an ecosystem of humans and

artificial agents, where affordances co-evolve in the system. Cf. work on imitation in social

tagging (eg., I see some tags, I decide to use them for myself - this is how some tags get popular

and others don't get popular). Also - what is the role of memory in producing social tags - how

are tags represented and processed in memory?

So, from the perspective of models of imitation, how does consensus emerge? A typical imitation

mechanism is preferential attachment - you just copy a tag that has been used by someone else.

Another mechanism is semantic imitation - you gdon't copy the word directly, but the tag creates

a certain representational context in your mind, and you use these other concepts (eg., a tag

'book' leads you to use a tag like 'read').

A model for studying this is 'fuzzy trace theory' - you can be in different recall states when you

have learned something. Sometimes you forget the words, eg. of a song, but you can remember

the meaning. This can inform tag-based search - sometimes you learn the tag, sometimes you

learn the gist (this is called the gist-trace). See Brainerd, et.al. 2010.

So - the experimental study: what role do verbatim and semantic processes play when imitating

tags? And can these processes be disassociated using practically significant variables? The

experiment uses the RTTT-Procedure (basically a way for people to tag the same photo several

times).

Here's the model then, to dissociate verbatim and semantic imitation: if you learn the tag, you

have 'direct access' to it, and you imitate it. Or you maay have no direct access, then you may

either reconstruct the tag, possibly even the original tag, or another semantically relevant

imitation; or finally, you may have no recall, in which case you are guessing. The model fits the

data very well.

The results? The rate of semantic imitation was relatively constant at about 13%; verbatim

imitation varied quite a bit (8% - 20%). Influencing factors included semantic layout of the tags,

size of the tags, and connectivity of the tags.

A technology recommender system was developed based on the principles of this model. It

basically figures out the sorts of tags you would use, so it can recommend them to you. It is

based on a connectionist network with a hidden layer, where resources are encoded in terms of

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topics or categories (eg., Wikipedia page categories). The recommended learnss for each person

all the tag assocciations they have done in the past, and then tries to match this pattern to all the

different examples.

Can this algorithm guess which tags people will use? The algorithm, was superior to semantic

categories extracted from existing tags, and approaches where you just choose the most popular

tags, or a spreading-activation model. But we don't know the answer to the question yet - it

would be interesting to apply to a real system. So, eg., a 'tagging in the real world' project: eg.,

tagging real-world objects in construction, health care - some examples of people tagging

machines (with warnings, instructions, etc). Another project - 'My learning episode' - a

sensemaking interface. http://developer.learning-layers.eu/tools/bits-and-pieces/RunningDemo

Future work includes the study of tagging processes - is it an automatic process, done out of

habit, or is it a deliberate process, where you look at other tags and decide whether to resuse

them or not. Also, how strong is the affordance character of social recommendations? And what

is the influence of the physical environment.

Network analysis of mass collaboration in wikipedia and

wikiversity

Iassel Halatchliyski

We're looking at long-term self-organizing processed based on stygmatic methods of

coordination, where these knowledge artifacts have a network structure.

What is important from the theoretical background is the focus on the link between individual

and collective knowledge. (Reference to a bunch of theories by title - complex systems, socio-

cultural construction, situated learning, etc).

The approach is to use network analysis technics, metrics and algorithms, and apply them to

networks of knowledge artifacts. Three studies.

Study 1: based on the assumption that the internal logic of knowledge is reflected in the network

structure of the artifacts. This leads to the exploration of the potential for modeling collaborative

knowledge through its networks structure. It was a cross-sectional analysis of hyperlinked

articles in Wikipedia. It asked the question, "what is the editing experience of authors who

contributed to pivotal articles?"

So, eg., we have a network of two combined domains - education and psychology - with about

8,000 articles and 2,000 articles. We look at boundary-spanning articles using a 'betweeness'

measure of centrality, as well as the articles that are 'central' in each of the two domains. The

experience of the authors from working on different articles in Wikipedia is related to how

pivotal the articles are that they work on 0 in the long run, experienced articles create pivotal

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articles. The explanation is that in the long run, experienced authors will write pivotal articles

that set the stage for new knowledge.

Study 2. How is the development of new knowledge related to the articles with a pivotal network

position? The background here is based around preferential attachment (Barabasi and Albert,

1999) and the idea of a world of ideas with their own lifecycle. This study followed the same

network as it developed in Wikipedia over 7 years. 'New knowledge' in Wikipedia may be new

articles or edits to existing articles.

Study 3. How do we identify pivotal contributions and moments in a discourse process?

Discourse happens continuously over time and builds on previous contributions. This study used

a scientometric method for quantitative studies of scientific work, which is used to identify the

main network flows in a scientific literature connected by citations. (Some diagrams shown

illustrating the 'flow of ideas' through a research community).

Is there a peer effect in knowledge generation in productive

online communities? The case of German Wikipedia

Olga Slivko

From an economic perspective, we look at interactions between individuals sharing existing

resources to produce a common socially valuable output. What processes drive contributions to

online communities? There's pure altruism, there's social image, there's reciprocity to peers, etc.

So the question is, is there any social reciprocity / social interaction in contributions to

Wikipedia.

In Wikipedia there are differences from other social networks. There is need for coordination on

a single page. There are no explicit friendship structures on Wikipedia. Individuals do not get a

high 'reputation' on Wikipedia (so there are not potential monetary gains). So, do the 'peers'

activity affect knowledge generation?

In previous research on peer interaction, we find strong input by peers on group behaviour (eg.,

health-related attributes such as smoking, GPA and choice of major). And social ties matter for

engagement into open source software development projects, online music, and video gaming

networks.

Measurement: the utility of an individual contribution to Wikipedia.

Network of editors: Editors are connected if they made a revision on a page within a 4-week

span (these links can expire as well). We can construct networks of editors out of these

connections (long 'standard' formula used to describe this).

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Where do we go from here? Teaching, mentoring, and learning

in the games and crowdsourcing era

Ben Shapiro

The point of philosophy is to change things (Marx)and maybe we should be looking at what we

want mass collaboration (or cooperation?) to change things to.

We've heard of Wikipedia as a community of practice - but what does that mean? Reference to

Lave and Wenger and legitimate peripheral participation. Bryant, Forte and Buckman 2005 - role

and goal changes from being on the outside to gradually becoming a core member.

So, videogames: Minecraft. It's very popular, but it's also very unstructured. A lot of people just

use it to build things. Another game: Civ V - you create civilizations, multiple ways to be

victorious. People create multiple causal maps of how to be successful in a game.

Most of what's happening in a game community happens outside the game - people collaborate

in ways the game environment doesn't allow you to. They create content collaboratively. World

of Warcraft is another very popular game - with WoW you can't get very far in the game without

working with other people. You have to apprentice with more serious players to get ahead.

It has also been explored how players plaaying warcraft are engaging in scientific practices and

discourses, Eg. Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2007, 2008 - use of data and experiments in game play.

But the hitch is they are engaging in these practices in make-believe worlds.

As designers we can do better, online environments that are as engaging as actual games, but

embedded in real science.

There are some light-weight crowdsourcing games designed by scientists to collect data.

Crowdsourcing: was of a group of people work together to solve a problem posed by an

interrogator. Eg. Galaxy Zoo - players go to the site, they see a pictureof a galaxy, and they are

asked to lable the picture - is it a spiral? Is it clockwise?

But this is an inauthentic scientific process - scientists themselves do not feel this work is worth

doing as part of science (but they like getting other people to do it). Also, the players must be

strictly independent - they cannot interact, because you don't want to taint the data.

Another game, Foldit. You create protein structures. You can work as teams. Questions: is this a

collaboration (with scientists)? Is this a learning enviornment? Popovic (creator of Foldit) says

they do learn, but the players gthemselves have no idea what the 'blue and orange thingies' do.

Learning is not the point. These are labour systems, commoditizing the work that the machines

cannot yet do. But they don't help you learn, and they're not collaborative systems.

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So, there's the Maker Movement. It's this convergence of DIY with open source software and

electronics. We have to study this as a distributed activity system, the people have different

goals. There's an outreach to bring people in - eg. Make Magazine, Maker Faire, etc. Also, online

communities and sites. It happens in communities, and also purpose-built places (eg. Island

Asylum) - you pay a fee to access eg. tools and such.

Right now it's the early phase where there's a lot of excitement and little study (this would be a

good place to start studying).

So - what could the future of this thing look like. Eg., participatory discovery networks. We see

pieces of this in things like citizen science projects - they look at distributions of bugs or count

birds in trees. Or after Fukushima, when people built real-time radition monitoring.

So - a hypothetical example - how you might revolutionize medical imaging in developing

nations. They need better diagnostic information - they have nobody to read the images. So, how

do you enable people to build the hardware, how do you enable them to share it, and how do you

have people around the world contribute.

We've been using a tool we developed called 'Blockey Talky' - build software by assembling

blocks.

The online tools - eg. a Facebook plugin where you can access a CT scan where people could

look at it, argue about what the image is, etc.

Imagine how the public could work together to improve public health? Could we get people

working to make things and at the same time develop enough education to make devices that are

useful? Could we build communities around this - people doing first-pass analyses of things,

which can be passed to people with more experience.

Creating participatory discovery networks that address real problems is something we can

explore.

Language Technology for Mass Collaboration in Education

DIPF Frankfurt - UKP Lab

Iryna Gurevych

The motivation for natural language processing in mass collaboration: these is evidence that

learned information in collaborative learning is retained longer. There are instances of computer-

supported collaborative learning, eg., discussion boards and wikis, computer-supported

argumentation, and community-driven question answering.

These new forms of collaborative learning bring some challenges along with them. They result in

massive amounts of unstructured textual content - people expresisng their opinions, eg., and for

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humans it is impossible to process all of this content. Especially for learners, it is difficult to

process, and difficult to assess for quality.

The current issues can be summarized as:

- knowledge is scattered across multiple documents /locations

- difficulty having an overview

- abundance on non-relevant or low-quality content

- platforms for collaboration do not provide intelligent tools supporting users in their information

needs

(The specific issue is that learners because they are learners do not have the background

knowledge)

Natural language processing is a key technology to address these issues - it enables users to find,

extract, analyze, and utilize the information from textual data.

For example, one of the things that can be analyzed are 'edit-turn-pairs' - edits are fine-grained

local modifications from a pair of adjacent revisions to a page, and include deletion, insertion,

modification, or relocation (a more detailed taxonomy was created). Turns are single utterances

in the associated discussion pages, and again can be given metadata.

We asked: what kind of correspondence can be identified between edits and turns? What are the

distinguishing properties of corresponding edits and turns that can be used to show they are

correlated. How much knowledge in the article was actually created in the discourse on the

discussion page?

(Example of an edit-turn pair)

Ferschke et al (2012) propose explicit performative turns: 1. turn as explicit suggestion, 2. turn as

explicit reference, 3. turn as explicit commitment to edit in the future, 4. report of performed

action. Other turns not part of this set are defined to be 'non-corresponding'. To find

corresponding turns, Mechanical Turk was used to select corresponding turns. From 750

randomly selected turns, 128 corresponding turns were found.

Language processing processes were then used to analyze the turns. We find we can detect the

non-correlated turns with a rate of 0.9 and correlated turns with a rate of 0.6.

Ivan Habernal (continuation of the same talk)

Argumentation mining is a rich and growing field. It includes stances and reasons and how

argumentation is put forward and phenomena typical of argumentative discourse, eg., fallacies.

Our research looked at controversial topics within the educational domain, mostly two-sided

debated (eg., home-schooling, mainstreaming). The purpose was to enable people to support

their personal decision and to give reasons for these decisions.

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(Diagram of the whole things) - identification of topic, discovery of relevant posts, extraction of

argumentative data, annotated argumentation.

So - we needed to create a corpus with which to feed our machine-learning algorithms - fror

example, to identify persuasive on-topic documents (as most documents are not one or the other).

This was a binary decision over 990 documents (comments to articles, forrums, posts), which

obtained pretty good agreement (0.60).

Next, we are going deeper into the structure of argumentation in the documents. There are

different schools to describe arguments from different perspectives. It was inspired by a model

proposed by Toulmin (1858) which uses five concepts in logos dimensions: claim, grounds,

backing, rebuttal, and refutation. There's also the pathos dimension, and appear to emotions. We

wanted to find the corresponding text and associate them with the labels.

Challenges:

- the main message is ofteen not stated

- granularity of the concepts

- the very general challenge of analyzing argumentation that the users are not even aware of

using

Results from this study, of 350 documents (sampled from the first phase) with 90K tokens, and

found agreement for claims and grounds, less for others; for longer posts (eg. blog posts) we

could not find agreement even for claims, grounds. The longer texts heavily rely on narratives,

cite research articles, etc., and can hardly be captured by Toulmin's model.

Later this year: complex community-based question answering. Factoid questions can easily

answered by computer, but the 'why' questions are much more difficult. We would like to solve it

by combining user ratings, model answers, etc.

Conclusions: these are three examples of NLP technologies that can be used in mass

collaboration in education. These could be used to summarize arguments, and help students form

their own arguments.

Question on 'indicator words' (or 'discourse markers') - they play a role, especially in well-

written text. But in the social media discourse, these discourse markers were misused or missing.

Tool used: test classification framework (all open source tools).

Understanding and Bridging the Wikipedia Language Gap

Darren Gergle

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There is an extensive literature on Wikipedia, everything from collaboration to participation to

embedded bias to the uses of Wikipedia data structures by AI and natural language processing

application.

So, in different places people speak different languages, but the presumption is people are

reporting on the same things, and have the same sort of coverage biases. But as we consider the

gloabl nature of information we need to think about equitable information access, retaining

diverse perspectives, and algorithmic biases and the role they play in information structure,

representation, and consumption. A part of this talk is to look at tools that address this.

Gerhard Fisher presented a nice picture of how things are - this presentation is more about how

things should be.

To what extent is there content diversity among Wikipedia language editions? I thought this

would be a simple question - five years ago. There are two aspects here in the implicit

assumption that every language describes the same sorts of things, and so there is a global

consensus among the concepts. But there is diversity at the concept and sub-concept levels.

We have concept diversity - that is, the set of titles of articles.

We have sub-concept diversity - that is, the set of topics within a given article.

First of all, the methodology, matching pages to concepts. So we want (eg.) to find a core

concept ('chocolate') and then match the pages in different languages to this topic. There are

'language links' on the Wikipedia pages that will take you to the other language for the same

page. We take a hyperlingual approach, which gives us a cluster of pages (sometimes even if the

link between two language editions is missing).

The 'conceptual drift' problem also occurs - the boundaries of conceptions changes across

language. So, eg., we have a page in English on 'river', which links to a German page, which

links back to 'canal', which links to a French page, which links back to 'canyon'. So the algorithm

has parameters to tune the tightness of concepts - it first limits the number of edges from a given

language, and second, has a minimum number of languages to allow an edge to remain.

So after examining the concepts we discovered that the archetypical concept looks nothing like

'chocolate'. They look more like a region or place or person (explore this?) We also find that the

bulk of concepts are single-language concepts, with only a small number of concepts common to

even three languages.

So - why? Maybe it's just that English, being the largest, is a superset. And everything else is just

growing into it. But when we do pairwise comparisons this doesn't bear out - comparing English

to German, for example, we find 40 percent of the concepts unique to each language.

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So - analyzing the concepts - we can (Adafre and de Rijke, 2006) use the links on the page to

create a conceptual representation of the page. Now we can compare these between languages.

So we look at which links they have in common, which defines an 'overlap coefficient'. The

mean OC is 0.41 - that is, about 59 percent of the links in the shorter articles (in one language)

don't appear in the larger articles (in another language).

So, what accounts for this diversity?

We look at the concept of self-focus - the degree to which language-based cultures centre their

descriptions around objects and entities of regional importance. So we used geo-tags to examine

this, drawing out articles with a spacial location. We use a technique called 'spatial indegree

sums' - so, for example, we take an area like 'Poland', find the entities within that region, and

then find all the articles that link to those original entities. So we can give a particular weight to a

given geographic area. This allows us to compare an indegree sum for different languages for a

given geographic area, which allows us to measure self-focus.

So - the global consensus hypothesis would suppose that each region has relatively equal

indegree sums for each region, while the diversity hypothesis would predict that the polish-

language Wikipedia would favour Poland. The actual results show regional diversity - people

regionalize the information around them. The English Wikipedia focuses on the US and Britain,

the Russian Wikipedia on Russia, etc.

So: self-focus is a systemic bias in Wikipedia. People orient the knowledge and language around

themselves. This diversity is a serious concern for semantically based AI and NLP applications.

On the converse side: we could create applications that take advantage of this diversity. We built

a system called Omnipedia that provides access to 85M+ concepts in 25 languages. Pick a

concept - it displays the number of related links for each of the languages, as nodes: you click on

the node, and we use a representative snippet, translated through Google translate, to give the

gist of the article. As you continue, you can find concepts that are listed in many languages - but

you can still see how the same concept might be described differently.

We've done some evaluations on the system...

Some tools we've developed for researchers: an API, WikAPIdia and WikiBrain (get access from

GitHub). These are tools that download and organize Wikipedia datasets. You can do eg.

relatedness metrics (eg., how related 'engine' and 'car' are in different languages).

Some comments & questions - there are huge difference in the practices around different

language editions - first-mover advantages, management of articles, etc.

What we were doing (in part) was a pushback against a lot of data scientists and AI researchers

who use the English version of Wikipedia as a baseline. The degree and extent to which there is

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unique content across languages is shocking - only 1 percent conceptual overlap over 25

languages.

Comment - if there are diverse concepts, then the philosophy of a 'neutral point of view' is

contrary to fact. They (Wikipedians) believe there is a world-wide 'neutral point of view'.

Mass-Collaboration as a basis for procedures for e-

participation

Thomas Herrman

How can several people be supported to contribute to the solving of problems in the social

context? In this situation, how is creativity encouraged? How can democratic principles be taken

into account? How large a group can this support?

The concepts of social and collaborative creativity partially overlap; so do the concepts of mass

collaboration, e-participation, and social/cultural creativity (but there is 0 overlap in Google

Scholar for all three).

In Germany, there are laws supporting co-determination that determines the degree of co-

management and employee contribution (mitbestimmung). There are special teams called

Betriebrat that manage this. So eg. there are discussions concerning working conditions, layoff,

which ultimately allow for co-determination among people.

There is a range of increasing degrees of participation, from informing people and observing

people to interaction to co-management of outcomes. These have technical equivalents ranging

from linear MOOCs to big data to brainstorming through to discussion forums, open source and

discussion and e-voting.

So now: the case of the German Citizen dialogue on demographic trends. The goal was to

propose improvements to society. It took place in cities, with 80 people each. Three major

themes:

- how will we live together

- life-long learning

- the influence of this on work environments

There people sitting at individual tables (10 tables of 8?) which would address one of these

questions for th full day, and report back. There were two phases: first, the comment on the

current situation, and second, proposals for improvements.

Afterword, representatives from the cities were called to meet in Berlin, and a final report was

produced.

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Facilitation: we had at every table a facilitator and a taker of minutes. Participants didn't see the

notes being taken; from time to time a summary was read to the participants. Results were not

visualized; the goals were not visible. Facilitators tried - with limited success - to encourage less

active participants.

Role of the experts: experts were invited to give an opinion, but then citizens complained that

they did not want to be the victim of expert participation, so in the next round the experts stayed

in the background and waited for the citizens to ask for help, which never happened. Experts

were not asked to support the finding or proposals or to clarify whether an idea had been tested

elsewhere. There was a strong focus on practical regional knowledge, but this was not compared

at the global level of what has already been done. A lot of singular experiences were discussed

but there was little attempt to discuss at a systemic level.

Overall, there was a low level of interaction between the tables - sometimes highlights were

presented (by the opinion leaders) and participants had no input in the production of the final

report. The experts made additional contributions which were included without any critical

discussion.

Lessons learned: people who are highly interested and willing to be engaged are not necessarily

well-prepared to contribute novel ideas. The process of converging a huge number of

contributions and exploit potential for synergy is difficult. And the influence people have on real

political decisions was unclear - was it really about mass collaboration, or merely mass

contributions.

So the questions are: how can people be encouraged to relate their ideas to each other? Eg. to

escape the hidden profile trap - people take out of the whole set of mass contributions those parts

which sound familiar to them. The group does not base its decisions on the information because

it's not really shared. It's difficult for people to relate to what others have said.

Also, how can participants be motivated to take existing knowledge or expertise into account?

How can the dominator-follower relation be transformed into a symmetrical relation?

And how can research on small group creativity support be transformed to the level of large

numbers of participants? How can the transition from mass contributing to mass collaboration be

defined?

Which facilitation studies are sufficient - visualization, prompting, etc.?

Why do people take part in mass collaboration? Many of them just like it - it's not because they

believe they will create change, it's just because they like the experience of participation.

There is a need for scaffolding and prompting, to support directly referencing to others'

experiences - alternating between contributing and comparison of contributions, detecting the

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most interesting similarities and contrasts, to create something 'new'. Needed, the activation of

more passive people.

We look for socio-technical approaches to maintain the awareness of existing information -

maybe we need several facilitators, to represent different positions or interest groups (eg. if you

have a conservative facilitator, he or she will filter out more progressive contributions). The

political directions of the attendees should be mirrored at the facilitator level.

In general, we may have:

- type A1 - not appropriate to be carried out in small groups

- type A2 - not appropriate to be carried out via mass collaboration

and

- type B1 - more efficient when carried out in small groups,

- type B2 - more efficient when carried out vie mass collaborations

How can sociotechnical solutions support a shift from A to B? Example, production-blocking

and fear of evaluation in small groups can be avoided by organizational and technical measures,

eg., anonymous comments submitted electronically.

Claim: facilitation is needed!? Question: can facilitation develop spontaneously? The whole

facilitation business is developed on the basis of the ineffectiveness and inability of small

groups.

What is facilitation? 'any activity that makes tasks for others easy'.

A procedure is proposed:

- preparing participants (mess finding, data finding, etc) - often we get brainstorming, etc.,

without this phase of preparation

- making contributions - online we typically think of written contributions, maybe there's a way

to do oral contributions (it's easier for a lot of people) - at the same time taking new content into

account

- observe the process of merging

So we need to shift facilitation work to support mass participation.

- from one facilitator, to several facilitators (plus a metafacilitator)

- from qualitative comparison of viewpoints, to quantitative evaluations

- from., giving every contribution equal weight, to, the main perspectives should be represented

- from simple voting mechanisms, to complex voting mechanisms

- from contributions visible to all participants, to extra support needed to make the facilitators

work visible

- from interventions and prompts being delivered to all, to them being delivered selectively

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The transition from collaboration to mass collaboration is not clear. Mechanisms arre needed to

build the most promising subsets (7 +/- 2). Collaborative facilitation is needed for prompts and

representing diverging positions.

Comments: differences between small groups and mass - eg. scientific community as an example

of mass collaboration. Journal editors as facilitators? It seems odd - the facilitators are mostly for

co-located groups. In mass collaboration, facilitation is created by means of the structures. Eg.

Wikipedia has a particular set of structures and norms, Linus does, web communities do, but they

typically don't have facilitators. (But - by contrast, go back to the field of business in the 1950s -

that was mass collaboration - why shouldn't the same improvement be possible in mass

collaboration - it is worth at least typing, to not only rely on the structures).Comment: comparing

the role of curation and facilitation. Even in the OS community, people identify needs. In this

context we have virtual ecologies of participation. The facilitator role is changing. Response:

there is less research in the area of the effects of facilitation in the context of mass collaborations.

(SD - the presumption here seems to be that people are not participating correctly - but maybe

that's backward)

Comment: people are typing to scale from small groups to masses; and on the other side, people

who study masses, less interested in impacting or steering or moving the masses. Also there is

this concept of 'liquid democracy' by means of technology. Maybe there is research on this.

Summary Discussion

Major issues:

- collaboration vs cooperation

- democracy: governance vs democracy, collaboration vs right of minorities

- how masses really operate

- can we design or influence how masses think or operate - can we make the masses more

effective? the MOOC?

- (?) tools to study mass collaboration

Discussion: concept of the 'flipped classroom' - we do our readings ahead of time - somee of us

did extended abstracts - but these create resources constraints. We see this with MOOCs - they

are not a big success, because they require additional resource commitments (on the part of

students). And similarly with aa book - it creates resource constraints.

Moving beyond the workshop? (Discussion of the idea of publication)

Tubigen, Germany

May 21-23, 2014

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New Learning

Those of you who are my age may remember something called 'new math'351. The idea was to replace fixed-value mathematics, which is characterized with an emphasis on rote learning, with

variable-value mathematics, which emphasized an understanding of equations, inequalities, and

ranges.

As Richard Feynman352 wrote in the essay "New Textbooks for the 'New Mathematics" (via Wikipedia):

"If we would like to, we can and do say, 'The answer is a whole number less than 9 and

bigger than 6,' ... In the 'new' mathematics, then, first there must be freedom of thought;

second, we do not want to teach just words; and third, subjects should not be introduced

without explaining the purpose or reason, or without giving any way in which the

material could be really used to discover something interesting."

New math was hard, and it was hard for those of us living through that transition to wrap our

minds around the ideas. But it was better, because it was more real, more practical, and

embedded in experience.

It was also hard for our parents, who were no longer able to help us with out homework. The

world had changed beyond their comprehension, and there was and is a reaction to that, an

emphatic 'back to basics' movement, which means 'back to the way we learned it', even though

there is and was mounting evidence that they were no longer prepared to meet a complex,

dynamic and changing world with the knowledge they had.

Why do I bring this up? Well there's a post out today353, YALA (Yet Another List Article), which describes "8 Ideas That Will Permanently Break Education As We Know It," by Terry

Heick in TeachThought. The author means well, and actually talks about the new learning being

difficult for our parents to understand. It's a good overview of the ways education is changing,

but it subtly misses the point item by item.

So call this a SOYALA (Son of Yet Another List Article) wherein I explain, point by point, how

New Learning is different from the way our parents did it (indented quotes are from the original

Heick article).

351 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math

352 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

353 http://www.teachthought.com/trends/disrupting-education-8-ideas-will-break/

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New Knowledge

"Connectivity is replacing knowledge," writes Heick. "Or rather usurping it in terms of sheer

credibility. Businesses, education institutes, groups, organizations, people—everyone wants

visibility and access. These occur through connectivity."

This of course is the core idea of connectivism, or what I have in the past called 'naive

connectivism', which is the idea that our need to remember things is being replaced by our need

to find things on the internet.

But what is more fundamental is the change to our understanding of knowledge itself. We are

shifting from knowledge as remembering to knowledge as recognizing. The difference is that we

understand knowing, not as an accumulation of facts, but rather, as a development of the self, of

the creation of a 'mental muscle', which is in essence a set of reactions and instincts.

Sometimes, new knowledge looks like remembering, especially then the knowledge being

applied is simple and straightforward. Sometimes it looks like a performance or skill, as when

we perform a complex and adaptive task. Somethings it looks like mastery of the tools, as when

we know exactly what and where to look up the information we need.

New Students

"Student are clients," writes Heick. "There are new options for learning, and the most innovative

don’t have the word 'school' in them. Charter schools and eLearning have been about as brazen

as education can bring itself to be."

Not quite. Although it is tempting to describe learning and students in the new language of

business, it's inaccurate, because the new language of business is old thinking. Business itself if

changing. The concept of the 'customer' is being undermined.

Instead, it is more accurate to say students are prosumers. They both produce and consume their

own education. They access experts and learning resources directly, and organize these

themselves. They form their own communities, work at their own pace, and share extensively

with each other.

And students are learning informally. What this means is that they are not learning to acquire a

body of knowledge leading to a credential, but rather, they are learning on an as-needed basis in

order to address some immediate problem or objective that lets them complete some task or

project.

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New Software

"Adaptive software can replace 75% of what a teacher does," writes Heick. "No, apps can’t

replace teachers, but in terms of the way teachers spend their time, adaptive software—whether

minor (like Knowji) or major (like Knewton) in scale—can automate the bulk of these tasks."

Again, this misses the point in an interesting way. First, software isn't simply replacing what a

teacher does - it's not just delivering content and marking tests and recording grades (though of

course it can do all of that). But more, second,new software isn't simply adaptive. Software

becomes intelligent the way students become intelligent, by associating data, recognizing

patterns, and making inferences.

The concept of software as a list of instructions that computers simply follow is gradually being

replaced. Yes, at a basic level, computers must be told what to do (just as, at a basic level, human

brains follow the laws of chemistry and physics). But the organization of software allows it to

develop an artificial intelligence.

This intelligence, rather than a more basic set of instructions, is what enables software to respond

to learning needs. Adaptive software, traditionally construed, measures performance on tests and

assigns new learning materials according to predefined outcomes. Intelligent software identifies

patterns and regularities in the world as a whole, extracts outcomes, and associates these with

learning materials, activities and resources that might not have existed when the software was

written.

New Media

"YouTube is way, way more engaging than reading and writing," says Heick. YouTube is

packaged for consumption. It’s visual, social, diverse, mobile, and 'chunked' in ways that

promote (often reckless) consumption. Always-on learning must compete with this—which

means reading and writing must compete with this as well."

Not quite. Video becomes one of many media that are being used simultaneously. New media is

interactive multimedia offered through multiple screens and multiple channels, all at once. Try to

imagine new media as stereo (and even quad) emerging in a world that has always been mono.

The phenomenon of the 'second screen' is already well-known and measured. Today people may

be using a television or video feed at the same time they are using a mobile device, perhaps even

while attending a live event (this is exactly what I was doing yesterday).

This isn't quite the 'multitasking' that was envisioned by Tapscott and others; our attention can

and does shift from one to the other. But there's an element of multitasking - we are processing

information from multiple channels and communicating our reactions in various ways.

p.317

New Writing

"Reading and writing should be social," says Heick. This doesn’t mean they always have to be

social, but they need that potential built-in from the ground up."

It's not simply that they are social. New writing often isn't even writing any more. New writing

might be the creation of a lip-sync video in an empty airport, a droll LOLcat, a cartoon or

animated gig, or any of a wide variety of media.

Being social is just a part of it. New writing is expressive in a way that old writing was not.

Writers don't follow the rules the way their parents did. They make the rules.

Old writing followed rules and formulae, from the standard 'five paragraph essay' to form letters

to the traditional academic publication. Rules of grammar were strict, and a common and limited

vocabulary was understood by all.

New writing is purpose-built. It doesn't follow rules but does employ conventions, memes, or

archetypes - any sort of pattern or regularity. These communicative tropes are no longer

universal or culture-wide, but are often focused to the needs, perspectives and understandings or

a particular community.

New Internet

Heick writes, "The disruption of mobile technology will be complete... Companies like

Microsoft, Apple, Google, Honda, Amazon, and well just about every other forward thinking

company on earth are scrambling to adjust for a mobile culture that is cloud-based and social."

It's more than that - mobile technology is just one aspect. New technology is ubiquitous and

connected. The reason mobile devices work at all is that they are carried in a technology-rich

environment.

The new internet is not just the mobile internet, not just the internet of things, but rather, rather is

being called the 'internet of everything' (IOE) that connects objects and sensors.

The effect of this is that knowledge, information and learning resources are all available 'on

demand', in much the same way we find water or electricity in our environments today. It will be

in products and devices, local and specific, and available from the air itself.

This changes the nature of these resources. People learn by doing in authentic environments, and

learning support changes as the person demonstrates greater skills and more adept responses. It is

also context-aware - sensitive to and responsive to the needs of the situation.

p.318

New Parents

"Parents don’t understand teaching and learning," writes Heick. "Parents speak in the language

of terms and compliance because that’s how we speak to them." But also, "Parents are the

sleeping giants in education. Think of them as students with 25 years of life experience added

on."

Indeed, parents should now be thought of as co-learners. They can't simply transfer their

knowledge and wisdom to their children, and even if they could, much of that knowledge

wisdom is outdated, wrong, and sometimes dangerous.

The way parents will teach their children in the future will not be through telling, but through

example. The things they learn - new economy, new operating system, new work, new social

order - will be learned at the same time their children learn them, but they will model and

demonstrate how to adapt to this new world.

This extends beyond learning itself. We are entering an era where meaning, value and success

are being defined differently. Parents have to adapt - today, it isn't about earning more money

than your parents did, nor about having more stuff, but rather, in having good experiences,

supporting community, and being environmentally responsible.

It was perhaps always thus, because children have always learned more through example than

through dictation. But in the future, parents will be increasingly aware that they the way they

teach is the way the walk.

New Universities

Finally, Heick writes that "Universities are decaying. At least in their current form.... They

simply cannot survive as they now exist—an awkward kind of hybrid of career prep and

highbrow intellectualism."

There is this tendency to suggest that the number of universities will dwindle to a very few. But

in fact, universities, if viewed as institutions of higher learning, will proliferate. They will be

accessible and available, and number in the hundreds of thousands, not in the dozens.

What will change is that universities will no longer be bastions of privilege and elitism. That

responsibility (as it were) will be taken up by a new kind of institution - and the elite universities

are struggling to find out what that will be.

The learning offered by universities has always been incidental. Their primary purpose has been

to create the sort of social markers, institutions and networks that would serve the next

generation ruling class. They would be able to recognize each other in the future by distinctive

knowledge, distinctive behaviours and mannerisms, even distinctive language and accents.

p.319

Now mutual support networks belong to everyone, and different communities can form their own

sets of knowledge, values, languages and accents. No one community will rule (though there will

be a concerted effort by existing elites, and their institutions, to preserve the status quo).

It's not just learning that helps people advance. It's the entire social network of social support,

expectations and values. That's why today's learning outcomes are predicted by socio-economic

standing (SES). As the trappings of privilege, widely construed, accrue to the rest of us, the

social balance will with any luck be restored, and the people will prosper.

Moncton, Canada

June 11, 2014

p.320

The Achievement Gap

Response to Annie Murphy Paul, whose newsletter appeared in my email today, on her

article, Technology Is Making Achievement Gaps Bigger354 .

In your email you state "I'd love to get your feedback!" so I'll take that to heart.

My first impression was of the level of writing. Phrases like "making reference" (instead of

'referring') and "more vocabulary words" (instead of 'larger vocabulary') suggest a lack of writing

experience.

There is also a naive air of 'research reveals' this or that (the phrase "Research is finding..." is

actually used) when it does no such thing. People perform research, and of results are ever

'revealed' (which they are usually not) they are revealed by people.

Finally, why would you suppose that a few research studies of students in the United States can

be generalized to anything? And what is the basis for suggesting that the *computers* increase

the digital divide? The cause of (what you call) the Matthew effect is clearly the lack of social

support (you refer to 'parents' but there's no reason to suppose that genetic relation is necessary

here). So why transfer this problem to a discussion about computers?

So I think you're reading your sources uncritically. The sceptic in me wonders whether that is

what you are being paid to do, if you are being paid at all - there is a substantial lobby seeking to

limit and reduce the provision of social supports (including computers) to poor people. Or

perhaps you simply haven't read sufficiently widely, as is suggested by the level of writing.

I detect a strong strain of the line of thought advanced by people like Daniel Willingham in your

writing - we see this in the references to "background knowledge", for example. I don't think the

Willingham position is well-supported in the field, and I think a lot of the supporting

argumentative infrastructure, such as cognitive load theory, is methodologically unsound. You

might disagree with me on this - and that's fine - but it makes presenting the research as you do

here, as establishing some sort of fact of the matter - as misrepresentation and even a bit

pernicious.

It bothers me because I see this same argument being advanced without any real consideration of

its weaknesses from a variety of sources - this one http://www.americasquarterly.org/warschauer

for example, from "America's Quarterly", even uses the same "social envelop" phrasing.

354 http://anniemurphypaul.com/2014/06/educational-technology-isnt-closing-achievement-gaps-its-making-

them-grow/#

p.321

(As an aside, numerous researchers - not "one researcher", as you say - use the phrase "social

envelop". But real researchers are careful to say "there is no one appropriate social envelop for

educational computing." (Giacquinta, Bauer, Levin, 'Beyond Technology's Promise', 1993, p.

163)

Finally, it concerns me that the solution seems to be to divert resources away from people who

need them. A lot of research has suggested that socio-economic background is the primary

predictor of educational outcome. It's easy to say that we should simply focus on "training

teachers, librarians, parents and children themselves to use computers effectively." But if the

'Matthew effect' is as you describe, then these too would increase the divide, because the well-off

people can make better use of these services than poor people.

My own thinking is that the actual cause of the socio-economic divide in education is socio-

economic disparity. We live in a world in which most social and institutional structures are

designed in such a way as to disproportionately help those who already have an advantage.

Proposals for structural reforms we need to address these inequalities are opaqued by distracting

nonsense telling us things like "computers don't solve the educational divide all by themselves."

Which is probably the point of such articles.

Moncton, Canada

June 25, 2014

p.322

The Facebook Research

The Facebook experiments are actually very clever.

The content stream is the presentation of everyone else's material to an individual user. So, in my

content stream, I get stuff from Rod, stuff from my family, stuff from Moncton Free Press, stuff

from the City, etc., including some sponsored or promoted content from magazines and

advertisers.

Facebook has been tinkering with this content stream since day one. You can't show everything,

because there's generally too much. So you show the most 'relevant' links (on some content

streams you have the option to 'see most recent' and 'see most relevant'). They are experimenting

with what counts as 'relevant'.

Facebook is an advertising company, and therefore the product it sells is the induction of beliefs

in the users. Coke, for example, want people to think that Coke is good and good for you, and

that they want a Coke now. The NRA wants you to believe that guns are harmless and that

"they're trying to take away our freedoms."

So the experiments basically measure whether the presentation of posts created by friends and

family, etc., rather than the creation and presenting of actual advertising, can produce the desired

result. Intuitively, it should. Present nothing but crime stories in the news feed and you'll end up

thinking crime is everywhere. The experiments measure whether this intuition is correct.

From the perspective of ethics, they are blending two things which are, on the face of it,

innocuous:

- they are altering stream results in an attempt to produce a 'better' stream - something every

content vendor everywhere does, and has done since the days of FTP and UseNet

- they are accessing publicly available data to analyze it for affective and cognitive properties,

something we do as well, and something that does not require permission from individual users

Does the combination of them create an ethical dilemma?

It's not clear to me that it does. Sure, it reinforces Facebook's image as a somewhat greasy

operation that will manipulate results in order to satisfy the needs of its advertisers (hence

making it no different from Dr. Oz and your local news broadcast). But that's not unethical, at

least, not in the sense that you'd take them before the courts.

The question of ethics comes into the equation when there exists some possibility of harm, and

where that harm is a predictable outcome of the experiment, and where that sort of harm would

p.323

not normally be expected. The classic case, of course, is the testing of drugs that have harmful

side-effects, where you have not disclosed the side-effects.

In the case of the manipulation of free digital content to stimulate emotional responses, and then

measuring for those responses, the presence of actual harm is a lot more difficult to show. The

mere production of emotional responses is not harm, otherwise most of what we do every day is

ethically wrong. The mere measurement of emotional responses is not harm either.

If we don't actually harm someone, then how could it be ethically unsound? Doing all this in

secret could be ethically wrong. But Facebook is not doing it in secret; it's all over the news.

There is a hard line in research ethics to the effect that any interaction with a user needs to be

declared beforehand, and conducted with the explicit consent of the user. I don't subscribe to that

line. In one sense it is impractical. There are too many interactions and too many users to require

consent in advance. In a second sense it's unnecessary. Research is not inherently evil, and

studying people to find out how they work is not wrong. And third, it can be harmful. Creating

conditions of consent alters research results; tell people their emotions are being monitored and

they change their emotions.

This is the point of disagreement:

"They formulated a research hypothesis and tested it on human subjects. For this, explicit

consent is required."

Here is a counterexample:

Engineers have theories regarding the length of left-tern lanes on the highway. To test this

hypothesis, they construct a left-turn land, and then measure ho much it underfills or overfills.

Based on this work they publish a paper. No research consent is obtained.

Should consent have been obtained? It fails the three tests. First, it is impractical. You can't have

drivers fill out a consent form befor they enter the intersection. Second, it is unnecessary. No

harm will be caused by the research. And third, requiring consent changes the outcome.

So it seems clear to me that this statement is false. The requirement for explicit consent must

depend on different conditions. I argue actual harm must be cause, that it must be practical to

obtain consent, and that obtaining consent can't change the results.

Facebook's experiments on users and Emotional Contagion (via Peter Turney)

https://gist.github.com/desilinguist/35e0a9f4abae47157104

The full paper -http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full

p.324

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10932534/Facebook-conducted-secret-

psychology-experiment-on-users-emotions.html

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-

guidelines-researchers-say

Listen to your customers, not to the HiPPO - http://videolectures.net/kdd07_kohavi_pctce/

Moncton, Canada

June 30, 2014

p.325

Beyond Free ‑ Open Learning in a

Networked World

Published as Beyond free: open learning in a networked world in Distance

Education in China, 2015:4 4-16, Aug 30, 2015.

Abstract

This paper examines the role of open learning in the development and design of the Massive

Open Online Course (MOOC). It explores faculty and institutional resistance to open resources,

arguing that institutional priorities are not supportive of student access. It suggests that these

priorities shaped the design of institutional MOOCs, resulting in MOOCs that are inconsistent

with the original intent as designed originally by the author. The role of the MOOC in

incorporating, using and sharing open educational resources is highlighted from a pedagogical

and methodological perspective.

Keywords: Learning, education, MOOC, open, institutions

What is the Problem Online Learning Seeks to Solve?

As the concept of ‘open learning’ has grown it has posed an increasing challenge to educational

institutions. First admissions were open, then educational resources were open and now whole

courses are open. Proponents moreover are demanding not only that open learning be free of

charge, but also that the resources and materials be open source – free for reuse by students and

educators for their own purposes. This formed the basis for the original design of the Massive

Open Online Course as a connected environment in which participants created and reused

resources.

In such a learning environment, the provision of education moves beyond the programmed

delivery of instructional resources and tasks. Education is no longer ‘delivered’ (for free or

otherwise) and instruction is no longer ‘designed’ in the traditional sense. Institutions are no

longer at the centre of the ecosystem; their value propositions are challenged and new roles for

professors and researchers must be found if they are to survive.

In this paper I address the concept of free, the concept of open learning, the concept of

networked learning in a networked world and the concept of the institution. It may be thought of

as a rebuttal to the way institutions are approaching Massive Open Online Courses and open

learning generally today.

Diana Laurillard challenges the concept of the Massive Open Online Course by asking, "What is

the problem that MOOCs appear to have solved?" (Laurillard, 2014) And she answers it, "The

problem MOOCs succeed in solving is to provide free university teaching for highly qualified

professionals." One might answer that's what the traditional institution is doing as well. One

p.326

might equally answer that that's what the Internet was doing 20 years ago.

What I want to examine in this talk, is not the problem MOOCs solve at the moment but the

problem MOOCs were designed to solve. I'll take a little bit of credit. I'm one of the people that

had a significant hand in designing the original concept of the Massive Open Online Course.

Diana Laurillard actually answers the question in the same talk, the same paper, in which she

proposes. The dilemma, she writes, "By 2015 there will be 53 million out of school and

UNESCO estimates that we need 1.6 million teachers to achieve universal primary

education.” (UNESCO, 2014) That's primary education. That's not secondary. That's not

tertiary, primary. I did a quick off the cuff calculation. At $50,000 or 25,000 pounds we would

need an additional 80 billion dollars in salary a year not counting buildings, equipment,

resources, et cetera, roughly 40 billion pounds.

That's a lot of money. It's not inconceivable that we could pay this amount, but the difficulty

there is there seems to be no inclination on the part of governments and institutions in the world

to actually pay this amount of money.

We have to find, says Laurillard innovative ways of teaching. I would say we have to find more

innovative ways of learning. Because the problem isn't the way we design our courses. That

might be a solution to the problem, one solution, but the problem is cost and access. Design is

only one way, and, I would submit, a limited way of looking at the problem.

What is the problem? Very simply, who gets to graduate? Paul Tough, "New York Times",

"Whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on one factor, how

much money his or her parents make." (Tough, 2014) Look around this institution and ask

whether that's the case here as well. Did it determine who got in? Does it determine who gets

out?

"It's always going to be the case," he continues, "that the kids who have need are going to have

been denied a lot of the academic preparation and opportunities for the identity formation that

the affluent kids are given. Money does not simply buy access to a better education, it buys the

background, the expectations, the culture, and the values that lead to better educational

outcomes." So simply throwing money at poor kids isn't going to solve the problem, but neither

is denying the money to make solutions to the problem possible. Money is a necessary, although

admittedly not sufficient, condition.

Let's turn the question around. What is the problem for which colleges and universities are the

answer?

Institutional Priorities: Why Universities Create MOOCs

It's not addressing issues of cost or addressing issues of access, is it? If we look at the results that

they have produced, it's exactly the opposite of that.

Let's look at why colleges and universities and other educational institutions are running

MOOCs. What are their reasons? They've been studied. One such study (Hollands & Tirthali,

p.327

2014) lists the following five reasons why institutions are building MOOCs. Check these off if

they sound familiar. Check these off if you just heard them:

 extended reach and access (to markets),

 build and maintain brand,

 reduce cost, that is the cost to the institution, and raise revenue for the institution,

 improve educational outcomes, I could talk a lot about that, and, of course,

 research and innovation in teaching and learning.

Did you see cost in there to students? See access to learning there for students?

Meanwhile, academics deny that cost is even a problem. A ridiculous set of studies recently, the

references are all there, argue that the benefits of college still outweigh the cost. The reasons for

that, if you read the article are:

 That the opportunity cost of going to college has gone down. What that means is, when

you go to college or a university you're giving up less income. Why? Because there's

been a worldwide recession and you wouldn't make as much money. That's the

argument. (Abel & Deitz, 2014)

 Financial aid programs drive college prices higher, as though they were incapable of

doing anything else. It's like when the tuition caps were raised here in the UK to 9,000

pounds and the expectation, naive though it was, was that universities would settle out on

a gradient based on relative ranking instead of all raising their fees to 9,000 pounds.

When asked to rank themselves, they generally ranked themselves at or near the top tier,

and demanded the maximum tuition fee. (American Enterprise Institute, 2014)

 And there's the argument that student debt is overstated, which is true if you, when you

read the study, look at only people who are heads of households between the ages of 25

and 40 and don't look at the people who have not been able to establish their own

household. In that case student debt is overstated, but if you actually looked at all

students, you'd get a different story. (Leonhardt, 2014)

We've been told outright that money is not the problem, the implication being that we should not

spend any money trying to fix this problem. (Lynch, 2014) That's why we're getting a lot of – a

lot of - educational reform or, as it's characterized in North American, education de form. And

they're saying what we really need is a culture change in the institution, that what we really need

is accountability – perhaps to the BMO financial group that offered this study.

p.328

Image: Bristow, 2014

But for many people, let's be realistic here, and you can walk down the street and you can see it,

for many people cost is the problem. In Canada, in North America, in general, university

participation rates are lower among aboriginals, students with disabilities, the poor. (Bristow,

2014) Big surprise. Student debt acquired not only by paying tuition but by paying that

opportunity cost that isn't as much now, has become an even bigger problem. (Eaton, Dioun,

Godoy, Goldstein, Habinek, & Osley-Thomas, 2014)

It's interesting. You look at in constant dollars higher ed cost and instructional cost, they're more

or less steady. But students are getting nailed on student loan interest. That's the light blue line.

And the private colleges are making out like bandits.

Not only are students hurt, so are their families. (Canadian Alliance of Student Associations ,

2014) This is a study from the Canadian Association of Student Associations. Parents are

borrowing more. They're going back to work. They're dipping into their retirement savings.

Those very same studies that say debt is not a problem are studies that ignore the impact on

families that are supporting students trying to go to school.

And meanwhile the benefits - remember that, those of you are maybe my age - the benefits of

digital resources, (like) open knowledge for all, never materialized. Recently we had a report in

"The Chronicle of Higher Education," 11 publishers are raising their prices all at the same

time. (Wolfman-Arent, 2014) But there's no collusion. The previous cost model for e-books

was not sustainable.

Even universities agree that that's a problem, pretty surprisingly. Journals published by non-

profit organizations, says this report, "2 to 10 times better value than those published by

commercial companies." (Sample, 2014) Of course the journals don't want you to know this.

Academia doesn't want you to know this. In one case they published the criticism only after the

editorial board threatened to resign if they did not. . (Jump, 2014) That's what happened a couple

of months ago. And then when they publish the report, they'll publish it with a big disclaimer

p.329

saying it might not be true. (Harvie, Lightfoot, Lilley, & Weir, 2014) Those are the guardians of

academic knowledge.

The Call for Alternative Resources and the

Patent/Copyright/Trademark Threat

And what we're seeing in the community today are calls to recognize alternative forms of

literature. (Hunwick, 2008, GreyNet, 2014) I'm a living

alternative form of literature. They're calling on people to

recognize research and technical reports, which I produce

a lot, evaluations, of which I produce a lot, working

papers, which is pretty much all I produce in the way of

papers, conference papers like this, which isn't even a

paper until well after it's created, multimedia content, and

the like. There's a reason for this. This stuff is a lot more

accessible, a lot more immediate than traditional

published literature.

You know, the Internet 20 years ago was providing

services only to highly educated professionals. And 20

years ago in 1994 a guy called Steven Harnad came out

with what he called "The Subversive Proposal". (Okerson

& O'Donnell, 1995; Poynder, 2014) The Subversive

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Originally the idea was to put these things up FTP servers (FTP servers are like websites but

without pictures or links or hypertext or cat… well ok, they did have cat videos). "Self-

archiving's time," wrote Harnad in a later presentation (Harnad, 2001) "has yet to come 20 years

later." That doesn't mean there hasn't been a movement. There has been a movement. There's

been a growth of a movement, the idea based on the firm belief that open access holds, at the

very least, the promise of a faster and more effective system of sharing new knowledge.

And it's a promise that resonates not simply in the halls of universities like this, but in places

where people are impacted by constant access, in the developing world, in the First Nation's

communities, among the poor. (Poynder, Open Access in India: Q&A with Subbiah

Arunachalam, 2014)

Now it's no coincidence that the worldwide web was created 20 year ago as well. The first

accredited school, according to Phil Hill, to offer a course of the WWW, which is what it was

called then, was the Open University in a pilot virtual summer school. (Eisenstadt, 1994; Hill,

p.330

2014) My own first online learning resource was called "Stephen's Guide to the Logical

Fallacies," and I'm a relative newbie because it was published online as a website early in 1995.

I'm a neophyte. And our first institutionally based online course, "Introduction to Instruction" at

Assiniboine Community College was offered in 1996.

But you know we're still waiting for the benefits of web-based courses as well - this whole

openness thing, this whole access thing. I once did a survey specifically for digital rights

management technologies for learning resources. I did a survey of how long it would take me to

read all of the patents. Since I was developing my own system, I thought it would be a good idea.

It would take me more than a lifetime to read them all.

The history of online learning is the history of a plethora of patents. (Watters, 2014) This (figure

1) is a patent for setting up a regional network in the southwestern United States. That's Nevada,

Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. It’s nothing more than a map, however, it now

becomes part of a patent. Calling it a patent thicket is more than a slight understatement. And it's

not just patents that are the problem it's copyright, trademarks, even trade secrets.

Here's one that came out a few weeks ago - I've actually got the screen capture - trademark for

pi. (Poulsen, 2014) Yes, pi, the pi that you're all familiar with, 3.141 whatever (figure 2).

This is not simply an isolated instance. It's the norm. It's a phenomenon that took place in the

industrial revolution. It's a phenomenon taking place in the information revolution. It's a

phenomenon of enclosure. You would think we learned from the last time, but we didn't. And it

threatens the commons, the common heritage, common knowledge, common culture that we all

thought that we own.

People say that I'm scare-mongering, that these fears won't really come true. Even the defenders

of open content say, "Oh, you're way over. Show us one example." Well, here's one example: A

study of 50 titles, this was from New Zealand literature prior to

1890 or something like that that have been digitized. Only three

were hosted by repositories that do not restrict any type of

subsequent use. (Clark & Chawner, 2014) These are contents

that are public domain. The copyright has long since expired, but

you cannot access them except through a system that imposes

limitations to your use. And it's getting worse.

Figure 2- Patent for Pi

p.331

Content companies now are building web browsers. (Baker, 2014) This (figure 3) is a promo for

the new Amazon web browser. One click and you can be watching the best in paid TV. I love the

way it's represented. "Watch for zero dollars with Prime." (Searchy, 2013) You're supposed to

think it's free, but the only reason there's a price there is because in the future episode one will

with one click costs you $2.99 or you can buy the season for $29.99 or maybe you can buy an

open access, public domain work for who knows how much.

Content providers, and this is manifestly clear and well known, do not want people to have free

and open access. (Newman & Levy, 2104) Newspapers are a good example. People got used to

having their news for free on the Internet, but they've been trying desperately to stop that. There's

almost a sense in which they have no sense of community as they do this.

You might think that's an extreme case. It wasn't so long ago, a month or so ago, I can get the

exact date, happily, that we had some guy heavily armed in Moncton with assault rifles strapped

on the back and he went out and started shooting policemen. The whole city was locked down. I

was locked down. We were all locked down. The city became a ghost town. It was a huge story.

You may have heard about it. No? We thought it made the international news. I guess not.

It was a big story in Moncton. Our local newspaper did not remove the pay wall barrier even

though the safety of people on the street depended on free and open access to news. My little

alternative, community based web newspaper, "The Moncton Free Press" was the major source

of online news during the event, that plus Facebook plus Reedit plus the other social networks.

Their priorities are not our priorities, and, sad to say, this includes especially universities.

Look at what their priorities are. Universities searching for a new president, 400K salary. Staff

there, some of the staff there, were volunteering in groups

of four to take that salary. (As It Happens, 2014) No word

on whether their offer has been accepted, but 56 of them

have already volunteered in groups of four.

The resistance, generally, of academic staff to open content

is manifest. Here's a report from here (Greenwich) where

we see active change blocking and passive forms of

intransigence. The sharing of resources only happens on

Moodle (did I see that in a slide recently) which is a closed

system. It may be open source, but the content is blocked

with a subscription wall. The staff have not had time to

effectively learn about open content in their work. (Bryant,

Coombs, Pazio, & Walker, 2014) This is a report that was

cited by Terry Anderson. (Anderson, 2014) You can see the

report an open course-ware conference in February of this

Figure 3- a promo for the new

year. Even at that conference skepticism prevails.

Amazon web browser

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This is Tony Bates reporting that adoption by faculty and instructors remains a major

challenge. (Bates, 2014) And this is repeated over and over and over and over. Peter Suber and

the aforementioned Steven Harnad have come to argue that institutions need to adopt mandatory

open archiving policies. Why would they advocate such a measure? Because faculty left to their

own devices won't bother. And that's well documented.

There's no end to the reasons they offer (Jhangiani, 2014):

 For many disciplines, they say, there is no open textbook available. That's not true, but

that's what they say.

 They're concerned about the quality, the comprehensive, clarity, currency, et cetera, as if

existing textbooks are such models of comprehensive, clarity, and currency.

 They complain that in the world's most visual medium there are no illustrations, charts, or

graphics.

 In a world of chat rooms and YouTube comments, there are no questions or clinical

thinking exercises

 No online learning management systems available despite the existence of the

aforementioned Moodle.

 And, crucially for faculty, there is no testing.

Professors who call out the institutional policies, the institutional indifference to cost and access,

are accused of insubordination. A professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Robert

Buckingham was summarily fired and stripped of tenure for criticizing administration plans to

"rationalize". (CBC News, 2014)

Universities, meanwhile, disguise what is an increasingly unsustainable model by doing what

they were doing to me, hiring poorly paid, temporary, academic staff. They're called sessionals

in Canada. They're called adjuncts in the United States, I don't know what they're called here. I

don't know if they exist here. They do. I'm getting nods. This is what the adjunct or sessionals

say, "Our marginalization, meager pay, and lack of job security," all of which I can attest, "...all

contribute to a culture of paranoia and

enmity." (Shah, 2014) Sound familiar?

And our institutions who do not have

access or openness as a priority have

priced online learning using the same

models, same mechanism even, that

they've used to price in classroom. Here

we have a report on an online learning

consortium. "I don't see why university

administrators could think that

unapologetically pricing courses at $1,400

Figure 4- benefits of open access

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per credit hour..." - that's per credit hour; most courses are three credit hours, six credit hours -

"...for online learning could possibly work." (Straumsheim, 2014) But, of course, it worked in

traditional institutions, so it should work online.

And "Mostly they see the new technology as a means to make more money." (Martin, 2014)

McGill University looking at the new wonderful phenomenon of crowd sourcing has decided to

use crowd sourcing to encourage donations (and yet again, the silo model, the model where the

university is all prevails, they didn't use Kick starter, they built their own crowd funding

platform. It boggles the mind).

Open Content, Open Networks – and Commercial Resistance

While university fundraisers pursue parochial interests open content advocates create resource

networks. (Sheare, 2014) And that's a big difference between the world of closed and the world

of open.

Why? Open access makes a massive economic difference, maybe not to the institution, although

I would argue that it does, but especially to the users of that institution. The estimated rate from

open data for the G20 nations is 2.6 trillion dollars, 1.3 trillion pounds, annually, from education,

transport, consumer products, and the rest. (Dawson, 2014) (Figure 4)

The mechanisms we have today such as the Creative Commons license are being recognized

finally as a patch, not a fix. (Brest, 2014) We shouldn't be adopting this world of closed content

and copyrights and trademarks and patents as the default. They (Creative Commons) are now

arguing, finally, that we should be working to a world where the default is open. And you know,

that is the world outside academia. That's the world that has been unfolding in my experience, in

my world:

 Things like Ergo, a free and open journal of philosophy. (Huber & Weisberg, 2014)

 Things like "Mini Lectures Using Learning Objects" (Nash, 2014)

 Things like, "A New Talk Sketched Daily" (May, 2014) in which an artist created a

single-panel visual representation of a TED talk

 Even TED, although TED is, as I once commented, really the Upworthy of academia.

 Things like "The Open Textbook Toolkit" from BC Campus, basically a way to help

people who want to create an open textbook create an open textbook. (BC Campus,

2014)

We are seeing what Martin Weller has called the "open virus". (Weller, 2014) He writes, "It's no

coincidence that many of the MOOC pioneers had also been early adopters of open access, active

bloggers, and advocates of open licenses, and creating open courses in that model seemed the

next logical step."

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Can we imagine a world of open resource, open access, open learning beyond the traditional

world of open coursework, beyond the traditional university model? Maybe. Even the Open

Coursework Consortium is changing its name, so we must be getting somewhere. (Open

Education Consortium, 2014) We're seeing a worldwide – literally – embrace an alternative

model of learning based on open content and even national and pan-national investments in open

content networks and open content platforms. (Creelman, 2014)

But, of course, there's nothing that can't be corrupted by money. We should know, looking places

like Canary Wharf, where entire industries have been formed based on betting on economic

indicators, and not caring whether the result helps or (as it has on occasion) seriously harming

the economy. In addition, we have, for example, a company that produces five minute

educational videos. They're not TED videos. TED videos are longer. They have the intent of

making them go viral. (Wolfman-Arent, Online Upstart’s Goal: MOOC Lectures That Go Viral,

2014) Or we have this free online lesson from Disney called, "Play Games with Doc

McStuffins." (Figure 5) The reference is clearly to products advertised to children by McDonalds

restaurands. (Dickson, 2014)

Traditional universities are not immune, sadly, from this temptation. Events have proven that

they're not. Some critics take them to task. They take them to task for MOOCs. People like

Roger Schank saying, "I'm sure that Stanford itself won't give the stuff they produce to its own

students. No one calls this racism or classicism, but it's education for poor people.” (Schank,

2014)

On the other hand, Schank's solution. Give a Stanford education to everyone is ridiculous. I did

the math. $32.5 trillion a year - $54.5K per year to attend Stanford x World population ages 20-

24 of 596.3M. (Sullivan, 2012) That's more money than there is in the world. (CIA, 2014) It's

hard to resist the idea that MOOCs are moneymaking scams, perhaps because there is so much

money involved, and the solutions seem to impractical. (Nagel, 2014) You take the people

charging that tuition, and you put MOOCs into their hands, that's kind of the image you get. Isn't

it?

You almost wonder whether this $0.00 MOOC offering is what they call a loss leader.

They’ll get your hooked on the MOOCs, this free open content, and as soon as you're hooked on

the MOOCs, well, now it's going to cost you a dollar, $5, $19.99, $39.99. It's still cheaper than a

course, but you know. Online education is a billion-dollar business motivated more by profits

than quality education for students.

The research is telling us how bad these MOOCs really are. If you are isolated, poor and

enamored of the prestigious MOOC university offering, the MOOC you're taking, you are less

likely to complete it et cetera, et cetera. (Kolowich, 2014) But of course the sort of MOOCs that

these critics are criticizing are the MOOCs created by the same people. In some cases exactly the

same people like Richard Levin, for example, who wanted to raise money selling courses online,

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and who also gave the impression during interviews that they don't really know what the

software they're pushing does. (Hill, Partial Transcript: Richard Levin (new Coursera CEO) on

Charlie Rose, 2014.

MOOCs as They Were Designed

We need to understand that MOOCs as they were designed are different, that they're not

traditional courses, that they're not these moneymaking scams. They're not intended to be

anyway. And we can begin by dropping the labels and the value points that we attach to

traditional learning, for example, the label 'dropout,' (Wolfman-Arent, Study of MOOCs

Suggests Dropping the Label ‘Dropout’, 2014) and characterize people by the actual impact they

have on the system: uploaders, commenter, subscribers, viewers, lurkers. All the names you

would normally associate with day-to-day Internet practice.

Because that's what the MOOCs are based on. It's true that one thing that characterizes the

MOOCs is the sheer scale of participation. “1,162 students taking the final exam at this course,”

writes one person, “is more students than I've taught at Wellesley College over the last 10

years.” (Rogers, 2014 May) Quite so. These numbers are not telling the story about MOOCs.

Michael Feldstein asks of MOOC analytics, did they look at any information giving us a clue of

whether students desired to complete the course? The answer, no. Or get a good grade? The

answer, no. Get a certificate? Well, some. Sample some material. No, that's not one of the

questions they asked in these surveys. (Hill, What Harvard and MIT could learn, 2014)

And what we’re finding - this is research from the MOOC Research Institute, George Siemens is

saying at the University of Texas at Arlington (Siemens, 2014) - the bulk of MOOCs are created

in the image of traditional courses. And eventually, I would say, they will be given the prices of

traditional courses. And indeed the retrenchment to the form of traditional education has begin.

The institution is saying MOOCs will not replace the traditional course. They will only

supplement them (the phenomenon they call the ‘wrapped MOOC’). (Christensen, Alcorn, &

Emanuel, 2014; Kelly, 2014)

We are told that everything is negotiable. Remember that. That is the retrenchment. From my

perspective none of it is negotiable. Especially the most important part: open. But traditional

education, we are told, will simple absorb the MOOCs (Hollands & Tirthali, 2014), as it has

absorbed, or as we say co-opted so many things in the past – rap, punk, the list goes on. That

institutions feel that they would simply absorb the MOOCs doesn't surprise me. These

institutions have had very different goals and ambitions all along.

The mission has shifted completely away from MOOC, completely away from open learning,

and to the support of the university's prosperity. (Hill, Coursera shifts focus, 2014) Does that

sound familiar? They want to build a new marketplace. And they even think it's a new

idea. (Goodwin, 2014) This is the next land rush of online learning, the move to

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marketplace. (European Multiple MOOC Aggregator, 2014) If you hear the word 'federation' in

a talk this is what they're referring to: “a coalition of interdependent universities providing an

LMS, content repository, and learning analytics system” which might connect maybe, if they

supported single sign-on, to some external systems. (Feldstein, 2014)

What's important here is that MOOCs are not second rate, they're not disappearing, they're not

being absorbed, or anything else. They are, to borrow that horribly hackneyed phrase,

disruptive. (Christensen & Weise, 2014)They're going to be disruptive on price, technology,

even pedagogy. That's because they're disruptive in terms of approach. And that approach is that

MOOCs are designed, and built, and intended to be free and open. The one thing universities

have always struggled with.

The idea of a national network for free learning is something that can endure, and eventually

become entrenched. (Kamenetz, 2014) And it is becoming entrenched, but mostly outside the

university system. We're beginning to see the importance of this: Matt Crosslin's been trying to

design a hybrid MOOC presentation. All the connective bits of a connectivist MOOC, the way

we designed it, and mix it up with traditional X-MOOC of traditional academic courses. He

recognizes that the idea of free and open content is linked to the importance of dialog and

interaction. It is impossible to exchange thoughts and ideas using media and artifacts if you are

not permitted to share the media and artifacts. (Crosslin, 2014)

But why would you build a hybrid? What part of dialog and interaction actually requires a

university system and lectures and the works? Why do we need these institutional structures to

enable conversations? We don’t! We looked at and analyzed the nature of conversation, and it

turns out we can do it all by ourselves.

So people like Alan Levine, and many others, said, "Let's build mesh networks of people

instead." (Levine, 2014) Let's imagine what we could do on a limited budget with free resources

that are already out there that we can share, that we can use to communicate, that we can have

other people take and run with to solve their own issues, their own problems, their own needs.

(McGregor, 2014) Open content plus conversation equals learning networks, and the original

MOOCs were not intended to be high-priced or even free university courses, they were intended

to be learning networks.

The idea that professors tell students what to believe: that's the old model. And it's

wrong. (Jaschik, 2014) By studying the MOOCs we’ve created, we're learning more what does

work in these learning networks. We have, for example, derived things like the principles for

dynamic networks. Some authors draw these principles from Deleuze and Guattari’s work in

rhizomatic (self-replicating) structures. (Mackness, 2014) In my own work, I have identified four

principles: autonomy, openness, diversity and interactivity. (Downes, 2010)

Autonomy -- each entity in a network should employ its own internal mechanisms, its own

criteria and its own principles, in the governance of its own actions, including the assessment and

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management of incoming signals. Autonomy creates the capacity for judgement and resistance. It

ensures that a signal propagates only if it satisfies a wide range of assessments, rather than a

single, and potentially fallible, test.

Diversity -- the entity is composed of many different entities, rather than many copies of the

same type of entity; minimally, each entity has its own set of connections and inputs, creating a

unique perspective, rather than the same set of connections and inputs as the others. This ensures

a variety of perspectives, a variety of points of view, and therefore a more multi-dimensional and

reliable perception of phenomena.

Openness -- the network should have inputs and outputs, content should flow freely through the

system, constrained only by the individual decisions of the entities, and entities themselves

should flow freely into and out of connective relationships with others. Openness enables the

possibility of perception by the network, and fluidity of connection enables the possibility of

learning and adaptation.

Interactivity -- networks should adapt and grow by means of interactions between its members.

Interactivity is the creation of knowledge, not the propagation of knowledge. Networks that

support and sustain interactivity are able to learn; networks that limit and stifle interaction are

unable to learn.

These principles apply not only to learning, but to networks generally, and have been observed in

other domains. For example, we see the existence and influence of networks in social life in the

work of Harrison C. White, who described overlapping nets with no clear boundaries. (Azarian,

2000) This is, again, exactly the opposite of universities, especially one with a big fence around

it. The structure of MOOC is the structure of a network. The principles of the MOOC are the

principles of the network. (Grabher, 2006)

We see the same principles in neurophysiology. For example, just as there's no such thing as a

generic resource, there's no such thing as a generic person, and there's no such thing as a generic

neuron. (Hall, 2014) Networks require and thrive on diversity. They thrive on different content

created by different individuals, not single content created by an institution or professor. Far

from curriculum, we're learning that we should be emphasizing diversity, be emphasizing

experience, be emphasizing autonomy and learning. (Lunau, 2014) The idea of the MOOC is not

the idea of open resources, or even the idea of open teaching.

It goes beyond that. It's about living openly. (Funes, 2014) It's not about teaching. It's about

sharing the process of thought.

When I give a lecture, for example, I tell people to ignore the content of the talk, and to look at

my work as a whole, and thereby to see the example of the MOOC instantiated literally on a day-

to-day basis. Sharing with things like Board Thing. (Figure 6) (BoardThing, 2014) Sharing with

things like MOOCopoly, the game (Levine, MOOCopoly, 2014). Sharing with things that are

p.338

decentralized, not centralized. (Cox, 2014) Of course decentralized is exactly what the

institutions are clamping down on. Decentralized is why Internet access is being sold to the

highest bidder. (Singel, 2014) Decentralized is why the open content movement is beginning to

address open policy. (Open Policy Network, 2014)

Open content, open access, open learning. These are not only a part of democracy, a part of the

free exchange of ideas, a part of the culture of learning, but they define all of these, and they

define a system of free and open government. (Jarche, 2014) These things depend on them.

When I say the institution has different values from us, this is what I mean. The very nature of

the institution restricts access, is focused on profit, and is designed contrary to network

principles. These are values contrary to the nature and intent of learning.

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Beyond Institutions Personal Learning in a

Networked World

Published as Beyond institutions: personal learning in a networked world in

Distance Education in China 2015:5 5-17 Oct 30, 2015.

Abstract

This article looks at the needs and demands of people seeking learning with the models and

designs offered by traditional institutions, and in the spirit of reclaiming learning describe a new

network-based system of education with the learner managing his or her education. It questions

the employment of models to design learning systems or the learning process, and recommends

instead that learning be developed on a case-by-case basis by the learners themselves as they

work within a network of learning resources within a personal learning environment. Learning

design on this model resembles a murmuration, shaping and reshaping itself in a self-organizing

manner. The author recommends that students self-organize by ‘reclaiming learning’, that is,

developing their own learning systems and working outside traditional institutions of learning.

Keywords: learning, networks, MOOCs, personal learning environment

Introduction: What learners Need

I want to begin with a story that came across the wires recently and I thought was very

appropriate for this paper. (Inman, 2014) The story described a manifesto that was authored by

economic students demanding that the way their profession be taught be changed. Here’s what

they said:

We, over 65 associations of economics students from over 30 different countries, believe

it is time to reconsider the way economics is taught. We are dissatisfied with the dramatic

narrowing of the curriculum that has taken place over the last couple of decades. This

lack of intellectual diversity does not only restrain education and research. It limits our

ability to contend with the multidimensional challenges of the 21st century. (International

Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics, 2014)

They made observations about things like the global economic collapse and global climate

change and other things not really being addressed by current economic theory. They suggested,

not so much that current theory is wrong, although current theory is wrong, but that they should

be given alternatives or different ways of being able to look at the world. They wanted, in other

words, from my perspective, more control over their education.

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Professors, meanwhile, far from embracing this Renaissance of student-led learning, are sticking

to the tried-and-true traditional way of lecturing in the classroom to the point where they want

laptops banned from the classroom. Dartmouth professor Dan Rockmore said in an article in the

New Yorker, "These digital assistance are more suitable for play and socializing." (Rockmore,

2014) This is not getting the point that learning today is about play and socializing. It's

interesting to note the study he cites, which says, "Taking notes by hand creates better memory

recall than taking notes by typing.'' (Talbert, Three issues with the case for banning laptops,

2014) This again misses the point of what learning is about. As I shall argue in this paper,

learning is not remembering.

Active learning works better (Lederman, A Boost for Active Learning, 2014) than the lecture

used and defended by traditional institutions. “Students in sections characterized by active

learning scored 6 percent better on examinations than did their counterparts in lecture-only

classrooms, and those who were in lecture-driven sections were 1.5 times likelier to fail than

were their peers in active learning classes.” (Freeman, 2014) It may seem odd, then, that I engage

in lectures myself. But what I’m really doing to engage in the process of creating a learning

resource that I hope will be used, shared, cut, clipped, and otherwise abused by people around

the world through the years that follow. This isn't so much about the content of this talk and

people remembering what I say as it is about creating the possibility, the potential for dialogue

and interaction. As Iyadunni Olubode says, “Everyone knows that learning is growing at an

increasing depth and an increasing breadth, so you need people who can constantly learn and

bridge that gap, even when they're in their current jobs.” (Olubode, 2014)

This is the shape of learning in the future. It is not learning where you go to a lecture, you

remember the gospel wisdom that your professor has told you, and you go out forth in the world

and propagate it. It's a world where a person is constantly learning before they get to university,

while they're in university, after they're at university. It's a world where the content, the nature,

and even the means of learning is changing almost on a daily basis. People are looking for

learning that isn't so much the repetition of their professors' ideas, but learning that they can

apply, that is a part of their life, whether it's part of their life in work, part of their life in their

hobbies or their avocations, or part of their life just in what interests them. (Bolkan, 2014) They

expect universities to be flexible. (Zogby Analytics, 2014)

This dichotomy between what universities provide and what students want becomes evident in

conversations with faculty and staff. At the London School of Economics, for example, where I

gave a talk on this subject, we were talking about how the university is structured Bachelor's,

Master's, PhD, maybe a couple of other names for these degrees. That's pretty much it. That's not

what people are looking for. In survey after survey, they want learning that is directly and

immediately applicable to what they're doing. (AfricanEconomicOutlook.org, 2012) "Students

expect universities to be more accessible, flexible and focused on jobs." (Zogby Analytics, 2014)

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Figure 5. The shifting burden from government support to tuition revenue. Via The Economist, op. cit.

Economists, on the other hand, have their own view of what academia needs. (The Economist,

2014) We've been hearing a lot about it both in Europe as well as in North America. The

economists are talking about these days is the destruction of the university at the hands of the

massive open online course. “Universities are up against serious cost and efficiency problems,

with little chance of taking more from the public purse.” As one of the people who invented the

massive open online course, I feel a little personally involved here. It wasn't our intent. I just

want to be clear about that now. It was not our intent to destroy universities. That's not why we

did it. We want to change universities, and we want them to work for the better.

Thinking in Models: for Design, for Learning…

A large part of this paper is about that change. It may be tempting to transition from people

wanting universities to be relevant immediately to the idea that universities will be replaced

without thinking about what we need to do in between, but we need to do this thinking.

What are models?

So what are some of the steps in between? We're told there will be tiered service models at

universities. We're told there will be analytics and data-driven management. We're told there will

be alternative credentials. (Sandeen, 2014) To a certain degree, all of these three things are true.

But to a certain degree, none of these three things are going to work themselves out in the way

that the economist or economists or education reformers predict.

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When you look at that, basically it's like they have this model or design in their head of how we

could rebuild the university system, wipe it all out, start over, and we'll have a new model.

Figure 2 - workflow process employed to assist LMS selection

This model of accountability and cost frameworks and all of that will solve all the problems that

the current system has. Models are popular in education too. Here's a model (Figure 1) of a

workflow-processed employee to assist LMS selection. (Norman, 2014) You can't really read the

small writing there but it’s not important. Notice the flow from enrollment to program

administration to learner interactions to content creation to assessment. It's a fishbone diagram. If

you're in economics or business, you're probably familiar with it.

In addition, we have models describing how to select educational technology using customized

lists of LMS features, a way of picking among those 305 features of a learning management

system that you might want to solve the educational problems at your institution. (Wright, Lopes,

Montgomerie, Reju, & Schmoller, 2014)

Models of how to do learning, learning design patterns: Grainne Conole has done a lot on this.

Diana Laurillard, who I really wish had been there yesterday because I really wanted to have a

chance to discuss some of this she's been working on. If you get the pedagogy right, that will

solve all the learning problems. (The Learning Designer, 2014)

There are models for best practices for typical learning tasks, for example, a reference to a paper

that talks about the conditional release of materials, or what we used to call back in the day

programmed learning. (Fisher, Gardner, Brinthaupt, & Raffo, 2014) You do some learning, you

do a test. If you pass the test, you get to see the next learning. You still see the old professors

with their overhead projectors and their slides and their little piece of paper that they slowly

work down the slide. Goodness, you can't have people reading the bottom of the slide first. It

would be just wrong.

There are even models of how to offer courses. There are numerous discussion like this in the

literature, such as the way Brinthaupt (et.al.) breaks the model of online, hybrid or traditional

models into things like the types of tools, whether you're using discussion boards or white boards

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or websites or videos. (Brinthaupt, Clayton, Draude, & Calahan, 2014) There's a selection

matrix. Out the other end comes level two decisions. You have all of these inputs and outputs.

It's very much a systems theory approach. If you get the system and the process right and

everything flows out the bottom the way it should.

In these models, these designs are being implemented as educational technology. This is what

education reform is about. “Wow,” as I said yesterday, sarcastically. It's also about making a lot

of money for some people. It's about standardizing and rationalizing the educational system to fit

into a certain set of models or designs

There’s more. For example, we have Google coming out with Classroom just as part of Google

apps for teachers. (Google, 2014) It does all the really useful stuff that teachers need to do like

marking and scheduling and assigning learning tasks and all of that sort of stuff. It's education

done by software application, basically. It's being commoditized and being standardized and

being packaged and delivered. This is education of the future.

The MOOCs that came out, not the ones that we did, but the ones that came out after us, are,

again, very much in that same model. “Carnegie Melon University received a two-year grant for

research on and development of MOOCs platforms ‘intelligent enough to mimic the traditional

classroom experience.’” (UOIC UNESCO Chair, 2014) Get some videos, get some exercises, get

some tests, and step students through the material week by week by week. You don't even need a

professor. It's nice to have them to do the videos, but otherwise you just deliver this as a content

package. (Caulfield, 2013)

Everybody gets the same thing. That's what works. It's Dan Willingham and Paul Kirschner and

they say, "There are no individual differences in how we learn. The way we learn depends on the

content, not the learner." (Clark, Kirschner, & Sweller, 2012) (Riener & Willingham, 2010)

That's a pedagogical approach that I feel is incorrect. I think it is obvious that people learn

differently. Learning styles, as a theory, and especially as a design theory, may be wrong. But

people learn differently.

Models are not Reality

The fact is that people learn differently, that they have different objectives, different priorities,

different goals, different times that they want to learn, different pets sleeping on their keyboard,

all of these impact how people want to learn. That's immediately obvious to anyone who actually

looks at people learning. Even as I look around the room, he's on an iPad, she's typing, she's

writing on a notepad, he's asleep. Everyone learns differently.

As an example, Google has created a page called ‘Apps for Teachers’. (Google, n.d.) These

applications model the work of education, according to Google: creating and collecting

assignments, making announcements, asking questions, and, of course, a folder, school folder for

each assignment and for each student.

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Of course Google will mine this data. They've said they will no longer mine student data for

commercial purposes. (Hustad, 2014) They recently came out with that pledge. They did not say

they will no longer mine student data. They just said they won't do it for commercial purposes

anymore. Google knows people learn differently. That’s why it’s important to mine the data.

With models, again, maybe I'm talking to economists here, maybe I'm not. I'm not sure, but this

was actually the subject of my Master's thesis, which maybe three or four people have read. The

model is not the reality. That's my 235-page thesis in one sentence. The model is not the reality.

The model has never been the reality, and worse, when you're doing any kind of research, if you

use a model, typically the answer to the questions you're researching have been defined by the employment of the model in the first place.

That's what happens here. If we use these models, or other models, the design of the model

predetermines the structure that defines how we will understand what learning is. We've

predefined what the outcome will be. But learning needs to be open-ended. Learning needs to be

an exploration and a discovery, not the output of predefined, standardized products. The

adaptation of these models to computerized learning is no more effective than the use of these

models in the classroom.

New Versions of Old Models

If your teacher walked in and spoke from a script and answered every question in the same

standardized way, you would not consider that effective education. The same is true if it's done

on a computer.

Again, we're told that these MOOCs are a new pedagogy. We're told that what's being done at

Stanford, MIT, EdX, the rest of it, is going to change education, but it's a continuation of the

same models and the same strategies that have defined education for decades, despite the fact

that people are asking for something different. It's not even that the new models are the old

models with new names. The new models that we're seeing today being done on a computer are

the same models we saw being done on a computer a decade ago and two decades ago.

Audrey Waters, for example, talks about Fathom. (Watterrs, 2014) Fathom had a plan. What

their plan was, to take learning materials, put them on a computer, and make them available,

even openly, to people who wanted to learn. That was almost 20 years ago. People talk about

EdX and Coursera and the rest of them as being new. It's like they've written off the previous

experiences.

Interestingly, she notes, the president of Coursera is the former president of Yale who while

there had the same wonderful idea of putting courses online and charging money for them. Guess

what he's going to do at Coursera. It's the same model being repeated over and over and over

again. Universitas 21 was invented something like 15 years ago to monetize online learning. It's

one of many initiatives to take a course, charge university-level tuition for it, and sell it online.

p.353

This is not what people want, and these initiatives continuously fail.

The same is the case in other areas of educational technology. The LRMI (Learning Resource

Metadata Initiative) (Barker, 2014) is a system of standardizing the descriptions of learning

resources, but it's a clone, in many respects (I'll talk about a way in which it's not a clone below)

but it's a clone, in many respects, of the standards-driven efforts that have come before. The

AICC, (Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee) had a set of learning resource

metadata standards in the 1990s. So did the IMS, Instructional Management Systems. So did

IEEE, which is the IEEE, learning object metadata. So did Advanced Distributed Learning, with

SCORM, the Shareable Courseware Object Reference Model. And of coursed all of these are

based on card catalogue entries we would have found in libraries in our youth

Again, over and over and over again we see the same pattern: take standardized resources, create

standardized descriptions, and create standardized search mechanisms. The standard is the

golden standard of learning, it seems, and it's always thought that if we could just get this precise

standard right, it'll all work.

The results have been, over the years, pretty much what you expect. Looking at LRMI again,

Phil Barker can list only six or seven institutions using LRMI. (Barker, Who is using LRMI

metadata?, 2014) As with all of these standards initiatives, the easy part is to define the standard.

I've designed dozens of standards. The hard part is getting people to use the standard, because

everybody does these things differently.

Even the terms within the standards are mostly the same from one standard to the next. Typically

there is a URL, a title a description, an author.

Even the mistakes are replicated from one standard to the next. The ‘author field’, for example.

You'd think, author, how could you go wrong with author? But in actual use we can see

everything from people, lists of people, organizations, associations, sometimes pets, sometimes

nothing at all. People put markup in what should be a simple string of characters. They put

anything and everything inside the author tag. And this is because there shouldn’t be an author

tag; there should be a pointer, link or connection to an external entity.

New versions of old models don't produce new results. (Kelly, 2014) I'd like to go down to

Canary Wharf and tack that onto one of the buildings so the economics, who use the same

models over and over, can read it. If you do the same thing, even if you do it on a computer,

you're going to get the same result. And the same result isn't sufficient.

The Right Model is No Model

I may criticize Coursera and the Stanford MOOCs, but when Norvig and Thrun launched their

artificial intelligence MOOC, in the first week, 150,000 people signed up. Overall, I think it was

something like 250,000 people signed up for one course, a really hard course that's really

difficult to understand, in artificial intelligence. So they were doing something right.

p.354

Forget the fact that a lot of them dropped out. A lot of them didn't. Tens of thousands finished.

This, by itself, indicates that the old model wasn't working. There was such a pent-up demand for

upper-level university courses in artificial intelligence that, when one was finally made available,

people knocked down the doors trying to get to it.

George Siemens and I launched MOOC on connectivism in 2008. It was focused on a niche

subject, about as small a niche as possible. It was about an unknown theory in the field of

educational technology. Try going out onto Fleet Street and advertising that. Nobody's interested.

We got 2,200 people without advertising. That was our first MOOC, and that was when we

realized we were onto something, because again, people were beating down our doors trying to

get into it. Not as many people, but they weren't very big doors.

You can see that offering these courses to 10 or 12 people at a time in a seminar, whether it's

online or offline, isn't going to work. Following a model – any model – of learning was not going

to make our course a success. We had to work beyond models.

The right model is no model. The right model is to do away with the models. (Richards, 2014)

Think of non-standard-based systems. Think of non-standard designs. Think of courses where

there are no defined learning objectives. Think of a learning environment where there is no

common core of content. Think of a conversation where you and I have not first established a

shared understanding of the meaning of all of the terms.

That's reality. That's this paper. There is no model for what is being written here. If there is a

model, I'm probably breaking it. When you say the paper followed a model, it’s mostly after the

fact - look at what I did, and say, "Oh, yeah, that's part of the model," and a new model is born,

where there should be no model.

That’s what happened to Sugata Mitra (who has almost been commoditized these days). The

concept or the idea behind what he did was turned into a model. And this fact, and not what he

did, became the basis for criticism. People went back years later to see these computers, and

what they found were nothing but holes in the wall. Computers had been vandalized, the

Plexiglas stolen. That happens. It doesn't mean he was wrong. It just means that that experiment

for that time was finished. People were looking for a model that would always work, but things

don't always work. They work for a time, but then we must move on to something else.

David T. Jones argues that "What's missing," he says, "in the standard-based models is what we

used to think of as BAD." (Jones, 2014) BAD. (Bricolage, Affordances, Distribution). These are

all, in a sense, anti-models.

 Bricolage: when IMS Learning Design was introduced they used, in their documentation

and in their presentation, the metaphor of actors on a stage, and the teacher, of course,

would be the director, and then everybody would play their roles. My objection to

Learning Design was to ask, "What about improv?" You can't do improv. That's what's

p.355

missing with these models. You need to be able to assemble, create and improvise, as we

say, on the fly.

 Affordances: When people built the Internet, they did not intend to design a system that

would store 680 million cat photos. That was not their purpose, and had anyone

anticipated in the 1950s and '60s that they were building a system for storing 680 million

cat photos they would have thought, first of all, that it's ridiculous. Then they would have

thought, "Who would want such a system?" That's the beauty of the Internet, is that,

although it was designed for academic research and to survive nuclear wars and things

like that, it turns out to be the perfect place to share your cat photos.

That's what makes it beautiful, the affordances, the possibilities of technology that come

up that you didn't plan on ahead of time that you can use for other things. History is full

of these things, from the first person to use duct tape for something other than to repair

ducts to people using an Apple computer to hold a door open. The misuse of technology

is what makes technology great.

 Distribution: The idea that you have to be a certain place to get wisdom is ridiculous.

New technology and new learning allow for learning to be not only at the event, but also

available online to web video-streaming people. The idea that things don't have to be in

one place anymore, learning in one standard way.

Content

Too much content?

We need to question the presumption -- and it is a presumption -- that there's too much content,

too much data. So much follows from this presumption. We have information overload. It has to

be organized. It has to be standardized. It has to be categorized. Must be delivered in packages.

David Weinberger says, "We do not, interestingly, feel overloaded by the effects of 1.3 million

apple pie recipes or 7.6 million cute cat photos" (maybe he was just referring to the subset of cat

photos that is cute, but clearly, it's much larger than that). (Weinberger, 2014) We're not

overwhelmed by it at all. We don't walk out in the world, wondering, "What am I going to do? I

got so many cat photos."

When we talk about learning, by contrast, it's almost the first thing people say. When we started

our MOOC, we got people to bring in content and suggest content to us. We brought in a lot

content. And the first thing people said was, "There's too much content. How am I supposed to

remember all of this?"

We told our students the same thing we’d say about cat photos today: you're not supposed to

remember all of it. You’re not even supposed to view all of it. That's the old way of thinking, the

supposition that you're supposed to remember the content that the instructor is delivering. But in

this course, we said, you're not supposed to remember it. The whole idea of our course (or any

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course, this course, this paper) isn't to get you to remember what was said. It is to stimulate in

you the sort of mental experience that will create in you the sort of mental structures that will, at

some point in the future, be useful to you.

These mental experiences are created through environments and interactions. The goal of the

course is to stimulate this environment and this sort of interaction. That's why we want questions

and discussions after, and that's why we want the wine and cheese reception after a lecture.

We're not expected to master every word of the lecture; we draw from it what we need, each one

of us something different, to create the learning environment that follows as we talk about it.

It’s like the pie recipes. We don’t have to remember every one of the 1.3 million apple pie

recipes. Mastering one will actually be enough. Mastering three to five will be more than most of

us ever do. Actually, mastering one will be more than any of us ever do. The main point is we

pick and choose them as we need. The interesting thing is take a room full of 50 people, and 1.6

million apple pie recipes, people will choose, not all the same recipe, but different recipes,

because they look different. They seem different.

They appeal to us in different ways. I have a whole talk on this. How you will read "Perfect

Apple Pie Recipe" from Pilsbury.com? This will set off one set of mental associations for you,

while someone else will read it very differently. Maybe you have a favorable impression of

Pilsbury, or maybe you think of the dough-boy and say, "No, that's not for me." Or maybe a

different site, perhaps taste.com.au, appeals to the Australian nationalists in the room.

Personal and Personalized

I want to draw a key distinction here, and it's a distinction that the model builders don't get. It's

the distinction between personal learning and personalized learning. It's the same difference as

pretty much anything like this: custom tire versus customized tire; chocolate versus chocolatized.

Something original versus something that has merely been adapted.

The idea here is that personalized learning is something that's off-the-shelf, where you tweak

some variables in it, and you have thereby made it personal. That's what's offered in programmed

learning. That's what's offered in customized learning solutions, personalized learning, adaptive

learning. (Schuwer & Kusters, 2014) Any of these design-based systems, they're personalized.

They are really all just one one package with a bunch of options that have been set.

Personal learning is made to order. Personal learning can be learning you make yourself.

Personal learning is where you build your learning, not from a kit, but from scratch. There’s a

difference. People don't want customized, necessarily. Sometimes, they do, but typically they

don't. They want something personal. They want something custom.

That's the expensive part of learning. Consider the Oxbridge model. "The Oxbridge model is so

much better," said the Deputy vice-chancellor at Greenwich. Why is it so much better? He has a

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point. It is better, in many ways, because it's personal. The problem is it’s also really expensive.

To provide that for everyone would cost more money than there is in the world.

But it would be nice having learning that's tailored exactly to each person’s needs. If you can

build it yourself, that's even better. If you can design your food or choose your food from an

infinite array of choices, that's better than going to McDonald's. Even if they offer to take the

pickle off for you.

Institutions, I would argue, understand personalized. They don't understand personal. There are

so many ways in which this is manifest. Even in some of the discussions about personal websites

by institutional staff, the first response that comes up is, "But will they follow institutional

standards?" (Hannon, Riddle, & Ryberg, 2014) The answer, of course, is, "Well, no." There's the

concern that widespread adoption of social media brings shared interactional practices that do

not match university arrangements for learning.

When people from institutions talk about learning, they talk about classes. But when they talk

about personal learning, they cannot talk about classes. If the class is like a box, the people who

want personalized learning are outside the box. You can have a personalized class, but it's still a

thing in a box. Something that's personal must go beyond the box.

Autonomy vs Control

Autonomy, for many reasons, rather than control, is essential in education.

This is a bit of a digression, but I want to be really clear about what I mean here. Autonomy does

not mean no structure. It means choice of structure.

Think of touring a city. The way the autonomy-versus-control distinction is typically sketched is,

if you're visiting a city for the first time, either you wander around with no idea of where

anything is or where you are, or you're taken on a guided tour. If you actually want to get

someplace in the city, you pretty much have to do the second. You can't do the first, because

you'll just wander around aimlessly.

That is not a good distinction. Those are not the choices that are given to people. If you're

visiting a city for the first time, you have a number of choices. You could -- and I do this

frequently -- wander around, aimlessly, not knowing where you are. Or you could wander

aimlessly around with a map on your phone. Or you could wander aimlessly around with a dead

battery on your phone, but using maps that are put up in the city. Or you could ask someone for

directions. Or you could take the train, which will drop you close to where you want to go,

although you might have to ask for directions to do that, too. Or you could get on one of those

hop-on, hop-off buses. Or you could get a friend to drive you around the city and show you

things. They offered to do that for me in Greenwich. Or you could join a guided tour. That's

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choice. That's autonomy. The other option is they kidnap you and take you around the city, no

matter where you want to go. That's control. Those are the real choices.

Ironically, we do education the second way. Control, really, is an illusion. (Satell, 2014) Really.

When you manage and control a work in order to attain certain outcomes, if the environment is at

all complex the outcomes often fail to materialize. The reason is that the designs are really

abstractions of the actual process. They are no more accurate than the false dichotomy between autonomy and control that we just sketched above. They're not useful as prescriptions of what

should be done. If they're useful at all, they're useful as descriptions of what was done, but only

partial representations of what was done.

The personal, by contrast, is not designed. It's based on -- and the photo of the murmuration

shows this -- based on self-organization.

Figure 6 - Murmuration.

It's based on the idea that people can manage themselves and manage their interaction with

others, including learning, for themselves. Consider the murmuration. (Mastrapa, 2010) They've

done studies on the murmuration, and of course, there's no head starling. (Cavagna, 2010) What's

interesting is there's no mass communication, either. It's rather more like a mesh network, in

which each starling is reacting only to the seven starlings around it. Anytime a starling changes

position, the seven starlings around it change position. That's what produces the cohesive

movement of the whole.

It's interesting, because when you think of it -- and that's not even in this article -- when you

think of it, a murmuration is a perceptual system for starlings. It's a way a whole flock of

starlings can magnify the perceptions, say, of a hawk, by any individual starling.

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Complexity, Cause, and Murmurations

What is interesting in this discussion is the way that design, organization, planning, et cetera,

suggests that we can cause these events to happen. For anything that is even slightly complex,

however, there is no cause, properly so-called, of the event.

We award prizes to the person who created a landmark idea, to a person who caused some

significant change. But landmark ideas and significant change are created not by individual

people, but by societies, by this large murmuration of people interacting with their community.

(Mitteldorf, 2014) Not all of them, necessarily, but most of them.

The modern technological world is giving us new examples of that. The hashtag (Kricfalusi,

2014) is a way of creating self-organizing networks. They turn out to be an excellent way to

organize the discussion at a conference. Imagine if we tried to plan the Internet so that we could

account for and index and abstract all of the conferences that will happen from now on, before

they happened. It'd be ridiculous. Couldn't happen. A new speaker series would be impossible to

anticipate. Hashtag networks can be seen as self-organizing ideas. (Melcher, 2014) The hashtag

is a murmuration of tweets.

Mary Meeker -- if you're not familiar with Mary Meeker, you should be, if you're at all interested

in education technology and markets -- has observed (Meeker, 2014) the proliferation of apps,

not just in education, in everywhere. What the app world does is facilitate this kind of network

interaction. What she's noticing is that the edge, that is, the link between two nodes, is more

important than the node.

In education the node is the person, the computer system, the learner, the starling, whatever. It's

the connections that are interesting. That's what's interesting in education, as well. The starlings,

in education, are the students. (Hill, 2014) The university, the learning institution, properly

conceived, should be organized like a murmuration. Should be a self-organized assemblage of

students. But then, of course, you don't need that institutional structure, at all, and it becomes

really difficult to justify a $20,000 or 9,000 pound tuition rate.

A Reclamation Project

Reclaim what?

It's happening. There was a critic recently who said, "Do you know there are no students

involved in these conferences?" I did a search. The search for "student panel" actually yielded

199,000 results on Google. The search for "ed tech student panel" in quotation marks, so it's the

union set of those words in that exact order, yielded 2,000 results.

The students are doing this. They are organizing themselves. Audrey Waters says (Watters,

2014) -- and I think she's quite right -- "The future of educational technology is a reclamation

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project." The idea here is that we, the learners, the people who need to learn need to reclaim the

management and organization of learning for ourselves.

The same thing is happening on the wider World Wide Web. Facebook, for example, has taken

over conversations with our grandparents: we used to talk to our grandparents in person, but now

we require Facebook as an intermediary. The managers of Facebook are using these interactions

to run experiments, for example, to see whether they can influence our emotions by adding and

removing content , the results of which will be used for marketing purposes. We need to reclaim

our conversations with our grandparents. We need to reclaim our interactions of Plato, Socrates,

and the person next door. We have to reclaim control of the data, the content, and the knowledge

we create. The idea that this belongs to the university that it belongs to the institution is

ridiculous. The idea that the university has any say over what students or even its professors

would produce in this Internet is absurd.

Here’s why: Lucy Gray does what I do. She puts her presentations up on Slideshare. One day,

Slideshare deleted everything. (Gray, 2014) No explanation. No recourse. She couldn't even

contact them. She had to tweet it to get any attention from them. No notice. They were just gone.

That's why we have to be the owners of our own education. I read this morning -- I didn't have a

chance to put it in the slides -- there's a guy who started a course, a Coursera course. Went two

weeks into the course, and then he deleted the entire course. (Kolowich, 2014) It was, he said,

"An experiment in causing confusion." (It’s not the first time (Kolowich, Professor Leaves a

MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over Teaching, 2013) this has happened).

One of my colleagues, Ben Werdmuller, is creating something called Known. (Werdmüller,

2014) Known is an application where, as he says, you can still share selfies, make friends, listen

to music, et cetera, or put up cat photos (very important). But in a space that's yours and that you

get to have control over. Werdmuller, with Dave Tosh, built a thing called Elgg a while back,

which is now widely respected as a social networking environment for learning. They also built

something that really should have been much more successful than it was, called Explode, which

was a similar sort of thing to Known, except I think Known will be better produced.

David Wiley gushed when he heard of the "publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere"

anti-model (it's called model in the article but I'm calling it an anti-model because it's not really a

model). (Wiley, 2014) There have been (if you check out the #indieweb hashtag you'll see)

indications of this, from Diaspora (disclosure: I invested a hundred dollars in it - that was my

only investment; I'll never see a return on it) to App.net, which I actually pay money to as well.

Even to syndication itself, it's this idea that what’s today a silo (which is learning) is going to

become the syndication end point. These applications, these services, these resources, are the

things we reach out and touch but not where we invest our entire lives.

Reclaimed learning is network learning

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Jim Groom has been running something called, "Reclaim your domain." (Groom & Lamb,

2014) There have been various other wordings, "Reclaim innovation, reclaim learning." Starting

now, he writes, “a technology that allows for limitless reproduction of knowledge resources,

instantaneous global sharing and cooperation. All the powerful benefits of digital manipulation,

recombination, and computation.”

That was the potential of the Internet twenty years ago and it was basically stopped by the

institutions that decided it should be organized a different way. The idea of "reclaim all of this

stuff" is to bring back that idea of the Internet. That begins with personal control over your own

resources and your own access to external services including leaning.

I've outlined the model in our discussion earlier today. It used to be the case that you would go to

one institution, maybe two institutions and you did all your learning there. It's changing now so

that you access learning from multiple institutions. Not just multiple universities, but multiple

types of institutions, from colleges and universities, potential employers, current employers, past

employers, to pet food stores, to friend networks, to special interest groups, to hobby groups, to

the government, to whatever.

They're all sources of learning. The idea is, you are at the center of this network of learning.

Reclaimed learning is network learning. (Laux, 2014) Reclaimed learning is having access to the

tools and the mechanisms to freely author and create your own learning and share it with others

and to access and use learning that was created by others and shared with you.

It's your mechanism for talking to the starlings that are nearby (I really love that murmuration

example. I'll try not to beat it to death, but just happen to be beating a starling).

That's something like what we were building when we were building the first MOOCs. (Levine,

2014) Our MOOCs are called "connectivist MOOCs" or "cMOOCs." What makes them distinct

is that the people, the individuals are at the center and the learning resources are all distributed.

You might think, "Well, how do you build a course where the center isn't your course?" What we

did is, we pointed students to mechanisms on the current internet where they could each build a

network where they are at the centre. We said, "Create a blog on Blogger. Create an account on

Delicious and do that. Put photos on Flickr. Add videos to YouTube. Create a Google group."

Do any of these things.

In the future we'd say, "Use your own personal web space to organize and coordinate your

resources and then tell us what these resources are." You create your space, we'll create a space

like this too, and then we'll join them together.

That's what we did. It wasn't a course where we had a pedagogical model in mind where we tried

to step people through. It was this ridiculous no-rules mess that turned into a murmuration, that

turned into a MOOC, that turned into something that can attract hundreds of thousands of people.

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Technology Behind the Reclaimed Web

Some of the technology (for example, Farhi, 2014) behind the reclaimed web, technology that

allows us to have comments on our sites without having to author a comment management

system...

There's a tool set these days is called the distributors' developers stack, (Loukides, 2014) where

you can build your own website and access external services like storage. The old stack was

called LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl. Perl's programming language. That would be

where you manage all your data. Today, the stack is your website, but then all the remote system

that you can access with your website.

Making it easier for search engines to index (and this is the promised clarification of LRMI) is

Schema dot org, where you manage and create your own metadata. (Barker & Campbell, What is

Schema.org?, 2014) You don't have to adopt and adapt IMS or IEEE or whatever. Schema is

being set up by the search engines. The search engines are saying, "Here's what you can do. It's

almost like tagging with tags for websites.''

Figure 7 - Bitnami Apps

Or this is one called Bitnami, it's an app store for server software. (Bitnami, 2014) These are all

different apps. Again, they're kind of hard to see. But Word Press, Joomla, Redmine (which I

don't know anything about), WAMP stack (Windows something, something, something,

probably Python) Moodle, Magneto, for e-commerce, just to name some of them. There are

actually 50-60 different applications.

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You want to run a survey. The old way to run a survey on your website is you download and

install software like LimeWire, configure it, set it up -- and hope it works -- and launch your

survey.

The modern way to do it is you get an account with Amazon web services or something that will

give you some Cloud hosting. You use the app store you rent a LimeWire for $1.99. It installs in

Amazon web services, you put a link to it, you have a survey ready. You're not even using any

disk space and Amazon is taking the hit for all the traffic. It cost you a little money but it so

much better than Facebook.

Take your data back from Google. (Finley, 2014) This will be a thing, a personal web server,

preloaded with open-source software that lets you run all of your web services from home, your

home website.

If you don't think it's going to be a thing, think again. People use to go to the Western Union

Wire Office to send messages to each other, then the fax machine was invented, and Western

Union installed a fax machine on each one of their offices and figured, "This is great. Now, we

can charge people for sending messages, and now they can send facsimile images too."

But what happened instead is, people bought fax machines and put them in their homes. You

would think who would put a message sending device in their home? Now, we carry them in our

pockets.

This is the future of this technology. The personal learning that I've been talking about isn't just

personal learning in a conceptual sense, it is personal learning in a concrete hardware sense.

Your university will be a box in your living room.

The modern web (Agarwal, 2014) is distributed, interactive, murmuration of services and

people -- 2RCode, OpenSearch, Windows Live Tiles, touch icons, RSS and even a thing called

human dot text. All of these are little pieces. Your flavors will all be different as they should be.

The idea that every website must be exactly the same is absurd. Only an economist would come

up with that.

Social Networks and Neural Networks

This changes learning. This is what George and I are getting at is of the theory of Connectivism.

“Connectivism repositions media as type of content” (Buckreus, 2014) - but content is,

remember, the McGuffin; it's the thing that gets us talking to each other.

We use media. We use our own services. We use our interaction with each other to create links

with each other. These links with each other, these connections between people, between

neurons, between concepts, between ideas. That's the actual learning. I could go on. I have two

hour long talks about that, which I won't do.

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One question that's always asked is what is the connection between social networks and neural

networks? (Matthias, 2014) What is the connection between tweeting each other, or sending

email, or skyping, and learning, where learning is the formation of connections between your

neurons? Learning is, manifestly, the formation of connections between your neurons. What is

the link between this and social networks?

There are two ways of looking at it. Connectivism embraces both ways. These are not

alternatives, although they're alternatives, but they're not exclusive alternatives.

George's answer is that it's a multi-nodal extension. What that means is when you learn it's

literally the formation of connections between your neurons. You have a network in your brain.

This network extends out of the brain and into devices, into the Internet, and, eventually, through

to other people. It's an adaptation of the old McLuhan idea that a communication system is like

an extension of the body. An information system is an extension of the mind. Pretty smart.

My answer is just as smart. My answer is pattern recognition. (Vento, 2015) My answer is that

neural networks and social networks are, in fact, ontologically different, and one is not an

extension of the other, but they're related.

They're related by, first of all, a common set of underlying principles described in the

mathematics and the methodology of networks. I talked about underlying network principles like

autonomy, diversity, and that sort of thing.

The other aspect of it is that networks learn by pattern recognition. The learning in a network is

literally the formation of connections. A society learns by forming connections between its

people. A human learns by forming connections between their neurons.

What these connections are actually doing is creating a capacity on the part of the network, as a

whole, to recognize characteristic patterns. Just like a murmuration of starlings can recognize a

falcon. Not because it has falcon-like content in its collective mind (when you put it that way, it's

pretty absurd, right?) but, because it, as a whole, is a system that can react to the presence of a

falcon.

The same principles underlie social networks and personal networks. A social network is a

perception mechanism for a society. A neural network is a perception mechanism for a person.

Persons can recognize patterns in society. Societies can recognize patterns in persons. The

interaction begins to flow.

You can see that the Downes answer and the Siemens answer are really two sides of the same

coin. Different ways of seeing the same topic. That's really common in network learning.

Even if we're examining the same thing, we're all looking at it from a different perspective. Our

understanding of it is never going to be the content of any individual's mind. Again, that would

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be ridiculous. Rather, the combination, the pattern created by the multiple perspectives that come

into play as we all look at this common object.

If I put a chair in the room, our understanding of the chair is the totality of our perceptions of the

chair (which is why Wittgenstein was right and Moore was wrong).

Network Learning

Connectivism can be thought of as a learning theory. (Cain, 2014) Personally, I don't care

whether you call it a theory or not. But, it accounts for existing theories, it explains where we

are, and it we can make predictions.

One thing I do a lot of is make predictions. The predictions based on connectivism can be tested.

I've got a history of making predictions, and I'll continue making predictions. One response of

connectivism was the MOOC. (Cain, MOOCs and Connectivist Instructional Design, 2012) We

built a course in this network style. What we discovered (and frankly, we did discover this, we

did not know this going in this) was that building a course as a network allows you to

accommodate a lot of people with very few resources.

We had a budget for our first MOOC of nothing, yet we still managed 2500 people. I shouldn't

say nothing - George wrangled the free Elluminate account. What we were doing is we were

testing connectivism by using connectivist theory to create a course, and that course resulted in

the MOOC. My verdict is the experiment was a success. Participants seemed to agree.

Creating networks, developing professional connections, studies of MOOCs - This one is a study

done by a couple of my colleagues, Helene Fournier and Rita Kop. (Fournier, Kop, & Durand,

2014) The people who actually took these MOOCs report that the really important part wasn't the

content, because the content was just the stuff that George and I sent, but the creating of

networks, the developing of connections, the networking, building on the affordances of this

particular network. (Saadatmand & Kumpulainen, 2014)

Where are we going? Here comes the prediction part. Although, it's not just me anymore. I've

been talking about personal learning and personal learning environments for a number of years

ago.

The Aspen Institute - they're actually one of these right-wing think tanks, but we'll leave that

aside - even they are saying learning has to be personal. (The Aspen Institute Task Force on

Learning and the Internet, 2014) Learners have to be empowered to learn any place any time.

The idea is to use networks to support and guide learners and, most importantly, build operability

across learning networks. Grain of salt: they're thinking of this management design perspective.

You can't do exactly what they say, but they have the right in saying learning needs to be

personal. Learning needs to be connected. Learning needs to be networked.

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Learning control is moving beyond computer-assisted programs “towards authentic learning

context, mediated by technology.” (Buchem, Tur, & Hölterhof, 2014) If you think about it, if

learning is a network and not an on-site event-based kind of process, it can happen anywhere. It

will happen anywhere. It will happen and be managed and controlled by people using their own

devices, wherever they happen to be. The devices that are implicated in learning will multiply.

This is an interesting one. (Poynder, 2014) I love this one. Reading and networking will become

one and the same thing. This is not exactly what Steve Pettifer is saying. Steve Pettifer developed

a program called Utopia. It's an Adobe Reader, but when you read it, a sidebar opens up and

gives you all kinds of resources from other services.

We built something similar to that, called Plearn. It was an in-house proof-of-concept project that

we did between 2010 and 2012. I've seen similar sorts of things in Microsoft Word. The norm

will be to have, if you're consuming (terrible word) consuming content, the norm will be that you

have a sidebar experience. Even watching television. It used to be you just sit there (and watch).

Remember that? But now, we have what they call the second screen experience.

Reading, watching television, all of these things will be, are becoming networked experiences. In

the workplace, connective learning is already changing the workplace. It is going to really

change the workplace when our learning becomes present in our devices. (Hinchcliffe, 2014) I

used to talk about the fishing rod that teaches you how to fish. Now, recently, I saw an

advertisement for a tennis racket that teaches you how to play tennis. Somebody actually built it.

It exists. I wish I had the link for it. You have internal sensors. The internal sensors know what a

good swing looks like. Feeds back to your device. Your device says, "You really ought to work

on that backhand." Or whatever.

Cooperation

Teams and collaborations will be transformed. The old way, the design way, the management

way, the control way is to form teams and collaborations, and put people in groups and get them

all marching to the same tune, singing the same song, et cetera. The new way is to connect, to

interact, but to work autonomously. In software development, they're calling the oscillation

principle, (Dixon, 2014) where you get together and connect, and go away and do your thing.

Get together and connect, go away and do your thing.

Cooperation is basically defined as a set of interactions in a problem space. (Roschelle &

Teasley, 1995) The problem space might be anything. The idea here is that you can achieve

results without actually having all the overhead of a collaboration. A murmuration is

cooperation. Each starling is autonomous. Each starling decides for itself where it's going to go.

There's no shared vision.

"Hey, let's have this really neat kind of amorphous mass." It's like one starling's saying, "That's a

falcon," and making its own decision. In cooperation, we don't share models. (Stoner, 2013) We

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don't share designs. We don't share goals. We don't share objectives. Axelrod talks about

cooperation. (Axelrod, 1984) All cooperation requires is a durable relationship.

All the overhead that we typically associate with managing activities on the web, including

learning -- things like centrality, commonality, learning objectives, learning management,

controlled outcomes, even trust -- all of these are unnecessary for self-organizing systems.

They're overhead. They make the institutions rich. They don't do the kind of job that the students

need.

Cooperation means working with others. Working with them directly, without the overhead.

Doing away with the negotiations, the discussions, the accommodations. All you need is to be

able to interact and communicate with people. That doesn't mean you can't have negotiations,

discussions, and accommodations. A lot of people like that stuff, and it's OK. But it's like the

guided tour. A lot of people like the guided tour. If you want to get on the guided tour and share

an experience with people, you can. The point of cooperation is we can run a society where you

don't have to be guided, where you can explore on your own.

The new skills, therefore, both in teaching and learning are network skills. The new skills, pretty

much in any discipline now, are network skills. This is a reference to Coding For Journalists so

that journalists will understand the real meaning of things like lists, loops, and application

programming interfaces. (Bradshaw, 2014) The whole idea here is to understand the concept of

how individual entities are related to form patterns, data structures, and entities.

People forget about things like Codeacademy, which have proven, very successfully, through

millions of users, that people can do things like learn to program on their own, without being told

how to do it. (Griffith, 2014) It's like I mentioned at the beginning of the talk. The model for

learning is like socializing and playing games.

A New System of Learning

If you've ever been to the media center, I visited the media center once at MIT, the Media Lab -

it was a really interesting experience, because the place is a mess. It's utter shambles. (Resnick,

Minsky, Kay, & Negroponte, 2014) It's probably a fire trap. But it's brilliant because people can

interact any way they want, using whatever kind of device they want. If you want to build a

robot, that's cool. It's all play, but I'm sure it's not all play.

We have these models. One model is called the super-university. (Cape Breton University,

2014)It's going to respond to government directives or commercial imperatives. It will be

designed. It'll produce outcomes. It'll create jobs. Economic development. Employment for

graduates. Even manage immigration. Commercialize research. This is a line; people have told

me this: "It isn't innovation unless it's been commercialized."

p.368

Again, if you're in economics or business, you've probably heard this. I really don't think that's

true. You might say it's not innovation unless it's used, but that's something distinct. That's the

one model. That's the kind of thinking that (is typical of) the people's that are saying, "There will

be 10 universities left in the world." That's the kind of thinking that goes into that sort of model,

that sort of design.

They talk about the importance of universities because we need them. They don't talk about what

it is, in fact, we need. Think about the topics I've talked about in this presentation. Do we need

more models and more designs? Does the world really need another theory of learning, honestly?

Do we need more standards and more measurements? I showed you half a dozen ways of

standardizing learning resources. I could go on about standards and measurements. Do we need

more centralization and control? Are the people out there yearning, "Control me! I don't know

where to go." Do we need, quite frankly, the same mistake repeated again?

We're able now to rebuild our system of learning. Why on earth would we do it the old way?

What is it that we need? What we need is the mechanism to support learning itself. When you

ask the people what they want, they don't want immediate economic development. They want

better lives.

They see things like learning - All of those people who went to the artificial intelligence course,

all of those people who flooded into our MOOC, they're doing the same thing that the people of

Leiden did when they opted for a university instead of lower taxes. They're doing what the

people of Tublingen did, when they said, "We want a university, not industrial development."

We have an alternative. We do have an alternative. There is a model. It's not a model. I shouldn't call it a model. We have an anti-model. Maybe I should be anti-anti-model and call it...Never

mind. I won't go there. We can, as they say, reclaim learning.

We can have a way of looking at learning where learning is not structured, designed, and set up

to create outputs, but rather run, operated, and controlled as an unorganized, unmanaged system

by individuals. I say we're moving beyond institutions in learning, toward a cooperative model,

toward a society based on network knowledge, which we can call a ‘knowing society’, because

the society as a whole, as well as the individuals within it, can learn and know new things. That's

the model of the future.

It'll be based on software, technology, resources, systems, interactions, communities, and the rest

that take learning well beyond formal education. People talked about, "What is the role of formal

education and institutions in all of this?" It (the role of formal education and institutions) is to

serve that.

p.369

Institutions need to adapt and get out of the mindset that they control and manage learning, and

now think about how they can serve many different people in many different ways, with the

resources, the learning, the coaching, the mentoring, et cetera, that they need when they need it.

We're going to get the opposite of these large, control-based universities. People say, "This is the death of the university, these MOOCs." It's not. This is the beginning of the university. The shift

of the university from something big and large and available only to a few, to something much

smaller, much more nimble, much more independent, a lot like community music artists -- that

line was for George Siemens -- that will cater to specific learning needs. They will number in the

hundreds of thousands, not the tens. They will be everywhere.

I thank you for your time and your attention. We do actually have a little time for questions, but I

won't say how little. Thank you.

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p.376

Beyond Assessment - Recognizing

Achievement in a Networked World

Published as Beyond institutions: personal learning in a networked world in

Distance Education in China 2015:5 5-17 Oct 30, 2015.

ePortfolios and Open Badges are only the first wave in what will emerge as a wider network-

based form of assessment that makes tests and reviews unnecessary. This paper discusses work

being done in network-based automated competency development and recognition, the

challenges it presents to traditional institutions, and the opportunities created for genuinely

autonomous open learning. Through an exploration of the ethical issues related to analytics and

assessment and the development of alternative credentials, the paper proposes a mechanism for

personal learning assessment based on production in social and community-based environments.

Keywords: networks, learning, assessments, social media, analytics, ethics

What constitutes success?

There is a case of a woman who was a dean at MIT for decades, receiving the institute's highest

honor, the MIT Excellence Award for Leading Change, and it turns out she didn't have any

degrees, not even a bachelor's degree. (Lewin, 2007) Obviously she has been disgraced and she

should not have done that, but the interesting thing is that she can do an excellent job and be

recognized for this, by a major institute of higher learning, and yet not have a degree. It raises the

question of the value of the degree itself.

On the other hand, we have the possibility that many of us are just faking our way through.

(Tremonti, 2014) It's not just faking our way through doing jobs without degrees -- although I do

wonder how many other people are out there doing that. It's faking our cultural knowledge

generally, for example, people acting like they've read "War and Peace" when they really haven't

read War and Peace, or people referring to plot elements in "Moby-Dick," like I do, without

having read Moby-Dick, which I haven't.

When we get into this sort of discussion, we wonder, is there a core, a common heritage, which

we each share, or rather is each individual, as we just heard, a strand running through the fabric

of culture? What is it that can be faked, and what is it that, like being able to speak Urdu, can’t

be faked?

It's interesting to think of culture in this perspective, as a type of language -- culture as

something that helps us communicate with each other. (Hereford, 2014) It’s like a speaker at a

p.377

conference referring to a science fiction novel by Greg Egan to make a point. I can nod at this

because I'm familiar with Greg Egan, thus faking cultural fluency. Unfortunately I hadn't read

that particular book so I lost the context of the example, and wouldn’t be able to discuss it.

Cultural knowledge can be faked, but cultural interaction cannot.

When we talks about knowledge and language in this way, we sometimes have this sense that

we're talking about knowing a language, knowing a culture, knowing a whole set of facts, and if

we could just get all these facts, then we'd know what people know. But, in fact -- Wittgenstein

here is the expert on this -- a language isn't just knowing a set of facts or knowing a set of rules.

A language is something much more dynamic, much more behavioral and complex: not a set of

facts, but the embodiment of a skill, like playing a game, like a way of life.

Looked at from this perspective, what constitutes success? (Thomason, 2014) Playing the game

of being a good MIT Dean of Admissions constitutes success, while a demonstration of recall of

a set of facts does not. What is it for one of us to be a success? Do we count our citations? Do we

count the impact factor of the journals that we're writing? Probably we shouldn't.

This raises a lot of serious questions about assessment and about understanding what constitutes

success and what constitutes learning.

Here's one question: we have many more ways of finding work today, but it seems harder and

harder to find a job, harder and harder to match ourselves to a position. (Young, HR tech, 2014)

Why is that the case?

Here's another question: today's students leave a lot of data traces, as we've just heard, from

demographic information to how they read and highlight eBooks, et cetera. What are the ethics

of using this for the purposes of assessment? (Young, Personal education, 2014)

Here's another one: everybody's learning experiences are customized. Everybody is, as my wife

likes to say, a special snowflake, where their experience exactly matches who they are. They

study exactly what they best comprehend. So does this mean everybody gets an A?

And another: is open online learning or the MOOC, the massive open online course, or informal

learning in general doing the sort of thing that we need? According to the traditional metrics, it's

not. (Moe, 2014) People aren't completing their courses. They're not amassing these sets of

facts. They're not proving their knowledge by taking tests and getting degrees.

MOOCs and open online learning generally are shifting the definition of education away from its

historical roots to a skills based, instrumentally defined enterprise -- in other words, very much

like speaking a language.

p.378

What We Need

What is it that we need? What is it that we're after? What are we trying to get at when we're

doing assessment?

Figure 1. Skills Gap

One way of looking at it is the skills gap. As widely discussed in Canada, a skills gap exists

when the set of unemployed people and the set of employment opportunities don't match. The

skills the positions need aren't the skills that the unemployed people have. So we’re trying to

bring people to the point where they can qualify to fill the jobs. That's one way of looking at it.

Or look at it this way: it would make sense for employers to just go out and say "we'll educate

people for the skills that we need, and then we can hire them," but this isn't happening. (Munroe,

2014) One of the reasons, I think, is employers don't actually know what these skills are that they

need.

They know that they don't have the people. They know that the unemployed people don't qualify

for the job, but they don't know exactly what it is that would qualify for the job. It's just when

they do the interview, when they have a conversation with the person, it becomes obvious to the

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interviewer that they're qualified or not qualified. This is an interesting and remarkable

phenomenon.

What's being recommended? What has our government and business community come up with?

Well, in Canada we have something called Canada 2020. It's a business oriented group. They're

recommending a learning outcomes assessment program, a council on skills and higher

education. We actually used to have one, called the Canadian Council on Learning. Now they

want it again.

They want education and skills for aboriginal peoples, whatever that means. They want to

"narrow the skills gap between men and women," again, whatever that means. They're looking

for credential recognition and skills training for immigrants. (Munroe, Skills and Higher

Education in Canada, 2014)

I don't think any of these addresses the point. I don't think any of these addresses the problem.

The problem is how do you recognize, first of all, what you need in society? And secondly, what

people actually have in society. We need to be able to, on a society-wide level, to be able to do

the job of the interviewer.

Traditional approaches to assessment

Confusing the outcomes of education with the process of education

This sort of approach being recommended by Canada 2020 and other business groups isn’t

addressing the problem head on, but instead is trying to cover the cracks with committees and

lists of skills and competencies. But it doesn't get to the core of the problem.

What we’re doing now is compiling learning task inventories (LTIs) to define sets of learning

activities related to skills. (MacNeil, Wood, Zivcakova, Glover, & Smith, Learning Task

Inventories (LTIs). Exploration of Optimal Conditions to Help Students Develop, Improve and

Sustain Good Study and Learning Practices, 2014) It' s the basis for instructional design.

(Quinlan, 2014) You start with what you want them to learn, design an experience, cause them to

learn it, build in some checks, and see that this has all happened in the end.

That's basically what these councils and these skills programs are going to do. That's what PISA

did. That's what PISA did for 15-year-olds. The PISA test, for those of you who aren't familiar

with them, is to take 15-year-olds around the world. You give them a standard set of test

questions (interestingly, test questions not based on the curriculum of what they learn but rather

test questions based on some definition of what the organizers of PISA think they should have

learned by the age of 15). Apply these tasks, and then you get a league table. You have Finland,

Shanghai and Singapore at the top, all the way down to "not us" at the bottom half of it.

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It’s a very traditional approach. LTIs detail the learning tasks students are expected to master

during the course. They are represented in, for example, standardized curricula such as the

Western protocols in Canada or the Common Core in the United States. The intent is to improve

learning outcomes; “It is well known that distributed practice, the technique of dividing study

efforts into frequent, relatively short study sessions, is more beneficial to student learning than is

massed practice.” (MacNeil, Wood, Zivcakova, Glover, & Smith, 2014) But while making it

clear to students what they don’t know, it is not clear that LTI’s actually help them learn. “Only

10-20% of students believe this contributes significantly to making course material easier to

learn or to their final grades.”

So creating lists of learning tasks students are expected to master creates significant extra work

on the part of designers, but it’s not clear it results in more work or improved outcomes on the

part of students. It’s a long process of identifying and testing for skills gaps that doesn’t seem to

have any beneficial result. And interestingly, the countries that are doing well in PISA are

beginning to doubt the whole program. Countries like Finland probably always doubted the

whole program. We have Shanghai, and China generally, looking at whether they really want to

focus their efforts on this anyway. (Zhao, 2014) Their skills and qualities, they say, should also

be acquired from a variety of activities, not just studying specific (‘core’) skills and and testing

for them. They consider things like play, online activities, and games to be equally important

because they understand that knowing isn't just about getting a set of facts that you can measure

on a test.

Why are we emphasizing the test? Here's one theory. This is the slide for any who are skeptics.

The per-student cost for testing is currently about $31 a student. Multiply that by 50 million

students in the United States, and you get lots of money. (Heick, 2014) Interestingly,

organizations like "The Washington Post," who promote testing, also run testing agencies like

Kaplan.

Yet, education is still crucial for economic development, for personal development, and there is

this sense in which skills build on skills. (Pearson, 2014) There is this sense in which education

is kind of cumulative. It almost feels like we're piling facts on each other, even though we know

it's not.

We have reports saying the time in school spent by a country's children is directly related to the

productivity of its workers. That appears in the publisher's Pearson’s White Paper. I'd probably

say it differently, to focus on the health and welfare of the population. The point nonetheless

remains the same -- more education means happier people and a more developed society.

In my opinion, the problem is that we're confusing the outcomes of education - the test results,

etc. - with the process of education. That's why it's significant and that we talk about the time in

school as opposed to, say, the test grade, because if people said the test grades are proportionally

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related to economic development or productivity, I think they'd have a much harder time making

their case.

As opposed to test grades, which are easy to measure, outcomes are hard to measure. As

Pearson’s 2014 report, ‘The Learning Curve’, argues, "You can be certain and vague, or you can

be precise but not certain. You can't be both." (Fallon, 2014) The really interesting, useful

outcomes like "understand" and "appreciate" are almost undefinable. (Talbert, 2014) They are, in

a certain sense, ineffable. We could not really express what we mean.

This is what the representation of culture as a type of language appeals to, the ineffability of

learning. We cannot express in language what it means to learn a language. Language limits us to

describing learning in terms of as a set of facts, structures, rules, et cetera, and this doesn't work.

There isn't a nice and neat set of concepts and principals linked to what we mean by

"understand," so you get behavioral outcomes, "display," "recite," "define," but these are based in rote.

That's the problem with these tests -- you can fake them.

"The complexities matter," says Gardner Campbell. "When confident, simple, plain orderly

advice is given about a subject matter I hear the sound of the hatchet replaced by the sound of

wood snapping as the branch I'm sitting on gives way."' (Campbell, 2014) It’s easy to

recommend simple test-defined outcomes-based ways of developing education, but as soon as

we begin to do that, we're undermining the foundations of the educational system.

Making Stuff Up: Mental Processes

This is the dilemma. We can’t depend on the test. But on the other hand, our knowledge is in our

heads, and what's in our heads is incredibly difficult to access. Even if you slice open the brain --

and people have. I've heard this -- you still don't see knowledge. You see gray, messy, gooey

stuff.

What are we going to do? (Watters, 2014) Do we continue using the black box approach

(McLeod, 2014), which is based on "recite," "define," et cetera, or do we start making stuff up,

using what Hume would call ‘convenient fictions’ to explain away that which we do not know.

Here's an example of what I mean by "making stuff up." This is someone who I won't name for

his own protection: "Our brains need some way of deciding what to encode and how to encode it,

so as to retrieve it in a way which is useful. Our minds solve this problem by encoding

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information along the affective context.” (Shackleton-Jones, 2014) No doubt you have studied

many papers that sound like this.

This is made up stuff. It seriously is made up stuff. What is the “affective context”? Even if you

can give me a definition, can you give me a definition that is operationalizable in any meaningful

way? Can you give me a definition which is observable in any meaningful way?

When you start saying things like "the brain needs some way of deciding," how do you know

this? Is the brain sitting there and saying "oh, my, I need to find some way of deciding how I

know?” No. It's a hypothesis. It's making up some kind of activity the brain is doing, but the

brain is not actually doing it.

Stephen Talbott argues that we have this tendency to represent the human body and human

systems, including thought and even things like the circulatory system, as though they were

machines, when manifestly they're not. (Talbott, 2014)

Figure 2: The Heart as something other than a pump. Image:

https://emedtravel.wordpress.com/page/16/

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For example, we typically (and habitually) think of the heart as a pump. So we say the heart

pumps the blood through the circulatory system. But, as he argues, if that's really what happened,

the amount of pressure that the heart would have to exert on the blood would explode the tiniest

veins and arteries in our bodies. Rather, our circulatory system is less like plumbing and more

like the tides. It involves some liquid in the blood system but other liquid elsewhere in the body.

It's like the tides that sway back and forth.

On this picture, the heart is a regulatory mechanism, not the sole thing that makes the whole

thing work. Other things are involved; the veins in your legs actually play a role in moving the

blood back to the heart. The whole body works in this way. The whole body works together as a

system for making the blood move. It's not simply the heart. The heart is just one part of it. It's a

complex, messy -- really messy. Open a person and you'll see nothing but messiness -- totally

integrated organic system, not a machine.

Making Stuff Up: Competencies

That takes us to the next part of our discussion, competency-based education, which is a major

trend in modern e-learning. (Tamburri, 2014) In competency-based education students are

granted credentials (Eduvation, 2014) based on demonstrated proficiencies. (Shapiro, 2014)

Critics argue that it seems too much like training and it focuses too much on outcomes. That may

be. My response to it is it takes a hard problem (of deciding, for example, whether somebody is a

dentist) and breaks it into smaller problems, each of which is just as hard as the original problem.

We had one hard problem. We've created 10 hard problems.

I wonder, indeed, whether personal learning even requires competencies. Do we need to break

down our domain of study into a set of clearly defined competencies in order to be able to master

the domain? Is a discussion of our learning a domain at the same time a requirement for a

discussion of the competencies that we've acquired in that domain? For example, is being a

physicist the same as having acquired all the competencies we take to define a physicist?

In one sense, yes. (Mind/Shift, 2014) You can't really do personalized learning without common

expectations about competencies. You need to know, for example, what a physicist knows. But

what is that? What defines what a physicist knows? This is where the competency-based

approach begins to break down, because it is extraordinarily difficult to define the full set of

necessary and sufficient competencies that define ‘being a physicist’. Only under certain

circumstances, where we know and require a common and core set of competencies, are

competencies required to support personal learning. But this may well prove to be the exception

rather than the rule.

And this seems to be the result we are obtaining in practice. According to a study (Abner,

Bartosh, & Ungerleider, 2014) on competency-based education from the Higher Education

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Quality Council, there's no systematic comprehensive study indicating that the specificity of

skills from competency-based education translate into performance. As Charles Ungerleider

asks, what are the competencies underlying performance in anything? What are the competencies

underlying a satisfactory high school education, even?

We think we've got a good handle on what these basic competencies are, but we don't. We think

we do, but it's an illusion. We make stuff up, and we say it’s foundational, without any good

ground for saying so.

Alternative Credentials

What's happening now? What are we getting? We are getting alternative credentials. We used to

have a system where we had high school diplomas, bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, PhDs,

and a few professional certifications. Now, because there's so much information out there and so

many ways of interacting with people, we are getting a ton of alternative credentials.

As I say here, a veritable slew -- Qualt, (http://www.qualt.com/) for example, based on courses

developed by the Association of Accounting Technicians, et cetera, and brought to us by the

good people like Google. Harvard has created the Credential of Readiness, which means that you

are ready to take a Harvard education, I guess. (Useem, 2014)

ALT, the Association for Learning Technology, in Britain, is designing and creating badges as

part of its ocTEL MOOC. On top of that, the badge issuing system, which can establish whether

the badges you are issuing are compliant badges. So we have a credential for a credential.

(Hawksey, 2014) (Levine, 2014)

Udacity, Sebastian Thrun's company, together with AT&T and 1.5 million of their dollars, is

launching something called nanodegrees. (Shen, 20143) In Europe, the European Commission

has the VM Pass (Knowledge Innovation Centre, 2014), a validation process based on a

combination of peer review and crowd sourcing. (Creelman, 2014)

Condé Nast - yes, the magazine publisher - is issuing college credentials. (Lederman, 2014) The

experts are going to be the writers and editors from various magazines. Of course, the publisher

will provide some financial backing. It actually convinced some colleges to go on with the

scheme.

The Achievement Standards Network is offering “open access to machine-readable

representations of learning objectives published by education agencies and organizations

including the Common Core State Standards.” (JES & Co., 2014) It was recently acquired by

Desire2Learn.

Learning Locker (http://learninglocker.net/) is an open source Learning Record Store for tracking

learning data. (Betts, 2014)

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What Are We Validating?

Understanding

What we are seeking is a sustainable and reliable method for the validation of learning. But, let

me ask, are we validating the learning, or are we validating the person? Who are they hiring

when they hire someone, the learning or the person?

The objective was, remember, jobs, skills, gap. They don't hire learnings. That's why they don't

just use the CV when they're hiring people. They're hiring the person. You wonder why they

would do this. They actually go through a process of selection, where real people sit down and

talk to job candidates. Why does that happen?

We need a basic understanding of understanding. (Stanley, 2014)

When you're trying to show that you understand something, the answer to that isn't really "let me

demonstrate." The reason why "let me demonstrate" isn't the reason is that it's too easy to fake. If

you just show a production of some sort and say "this proves that I know of quantum physics,

because look," people aren't going to believe that.

This is because there is a sense in which understanding quantum physics is more about being

immersed in a culture or like learning a language than in possessing some set of facts and

principles in the brain.

To know something, in this sense, is to recognize. (Wilkins, 2013)

This should be thought of in a very precise sense. What is it to know something? Consider the

books, "Where's Waldo?" (or "Where's Wally?" in Europe). (http://whereswaldo.com) Open up

"Where's Waldo" and look and search for Waldo. Finally, you see him. You recognize him. The

next time you do the same thing, it takes you no time at all. There he is.

Knowing is like finding Waldo. It's being able to recognize him in the sense that you can't un-

know it once you see it. Knowing is like picking out the face of your spouse or your close friend

in a crowd coming over in a train. Easy to do. It’s an incredibly complex process, but easy to do.

You can't not do it. That's the key.

It's a physical state. It is quite literally the organization of the connections in our brain. Our brain

is a perceptual mechanism. It's a perceptual mechanism such that if we see something that we

recognize or we know, we get a cascade of neural activation, and we get this characteristic "Ah,

there's Waldo. Ah, there's my wife. Ah, there's a tiger." You can see how it would be useful.

Knowing and Doing

Learning, in an important sense, is learning how "to do," in other words, rather than "to know."

(Ferguson, 2014) This is important.

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When we're doing these assessments, when we're doing these measurements, we're after facts

and principles and things like that. Theories. Even language. Even a definition or description.

This is a representation or a model of what we know, rather than what we do. It's a tool, an aid to

learning, an aid to understanding and comprehension, but it is not literally the thing that we

know.

The thing that we know literally is this recognition process. How do I know that? I know,

because our brain is a pattern-recognition machine, not a digital computer. It's not even a pattern-

recognition machine. It's a complex biological stuff, interconnected neurons that collectively

recognize patterns, and not a digital computer. The digital computer analogy is simply wrong.

How do you show what you’ve learned? Do you demonstrate, or do you do? A demonstration is

a requirement intended to satisfy a specific set of criteria. That’s the formula. (Kuhlmann, 2014)

How do you become, or establish yourself, or show that you are an e-learning professional or

anything else? First of all you practice what you do. Secondly, you show examples of what you

do. Thirdly, you show what you do and what you learned.

Figure 4: My LinkedIn Network

You don’t just show the examples. You show the process. You show the thinking. You show

what goes on behind the scenes. And this is what a modern learning network enables. When I

work on the network, I show what I know by being on this network doing what I do, whatever I

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do. All of those people see it, and they talk about it. Maybe they talk about it, or maybe they

ignore it. Who knows? They do what they do.

For example, I show what I know with my LinkedIn network, (Downes, 2014) and it shows a lot

of connections. The connections are mapped and organized by the computer, which also adds the

colours. You can actually analyze what the different colors mean; they represent clusters of

contacts. The computer autodetects these clusters; to a certain degree, you could find out what I

know by looking at the set of people who talk to me.

This is the wave of the future. There's a system called SCROLL, a System for Capturing and

Reusing of Learning Log, and basically it's capturing your learning as you go along. (Ogata1,

Hou, Li, Uosaki, Mouri, & Liu, 2014) This learning, just like a LinkedIn network diagram, can

be analysed by computer and clusters – which in this case would be key areas of learning – can

be identified.

Think about what happens when we add learning to the Internet of Everything. (Jarche, 2014)

The Internet of Everything is the Internet of people, of resources, and of things. We're hearing

about the Internet of things, but what's really interesting is the Internet of everything. We interact

and communicate not only with each other but with our devices and our tools.

I used to talk, many years ago, about this fishing rod that teaches. (Downes, The Buntine

Oration: Learning Networks, 2004) You take your fishing rod and go out and fish, and the

fishing rod has internal sensors that detects how you cast. Then it remarks to you, "You've never

fished before, have you?" or something like that. The fishing rod gradually teaches you, but

what's more interesting is that the fishing rod and you are interacting together. It has sensors. It's

detecting what you're doing, and it's using that feedback to help you learn. It was always

theoretical, but a month ago I saw a TV show. They didn't do a fishing rod. They did a tennis

racket. (Diallo, 2014) People who buy a tennis racket will pay more than people who fish, I suppose.

The idea here is that as time goes by, we and the machines have to get skilled, are getting skilled

at lumping data and things together and then filtering and understanding the language. You can’t

fake playing tennis. You can’t fake fishing. The totality of the practise represents the learning.

All of this data basically tells, as Samuel said, the story of who we are. The story of what we do.

It's assessment based on public performance. It's like an essay, and it can be assessed in exactly

the same way an essay is assessed. The way an essay is assessed now is a person reads it.

Sometimes they'll use a rubric but again, that's taking one hard problem and creating 10 hard

problems out of it.

Other times they'll look at it, and the mechanism by which they determine whether it's an A or an

F -- and they've decided that probably very quickly – maybe even after the first few paragraphs.

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Certainly when I read papers -- and I read lots -- I force myself to read the rest of the paper, but

really I know.

You know because you can tell. You can recognize it. See how the words are used? See how the

sentences are constructed? Are they even addressing a real problem? All of these things are in a

certain sense ineffable.

Like Dreyfus would say, "The knowledge of an expert is intuitive. It's recognized." (Lester,

2005) The machines are getting smart enough to do this themselves. Neural-network software is

getting smart enough to do it itself.

That's how computers are used to mark essays. They don't mark essays using key words or

grammatical constructions. That's a popular fiction. (Kolowich, 2014) If you look at the actual

way they do automatic grading of essays (Paruchuri, 2013), they give a neural net a training set

of five, 100, 1,000, whatever essays all previously marked, and then that creates the recognition

mechanism in the neural network, specifically the pattern and connection. Then when they put a

new essay into the system, it comes out with a grade based on that previous experience.

Grading/What is assessment?

A Recognition Task

Combine two things, the mechanism that creates clusters like we saw on LinkedIn and the

mechanism that can automatically grade essays, and you have the potential for a system that

doesn't actually need to be trained. You just let it out there into the world, let it find expert

discourse for itself, and then it can associate new discourse with the expert discourse.

I've just waved my hand here at what is in fact a very difficult and challenging problem. We have

researchers and engineers working on this problem...Not easy. But we know the machines are

getting closer.

We know this because machines are passing the Turing test. (Baraniuk, 2014) They have been

improving since the development of the chatbot, for example, which has been going on since the

1990s in MUDs, IRC, which systems like the one called Julia, (http://www.lazytd.com/lti/julia/)

where people would have conversations with these bots. That's been continuing since then.

Grading is a recognition task. It's what neural networks do, and it's what we design and build

interfaces for ourselves to do. It's how we'll respond to the Internet of things. (Lockton, 2004)

We're not going to examine all of that data personally. If we could, we'd design systems that

present to us maps, graphs, dashboards, things like that. It's how we're beginning to understand

the world now.

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Sometimes it's talked about as intuitive. Sometimes it's talked about as a language. Sometimes,

Don Tapscott, Marc Prensky, and the rest would talk about it as a culture and a generation in

that. (Tapscott, 2013) But what they really mean is that we are beginning to understand the world

through this process of pattern recognition in complex data. Preskett and Prensky might know

that this is what they're saying, but this is what they're saying. It's not a generational thing. It's

not a "ooh, we can all multitask." It's that if you look at this wide set of data you can see. You

can look at multiple thread streams, multiple Twitter feeds at once, and see the pattern.

How do you see the pattern? Because you train your brain over time. You have been exposed to

this data in the past and it creates a set of connections. Your brain is a pattern-recognition

machine. You see Tweets, LOLcats, whatever, and you recognize them like you recognize

Waldo, like you recognize a pattern. It's an instinct of knowledge. It doesn't have a name. It

doesn't have a word. It doesn't have a concept. But it's a thing. People know what it is.

What We Reveal

Our reaction to some of the stuff that goes on online is proof of our recognition of some of the

stuff that goes on online. We're beginning to become sensitive to these tunes, to these signals,

sometimes even overly sensitive, sometimes even hypersensitive. (Flaherty, 2014)

On the one hand, we reveal ourselves in our messages. (Tyson, 2014) We reveal our thoughts,

maybe times a lot more than we intended. Sometimes these assessments, what we reveal, what

other people look at, can be very personal, can be very uninhibited. (Rose, 2014) I think we

know this.

We're getting sometimes some very brutal -- not necessarily honest but nasty -- assessments

online. There's the whole range of reactions. The range of reactions is from the very positive to

the oh-so-very negative. I've had both, and I think we all have had both.

We're seeing all of this in other areas first. (Dyens, 2014) We're seeing big data used to analyze

all of these Internet reactions. We have a project (Mechanical Turk, 2013) at the National

Research Council where they looked at the emotional significance of Tweets. You have an event.

You look at all the Tweets. Are people generally happy with it? Are they upset with it? et cetera.

It's a project. It's done all by neural network analysis of this published data. Sometimes what we

reveal is very involuntary. You can sort of get this reaction. You may see a cat with the cone on

its head and say "aw." This "aw" sensation is revealed in your later communication. Sometimes

you actually type it out, "Aw."

It's interesting because it's not just a one-way thing. There's a dynamic interplay. I was thinking

about this. There's of course this whole literature about violent video games and that. I've played

violent video games. I don't think that they desensitize you. The reason that I don't think they

desensitize you is that there's no real emotional attachment to the figures in the game in the first

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place. (Bilton, 2014) It doesn't trigger the apocryphal mirror neurons. (Winerman, 2005) They're

maybe not that apocryphal, but you know what I mean.

But I'm also a devotee of fail videos. That's a little secret. But I love them because I see myself in

those. You see somebody on the bicycle going over the handlebars, and you go "ah." You do

have that feeling. That feeling is what comes out, and that feeling does get reflected. Then

Facebook analyzes it and monetizes it.

Ethical issues

These assessment mechanisms are being built into the LMS. (Petropoulou, Kasimatis,

Dimopoulos, & Retalis, 2014) You require your students to use an LMS. They use an LMS.

Your system now begins to analyze them in more and more and more detail over time. They

probably won't stop at the LMS, will they?

People are beginning to raise questions about this (Association for Learning Technology, 2014),

and I think these are important and good questions. They're asking about the methods of

exploring the types of data. What kinds of data is appropriate for an institution to collect? Should

an LMS be collecting information that reveals your emotional state? They're asking about data

fishing. "Let's see what's there."

The worlds of privacy and the worlds of analytics interact (Heath, 2014). This is the problem

with traces. You leave these traces, and they're analyzed. People see into your soul -- or other

non-made-up thing -- do we have the right to do this, or do we have the right to, as Samuel said,

take back our traces, take back our digital presence?

In a certain sense, that's impossible. It's like me trying to take back the fact that you all saw me

10 minutes ago -- "I'd love to take that back. It wasn't one of my better moments" -- but it's not

possible.

You have heard about this:. Facebook was doing an unannounced experiment on the emotional

reactions of 689,003 of its users to show that emotional states can be transferred to other people.

(Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock, 2014) They messed around with the lists of stories displayed in

their news-stream or their feed and then measured the responses to detect emotional responses to

that. Intuitively it's measuring something that we understand does exist.

If you show people nothing but stories of crime -- and there have been studies on this -- and they

think there's a high-crime rate. Even though the crime rate is going down, because all they see is

crime, they think it's going up. Facebook was doing the same sort of thing, except they didn't tell

anybody they were measuring this.

You've probably heard about the reaction. (Globe and Mail, 2014) People want to get out of

Facebook, and they'll jump to Twitter. But it's not just Facebook. Yahoo -- among others, I think

Google is the other one -- is dropping the do-not-track mechanism. (Marvin, 2014) That's a

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signal you can put in your browser so that people don't track you (They're saying that it's too

confusing, but they're the ones who made it confusing).

Google announced (Molnar, 2014) last April that they had halted the practice of scanning student

Gmail accounts for potential advertising purposes. (Bout, 2014) But that means they were

scanning student accounts for advertising purposes. They've decided to stop acting like your

creepy uncle.

Sometimes it's accidental. (Biemiller, 2014) Sometimes the data just gets out, but when it gets

out it can be a bombshell. Like this one, "University of Virginia Law School collecting and

distributing to potential employers information about grades," OK, "class ranking," I don't know,

"political affiliation, work experience, recommenders, information about where their girlfriend

lives." (Zaretsky, 2014) This is secret data. Students don't know about this, the employers do.

Options

What do we do? One option is to delete all of our social media accounts (Suarez, 2014) (Bussing,

2014) , but we're not going to do that, are we? People are not leaving Facebook. (Elliott, 2014)

They're not leaving Google. They're not leaving LinkedIn. It's not going to happen. These

services are too useful.

We learn about our friends. We learn about ourselves. It gives us this mechanism by which we

can recognize what the state of affairs of the world is. So we're not going to leave the system. At

the same time, companies are beginning to feel the heat.

Figure 6. InBloom. Source: op.cit.

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Gates funded a thing called inBloom. (Thompson, 2014) It was based in Atlanta, and basically it

was "we will centralize and store all of your student data for you." Well, we know about that sort

of practice, and we have Rupert Murdoch on the one hand, Gates and Carnegie on the other

hand, and Joe Hacker on the other hand all accessing this data.

Of course it raised a substantial response, a substantial reaction, and inBloom was eventually

shut down, (Korach, 2014) as it should be. (Daniel Solove, 2014) Ironically the new concern

about data is called the Snowden Effect. (Grealish, 2014) That's what you classically call

shooting the messenger.

But it's true. Canada just passed an anti-spam law, which I can report in my case did not change

the flow of email into my inbox. (Davison, 2014) There was a surge before the law was passed of

people asking whether I gave them permission to continue sending messages to me. I took great

delight in not giving them permission.

As of July 1st, the same messages, the same companies...The flow continued uninterrupted. But

there are laws in place now.

This whole concern about privacy is spreading -- and quite rightfully so in some cases,

wrongfully so in other cases. For example, lecture capture… (Opidee, 2014) you'll notice I did

advise everyone that I was recording this ahead of time. I hope it's still recording. Oh yes, it's still

chugging away there.

People are demanding that the classes they attend not be recorded because they think that the

classroom is a space where you expect privacy. It's an interesting question.

But it's also becoming more and more the case that when you attend a class, cameras will be on,

if not officially at the front of the room, unofficially in the back of the room. I could give you a

whole bunch of neat little examples of teachers rampaging on, but I won't.

One proposal -- and this comes from Doug Belshaw with Mozilla (Belshaw, 2014) -- is to ensure

that common spaces are public spaces and not privately owned. There's one weakness in that

proposal -- our public spaces aren't very private either; no matter where you work, it seems, there

will be both government and corporate surveillance, turning your private conversations into

products or commodities.

Personal Privacy

It's not simply the case that we can take these services out of the hands of the billionaires

because if we put it in the hands of the government, we get, again, the Snowden Effect. The real

answer here, I think, is personal privacy. Personal privacy and informal assessment are going to

go hand in hand. They will necessarily go hand in hand.

p.393

The schemes -- and you will hear a lot more about these -- big data and learning analytics are

going to flounder on the rock of personal privacy. There's clear indication that people want this.

One example is on a crowdfunding site called Seedmatch raising money for an NSA-proof

personal server. (Russia Today, 2014) They asked for €75,000. In 89 minutes, they raised

€750,000.

People are moving to privacy securing personal networks. There are a whole bunch of them.

Privatext, TigerText, Whisper, Cyber Dust, Ansa, Omelette, and Diaspora. (Bourne, 2014)

Personal disclosure, I invested in a whole 100 dollars in Diaspora.

A New System of Assessment

How does it work?

Let's put all of this together. The elements within your system of assessment are going to involve

personal servers. (BCNet, 2014) Not stuff you store on the learning management system, not

stuff you store on Facebook or LinkedIn, but stuff you store on a network you control and own.

There's going to be a public space, the information you are willing to share with other people,

your friends, the assessors that are out there in the world. That'll be your public face. It'll be the

clothes that you put on.

There will be identity management. But individuals will take control of our own identity.

Facebook that's depressing insists that each person will have one and only one identity. But

instead, one of the things we will see is people can have multiple identities. The can present

themselves in different ways to different audiences (just in the same way an athlete is one type of

person while playing the game and a very different person when caring for his daughter).

Figure 7. Personal Production

p.394

The things we do online publicly feeds into these content networks. This is known as personal

production. (Waters, 2014) These content networks act, in the first instance, as a global content

filtering system, a global perceptual network. You think of the social network as an

interconnected network of people. It functions in the same way as a neural network, in the sense

that it is a pattern recognizer.

One might ask, who are the curators? The answer is: everyone else. They interpret, revise, remix,

re-purpose, spin-roll, fold, et cetera. This is more than just curation, although curation is a word a

lot of people like to use. It's people, right? It's one person doing things, whatever they do, and

these things are seen, recognized, passed on, commented on, et cetera, by other people.

The first layer here is the social network. (Andrade, 2014) That creates the mechanism for

assessing the qualifications of the individual. One can imagine a social network of quantum

physicists. We know all the major quantum physicists know each other. They communicate with

each other, respond to each other's papers, go to the conferences, call each other names, et cetera.

There's this cluster, just like the cluster of green people in my LinkedIn network, except they're

quantum physicists and therefore have no color. They're linked to each other.

My qualifications, as a quantum physicist, can be mapped and understood as my positioning in

this cluster. If the other quantum physicists talk to me -- this is putting it very crudely, of course -

- I rate as a quantum physicist, but I can't fool the other quantum physicists because the one

person who recognizes a fake quantum physicist is a quantum physicist.

This human network acts as a perceptual mechanism for filtering the qualifications of people.

That's why the person could fool MIT staff. The degrees actually don't matter. But the way you

relate and interact with other people: that does matter. That's what's happening online today. And

as an aside, it has always happened. That's the way it's always worked except we didn't have a

global communications network to pull it off before, so it was always very local, very individual,

very personal.

Professions will coalesce around this. They're online communities. They're open ended networks.

They're similar to vendors' communities in practice, but they're not just that. They might be

gaming communities. (Nisnevich, 2014) They might be hobby communities, they might be

neighbourhood communities. These already exist, and we already use them. And the artifacts of

our interactions with each other in these communities can be measured and understood in terms

of their impact on our qualifications and credentials. (Salmons, 2014)

Interviews. Instead of a person interviewing with 10 different companies, a person does an

interview with a professional interviewer. The video and transcript are made available online,

and then these 10 companies can look at that interview, use their system to assess that interview

according to their internal criteria, and determine whether or not you get the job. It's a first-order

screening , but it's a very effective one.

p.395

Would you hire him? Could a machine detect whether you would hire him?

Assessment of the future will basically redefine what we mean by a body of work. (Bentley,

2014) It used to be that one’s work was one’s formal publication, books, paintings, films,

whatever. Now it will be the mass of communications, my mass of activities, whatever we do on

the public Internet. That will be a good thing because it will mean that we're able to obtain a

much more accurate, much more precise assessment of people and it will help to map, first of all,

the gaps in knowledge that need to be filled by learning, which is one of the purposes of

assessment.

How Do We Know This Will Work?

It is arguable that such a solution is no better than the competency maps we have now. We could

simply say, “We need maps.” There is nothing wrong with the map. The question is the place of

the map within the educational system. The competencies we develop today are just a guide –

they help us understand what we need to perform our work, but they don’t define it.

The map analogy is useful because there are different ways to create maps. One way of doing a

map is to send a guy on a ship out with an astrolabe and a compass, and to draw pictures of the

shorelines. That's what people used to do. But this is a bad idea, first of all, because it’s really

expensive, and second, because the maps aren't that accurate.

A better plan is to launch a satellite and take pictures. That is still not going to be the best map in

the world. We could probably still do better, and it's still only going to be a map. But it's going to

be a lot more accurate and a lot more useful. When we use a GPS, we use one of the picture kind

of maps, rather than one of the hands-made kind of maps because it's more accurate. It's not

perfect -- people have driven into rivers following on GPS. They really shouldn't depend on them

and believe that they are reality, but they're better.

We have the same story here with competences. Right now, the enterprise of sending people out

and drafting lists of competencies by hand, is too expensive and almost certainly inaccurate. We

want the alternate mechanism of automatically recognizing competencies.

We actually have a project in our program called Automated Competency Detection and

Recognition. The idea here is it's like a satellite photo of an environment -- in this case a social

infrastructure -- taking pictures, understanding the connection, et cetera, and that gives you your

map. But it's just a map. Once we understand that it's just a map and that it's based on what are

actually real human performances. And it's the real human performances -- and responses to

them which are equally important.

We may maintain that we need to have the human support to ensure that it’s accurate, but in fact

the reliance on humans makes it less accurate. For example, we have the choice between

OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org) versus Google Maps. OpenStreetMap is created

p.396

by people who map their own communities. But I use Google Maps. The reason for that is

OpenStreetMap is really detailed in some areas but not too detailed in other areas, because there

are no people there, like places where I live.

I live in a province the size of Belgium with a population of one of its smaller cities. There is a

lot of room, and there are very few people driving on the roads. None of them are mapping them.

That's the problem. Meanwhile, the Google satellite, or whatever it is, passes over once, takes a

picture of the province, and we've got our map.

Yes, machines may have blind spots, and the design of the analysis may create some blind spots.

Human perception works basically on the same principle, and human perception sometimes goes

wrong. Sometimes we're color blind. We only see what we're expecting to see. We don't see the

gorilla walking behind the crowd. Perception is not a perfect mechanism.

I think we need as a society to understand we've always had these mechanisms. We're describing

a system for analyzing social networks, but it’s just describing a giant version of a much richer

and complex network of social perception that adds to what we've always had in the past. The

perceptual mechanism we had in the past was composed of scholars and reporters going out,

watching things, taking pictures, and writing about them, publishing in newspapers, and things

like that.

It has on the whole functioned pretty well, but there have been some glaring weaknesses, for

example, weaknesses created by corporate control of newspapers or influence over research

results. The system being proposed here is probably better than that, but it's not perfect. One of

the useful things about the new system is that it's forcing us to question whether our

understanding of the world is correct. That isn't something we've been good at in the past.

It is hard to be self-correcting. We need to develop the global mechanism of self-awareness, of

reflective reflection. One of the reasons why I favor a neural network approach is that in the

neural network, the quality, if you will, of the inference is described in terms of the structure and

the properties of the network. For example, one of the properties of the neural networks is to

seek the set of connections that expresses the lowest potential level. It's a methodological

principle. It might be overall good or might not be overall good, but as a methodological

principle, you can apply that and test whether or not it is.

Who Pays?

Finally, I would like to address some practical considerations, such as the question of who pays.

The "who pays for it" is us because we've always paid for it. Facebook offers a free service, but

as everyone knows you are not Facebook's client. You are a product. You are what they sell to

their real customers, who are the advertisers, marketers, and corporations. That's who pays for it

ultimately.

p.397

We could approach this in different ways. One way is to view it as a technological problem, a

question of designing self-organization in such a way as to distribute revenue and qwork

equitably through the system. The other way is to attempt to make the same determinations

through social processes. There can be work and revenue for all if we view this from the

technological perspective. But the social processes could go in any direction, leaving us without

a means to pay for the system, and ultimately, without a system at all.

Those of us who are good at negotiating deals will get our employers pay for some of it. You

might get a computer from that. You might get a service from them. Just like my employer pays

for my computer in my office, my employer also pays for laptops. If I want a better one I can

configure on my own, I pay for it myself.

The more significant issue after ‘who pays’ will be ‘who is in control’? We've got to come up

with some sort of accommodation. There are voices even in my own company, the National

Research Council Canada, which is a government agency, saying "there should be no data

whatsoever that goes outside the corporate infrastructure," but from a practical sense that's

impossible.

The world is more permeable. The world must be more permeable than that because you can't

run in a completely isolated network and expect to communicate with the rest of the world. It

can't happen. There isn't going to be an easy answer to your question. Ultimately it comes out to

power. The power relations are shifting. It's outside the scope of this talk, but the power relations

between individuals and employers are shifting.

What's going to change things is the capacity for people to organize themselves, to quickly and

efficiently find people, individuals, and contractors to fill individual positions. People will be,

because of something like this, more mobile, more able to market their works to a wide variety

of employers worldwide as opposed to just in your own city or your own plot. That changed the

dynamic.

The relationship between employer and employee becomes one more of a negotiation between

equals rather than the exertion of a corporate dominance by one over the other. This is the

technological solution. That's what allows for the negotiations to take place regarding the

ownership and the management of the data. But social forces push back. I know employers don't

like this. People in power never do, and they will resist this -- count on it.

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p.405

The Chinese Test Example

I'm going to quote at some length from David Wiley's Facebook page355 to set this up (so you don't have to go get a Facebook account to read this), and then offer my comments below.

This is a *perfect* parable for the way math has been taught for decades:

"A person lives inside a room that has baskets of tokens of Chinese characters. The

person does not know Chinese. However, the person does have a book of rules for

transforming strings of Chinese characters into other strings of Chinese characters.

People on the outside write sentences in Chinese on paper and pass them into the room.

The person inside the room consults the book of rules and sends back strings of

characters that are different from the ones that were passed in. The people on the outside

know Chinese. When they write a string to pass into the room, they understand it as a

question. When the person inside sends back another string, the people on the outside

understand it as an answer, and because the rules are cleverly written, the answers are

usually correct. By following the rules, the person in the room produces expressions that

other people can interpret as the answers to questions that they wrote and passed into the

room. But the person in the room does not understand the meanings of either the

questions or the answer." (From Searle (1980) via Greeno (1997) via dy/dan today 356).

It's encouraging to see recent trends in math instruction trying to move beyond the "Old

Way" - that hallowed, relentless focus on the process of performing calculations without

ever helping students see what the calculations *mean*. In addition to being able to

calculate, people need to actually *understand* math. If they don't understand it, the only

times in their lives that math will ever be useful to them is when they're confronted by a

textbook.

It's a total crime when you think about: 10 or so *years* studying the subject, and all that

many people have to show for it are the most utterly banal applications of addition and

multiplication. Maybe some subtraction. (Division is way too complicated.) Certainly

nothing taught after elementary school.

I continue to be completely amazed - absolutely stunned - at how vehemently many in

Utah and around the country are fighting against educators' efforts to help students learn

math in a way that teaches them both to calculate *and* to understand. Why don't they

355 https://www.facebook.com/opencontent/posts/10153381263483475

356 http://blog.mrmeyer.com/

p.406

want them to understand? Why do they want to sentence their child to life in the Chinese

Room?

I have to add, too, that I'm increasingly confused by the popular fetish with the algebra,

trigonometry, and calculus pathway. When's the last time you read a news story involving

polynomials? Or heard a piece on the radio involving the law of cosines? Never. But

when was the last time you were manipulated by a media conglomerate, or a government

agency, or a news outlet, or a campaign ad because you don't understand statistics? Sadly,

it was probably earlier today. Normal people have infinitely more opportunities to use the

concepts taught in statistics in their lives than they do the concepts taught in the

traditional math sequence. How about some love for statistics?

That's a really interesting use of the Chinese Room example (it is well known as such to

philosophers). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ 357

The example was originally intended as a response to the 'Turing Test' model for evaluating

artificial intelligence. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/358 The idea of the Turning Test is that a machine could be considered intelligent if its responses are sufficient to fool a human

interlocutor.

One response to the example suggests that a machine could not actually succeed in responding

without actually understanding. It would need to form models and comprehend principles in

order to anticipate the variety of comments and questions thrown at it.

Another, related, response is that the example appears to an intuition that has not itself been

validated. If we did not believe a priori that the combination of person and machine did not

understand, would the example convince us that they don't? (This is sometimes called the

'systems' response.)

My own take is that the example, if it succeeds, succeeds because of oversimplification. Our

interactions are not in fact composed entirely of conversations in words. If the understanding of

the Chinese Room is inadequate, it is because cognition thought of as interaction via text is

inadequate.

The same sort of responses could be offered with respect to testing. First, the student could not

really succeed in the test without actually understanding (call that the 'Brainbench' example.

Second, the capacity to respond to thee tests is itself a form of understanding (call that the

357 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

358 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/

p.407

cognitivist response). Third, appropriate testing would go well beyond text-based questions and

answers (call that the recognition response).

p.s.

I would also add that despite the weaknesses of the algebra, trigonometry, and calculus pathway,

the suggestion that people learn statistics instead is not a viable alternative, for the primary

reason that it is not an actual alternative.

Once you get into the study of anything beyond simply statistics, you are going to be involved in

the study of algebra, trigonometry, and calculus. Statistics is the study of change, and change can

come in pretty much any mathematical form. 359

Moncton, Canada

August 3, 2014

359 http://www.downes.ca/post/53662

p.408

Bader A. Alsaleh, Summary Notes

Bader A. Alsaleh (Professor, Instructional Design and Technology, King Saud University)

@ba_alsaleh

In 40 minutes, will present a number of ideas.

Why are we interested in social media? What is the importance of talking about it? What is the

relation to education? And what are the implications on pedagogy?

Pedagogists have spent the 20th century asking about these questions, but in the 21st century

everything has changed. Now social media is playing a major role, with implications to e-

learning environments.

Why are we talking of a second generation of pedagogy - Pedagogy 2 - and what are the

paradigms of this shift in education?

I have to assign some blame to pedagogists; we are using smart phones, etc., but does this mean

the relation between teachers and students have changed? There are complex drivers for a

paradigm shift: educational crises, learning reserach, tech affordances, 21qst century skills.

Crisis - if we were accomplishing everything we wanted, there would be no need for changes.

Research - speaking of a number pf philosophers talking about the type of education people get

in the 21st century. In the 20th century they received 'inert knowledge' - it was not related to the

social development of a country. It does not lead anywhere. Why Don't Students Like

Education? (book - weapons of mass instruction).

Characteristic of learners: hope that lectures to follow will focus on that research

What is the purpose of social media? Collaborative or cooperative learning - they want

cooperative or interactive types of media (aka social media). They want a digital bridge.

www.tomorrow.org - Speak Up 2009, FETC.

Oblinger & Oblinger - characteristics of students in the digital age. Transformation in the

relation between the teacher and the student. Gates: will there be a change - the change will be

remarkable. Social media - necessary for the spread of digital knowledge. Students have

remarkable expectations.

Two main pedagogical models:

 instruction or acquisition paradigm (transmission, outcome based)

 learning or participatory paradigm (transformative, process-based)

p.409

The third type depends on practical application. It is based on innovation. We learn through our

life. It is about shaping and reshaping knowledge. It is related to the exploitation of network

advantages. Teaching and learning is effected by the new technology.

Bahrain, 2003 - students were prepared to work on a specific type of project. We can ask, why

aren't our children similarly able? So we have two objectives: to improve the ability of students,

and to support social interactivity between students.

The lecture may appear to be academic, but this does not mean things have changed much.

Electronic, on the board, but I am talking to you. But the second level of technology is to bring

about the participation of students.

Calling for change in educational environment should result in a change in technology. Pedagogy

2 is a reaction to the remarkable failure of the provision of funds to education technology. In

most parts of the world there is a backwardness in the use of technology. Technology integration

today means that tech should be part and parcel of the educational activity. There is an

indispensable link between education and tech, without that link we will still be backward in that

field.

Social media is particularly important in the field of teaching. Education should be part & parcel

of our activities; the learner should also be the producer.

Social media lies at the intersection of social constructivist, connectivism.

Social constructivism - Vygotsky - Wheeler also mentioned him - the teacher should provide the

necessary help that the student needs. This also applies to the students.

Connectivism - as educators in the Arab world we have not even reached agreement in such

theories. Links to computer science; this could be much more useful than the role played by the

teacher. Learning should actually focus on plurality and differences. The ability to know, to

learn, is interdisciplinary. The types of information should be linked together.

Related: collective intelligence and distributed cognition. Wheeler referred to that also. This type

of information actually exists in the mind of others. Reynard (2008). Collective intelligence

(Rogers, 1997; Bruse, 2012). This could not actually happen in the 20th century.

(Overview of major pedagogic models)

- e-learning 2.0

- connectivism

- communities of enquiry

etc

Key elements of pedagogy: personalization, participation, productivity. These together create

Pedagogy 2.0.

p.410

The necessity that future programs should be cumulative in the sense that they should help

interdisciplinary things. The program must include various items of knowledge, each of which

could help the other, and each belonging to a different area of knowledge.

The teacher should contribute to an environment of e-learning in which the students can work

together. And learning should continue outside the learning environment. This is called 'meta-

learning'.

The necessary skills we should try to create: interaction, participation; self-reliance; making

decisions; We should create authentic learning environments and preserve interactive educational

environments.

Future e-learning environment is the intersection of pedagogy 2.0, w1st century competencies,

and technology affordances. Mishra, Punya, Koehler, 2006: intersection of content, pedagogy,

technology.

Cycle of training: pre-activity, initiation (social media), collective knowledge, summation (fine-

tuning), reflection (re-evaluation, or assessment).

Denver - importance of information. Florida - video clips. Students try to listen to the ideas of

others, given a chance to reflect about what others have done. If they are given such chances,

they will begin to like or love those schools.

PLEs: interoperability, openness, learner-centric. Challenges that face pedagogy 2.0 in the field

of instruction. The necessary types of training, not just confined to the educational environment

in an institution - these institutions have many routine restructions; there is a need for a gradual

transition.

We should learn with technology, not from technology. It's more than having classes full of

technology; we should actually be able to use technology.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

September 17, 2014

p.411

MOOCthink

Responding to Linda Harasim's comment, here360: To Mohsen Saadatmand: there is indeed significant overlap between communities of interest and

cMOOCs and the underlying mechanisms are the same. The difference between the communities

and the MOOCs is that the former are persistent while the latter are occasional. Thus, the two

play different roles: the communities embed knowledge and standardize practice, while the

MOOCs disrupt existing patterns of thinking and introduce people to new connections and new

ideas.

To Linda Harasim: interesting and engaging comment. I do not think that artificial intelligence

will be in any particular way better than human intelligence. But I think that anything that is a

network – and this includes networks of machines as well as networks of humans or networks of

neurons – can develop intelligence. There is substantial evidence to suggest that this is true, and I

think it is no longer sufficient to suggest that the theory is simply an instance of “magical

thinking.”

Take one particular point you make, for example. You write: “Siemens and Downes expected

that somehow 2,000 participants should self-manage their learning by forming interest groups:

how would or could 2000 strangers meet and self-organize into functioning learning groups?

How would each individual know how to identify their interests?” The suggestion that this is

impossible, that strangers could not self-organize, is refuted by reams of evidence. From tag-

based communities to clusters on interest groups on Google Groups to the threads in Metafilter

and 4chan, people have shown a remarkable ability to self-organize. And the research on our

MOOCs (and even some xMOOCs) shows that this happens in MOOCs as well, and that these

self-organizations have a learning focus.

But I also think you misunderstand the role of technology in cMOOCs. You write, “the ultimate

organizer and decision-maker in the learning network (whether formal or non-formal) is that

artificial intelligence (neural networks) replace the teacher or the moderator or the organizer.

Technology replaces the human who is making the decisions and organizing the interactions.”

This is simply not true, and nothing I have developed or advocated leans this way.

Technology makes learning networks possible; technology creates the channels through which

people can interact, but it is people – each one of them making their own decisions – who choose

360 http://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/01/the-role-of-communities-of-practice-in-a-digital-age/comment-page-

1/#comment-920867

p.412

what to read, what to link to, what to create, what to say. The ultimate organizers and decision

makers in the learning network are students.

Can machines learn? Sure they can, of course they can, anything that is networked can learn.

Simple stupid neurons, when joined together, can learn. So can simple stupid computers. But the

most interesting results happen when you take networks of humans and, instead of telling them

what to do, enable them to make decisions for themselves. Now you have networks of learning

networks. You get remarkable results, like memes, cat photos, and maybe, global democracy.

And it’s not magic. It’s the simple, observable, science of networks.

Moncton, Canada

October 6, 2014

p.413

Positivism and Big Data

This is an outcome of a conversation with Rita Kop regarding the article The View from

Nowhere361.

She writes, data scientists use their quantitative measure, as positivists do, by putting a large

number veneer over their research

This misrepresents positivism, just as Nathan Jurgenson does in his original article.

The core of positivism is that all knowledge is derived from experience. The core tenet of

positivism is that there is a knowable set of observation statements which constitute the totality

of experience. The number of sentences doesn’t particularly matter; in some cases (eg. in

Popper’s falsifiability theory) even one such sentence will be significant.

Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” most clearly states the core of positivism in the process

of attacking it. The two dogmas are:

1. Reductionism – that all theoretical statements can be reduced to a set of observation

statements (by means of self-evident logical principles);

2. The analytic-synthetic distinction – this is the idea that observation statements can be

clearly and completely distinguished from theory, which of course, turns out not to be

true (because we have ‘theory-laden data’.

We can apply these principles to big data analytics, of course, and we can use the standard

criticisms of positivism to do it:

1. Underdetermination – this is the ‘problem of induction’ or the ‘problem of confirmation’.

Theoretical statements cannot be deduced from observation statements, hence, we rely on

induction, however, observational data underdetermines theory – for any given set of

observation statements, an infinite set of theoretical statements is consistent with each

statement equally well confirmed;

2. Observer bias – the language we employ in order to make observation statements must

exist prior to the making of the statement, and hence, adds an element of theory to the

statement. This language is typically a product of the culture of the investigator, hence,

language introduces cultural bias.

To Quine’s two objections I am inclined to add a third: logicism. This core element of logical

positivism in particular in general escapes challenge. It is essentially the idea that the relation

361 http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/view-from-nowhere/

p.414

between data and theory can be expressed logically, that is, in systems comprised of statements

and inferences.

It’s not that data scientists put a ‘veneer’ over their research by virtue of large numbers. Rather,

it is that, by virtue of following positivism’s basic tenets, they subscribe to one of positivism’s

core principles: a difference that does not make (an observable) difference is no difference at all.

The contemporary version is “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

Flip this, and you get the assertive statement: if there is anything to be found, it will be found in

the data. If there is any improvement to process or method that can be made, this will result in a

change in the data. It is this belief that places an air of inevitability to big data.

We can employ Quine’s objections to show how the data scientists’ beliefs are false.

1. The same data will confirm any number of theories. It is not literally true that you can

make statistics say anything you want, but even when subscribing to Carnap’s

requirement (that the totality of the evidence be considered; no cherry-picking) you can

make statistics say may different things. This will be true no matter how much data there

is.

2. The collection of the data will presuppose the theory (or elements of the theory) it is

intended to represent (and, very often, to prove). I’ve often stated, as a way to express

this principle, that you only see what you’re looking for.

In my own epistemology, though I remain unreservedly empiricist, I have abandoned Quine’s

‘logical point of view’. In particular, I propose two major things:

1. Theory (and abstractions in general) are not generated through a process of induction, but

rather through a process of subtraction. These are not inferences to be drawn from

observations, but rather, merely ways of looking at things. For example, you can see a

tiger in front of you, but if you wish, you can ignore most of the detail and focus simply

on the teeth, in which case we've generalized it to "a thing with teeth".

2. Neither observations nor theories are neutral (nor indeed is there any meaningful way of

distinguishing the two (which is why I don’t care whether connectivism is a theory)).

Rather, any observation is experienced in the presence of the already-existing effects of

previous observations, which is the basis for the phenomenon of ‘recognition’, which in

turn is the basis for knowledge.

These constitute a consistent empirical epistemology, however, they are in important ways

inconsistent with the core tenets of big data analytics (but that said, this depends a lot on how the

analytics are carried out).

In particular, it conflicts with the idea that you can take one large set of data, representing any

number of individuals, and draw general conclusions from it, because these data are embedded in

p.415

personal perspectives, which are (typically) elided in big data analytics. Hence, big data is

transforming deeply contextual data into context-free data. Any principles derived from such

data are thereby impacted.

Moncton, Canada

October 13, 2014

p.416

Constructivism and Eliminative Materialism

A few months ago Fred M Beshears and I discussed362 Constructivism and Materialism. He compiled the conversation and posted it here363.

--------------------------------------------

Stephen Downes

We don't reason over perceptions or construct meaning, etc- there's no mechanism to do that -

rather, we gradually become better recognizers.

The basic constructivist premise (and I mean constructivists generally, not just those working in

education) is that learning and discovery proceeds by the creation or models or representations

off reality, and then carrying out operations in these representations. Usually these

representations are created using a symbol system - language, mathematics, universal grammar,

etc - composed of signs and rules for manipulation.

We create meaning or sense in these representations by means of a semiotic system - a way of

assigning meaning to individual symbols, phrases, groups of symbols, or entire models,

sometimes by reference, sometimes by coherence, etc. (note that there are *many* different

variations on this common theme).

These representations are easy to find in the world - we can see instances of language and

mathematics, for example, in any book. But the theory argues that we *also* have these systems

in our minds - that we actually reason in our heads by means of these representations, and hence

that learning means constructing these representations and assigning meaning to their symbolic

entities. Cf. for example the 'physical symbol system' hypothesis.

What I am arguing is that this position is wrong. That even *if* we construct representations in

our mind, there is no distinct entity over and above the representation that does the constructing,

manipulation, or sense-making. Therefore, we do *not* learn in this way.

------------------------------------------------

Fred M Beshears

362 https://www.facebook.com/downes/posts/10153942292095083

363 http://innovationmemes.blogspot.ca/2014/10/constructivism-and-eliminative.html

p.417

It depends on which level of description works best for the problem at hand. To describe the

workings of a computer you could pick from the following: logic gates, machine language,

assembly language, a high level programming language (e.g. Lisp), or the user interface.

Similarly with humans, you can pick from the following: an individual neuron, a group of

neurons (e.g. Kurzweil claims that it takes an average of 100 neuron in the cerebral cortex to

form a pattern recognizer), or groups of pattern recognizers (Kurzweil claims there are around

300 million pattern recognizers in the cerebral cortex), or one's 1st person account of one's

stream of consciousness (which for many of us comes in the form of a sequence of words).

Of course, animal consciousness is probably very different from human. And, with computers,

we know how to map from one level of description to another. But, with biologically evolved

brains, we still have a long way to go before we've completely reverse engineered the brain.

As for educators, I don't know if there is one "correct" level of description. Some may prefer folk

psychology, others neuroscience.

----------------------------------------------------

Stephen Downes

Not all descriptions are simply 'levels of description'. Some are simply wrong and should be

eliminated from the discourse. For example, discussion of 'phlogiston' was not just some level of

description, it was just wrong. If you say that your computer has a soul, it's not just a level of

description, it's wrong. And when educators use 'folk levels of description', they should be aware

that their discourse is no more reliable than phrenology or reading the Tarot. I don't think that

being an educator is a license to use whatever terminology and ontology they please.

------------------------------------------------------

Fred M Beshears

There may be some eliminative materialists out there who have jumped the gun and are now

starting to claim the folk psychology has been successfully eliminated by neuroscience!

Eliminative materialism may someday turn out to be right, but it would be very wrong for them

to claim that they have proved their case as of today - especially if they try to do so by simply

making selective references to physics.

Some folk theories of science - such as phlogiston - have been eliminated and have been

consigned to the history books. And, some eliminative materialists working in the fields of

cognitive psychology and neuroscience selectively refer to these examples to bolster their case.

In the case of cognition, the eliminative materialist believes that since this has happened in some

cases in physics it will someday happen in cognitive psychology, too. In other words, the

p.418

eliminative materialist believes that neuroscience will someday eliminate folk psychology; it will

not simply match up with folk psychology categories.

But, there are at least two other materialist schools of thought that we should also consider:

reductive materialism and functionalism.

Reductive materialists (aka identity theorists) believe that someday folk psychology will be

reduced to neuroscience. In other words, they believe that each mental state of folk psychology

will be found to be in a 1-to-1 relationship with physical states of the brain. They, too, try to

support their theory by making selective references to physics. So, the identity theorist will say

that in the case of sound we know that as a train compresses air it creates sound waves, and that

high pitched sounds are the property of having a high frequency of oscillating waves in air. We

later learned that light was an electromagnetic wave and that the color of an object is related to

the reflective efficiencies of the object, much like a musical cord. But the notes in the case of

light are electromagnetic waves. So some reductive materialists in the field of cognitive

psychology (like some eliminative materialists) use selective references to physics to bolster

their case - i.e. that someday there will be a intertheoretic reduction between folk psychology and

neuroscience.

Functionalism is yet another form of materialism. According to Paul Churchland, the

functionalist believes the "essential or defining feature of any type of mental state is the set of

causal relationships it bears to (1) environmental effects on the body, (2) other types of mental

states, and (3) bodily behavior." (p. 63 of Matter and Consciousness 2013) Unlike the behaviorist

who wants to define mental states solely in terms of inputs from the environment and behavioral

outputs, the functionalist believes that mental states involve an ineliminable reference to a wide

variety of other mental states, which makes impossible the behaviorist game plan. Functionalists

are at odds with reductive materialists, too. So, the functionalist would argue that a computer or

an alien from another planet could have the same metal states that humans do (e.g. pain, fear,

hope) even though they implement these mental states in a different physical substrate.

According to Paul Churchland: "This provides a rational for a great deal of work in cognitive

psychology and artificial intelligence, where researchers postulate a system of abstract functional

states and then test the postulated system, often by way of its computer simulation, against

human behavior in similar circumstances."

But there are arguments against functionalism, too. For example, many functionalist AI

researchers try to model thought as "an internal dance of sentence-like states, a dance that

respects the various inferential relations holding among [propositions]" (p. 80 in Mind and

Matter) But although humans do have a command of language, and most 1st person accounts of

human thought do involve language, there are obviously other creatures with brains that do not.

Churchland provides a very balanced presentation of these three perspectives. And, he doesn't try

to make the case that eliminative materialism has triumphed over the other two perspectives by

p.419

simply making selective reference to the cases in physics that support his view (which is a

moderate form of eliminative materialism).

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Stephan Downes

Hiya Fred, I am of course familiar with identity theory and functionalism (you can see references

in my latest presentation) and I am of course familiar with Paul Churchland. Your overview is

quite correct as a broad account of some major recent theories in the philosophy of mind.

Now of course I am not going to claim to have defended elimininative materialism in one or two

paragraphs (or even in my recent talk, in which I discuss both identity theory and various forms

of functionalism, as well as Thomas Nagel and the cognitivist position of people like Fodor and

Pylyshyn).

My response to you was to indicate that folk psychology is not automatically correct, and that

something akin to Dennett's 'intentional stance' might not be reasonable if in fact the position I

argue for is correct. Indeed, I think that folk psychology is deeply flawed (cf Steven Stich 'From

Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science'). In particular, if the claims made by folk psychology

(and for that matter constructivism) are literally true, then we descend into nonsense and

contradiction.

But what I would also like to be clear about is that in this case as in all cases I am explaining my

line of reasoning. This is where my thoughts have led me. I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I don't

expect anyone to be swayed by my arguments (this makes my quite unlike most theorists in

education). I develop learning systems based on my theories, and if they work, that is my

argument.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Fred M Beshears

Thank you Stephen. If the eliminative materialists are correct and neuroscience advances to the

point where we can replace folk psychology, then the effect on education may be far more

radical than even the cMOOC.

In anticipation of this coming revolution, I've started writing a book. It will be called: What color

are your neural implants, a guide for post-singularity job seekers.

:-)

Moncton, Canada

October 15, 2014

p.420

More Than Apps and Gadgets

Published as More Than Apps and Gadgets, Open Learning, Dec 02, 2014.

Umair Haque, who is perhaps the only economist I can read without suffering indigestion, quite

rightly condemns today’s penchant for addressing social problems with yet another app. “If you

believe that Ubers, tacocopters, and dating-slash-butler apps… change the world… especially this

world,” he writes, “you’re not just clueless. You’re hopeless.” 364

So what does matter? “Make a vaccine for Ebola. Give the half the world missing it clean water,

education, sanitation. Fix global youth unemployment. Give women and minorities a way to use

the web without being harassed.” Stuff like that. Concrete, tangible good produced that

measurably and meaningfully improves the lives of people and propels us toward higher

aspirations.

This is a bit of a challenge for a web-monger like me. For the last twenty years or so I’ve been

scripting my own versions of things I think would help – a learning management system here, an

open website on the logical fallacies there, learning networks, open online courses, and most

recently, personal learning environments. It’s hard not to wonder whether I’m not just serving up

more of the same slop that has led us to where we are today.

Haque is pretty clear about what is not useful. “Apps, gadgets, hearts, likes,” he writes. “Taps,

clicks, swipes, screens. These numb us with comfortable titillation.” They prevent us from

aspiring to something more. “Things that make people…butlers, chauffeurs, maids,

courtesans…debtors, sharecroppers, zombies…don’t change anything.”

He’s right, of course. The best inventions are liberating. They give us life, they nourish us, they

advance us, they engage us, they empower us. They are not things that help us to become better

workers, better servants, better employees.

That, if I may share a secret, is what has always bothered me about my work in education. In so

many ways, we are either working to keep in power those who are already in power, providing

them elite educations at exclusive universities, or we are perpetuating the servitude of the

working people, teaching employment skills and vocational trades to the children of factory

workers and farmers. And educators themselves, especially in today’s outcomes-based

environment, are so often cast in the role of the butler or the maid, pandering to, rather than

enlightening, the children of our employers.

364 Umair Haque. What it Means to Change the World. Medium. https://medium.com/bad-words/what-it-means-

to-change-the-world-d2b2bf50d9d4

p.421

I’ve always aspired to something more. I’ve always believed that at the end of my career, when I

looked back, I would look on a body of work that led to something more significant than an app

or a servlet.

That is why I am engaged not merely in the development of learning technology, but also

engaged in the development of means, methods and mechanisms to deliver open learning – with

‘open’ being thought of in the widest and most liberating sense. And when I design educational

systems – even when I am working with partners in government and industry – I am first and

foremost thinking of my client as the students and learners themselves. And that is why I think in

terms not of pedagogy and learning design, but in terms of self-management and personal

development.

Educational technology is meaningless if it is not also liberating technology. The purpose of

education is not to serve certain social objectives or as a means to employment, but rather to

place in the hands of the learner the best and most useful set of tools possible to enable him or

her to choose and forge the best quality life for themselves, or as John Stuart Mill would say, to

pursue their own good in their own way. Because I believe the best society and the best

employment are not those defined by one person over another, but those chosen and built by the

people themselves.

We need to remember this when we are building our trinkets and baubles. We can build a better

world out of the simplest elements, but only if we image what a better world is like, and refuse to

be swayed on our pursuit of it.

Moncton, Canada

November 17, 2014

p.422

Knowledge as Recognition

This is an assignment365 for a grade 12 philosophy course366.

Proposition

Most theories of knowledge depict knowledge as a type of belief. The idea, for example, of

knowledge as 'justified true belief' dates back to Plato, who in Theaetetus argued that having a

'true opinion' about something is insufficient to say that we know about something.

In my view, knowledge isn't a type of belief or opinion at all, and knowledge isn't the sort of

thing that needs to be justified at all. Instead, knowledge is a type of perception, which we call

'recognition', and knowledge serves as the justification for other things, including opinions and

beliefs.

Philosophical Enquiry

One of the long-standing problems of philosophy concerns the justification of knowledge. Noam

Chomsky called this problem Plato's Problem. It results from what he calls the "poverty of the

stimulus." The evidence and information we receive from the senses, he argues, is insufficient to

justify the knowledge we have.

A child, for example, can learn a language even though not explicitly instructed. The knowledge

of a language is a way of knowing about universals, because we can generate an infinite number

of different sentences in a language. But our experiences are always finite and limited. No matter

how much we experience, we can always imagine, and express in language, something that goes

beyond our experiences.

In the field of 'epistemology' - that is, the philosophy of knowledge - this is known as the

problem of the justification of induction. How can we know about general properties, such as

colours or shapes, when we only have limited experiences of them? How can we know universal

truths, such as "2+2=4", when we have only finite experiences? We can't! This was the

conclusion Descartes reached in Meditations, and he argued that experience is insufficient and

unreliable. We must rely on our rationality, our innate knowledge pre-written in our mind like a

"mark of God" to make sense of the world.

365 http://philosophy.talons43.ca/2014/11/26/midterm-assignment-personal-theory-of-knowledge/

366 http://philosophy.talons43.ca/2014/11/26/midterm-assignment-personal-theory-of-knowledge/

p.423

Logic

Cartesian scepticism, as it came to be called, marked the beginning of a tradition in philosophy

called rationalism. The rationalists believed that knowledge comes first from the mind, and that

through the application of the principles of rationality we can come to know about the world.

That is not to discount the role of experience and perception. But these, argue the rationalists, are

unreliable.

Perhaps the most important of the rationalists was Immanual Kant. In the Critique of Pure

Reason he described the "transcendental deduction" in which he established the "necessary

conditions of the possibility of experience". Though direct experience of the external world is

impossible, he argues, we can understand its fundamental structure because our experiences of it

would be impossible without it. These fundamental structures are the principles of space and

time, and these are governed by the principles of pure logic.

In the 20th century, the logical positivists attempted to realize Kant's vision by constructing a

universal theory of knowledge based on fundamental data from experience - sense data - and

logical inferences from that data. As described by A.J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic,

knowledge begins with the inference of general principles from observation language, and then

proceeds by means of verification of these principles through the process of making and testing

predictions. The meaning of a sentence was equivalent to the conditions of its verification; a

sentence that could not be verified by experience was, literally, meaningless.

Logic is, in essence, pure abstraction, produced by thought alone. Without the material of

observation statements, it has no meaning on its own. Logic can be used to derive knowledge

from experience, but not to produce knowledge by itself. Logical and mathematical truths are

true only within the language of logic itself; they are then applied to statements about experience

and used to infer new statements about experience. So the theory goes, at least.

Scientific Philosophy

In the 20th century the sciences flourished, greatly bolstered by the application of logic and

mathematics to physical phenomena. Our understanding of language and meaning led to the

development of computer science, which in turn led to the information revolution.

The scientific model described by Ayer was described in much more detail by philosophers such

as Carl Hempel, who formalized the method of hypothesis formation and prediction into what he

called the Deductive-Nomological Model.Another model was created by Karl Popper, who

emphasized falsification rather than verification. Instead of proving that a scientific theory is

true, argued Popper, we need to try to prove that theories are false.

Even our study of the mind was impacted; based on logical positivist principles philosophers like

B.F. Skinner and Gilbert Ryle developed and popularized the science of behaviourism, which

p.424

reduced all statements about mental phenomena (such as beliefs, desires and hopes) to statements

about physical behaviours.

However, the science of logical positivism was based on a critical flaw, which was first

described by W.V.O. Quine in his important paper 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism'. Logical

positivism depends, he writes, on two principles that turn out to be false:

 the analytic-synthetic distinction, which distinguishes between observation statements

and and pure logic

 the principle of reduction, which argues that all knowledge can be reduced to observation

and perception

Our observation of the world, our perceptions, our experiences - these are all theory laden.

Scientists work in what Thomas Kuhn called paradigms and these define not only the problems

that need to be solved and the principles we use to solve them, but also the meanings of the

words we use and what counts (and doesn't count) as observation and data.

Metaphysics

Today, we don't know what exists, and what is just an artifact of our mind or of our scientific

theories. We are immersed in our world. The meanings of our words is not fixed and determined

by observations and reality, but vary and change, as Ludwig Wittgenstein argues, by the way we

use them. Our languages are not constructions we create from experience and reason, but games

we play with each other in the day-to-day fact of existence.

The theoretical stance we adopt determines what we know (or at least, what we think we know)

about the world. One major stance is called 'realism' - this is the idea that we can know that there

is a real world, and that science is the process of studying that world. The best evidence of the

reality of the world, according to this approach, is that it exists. "Here is a hand," says G.E.

Moore, holding out a hand. What more proof could you have? What more proof could you need?

But realism has its sceptics. Not everything that we perceive is 'real'. Take, for example, the

colour red. Is the colour red real? Plato thought it was, and that it existed on a plane of ideal

forms (along with goodness and virtue, justice and beauty). But even as early as 800 years ago,

philosophers like William of Ockham were questioning this doctrine. "Do not multiply entities

beyond necessity," argued Ockham in the first formulation of what we now call Ockham's

Razor.

Contrasting realism is the philosophy called phenomenology. Most completely described by

Edmund Husserl, it is the study of the structure of human experience. This experience typically

involves what Husserls calls intentionality, or the property of being directed outward toward the

world. The idea is that experience represents or 'intends' external objects or properties.

Experience, therefore, is something that is interpreted through a process of reason and reflection.

p.425

This approach to phenomena can be illuminating; Jacques Derrida, for example, finds through

the interpretation of language the essence of hidden meanings and what he calls the difference in

the meaning of a word according to the alternatives to that word imagined by the speaker.

In contemporary this has evolved into the idea that knowledge and reality are contained

in representations, which are essentially mental models constructed as the result of experience.

Thus, for example, when we say that a proposition P is 'true', what we mean is that 'P is true in

M', where M is a model or representation of the world. Most science today is conducted through

the creation and testing of models or representations as a whole. One example of this approach is

described in Bas C. van Frassen's The Scientific Image, which describes what he calls

'constructive empiricism'.

Representationalism has also been advanced as a theory of mind. In his book Representations

Jerry Fodor outlines the thesis that our mental states are composed of mental representations,

which in turn are created out of what he calls the language of thought. Like Chomsky, Fodor

believes that the capacity to build these representations is innate, and that we are born with the

potential to realize a fully formed language of thought already realized. Knowledge, therefore, is

a true and justified statement in this language, and a collection of such statements combine to

form a representational state.

Toward a Theory of Knowledge as Recognition

The history of philosophy is the history of the attempt to justify knowledge through some

mechanism of justifying statements describing states of affairs in the world. But this attempt has

been thwarted by the fact that we do not have direct experience of the world, and hence are

forced in one way or another to study ourselves in an attempt to study the world.

Ultimately, this is unsatisfying. Logic and language require that statements be true or false, or

that we have what are called 'attitudes' toward propositions. If knowledge is formed of

propositions, therefore, there will always be the question of what comes before knowledge, that

will justify or otherwise lead us to forming these attitudes - that a proposition is believed, that it

is probable, that it is true, that it is necessary, that it is intentional, and the like. But knowledge

should be the foundation of these attitudes, and not the result of them. The idea, therefore, that

knowledge is composed of statements in a language, or propositions in a representation, is

inherently self-contradictory.

What if knowledge were something else? What if it were something that is sybsymbolic? What if

language was useful as a way to express knowledge, but not what knowledge actually is?

In the 1700s the English philosopher David Hume conducted a sceptical enquiry of human

reason and reached much the same conclusion. Among other aspects of knowledge, he examined

the principle of causation. Without causation, we do not have any coherent concept of science, or

p.426

of explanation, or of human action and morality, at all. So if anything is an element of

knowledge, cause and effect is.

But cause and effect cannot be derived from experience, and it cannot be derived from pure

reason. The idea that, because one event happens, another necessarily follows, cannot be derived

from any form of inference at all. But, he observes, it is universally believed, and not only by

lecturers and scientists, by by the common man, small children, and even animals! So

we have knowledge, even if we don't have the language to express it.

In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume argued that we arrive at principles like causation through

the process of custom and habit. "Men will scarce ever be persuaded, that effects of such

consequence can flow from principles, which are seemingly so inconsiderable, and that the far

greatest part of our reasonings with all our actions and passions, can be derived from nothing but

custom and habit." And "Thus it appears, that the belief or assent, which always attends the

memory and senses, is nothing but the vivacity of those perceptions they present."

Today we call this form of learning 'associationism' and it forms the basis for theories of neural

connectivity. Hume's basic principle of contiguity, where one idea or impression is commonly

followed by another, is an instance of the principle of association described by Donald O. Hebb

in what we today call Hebbian Associationism, the basic learning theory for neural networks.

When we associate experiences in our mind, we aren't performing any sort of inference on them,

and we don't even typically represent them in a language. We see our child's face every day, and

we don't describe it to ourselves, we simply come to recognize this particular collection of

features as it is presented to us every day. To 'know' that one sort of thing causes another is

simply to recognize this circumstance each time we see it. To be able to read, to infer, and even

to reason, is to recognize common word forms, syllogisms, or commonalities. The recognition,

and the fact of recognition, is the knowledge and the justification for knowledge all rolled into

one - a direct, non-inferential form of knowledge.

References

Ayer, A.J. L Language, Truth and Logic. 1936, London: Victor Gollancz

Ltd. http://lccn.loc.gov/36018286

Chomsky, Noam. Modular Approaches to the Study of the Mind. San Diego: San Diego State

University Press, 1984.

Descartes, René. Meditations. Translated by John Veitch,

1901. http://www.wright.edu/~charles.taylor/descartes/mede.html

Fodor, Jerry. The Language of Thought, Harvard University Press, 1975

p.427

Fodor, Jerry. Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science,

Harvard Press (UK) and MIT Press (US), 1979

Hempel, C. and P. Oppenheim., 1948, ‘Studies in the Logic of Explanation.’, Philosophy of

Science, 15: 135–175.

Hume, Davis. A Treatise of Human Nature. Project Gutenberg,

2010. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm

Husserl, E., 1963, Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. W. R. Boyce

Gibson. New York: Collier Books.

http://www.greenboarstudio.com/uploads/2010_02_04_Husserl_Ideas_Crisis_of_Philosophy_Int

roduction_to.pdf

Kant, Immanual. Critique of Pure Reason (1929: Norman Kemp Smith

translation). http://staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk/ppp/cpr/toc.html

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

(1970, 2nd edition, with postscript). https://www.lri.fr/~mbl/Stanford/CS477/papers/Kuhn-SSR-

2ndEd.pdf

Ockham's Razor. Encyclopedia Britannica.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/424706/Occams-razor

Plato: (427 B.C. – 347 B.C.). Theaetetus. 2004. Farlex, Inc. 15 Mar. 2006.

http://plato.thefreelibrary.com

Popper, Karl, 1959, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London: Hutchinson .

http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf

Quine, W.V.O. Two Dogmas of E,piricism. The Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 20-

43. http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. 1958: Basil Blackwell.

http://gormendizer.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-

.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf

van Fraassen, Bas C. The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1470783.files/van%20Fraassen_Scientific%20Image.pd

f

Moncton, Canada

November 29, 2014

p.428

E-Portfolios and Badges Workshop

E-Portfolio Workshop, Online Educa Berlin: These are content summaries; if written in the first

person it is the speaker speaking, not me. Some comments in parentheses are my own.

Launch of the Europortfolio German Chapter during the Workshop

Igor Balaban - Europortfolio Community and Portal

http://www.europortfolio.org367

We've completed one year of the two year project. 351 members from 52 countries are members

- 3rd version of the portal was launched yesterday. The portal is the min driver, a getaway that

allows people to work together. What you will see today are four key products we have been

working on this year.

The portal allows you to collaborate, to create and announce events, offline or online. You are

also free to publish your recent work, to use the online collaboration, and to invite people to join

you and produce a deliverable. Today we will look at some deliverables that may inspire you to

get started.

This started as a project; we hope it becomes a self-sustaining network. For now we have core

partners, which should be mentioned.

367 http://www.europortfolio.org

p.429

Serge Ravet - Mturity Matrix

Now involved in another project called BadgeEurope.

A few words about the matrix. How did we produce them? The idea was to provide a framework

to describe the maturity of eportfolio initiatives, trying to describe the complex nature of

learning, to go beyond the basic 'how to implement an eportfolio system', to the point where an

eportfolio will have a transformative effect.

What we didn't want to do is take a framework and 'add ICT to it' or 'add portfolio to it'. An

eportfolio is about learning, so the matrix should be about learning. If it didn't mention

eportfolio, that would be great. But in fact what we looked at was the learning itself, and what

can be added with the eportfolio.

Example of matrix (very detailed slide with tiny impossible-to-read text). Learning: aware,

exploring, developing, integrated, transformative. We wanted to find specific examples of

activities outside eportfolios themselves, and then look at them in eportfolios. We have a paper

version of the matrix which will be distributed this afternoon.

Janet Strivens - Competency Framework

(No slides - ack!) CRA has taken the lead in the competency framework (CF). Not as mature as

the maturity matrix; still open to revision.

The CF recognizes that one of the major purpose of a portfolio is to gather and display evidence

of competences. We are trying to do two things:

- arrive at a consensual understanding of the nature of competence. One of our concerns is that

the view of competence presented as a project view is too UK-centric. So we want to share the

understanding of competence with you and ask you whether this aligns with your understanding.

We have already shared with Australia and New Zealand, but they are already closely aligned to

the UK. We will share this with you this afternoon.

- to do with the technology which can support the recognition and accreditation of

competence. The document takes the view that a range of functionalities is associated with

eportfolio technologies. It looks at these in terms of how they support competency recognition

and accreditation. We will share this with you this afternoon.

In the final version of the document, 3 or 4 months time, we intend to link the competency

framework document to an ongoing and developing spreadsheet of organizations and

frameworks related to the recognition and accreditation of competencies.

p.430

Marcelo Fabian Maina (in place of Lourdes Gardia)

UOC - creation of an online course that serves as an entry point for early adopters or non-expert

users of eportfolios.

Three specific aims:

- create an EP environment for the organizers

- create an EP environment for the students

- help people create their own EP

The design principles for the course modules:

- non-stop, always open, self-study, self-paced

- customizable, task-oriented

- use and reuse OER (content)

- creation of the 'learning scenario'

- orient them toward tangible results

- create sharing options through the social web

The course is made up of 7 modules (which I won't list here). The first five are oriented to

individuals, the last two are oriented to organizations, focusing on systemic change and moving

from an individual to an organizational initiative. Each module has six sections: objectives,

questions, investigate, activities, etc.

We have a 'pyramid of objective' to find what the common objectives are of individuals so we

can find what questions they all have. We will share this with you this afternoon.

The course isn't available yet - we have the structure and write-throughs as the modules, but what

we hope to get from you is input from you.

Anastasia Economou, EUfolio, by video

http://www.eufolio.eu368

The project is 'EU Classroom ePortfolios'. Started in May 2013, ends April 2015. It includes 14

partners from u7 European countries.

The need was based on 21st century skills. There were broken into 'develop' these skills, and to

'assess' these skills. Assessment was both 'for learning' and 'of learning'.

368 http://www.eufolio.eu

p.431

Goals: to design innovative ePortfolio models, to pilot these modules through case studies in 40

schools, to select evidence for the efficiency of teaching and learning approaches, and promote

strategies of effective practice.

The challenges: we needed to share a common understanding of what an eportfolio is. Most of

the cases referred to higher education. We also had to prepare the teachers to use the EPs in their

teaching practice; they needed to go through a transformation, and not just add this as an extra

thing to their teaching. We needed to examine the affordances of the technology and adapt online

learning strategies for the implementation. Finally, it's a challenge to communicate these results -

we're still trying to find a way to communicate these to policy-makers.

The main tasks: design, develop, implement, suggest.

The content areas included assessment and eAssessment, 21st century skills, and the learning

design process. This was to help them align not only the content knowledge but also the learning

outcomes. Three steps: 21st century technologies, activities, then assessment.

The 21st century skills include:

- ways of thinking

- ways or working

- tools for working

- the 21st century world

How do we assess these skills? This is where the eportfolio come in. There were three stages or

levels to the process:

- storage

- workspace

- showcase

Storage: students can search and gather material, video, audio, etc. We develop skills like

uploading, downloading, search and so on.

In the third level the students will present their products: skills like presenting, sharing,

assessing.

The workspace level we wanted to emphasize. We wanted students to provide evidence of the

process they used to achieve their learnings: journals, poems, etc.

In the assessment, students go through: reflection, talking, creating, interacting, using forums and

pages.

The process to implement the model: train the trainers, train the teachers, then train the students.

We used Mahara and Office 365, and are still working on the customization of it.

p.432

We held a trainers forum, covering a common understanding of what a portfolio means, and alos

sessions on 21st century skills, assessment, and the portfolio design process. We also had

workshops on Mahara as a tool for the portfolio project. We are now running pilots, but we don't

have any data as of yet.

We decided to use an approach having to do with embedded multiple case studies. That is, for

each teacher, with each class, we refer to it as a case. Since some classes have more than one

teacher, this is again another case. So each student might have an eportfolio with 2 or 3 or 4

teachers.

We developed some tools to do the research. These included questionnaires. and also ways to

gather notes and observations, as well as ways of looking at the artifacts.

I will show (with scepticism) some of the results from the first phase, from Cyprus. One of our

questions was about the impact of the ePortfolio. There was an impact in the teachers design

process. The teachers had a transformation in terms of how to use the technology, not just as a

tool, but as a part of the whole learning. They used Mahara not just in class but also in other

spaces. From a teachers discussion group in Cyprus, it was very obvious how the students were

re-engaged in learning. The teachers had evidence of the students' learning.

It was important to see how the portfolio facilitated learning. We got three comments from

teachers, about the use for summative assessment, about the communication and interaction

during the implementation, and about the accessibility of the system.

Barriers included: infrastructure, administration, barriers at home, also, how to use ICT in the

learning process.

We will finish the pilot at the end of 2014 and will work on the analysis January-February and

share our analysis thereafter. We will be having a conference.

Ilona Buchem, CreditPoints with OpenBadges

@mediendidaktikCentre for Recording Achievement (CRA)

Open Badges for Job Application (slides by-NC-SA :) )

This is a qualification project for students who come from abroad, migrants who have difficulty

finding a job, who have education, even a PhD, by assigning 'credit points', as part of the Federal

Network Integration through Qualification (IQ) project in Germany.

Each participant co-constructs an individual qualification schema. We use the badges to

recognize the skills and combine them with an ePortfolio to help them find employment, by

making them more visible and potentially more attractive.

p.433

The approach is not based on the 'mastery' approach - we simply observed how people were

progressing while they were learning and then 'discovering' the skills, identifying them as

competencies, and awarding badges for those.

One of the most important processes was competency recognition - we used ProfilPASS, a

German Tool, for this. For example, for language-based badge, we linked this to the European

Qualification Framework to describe different competency levels; each badge connects to a PDF

that described what the badge means - the the person can read, write and speak the language, for

example.

We designed badges that have a lot of space to include as much information as possible - we

created a cube, with information in three areas (and colour indicates module).

The showcase type of ePortfolio (or 'digital job application videos' as we call it in German). You

have you're c.v. shown on the site, the badges are integrated, to show in one place the skills of

the person. Participants used the backpack to organize and display their badges on different sites;

we also included the badges in the certificates. Credit points count as ECTS points (whatever

those are).

A publication (in German) is coming soon.

Eric Rousselle, CEO, Discendum, Inc

(an ePortfolio service)

We are a Finnish service provider, we have an open LMS platform, badge factory, ePortfolio

system built on Mahara. There has been for several years a strong interest in PLEs and personal

learning; that's why we went with Mahara. Not perfect, but it has a big potential.

http://kyvyt.fi is a national e-portfolio service designed and hosted by Discendum, launched in

August, 2010, used by 38,500 learners and 200 organizations. The users are mainly schools,

vocational and higher education institution. Kyvit.fi is used mostly for reflective learning,

student counseling, and assessment.

It's free for end users; organizations pay for the use, and users own their own contents.

There has been a very good response to date, with positive attitudes from students and

authorities. The community is still growing after 4 years.

Some of the positive outcomes are: students are moving from the 'aware' stage (in the maturity

matrix) to 'exploring' and 'developing'. Some schools are integrating ePortfolio practices in their

curriculum. Some student shave used their ePortfolios after graduation.

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Challenges: there is strong LMS culture which emphasizes the teacher's role and the importance

of controlling and monitoring the student's progress. As a PLE and social media application,

Kyvyt is challenging for teachers and also for students who are used to being monitored. There is

an issue (for example) around students forming groups by themselves. We still need good

pedagogical models, user cases and templates (we have a conference every year to attract these).

The big problem for many teachers is learning how to use yet another system.

We are often missing an organization-level strategy - teachers are using it, but not organizations

as a whole. Also, because the institution is not hosting it, teachers and schools are reluctant to

use it - IT departments are not interested in supporting a system they don't host. As a business,

hosting and developing a national eportfolio system is most challenging.

For learners, many ePortfolio systems are too complex and too academic. Learners should have

the feeling "it's nice" to use the portfolio, and not "I have to do it". The 'academic' eportfolio

systems are probably not what citizens need in a life-long learning environment. In many

countries we are creating a portfolio that is useful in an academic context, but not a real-life

context.

So: badges. There is the potential to grow the value of a portfolio by adding badges. So we have

developed a plug-in so we can issue badges in Mahara. We're looking at a 'badges first' approach

to ePortfolio - we want to build a "better backpack" because Backpack is not a very good tool.

We are looking at an open badge passport as a micro-portfolio. The idea is to gather badges,

organize them in pages, and reflect and build the big picture.

But we need to bring portfolios to life. A mechanic working on engines all day doesn't see why

they should go to Mahara and write a page. So we want to integrate them, they take a picture on

their mobile and get a badge. The key words here are simplicity and usability. Using badges gets

us away from text-heavy portfolios, and introduces the possibility of search, which for employers

is very nice. They can search employees for badges and set badges as goals for skills training.

Berlin, Germany

December 03, 2014

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Rheingold, Lewin, Stevenson

These are summary notes of the presentations at Online Educa Berlin, 2014. If the text uses the

first person, it is the presenter speaking, not me.

Howard Rheingold

For me it has always been about the kind of learning and teaching that technology enables.

Social learning is what makes us human. Without the connection to the students and the

pedagogy, I don't think the technology would have been so useful.

I'm talking about a new culture of learning - also the title of a book by JS Brown and Doug

Thomas. One aspect: learner centred. Before, you used to have to go to a school. Learners have

many other options now. It's also more social - learning has been more and more peer-to-peer

and not just listening to the teacher. It's also more inquiry-based. It's also more collaborative -

this used to be called cheating. It's also cooperative - I talk about co-learning, being responsible

for each other's learning. Networked: this is new - children in schools are able to connect with

each other in ways that weren't possible before.

In 1996 I wrote this article, virtual communities. I created a 'university of the future' that cost

several million dollars - I didn't imagine that 10 years later people would be able to have all this

virtually for free.

In 2008 I was able via a MacArthur grant to create a social media classroom. The idea was to

enable students to use different media in the same browser-based environment.

The forum, for example, enables the sort of online conversations that are really not feasible using

email lists. The forum explicitly enables the group to have a voice. In school these conversations

are truncated; the bell rings and students move on. Online these continue. It's about the group

being more than the sum of its parts.

On another tab you find the blogs. It is the individual blogger that chooses the subject. This is

more and more important at younger ages. Think of the difference between writing a paper only

the teacher sees, and writing a paper the world sees.

There's also the wiki, to create pages that anyone authorized to edit. We use it to collaboratively

author documents. We also use social bookmarks.

A lot of what I am talking about isn't something I knew. It is something I learned along with my

students. It was about empowering the students, to take control of their own learning. Here's a

picture of how the classroom has changed. Working with students we developed the concept of

co-teaching. As well, we reorganized the room into a circle - there's no back row in a circle.

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One of the things we did was to develop a lexicon of the words and phrases we encountered; it

was up to all of us Wikipedia-style to add to the definitions. If each one of us does some little

thing we are able to create something larger.

We also used mind-maps to allow people to break out of the linear, to think visually about the

subjects. One of the co-teaching duties was to make a mind-map of the materials assigned.

A few years ago I decided to experiment outside the university and go into purely online

teaching. I started Rheingold U for students all over the world. Interesting - I changed my

greeting from 'esteemed students' to 'esteemed co-learners'. It reflected a different attitude to

students, to give them power over learning.

We use a wiki, we meet online once a week - we can use Collaborate, Adobe Connect, Big Blue

Button - it's an exercise in multi-tasking in many ways. I put up a page and asked participants to

take new roles = search, mindmap, create lexicon, etc. This creates interactivity - you could go to

YouTube and just listen. BB Collaborate has a very nice whiteboard that lets people put up stuff

anonymously. We use it to brainstorm; then some students would create more formal mindmaps.

It's really not a matter or memorizing facts; it's a matter of finding connections and finding

meaning.

Since then many services have started up to allow people to learn outside school - Khan

Academy, Coursera, etc. If you have internet access you can learn. That started me thinking,

what's the next step? What do self-learners need to know in order to effectively teach and learn

from each other. More and more people are finding out they can learn what they want to learn

online.

What of we eliminated the teacher altogether? How would they organize themselves? What

would they do? So, I got together with a group at Berekeley and talked about it. Over time the

group in the room dropped out, but an international group online worked together to created what

we called 'Peeragogy'. It was an exercise in peeragogy. We studies and worked online - we used

Google Hangouts and Wordpress - we created a Handbook. You can join our meetings and heelp

us edit and revise it.

I tend to work ahead of the rest of the worls and I think peeragogy will be more common over

the next 2, 3, 5 years. Yes there is a place for expertise. But we can't scale up traditional brick

and mortar schools. Also, there is an economic question: do people want to pay more taxes to

pay for teachers and schools.

A recent McArthur grant got me involved in open and connected learning. A good example is

ds106.us - instead of using the digital classroom, this is teaching and learning on the open the

web. I ask my students to claim a domain name and get a WordPress server on the web - costs

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$25 - and take control of what they do on the web. The web is not just Facebook; it is not just

social classrooms. I created a course hub that aggregates their blogs.

They are learning how to create a public voice. I tell them, whether or not they like it, they have

a public face. People talk about them. This is about them being able to take control of their own

selves. We use MediaWiki, we use Discourse (discourse.com) - working with the organizers of

these open learning courses (eg. Jim Groom) led us to create an open course on creating open

courses. There are core groups, and thousands worldwide, and you can use the Wordpress filters

to control what you see.

Right now online you can find our work at connectedcourses.net - it's not about driving this top-

down, but to enable people to co-evolve the pedagogy, not to replace traditional learning, but to

enhance it. Every year in the syllabus I introduce students to new ways of participating in ways

they are not accustomed to. They can read books and listen to lectures, but they're not used to co-

teaching and working together. They don't just take a package of learning from the course.

This not the only way of learning. There are many things you need to learn how to do - how to

change a lights switch. More and more this procedural knowledge is something that more and

more we need to do together.

Lisa Lewin - Pearson

@lisalewinlive The Ed Tech Revolution

The big news story of higher education in the 20th century was one of access. There was a big

explosion of access to tertiary education, something that used to be reserved to the elite. It

became accessible to the disadvantaged, ethic minorities, to women.

The OECD's list of nations that have 40% who have reached higher education attainment. (North

America, Europe, Japan, Korea, Australasia). I did. I'm from the midwest US. My grandfather

was born 1925 in southern Illinois. He was in WWII in Japan, used the GI Bill to pay for his

education. My mother was born 25 years later; she attended a land-grant university (the US

granted land to states that could be used to start universities - Many of these grew to become the

mega-universities). That's where she met my dad, a bright international student from Jamaica. I

was born in 1975, so when I went to Harvard I was able to take advantage of a loan program

(unsubsidized loan at low interest backed by the government). It shows that policy interventions

can have both a micro-impact (my case) and a macro-impact (all of yours).

Now, we're making a bet that technology can continue to improve access. It gives flexibility,

more diverse options. We also hope that technology can increased access in the developing

world. We're placing a bet that tech can expand access on that axis.

We also hope that etch will not only expand the quality of education, but also improve the

quality. That's where facts and figures are a bit murky. When we look at the data, on balance,

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we're not getting the big learning gains that we would expect. Access has expanded, but we still

have issues of completion, employability, training in 21st century skills. It's tougher having e-

learning produce gains in quality.

Maybe this is a problem in innovation. Here is a (Foster's) technology S-curve (a theory that

suggests technology follows a common curve, from trial and error to rapid adoption, to

mainstreaming at a performance limit, to eventual replacement). I argue that we are at the end

of the first curve in educational technology. We've seen some mainstreaming and rapid adoption

- it's no accident that the sponsors are Pearson, Blackboard and D2L - we have LMSs and 'online

homework systems'. So we might be at that phase near the top of the curve, facing diminishing

returns. On the measure of learning gains - we're not seeing 'double the learning gains'. So the

question becomes, how do we get to that next technology?

Some candidates. For example - brain scans - we didn't know before that during a lecture the

brain slows down to an activity below that of sleeping. We didn't know about the impact of

nutrients. Etc. If we could create brain-informed teaching and learning strategies, that might bet

us to the next level.

Or another theory: it's not brain science that will get us to the next level, it's data science. The

theory here is that we were not able to understand what was happening at the point of instruction.

We only test what students every few weeks or every few months. Imagine what can happen if

we observe every course resource, to actually dissect the effectiveness of all the micropoints.

Now we have a critical mass of student s- we have a zettabyte of data. That's lot of data; we

could mine that.

But wait. Maybe, the limit to progress in ed tech is a human limit. Eventually machines will be

able to do everything better. If we want truly personalized learning, an algorithm will be able to

produce this better than a human ever could. Engineers in augmented reality and virtual worlds

suggest that machines can help us overcome physical limits - to demonstrate nuclear fission, for

example, or to think about how we better scale and give training teachers better practice without

subjecting students to their experimentation.

Or there's one more possibility. What's preventing us fro getting these outsized learning gains is

that we have not had a metascience that pulls all those threads together, helping us tie all of these

things in a manner that's somewhat wholistic. That's what learning science - a new discipline -

will do.

My personal view is that any of these, any one of them, if we could figure out how to apply it

correctly, could just explode our ability to apply ed tech. But what that will rely on is for all of

use to do out part to develop a better and bolder innovation ecosystem. Here's what I mean by

that.

p.439

At a certain point, there's basic research. Following that, there's a technology development space

- an incubation space. Early-stage startups, taking new discoveries and trying to apply the,. Then

you have a product development phase, and a scalability phase, where you have people whose

job it is to productize those innovations, so they can be used by the masses.

We need to do two things. First we need to go deeper in all of these things - being bolder and

more creative in research and innovation, etc. And the other thing is what I'll call horizontal

coordination, all of these working together, so that we're actually translating the great work that's

happening on the frontiers into actual products everyone can enjoy.

Mark Stevenson

@optimistontour

Hello! Hello! Hello! I will go very fast.

So I grew up in a depressive household, that led me to create a consultancy.

Douglas Adams - three types of tech

 tech that existed when you were borm - doesn't feel like tech

 tech created before middle age, that's exciting and useful

 tech created after middle age, which is pointless and makes you angry

So in learning, we have technologies that looks interesting but we don't know what to do with it.

Eg. genetic testing. For example, I was screened, I have the same risk as a black mad for a

certain disease. I said I wanted a test, my doctor said, I can only recommend that test if you are a

black man. My doctor is not a racist, but our system is, relying on superficial cues rather than

actual data.

Looking at the exponential growth of tech. Your mobile phone has more computing power than

the entire Apollo program. You might think a car driving itself is amazing. But you can see

somebody in such a car being amazed. Now they will be allowed on the roads. What does this do

to insurance countries? If there's no driver, who do they blame? But humans are bad at driving

cars; it will reduce accidents.

In a few years, there will be a 1 cent human genome. What does that do to medicine. Fuel created

from carbon, which they feed to algae. Taking carbon from the atmosphere. Many companies bid

on this project. Kleinworks win the bid, and is making diesel from the air right now. This will hit

ion a niche market in 2023. The cost of solar power is dropping, and capacity is doubling every

couple of years. Companies are switching from oil and gas to renewables.

The world will change dramatically, because all of our politics and economics are the politics

and economics of energy.

p.440

Another amazing thing. 3D printing. 3D printed technology - a 3D printed heart. A German

technology, Nanoscribe, 3D printing components for microchips on a nano scale. Eventually 3D

printers will be able to print all the components required to make a 3D printer.

Solar powered mobile phones. Blood tests you can run on your mobile phone. Designs for

printers that produce pharmaceuticals. But these together. bioCurious.

Digital was the cocktail sausage before dinner.

You're creating an industry that is supposed to usher us into that world. JS Brown - nearly every

social technology and business structure can't survive, and yet we're trying to educate people into

those structures. Learning quicker than your competitors may be the only way to survive. The

future needs a different model of education. Automation applied to an inefficient operation will

just magnify that inefficiency - Gates.

We all want to innovate. We love innovation. It's amazing. All my clients want to do that. But

what they want is innovation-wash - to appear to do it, without actually doing it.

We need radical change, but most of us can't do it, because of the way we were educated.

Sinclair - "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not

understanding it." Remember Wang? Remember Blockbuster. Big companies die because of

their culture. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. None of the new technologies were developed

by incumbents.

If it doesn't interact with you, it's broken. Publishing, medicine, manufacturing, energy - not just

consumers, but producers. In education, it's about co-learning. learning is not a place - it's

something that we are, something that we do. If you try to just recreate the place, you're not

innovating.

Mass power is coming to you. And with power comes responsibility. With mass power, mass

responsibility. That's why your work is so important. You have to become citizen and state. You

can't predict the future, you can only prepare for it. The future is just a mirror, and asks us what

kind of world we want. If we don;t look in that mirror and see a world of justice, and humanity,

and compassion, we'd better be prepared for the consequences.

Berlin, Germany

December 04, 2014

p.441

Open Education, MOOCs, and

Opportunities

Reusable Learning Resources

The initial development of online learning technology began at scale with the development of the

learning management system (LMS) in the mid-1990s. These systems were modeled on distance

education resources such as programmed texts and course workbooks. These were designed

originally by organizations such as the Open University, in Britain, and Canada's Athabasca

University. Online courses were developed according to a protocol that developed over 20 years

of experience. These combined learning materials, activities and interaction, and assessments.

Technological systems based on these designs were first developed by the aviation industry, in

the form of the AICC specification (Aviation Industry Computer Based Training (CBT)

Committee). These standards were adapted by the Instructional Management Systems (IMS)

consortium, a collection of academic and corporate training providers. These defined metadata

standards describing small and reusable resources first called 'learning objects' by AutoDesk's

Wayne Hodgins. These standards, called Learning Object Metadata (LOM), enabled the

development of resources that were reusable, discoverable, and sharable.

Major LMS companies such as WebCT, Blackboard, Angel, Saba and Desire2Learn all adopted

standards originally developed by IMS. In addition to LOM, the consortium designed Content

Packaging, to bundle sets of learning objects for storage and delivery, and sequencing and design

specifications, to organize them into courses. In addition, an organization called Advanced

Distributed Learning (ADL), working for the U.S. military, developed the Sharable Courseware

Object Reference Model (SCORM) to both describe learning resources and enable them to

communicate simple messages with LMSs. SCORM 2004 remains the dominant learning

resources specification in both the corporate and academic learning technology marketplace to

this day.

Additional technologies to support resource discovery and reuse have been developed since then.

Among them were IMS Common Cartridge (CC) to support the ability to 'plug in' applications

into LMSs, the Learning Technology Interoperability (LTI) to enable LMSs to launch typical

applications such as chat or discussion engines. These were supported in term with application-

specific application programming interfaces (APIs) and specialized software, such as

Blackboard's 'Collaborate' synchronous conferencing system.

Open Education Resources

Alongside the development of educational technologies is an equally important movement to

support open educational resources. This movement predates the development of the world wide

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web in 1994, as seen for example in the Gutenberg Project, an open access archive of public

domain works of classic literature. In addition, there were during this time nascent free software

licenses were also developed, first to support 'freeware' software applications distributed across

pre-internet electronic bulletin boards, then to enable the distribution of onlione gaming libraries,

such as the LP-MUD.

Free software was formalized with the development by Richard Stallman of the GNU Public

License (GPL) in 1998 (ref). This license not only promoted the free use of software, it also

guaranteed access to the orig8inal source code of the application, and was 'viral', which meant

that any new work produced using the source was required to carry the same license. The license

did not prohibit commercial use of the software, however, the viral clause made it unattractive to

companies that wanted to develop proprietary applications, so licenses without the viral clause,

such as the Lesser GPL and the Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD) were later developed.

Content was treated differently by Stallman. To support the free distribution of software

documents and support materials, the free software documentation license (FSDL) was

developed. It was similar to the GPL, but in order to ensure the integrity of documentation, did

not allow derivatives. Learning content required a more flexible model, which was provided first

by David Wiley, with the Open Content License, and then by Lawrence Lessig, with Creative

Commons. Both of these licenses allowed for the free reuse and redistribution of the resource,

but with conditions.

The Creative Commons license (CC) has become widely used and today thousands of libraries

and millions of resources use the license. It because successful because it offered flexibility to

content authors and publishers. By allowing a set of sublicenses, it allowed authors to specify

several things:

 By using the Non-Commercial (NC) clause, could restrict copying and reuse of the

resource to non-commercial purposes only

 By using the Attribution (By) clause, could require that any reuse identify by name (and

typically URL) the original author of the resource, and

 By using the Share-Alike (SA) clause, required that the subsequent copying and reuse of

the content use the same license as the original, as in the 'viral' GPL

 By using the No-Derivatives (ND) clause, authors could require that only exact copies of

the original be made and redistributed

In 2002, UNESCO, in an examination of the needs of developing nations, and the potential

offered by the free distribution of digital learning resources, developed the concept of the 'Open

Educational Resource', as follows: (ref)

In a related but separate initiative, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched

what it called OpenCourseWare (OCW). This project, funded by Foundations such as Hewlett,

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involved the conversion and distribution of all MIT course materials on the internet. Though not

the equivalent of a full MIT education, these resources were visited by millions of people around

the world over the last 12 years. OpenCourseware spawned a number of additional projects,

including the OpenCourseware Consortium, and the Open University's OpenLearn initiative.

Content Syndication Networks

The concept of content syndication originates with the newspaper industry. The idea is that a

news story published in one newspaper might be of interest to readers of other newspapers, and

so the same story, after its original publication, is distributed to these other newspapers as well.

In time, press agencies such as Associated Press and Reuters, formalized the syndication of news

content and provided some original news coverage as well.

In 1998 Netscape, the creators of the first commercial web browser, developed a web site called

NetCenter and encouraged contributors to 'syndicate' their content in it. This was supported using

a technology called Rich Site Summary (RSS), co-developed by Netscape and Dave Winer. RSS

went through several early versions: RSS 0.91, which was the first production version, RSS 1.0,

which used a web technology called Resource Description Framework (RDF), and RSS 2.0,

known as 'Really Simple Syndication', which was adopted by blog engines such as LiveJournal

and Blogger. A parallel standard, called Atom, was also used to support blog post syndication,

and additionally defines a standard for uploading contents, including comments and new blog

posts. These specifications brought content syndication to the online publishing community.

In education and academia, meanwhile, a parallel initiative called 'Open Archives Initiative'

(OAI) was created. This followed the calls of academics (in documents such as the Berlin

Declaration and Budapest Open Archives Initiative) for the free distribution of academic content.

Technology supporting open archives, called OAI, to create lists of academic journal articles in

repositories for retrieval and distribution. This technical development now numbers in the

thousands of repositories, and millions of articles, as listed in the Repository of Open Archives

Repositories (ROAR) and has been paralleled with the 'Open Access' movement led by Stevan

Harnad and Peter Suber, who promote the creation of institutional services rather than reliance

on commercial publishers.

Content syndication has been behind some of the most innovative developments on the world

wide web. Microcontent services such as Twitter and Facebook originally supported RSS.

Millions of people have uploaded photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube, many licenses with

Creative Commons and shared with RSS. What we now know as the social web, and the social

network, evolved from these origins.

Learning Technologies at the National Research Council

In 2001 members of the National Research Council's e-Learning Research Group joined a pan-

Canadian network of learning resource providers called eduSource. This initiative, a three-year

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$10 million project, brought together institutions like Athabasca University and TéléEducation

Quebec (TelUQ) together with colleges, corporations and other government partners. This

initiative designed and built software to support a pan-Canadian network of learning object

repositories and to develop a Canadian version of LOM called CanCore.

In addition to participation on the Steering Committee, NRC staff (including Stephen Downes

and Rod Savoie) drafted the organization's core philosophical principles. Together with several

partners in Atlantic Canada, the NRC developed the core framework for licensing and

authentication, known as Distributed Digital Rights Management (DDRM). In addition, an

alternative content syndication framework, called Distributed Learning Object Repository

Network (DLORN) was developed.

The National Research Council also engaged in a pioneering content recommendation project

with a New Brunswick company, Mosaic Technologies. Working with the Semantic Web group

located in Fredericton, the eLearning group developed a product called Sifter/Filter. This product

enabled the company to describe resources with metadata in such a way that properties of the

learning resource could be matched with the needs of the course developer. Mosaic was

eventually acquired by a British technology company while the core technology was rebranded

as a music recommendation service, RACOFI, and commercialized.

In 2003 NRC research Stephen Downes developed the concept of e-Learning 2.0 by employing

content syndication technology and social media to support learning. Learning, he argued, would

be best supported through social networks with the development and free exchange of learning

resources, thus enabling students to add to the instruction provides by schools, employers and

universities with their own contributions and interactions. Working with George Siemens in

2004 and 2005, the learning theory known as Connectivism was developed, with the idea that

learning takes place not just in an individual person but across a network of connections. This

would be supported by open educational resources, and to this end NRC defined a set of

sustainability models for the OECD in 2006.

The National Research Council's e-Learning group continued development work in collaboration

with the major LMS company, Desire2Learn, and the Université de Moncton. The SynergiC3

project helped D2L implement a collaborative learning content development system in its core

project. NRC contributions to the technology included content harvesting and syndication

technology, a semantically supported workflow engine, a data representation format called

'resource profiles', and an upgraded version of distributed digital rights management. NRC patent

applications resulting from this work have been incorporated into Desire2Learn core technology.

Massive Open Online Courses

In 2008 Stephen Downes and George Siemens developed the first Massive Open Online Course.

This course, called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08), was designed to explain

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and expand the learning theory they had been developing since 2004. At a Desire2Learn

conference in Memphis, Tennessee, Downes and Siemens determined that the online course they

were developing should emulate the structure of the theory they were describing in connectivism

- that is, it should be an open course, designed as a network of connected parts, designed to

facilitate communication using social networks and the sharing of learning resources.

The course was launched in September, 2008, using Moodle, MediaWiki, WordPress, and an

application designed by Downes called gRSShopper. This application, the same employed in the

construction of DLORN, is used to author and syndicate Downes's e-learning newsletter,

OLDaily. The course was sponsored by the University of Manitoba as part of its Certificate in

Adult Education (CAE) and had 24 paying students enrolled. It was also opened to the general

public and attracted 2,200 registrations. Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander coined the term

'MOOC' - Masssive Open Online Course - to describe this new form of online learning.

Between the years 2008 and 2014 the NRCDC led or was a part of the following MOOCs:

- CCK08 - the first course, conducted over 10 weeks in the fall of 2008. Weekly synchronous

sessions were conducted using a conferencing system called Ellimunate. This course proved the

concept of the networked course and led the use of distributed content networks to incorporate

student contributions to the core course content. By the end of the course 170 students were

contributing RSS feeds, while 1800 participants were subscribed to the course content

newsletter.

- CCK09 - the second version of the same course saw many of the original participants of the

first course return to help teach the second, thus proving that the same model can be duplicated

with more robust student interaction in the second iteration.

- Critical Literacies - along with researchers Helene Fournier and Rita Kop, this course

attempted to engage learners with the core skills they need in order to become proficient

participating in MOOCs. It was designed in response to criticisms that participants must already

be literate and educated in order to benefit from the instruction.

- Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge (PLENK 2010) - this course

examines the idea of the personal learning environment (see below) and the creation of self-

organizing learning communities.

- Change 2011 - this was the longest course, at 30 weeks, running through the fall of 2011 and

the spring of 2012. It proved that a MOOC can be run for a long period of time with the same

core group of participants, and that new participants can enter the course at any time.

- CCK11. The third version of the first course included a test of the Big Blue Button (BBB)

open source conferencing system. Because Elluminate was sold to Blackboard, becoming

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Blackboard Collaborate, an API connecting gRSShopper and Big Blue Button was authored.

However the number of users proved to be too much for BBB.

- Course on the Future of Higher Education (CFHE) - organized in cooperation with Athabasca

University, EDUCAUSE, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Gates Foundation, and

Desire2Learn. This course demonstrated that a traditional LMS could be used to support a

connectivist-style MOOC, albeit with an integration with gRSShopper. To support this course an

API between gRSShopper and D2L was developed.

- MOOC-REL - this course was offered in French and covered the topic of Resourses Educatif

Libre (REL). It was offered in cooperation with the Organisation international de la francophone

and the Université de Moncton. MOOC-REL also involved the production of a series of videos

and the development of content for the OIF.

Through six years of MOOC development the National Research Council has gained

considerable expertise and research through numerous iterations. NRC staff have published

numerous articles documenting the forms of participation and interaction that take place in

MOOCs.

Following the NRC's work, the MOOC became much more widespread. Most notably, Solvig

and Thrun launched the Stanford Aritificial Intelligence MOOC, which attracted 170,000

enrollments. Although the Stanford MOOC is described as a distinct form of MOOC, it is

noteworthy that it has the same origins as the Connectivist MOOCs. The Stanford authors

reported that they were inspired by Salman Khan, who launched the Khan academy a series of

freely accessible video lessons offered on YouTube. Both the connectivist MOOCs, and the

Stanford MOOCs, depended crucially on free and open resources.

The Structure of a MOOC

Both forms of MOOCs, the connectivist MOOC (cMOOC) and the Stanford MOOC (xMOOC)

are based around a common core of content. This content serves different roles in the two types

of MOOCs, which will be discussed.

In both types of MOOCs, weekly synchronous events are held. Both xMOOCs and cMOOCs

record these as videos. In addition, both offer supplementary materials, such as additional videos,

articles, and learning activities. In some forms of cMOOC, such as the ds106 MOOC conducted

by Jim Groom of Mary Washington University, collaborative and creative activities are the core

of the course. In xMOOCs, adaptive learning technology supports instruction. Probably the most

advanced of this can be found in CodeAcademy, a system that allows students to teach

themselves programming.

The difference between the cMOOC and the xMOOC is in the distributed nature of the course.

While both types of MOOC involve the creation and distribution of open educational resources,

p.447

the cMOOC in addition draws on student participants to develop and distribute their own

resources, and to find related resources from around the internet and incorporate them into the

course. For this reason a cMOOC requires a much less intensive body of resource production,

and can be developed for a much lower budget. Even so, both forms of MOOC require the

creation of some core content, to serve as the focus around which subsequent interactions and

activities take place.

Additionally, the cMOOC draws on self-organizing social networks in a way the xMOOC does

not. While it is true that informal learning groups, such as in-person meetings, online

conversations, Facebook and Twitter groups, and other social networks form around the

xMOOC, they are not integrated into the structure of the course itself (this lack of integration is

so profound it has led some to propose the MOOC 2.0, which is essentiallythe cMOOC design).

The cMOOC employs content syndication technologies to collect resources and conversations

conducted by course participants around the world, and to build their contributions into the

structure of the course itself.

This results in a course that is not only more relevant to participants, it also results in a course

that is a dynamic entity, growing and changing over the years as new resources are created and

added. Unlike traditional courses, including xMOOCs, which require redevelopment after a shelf

life of three to five years, a MOOC can be rerun indefinitely, as the four iterations of the CCK

course have shown.

The xMOOCs were deployed with limited testing and commercial software developed and

funded without reference to earlier technology, including content syndication and social media.

As a result, products such as Udacity, Coursera and edX - all of which have commercial intent

and all of which were derived from the same Stanford AI model - involve only the prewsentation

of video material, adaptive learning exercises, and testing. It is this lack of integration with a

student community, and the resulting inflexibility of the xMOOC, that have caused large

numbers of students to drop out and for Sebastian Thrun to criticize his own technology.

Next Generation: Personal Learning Environments

In two conferences in Manchester, UK, in 2005 (Alt-C) and 2006 (PLE), the concept of the

personal learning environment was first defined. The core idea of the PLE was to take a student-

centred point of view for the provision of learning resources and services.

As described above, the first generation of learning technologies centred around the development

of learning objects. These early learning materials, which could be complex and engaging, were

packaged and distributed through learning management systems. In order to access a learning

object, a student would register as a student in a course on an LMS. Even Moodle, which is an

open source learning management system, requires that a student register on the service and sign

p.448

up for a course in order to access a learning resource (or even to participate in a course

discussion).

This form of content management does not mesh well with open educational resources, which

are intended to be freely accessed and shared. This is why MIT, when developing Open

Courseware, also developed technology called DSpaace, which is an adaptation of Open

Archives Initiative. It needed a way to distribute academic resources without requiring that

readers register and enroll.

In addition, the use of the LMS disabled portability of content. Artifacts created by students and

stored in LMS ePortfolios, and comments and interactions among students, could not typically

be shared beyond the LMS. Moreover, a student who was enrolled in one LMS could not take

advantage of content or assets stored in another LMS. Learning records were also locked inside

institutional LMSs, making transfer or recognition of prior learning difficult or impossible.

Finally, many services in common use outside an LMS - including blogging tools, personal

calendars and email, task managers, microcontent and social media, could not be used inside the

LMS. The student's social world and academic world remained apart.

The PLE was developed in response to the need to facilitate interoperability between the

different systems. As originally developed, it was more of a concept than a digital application -

the addition of an open LMS would enable the deploy,ent of the rest of the interneet technologies

in support of learning. This was the basis for the original design of Instructure's Canvas, which

creates greater interaction in and out of the learning management system. Blackboard and D2L

have both developed open versions of their software for free courses as well. Data portability,

however, remains a challenge.

In 2010 the National Research Council embarked on an internal PLE project called Plearn. This

was a proof-of concept prototype that demonstrated that an environment could be built that

connected traditional learning services, open archives and open repositories, and social

networking software and services. It also demonstrated that the personal learning environment

was pedagogically feasible, that is, that the instructional and social supports, known as

'scaffolds', necessary to enable learning, could also operate in a personal learning environment.

The Plearn project also demonstrated some of the newer technologies for interoperability. It was

designed around a Javacript Object Notation (JSON) framework. This is a data representation

system that replaces RSS, and can be used for both content syndication and application

programming interfaces (APIs). This allows different software applications to work much more

closely together and ultimately enables the replacement of SCORM with more robust messaging

between components. The same sort of system, called OAuth, which allows a person using one

online social networking tool, such as Facebook,. To share content with another such too, such as

WordPress, can enable an individual learner to combine the functions of a learning management

system with those of a social network.

p.449

Learning and Performance Support Systems

When the National Research Council reorganized in 2012-2013 it dissolved individual project-

based groups and instead focused on a smaller set of research programs. One of these, structured

around the idea of the personal learning environment, is the learning and performance support

system (LPSS). This is a five-year $20 million initiative to advance and deploy core PLE

technologies while at the same time supporting commercial development of related technologies

and meeting key policy objectives, such as increasing employability in disadvantaged

populations.

The LPSS does not replace the LMS or the MOOC. Rather, these continue to be provided by

employers, academic institutions, foundations and governments in order to serve important

learning, training and development environments. These agencies have the option of creating and

making available open educational resources, drawing on the relevant community to locate and

create open educational resources, or to supplement these materials with commercial content and

custom software applications. The personal learning environment is designed as a means to

enable an individual learner, student or staff member to access these resources from multiple

providers.

Hence, just as a connectivist MOOC is based on the concept of content syndication to bring

together resources from multiple providers around a single topic, LPSS employs the same

technology, called the resource repository network (RRN), to allow an individual to obtain

several parts of his or her education from multiple providers. At its simplest, an LPSS can be

thought of as a viewing environment for multiple MOOCs. In this way, an LPSS is much more

like a personal web browser than it is a resource or a service.

Like a browser, each person has his or her own instance of LPSS. Though resources can be

shared, each LPSS user has his or her own list of bookmarks and resources. Because each LPSS

is individually owned, it can also act as a personal agent for the student. For example, by

providing credentials to remote systems (using technology such as OAuth), it can eliminate the

need to register at multiple services. An LPSS can therefore serve as an important place for a

student to store his or per personal learning records. A JSON formatted data exchange called

xAPI (the eXperience API) created by ADL makes it possible for an LPSS to communicate with

learning resources directly, and with an LMS or a MOOC. This creates, finally, a personal and

portable learning record.

Like the original concept of the PLE, the LPSS envisions a user employing a number of online

services to create and share content. Hence, for example, a user (who may be a student, an

employee or even an expert or a professor) may wish to store videos on YouTube, photographs

on Flickr, and documents and spreadsheets on Google Docs. It should provide access to, and

synchronize content among, a variety of online storage media, such as Dropbox or Cubby. A

p.450

person can even sort custom applications on Windows Live or Amazon Web Services. Data

exchange services, in addition to authentication, are required for this service.

Advanced Services

It is commonplace today to depict online learning as something that takes place at a computer

screen. However with an increasing number of people using smartphones in their everyday lives,

mobile deployment is also important. An LPSS, however, envisions a world where learning

resources are available outside the domain of traditional computing environments.

One application developed by LPSS, for example, is the Multiple Interactive Trainer (MINT).

This is a firearms training system used by military and policy. The objective of LPSS is to

example the exchange of information between the MINT trainer and the LPSS application,

enabling the results of sessions to be available one day to the next, or for a person to report traing

results to an associated LMS.

A similar application is being developed by the NRC's medical devices portfolio. Medical

simulation systems that emulate the look and feel of actual humans are already deployed in

hospitals around the world (including Riyadh). The medical devices team is working with LPSS

to exchange xAPI data and to support training scenarios with external applications.

Moncton, Canada

December 12, 2014

p.451

The OOC

I posted this369:

The conundrum of creating an open course in a closed site – Storyboard OOC

update

Gabi Witthaus, Art of e-learning, Dec 22, 2014

So this, I think, is the opposite of a MOOC: "We chose to use a

platform that requires people to have accounts and sign in, in order to

be able to set up and manage the groups effectively." Ironically the

letter they choose to drop MOOC is not 'O' for 'Open' but 'M' for

'Massive'. It's true that if the course is not open, it won't be massive, but

the really important bit is whether or not it's open. Additionally, setting

up a course in such a way as to require management of groups is also contrary to the

intent of MOOCs. So why not just call it an 'OC' (Online Course)? Well, it wouldn't be

very interesting if it were just one of those, would it? And that's why we're getting so

much false-MOOC pollution.

And Gabi Witthaus responded:

Stephen Downes has thrown me a curved ball - http://www.downes.ca/ (sixth one down

from the top at the moment). It stings a bit because Brenda and I are doing this as

individuals with no institutional backing and zero funding, and we are sincerely trying to

make a contribution to open education. We are certainly not trying to limit openness - and

I don't believe that the idea of groups in open courses runs counter to the spirit of

openness. I really don't want to go into battle with Stephen, but I can't let him give people

the impression that the OOC is not open! (Apparently he has come to that conclusion

because I said it will be run on CourseSites where participants will need to sign in. Well,

by that logic, the MOOCs on all the major MOOC platforms are not MOOCs.) I'll base

my reply to him on the assumption that I did not make it clear enough in my last post that

the OOC is actually an open course.

Here's my response:

Thanks to Gabi for posting this and please allow me a few words.

> It stings a bit because Brenda and I are doing this as individuals with no institutional backing

and zero funding, and we are sincerely trying to make a contribution to open education.

369 http://www.downes.ca/post/63171

p.452

I appreciate that, and I’m sympathetic, because I’ve spent many years in a similar situation. By

the same token, as I’m sure you would agree, this doesn’t render you immune from criticism.

Much of the work I’ve done over the years has been criticized (and in turn, I’ve criticized my

share of people along the way). It’s all dialogue and discussion, and intended to result in a better

outcome.

> We are certainly not trying to limit openness

I hear this a lot – usually right after someone has taken some of another measure that limits

openness. And that, I’m afraid, is how I would interpret the present circumstance.

In my view (and not everyone agrees with me) if you are requiring a login in order to access

course materials, you are limiting openness:

 you are requiring that people give something (specifically, contact information) in order

to access the material (there’s a reason Blackboard would want to force this)

 you are making it impossible for other sites to simply link to or embed the content you

are sharing

 it is not accessible to search engines and aggregators

You might say that these aren’t very significant limitations. True enough. But my point is that

they are limitations. You’ve created costs and barriers to the material. It is not open, at least, not

open in what I would consider a meaningful sense of the word. Stuff behind userids and

passwords has a very different status – a closed and presumptively private status.

> I don't believe that the idea of groups in open courses runs counter to the spirit of openness.

There are groups and then there are groups.

If people gather around open content and organize themselves into groups then that is very much

in the spirit of openness. But that’s not what’s happening in this case. You required logins “to be

able to set up and manage the groups effectively.” This makes the groups something you create

and control, and not something people create and control for themselves.

I’m not sure exactly of the range and scale you had in mind of ‘managing’ the groups – it

reminded me of some ill-fated attempts to automatically generate small groups in some previous

MOOCs – but to the extent the groups are managed the course becomes less open. For example,

are you telling people what groups they can join and what groups they can’t? Are discussions

being limited to specific topics? Must groups be located on the course website?

Finally, what if a person doesn’t want to be in a group? This is true for many may people. All

they want to do is read the course content and now you’re putting them into a group and giving

them (presumably) unwanted messages and email.

p.453

You don’t have to agree with me about this. But it’s the sort of criticism of groups I have made

many times in the past and would not be at all surprising for someone to see coming from me in

this case, especially when it’s used as a justification for closing the course behind a login.

> I really don't want to go into battle with Stephen, but I can't let him give people the impression

that the OOC is not open!

Then remove the login.

> by that logic, the MOOCs on all the major MOOC platforms are not MOOCs.

I’ve made that argument many times as well. :)

In fact, many of the MOOC engines are closing their content behind subscription walls. Many

also have licenses prohibiting sharing and reuse of the content. Some of them (and most of the

‘major’ MOOC engines) are now even charging for content. They keep chipping away at the

definition of MOOC until it comes to resemble exactly the same sort of course that institutions

were offering before MOOCs came along, except maybe at discounted prices.

The whole point of MOOCs is that you make them massive by eliminating the bottlenecks in

traditional courses that made massive enrollments impossible. These limitations include:

 tuition or other fees

 logins and registration to view content

 centralized discussion forums

They also include things like heavy content (such as video), processor-intensive functions,

personal interaction with the professor, etc.

Now I know, the Storyboarding course is not massive. My take is that this is because

it couldn`t be massive. And it couldn’t be massive because it is closed or limited in certain ways

that make massiveness impossible.

This is your choice. I understand the reasons behind the design decisions that you’ve made. But

my observation stands: this makers it just like every other traditional online course – it’s being

designed as a hands-on artisan course with specific interactive intent designed into the structure.

That’s fine if that’s your choice. But you shouldn’t brand it as the other thing. Because it isn’t

one.

Anyhow, I’m sorry the criticism made you feel bad. That wasn’t my intent.

Moncton, Canada

December 22, 2014

p.454

Becoming MOOC

There are two types of MOOCs. On the one hand, there is the xMOOC - this is a formal course

created in a site like Coursera or EdX. An xMOOC will have regular lessons, videos and

assignments, be led by an elite university professor, and attract a large online audience. These are

the MOOCs that have received most of the attention in recent years and have generally shaped

people's impressions. But there's another type of MOOC, called the cMOOC, which is based on

connection rather than content, which looks more like an online community than a course, and

doesn't have a defined curriculum or formal assignments. These were the original MOOCs, and

they posed a much greater challenge to both the educational institutions that offered them and the

participants who studied in them.

One major criticism of the cMOOC is based on the free-form nature of the course. Students have

to manage their own time, find their own resources, and structure their own learning. For this

reason, it is argued, students must already have a high degree of skill and internet savvy in order

to be successful. A student who cannot navigate complex websites, search for and assess

resources, or make new friends through a social network may have difficulty navigating through

a cMOOC. As Keith Brennan writes, "Not everyone knows how to be a node. Not everyone is

comfortable with the type of chaos Connectivism asserts. Not everyone is a part of the network.

Not everyone is a self-directed learner with advanced metacognition. Not everyone is already

sufficiently an expert to thrive in a free-form environment. Not everyone thinks well enough of

their ability to thrive in an environment where you need to think well of your ability to thrive."

(Brennan, 2013)

But what makes a person able to function from the first day in such an environment? What

constitutes the literacy that is missing in such a case? There's no clear answer, but proposals

abound.

Brennan himself suggests that proficiency is based in learner efficacy. "Self-efficacy is our belief

that a task is achievable by us, and that the environment in which we are working will allow us to

achieve that task. It's that ticking heart that measures out the motivation in us," he writes. And in

order to preserve and promote self-efficacy, design is important. Tasks must be challenging, in

order to be satisfying, but not so frustrating as to create confusion. Whether a particular task

satisfies these criteria, he writes, depends on cognitive load and prior knowledge. That's why

"why we tend to teach absolute novices using techniques and contexts that are different to the

ones we deploy for absolute experts, and why we avoid exposing novices to too much chaos."

Other writers refer to these criteria under the heading of flow, and trace its origin to game design.

(Baron, 2012)

But cognitive load theory assumes that there is some specific outcome to learning such that

supporting experiences can be divided into those supporting the learning outcome (aka 'signal')

p.455

and those that constitute part of the background (aka 'noise'). This is especially the case if the

purpose of the learning experience is to remember some specific body of content, or to

accomplish some particular task. However, in a cMOOC, neither is the case. Indeed, navigating

the chaos and making learning decisions is the lesson in a cMOOC. The cMOOC is in this way

similar to constructivism. As George Siemens writes, "Learners often select and pursue their own

learning. Constructivist principles acknowledge that real-life learning is messy and complex.

Classrooms which emulate the 'fuzziness' of this learning will be more effective in preparing

learners for life-long learning." (Siemens, 2004)

What, then, would promote learner efficacy even in chaotic or noisy environments? A second,

more robust, proposal takes the idea of literacy literally. A language might appear chaotic at first.

Even if someone has learned how to spell the words, and even if they know what they mean, the

nuances of using them in a sentence are many, and a language supports an infinite number of

new sentence combinations. Each new experience with a language will be different, there are

tens of thousands of words to choose from when forming a sentence, and only the barest of

grammatical rules to aid construction. Imagine the language learner given a new text to read and

criticize, picture them in front of a blank page they have to fill with words, and you have created

an experience very similar to participating in a cMOOC.

What sort of literacy would be appropriate in a cMOOC? Two major types of literacies suggest

themselves: 21st century literacies, and digital literacies.

21st century literacies are those literacies appropriate for living and working in the 21st century.

This is an environment which changes at a much greater pace than in previous years, where there

is a constant flow of information, where connectivity with people worldwide is part of our

everyday reality, and where jobs that existed ten years ago have disappeared, and new ones have

taken their place. A good example of this is the Framework for 21st Century Learning, which

addresses several dimensions of this new type of learning, including core skills of collaboration,

creativity, communication and critical thinking, and supporting skills such as workplace skills,

information media skills, and the traditional core types of literacy and numeracy. (The

Partnership for 21st Century Skills , 2011)

Alternatively, we can focus on literacies specific to the digital medium itself. For example, the

Mozilla Foundation has developed and promoted a Web Literacy Map which describes in greater

detail how to engage with digital media (as opposed to merely consuming it). (Belshaw, 2015)

Three major types of skills are identified: exploring, building and connecting. The first describes

how to find your way about the chaotic environment and even to make sense of it for yourself.

The second examines traditional and new forms of content creation, including authoring and art,

in a digital media environment. And the third addresses the previously under-represented

function of sociality and connection. Taken together, these three literacies can be seen as a way

for individuals to manage cognitive load for themselves, to adapt the task of making sense of the

p.456

web to their own skill level, and therefore to manage even in an environment that is not well

designed.

Belshaw writes, "In its current form, the Web Literacy Map comprises a collection of

competencies and skills that Mozilla and our community of stakeholders believe are important to

pay attention to when getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web. Web

literacy is about more than just coding. The web literacy standard covers every part of web

literacy-from learning basic coding skills to taking action around privacy and security." In this

sense, the modern understanding is about more than communication and meaning in a language

or symbol system. It is about operating and interacting in a complex and multi-dimensional

environment. This makes it particularly relevant to an understanding of the difference between

literacies required in traditional courses and the contemporary literacies required in a much less

structure learning environment such as a MOOC.

These types of literacies can be combined into an overarching set of literacies that may be

described under the heading of 'critical literacies'. These literacies encompass not only the skills

related to comprehension and sense-making, but also the creative abilities that support criticism,

construction and communication. And they go beyond this in addressing the dynamics of today's

world. They include, at a minimum, the following: the ability to detect and define syntax,

structure, patterns and similarities; the ability to identify and generate meaning, purpose and

goal; the ability to sense and create context or environment; the ability to apply or use language,

literacy and communication to accomplish tasks; the ability to support a conclusion, criticize an

argument, offer an explanation or define a term; and an understanding of how to recognize,

manage and create change. Or, in brief: syntax, semantics, context, use, cognition and change.

(Downes, 2009)

These literacies may be necessary for success in a MOOC, but they are more widely applicable

as well. The theory of knowledge underlying the creation of the cMOOC suggests that learning is

not based on the idea of remembering content, nor even the acquisition of specific skills or

dispositions, but rather, in engaging in experiences that support and aid in recognition of

phenomena and possibilities in the world. When we reason using our brains, we are reasoning

using complex neural nets that shape and reshape themselves the more we are exposed to

different phenomena. Choice, chance, diversity and interactivity are what support learning in

neural nets, not simple and static content. Cognitive dissonance is what creates learning

experiences. To learn is to be able to learn for oneself, not to learn what one is told; it is to be

able to work despite cognitive overload, not to remain vulnerable to it. So the cMOOC is harder,

requiring a greater degree of literacy, but in developing these literacies, promotes a deeper

learning experience.

Finally, an understanding of the literacies required also helps us understand the difference

between traditional courses, including the xMOOC, and the less structured cMOOC. It also

offers ground for criticism of the former. Traditional literacies are rooted in our comprehension

p.457

of, and ability to work within, abstract symbol systems (and in particular, language and

mathematics). It is no coincidence that PISA, for example, measures student performance in

language, science and mathematics. These are be languages of learning, as well as the content of

learning. But from the perspective of the cMOOC, these traditional literacies are inadequate.

They form only a part of the learning environment, and not even the most interesting part, as we

engage in environments that cannot be described through timeless abstractions or static facts and

figures. But this is exactly what we face when we attempt to extend our learning from the eternal

present and into the vanishing past or future. We need to learn to engage with, interact with, and

recognize form and change in the environment for ourselves, rather than attempt a static and

distanced description.

Learning in a MOOC and literacy in a MOOC become synonymous. We are not acquiring

content or using language and literacy, we are becoming literate, becoming MOOC. Each bit of

experience, each frustrated facing of a new chaos, changes you, shapes you. Participating in a

MOOC is like walking through a forest, trying to see where animals have walked in the past,

trying to determine whether that flash of orange is a tiger. There are no easy successes, and often

no sense of flow. But you feel the flush of success every time you recognize a form you defined,

achieve a skill you needed, and gradually gradually you become a skilled inhabitant of the forest,

or of 21st century human society.

Baron, S. (2012, March 22). Cognitive Flow: The Psychology of Great Game Design. Retrieved

from

Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/166972/cognitive_flow_the_psychology_of

_.php

Belshaw, D. (2015, January 13). Web Literacy Map. Retrieved from

Mozilla: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/WebLiteracyMap

Brennan, K. (2013, July 24). In Connectivism, No One Can Hear You Scream: a Guide to

Understanding the MOOC Novice. Retrieved from Hybrid

Pedagogy: http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/in-connectivism-no-one-can-hear-you-

scream-a-guide-to-understanding-the-mooc-novice/

Downes, S. (2009, November 12). Speaking in LOLCats: what literacy means in teh digital era.

Retrieved from Stephen's Web: http://www.downes.ca/presentation/232

Siemens, G. (2004, December 12). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.

Retrieved from elearnspace: http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills . (2011, March). 21st Century Student Outcomes and

Support Systems. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/1.__p21_framework_2-

pager.pdf

p.458

Note: this article originated as a submission requested by a magizine, but when I learned that

they wanted an article that was 2,000 characters long, not 2,000 words, this article became

available as a blog post.

Moncton, Canada

February 11, 2015

p.459

Ten Key Takeaways from Tony Bates

Like pretty much everyone else in the field I've been immensely enjoying Tony Bates's work-in-

progress, an online open textbook called Teaching in a Digital Age. 370

Having said that, I think my perspective is very different from his, and this summary post offers

me an opportunity to highlight some of those differences. So in what follows, the key points (in

italics) are his, while the text that follows is my discussion.

Note that this discussion is focused specifically on the "differences between classroom, blended,

online and open learning." We have points of disagreement in other areas too :) but this post

offers a way to focus on some aspects of that. Note as well that I'm not offering 'gotchas' here;

Bates has discussed many of these points elsewhere and my objective is not to refute him based

on this quick summary, only to identify the differences in perspective.

1. There is a continuum of technology-based learning, from ‘pure’ face-to-face teaching to fully

online programs. Every teacher or instructor needs to decide where on the continuum a

particular course or program should be.

The continuum here is presented in one dimension, the most obvious dimension, with teachers

and instructors making the decision as to where some particular course or program ought to lie. I

think all elements of this statement are problematic.

First, because online learning provides affordances not available in the classroom, there are

multiple dimensions of comparison. For example, we could draw a line from one-to-one teacher

on student instruction, to small classrooms, to larger lecture or presentation format courses, to

delivery to thousands or even millions of people.

Second, one of those dimensions concerns whether the online offering should be a course at all.

Online learning allows for informal conversation, videos, simulations, interactive learning,

games, and a host of other models that can be attempted imperfectly at best in a traditional

classroom. Understanding, for example, the role informal learning can play is key to

understanding the distinction between in-class and online learning.

Third, in online learning the locus of decision-making need no longer rest with the instructor.

Unlike a traditional environment, where a student's choices are to "stay" and "leave", an online

student can select from many different options - including ion-class, if they're lucky enough to be

able to find one that is local and offered at a time they can attend, at a rate they can afford.

370 http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

p.460

2. We do not have good research evidence or theories to make this decision, although we do

have growing experience of the strengths and limitations of online learning. What is particularly

missing is an evidence-based analysis of the strengths and limitations of face-to-face teaching

when online learning is also available.

Here I am first inclined to point to differing beliefs regarding the nature and role of research and

theories. I consider what I do to be research, for example, and I do not consider surveys of a

dozen graduate students to be research. And I am sceptical of the value of theories based on

models employing (what have been termed) folk-psychological concepts and naive

understandings of human cognition. Any theory of the form "x causes y" in this field should be

considered suspect.

So it follows that to me "an evidence-based analysis of the strengths and limitations of face-to-

face teaching when online learning is also available" is an oxymoron. Far too much in such an

account is left unstated and merely assumed, with variables to be filled in by the reader's own

prejudices. What constitutes a 'strength'? From my perspective, each person learning seeks

different outcomes, so a 'strength' for one is a problem for another.

But most of all here is the presumption that we can determine a priori the desirable properties of

online or traditional learning. In this regard, I side with John Stuart Mill371, and aver that "the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire

it." Without an a priori definition of 'effective' most so-called evidence-based decision-making

falls flat, and of course, what we do know though observation is that people desire many

different things.

3. In the absence of good theory, I have suggested four factors to consider when deciding on

mode of delivery, and in particular the different uses of face-to-face and online learning in

blended courses:

 your preferred teaching strategy, in terms of methods and learning outcomes

 student characteristics and needs

 the pedagogical and presentational requirements of the subject matter, in terms of (a)

content and (b) skills

 the resources available to an instructor (including the instructor’s time).

I find it fascinating that three of the four factors are based on the instructor, with only the very

generic "student characteristics and needs" constituting the fourth.

I can understand that, from the perspective of the instructor, the instructor's "preferred teaching

strategy" matters a great deal. But from the perspective of the student, the response is, "who

371 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mill-john-stuart/1863/utility/ch04.htm

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cares?" Elsewhere, the many weaknesses372 of the lecture format, for example, have been documented, as also most instructors' preference for the lecture. This has produced yet another

generation of students asleep in their classroom (especially those where electronic devices are

'not allowed').

The characterization even of "student characteristics and needs" is suspect. The phrasing

suggests two aspects of concern: first, that we are considering these in the aggregate, as a

generalization across an entire class (or generation?) of students, and not individuals; and

second, these are factors out of the students' control entirely, as we consider (predefined?

instructor-defined?) "needs" instead of wants, and "characteristics" instead of preferences.

Part of this is the unrelenting instructional stance Bates takes throughout his work. It results in an

assessment of factors impacting instructional decisions, even in areas where it's not clear the

decisions are open for instructors to make. The key difference between in-class and online

learning is the shift in the locus of control.

I would also add (cynically) that today the resources available to the instructor are increasingly

based on the students' willingness and ability to pay, as our governments gradually remove373 all levels of support for public higher education.

4. The move to blended or hybrid learning in particular means rethinking the use of the campus

and the facilities needed fully to support learning in a hybrid mode.

No disputing this one.

As the trend toward online learning continues, the traditional school or university increasingly

will become a place where local residents access lab and conferencing facilities, no matter where

they are enrolled. Meanwhile, classes offered in situ at these campuses will increasingly need

recording and conferencing facilities to support their worldwide audience.

5. Open educational resources offer many benefits but they need to be well designed and

embedded within a rich learning environment to be effective.

I mentioned above the need for an a priori presumptions regarding the desirable properties of

online or traditional learning. It comes into play here.

For one would ask, what is the basis for the belief that OERs need to be well designed and

embedded within a rich learning environment to be effective? The evidence seems to suggest

otherwise. The Khan Academy, for example, made a virtue out of offering very low quality

372 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/lectures-dont-work-but-we-keep-using-them/2009141.article

373 http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1489083/university-funding-in-ontario-hits-worrisome-milestone

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videos helping viewers understand math and physics concepts. People exchange and learn from

ideas presented in discussion boards across the internet despite these boards having no

pedagogical design at all.

I think that only within a very narrow definition of "effective" can we demonstrate a "need to be

well designed and embedded within a rich learning environment."

Again, it comes back to what people want to do. Generally, the learning I need to do from the

internet is immediate and simple. A (badly designed) Wikipedia page often does the job for me.

Indeed, typically, something designed in a rich learning environment just takes too much time

and effort to be useful. I don't need a battleship if I'm just trying to cross the river.

6. The increasing availability of OER, open textbooks, open research and open data means that

in future, almost all academic content will be open and freely accessible over the Internet.

Agreed.

7. As a result, students will increasingly look to institutions for learning support and help with

the development of skills needed in a digital age rather than with the delivery of content. This

will have major consequences for the role of teachers/instructors and the design of courses.

I also agree with this. I've actually discussed it at length in The Role of the Educator374. And my reflections here suggest a very different future than the one considered in this article.

First of all, increasingly, educational institutions will not offer courses at all. Why would they? If

you're looking for "learning support and help with the development of skills needed in a digital

age" you are very rarely looking for a course. Typically, you're looking for help with a project, or

maybe an offer of a project, in which you can apply and augment the skills you're attempting to

develop.

And different aspects of your support are offered by different people, at different institutions.

Why would we suppose that the same agency offering learning is also the one assessing that

learning? Insofar as 'design' (properly so-called) comes into play, it will be based as much on

principles established outside education.

Sure, there will be structured learning experiences (and we might even still call them 'courses').

But the idea of an instructor offering a course through a given institution will be the exception, a

tiny minority of the cases, compared to the much larger learning and development environment

generally.

374 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/the-role-of-the-educator_b_790937.html

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But of course Tony Bates knows this...

8. OER and other forms of open education will lead to increased modularization and

disaggregation of learning services, which are needed to respond to the increasing diversity of

learner needs in a digital age.

Of this there can be no doubt.

But let me add that the phrase "increased modularization and disaggregation of learning

services" suggests the repackaging of products and services that already exist. But the defining

characteristic of online learning is the wide range of new things you can do to support learning.

This leans that there will be a proliferation of new learning services. And additionally, many old

learning services will be discontinued.

For example, when I was growing up, there was a thriving industry producing binders and lined

paper. Moreover, the concept of blogging did not exist. Today we take electronic notes, blog

them directly, and hire blog moderators to ensure children don't get themselves into trouble

publishing online.

Learning online isn't simply a shift in modality. It's different. The methods are different, the

objectives are different, and the services are different.

9. MOOCs are essentially a dead end with regard to providing learners who do not have

adequate access to education with high quality qualifications. The main value of MOOCs is in

providing opportunities for non-formal education and supporting communities of practice.

It is again interesting to see this one thing highlighted. It is interesting to me because this was

never the intent of the MOOCs I produced, and with some few exceptions375, is not the intent of MOOC producers today.

But more interesting is the question of why MOOCs are a "dead end" in this regard.

The suggestion here (and it's only implicit) is that MOOCs are incapable of providing the

learning required to warrant the awarding of a credential. That's why Bates includes the phrase

about students "who do not have adequate access to education." This suggests that access

to traditional education is a necessary condition, that MOOCs could not provide an education by

themselves.

But why not? The role of answering this question is played by the phrase"high quality

qualifications." Even if MOOCs could provide qualifications, they would not be"high quality".

375 http://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/Pages/Giving-MOOCs-Some-Credit.aspx

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These, it appears to be suggested, may be offered only by (putatively) high quality formal

education.

But I submit that these are not empirical arguments. Indeed, I would go further and suggest that

the only reason students cannot earn high quality credentials in MOOCs is that the institutions

that offer such credentials won't grant them for MOOCs. And why would they? Their business

model depends on requiring students undertake extensive and often extensive coursework before

the credential can be issued.

What makes the MOOC a "dead end", in other words, has nothing to do with the MOOC itself,

but rather, has everything to do with the credentials.

The more interesting question here is whether a person working from childhood could achieve

the same degree of knowledge and (qualification for) credentials taking MOOCs exclusively.

Can a non-literate and non-educated person become literate and educated through open online

learning? Is there a fundamental property of closed formal learning that suggests that it is the

only route to a credential?

There are arguments to be made on both sides here. But I submit that the case is far from closed,

and that this is not a takeaway.

10. OER, MOOCs, open textbooks and other digital forms of open-ness are important in helping

to widen access to learning opportunities, but ultimately these are enhancements rather than a

replacement for a well-funded public education system, which remains the core foundation for

enabling equal access to educational opportunities.

I think that Tony Bates and I both agree on the importance of an open and accessible public

education system.

Where we disagree is in the form that system should take.

The existing public education system does a poor job of ensuring equal access to educational

opportunities. Major barriers exist across the board, in factors as varied as child poverty and

nutrition, access to school materials, fees and access to extracurricular activities, expectations

and class backgrounds, travel and work opportunities, opportunity cost and risk, and much much

more.

Viewing online learning as nothing more than an enhancement of the traditional system is, to my

mind, to preserve the inequalities inherent in the traditional system. It is to misunderstand the

role played by the traditional system not only in the provision of an education but also in social

networking and the formation of social classes.

The primary purpose, for example, of a school like Harvard or Yale is not to provide a superior

education (their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding). It is to provide exclusive access to

p.465

a network of potentially rich and powerful individuals who will shape and promote your career

through future life. Simply building an enhancement on that system will not change the

inequality it represents.

For online learning to truly reach its potential it needs not only to break the educational

monopoly of the rich and powerful, it needs to break the social monopoly of the rich and

powerful, rending open their cliques, and laying bare the foundations of their influence. We

too can form global networks of mutual self-support, but only if we break the existing structures

designed to preserve status and privilege.

And in the end, I think that this points to the deep difference between Tony Bates and myself. I

think that we disagree ultimately about what constitutes an education.

I think that he views it in terms of classes and content, of subjects and competencies and

credentials, in terms of instruction and demonstration, pedagogy, skills and knowledge. This is a

common and very traditional view of education, but one which I have increasingly come to

question.

In my view, education is more akin to shaping and growing oneself, of acclimatization to a

community and to an environment. The learning of any subject is analogous to the formation of a

literacy in that subject, based not only in speaking the right words, but also in seeing the world in

a certain way, recognizing some things as important (and other things as not). Expectations are

as important as knowledge in this view, the way we say something as important as what we say.

This is what distinguishes between the education an elite receives, and an education that is

reserved for the rest of us. While the mass of people get facts and skills and credentials, the elite

are transformed into a natural ruling class. It's like the difference between someone who is taught

the rules of the game, and someone who trains as an athlete. No amount of skills and drills can

produce in a non-elite person the social and literary bearing of an elite person.

My objective is to transform learning as a whole into something that produces at least this

possibility for everyone. We should embrace this as a public policy objective. Because, with all

the capacity, technology and wealth available to us in society as a whole, it's the least we can do.

Moncton, Canada

February 22, 2015

p.466

From MOOC to Personal Learning

Published as From MOOC to Personal Learning in Revista FGV Online Year 5,

Number 1 69-77, Oct 05, 2015.

The cMOOC, is based on connection rather than content, looks more like an online community

than a course, and doesn't have a defined curriculum or formal assignments. What makes a

person able to function in such an environment? What constitutes the literacy that is missing in

such a case? What type of learning design or learning technology is best suited to support

learning in a free-form community-based environment? These are the questions intended to be

addressed in this paper. It describes the basis for a personal learning architecture and outlines the

elements of the ‘learning and Performance Support System’ project being developed to

implement this architecture.

The first Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) was created in 2008 by George Siemens and

myself. The course, titled Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, was implemented as part of

the University of Manitoba’s Certificante in Adult Education and simultaneously offered at no

charge to approximately 2200 people worldwide. In the years that followed CCK would be

offered three more times. Additionally, the same platform was used to deliver a course called

Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge (PLENK) in 2010, as well as the 30-

week course on Change.

In 2011 Stanford University offered its first MOOC, the Artificial Intelligence MOOC authored

by Norvig and Thrun. It differs from the network-based connectivist MOOCC (cMOOC),

though, by being centred on a single platform and focusing on content like a traditional course.

The xMOOC, as this model came to be known, is characterized by limiting autonomy and

diversity - all students followed the same lessons at the same pace. Although it was open,

interaction flowed one-way, from professor to student.

Since that time the field has seen experiments, articles and publications in the field with varying

attention paid to each of the four terms in the original definition. Research and reports have

questioned the sustainability of the MOOC model, questioned variables like learning outcomes

and completion rates, and questioned whether the needs of non-traditional and less independent

students are being met. Some have questioned whether MOOCs should be massive at all. Others

have questioned whether it should be free.

These questions need to be asked differently of the two types of MOOCs. The xMOOC has

received most of the attention in recent years and have generally shaped people's impressions.

But the other type type of MOOC, called the cMOOC, based on connection rather than content,

looks more like an online community than a course and doesn't have a defined curriculum or

formal assignments. These were the original MOOCs, and since they posed a much greater

p.467

challenge to both the educational institutions that offered them and the participants who studied

in them, they must be assessed differently.

One major criticism of the cMOOC is based on the free-form nature of the course. Students have

to manage their own time, find their own resources, and structure their own learning. For this

reason, it is argued, students must already have a high degree of skill and internet savvy in order

to be successful. A student who cannot navigate complex websites, search for and assess

resources, or make new friends through a social network may have difficulty navigating through

a cMOOC. As Keith Brennan writes, "Not everyone knows how to be a node. Not everyone is

comfortable with the type of chaos Connectivism asserts. Not everyone is a part of the network.

Not everyone is a self-directed learner with advanced metacognition. Not everyone is already

sufficiently an expert to thrive in a free-form environment. Not everyone thinks well enough of

their ability to thrive in an environment where you need to think well of your ability to thrive."

(Brennan, 2013)

But what makes a person able to function in such an environment? What constitutes the literacy

that is missing in such a case? What type of learning design or learning technology is best suited

to support learning in a free-form community-based environment? These are the questions

intended to be addressed in this paper.

Brennan himself suggests that proficiency is based in learner efficacy. "Self-efficacy is our belief

that a task is achievable by us, and that the environment in which we are working will allow us to

achieve that task. It's that ticking heart that measures out the motivation in us," he writes. And in

order to preserve and promote self-efficacy, design is important. Tasks must be challenging, in

order to be satisfying, but not so frustrating as to create confusion. Whether a particular task

satisfies these criteria, he writes, depends on cognitive load and prior knowledge. That's why

"why we tend to teach absolute novices using techniques and contexts that are different to the

ones we deploy for absolute experts, and why we avoid exposing novices to too much chaos."

Other writers refer to these criteria under the heading of flow, and trace its origin to game design.

(Baron, 2012)

But cognitive load theory assumes that there is some specific outcome to learning such that

supporting experiences can be divided into those supporting the learning outcome (aka 'signal')

and those that constitute part of the background (aka 'noise'). This is especially the case if the

purpose of the learning experience is to remember some specific body of content, or to

accomplish some particular task. However, in a cMOOC, neither is the case. Indeed, navigating

the chaos and making learning decisions is the lesson in a cMOOC. The cMOOC is in this way

similar to constructivism. As George Siemens writes, "Learners often select and pursue their own

learning. Constructivist principles acknowledge that real-life learning is messy and complex.

Classrooms which emulate the 'fuzziness' of this learning will be more effective in preparing

learners for life-long learning." (Siemens, 2004)

p.468

What, then, would promote learner efficacy even in chaotic or noisy environments? A second,

more robust, proposal takes the idea of literacy literally. A language might appear chaotic at first.

Even if someone has learned how to spell the words, and even if they know what they mean, the

nuances of using them in a sentence are many, and a language supports an infinite number of

new sentence combinations. Each new experience with a language will be different, there are

tens of thousands of words to choose from when forming a sentence, and only the barest of

grammatical rules to aid construction. Imagine the language learner given a new text to read and

criticize, picture them in front of a blank page they have to fill with words, and you have created

an experience very similar to participating in a cMOOC.

What sort of literacy would be appropriate in a cMOOC? Two major types of literacies suggest

themselves: 21st century literacies, and digital literacies.

21st century literacies are those literacies appropriate for living and working in the 21st century.

This is an environment which changes at a much greater pace than in previous years, where there

is a constant flow of information, where connectivity with people worldwide is part of our

everyday reality, and where jobs that existed ten years ago have disappeared, and new ones have

taken their place. A good example of this is the Framework for 21st Century Learning, which

addresses several dimensions of this new type of learning, including core skills of collaboration,

creativity, communication and critical thinking, and supporting skills such as workplace skills,

information media skills, and the traditional core types of literacy and numeracy. (The

Partnership for 21st Century Skills , 2011)

Alternatively, we can focus on literacies specific to the digital medium itself. For example, the

Mozilla Foundation has developed and promoted a Web Literacy Map which describes in greater

detail how to engage with digital media (as opposed to merely consuming it). (Belshaw, 2015)

Three major types of skills are identified: exploring, building and connecting. The first describes

how to find your way about the chaotic environment and even to make sense of it for yourself.

The second examines traditional and new forms of content creation, including authoring and art,

in a digital media environment. And the third addresses the previously under-represented

function of sociality and connection. Taken together, these three literacies can be seen as a way

for individuals to manage cognitive load for themselves, to adapt the task of making sense of the

web to their own skill level, and therefore to manage even in an environment that is not well

designed.

Belshaw writes, "In its current form, the Web Literacy Map comprises a collection of

competencies and skills that Mozilla and our community of stakeholders believe are important to

pay attention to when getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web. Web

literacy is about more than just coding. The web literacy standard covers every part of web

literacy-from learning basic coding skills to taking action around privacy and security." In this

sense, the modern understanding is about more than communication and meaning in a language

or symbol system. It is about operating and interacting in a complex and multi-dimensional

p.469

environment. This makes it particularly relevant to an understanding of the difference between

literacies required in traditional courses and the contemporary literacies required in a much less

structure learning environment such as a MOOC.

These types of literacies can be combined into an overarching set of literacies that may be

described under the heading of 'critical literacies'. These literacies encompass not only the skills

related to comprehension and sense-making, but also the creative abilities that support criticism,

construction and communication. And they go beyond this in addressing the dynamics of today's

world. They include, at a minimum, the following: the ability to detect and define syntax,

structure, patterns and similarities; the ability to identify and generate meaning, purpose and

goal; the ability to sense and create context or environment; the ability to apply or use language,

literacy and communication to accomplish tasks; the ability to support a conclusion, criticize an

argument, offer an explanation or define a term; and an understanding of how to recognize,

manage and create change. Or, in brief: syntax, semantics, context, use, cognition and change.

(Downes, 2009)

These literacies may be necessary for success in a MOOC, but they are more widely applicable

as well. The theory of knowledge underlying the creation of the cMOOC suggests that learning is

not based on the idea of remembering content, nor even the acquisition of specific skills or

dispositions, but rather, in engaging in experiences that support and aid in recognition of

phenomena and possibilities in the world. When we reason using our brains, we are reasoning

using complex neural nets that shape and reshape themselves the more we are exposed to

different phenomena. Choice, chance, diversity and interactivity are what support learning in

neural nets, not simple and static content. Cognitive dissonance is what creates learning

experiences. To learn is to be able to learn for oneself, not to learn what one is told; it is to be

able to work despite cognitive overload, not to remain vulnerable to it. So the cMOOC is harder,

requiring a greater degree of literacy, but in developing these literacies, promotes a deeper

learning experience.

Finally, an understanding of the literacies required also helps us understand the difference

between traditional courses, including the xMOOC, and the less structured cMOOC. It also

offers ground for criticism of the former. Traditional literacies are rooted in our comprehension

of, and ability to work within, abstract symbol systems (and in particular, language and

mathematics). It is no coincidence that PISA, for example, measures student performance in

language, science and mathematics. These are be languages of learning, as well as the content of

learning. But from the perspective of the cMOOC, these traditional literacies are inadequate.

They form only a part of the learning environment, and not even the most interesting part, as we

engage in environments that cannot be described through timeless abstractions or static facts and

figures. But this is exactly what we face when we attempt to extend our learning from the eternal

present and into the vanishing past or future. We need to learn to engage with, interact with, and

recognize form and change in the environment for ourselves, rather than attempt a static and

distanced description.

p.470

Learning in a MOOC and literacy in a MOOC become synonymous. We are not acquiring

content or using language and literacy, we are becoming literate, becoming MOOC. Each bit of

experience, each frustrated facing of a new chaos, changes you, shapes you. Participating in a

MOOC is like walking through a forest, trying to see where animals have walked in the past,

trying to determine whether that flash of orange is a tiger. There are no easy successes, and often

no sense of flow. But you feel the flush of success every time you recognize a form you defined,

achieve a skill you needed, and gradually ou become a skilled inhabitant of the forest, or of 21st

century human society.

These literacies form the design architecture for a learning technology that supports personal

agency in a learning community. They form the basis of the a personal learning architecture

being developed in the National Research Council's Learning and Performance Support Systems

program. This program was developed and approved to address the issue of skills shortages in

technical and professional industries in Canada. It is an issue that costs Canadian industry

billions of dollars a year while thousands of Canadians remain unemployed. Our solution is to

provide each person with a single point of access to all their skills development and training

needs, individualizing their learning path, providing learning support, and supporting learning

tailored to industry needs and individual performance support.

This program builds on the National Research Council's deep connection to the e-learning

industry, including collaboration and commercialization across the sector. The program draws on

NRC's research in other fields, such as machine learning and analytics. And NRC is free to take

risks on technology that might daunt commercial providers. NRC's track record in this sector

includes the leadership role it played in the eduSource network of learning object repositories,

the Sifter/Filter content recommender later commercialized as Racofi, sentiment analysis in

learning, the Synergic3 collaborative workflow system, and more.

NRC's Learning and Performance Support Systems program touches on all parts of Canada's

learning technology, but has the most direct impact on the learning management system (LMS)

sector. This is an area that includes content management systems, talent management systems,

and the LMS. It also impacts content developers and e-learning distributors, including MOOC

distributors and educational institutions. It also impacts end users themselves: not only students

and individual learners, but also their employers.

In recent years NRC has become widely known for developing and refining the Massive Open

Online Course (MOOC), including the creation of the technology behind the original

Connectivism and Connected Knowledge (CCK08) MOOC offered in 2008, creating a dynamic

connected application to support learning. The MOOC combined several themes which were in

themselves becoming increasingly important: the idea of massively multi-user environments, the

idea of using open and distributed content, the idea of fully online delivery, and the packaging of

these as an online course.

p.471

The NRC-designed MOOC differs significantly from traditional courses. The most obvious

difference is that the course is not located on a single platform, but is instead a web created by

linking multiple sites together. The architecture of this web is intended to optimize four design

principles: each member of the web operates autonomously, the web links diverse services and

resources together, the web is open and supports open engagement, and the web encourages

cooperative learning. Engagement is at the core of cMOOC learning. Participants aggregate

resources from multiple sources, remix these in various ways, adapt and repurpose them to their

own needs, and then share them. If we look at the structure of the course from this perspective,

we see a network of individual learners interacting with each other and exchanging, and working

with, diverse resources obtained from a variety of internet sources.

Looked at more deeply we can describe specific support requirements for each student. A student

creates a resource, and makes this available to the course where it is accessed by a second

student, who via this resource finds a third student's resources. From the course provider

perspective, students contribute content metadata and the learning provider may create additional

content, all of which is accessed and shared by course participants, who may also attend live

online events or access event recordings. From the student's perspective, by contrast, the view is

to a set of other students or course instructors, and via interactions with these course participants,

to a wide range of resources and services across the wider internet, everything from blog posts to

YouTube videos.

To support a student's involvement, therefore, technology design is based on the idea of putting

at the centre of a learning network, connecting via a single environment to other participants,

course resources, and myriad online services. This in turn suggests a simplified design that

supports this student-centered approach with connections to learning support applications, and in

particular, to resource repositories, to external cloud media storage, to learning applications and

APIs, and to external graph-based analytics. These components form the core of the Learning

and Performance Support Systems (LPSS) technology development proposal, which incorporates

these connective elements with a personal learning record to support lifetime management of

credentials, training records, and learning activities, and a personal learning assistant to manage

the system.

The NRC LPSS program is a 5-year $20 million effort designed to develop these core

technologies and bind them with a common platform. The program applies this technology

through a series of implementation projects with commercial and technical partners, including

other NRC and Government of Canada (GoC) branches. These projects are managed through a

program organization that maps the technology effort to client demands and the employment

outcomes described at the beginning of this paper. Program deliverables include not only the

technology development, which will be implemented in corporate, institutional and government

environments, but also a series of publications and white papers describing the LPSS learning

network, how and why it works, and how to connect to it.

p.472

Also LPSS can be viewed as a stand-alone system, it is designed in a distributed and modular

fashion in order to enable it to be inserted, for example, directly into work environments and

corporate contexts, directly addressing human resources and training requirements. This

interoperability is achieved through the personal learning assistant (PLA). Like an LMS, the

PLA displays learning resources and plays interoperable learning technology (using standards

such as ADL's SCORM or IMS's LTI). But it also the leading edge to much more. As mentioned

above, the LPSS program is developing five core technologies, linked by the Common

Framework (CF). These are the aforementioned PLA, the Resource Repository Network (RRN),

Personal Cloud (PC), Competency Development and Recognition Algorithms (ACDR), and the

Personal Learning Record (PLR).

Let us examine these in more detail. The first of these is the Resource Repository Network

(RRN), needed to provide connectivity with external resources. This package of applications

enables a user to manage and discover lists off sources and resources. In a sense, it functions like

the syndicated content (RSS) readers of old, but is designed to access and manage many different

forms of content, including calendar information and modern Javascript-based (JSON)

descriptions of courses and programs.

A second aspect of LPSS is the Personal Cloud (PC) set of applications. These applications

manage personal cloud storage services. Some of these are familiar, such as Dropbox and Google

Drive, and some of these are innovative, such as personal home-hosted cloud storage using

OwnCloud. But more is involved than merely storing data; resources must be secured, backed

up, authenticated and synchronized. This enables LPSS to support genuine data portability, and

eliminate reliance on a single provider.

As mentioned above, interoperability is achieved through the Personal Learning Assistant (PLA).

In addition to displaying learning resources and running e-learning applications, the PLA is

designed to 'project' LPSS capacities into multiple platforms. These include not only desktop and

mobile devices, but productivity applications such as Word and PowerPoint, interactive

environments such as conferencing systems and synchronous communications platforms,

simulations and games, as well as tools and devices. The PLA exchanges information with these

environment, enabling them to interact intelligently with the user. One example of this kind of

integration is LPSS's integration with another NRC product called 2Sim, which provides virtual

haptic training simulations in medical environments. By exchanging activity data (using the

Experience API, or xAPI data exchange format) LPSS supports a continuous learning path using

these systems.

This points to an additional set of services that can be integrated into a distributed learning

application, Automated Competency Development and Recognition (ACDR). This is a set of

intelligent algoritms designed to import or create competency definitions matching employment

positions, to support the development of learning plans based on these competencies, to provide

resource and service recommendations, and to tackle the seriously challenging task of assessing

p.473

performance based on system and network interactions. It is worth noting that while LMSs and

xMOOCs tout learning analytics, only a distributed personal learning network application can

apply analytics using a person's complete learning and development profile, and not only the

specific LMS or cMOOC.

This functionality is enabled by the Personal Learning Record (PLR), which collects learning

records and credentials obtained through a lifetime and stores them in a secure locker owned by

the individual and shared only with explicit permission. The PLR collects three major forms of

records: learning activity and interactivity records, such as xAPI records; a person's personal

portfolio of learning artifacts and evidence; and the person's full set of credentials and

certifications, these verified by the issuer.

It should be noted that LPSS recognizes, and is designed to cooperate with, existing personal

learning environment and personal learning records, including Europe's Responsive Open

Learning Environments (ROLE) project and start-ups such as Known, Learning Locker and

Mahara. Additionally, LPSS is designed to work with MOOC providers - not only NRC's

gRSShopper but also Coursera and EdX. We've integrated badges in a Moodle and Mahara

environment for the Privy Council Office, we're doing xAPI application profile development,

and are engaged in collaborative workplace training and development. These implementation

projects (as we call them) reinforce LPSS's mandate to be more than just a theoretical exercise,

but to apply the technology in authentic environments, supporting individuals in a learning

network and feeding this experience back into product improvement.

It may be suggested that there are any number of companies engaged in aspects of learning

analytics, personal learning records, learning technologies integration, and the like. But the LPSS

approach is different - by creating many small things linked together instead of one large

centralized application, many tasks that were formally simple - like data storage, content

distribution, authentication and analytics - become that much more difficult. Take analytics, for

example - how do you do big data analysis across thousands of separate systems each with its

own unique data structure? These are the hard problems NRC is trying to solve.

LPSS launched in an initial pre-alpha version October 1, 2014. Invitations may be obtained by

going to http://lpss.me and filling in the short form. Users will also be asked whether they would

like to participate in LPSS development research (this is not required and all personal research is

subject to strict Government of Canada research ethics protocols). Functionality in this early

system is limited; the first release focused on content aggregation, competency import and

definition, and simple recommendation.

The next release will feature the 'connectivist' social interaction architecture being designed

through an implementation project with the Industrial Research Assistanceship program (IRAP)

supporting small and medium sized enterprise. The roadmap projects two other major releases, at

p.474

6-month intervals, coupled with ongoing client-specific and industry-specific learning solutions.

Technology will be transferred to partner companies beginning in 2017.

Baron, S. (2012, March 22). Cognitive Flow: The Psychology of Great Game Design. Retrieved

from Gamasutra:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/166972/cognitive_flow_the_psychology_of_.php

Belshaw, D. (2015, January 13). Web Literacy Map. Retrieved from Mozilla:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/WebLiteracyMap

Brennan, K. (2013, July 24). In Connectivism, No One Can Hear You Scream: a Guide to

Understanding the MOOC Novice. Retrieved from Hybrid Pedagogy:

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/in-connectivism-no-one-can-hear-you-scream-a-guide-

to-understanding-the-mooc-novice/

Downes, S. (2009, November 12). Speaking in LOLCats: what literacy means in teh digital era.

Retrieved from Stephen's Web: http://www.downes.ca/presentation/232

Siemens, G. (2004, December 12). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.

Retrieved from elearnspace: http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills . (2011, March). 21st Century Student Outcomes and

Support Systems. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/1.__p21_framework_2-

pager.pdf

Portions of this paper appeared as a blog post, Becoming MOOC, February 11, 2015

(http://halfanhour.blogspot.com) and portions were presented as a keynote address, Design

Elements in a Personal Learning Environment, March 04, 2015, delivered to 4th International

Conference e-Learning and Distance Education, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

(http://www.downes.ca/presentation/356)

p.475

A Lexicon of Sustainability

This is a summary of a talk at the Hewlett Grantees' Meeting, San Francisco, March 25, 2015.

Errors (and typos, etc) are my own.

Douglas Gayeton

Lexicon of Sustainability376

http://lexiconofsustainability.com

Our food system is opaque. We asked people to develop a lexicon around food sources.

We started with the word 'sustainability'. That is one of the most opaque words. I asked a native

hunter - he said he watches what the animals eat; they always leave something behind. I asked a

farmer; she said it was about survival. I asked Miguel, who started growing organic food because

it was too expensive.

How to tell these stories? Photography is great, but it only captures one image at a time, one

moment in time. I looked at a place where he grows fish in boxes, the waste is used to grow

tomatoes, and he also grows worms. How do you tell that story in one photo? You can't - I made

a composite after taking thousands of photos.

What if I had him tell me what the word 'vermiculture' means? You can combine the words with

the picture and tell a good story.

So we went around the United States and created a lexicon of sustainability. We created a book -

the focus groups came back: "Nobody knows what 'lexicon' means."

The power of graphical ideas: thought bombs. Photo composites with words all over them. By

making things graphical and textual at the same time you engage people's left brain and right

brain at the same time. You create a deconstructive narrative. Thing Sherlock Holmes: "all the

answers were in this room. We just had to piece them together in the proper order." From a

passive learning experience to an active learning experience.

Knowing words - learning what they mean - can change the way entire industries work. A loaf of

bread - a list of ingredients - most of them did not exist 20 years ago. The Bible used to be

written in Latin only - that is what an opaque religion looks like. But what if we published the

book in the language that we speak?

Eg. rBST is the name of a growth hormone fed to cows. A farmer sold milk without rBST - he

was sued by Monsanto (they eventually lost). Or consider - what is the "cage free egg"? What

376 http://lexiconofsustainability.com/

p.476

does it mean? I asked the producer what it means. Pasture raised. But nobody knows what that

means.

What is the real cost of cheap food? People growing food according to values are competing

against an industrial system that has externalized all its costs. The concept of 'true cost

accounting' looks at how much something really costs. Consider a river - it provides free energy,

and can be used to dispose of waste. We always pay when we get things cheap.

The best example when we look at food is the 'cow to pickup truck index' - the value of a grass-

fed cow compared to a truck. How can these compete against an industrial system? Convincing

people of the value of voting with their dollars. There's this idea of organics and eating locally.

There's a movement to have producers say whether food contains GMO organisms. It would

force food producers to be transparent. It is opposed by Monsanto and others who benefit from

an opaque system. GMOs aren't always bad - eg., a variant of papaya that was resistant to a

disease, which was in danger of being wiped out in Hawaii. People talk about GMOs as

privatizing seeds, etc - but that didn't happen here; he open-sourced the seeds.

Or another term - 'antibiotic free' - 80% of the antibiotics are fed to livestock, and they're not

even sick, because they gain weight quickly. So there's going to be a movement to lable

antibiotics in meat.

In fisheries, the term 'red snapper' doesn't mean you're getting red snapper. There's always the

pressure to give you fish close enough to what you always get (so fish are predictable like

tomatoes). There's an initiative to tag a fish so you know where and how it was sourced.

The concept of 'identity preserved' gives us a sense of where the food that is grown goes - for

example, wheat grown in California that is shipped to Italy to become pasta.

Before the second world war we spent 30 of our money on food. But after the war we applied

economies of scale to everything. Everything was centralized. Everything was based simply on

price. How do you reverse hat? It's a big challenge.

There's a town called Greensboro that died. They went and asked an old man what happened, he

didn't know, but he said they used to be able to get a pie of pie in a pie shop. They re-opened the

pie shop, and the town began to grow again. You can't have commerce without food. People are

beginning to apply the principle of 'terroir' - the idea that everything has a place - to the food

industry (in the shellfish industry it's 'aguoir').

'Community Supported Agriculture' (CSA) - is where they get a box of food every week that is

locally sourced. They are being more connected to their food, who grows it, where it's grown. Or

a pie shop in San Francisco set up a CSAA for fish. This used to be commonplace. In Italy they

knew to never buy fish on a Monday - wait until Tuesday when it's fresh. This is an example of

people being connected to their food.

p.477

A regional food hub - people are rebuilding what was dismantled when the industrial food

system came in. People in the community selling for many producers. Producers pooling

transportation costs cooperatively.

There is the concept of a 'food desert' where there was no food in a 6-square mile range. I went to

a local supermarket - no food - just candy, chips, alcohol, etc. Consumers don't know they have

other choices. There's a new 'corner store' movement - inserting places to buy local food in these

corner stores.

It's a system that is made by people. The average age of a farmer is 57. People are scrambling to

educate young farmers. The concept is 'green collar' - they give people land and training, for a

period of time (then you have to find your own land). It's a 'farm incubator'.

And there's a 'kitchen incubator'. Setting up people with kitchens, business training, etc. - that's

how you reinvent local food systems. Systems that are based on value.

So - what's the verdict? I'm not pessimistic when I see seed swaps. Upswapping, to convert land

to farmland. We took this to Mexico - in Mexico 'organic' didn't mean anything. Every Mexican,

though, knows the meaning of GMOs - because corn in their national food. We learned, we need

to speak to people in their own language.

We do projects based on portability - PDFs you can distribute. We do puppet shows. We do food

conferences. We help with street events. You can go to our website, you can download our

resources. We have a website, launching next month, the 'lexicon of food'. All resources open

sourced and free. Showing what people farms. Doing projects teaching people about aquaponics.

We do 'market makeovers'. We have kids in Mexico making images to explain their food system.

It's very powerful because it's made by people. It's people-sourced.

What will be your 'Road to Damascus' moment?

Q: what about school lunches?

A. People are confronting that problem. Politicians won't spend more money on school lunches

until they see the value in it. Right now that's opaque.

Q. I don't know a lot about food, but what I do know about is beer. What I've seen taking over

Virginia is craft breweries, where people grow their own hps, etc. Peo[ple are willing to pay $9-

$9 per glass.

A. They say people always centralize industries but that's not true. Another example is the music

industry.

Q. Often discussion of open education is overly cerebral. But food today is your #1 cool thing.

You can convince people with photos with food, but in education it's harder.

p.478

A. Our project is not about food, it's about climate change. People don't identify with climate

change. But you take all the ideas that contribute to climate change as clear as possible, so you

can't mistake the message overall. The idea of the taxonomy is to pinpoint all the individual ideas

of a thing and make them clear.

Q. We are using terms in education that people believe they already know and we are using them

in different ways. How did you grab people and help explain the complexities.

A. First we make everything as conversational and without jargon as possible. And second, we

say we are not out to make the definitive lexicon of things. Words are shifting and changing. It's

our biggest problem with Wikipedia - it doesn't have enough context to show all the contexts a

term can be used in.

Q. Terms - like taxonomy - can acquire baggage over the years. Eg. GMOs - we read all our

foods are genetically modified over time. You see that in education all the time - all the different

terms for 21st century skills.

A. We did a show; they kept asking for a list of all the images and we set them. It was only at the

last minute we set up the GMO image of papayas. They said "what are you thinking?" There was

a lot of opposition. All of these terms should elicit the fact that it's not a fixed idea, it's a dynamic

idea.

Sausalito, United States

March 25, 2015

p.479

OER Business Models: A Debate

This is a summary of a debate including four participants, listed below, at OER2014. Errors and

omissions are still my own.

Your Mission

What is your mission in OER and what is your business model?

David Harris – OpenStax

It's really about access, providing access to the highest quality OERs possible. A whole suite of

products beyond the textbook. We've created an ecosystem around learning materials. This

ecosystem is the core of our business. Eg. we might partner with John Wiley & sones. We works

with multiple partners to provide more options and choice for our partners.

Lisa Petrides – IKSME

Our mission is about maximizing all of these open access tools that enable breakthroughs in

teaching and learning. We build tools, develop capacity, support the OER Commons library, etc.

There are two main components to the business model: first, the R&D side, and second, the

service department, that offers services around the capacity-building piece, showing people how

to organize and use their content. The core is, how does it impact the learner?

David Wiley – Lumen

Two-fold mission: save students money and improve student success. We have a particular focus

on at-risk students, so especially the community college. The business model is based on helping

faculty make the transition from commercial to open textbooks. Any course that we provide

support for we charge a per-enrollment fee. All the content is CC-licensed content, and the

platform is open source as well.

Gary Lopez - MITE / Ed-Ready

Our mission is to improve access to everyone. The goal of the inrov project is to make sure

online K-12 content is available to every person at no cost. The business model supports business

and mission goals. In addition tot he content, there is a membership component, whgich supports

both goals.

Reactions: To Gary: if your're not a member of the community, what are your rights of access?

Gary: if you're an individual you have full rights to use and re-use. We focus on institutions - if

you're an institution, we ask that you join our membership.

What does it mean to be sustainable?

p.480

Lisa - ISKME is a non-profit. It's very much of a Linux model - the content itself should forever

be free and open. Access is always available. It's different from what Gary talked about - it

means that any wrap-around services are going to be another type of service, eg., we might to an

LTI or API integration, or a workflow process - some such thing. The key to being sustainable is

to always ask, how do we keep that part (the core part) free?

Gary - there a fundamental difference between for-profits and non-profits in their goals. In for-

profits the business goals are financials, and officers have a responsibility to achieving financial

goals. Unless there's a special arrangements to make supporting OERs the goal, the financial

responsibility always rises to the top. When a non-profit is set up, the mission is the goal.

David - sustainability is critical to us, especially if you are on the producing side of OER, and

especially if you think it has to be a market-based solution, which means it has to be of high

quality. I think it is irresponsible of a non-profit to assume you will be given philanthropy. As

you move toward sustainability you get greater independence and greater opportunity to pursue

strategies that support the mission. As a non-profit we don't have the overhead that for-profits

need to generate, so we can produce at a lower cost.

David Wiley - what's my ongoing ability to continue to meet my goals? For Lumen it means

being able to continue to partner with institutions and continue to drop the price to zero, and be

able to look beyond the grant.

Reactions: Lisa - the two people beside me came from the publishing side. What was that like?

Gary: I didn't come from publishing; I was faculty. My company got purchased by Harcourt.

You don't have a cost of money. You can go into markets more aggressively. Davis Harris: we

started out pro-market, but then it became just about the shareholders, which I didn't like. To

provide the greatest access, we have to think about marketplace solutions.

Lisa: let's look at this. What's been working in open food has been from the bottom-up. But we

are still working from a top-down perspective (eg., responding to concerns raised by publishers).

David Wiley: we became for-profit to maximize our ability to succeed, eg., we can partner with

institutions, and we can get more traditional investment as well, so we don't have to rely on

grants. The quality issue Dave prings up is interesting; hostorically nobody talked about quality -

it was always some proxy for quality. What's the only actual condition? Whether kids learn from

it. So we don't get distracted by how glossy it is.

David Harris: you are misinterpreting what really counts as quality. Eg. there are review boards,

etc.

Gary: we're gathering data, that data has to do with efficacy, whether people succeed. It was

before that the issue of whether people were actually learning never came into the equation (with

commercial publishers).

p.481

Lisa: so 'sustainability' in OERs is about learning.

Defining OER

How do you define OER, and why do your think your business is OER?

Gary: we don't think about the definition of OER. We're focused on our mission to provide

access to quality education for evertone. Whether or not something falls within the definition is

secondary.

David Harris: I don't think it matters what I think it is, that's defined by the license we use. We

use the CC-by license, which is critically important, because it provides freedom to the end user.

We use this to sell the concept to academics. They realize they can publish derivative versions,

for example.

David Wiley: I'm on the other end of the scale; I obsess about it. There's a two-part - there has to

be free and unfettered access to the resource; and I have to have free and perpetual ability to

engage in the 5R activities. As a matter of contract, any school we work with, the license says

the work we produce has tp be OER.

Lisa: how we define OER is that it isn't a thing, it is a practice; it includes content and curation

and quality and rigor and standards and change in teaching practice. When we say we are in the

business of OErs it is about free and open access to the world's knowledge. It's in the last few

years we've really understood our role as a public library; we're not serving an institution. The

other thing about OER Commons is we aggregate all of the licenses into four buckets.

David Harris: we have to be careful as a community because over the next 12-18 months we will

see more and more 'openwashing' by major publishers, because OER is establishing a brand

identity. And questions about who should be producing it?

Gary: anyone who want to. Who shouldn't?

David Wiley: to Lisa, if the category becomes so broad, it's difficult to know what we're talking

about. Eg. open pedagogy is different from OER.

Lisa: our open speaker used the work 'ecosystem'. You can't just have the seed: you need the

market, and the water. It has to be inclusive of the whole piece. Otherwise you have something

disjointed and not sustainable. Eg. if you have content and nobody uses it, how is it that we have

OER? It can't just be about this thing.

David Wiley: but each of the parts of the econsystem has a name, the ecosystem is 'open

education'.

Gary: but it does show that just creating them and putting them out there has no value. You have

to maintain them, have version control, etc. That's hard.

p.482

Q3. What does it mean to say we're giving the seeds away for free, but not the water, etc?

Lisa: well that'\s why we say it's a whole ecosystem. As opposed to the strategy of building this

part, then that part, etc. If you build the whole thing at once, that's sustainable.

David Harris: yes, but we thionk we don't have to build the whole ecosystem ourselves. If you

are going to build the whole system, you can't have everything free, all the time. You are going

to need revenue.

Gary: lets get back to access and equity. Free access doesn't mean anything if you don't get back

to the mission, which is to help people succeed. So there need to be measures you can measure to

show that you can attain that. We should all be thinking about the mission. We don't have to

build it all ourselves. We're all working in different ways, but united in purpose.

David Wiley: it's like the whole approach to OERs in the early days was like we set up a table

with seeds, and said, here are free seeds, we've solved world hunger. Then we argued a lot about

what the boxes look like, And we're learninging we have to add more support.

David Harris: but we're also learned that equity doesn't mean it always has to be free.

Gary: books are expensive because they're expensive to create. That's not free, and we have to

find ways to pay for it, to bring the price down but not scrimp on the value we create.

David Wiley: it would be interesting to see what are all the steps involved in producing high

quality materials. It would be interesting what happens when we pull out some of the steps and

see whether there is a difference in equity.

David Harris: faculty would demand full evidence. That gets into scale. How many of those

conversations could we have?

Gary: I think we can always come back to an economic argument to support it.

Lisa: I think we should have an equivalent of true cost accounting for this.

David Harris: I don't think it will be looking at the efficacy of learning systems. But learning

systems are not inexpensive to develop.

What is the impact of an open license on a sustainable business model?

David Wiley: two different ways: open licenses completely enable everything we do, because the

licenses create the infracture that supports everything we do. On the other hand, because we have

this licensing requirement, then putting that license in a contract (and being willing to walk

away when it's not there) helps us snowball the value we can provide every time we work with

somebody.

p.483

Gary: David is sport on. But th impact is, any license will limit therange of business models that

are possible. So a business model limited by an open license means not restricting usage of the

system to people with buying power. And if usage is not so limited, then it opens up other

models - by selling services, by selling secondary materials such as advertising, etc. You need to

build the business model first, then craft the license.

Lisa: our business model depends on having teachers and institutions, etc., to actually work with

on these projects. The license acts as a conduit to make this happen. Because without the license

we wouldn't have the users. As nice as it is to have big government initiatives, the majority of

people have actually created their own kind of license that meets their needs. That's why we've

created this mapping into four buckets. One is a free-for-all, another is a remix-and-share,

another is share, and another is read-the-fine-print.

David Harris: I agree, you need a common set of licenses so you have a common language.

Gary's system would create a proliferation of licenses, you meet business needs, but not learning

needs. people were concerned about CC-by licenses, because you lose control. But these

concerns were misplaced. I have seen very little profiteering from it. And on the positive side we

have 30 ecosystem partners. It may be called an open license, I call it an innovation license.

Gary: yes, there would be a lot of versions. But the question is, how it impacts sustainability. If

there are limited numbers of license, there are limited ways to create sustainability. That's what

we're doing. A lot of what we have is CC-by, but other stuff has a different license. This was

never going to be a debate. Business models speak for themselves, they either work or they don't.

David Wiley: on license proliferation, even within Creative Commons, we have some Legos, we

have some Duplos, we have some knockoffs that don't fit either. At the end of the day we have

some questions about whether the different licenses actually fit. There's a finite amount of time

and effort we can undertake to make them fit together.

David Harris: David is correct. If there were more standardization around a common license,

there would be more activity, more remixing.

Gary: Let's get back to mission. If our mission is to help people learn, we can get stuck in a rut

on this. There are many ways to help people.

How do you foresee your business models disrupting existing business models?

David Harris: we've disrupted the higher ed publishing industry in the following ways: from day

one, all students have access to the learning materials; second, we have lowered costs even when

open licenses are not used, because there is a ripple effect of lower costs; and third we are

leveling the playing field of non-standard producers. We are breaking barriers down. Forth,

OER can be blended now, because of OpenStax materialss - people take small pieces and embed

p.484

them in online learning environments. We are supporters of open data; publishers were

previously very closed with their data.

Lisa: aside from the cost, etc., the role of what you teach and how you teach is often determined

in a top-down way, especially in K-12, but we are actually empowering teachers to take back

control of the professionalism of their own practice; they leave and take the practices back to

their classrooms and we get calls from boards saying "what's going on?" Also, in some ways as a

field, we went to far too quickly gto try to define what sustainability was.

David Wiley: i don't like to use the 'd' word. I don't think we're there yet. I think in some ways

we're starting to be annoying to publishers. But I don't think we've broken open the market yet.

Once we take a billion dollars oout of the market then we'll be there. Where there has been some

stuff going on is this intuition that 'you get what you pay for' - this is opening up some efficacy

research conversations. I would cite John Hilton's work is more exhaustive on OERs than all the

peer-reviewed work on the efficacy of person’s work.

Gary: we actually may have crossed over this year, and disruption many have happened. Eg.

math product - the system has been adopted by states like Montana, Utaha, Hawaii, nd more.

And we've been adopted by hundreds of schools. So what does Ed-Ready disrupt? It eliminates

texts, tuitions and time involved in math remediation. And the efficacy is bringing people from

secondary to post-secondary at an unprecedented rate. And those who are using Ed-Ready are

remixing it. In Montana there are some 400 versions of it. And we are really upsetting Pearson.

David Harris: it doesn't take 30-40% market share to impact publishers. 10% works.

Gary: that depends on the market. It is true in the book market, but not the assessment market.

David Wiley: one strategy we've had is not to go after individual courses, but to go after entire

degree programs. When you can flip the entire degree program, now as a student I can actually

budget for it. We've now pulled a third of the cost out of a degree program.

Gary: what we're seeing is not only are we displaying high-stakes texts, we're creating pathways.

We find ourselves being adopted by a college, and then being adapted by their feeder systems.

The uptake by feeders systems has been breathtaking.

Lisa: I love and applaud these efforts, eg., the high stakes test alternatives. But what does it mean

to have the market. We're still doing education pretty much the way we were. It still costs

money. I'm still looking to see what's possible in this market. What does it look like to have the

corner store? What does it look like to have the seed exchange? We need a way to see what it

could look like the other way.

Gary: we're beginning to see this. We're beginning to see what it looks like when people build

things that meet their own needs. We're not just seeing people build more stuff. We're seeing

p.485

people build stuff that works better. Eg. to supporrt personal learning. We're coming up against

some of the real tenets of public education which is not working.

Closing Statements

Gary: I'm delighted we're analyzing and re-examining our mission. Also, though, we should be

looking at how to rebuild the connectedness in the community. Perhaps that's because it seems

like we're competing with each other. But we don't see that this is so; we're competing with

Pearson and the commercial publishers. So I hope this will be the start of a clear commitment to

OER and to one another.

Lisa: On one hand we're not competing in a traditional way, but at the same time I think some of

our ideas and how we're going about them might be in conflict with others, but that's still OK,

but we suffer from the milquetoast that we're all one big happy family - let's have more

disagreement. Some people day "don't put a crack in what we're doing" but i think we should be

innovative, have arguments - competition does push us forward.

David Harris. First, please recommend OpenStax to others. Now, there was a Gates report - there

is great opportunity for OERs. But our market size is 3-4%. So we are an irritant. There is a

debate of whether we focus on supply or demand. But of course we need to do both. Yes we

need supply. But just building it is not enough. We need to build the tools. The goal is to get to

10% of the market - if we do, we can win the market. If we work together we can do it.

David Wiley. So, amen and hallelujah to everything else that has been said. Don't make seeds

and put them on the table. Pick a problem and go try to solve that problem. Pick developmental

math and go try to solve that problem. Pick something concrete and go fix it. If it's concrete

enough you'll know that you've fixed it. Everyone on this panel - we've picked a problem. Who

is feeling pain, how can we fix this pain, then we went and solved it.

Closing points:

- over the next year or so, there will be ways to continue this conversation - eg.Creative

Commons business model project (Lumen learning - http://bit.ly/lumencanvas 377)

- we don't all have to agree on things, it's good to have polite disagreements (Oscar Wilde -

"friends stab you in the front")

- applause please

Sausalito, United States

377 http://bit.ly/lumencanvas

p.486

March 25, 2015

p.487

The Power of Reuse: Wikipedia in Action

Summary of a panel at the Hewlett Grantees' Conference. Errors are again my own.

Pete Forsyth, Wiki Strategies

(See also his blog post with resources for this panel at http://wikistrategies.net/oer-wikipedia-

getting-started/ 378)

In the past we've been saying that it's important to the field of OER to improve content. But

really, it's about teaching and learning. So what is it about Wikipedia that is an opportunity for

learning?

Jeanette Lee, the Cambridge School of Weston

We are integrating technology in the classroom, and students are always asking whether they can

use Wikipedia. We have a handout we created on how to use Wikipedia. One of the students

wanted to use the message box from an article, and we had a conversation about how to use it.

So, students are using Wikipedia and the question is how to integrate it.

Amin Azzam, UCSF

The peer review process has sort of a stranglehold on academic advancement, but they were

interested in partnering with Wikipedia such that if an author updated an article it might be

counted as a publication. The meeting on this was just yesterday.

The medical students all go to Wikipedia first when they go o look something up, because it's

written in a way they can understand, and then they go to a more reliable source. So then

someone suggested that students could contribute to Wikipedia.

Dan Cook, Wiki Strategies

I'm a voracious consumer of Wikipedia. My work is both as a journalist and as a consultant. This

week for example there was the experience of going from an article being marked for deletion to

the potential removal of the banner altogether. I have these experiences pretty much on a daily

basis.

I was part of the 'new journalism' when it was coined in the 80s. Secret sources and fights with

the editors and all that. But now Wikipedia is the new journalism of today; leave your ego at the

378 http://wikistrategies.net/oer-wikipedia-getting-started/

p.488

door, don’t use any modifiers, we don't want any spin. But it's a hard place for traditional

journalists to work; we have to unlearn everything we learned about journalism.

Jeanette

I compare Wikipedia articles to an expository essay, which students have to learn. So getting

them to understand that Wikipedia articles have structure, they have references, etc. So the idea

is making the use of Wikipedia in academia transparent. People are using it, they're just using it

quietly. It was about how to get a language to move between Wikipedia articles and the more

traditional essay.

A funny statistic from Pew, from February: 90 percent of AP and National Writing teachers find

information online for their classes; 90 percent use Google, 87% use Wikipedia, but they

discourage their students from using it. So there is this contradiction. So we need to get out in

front and deal with this contradiction. We need a PR campaign or something, so people know it

is legitimate to use in their classrooms.

Amin: Yes, 87-93% of medical students admits to using it.

Dan: If you could just get them to take the next step and look at their sources!

Jeanette: yes, that's what we want them to do, it's a great skill to develop.

Amin: there's roughly 26K articles in the medical field, but a lot of them have room for

improvement. One thing with my students is they're in the final year of med school, so they can

contribute, but they haven't lost the ability to speak English yet.

Pete: the articles I contributed to most were on topics I was learning about. Also, Amin

mentioned 'English Wikipedia'. This points to a way where Wikipedia and OER have a lost of

aspirations in common. (Reads from letter mourning the death of Babu Gi, from Kerala, and

commemorating his contributions).

Amin: discusses the translation of medical articles into other languages. Wikipedia has an

initiative called 'Data Zero' to give access to Wikipedia content for free. To me this is a no-

brainer. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero 379)

Jeanette: opportunities for OER to learn from Wikipedia - I don't have students contribute to

Wikipedia, but I do have students use materials from Wikipedia and OER Commons - I do hand

over a lot of content to students, and then they create the content that everyone uses. I give them

the option: either I lecture, or you do this project. Usually they choose the project. And they

know that everybody will be using the material for understanding the text. I view Wikipedia as

379 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero

p.489

part of the OER community, and it's a way for them to use Wikipedia even if they can't

contribute (they're just high school students, I would have too many permissions I have to fill

out).

Amin: there's a source of med information by students for students called 'Up To Date', it's called

'crack for medical students', but it's subscription, and they don't realize how much the school has

to pay.

Pete: where do students become ready to contribute to Wikipedia?

Jeanette: I think definitely there are high school students ready for that.

Amin: it's a question of what fraction of school work is contributing. For example in my class

they have peer review. They need this support.

Jeanette: some projects are individual and some are group. Anything that's a presentation for the

class, they grade it, I don't grade it.

Pete: I see this as a new journalism and I would like to see training begin in the classroom, so

they don't get the bad habits I got. When will students work on Wikipedia?

Jeanette: there are concerns about privacy, that's the barrier. I do think it would be a hard sell for

some districts. Showing districts how they can use Wikipedia would be much easier.

Amin: my students had to create user names, so we could track their contribution. They began

with non-descriptive user names, but eventually made it clear they were future doctors.

Pete: there is this culture of anonymity in Wikipedia. It's a major part of the ethos. But then

there's the potential for conflict of interest; we don't want the chief of Enron writing the article.

Dan: why did reporters have bylines? So they could be held accountable. Journalists especially

need to have user names that are transparent and they should describe themselves in a transparent

way. There needs to be a high level there. When I search to see if an article is credible, I don't

like seeing that the author is anonymous. Wikipedians will have to grapple with this.

Amin: the concept of anonymity almost doesn't exist any more. They have their Facebook pages,

they scrub them clean before going into med school.

Dan: I think it's people in my generation, they don't want to give up their social security

numbers, etc.

Jeanette: developing people who are comfortable as Wikipedia users, as they go into college,

they're used to working in that kind of environment.

Amin: my future students will be already equipped knowing how to be contributors.

p.490

Q: there are now things where you can remix in the OER space; but in schools there is this top-

down ethic about who is eligible to do that (it has to be curriculum specialists, etc).

Amin: I consider the medical librarian an equal partner in the course, and the Wikipedia

contributors to be equal partners. There's no way for any of us top be experts in everything. It

takes a village.

Pete: Wikipedia and OER are characterized by people coming together in ways that were never

anticipated, and saying to previous generations, we're not waiting around for you any more. We

want to address content gaps. Etc. The sort of thing that doesn't work well in that crowd-sourced

way. Eg. the small number of contributions by women.

Q. Pete said to me, the first thing they do after you tell them about OER, they go to Google and

search for it, and find the article on Wikipedia. Do you care about what they're reading? Do you

feel this is your responsibility? What ought we be doing in this community?

Pete: it's not an easy process, it doesn't have easy boundaries, you have to decide what's

important for yourself, and you have to think about how much you can get in, how to work with

other people.

Amin: Wikipedia is not a democracy, it's a do-ocracy.

Q: it seems to be impermanent, in the beginning, anything we thought was of value was not

surviving. But the value is where you should be participating. It does compel participation. We

made a lot of mistakes, but most of our articles are surviving now; it's about participating in the

community. Our students talk about 'surviving the Wikipedia process'. But that's the strength of

Wikipedia.

Pete: we see this dynamic a lot. People contribute an article and it's highly imperfect, just what

was in the newspaper. And then a few years later an expert comes along, and says there's all

these errors. And I say to them, "when were you going to do this?" When would you write the

article, without having seen all the errors.

Dan: I tell people, "go to the talk pages". That's where you can see the process at work.

Q: does it make sense to have a Wikimedian-in-residence in OER?

Amin: Brilliant idea.

Jeanette: I totally agree with that. And Wikipedia has done a good job partnering with

universities. Such a person could encourage partnering with districts.

Q: question was more whether it would conflict with the Wiki education foundation?

Pete: no it would not at all. I know most of those people, I think there would be delight.

p.491

Sausalito, United States

March 26, 2015

p.492

My Viva

Patrick Dunleavy offers this list380 of ten typical questions that might be asked on your PhD oral exam. I always felt I would have aced my oral exam, but I never got to take it because my

examiners did not want381 me to work on network theory.

So how would I have answered these questions? Dunleavy's post begs a response...

1. What are the most original (or value-added) parts of your thesis?

The semantics of distributed cognition.

In distributed cognition, there is no single location in memory where we might find an idea or

concept. Rather, it is distributed across a set of connections between entities (a graph theorist

might say it is constituted of a set of edges between nodes).

Like this:

We can say a few things about these distributed representations that are significant:

 They are not representations at all - that is, they do not 'stand for' things or 'signify'

things. This set of connections, for example, does not stand for the concept 'couch' nor

the word 'couch'.

380 https://medium.com/advice-and-help-in-authoring-a-phd-or-non-fiction/top-ten-questions-for-the-phd-oral-

exam-c3687cc75962

381 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2009/03/tnp-20-years-on.html

p.493

 They are not propositional - that is, they are not encoded in the form of a sentence, and

we do not 'think' in words and sentences (there is therefore no 'encoding' that takes place

when we communicate or perceive the world around us).

 They are different for each person. No two activation networks are alike. Indeed, they are

even different in the same person over time. There is no static constant that instantiates

the concept 'couch' at all.

The best way to think of the web of connections is to think of it as being like the ripples that

spread out when you throw a stone into a pond. The initial stimulus causes a cascade of

interactions and water molecules bump against each other, a spreading wave of activation that

follows the path of least resistance. The waves do not 'represent' anything, they are not 'about' the

stone, and indeed, you cannot infer to the existence of the stone merely from the presence of the

waves (although Kantian metaphysics is based on exactly that sort of inference).

To make life more complex, we only have one set of interconnected entities and connections

between them, and exactly the same set of connections contains multiple concepts or ideas. So in

addition to our thought of a couch (symbolized in red) we might have a thought of a dog

(symbolized in green).

Like this:

Again, these activations do not stand for anything; they are simply characteristic patterns of

spreading activation that occur in the presence of a stimulus. It is typical for the green activations

to overlap the red activations. This means that, in certain circumstances, the activation of 'dog'

might, by association, cause the activation of 'couch', depending on the overlap of these and

other associated concepts.

This is the basis for inferences. As Hume would say, "the far greatest part of our reasonings with

all our actions and passions, can be derived from nothing but custom and habit." Our inferences

from one thing to another, from cause to effect, from premise to conclusion, are based in

p.494

repeated iterations of an associative logic, which is based on the mechanics of spreading

activation.

There are different ways to talk about this. One way is to describe it mathematically, through the

principles of network interactions and learning theories. Each individual entity has its own

activation function, which determines how likely it is to be activated by incoming stimuli; each

connection has its own weight, which determines how much signal it carries forward, and the

creation and destruction of connections in a network, its plasticity, is determined by the learning

theory, which derives these new connections from weights and activation functions.

Another way to talk about it (and the way I talk about it in my dissertation proposal) is to talk

about it conceptually, by describing the relevant similarity between one concept and another. We

might think of this as the degree of overlap between one concept and the next - a very loose

statement of the idea would say that 'dog' and 'couch' have a similarity ranking of '3', based on

the overlap depicted in the diagram.

It is this network semantics based on similarity that is probably my most significant contribution

to the field. It follows the work of people like Amos Tversky in presenting a feature-

based account of similarity, but analyzes this in terms of spreading activation in neural

networks.

2. Which propositions or findings would you say are distinctively your own?

None.

If you take the theory I've just outlined above seriously, you see that it would be inconsistent for

me to say that everything is connected, and then for me to say that some proposition or finding is

distinctively my own.

Indeed, I struggle with the idea that my thesis is based in propositions at all. This supposes an

idea of a theory or model that is composed of a set of related propositions which are either all

consistently and coherently maintained by some logical framework or all derived from a set of

observations or measurements on the bases of some sort of inference calculus. And I doubt that

either is the case.

At best what I offer is a perspective, a point of view, a set of outcomes as presented from the

perspective of this entity given the experiences and observations obtained over a lifetime. But

these are all influenced to a significant degree by interactions and communications with others.

My understanding of the word 'Paris', for example, carries with it the influence of every other

occurrence of the word 'Paris' I have experienced in my lifetime. It can 'mean' nothing else.

Indeed, if I were to say that the meaning of the word 'Paris' were uniquely my own, there would

be significant cause for concern, for either I would be asserting some sort of supernatural

p.495

connection to Truth and Objects, or I would be asserting some sort of egotitocal priority of my

own perspective above that of all others,

There is this totally false depiction of the PhD thesis382, which is this: which supposes that the individual researcher forges beyond the rest of knowledge on his or her

own. But that's not how it works. We do all of our work entirely within the range of what might

be called 'existing knowledge'. And when existing knowledge grows or changes, it does so on its

own and not by virtue of one unique entity.

3. How do you think your work takes forward or develops the literature in this field?

Honestly, this question is just the same as the previous question, except that it refers to the

localization of those propositions or findings.

The presumption in the question is that my new research builds on or extends previous research.

It is a perspective or point of view that depicts knowledge as a mountain of propositions or facts,

and it suggests that our PhD work is intended to extent that mountain (in an appropriately

inferential of evidence-based way).

In my own case, if I had to characterize my contribution, it would be like this: same mountain,

different view.

As I said in my answer to the previous question, there is nothing uniquely my own that has been

added to human knowledge; I am working withing the same world, the same linguistic

framework, the same logic and mathematics, the same sets of properties and qualities, as

everyone else.

382 http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

p.496

My contribution, if we must identify one, is that I see it differently from everyone else (of

course, everyone sees it differently from everyone else).

One thing that I think is important is that I think that social knowledge and human knowledge are

relevantly similar. Specifically, they share the same structure and the same logic. In both humans

and societies, the structure of a concept or idea is the same: it is the set of connections between

entities.

This general structure - what I called 'Learning Networks' and George Siemens called (more

successfully) connectivism - calls into question even the concept of 'literature in the field',

because knowledge is not divided between some privileged set of writings, 'literature', and

everything else.

At best, the 'literature' might be thought of as some stigmergic activity enabling each of us to

contribute our own perspectives to a common object - a human intellectual anthill, of you will.

But this thing that we build is distinct from the knowledge we have as a society, and does not

hold any epistemic priority over other such network-based objects of knowledge, such as the 747

aircraft or World War II. It's a thing upon which each of us can reflect and obtain our own

unique perspective take on collective knowledge.

So I am frankly not interested in developing 'the literature', except to offer the occasional

contribution as a social gift, much the way I might contribute to Wikipedia or add to a cowpath

in the grass by walking upon it. I don't think the objective of research or scientific enquiry is to

develop the literature, or at least, not only to develop the literature. It is to engage, to contribute

a life to society.

If I were forced to discuss there I think this is the greatest advance, I would probably say that it is

the application of this thinking to education and pedagogy (keeping in mind that if it weren't me,

it would surely have been someone).

Educational theory before connectivism is based almost completely on the idea that learning

involves the recall of a set of propositions or facts, and is cumulative (much like knowledge in

the literature) and stigmergic (analogous to a co-creation of knowledge). Dissuading ourselves of

these propositions, and understanding that learning is network based, founded in the

development of custom and habit, is the core of my work over the last ten years.

4. What are the ‘bottom line’ conclusions of your research? How innovative or valuable are

they? What does your work tell us that we did not know before?

This is the same question again, but with a slightly different presupposition about the nature of

enquiry. The presupposition actually takes two forms: first, as the 'bottom line' as a chain of

inference or the conclusion of a logical argument; and second, as the 'bottom line' or net value (to

society? to Bill Gates?) of the research.

p.497

Both presuppose a directionality to research. Both suppose that research works toward

an outcome. And both, in their own way, focus on the utility or value of the research.

As we can no doubt infer what what I have discussed above, directionality is very much a matter

of perspective. Sure, it is always possible to depict a progression or flow from one entity to the

next to the next in a network. It is always possible to describe a series of activations, one after

another, over a slice of time. But the idea that these lead anywhere is surely a matter of opinion.

So at best what this question is asking me to do is to imagine the perspective of some putative

observer and to ask what my work looks like from their perspective (this is in fact the actual

process I undertake when describing our research program in my current office).

For example, we could ask, "what is the value of knowing that learning is associative rather than

propositional?" We can take the perspective of four distinct entities to draw out the implications:

- from the perspective of the individual student, it results in understanding that

learning anything is based in a certain set of skills (which I call the 'critical literacies') formed

around the idea that knowledge is not cumulative and constructed, but rather based in practice

and reflection resulting in habitual recognition of relevant phenomena. In other words, it makes

them better learners.

- from the perspective of the teacher, it results in the understanding that teaching does not consist

in explaining or describing, because these depend on an already strongly developed association

between the words and the concepts, but rather, that we c an at best show (ie., model and

demonstrate) actual practice, and have them obtain direct experience and practice.

- from the perspective of the education technology provider, it results in the understanding that

networking and interaction are essential components of learning, that new experiences must be

based on past experience, which entails the development of personal and experiential learning

environments.

- from the perspective of the employer seeking to address skills shortages it results in the shift

from a formal class-based outcomes-based learning paradigm to an ongoing informal learning

network, hands on support systems, and personal learning program.

These four might seem as large leaps from the answers given to the first and second questions,

but they are not in fact so large - of course, depending on your starting point you might have to

shift your thinking 180 degrees to get to this perspective, or it might click into place as

immediately intuitive or rational.

5. Can you explain how you came to choose this topic for your doctorate What was it that first

interested you about it? How did the research focus change over time?

Mostly by accident, by opting for what I thought was obvious, and by seeing opportunity.

p.498

The accidents are the vagaries of experience. Early exposure to science fiction in the local library

stirred my imagination and led me to want to be a scientist; poverty led me (on the advice of my

father) to investigate computers and technology; being overlooked for promotion led me to enrol

in university to become a scientist; a full English section in my physics program led me to enrol

in philosophy; my first course in philosophy exposed me to David Hume.

Why is this important? Because of my background in computers, I knew that logic is arbitrary, so

I was sympathetic with Hume's scepticism. This led me over time to a district of cognitivist

methods over time, and hence a Bachelor's thesis defending Hume's associationism and a

Master's thesis questioning model-based semantics as arbitrary and unsound.

In my PhD years I worked on the idea of knowledge as based on relevant similarity, developing a

logic of association, while at the same time creating huge conceptual maps of ideas, disciplines

and a wall-sized history of philosophy. So I was ready with Francisco Varela383 discussed the essentials of network theory in a lecture at the University of Alberta, and between

reading Rumelhart and McClelland384 and attending the Connectivism conference385 in Vancouver, had come to see that connectionism and associationism amount to essentially the

same theory.

I came into the field of learning technology via distance education at Athabasca University.

Given my background, it should be no surprise that I tried several things, including the creation

of a Bulletin Board Service (BBS) and co-authoring of an academic MUD. At Assiniboine I

created a website and online courses and eventually a learning management system. As I gained

experience I found that network principles could be applied to learning technology. I explored

the use of content syndication, developed the idea of learning networks, and with George

Siemens created the first MOOC. These were all instances of connectionism applied to

pedagogy.

My core academic interest lies in understanding knowledge and cognition -- the processes of

learning, inference and discovery. Time and experience have refined my early thoughts on the

matter, but I have always approached the subject from an empirical and scientific perspective.

There are no magic symbol systems, there is no privileged access to nature. There's only

experience and a very human - indeed, a very animal - way to comprehend it.

383 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Varela

384 http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/parallel-distributed-processing

385 http://books.google.ca/books/about/Connectionism.html?id=I8yvQgAACAAJ

p.499

6. Why have you defined the final topic in the way you did? What were some of the difficulties

you encountered and how did they influence how the topic was framed? What main problems

or issues did you have in deciding what was in-scope and out-of-scope?

If I had to state in a sentence how I define my topic, it is in the previous paragraph:

understanding knowledge and cognition through understanding the processes of learning,

inference and discovery.

In other words, I am focused first on how we learn rather than what we learn. This is an

epistemic choice; a cognitivist or rationalist approach will first describe what we know - "we

know language, we know mathematics, we know who we are," etc. My view is that many of

these knowledge claims are incorrect. We do not know universal truths, we do not have

knowledge of ideal abstracts. We don't, I argue, because we can't.

As a consequence, through most of my career I have found myself in conflict with those who

have very specific theories about what we know, and (therefore) how we know it. They depict

these knowledge claims as givens and construct and derive theories of learning and pedagogy

based on this.

For example, a common line of argument runs as follows: we understand scientific principles,

therefore we have knowledge of abstract universals, therefore these must be codified in a

physical symbol system, so learning is a process of acquiring and codifying these statements.

This creates a view of knowledge and learning that is content-based and focused on the

assimilation of a set of these statements by the most efficient means possible.

This is the dominant view, and the position I advocate meets opposition at each stage of the

inference.

It results in the need to reframe knowledge and learning from the ground up. It becomes very

difficult to decide that something is "out of scope" because each statement of an educational

theory varies in importance and meaning depending on which of these perspectives you take.

Even the idea of what constitutes a theory - and whether connectivism is one - depends on your

perspective.

Throughout the last fifteen years or so I have assembled thousands of small items, hundreds of

blog posts, and various talks and longer works. These do not lead from a basis of evidence to a

single conclusion. Rather they are point by point observations on a welter of interconnected

points, none of which is pure data, none of which is pure theory, all of which constitute an

interconnected perspective on knowledge and learning that undermines, and advances an

alternative to, the cognitivist view.

p.500

7. What are the core methods used in this thesis? Why did you choose this approach? In an

ideal world, are there different techniques or other forms of data and evidence that you’d have

liked to use?

As someone who wrote a presentation entitled Against Digital Research Methodologies 386 I have to say I didn't use any core methods per se.It's not that I think that science is random. It's rather

that, in the words of Paul Feyerabend, scientific method is whatever works.

I've given the talk several times and have tried to express this in different ways. I've talked about

my work as being a process of discovery, in which I try things, explore things, and look for

patterns that stand out, unexpected significance or meaning, patterns of change, and even

observations and inferences.

In other cases I've talked about conduct by research and design (not, by this I do not mean

"design-based research", properly so called).

Maybe the best way to approach this question is to take on the question of data and evidence

head on. Because the presupposition in a question like this is that the research methodology will

either be inductive - that is, inference to a general principle or method based on evidence -

or abductive - that is, inference to the best explanation of a body of data or evidence.

In my talks I argue that this depicts research as following a classical theory of science, one in

which we express data as a set of "observation sentences" and derive from that a set of

theoretical statements, which collectively form a model or representation of reality. Most people

understand that in the end we cannot distinguish between observation statements and theoretical

statements - this is why 'truth' is often defined as 'truth within a theory T'.

But they are less likely to agree with (or even understand) Quine's second proposition387, that reductionism is a dogma. We don't in any way infer from evidence and data to generalization or

method. Rather, the data show us only one of two things, either:

1. that something exists, or

2. that something is possible

Indeed, the bulk of my work takes the form: it can be done, because I've done it. My work, in

other words, takes the form of modelling and demonstrating, of giving an example (nothing

more) that others can use in their own thinking and their own reasoning.

386 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/315

387 http://www2.drury.edu/cpanza/quinereview.html

p.501

It is often asked of me: if there are no universal principles or generalizations, then what are those

statements that look like universal principles or generalizations? In response, I say that they are

abstractions.

But then, continue my questioners, aren't abstractions themselves idealizations based on

evidence? And my response is, no, abstractions (and therefore universals and generalizations) are

not created by inference from a set of empirical data. They are created from subtractions from

empirical data (sometimes even one piece of data).

There are many ways to create abstractions, but I'll illustrate just one: the elimination of

extraneous data from two overlapping concepts. Consider the concepts of 'dog' and 'couch'.,

which I described above. If we keep the connections between those entities where the concepts

overlap, and discard the rest, we have a new abstraction, which is whatever it is that dogs and

couches have in common.

Like this:

How should we characterize this abstraction? This is where the characterization gets difficult. It

might be the idea that dogs like to sleep on couches. It might the that both dogs and couches are

things. What it means depends on everything else around it. The more we subtract, the less the

overlap, the greater the range of possible things it could be.

8. What are the main sources or kinds of evidence? Are they strong enough in terms of

their quantity and quality to sustain the conclusions that you draw? Do the data or

information you consider appropriately measure or relate to the theoretical concepts, or

underlying social or physical phenomena, that you are interested in?

This question doubles down on the idea that a thesis is created by assembling a body of data or

evidence that supports a conclusion. Hence the thesis is evaluated by two criteria:

p.502

1. the quality of the evidence (which speaks to the soundness of the thesis)

2. the inference from evidence to conclusion (which speaks to the validity of the thesis)

I've dealt with inference above. But what are the criteria for good evidence?

Virtually all research that still uses this model will be based on some sort of statistical

generalization; the days when we could reason inductively from evidence to conclusion are long

since past, a relic of the world when Newton's theories held sway. Perhaps it is true, as Einstein

said, that God does not play dice with the universe - but if so, then he is a mean poker player.

Evidence is based on two criteria: quantity and type. By quantity we are asking whether we

have enough evidence to draw a statistical inference. There are some fairly well-established

principles of probability that are at least as reliable as any other form of inference that will tell us

that, for example, we cannot infer from 20 specific instances to a population of 7 billion

instances.

But more significant is the question regarding the type of evidence, which is specifically focused

around the question of whether the evidence is representative of the population as a whole.

That's why you don't just ask your friends how they'll vote when you're predicting an election;

chances are, your friends will vote like you do. It should also be why a class of 50 midwestern

undergraduate psychology students should not be used as the basis for drawing conclusions

about anything, but journals keep publishing the studies.

In my case, none of these matter, because I'm not generalizing (or, at least, I'm trying very very

hard not to generalize).

In my case, the question is always: is this example an instance of the thing I'm talking about? If

it is, we can say that it exists, and move on, trying to find associated phenomena. If it is not, then

what was it that misled me about it? Either way, I learn.

In a world without universal (or even predefined, or even commonly understood) categories,

answering questions like this is not a trivial matter. In some cases, it is sufficient to

obtain agreement among a group of people that "this x is a y". In other cases, we have to take our

time, be pedantic, and show that "this x is precisely a y". Most of the work

involved unravelling confused, imprecise or inconsistent categorization. People assume that

because we use the same words we mean the same things, while experience suggests that this is

often not the case.

In my case, we consider the set of posts, papers and talks, etc., to be both the evidence and the

conclusion (this is an instance of what I mean when I talk of 'direct perception'). There is no

sense to dividing one set of my posts as the evidence and another as the conclusion. The same

happens in the mind: the set of neural activations is at once the evidence and the conclusion.

There is no thing over and above the set of neural activations that constitutes the 'thesis' being

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discovered or proven (or, to be more accurate, if there is, it exists only as

an emergent phenomenon, and can only be recognized externally by a third party or observer).

So when we ask what the sources of the evidence are, and whether they sustain the conclusion,

we are asking what is, in my mind, an incomprehensible question, or more accurately, one that

embodies incorrect presuppositions about the nature of knowledge. Similarly, if one asks about

the correctness of the evidence and the conclusion, we reach the same conclusion, that the

question presupposes an incorrect epistemology.

I have developed and often talked about my response to this, which is what I call 'the semantic

principle', and what is at best a set of methodological presuppositions based on some opinions

about the most effective function of a network. So I ask whether in the entities and connections

in my thesis are diverse, autonomous, open and interactive. There's a longer discussion to be had

here (what does it mean to say a concept is autonomous, for example? what does it mean to say

that the parts of a thesis are diverse?) But it gets, I think, to a deeper understanding of epistemic

adequacy that a query about the soundness and validity of an argument.

9. How do your findings fit with or contradict the rest of the literature in this field? How do

you explain the differences of findings, or estimation, or interpretation between your work and

that of other authors?

I've discussed a lot of this in my discussion above. But I have as yet remained silent on the

difference between my own approach and the major approach in learning theory, or perhaps I

should say 'set' of approaches, under the heading of 'constructivism'.

If I had to put the matter in a phrase, I'd say that constructivism is cognitivist and connectivism is

non-cognitivist. Of course some people will immediately respond that there are some varieties of

constructivism that are non-cognitivist. I typically respond, only half in jest, that for any

criticism of constructivism C, there is a version of constructivism not-C, for an indefinitely large

set of criticisms {C1...Cn}.

In fact, though, theory-building, model-building and representation all had their foundation in

philosophy and the sciences well before their appearance in education, and the emergence of

constructivism in education is a not-surprising response to (for example) behaviourism and

instructivism, just as they were responses to logical positivism in the sciences. Bas van Frassen,

for example, offers a prototypical account of 'constructive empiricism' 388 in the sciences. Other 388 http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1470783.files/van%20Fraassen_Scientific%20Image.pdf

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flavours of constructivism are found in things like Larry Laudan's 'Progress and its Problems' 389.

Or Daniel Dennett's 'The Intentional Stance' 390.

They are at once responses to scientific realism, grounding science in logical and social

structures (there's a strong strain of this as well in Kuhn), and at the same time are responses to

the discredited idea of 'the observation statement', which was science's only response to the

idealist and the rationalist. Scientific constructivism was a way to preserve rationality in science,

without surrendering its basis in empirical grounds. Only these grounds would be served by

proxy, through an active engagement with experience, a process of construction, the formulation

of what Quine called 'analytic hypotheses', the presentation of tentative conclusions, models and

representations which would be evaluated as a whole against experience, against reality.

It's a brilliant response, and I have no real quarrel with the overall approach. My major criticism

is that while they jettisoned the 'positivism' of logical positivism, they kept the 'logical' part, and

it was in the logical part that logical positivism actually foundered. Indeed, Quine should have

called his paper Two Dogmas of Logicism, for that's what they were. Specifically:

1. The analytic-synthetic distinction fails not because there are no observations, but because

there are no observation statements

2. The principle of reduction fails not because there's no empirical basis in fact, but because

there are no logical principles of reduction

And this is where I find my difference with the constructivists. In (almost) all cases, they depict

the creation of knowledge as one of construction, where we (intentionally) create models or

representations, grounding them in a model or environment (literally: "making meaning"). Often

this is depicted as a social activity391 (sometimes, it is depicted as only a social activity). As a stigmergic activity, as I discussed above, I can comprehend it. But not as a theory of learning.

And the reason it is not a theory of learning is simply this: in a person (in a network, etc) there is

no third party to do the constructing.

The creation of a model or representation (or network or theory or whatever) that will be tested

against experience (or reality, or a run computer simulations, or whatever) is a

representationalist theory which assumes a distinction between the model and whatever would

act as evidence for that model (and, often, a set of methodologies and principles, such as 'logic'

and 'language', for constructing that model).

389 http://www.amazon.com/Progress-Its-Problems-Towards-Scientific/dp/0520037219

390 http://www.amazon.com/The-Intentional-Stance-Bradford-Books/dp/0262540533

391 http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/index.php?title=Social_Constructivism

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But the network theory I've described, if taken seriously, entails the following:

 the network is self-organizing; we do not 'create' sets of connections, these result

naturally from input and from the characteristics of the entities and connections

 the network does not 'represent' some external reality; 'evidence' and 'conclusion' are one

and the same; the network itself is both the perceptual device and the inferring device

 learning isn't about creating, it's about becoming

Someone recently said to me, "well that makes you a radical constructivist". Perhaps. But now

the meaning of 'constructivist' has ceased to be anything that would be recognized by most

constructivists. This is an outcome that could be predicted by my own theory, but not by most

others.

10. What are the main implications or lessons of your research for the future development of

work in this specific sub-field? Are there any wider implications for other parts of the

discipline? Do you have ‘next step’ or follow-on research projects in mind?

I have several things in mind, though life may be too short for all of them:

 I want to continue to develop in technology an instantiation of the concepts I describe in

theory (understanding that there's no theory, etc., etc.). This is the basis for my work in

MOOCs and my current work in personal learning environments, as instantiated in

the LPSS Program392. I want to see the various ways in which a learning network can grow and develop and help real people address real needs and make their lives better.

 I want to draw together the various threads I've described in this post and offer a single

coherent statement of connectivism as I see it. Related to this, but probably a separate

work, I want to draw out and make clear the elements of 'critical literacy', which I believe

constitute the foundations (if you will) of a new post-cognitivist theory of knowledge (the

program above has funding but I have no funding for this work, so as a message to

society at large, if you ever want to see this, consider some means of funding it).

 I would like to see the principles of self-organizing knowledge applied to wider domains

and to society at large, as (shall we say) a new understanding of democracy, one based

not on power and control and collaboration and conformity, but one based on autonomy

and diversity and cooperation and emergence. Society itself will have to do this; I can but

point the way.

That's pretty much it, from an academic and professional perspective. But I also understand that

the work is not possible in the confines of my own office working with texts and software. None

of what I do today, nor indeed, have ever done, has been separate from the rest of my life and

392 http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/solutions/collaborative/lpss.html

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living. Each experience that I have, each society that I see, each new city and each new bike ride

adds a nuance and a subtlety to my understanding of the world. It is a beautiful life and my

greatest contribution to the future would be, I think, to continue living it.

That's my PhD oral exam. I'd like to say thank you393 on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition.

Moncton, Canada

April 4, 2015

393 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwy-CPaXgOc

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Mark Surman on Open Education and the

Open Internet

Article and photo by Stephen Downes

This is a summary of Mozilla CEO Mark Surman's talk at Open Education Global in Banff April

24 (today). It is a paraphrase with lots of direct quotation, but shouldn't be taken as word-for

word literal. All errors are my own.

We need to help 5 billion people over the next 5-10 years become web literate.

Three quotes from great Canadian thinkers: "We are trying to do today's job with yesterday's

tools and yesterday's concepts." "We drive into the future looking only into our rearview mirror."

- classrooms are organized around how monks talked.

The experience of living in a small town as the only punk rock kid shaped me. And we lived in

the media culture hegemony, and also we lived in a time of very conservative politics with a

daily fear of nuclear war. What punk rock showed me was that we could play a role in shaping

the world we want. And I was a photocopier kid - a big part of punk culture was cutting things

up and remixing them. Records, guitars, and a scene: this idea of our media, our ability to

produce it, and a community. It's an ethos very different from the television world we grew up

in.

The last 40 years has been technology that lets us reshape our world. When I got a tape recorder

that I could record on, that was radical. These technologies and freedom inspire me. And I

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couldn't but help myself when the modem came along. And when Mosaic came out in 1994, I

said that's what I want to work on.

Second Canadian: Harold Innis394. "The Roman Empire and the city states were essentially products of writing." They could issue edicts and laws. How do we build the world we're trying

to build? There's a connection between power and words, power and communication, and what

we're trying to do is shift that, and make communication more open.

Mozilla: it says in our incorporation documents: "we exist to guard the open nature of the

internet." Best job I ever had. That's what drove m to work on the Cape Town declaration. We

said it can't just be OERs, it can't just be open content, it has to be learning, it has to be

participation.

So I would argue that we have a common ethos around that idea. And I see Mozilla as being the

David that can take on the Goliath with those ideas. And so we have won a number of battles, we

have a lot to celebrate. Firefox itself is a big victory - we went from 98% Internet Explorer

domination, and Microsoft was determining where the internet was heading. Firefox was a huge

victory in shifting that. That was 10 years ago, we haven't won much lately. Reference to Sunday

New York Times advertisement for Firefox 1.0 (I contributed to that: SD)

There is a shift, even in mainstream, toward seeing publishers as expensive and in the way. By

contrast we have organizations like Lumen, David Wiley's company, getting traction and VC

money. Similarly, you've heard lots over the last few days, more and more public money has

gone into ensuring that learning resources are open. For example, $2 billion for OERs in

colleges.

Those victories don't just limit themselves to this room. We have those dollars to people who

aren't having this conference explicitly. Eg. local tax grant in Missoula. We have people around

the world coming to OERs and open learning, and doing real stuff. We see a bias toward action.

Lots of victories, lots to be proud of.

We have won many battles... but we are losing the war.

We are losing the battle for openness, the open web, and in transforming education. These -

Pearson - are the kind of people are going to win. They may shift from selling textbooks to

capturing analytics and selling data, but they're still winning. Mozilla isn't anti-business but we're

against oligopolies. I'm more afraid that this is going to be Pearson - 'Classroom'. As much as I

use Google every day, it's increasingly a company that controls vast parts of the internet. India -

Google is effectively a monopoly with Android in smart phones. But unlike Windows and IE,

they control the OS, they control the money, they're taking over the carrier layer - this is a

394 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Innis

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monopolist with an intent to take complete vertical control over our internet lives. That is losing

the war.

How many think Uber is the good guy? We don't think of them as relevant, but it is likely the

next big monopolists. Their goal and intent is to become the monopolist in the area of physical

motion - to know everything about us, everything about the movers. That is then cloaked ina

positive aspect of creating a new type of work.

"Millions of Facebook users don't even know they're using the internet." People don't even know

what they're using. They don't really know what the affordances are in any of the most basic

ways the way we know. There's a massive gap between the general purpose computers we have

in our pockets and what people think they have.

We're seeing the growth of the empires that will shape humanity with a new set of values for

probably the next few hundred years. The centre of that empire is pretty limited - it comes from

Palo Alto, it comes from Silicon Valley. It's not that diverse a place. Its not the kind of empire I

want to see. I don't want to see empire.

Fork in the road.

Do we want 'the next Steve Jobs' or do we want Edward Snowden. Do we want creativity and

freedom, or control and a lack of agency. Are we going to choose openness, or are we going to

choose the Matrix.

William Gibson, third (sort of) Canadian: "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed."

The future I have committed to is a future where everyone has the know-how to be internet

citizens in full. That's where we want to go - how do we win the war?

Most of the people in the room used Mosaic, most were online before 2000 - the internet soon

will be 5 billion people - that's where the battle for open will play out).

Three things we are doing:

First, web literacy. The challenge we have is to help 5 billion know how to wield that general

purpose in computer in their pocket. We try to put it into Firefox, we try to put it into everything

we do (cf Doug Belshaw's competency map). Participation, using the open web, is a bit part of

this.

Second, we need to commit to learning and not just to open educational resources. That's what I

took from my early work in Shuttleworth to what I'm doing now. The language we use to talk

about our approach to pedagogy is: learn by making, make stuff that matters (that's a key idea

OER brings to the table, we can work on real material that is stuff we need), do it together (social

for us has to be a part of a radical open pedagogy).

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Third, think of ourselves as bigger than just those of us around a single table, bigger than just this

room - think of ourselves as people who want to take this open road (you are invited to Mozfest

in November).

A movement, a different approach to learning (web literacy), can help us go down the open road

if we do it ambitiously enough.

We've been doing this at Mozilla. Eg., the Maker Parties. We've had teach-ins, to have people

teach digital literacy to those around them. And this year we want to rally people to move

literacy on a massive scale - we don't know how to do that. Mozilla Academy? We will put

whatever resources to bear on this, and help people do this. There are 300 organizations that

make the Maker Parties happen - we want to do this together, get on the ball, and move it a lot

faster.

This is important. We are at a Gutenberg moment. We are at an early phase in internet

technology. What gets written today will determine the future.

Q. I'm struck by the fact that there are many Davids. How do you unite the Davids.

A. You have common cause though you have many approaches. 'Open' has been the rallying cry.

But in that rallying we have become inward focused. The concept of 'open' isn't something that

will get into the water necessarily. The key is to think practically, do things that will help people,

rather than be evangelical. That may be a rallying point, but still around our ideas.

Q. Net neutrality - where the telcos are trying to determine what speed you will have and more.

Steve Jobs was a master at creating beautiful golden cages. You cannot have OER and openness

within a closed hardware environment.

A. Another hour-long talk. In general, in building this movement for openness, Mozilla very

public takes a much more pragmatic approach on whether everything has to be free. Of course

we all know all of the pieces we wish were there, they're not even not there is an way even open-

advocates can live in an all-open world. Eg. should we be implementing the DRM standard in

HTML 5. Of course we're against that. But if we don't implement it and the other three browsers

do, then millions of our users won't be able to watch videos.

Which road do we choose, in order to remain relevant, and still keep a principled stance?

Hardware and net neutrality are very important in that. Hardware is the biggest vector for

network surveillance (I should have added Sczchen to the core of the new empire, on the

hardware level). And it's a big question about how companies like Facebook play into net

neutrality - Facebook is marketing itself in India as the free internet, don't bother with the rest of

it.

Q. I can't help but think about Aaron Schwarz. Will civil disobedience become an appropriate

response?

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A. It already is. We don't hope what happened to Aaron will happen to others. But people like

Anonymous - it's a tricky think to know what appropriate civil disobedience is. There may be

reaal criminals in there. We don't all have the same agenda. Tricky questions.

Q. Would the internet be different if we had women making it?

A. Yes. And we need more of that. Mitchell Baker is a champion for women in technology and

as leaders. But we're still very male-biased. We do need to have gender as an issue as we build,

we're not as aggressive as we want to be yet, but it has to be a part of what we think.

Q. The web literacy is the closest thing to what I mentioned yesterday as digital citizenship. Who

are the right people to engage on this?

A. We are thee stakeholders to first engage. Many great conversations here, eg., talking with

Cable (Green) about getting a course on web literacy. And Cathy saying one way to do it is

immersion. This is a good group of people to try to get some of those approaches into the

mainstream.

There's a lit of other stakeholders we think about. The right part of business, for example, even

some of the goliaths - eg., the phone companies, who have a set of interests counter to the core

Silicon Valley values. Eg. they want people to make and consume local content.

Q. It's very common for us to conflate the web with the internet. To what degree is Mozilla

interested in non-web parts of the internet.

A. As an activist, conflating the web with the internet is now a problem in my view. We think of

the web as the human interaction layer, at least for now. The rest of the web isn't really usable by

people. But increasingly not. We contrast the web with what's happening on the smart phone

right now - the web is open, iOS and Android are much more bundled and controlled. But we

have to pick our battled.

Q. Read-write-communicate has me thinking about openness - are you making the same pitch to

other segments of the internet? Is it the same pitch?

A. The answer is, I'm about to. I'm trying to figure out a crisper pitch. This is spring training. I'm

taking this to Quartz, and giving them the same pitch. The same in OE Africa in may. To see

who we can bring along with us.

Q. I don't like your metaphor with the word 'battle' and the word 'war'. Cf. Hal Plotkin. He was

entertaining us and also warning us with an example from the U.S. establishing a so-called 'free

university' which failed because people became too militant.

A. Many people don't like those metaphors. I think we're too passive. Let's see if we can find a

middle.

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Q. Facebook is bringing free 'mobile internet' to people which is

Facebook(+Google+Wikipedia)-only - internet.org

A. They're kind of BS. But they will be influential BS. Even at the board level, we talk about, do

we play with internet.org or not? I've been into these sorts of discussions for years - the old

Internet Advisory Council in Canada. It's companies saying "we will solve the problem of

access." It's an exceptionally simplistic view. People will get access. The market will take care of

access anyway. They want to be seen as on the forefront of solving that problem, and to capture

customers while they're at it, with monopolistic strategies. But if we help internet.org where half

the peopel only have Facebook, that's a bad outcome.

Banff, Canada

April 24, 2015

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Research and Evidence

I wrote the other day that the study released by George Siemens and others on the history and

current state of distance, blended, and online learning395 was a bad study. I said, "the absence of a background in the field is glaring and obvious." In this I refer not only to specific arguments

advanced in the study, which to me seem empty and obvious, but also the focus and

methodology, which seem to me to be hopelessly naive.

Now let me be clear: I like George Siemens, I think he has done excellent work overall and will

continue to be a vital and relevant contributor to the field. I think of him as a friend, he's one of

the nicest people I know, and this is not intended to be an attack on his person, character or ideas.

It is a criticism focused on a specific work, a specific study, which I believe well and truly

deserves criticism.

And let me clear that I totally respect this part of his response396, where he says that "in my part of the world and where I am currently in my career/life, this is the most fruitful and potentially

influential approach that I can adopt." His part of the world is the dual environments of

Athabasca University and the University of Texas at Arlington, and he is attempting to put

together major research efforts around MOOCs and learning analytics. He is a relatively recent

PhD and now making a name for himself in the academic community.

Unfortunately, in the realm of education and education theory, that same academic community

has some very misguided ideas of what constitutes evidence and research. It has in recent years

been engaged in a sustained attack on the very idea of the MOOC and alternative forms of

learning not dependent on the traditional model of the professor, the classroom, and the academic

degree. It is resisting, for good reason, incursions from the commercial sector into its space, but

as a consequence, clinging to antiquated models and approaches to research.

Perhaps as a result, part of what Siemens has had to do in order to adapt to that world has been to

recant his previous work. The Chronicle of Higher Education, which for years has advanced the

anti-technology and anti-change argument on behalf of the professoriate, published (almost

gleefully, it seemed to me), this abjuration397 as part and parcel of its article constituting part of the marketing campaign for the new study.

395 http://www.downes.ca/post/63823/rd

396 http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2015/04/30/on-research-and-academic-diversity/

397 http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/what-is-being-learned-from-moocs-new-report-takes-stock/56487

p.514

When MOOCs emerged a few years ago, many in the academic world were sent into a

frenzy. Pundits made sweeping statements about the courses, saying that they were the

future of education or that colleges would become obsolete, said George Siemens, an

author of the report who is also credited with helping to create what we now know as a MOOC.

“It’s almost like we went through this sort of shameful period where we forgot that we

were researchers and we forgot that we were scientists and instead we were just making

decisions and proclamations that weren’t at all scientific,” said Mr. Siemens, an

academic-technology expert at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Hype and rhetoric, not research, were the driving forces behind MOOCs, he

argued. When they came onto the scene, MOOCs were not analyzed in a scientific way,

and if they had been, it would have been easy to see what might actually happen and to

conclude that some of the early predictions were off-base, Mr. Siemens said.

This recantation saddens me for a variety of reasons. For one this, we - Siemens and myself and

others who were involved in the development of the MOOC - made no such statements. In the

years between 2008, when the MOOC was created, and 2011, when the first MOOC emerged

from a major U.S. university, the focus was on innovation and experimentation in a cautious

though typically exuberant attitude.

Yes, we had long argued that colleges and education had to change. But none of us ever asserted

that the MOOC would accomplish this in one fell swoop. Those responsible for such rash

assertions were established professors with respected academic credentials who came out of the

traditional system, set up some overnight companies, and rashly declared398 that they had reinvented education.

It's true, Siemens has moved over to that camp, now working with EdX rather than the

connectivist model we started with. But the people at EdX are equally rash and foolish399: (Anant) Argarwal (who launched EdX) is not a man prone to understatement. This, he

says, is the revolution. "It's going to reinvent education. It's going to transform

universities. It's going to democratise education on a global scale. It's the biggest

innovation to happen in education for 200 years." The last major one, he says, was

"probably the invention of the pencil". In a decade, he's hoping to reach a billion students

398 http://hackeducation.com/2013/10/15/minding-the-future-openva/

399 http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/11/online-free-learning-end-of-university

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across the globe. "We've got 400,000 in four months with no marketing, so I don't think

it's unrealistic."

Again, these rash and foolish statements are coming from a respected university professor, a

scion of the academy, part of this system Siemens is now attempting to join. As he recants, it is

almost as though he recants for them, and not for us. But the Chronicle (of course) makes no

such distinction. Why would it?

But the saddest part is that we never forgot that we were scientists and researchers. As I have

often said in talks and interviews, there were things before MOOCs, there will be things after

MOOCs, and this is only one stage in a wider scientific enterprise. And there was research, a lot

of it, careful research involving hundreds and occasionally thousands of people, which was for

the most part ignored by the wider academic community, even though peer reviewed and

published in academic journals. Here's a set of papers400 by my colleagues at NRC, Rita Kop, Helene Fournier, Hanan Sitlia, Guillaume Durand. An additionally impressive body of papers

has been authored and formally published by people like Frances Bell401, Sui Fai John

Mak402, Jenny Mackness403, and Roy Williams404. This is only a sampling of the rich body of research surrounding MOOCs, research conducted by careful and credible scientists.

I would be remiss in not citing my own contributions405, a body of literature in which I carefully and painstakingly assembled the facts and evidence leading toward connectivist theory and open

learning technology. The Chronicle has never allowed the facts to get in the way of its opinions,

but I have generally expected much better of Siemens, who is (I'm sure) aware of the

contributions and work of the many colleagues that have worked with us over the years.

Here's what Siemens says about these colleagues406 in his recent blog post on the debate: One approach is to emphasize loosely coupled networks organized by ideals through

social media. This is certainly a growing area of societal impact on a number of fronts

including racism, sexism, and inequality in general. In education, alt-ac and bloggers

400 http://ritakop.blogspot.ca/2012/01/research-publications-on-massive-open.html

401 http://independent.academia.edu/FrancesBell8

402 https://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/about/

403 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jenny_Mackness/publications

404 http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fss/organisations/netlc/past/nlc2010/abstracts/Mackness.html

405 http://www.downes.ca/me/mybooks.htm

406 http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2015/04/30/on-research-and-academic-diversity/

p.516

occupy this space. Another approach, and one that I see as complimentary and not

competitive, is to emphasize research and evidence. (My emphasis)

In the previous case he could have been talking about the promulgators of entities like Coursera,

Udacity and EdX, and the irresponsible posturing they have posed over the years. But in this case

he is talking very specifically about the network of researchers around the ideas of the early

MOOCs, connectivism, and related topics.

And what is key here is that he does not believe our work was based in research and evidence.

Rather, we are members of what he characterizes as the 'Alt-Ac' space - "Bethany Nowviskie and

Jason Rhody 'alt-ac' was shorthand for 'alternative academic' careers." Or: "the term was, in

Nowviskie’s words,407 'a pointed push-back against the predominant phrase, 'nonacademic

careers.' 'Non-academic' was the label for anything off the straight and narrow path to tenure.'"

(Inside Higher Ed408). Here's Siemens again: This community, certainly blogs and with folks like Bonnie Stewart, Jim Groom, D’Arcy

Norman, Alan Levine, Stephen Downes, Kate Bowles, and many others, is the most

vibrant knowledge space in educational technology. In many ways, it is five years ahead

of mainstream edtech offerings. Before blogs were called web 2.0, there was Stephen,

David Wiley, Brian Lamb, and Alan Levine. Before networks in education were cool

enough to attract MacArthur Foundation, there were open online courses and people

writing about connectivism and networked knowledge. Want to know what’s going to

happen in edtech in the next five years? This is the space where you’ll find it, today.

He says nice things about us. But he does not believe we emphasize research and evidence.

With all due respect, that's a load of crap. We could not be "what’s going to happen in edtech in

the next five years" unless we were focused on evidence and research. Indeed, the reason

why we are the future, and not (say) the respected academic professors in tenure track jobs is that

we, unlike them, respect research and evidence. And that takes me to the second part of my

argument, the part that states, in a nutshell, that what was presented in this report

does not constitute "research and evidence." It's a shell game, a con game.

Let me explain. The first four chapters of this study are instances of what is called a 'tertiary

study' (this is repeated eight times in the body of the work). And just as "any tertiary study is

limited by the quality of data reported in the secondary sources, this study is dependent on the

methodological qualities of those secondary sources." (p. 41) So what are the 'secondary

sources'? You can find them listed in the first four chapters (the putative 'histories') (for example,

407 http://nowviskie.org/2010/alt-ac/

408 https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2013/05/22/essay-defining-alt-ac-new-phd-job-searches

p.517

the list on pp. 25-31). These are selected by doing a literature search, then culling them to those

that meet the study's standards. The secondary surveys round up what they call 'primary'

research, which are direct reports from empirical studies.

Here's a secondary study409 that's pretty typical: 'How does tele-learning compare with other forms of education delivery? A systematic review of tele-learning educational outcomes for

health professionals'.The use of the archaic term 'tele-learning' may appear jarring, but despite

many of the studies being from the early 2000s I selected this one as an example because it's

relatively recent, from 2013. This study (and again, remember, it's typical, because the

methodology in the tertiary study specifically focuses on these types of studies):

The review included both synchronous (content delivered simultaneously to face-to-face

and tele-learning cohorts) and asynchronous delivery models (content delivered to the

cohorts at different times). Studies utilising desktop computers and the internet were

included where the technologies were used for televised conferencing, including

synchronous and asynchronous streamed lectures. The review excluded facilitated e-

learning and online education models such as the use of social networking, blogs, wikis

and BlackboardTM learning management system software.

Of the 47 studies found using the search methods, 13 were found to be useful for the purposes of

this paper. It is worth looking at the nature of this 'primary literature':

409 http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/NB12076.htm

p.518

p.519

(Sorry about the small size - you can view the data in the original study, pp. 72-73410) Here's what should be noticed from these studies:

 They all have very small sample sizes, usually less than 50 people, with a maximum size

less than 200 people

 The people studies are exclusively university students enrolled in a traditional university

course

 The method being studies is almost exclusively the lecture method

 The outcomes are assessed almost exclusively in the form of test results

 Although many are 'controlled' studies, most are not actually controlled for "potential

confounders"

This is what is being counted as "evidence" for "tele-learning educational outcomes."

No actual scientific study would accept such 'evidence' for any conclusion, however tentative.

But this is typical and normal in the academic world Siemens is attempting to join, and this is by

his own words what constitutes "research and evidence."

Why is this evidence bad? The sample sizes are too small for quantificational results (and the

studies are themselves are inconsistent so you can't simply sum the results). The sample is biased

in favour of people who have already had success in traditional lecture-based courses, and

consists of only that one teaching method. A very narrow definition of 'outcomes' is employed.

And other unknown factors may have contaminated the results. And all these criticisms

apply if you think this is the appropriate sort of study to measure educational effectiveness,

which I do not.

I said above it was a con game. It is. None of these studies is academically rigorous. They are

conducted by individual professors running experiments on their own (or sometimes a

colleague's) classes. The studies are conducted by people without a background in education,

subject to no observational constraints, employing a theory of learning which has been for

decades outdated and obsolete. These people have no business pretending that what they are

doing is 'research'. They are playing at being researchers, because once you're in the system, you

are rewarded for running these studies and publishing the results in journals specifically designed

for this purpose.

What it reminds me of is the sub-prime mortgage crisis411. What happened is that banks earned profits by advancing bad loans to people who could not afford to pay them. The value of these

mortgages was sliced into what were called 'tranches' (which is French for 'slice', if you ever

410 http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=NB12076.pdf

411 http://stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/ChanceEthics10.pdf

p.520

wondered) and sold as packages - so they went from primary sources to secondary sources.

These then were formed into additional tranches and sold on the international market. From

secondary to tertiary. By this time they were being offered by respectable financial institutions

and the people buying them had no idea how poorly supported they were (I'm not the first412 to make this comparison).

Not surprisingly, the reports produce trivial and misleading results, producing science that is

roughly equal in value to the studies that went into it. Let's again focus on the first chapter. Here

are some of the observations and discussions:

it seems likely that asynchronous delivery is superior to traditional classroom delivery,

which in turn is more effective than synchronous distance education delivery. (p. 38)

both synchronous and asynchronous distance education have the potential to be as

effective as traditional classroom instruction (or better). However, this might not be the

case in the actual practice of distance education (p. 39)

all three forms of interaction produced positive effect sizes on academic performance...

To foster quality interactions between students, an analysis of the role of instructional

design and instructional interventions planning is essential.

In order to provide sufficient academic support, understanding stakeholder needs is a

main prerequisite alongside the understanding of student attrition (p.40)

I'm not saying these are wrong so much as I am saying they are trivial. The field as a whole (or,

at least, as I understand it) has advanced far beyond talking in such unspecific generalities as

'asynchronous', 'interaction' and 'support'. Because the studies themselves are scientifically

empty, no useful conclusions can be drawn from the metastudy, and the tertiary study produces

vague statements that are worse than useless (worse, because they are actually pretending to be

new and valuable, to be counted as "research and evidence" against the real research being

performed outside academia).

Here is the 'model' of the field produced by the first paper:

412 http://stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/ChanceEthics10.pdf

p.521

It's actually more detailed than the models provided in the other papers. But it is structurally and

methodologically useless, and hopelessly biased in favour of the traditional model of education

as practiced in the classrooms where the original studies took place. At best it could be a

checklist of things to think about if you're (say) using PowerPoint slides in your classroom. But

in reality, we don't know what the arrows actually mean, the 'interaction' arrows are drawn from

Moore (1989413), and the specific bits (eg. "use of LMS") say nothing about whether we should or whether we shouldn't.

413 http://aris.teluq.uquebec.ca/portals/598/t3_moore1989.pdf

p.522

The fifth chapter of the book is constructed differently from the first four, being a summary of

the results submitted from the MOOC Research Institute (MRI). Here's how it is introduced:

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have captured the interest and attention of

academics and the public since fall of 2011 (Pappano, 2012). The narrative driving

interest in MOOCs, and more broadly calls for change in higher education, is focused on

the promise of large systemic change.

The unfortunate grammar obscures the meaning, but aside from the citation of that noted

academic, Laura Pappano of the New York Times, the statements are generally false. Remember,

academics were studying MOOCs prior to 2011. And the interest of academics (as opposed to

hucksters and journalists) was not focused on 'the promise of large systemic change' nearly so

much as it was to investigate the employment of connectivist theory in practice. But of course,

this introduction is not talking about cMOOCs at all, but rather, the xMOOCs that were almost

exclusively the focus of the study.

Indeed, it is difficult for me to reconcile the nature and intent of the MRI with what Siemens

writes in his article:

What I’ve been grappling with lately is “how do we take back education from edtech

vendors?”. The jubilant rhetoric and general nonsense causes me mild rashes. I recognize

that higher education is moving from an integrated end-to-end system to more of an

ecosystem with numerous providers and corporate partners. We have gotten to this state

on auto-pilot, not intentional vision.

Let's examine the MOOC Research Institute414 to examine this degree of separation:

MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as

part of a set of investments intended to explore the potential of MOOCs to extend access

to postsecondary credentials through more personalized, more affordable pathways.

To support the MOOC Research Initiative Grants, the following Steering

Committee415 has been established to provide guidance and direction: Yvonne Belanger, Gates Foundation

Stacey Clawson, Gates Foundation

Marti Cleveland-Innes, Athabasca University

Jillianne Code, University of Victoria

Shane Dawson, University of South Australia

414 http://www.moocresearch.com/

415 http://www.moocresearch.com/research-initiative/steering-committee

p.523

Keith Devlin, Stanford University

Tom (Chuong) Do, Coursera

Phil Hill, Co-founder of MindWires Consulting and co-publisher of e-Literate blog

Ellen Junn, San Jose State University

Zack Pardos, MIT

Barbara Means, SRI International

Steven Mintz, University of Texas

Rebecca Petersen, edX

Cathy Sandeen, American Council on Education

George Siemens, Athabasca University

With a couple of exceptions, these are exactly the people and the projects that are the "edtech

vendors" vendors Siemens says he is trying to distance himself from. He has not done this;

instead he has taken their money and put them on the committee selecting the papers that will be

'representative' of academic research taking place in MOOCs.

Why was this work necessary? We are told:

Much of the early research into MOOCs has been in the form of institutional reports by

early MOOC projects, which offered many useful insights, but did not have the rigor —

methodological and/or theoretical expected for peer-reviewed publication in online

learning and education (Belanger & Thornton, 2013; McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, &

Cormier, 2010).

We already know that this is false - and it is worth noting that this study criticizing the lack of

academic rigour cites a paper titled 'Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach' (Belanger &

Thornton, 2013416) and an unpublished paper from 2010 titled 'The MOOC model for digital practice' (McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, & Cormier, 2010417). A lot of this paper - and this book -

is like that. Despite all its pretensions of academic rigour, it cites liberally and lavishly418 from non-academic sources in what appears mostly to be an effort to establish its own relevance and

to disparage the work that came before.

I commented on this paper in my OLDaily post419:

416 http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/%20handle/10161/6216

417 http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf

418 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2015/04/non-research-citations-in-siemens.html

419 http://www.downes.ca/post/63823

p.524

The most influential thinker in the field, according to one part of the study, is L. Pappano

(see the chart, p. 181). Who is this, you ask? The author of the New York Times article in

2012, 'The Year of the MOOC'. Influential and important contributors like David Wiley,

Rory McGreal, Jim Groom, Gilbert Paquette, Tony Bates (and many many more)?

Almost nowhere to be found.

Here is the chart of citations collated from the papers selected by the committee for the MOOC

Research Network (p. 181):

Here is the citation frequencies from the same papers (p. 180):

p.525

What is interesting to note in these citations is that the people who Siemens considers to be 'Alt-

Ac' above - Mackness, Stewart, Williams, Cormier, Kop, Williams, Mackness - all appear in this

list. Some others - Garrison (I assume they mean Randy Garrison420, not D.D.) and Terry Anderson, notably, are well known and respected writers in the field. The research we were told

several times does not exist apparently does exist. The remainder come from the xMOOC

community, for example, Pritchard421 from EdX, Chris Peich422 from Stanford, Daniel

Seaton423 (EdX). Tranches.

But what I say about the rest of the history of academic literature in education remains true. The

authors selected to be a part of the MOOC Research Institute produced papers with only the

slightest - if any - understanding of the history and context in which MOOCs developed. They do

not have a background in learning technology and learning theory (except to observe that it's a

420 https://coi.athabascau.ca/contact/rgarrison/

421 https://www.edx.org/bio/david-e-pritchard

422 http://web.stanford.edu/~cpiech/bio/index.html

423 http://www.rpajournal.com/dev/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/SF2.pdf

p.526

good thing). The incidences of citations arise from repeated references to single papers (like this

one424) and not a depth of literature in the field.

What were the conclusions of this fifth paper? As a result, nothing more substantial than the first

four (quoted, pp. 188-189):

 Research needs to create with theoretical underpinnings that will explain factors related

to social aspects in MOOCs

 Novel theoretical and practical frameworks of understanding and organizing social

learning in MOOCs are necessary

 The connection with learning theory has also been recognized as another important

feature of the research proposals submitted to MRI

 The new educational context of MOOCs triggered research for novel course and

curriculum design principles

This is why I said in my assessment of the paper that "the major conclusion you'll find in these

research studies is that (a) research is valuable, and (b) more research is needed." These are

empty conclusions, suggesting that either the authors of the original papers, or the authors

summarizing the papers, had almost nothing to say.

In summary, I stand by my conclusion that the book is a muddled mess. I'm disappointed that

Siemens feels the need to defend it by dismissing the work that most of his colleagues have

undertaken since 2008, and by advancing this nonsense as "research and evidence."

Moncton, Canada

May 2, 2015

424 http://www.rpajournal.com/dev/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/SF2.pdf

p.527

The Study, and Other Stuff

There are three separate threads in Siemens's response to my last post425, all of which are fascinating:

 The thread concerning whether or not the study he published was bad,

 The thread examining the question of whether universities can be a valuable force for

social equity, and

 My own experiences of the university system.

Though the latter two threads are of endless interest, I'd really rather only focus on the first, for

today.

Whether or not the study he published was bad

Siemens writes, "Stephen expands on his primary concerns which are about educational research

in general." Let me be clear: I was making this statement about this study in particular. That's

why I cited work from the study itself. Yes, I believe that educational work in general is pretty

poor. But my focus was on this particular example.

I think he agrees with me, in part:

Educational research is often poorly done. Research in social systems is difficult to

reduce to a set of variables and relationships between those variables. Where we have

large amounts of data, learning analytics can provide insight, but often require greater

contextual and qualitative data. ... The US Department of Education has a clear

articulation of what they will count as evidence for grants. It’s a bit depressing, actually,

a utopia for RCTs (Randomized Controlled Trials).

And he says:

Stephen then makes an important point and one that needs to be considered that the meta-

studies that we used are “hopelessly biased in favour of the traditional model of education

as practiced in the classrooms where the original studies took place.” This is a significant

challenge. How do we prepare for digital universities when we are largely duplicating

classrooms? Where is the actual innovation? (I’d argue much of it can be fore in things

like cMOOCs and other technologies that we address in chapter 5 of the report). Jon Dron

425 http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2015/05/03/linearity_downes/

p.528

largely agrees with Stephen and suggests that a core problem426 exists in the report in that it is a “view from the inside, not from above.”

So, from this, it appears that he agrees with my criticisms.

He nonetheless persists with his defense, focusing on the fifth paper in the study, first suggesting

I don't find a lot to disagree with about it, and second, suggesting it is a vehicle for a

conversation between two versions of myself. He also finds fault with some other criticisms:

The names listed were advisors on the MOOC Research Initiative – i.e. they provided

comments and feedback on the timelines and methods. They didn’t select the papers. The

actual peer review process included a much broader list, some from within the academy

and some from the outside.

Who selected the review committee? Who are the people 'from the outside' that were on it?

Here's the best we have427 on the review process itself. Here are the project reports428. All of this was set in motion by the committee I named in my previous post. If there's another list of names

of people who were responsible for the outcome, they should be named. Otherwise, the people

named are the people responsible. You can't name a list of names and then say it wasn't them.

In his defense of the fifth paper (he seems not to defend the first four studies, the 'histories', at

all) he also writes:

In my previous post, I stated that we didn’t add to citations. We analyzed those that were

listed in the papers that others submitted to MRI. Our analysis indicated that popular

media influenced the MOOC conversation and the citations used by those who submitted

to the grant.

I recognize this. What I am is saying is that it seems to me that the 28 winners of a major

education research grant competition would have demonstrated more depth of understanding that

is apparent from the summary study that resulted. Maybe I should not have expected more from

what was essentially an automated and quantitative analysis of the papers (because there are

individually some bright spots). But when we look at the citations - which is essentially what we

were provided - the results overall are not reassuring.

That's it for Siemens's defense of the study. The core of my criticism, which is addressed mostly

at the first four chapters, is not addressed. Let me reiterate them here:

426 https://landing.athabascau.ca/bookmarks/view/1046726/half-an-hour-research-and-evidence

427 http://www.moocresearch.com/mooc-research-initiative-grants-awarded

428 http://www.moocresearch.com/reports

p.529

 They all have very small sample sizes, usually less than 50 people, with a maximum size

less than 200 people

 The people studied are exclusively university students enrolled in a traditional university

course

 The method being studies is almost exclusively the lecture method

 The outcomes are assessed almost exclusively in the form of test results

 Although many are 'controlled' studies, most are not actually controlled for "potential

confounders"

 All these criticisms apply if you think this is the appropriate sort of study to measure

educational effectiveness, which I do not.

I would now like to add that my criticisms are reinforced by two additional authors.

Although Jon Dron says429 "as such reports go, I think it is a good one," he writes: For the most part, this report is a review of the history and current state of

online/distance/blended learning in formal education. This is in keeping with the title, but

not with the ultimate thrust of at least a few of the findings. That does rather stifle the

potential for really getting under the skin of the problem. It's a view from the inside, not

from above.

And additionally, George Veletsianos writes430, One of Downes criticisms is the following: “the studies are conducted by people without

a background in education.” This finding lends some support to his claim, though a lot of

the research on MOOCs is from people affiliated with education, but to support that

claim further one could examine the content of this papers and identify whether an

educational theory is guiding their investigations.

I don't think it matters whether the investigation is informed by an educational theory - all I care

about is that the studies contribute in a useful, relevant and credible way to the field.

Finally, Siemens says, "The appeal to evidence is to essentially state that opinions alone are not

sufficient."

It can be allowed that Siemens's use of "we" in the Chronicle article "is about the academy’s

embrace of MOOCs." But as I pointed out, there's no mistaking his suggestion that the people

outside the academy, the Alt-ac people, do not rely on evidence. This is what he says when he

429 https://landing.athabascau.ca/bookmarks/view/1046726/half-an-hour-research-and-evidence

430 http://www.veletsianos.com/2015/05/02/who-studies-moocs-or-thinking-with-siemens-downes/

p.530

says, "Another approach, and one that I see as complimentary and not competitive, is to

emphasize research and evidence."

I have never suggested that opinion alone is sufficient, and never would. But he has to cease

characterizing the alternatives as not evidence based. Because I believe the opposite. I believe

that the controlled trials offered in the study misrepresent what little evidence they provide, and I

believe that the alternative approaches offer substantially more evidence than is allowed.

Siemens says, "While Stephen says our evidence is poor, he doesn’t provide what he feels is

better evidence." I did once author a Guide to the Logical Fallacies431, where I discuss the statistical problems. I've also talked about the same issue of evidence as it related to public

policy432. I've talked about research methodologies433 a number of times. And just the other day, I linked434 to a study I felt did pass muster (and indeed, over the years, I've linked to lots of things that I felt met the appropriate standards of research and evidence). And the body of my

work, grounded in practical application and observation, stands as an example of what I feel

constitutes "better evidence."

The Other Stuff

It's late and I don't want to longer on the off-topic stuff. But I also want to address a few things.

It's true that I am not a fan of universities and do not feel they support our common objective of

"an equitable society with opportunities for all individuals to make the lives that they want

without institutions (and faculty in this case) blocking the realization of those dreams."

This does not mean that I want to see them eliminated. And (contrary to Sebastian Thrun) I

expect their numbers will multiply exponentially in the future.

But they need to be reformed, and they need to be brought around to the idea that social and

economic equity are important. Because as it stands, they are one of the largest bastions in

society standing against that idea. Here are a few of the ways:

- universities foster the perpetuation of a social elite, especially through exclusive institutions

(Harvard, Yale, etc), legacy admissions, and perpetuation of a private social society consisting

pretty much only of the one-percent

431 http://www.fallacies.ca/

432 http://www.downes.ca/post/60

433 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/341

434 http://www.downes.ca/post/63825

p.531

- universities bleed those outside the upper classes by consistently responding to society's

demand for access with higher and higher tuition fees

- universities have fostered the creation of a low-paid academic underclass in order to support the

students that pay these higher fees, and resist any suggestion that they should be fairly

compensated, and actively resist unionization

- universities and professors continue to contribute to mechanisms which keep academic research

behind expensive paywalls - indeed, they are so indifferent to these costs that they must be

required by mandates and laws to open access to their research

- private universities operate tax-free, raise substantial endowment funds (sometimes in the

billions), yet always plead poverty, and are typically the prime recipient of funding provided by

governments and foundations attempting to support projects leading to the betterment of social

and economic conditions

- they then waste that money, and a lot of other money, padding their own resumes and

producing research such as the body of work I find myself criticizing today

Yes, perhaps universities could act as a force that promotes social and economic equity. They

certainly have the talent and resources. But they don't, they don't want to, and they resist any

attempt to make them do it.

It is true that I was badly treated435 by my PhD committee. But this is not a case of "today affirming that the Stephen in front of the PhD committee made the right decision – that there are

multiple paths to research, that institutions can be circumvented and that individuals, in a

networked age, have control and autonomy." Why not? A couple of reasons:

On the idea that, individuals, in a networked age, (should) have control and autonomy: I

have always believed that. I believed that long before I ever stood before a PhD committee.

On the idea that "the Stephen that today has exceeded the impact of members on that committee

through blogging, his newsletter, presentations, and software writing. "This may or may not be

true. But I have never believed that I have been more influential because I have worked outside

of academia.

I have been influential despite being outside academia. I have been influential despite not having

a professor's wages, the support of grad students, a year off every seven, tenure, funding from

foundations, grants and agencies, book contracts, and the rest. No university in the world would

ever hire me, because they consider me unqualified. I don't regard any of this really as an upside.

435 http://www.downes.ca/post/53399

p.532

Because that's what academia does. It wields huge sums of money and the support to achieve

certain social and economic outcomes. I just wish it was wielding this power for good, rather

than indifference. But I don't think it ever will.

Moncton, Canada

May 3, 2015

p.533

What I Learned from Philosophy

I posted436 an item in OLDaily today from Forbes touting the benefits of formerly 'useless' liberal arts degrees. In this item Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is quoted437:

“Studying philosophy taught me two things,” says Butterfield, sitting in his office in San

Francisco’s South of Market district, a neighborhood almost entirely dedicated to the cult

of coding. “I learned how to write really clearly. I learned how to follow an argument all

the way down, which is invaluable in running meetings. And when I studied the history

of science, I learned about the ways that everyone believes something is true–like the old

notion of some kind of ether in the air propagating gravitational forces–until they realized

that it wasn’t true.”

It's worth mentioning because the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary has a

notice posted on the wall to the effect that a philosophy degree was no guarantee of a job and

that graduates should not study expecting employment in the field. This wasn't parody or in any

way humorous - it was an official memo from the chair and posted in all seriousness. I can still

see it in my mind, not a big poster but an 8.5 x 11 memo with typed text.

I have often commented that my work in philosophy left we particularly well-suited to

employment in the new economy. It's not merely that sorting out corporate information might be

simple after spending years teasing out the nuances in Wittgenstein438, as the article suggests, though it's partially that. It's about what it is to know and to learn at a deeper level, which can

then be applied to new disciplines whatever they may be.

But what, precisely, did I learn from those years of study? That's a hard question to answer. But

it's worth a bit of a sketch here.

436 http://www.downes.ca/post/64245

437 http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/07/29/liberal-arts-degree-tech/

438 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/ludwig_wittgenstein.html

p.534

Precision

Butterfield said he learned to write clearly. But what does that mean? Fun with Dick and

Jane 439 is written clearly but we want to express thoughts more complex than "see Spot run."

Writing clearly means writing with precision, and precision is what philosophy teaches.

For example, it is commonly said that a sentence has a subject and a verb. This proves to be

important in clear writing. In clear writing the subject of the sentence is unambiguous. The

reader knows exactly what you are talking about. Through the rest of my days I have always

been attentive to the identification of the subject. You would be surprised how many people are

not.

There are specific ways of naming the subject. One way is to point, in words (that is, to name

your subject ostensively). " This is a sentence. That was an argument worth hearing."

Wittgenstein did that a lot. Another is to use a definite description. "The present King of

France," for example, was the subject of much discussion between Russell and Strawson.

Another way is to use names, which may in turn be subject to definitions, for example, "dogs",

"millennials" or "Barack Obama".

How many ways are there to be imprecise about the subject? There is always our favourite case,

the amphiboly: "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas

I'll never know." Another is to refer to something without a definite or indefinite article, for

example, saying "Matter of importance is clarity," instead of " A matter of importance..." or

" The matter of importance." Or there is the use of vague terms: "freedom is what defines our

approach to software." And on and on the list goes.

Precision is what lies at the root of grammar. In my opinion, the rules of grammar (for the most

part) exist in order to ensure precision. A lot of times it is the little things that cause confusion.

A single comma440 can change the entire meaning of a sentence. As when Johnny said, "It's supper time. We're ready to eat, Uncle Charlie."

Structure

What you learn in philosophy is that sentences - and thoughts generally - are not unstructured

streams of consciousness. This is especially clear in languages like French, where you have to

439 http://auburnpub.com/lifestyles/ricci-fun-with-dick-and-jane-and-childhood-reading/article_fbad973d-84f1-

5eae-8cd6-b0e2004fcc2f.html

440

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plan your sentences ahead of time, in order to ensure the gender of your words are in accord441.

In all languages, structure indicates not only the subject and verb, as mentioned above, but also

logical form leading to such things as inference and explanation.

Why does this matter? Well, as I've written elsewhere442, understanding this structure is key to writing useful and meaningful essays. It is also key to being able to analyze and understand what

other people have written. When you read an editorial containing a whole list of sentences, how

to do determine what opinion they are trying to express? It is the structure of the article that tells

you this.

Structure is logic, and logic is structure. You can see this by looking at the different kinds of

logic; they reveal to you the different kinds of structures you can employ in your reasoning:

 propositional - connecting and relating the truth of basic sentences using 'and', 'or', 'if-

then' and 'not'.

 quantificational - specifying how many of something we're talking about, and inferring

about properties of groups of things

 causal - understanding the conditions under which one thing is said to cause another

 modal - talking about whether things are 'necessary' or merely 'possible'

 statistical - understanding probability, that is, how likely something is to happen, or to be

true

 deontic - thinking about the nature of obligation and permission

 doxastic - the logic of beliefs

 mathematical - axioms, calculus and set theory

 computational - Turing machines and computational processes

Not only did I learn that all these forms of logic exist (who knew?) I also actually learned them,

which means I can make really complex inferences, but more importantly, know some pretty

basic things. For example, if 'P' is necessarily true, is 'P' true? (Yes) Or for example, if 'P is

always Q' is true, does it follow that 'P' is true, or that 'P' exists? (No).

Syntax and Semantics

Syntax is the structure of something - its logic - while semantics refers to its meaning, truth or

value. Syntax is the fact that ten dimes make up a dollar; semantics is the fact that it takes ten

dollars to attend a movie.

441 http://french.about.com/library/weekly/bl-agreement.htm

442 http://www.downes.ca/post/38526

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The very fact that syntax and semantics are distinct is important in itself, for several reasons.

The first is that syntax is arbitrary. We can make up any sort of syntax we want. This is not so

easy to see in everyday arithmetic and propositional calculus, where the rules are deeply

entrenched. But in modal logic, however, we have various 'systems' such as T, K, S4 and S5443.

Which one of these is 'true'? Well, they all are. Or none of them is. Or, it doesn't even make

sense to ask the question.In mathematics, similarly, there are different axiom systems. Which is

'true', Peano444 arithmetic? Mill's Axioms445? Or does it even matter446?

In fact, a syntax, thought in and of itself, can be whatever we want it to be. Usually we set out

some basic requirements - the system should not allow contradictions, for example. But there's

no requirement that we do this, and if we develop a system that does not have truth as its basis

(language, say) then the principle of non-contradiction doesn't even make sense! Take a look at

my categorical converter447 - do the lines have to be drawn that way? Well, no. Or imagine a logic that is falsity-preserving, rather than truth preserving: they look like mirror images, but in

falsity-preserving logic, nothing follows from a contradiction, and everything follows from a

tautology.

If pressed, we would say that we need to choose one system of logic over another because one of

them works in the real world, but the other doesn't. But the relation between logic and the world

is far from clear. We 'prove' a system of logic with a semantical argument, but the relation

between a semantics and a logic is itself the subject of discussion; these different relations are

called 'interpretations'.

What does it mean, for example, to say that "the probability of 'P' is n"? There are three major

types of interpretations of this statement:

 the logical interpretation, from Rudolf Carnap - for every possible state of affairs in

which P could be true or false, in n of them, P is true;

 the frequency interpretation, from Hans Reichenbach - in all cases in the past where P

could be true or false, in n of them, P is true;

443 https://www.otexts.org/mlo/1

444 http://www.math.wustl.edu/~kumar/courses/310-2011/Peano.pdf

445 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27942

446 http://www.ditext.com/hempel/math.html

447 http://www.fallacies.ca/why.htm

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 the subjectivist interpretation, from Frank Ramsay - of you were to make a bet on the

likelihood that P is true, you would require odds of n.

So if we are to validate the laws of probability - Bayes Theorem, for example - against an

empirical model, which of these is the correct model to choose?

For that matter, what makes a statement P 'true' at all? Alfred Tarski said "the sentence 'snow is

white' is true if and only if snow is white." Well, that sounds good. But the sentence "brakeless

trains are dangerous" can be true even of there are no brakeless trains. So it seems there are two

basic principles of truth - a correspondence principle, which requires reference to a physical

world of some sort, or a coherence theory, which requires consistence with a model.

This is how murky these questions can get when we're talking about something as basic as truth.

In the 20th century, however, philosophers focused on other aspects of semantics, such

as meaning and value. Here, the discussion became even more murky.

When someone comes to me and says that some thing or another is 'true', you can see I have a lot

to think about regarding what this assertion could possibly mean. When somebody says to me

that "We can all agree that such and such," I begin to distrust this person, first because the

statement is probably false, and second because it's not at all clear to me that 'agreement' is even

relevant to the sort of truth, value or meaning that we are discussing.

These are really important lessons, and they apply everywhere.

What are 'Things'?

Philosophy taught me that anything can be a 'thing' - it just depends on how you look at it. And

that there are different types of things, and different types of types of things.

Our teachers in school spent a lot of time telling us about the basic types of things - animals,

minerals and vegetables - and the different types of each thing that fall neatly into categories

beneath them as kingdoms, phyla, species and genera.

In university I learned that the way we define a thing in this system is to identify the category a

thing belongs in, and what distinguishes it from other members of that category. "A cat is

a mammal that purrs. " "A hammer is a tool used to drive nails." That sort of thing. "An x is such that all x are y and only x are z." Necessary and sufficient conditions. Essences.

Then in philosophy I learned that all of this is arbitrary. The beautiful system was upended, most

notably, by Wittgenstein. "What is a game?" he asked. Is there any statement that is true

about all games? No. Is there any statement that is true about only games? No. The idea of a

'game' os that it is a bunch of things that are kind of the same, like family resemblances, so you

can see that they are sort of alike, but there is nothing unique that defines them.

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Language itself is like this. We don't have 'rules' properly so-called, we have "language games".

What does a word mean? Well, it depends on how we use it. The meanings of words, the rules of

language, the nature of what is true and what isn't - these all shift over time, like the bed of a

river.

Even more importantly., what a thing is depends not on the thing itself, but on how it is

observed. Because whether one thing 'resembles' something else really depends on your point of

view. We can in one sense say that checkers resembles chess, while in another sense say that

checkers resembles mathematics.

There are many ways to define things: we can point to them, we can say what they contain, we

can say what properties they have, we can talk about what they do, what they were designed to

do, what they actually do, what they might do, we can say what they're for, we can talk about

where they're from or who (or what) created them, and on and on.

Viewed this way, anything can be a 'thing', and any group of things can be a thing. George

Lakoff talks about the culture that divides the world into two types of things: one class consisting

of "women, fire and dangerous things," and another class consisting of everything else.

So much of what we do today involves either working with certain types of things, or

understanding that we are defining new types of things. What are 'students'? What is a 'learning

object'? How do we define an 'ontology'? Philosophy taught me about the limitations of

relational databases long before there were relational databases.

Theories and Models

Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism448 taught me (and everyone else) two important things:

 There's no such thing as the analytic-synthetic distinction

 Reductionism is false

Above I discussed the distinction between syntax and semantics. The collapse of the analytic-

synthetic distinction means that no statement is wither purely syntactical or purely semantical.

What does this mean? An analytic statement is supposed to be true simply by virtue of the

meanings of its terms. We say "1 + 1 = 2" is true, not because of some fact about the world, but

because of the meaning of the terms '1' and '2' and '+' and '='. But if we put it this way, no

statement is purely analytic. "It is obvious that truth in general depends on both language and

extra-linguistic fact."

448 http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

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This leads us to the second dogma: reductionism. This is the idea that all true statements can be

reduced to 'observation language' or some other basis in pure facts (this could be any set of facts:

facts about the world, facts about pure thought, facts about the Bible). But in fact, there is no set

of 'observation statements'. Every 'fact' carries with it some element of the theory it is purporting

to prove. For, without the theory, there is no way to say whether even a simple sentence like "the

sky is blue" is true or false.

This taught me, critically, that what a person sees depends on what that person believes. It means

we have to rethink how we approach research and discovery, but also that we have to rethink

how we communicate with people, how we appeal to reason and evidence, and even how we

regard the world and our place in it ourselves. And it's why education - and how we think of

education - is so important.

For example, I say "to teach is to model and demonstrate". These are not idly chosen

concepts. What we model impacts how they see the world. Consider four world views (all of

which correspond loosely with different generations in and around my lifetime):

 We're at war. Our heroes are war heroes. When we work, we're at the front line. The

challenges we face are battles. The determination of a Churchill or a Patton inspire us.

 We are explorers. We use science and technology to discover new things. When we

work, we are solving problems. The challenges we face are mysteries, the unknown. The

courage of John Glenn and James T. Kirk inspire us.

 We are players. Our heroes are athletes who bring out the best in themselves. We leave it

on the playing field, but experience camaraderie outside the arena. The strength of Gordie

Howe or Hank Aaron inspire us.

 We are entrepreneurs. We take ideas and make change in the world, bending vast empires

of money and people to our will. We are driven by results, and expect a return on our

investment. Our heroes are people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

And there are many more, in different generations of different societies around the world. Each

of these does not represent just a different world view or a different paradigm. It represents a

different way of life. Without philosophy, it's impossible even to understand that there are other

ways of life, much less to understand what they could be like.

What are 'evidence' and 'proof' to people in each of these different worlds. I inhabit a workspace

where the only measure of whether something has value is whether someone will pay for it - part

of that entrepreneurial mindset. I don't agree with that mindset, but I'm also aware that my own

mindset, the explorer mindset, isn't inherently superior.

People are always saying to me that " this counts as a theory, but that doesn't," or that " this counts

as research, but that doesn't." I recognize such statements as arbitrary, and representing a set ofd

parameters that the speaker has employed to define what will count as 'normal' (or 'standard', or

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'appropriate') in their lives and work. I know I won't change their minds on this, probably,

because no evidence exists that does not reinforce their world view. That's the nature of world

views.

Thought is Associative

Not everybody who studies philosophy will learn this (see the preceding paragraph) but I did,

and it was of fundamental importance to me.

There are different ways to make the same point. Other people, for example, will say that they

learned that not everyone is rational, or that people don't make rational decisions. Others will say

that people think in music and pictures and whatever. These are both true. But for me, it comes

down to the idea that thought is associative.

But what does it mean? It's hard to explain in words, but by way of a metaphor, I would say that

the principles of knowledge, memory and understanding are basically the same as the principles

that apply when you throw a rock into a pond. There is the impact, there is the cascade as waves

rush out from the rock, there is the pushback as waves bounce off each other and off the shore,

and there is the settling as the pond returns to its level.

Now the human brain is much more complex than a pond, but in both cases, the impact of

something new affects the entire system, even though the cause touches only one small part of it.

The rock touches some water, which pushes against other water, which pushes against a

shoreline, and so on. The water organizes itself through a whole series of molecule-to-molecule

interactions. There's no head molecule. There is no 'purpose' or 'order' defining what the waves

must be - if tyhe stone had been bigger, the water colder, the shoreline shaped differently, it

would have worked out in a completely different way.

We are on the verge of understanding how that process actually works in brains (we understand

pretty well already how it works in ponds, to the point that we have an entire discipline built

around fluid dynamics449). What we don't have yet is a way of understanding the world consistent with this understanding of how thought works.

For example, I have said frequently, knowledge is recognition. Water doesn't really retain the

impact of rocks, which is why ponds aren't intelligent. But other more complex and more stable

entities will retain traces of the impact. One thing influences the next, and each thing preserves a

trace of that influence, such that after a while characteristic patterns of input produce

characteristic responses. This is recognition. And it is, to my mind, the basis for all human

intelligence.

449 https://www.hydrologystudio.com/if-you-learn-only-three-things-from-your-fluid-mechanics-class/

p.541

This way of thinking is in an important sense post-semantic. I don't see one thing as a 'sign' for

another. I don't see mental models as 'representations' of some external reality. I see knowledge,

cognition and communications as complex interplays of signalling and interaction, each with no

inherent meaning, but any of which may be subsequently recognized by one or another entity.

Remember how Marx said "everything is political"? Well, I think that "everything is a

language" (or, alternatively, there's nothing special about language over and above other forms of

communication). So when I create a 'scientific theory', which is my job, I create something that

consists of language, code, actions, photographs, and a host of other artifacts, all of which are

reflections of my interactions with the world, not intended to 'represent' some deeper truth or

underlying reality, but rather, intended to offer a set of phenomena that may be usefully

employed by others (depending on what they recognize it as being useful for).

Born Free

In any number of recent movies - the Hunger Games, for example, or Divergent - the plot

revolves around the idea that society is structured in such a way that we all have our assigned

places where we work and live. Sometimes, as in Harry Potter, this is depicted as a good thing.

But more often the established order is the subject of resistance.

The concept originates in Plato, who in the Republic 450 argued that society should be run by philosophers, and that the position of each person would be determined by their inner nature.

"One man will acquire a thing easily, another with difficulty; a little learning will lead the one to

discover a great deal; whereas the other, after much study and application, no sooner learns than

he forgets; or again, did you mean, that the one has a body which is a good servant to his mind,

while the body of the other is a hindrance to him."

It is true that there are innate variations among humans. But the far greater differences between

people are the result of their upbringing, culture and education.

In philosophy I encountered the idea that there is an inborn 'human nature' on a regular basis,

from the above-mentioned assertions from Plato to Descartes's ideas about the stamp of God

implanted in the human brain to Chomsky's postulation of an innate deep grammar. People argue

that there are common things (love of justice, fear of death) that unite us all, and essential

properties (mental capacity, physical strength, mathematical abilities) that divide us.

But none of this is true. What we have in common operates at a far lower level than people

suppose. It operates at a genetic level, a cellular level, which defines only the most basic

principles of human composition. Our heritage determines that we will have leg muscles, but not

450 http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

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how string those muscles will be. It determines that we have interlinked neural cells, but not how

they will be wired together. It determines that we will have a voice, but not what we will say.

Time and time again I have encountered evidence of this. When we look at physical properties,

for example, and even the oft-touted difference between men and women, we see how large a

role nutrition plays (women are tall and strong in nations where they are well-fed and nourished

- think about that). The physical differences between individual members of any race, class or

gender you can to name are far greater than any between the races, classes or any other

identifiable group.

The same is true of mental properties. Time and time again, the most reliable predictor of

educational outcome is socio-economic status. This is not because (as some suggest) the best and

brightest become rich (surely we have countervailing evidence of that) but because of the

advantages they receive in early life, everything from a rich intellectual environment, proper

nutrition and stimulation, and social expectations supporting learning and achievement.

How much of philosophy is devoted to determining whether there are natural - or essential -

properties of things, and most especially humans? Arguably, most of it. The argument that

something 'must be X' on the basis that 'X has property or capacity Y' runs through the entire

history of philosophy, from Thales to Aquinas to Kant to Fodor. And none of these speculations

has ever stood the test of time. There are no innate properties of significance. We are born free.

Value

The word 'value' is a bit loaded as in our entrepreneurial age it has become virtually synonymous

with some means of quantification in terms of worth, utility or commodity. There are older

senses in which the term 'value' meant something like those properties synonymous with virtue,

but those senses of the word are almost inaccessible to us now; we would have had to have been

born in a different time and a different place to understand it.

I think philosophy has taught me to think of value a bit more deeply than that, and to at least be

able to articulate alternatives that can count as 'value'. These alternatives form the basis of the

various systems of morality and justice that have prevailed over the years.

I once wrote to the Globe and Mail in a no-doubt long-lost online forum that the underlying

value that defines Canada is this: in diversity, harmony.

You need both parts. Harmony is the underlying value (the earth, as the Taoists might say), the

receiver of all things, the pond after it has become stable, the mind after it has become calm,

uncertainty and turmoil resolved. But rocks and sand crabs and fungus also exhibit large degrees

of harmony; we want something more. This is provided by diversity, the possibilities of

experience, the creation of the need to adapt, to understand, to grow and to learn.

p.543

But hey - it's just a value system. It's not like others haven't tried before me. And this knowledge

keeps me humble.

One type of value system revolves around survival. It's an animal value system, an artifact of our

lizard-brain, perhaps, brought through centuries of socialization to mean also the survival of the

offspring, survival of the tribe, or survival of the species. We see it reflected to day in such

philosophies as social Darwinism, survivalism, and various types of rule-based tribalism.

Another type of value system revolves around ideals. We have the Platonic forms, the perfect

Christ, Man and Superman- the idea is that the closer we can come to perfection, the greater the

value we have realized.

Another type of value system is based on duty and obligation. Perhaps best represented by Kant,

it is informed by the idea that each person is an "end in themselves", not a means to an end

(today we would say "each person is inherently valuable") and that we ought to act in the manner

such that every person could also consistently act in the same manner. Your mother invokes

Kant's categorical imperative when she says, "What is everyone else did that?"

Still another is based around the idea of happiness, and of freedom in a manner that enables a

person to maximize their own happiness. People like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are

most closely associated with this philosophy, and Mill famously proposes that the goal of society

ought to be to allow each person to pursue their own good in their own way. I have a lot of

sympathy with that ideal.

Maybe they all amount to the same thing. There's no shortage of ecumenical authors who like to

suggests that, at heart, we all have the same system of values. But if this were true then we would

have no satisfactory explanation for a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Clifford Olsen. So even while it feels

to me that hose perfect moments of harmony are a combination of happiness, obligation and

ideals, I think that other people see these values very differently.

This is important to understand. People like to say things like "the truth lies somewhere in the

middle" or "the good is what we can all agree on". But there really is no such thing (or if there is,

we have utterly no means of finding it just yet).

Justice

I was never really a fan of moral philosophy, because of the force of the observations just

presented, and even less of political philosophy, which to my way of thinking was offered for the

most part by the powerful to rationalize their exercise of power.

Of course, I have probably been jaded by the fact of being born and raised in an environment

where the peak of political philosophy varied between people justifying why we would have

enough military might to destroy the entire planet and people giving reason why we should or

p.544

should not use it. Political philosophy in my age is and continues to be about the deployment of

political power.

Probably the predominate idea in political philosophy is some sort of version of social contract

theory. This is the idea (and we see it reflected in school charters and corporate vision

statements) that we are united as a society under a set of principles that we have agreed to in

order to live together, prosper together or learn together.

The motivation for such a social contract is generally that the alternative is unbearable. Without,

for example, the benign power of an absolute sovereign, wrote Thomas Hobbes, our loves would

be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" (or course, given some of the sovereigns he was

defending that might be preferable).

The idea that we have actually signed such a contract is, of course, absurd. So the nature and

standards of conduct in the contract are often implied - Rousseau, for example, appeals to the

state of nature in which the noble savage found himself, as compared to contemporary society -

"man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." John Locke, envisioning an endless

commons, imagines that the rights of property are established when someone "affixes his labour"

to that which may be found in nature (an argument that justified the conquest of North and South

America). John Rawls imagines that we could imagine what we would negotiate with each other

under a "veil of ignorance" in which no one knew whether they would be a pauper or a king; this

would result in a system of "justice as fairness".

And of course there are communitarian theories of political philosophy based around the

common ownership of "the means of production" which would ensure that everyone gets "to

each, according to his needs, from each according to his means." Other communitarian theories

of justice assert the collective rights of women, minorities, language groups, religions, and

others.

Interestingly, I don't think that anyone who is actually in politics subscribes to any of these

philosophies per se. Actual observation (if there is such a thing) suggests that most of our social

and economic leaders are engaged in one or another version of Machiavellian political theory,

loosely stated as "might is right".

For my own part, I don't know whether "man is born free," but I do observe that "everywhere he

is in chains," and just as I feel the limitations of my own self-actualization I feel that the other

people of the world who have even less advantage than I do must feel more or less the same

thing, perhaps more deeply. I do not see us as merely "workers" or even as members of this or

that community; from Kant I draw the idea that each person is equally important and equally

special, and that our society and our individual lives are most enhanced by realizing that.

But I have no illusions, I don't believe in utopia, and I don't believe we can engineer (as so many

political philosophies suggest) a better society, a better company or a better school. In the end,

p.545

the political philosophy we employ - the nature of our culture, our social believes, our nation - is

the result of a billion individual, decisions made every day, and each of these decisions is based

on the many factors I've outlined above.

Good government, in other words, depends as much on things like precision of language,

structure of reasoning, appropriate semantics, and all the rest, and even then, there's no guarantee

that the government we get will be in any meaningful sense good - the best we can hope for,

maybe, is government that is just, and leave the rest to the people.

In Sum

In sum, philosophy has taught me the basics of what I need to conduct myself in virtually any

enterprise or occupation (save perhaps things like Major League Baseball).

I've learned through philosophy that nobody is special, and everyone is special. That nothing is

real, and everything is real. That there are infinite ways we can describe and divide up the

entities in the world, that in practice we fall into habits of seeing and reasoning about the world

based on our experiences and the influence of those around us (and today, that influence includes

language and media).

I think that the reason we are alive is because it's possible, and the reason we die is to continue to

allow it to be possible, by allowing our form of existence to grow and develop and adapt and

flourish.

I'm still trying to embrace diversity, and I'm still seeking harmony.

Moncton, Canada

July 30, 2015

p.546

Experts and Authority

In an article last year (and soon-to-be book451) Tom Nichols complained452 about the new relativism brought about by Wikipedia and Google and bemoaning the declining authority of the

451 http://tomnichols.net/blog/2015/06/18/coming-in-2016-the-death-of-expertise-the-book/

452 http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/

p.547

expert. I encountered453 his article today via Facebook; I'm not sure whether the source of this information had any impact on its veracity.

"Today," he writes, "any assertion of expertise produces an explosion of anger from certain

quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more

than fallacious 'appeals to authority,' sure signs of dreadful 'elitism,' and an obvious effort to use

credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a 'real' democracy."

To be sure, the three things he cites here are all things to be avoided:

 'Appeal to Authority' is an actual fallacy454; it occurs when an authority is cited in cases where (a) the authorities disagree among themselves, or (b) where the authority is

speaking outside the area of his or her expertise.

 Elitism is a structural defect455 in society, representing a state of affairs where those who are in power and authority manipulate the rules in order to maintain their (or their

children's) position in society.

 Stifling the dialogue, as we are seeing456 in Canadian society today, is a breakdown of communications that prevents society as a whole from learning about its mistakes,

exposing sources of corruption, or uncovering injustice.

How do I know all this? Well, I too am an expert - or, more accurately, I am called an expert by

people who are in a position to know, or to recognize, that I am an expert. And the relation

between democracy, expertise and authority is, I would say, much less straightforward than

described in Nichols's column.

Let's take democracy as an example. Here's what Nichols says about democracy:

But democracy, as I wrote in an essay about C.S. Lewis and the Snowden affair 457, denotes a system of government, not an actual state of equality. It means that we enjoy equal

rights versus the government, and in relation to each other. Having equal rights does not

mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge.

It is true that it does not follow that because we are governed by democracy that we attain an

actual state of equality. But it does mean, as Nichols suggests, that we are all equal before the

453 https://www.facebook.com/jburkemaine/posts/10156088875255157

454 http://www.fallacies.ca/aa.htm

455 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitism

456 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html?_r=0

457 http://tomnichols.net/blog/2013/08/02/snowden-manning-and-screwtape/

p.548

law. But what does that mean? A naive interpretation would suggest that the law treats each of us

the same. But experts know (having read Rawls458) that democracy means something like

"justice as fairness". That is, even though we are not all equal, in a democracy, the law

should tend toward helping us all become equal.

It's a complex idea but simple enough in practice. It means that society should help improve the

talents of the untalented, that it should seek to increase the skills of those with lesser abilities,

and to expand the knowledge of those with less knowledge. Yes, there is the presumption that

there should be equality before the law (this is the famous dictate of Solon) but what it means in

practice is that people in positions of power and authority should not bend the law to their own

advantage. There's nothing wrong with using the law to enhance the standing of the poor and

disempowered. Or as Plutarch says459:

Thinking it his duty to make still further provision for the weakness of the multitude, he

(Solon) gave every citizen the privilege of entering suit in behalf of one who had suffered

wrong. If a man was assaulted, and suffered violence or injury, it was the privilege of any

one who had the ability and the inclination, to indict the wrong-doer and prosecute him.

(Life of Solon, 18.5)

So when Nichols says this:

It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone

else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite

being obvious nonsense...

he is wrong. In a court of law everyone's opinions are as good as everyone else's. Indeed, we

even make allowances to the favour of those who are not in a position of authority or high social

standing. The facts and justice stand independently of anyone's opinions. That is what Solon

enshrined, and that is the rule that forms the basis of democracy. And it is the foundational

principle of reason, science and enquiry to this day.

As have numerous pedants before him, Nichols appears to be far more concerned about

the source of knowledge and information than about its veracity460 (that is, its truth or fair representation). "I fear we are witnessing the 'death of expertise': a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and

458 http://sites.wofford.edu/kaycd/rawls/

459 http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Solon*.html

460 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty

p.549

teachers, knowers and wonderers," he writes. Google-fueled indeed; that's how I found the

references to Rawls and Plutarch.

Yes, experts make mistakes, he concedes. "But an expert is far more likely to be right than you

are. On a question of factual interpretation or evaluation, it shouldn’t engender insecurity or

anxiety to think that an expert’s view is likely to be better-informed than yours," he writes. This

is true, just as it is true that a rich person has more money than you. But we shouldn't so lightly

accept the moral authority of either.

But let's acknowledge this, and agree that "experts have a pretty good batting average compared

to laymen: doctors, whatever their errors, seem to do better with most illnesses than faith healers

or your Aunt Ginny and her special chicken gut poultice." Quite so.

But notice that it is in a democratic society, where experts are far more likely to be challenged,

that experts hold the most sway. Before the widespread rise of public information, people were

much more likely to purchase snake oil. Old wives tales, in an enlightened society, are exactly

that: tales. It is when experts are beyond challenged by both the informed and uninformed that

the true value of expertise can take hold.

Nichols ought to pause for a moment to consider why this is the case.

He writes, "The death of expertise is a rejection not only of knowledge, but of the ways in which

we gain knowledge and learn about things. Fundamentally, it’s a rejection of science and

rationality, which are the foundations of Western civilization itself."

This to me represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how science and rationality work. The

world of the expert - of any expert - is obliged to be subjected to the widest possible criticism.

This applies equally to practitioners of snake oil and anti-cancer vaccinations. That is how we are

able to distinguish between the reasonable and the irrational. And it does not matter whether the

criticism comes from within the domain of enquiry or from an authoritative source. Because

rationality isn't about getting things right, it's about getting the right things right.

Look at his examples: "'Western civilization': that paternalistic, racist, ethnocentric approach to

knowledge that created the nuclear bomb, the Edsel, and New Coke, but which also keeps

diabetics alive, lands mammoth airliners in the dark, and writes documents like the Charter of the

United Nations." These make my case far better than they make his case.

First of all, those experts who also happen to be paternalistic, racist, and ethnocentric can be

questioned on that basis. We know that facts do not exist in isolation, but rather, they are a

product of a perspective or a point of view (even an expert's, most especially is he or she is

paternalistic, racist, or ethnocentric). We should question whether modern physics embodies

p.550

a western perspective461 of time. We ought to ask whether a biological thesis is informed by racism462. Shielding the authority from uninformed questioning is more likely to shield the authority from these questions, which come from outside the field.

The Edsel463 is a really good example of getting the right things wrong. It featured many advances in automotive technology, including engine warning lights, seat belts, and child-proof

rear door locks. But it failed on non-technical features such as aesthetics and price. It's the sort of

failure experts could have avoided with non-expert opinion (and it's why companies use devices

such as focus groups464 to ensure they don't make similar mistakes in the future).

Not trusting the expert is dangerous, writes Nichols. "We live today in an advanced post-

industrial country that is now fighting a resurgence of whooping cough — a scourge nearly

eliminated a century ago — merely because otherwise intelligent people have been second-

guessing their doctors and refusing to vaccinate their kids."

Well yes. But the reason people like Jenny McCarthy465 jumped on the anti-vaxxer bandwagon was that an expert, British physician Andrew Wakefield, "published a paper in The Lancet that

purported to identify a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the

appearance of autism in children." And history is such that sometimes the lone expert is more

trustworthy: witness the case of Frances Oldham Kelsey466, who protected the United States from the horror of Thalidomide poisoning.

Had Jenny McCarthy been right, she would today be hailed as 'an expert'. But she was wrong;

Wakefield's paper was revealed as a hoax, and there is no link between vaccines and autism. But

in the same breath, we would be dismissing Kelsey as a crank had Thalidomide turned out to be

same. One of the features of expertise is that it is typically revealed only after the fact, when it is

too late to be of any use. Before that time, we have to make use of argument, evidence and

statistics, and not credentials.

461 http://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-physics

462 http://www.britannica.com/topic/social-Darwinism

463 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel

464 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_group

465 http://www.thenation.com/blog/175388/jenny-mccarthys-vaccination-fear-mongering-and-cult-false-

equivalence

466 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/frances-oldham-kelsey-averted-a-

thalidomide-tragedy-because-she-wouldnt-be-rushed/article25976972/

p.551

Nichols displays an increasing impatience with the rigour of disproving the Kelseys of the world.

"You will get snippy and sophistic demands to show ever increasing amounts of 'proof' or

'evidence' for your case," he writes, "even though the ordinary interlocutor in such debates isn’t

really equipped to decide what constitutes 'evidence' or to know it when it’s presented."

But Nichols confuses between making the case generically, and making the case to the

satisfaction of a particular individual. As an expert with a long history of engaging in arguments

with people, I can say with assurance that it will not be possible to convince everybody of

anything. People - experts and non-experts alike - have their own 'riverbed propositions' 467 from which they will not budge no matter how reasonable the evidence. When an expert responds to

an argument, it should be done publicly, as the intent is to demonstration to the public as a

whole, not the individual in question. As a society, we decide.

And we need to be clear about the nature of the two assertions Nichols is making. First, he is

arguing that there are things that count as evidence and things that do not. And second, he is

arguing that non-experts are incapable of drawing this distinction. I think that on both counts he

is wrong.

Sure, people may make unreasonable demands of science. For example, they may criticize

evolution on the grounds that it is "only a theory", or demand "proof" of human-caused climate

change. This does not mean these are not forms of evidence; it merely means they are

unattainable (scientists would love to be able to refer to the law of evolution, or point to proof of

global warming, but it's just not forthcoming).

And things like Biblical references, the missing link, the little ice age, and other such non-

evidence are not non-evidence: they are anomalies that the theory must explain. The coincident

increase in diagnosis of autism with vaccination is a real thing, and it needs to be shown that this

is the result of the better diagnosis of autism over time, not the needle. This is

what Carnap468 calls the principle of total evidence, and recognizes that new evidence, even seemingly unrelated, might impact whether something being considered is true or not.

And when Nichols argues that non-experts are incapable of making that distinction, he must

explain the countervailing fact that society as a whole, which consists mostly of non-

experts, has made that distinction, and that our medical system, our code of justice, and social

infrastructure in general are built around the fact that vaccines are helpful and thalidomide is

dangerous. And Nichols has to explain why societies where experts are more likely to be

questioned and challenged are societies which are more likely to make this distinction.

467 http://www.edtechpost.ca/readings/Ludwig%20Wittgenstein%20-%20On%20Certainty.html

468 http://xeny.net/how_to_apply_the_Principle_of_Total_Evidence

p.552

And he can't just argue that these counterexamples are coming from a non-expert, that the

evidence here cited does not count as the right evidence, and that this is only a blog. Such

responses would quite rightly be dismissed as fallacies by both experts and non-experts alike

(and it is indeed the prevalence of fallacies in non-expert responses that is one of the major ways

non-experts can spot frauds in the ranks of experts).

And what of those people who are not even able to distinguish between a valid argument and a

non-sequitur? Nichols has no time for them and finds them exhausting. I find them exhausting

too, but I make my case for all to see, and have taken the time and effort to make the basis for

argumentation and reason available to all469. Because I value the contributions of non-experts, and would like to help them formulate their objections in the most effective manner possible.

This is called the principle of charity470, and is a fundamental rule in logic and reasoning.

To get to the point of Nichols's argument, he wants a return of the gatekeepers:

the journals and op-ed pages that were once strictly edited have been drowned under the

weight of self-publishable blogs. There was once a time when participation in public

debate, even in the pages of the local newspaper, required submission of a letter or an

article, and that submission had to be written intelligently, pass editorial review, and

stand with the author’s name attached. Even then, it was a big deal to get a letter in a

major newspaper. Now, anyone can bum rush the comments section of any major

publication. Sometimes, that results in a free-for-all that spurs better thinking. Most of the

time, however, it means that anyone can post anything they want, under any anonymous

cover, and never have to defend their views or get called out for being wrong.

Yes. Anybody can publish whatever they want. This has resulted in a lot of clutter. But it has

also resulted in Assange471, Snowden472 and Manning473, among many other notable examples.

To understand why this is important, it is necessary to understand the role of gatekeepers. And -

frankly - it was never the role of the gatekeepers to keep out the cranks. A brief look at the letters

sections of most any newspaper before the days of the internet is evidence of that. It was

469 http://www.fallacies.ca/

470 http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

471 https://justice4assange.com/

472 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/14/edward-snowden-hero-government-scare-tactics

473 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/judge-to-sentence-bradley-manning-

today/2013/08/20/85bee184-09d0-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html

p.553

to protect the newspaper from retribution474 from the rich and powerful should seriously damaging evidence or allegations be published.

Let us be clear: the time before the internet was a time when the elite entrenched and protected

each other. Even Nichols makes this point (though it is not clear he knows he is making it):

There was once a time when presidents would win elections and then scour universities

and think-tanks for a brain trust; that’s how Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington,

Zbigniew Brzezinski and others ended up in government service while moving between

places like Harvard and Columbia.

Yes. There was pretty much a closed walkway between positions of power and authority and the

elite institutions like Harvard and Columbia. And when Nichols writes that "I have a hard time,

for example, imagining that I would be called to Washington today in the way I was back in

1990" he fails to understand that this is a good thing, and that calling people like George

Siemens475 (an itinerant blogger born in Mexico, former restaurant owner, and self-made PhD in education) instead is far far better.

And consider how Nichols regards those other gatekeepers, teachers and university professors:

One of the greatest teachers I ever had, James Schall, once wrote many years ago476 that

'students have obligations to teachers,' including 'trust, docility, effort, and thinking,' an

assertion that would produce howls of outrage from the entitled generations roaming

campuses today.

And despite the lupine ad hominem, students should indeed protest such instructions. Nobody

has an obligation to produce trust and docility. Far better to be a nation of wolves than a nation

of sheep! There are good reasons477 to eschew docility; women especially understand the need to challenge the orthodoxy of thinking emanating from the professorial pulpit. A requirement of

trust and docility is in itself a betrayal of trust.

But what Nichols is really worried about is that the experts might become servants of the people.

This shows up in a number of ways near the end of his article. Consider this language:

474 http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/07/yelp-reviewers-beware-you-can-get-sued/

475 http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2015/08/03/white-house-innovation-in-higher-education/

476 http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-

expertise/www.catholiceducation.org/articles/education/ed0003.html

477 http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/24/us/radcliffe-women-once-docile-prod-harvard-sharply-on-equality-of-

sexes.html

p.554

The idea of telling students that professors run the show and know better than they do

strikes many students as something like uppity lip from the help

Or this:

many academic departments are boutiques, in which the professors are expected to be

something like intellectual valets.

But the argument is a bit more subtle than that. It's that we would be happy serving the people,

but the people are not good enough to be masters.

When citizens forgo their basic obligation to learn enough to actually govern themselves,

and instead remain stubbornly imprisoned by their fragile egos and caged by their own

sense of entitlement, experts will end up running things by default.

And so this is a "terrible" thing, he will oh so reluctantly take his position as expert, and step into

his natural place as the ruler of society. Or so he thinks.

But he's wrong, and worse, he is dishonestly wrong. He is disappointed he is no longer getting

calls from the White House, he yearns for the days when professors demanded docility and

respect, and he would much rather return to the days when the only public discourse was that

vetted by the editorial guardians of society. He does not actually want the non-expert to

contribute to the governance of society, for if he did, this column would be a call or education

and empowerment, and not a declaration to the effect that the masses are revolting.

His kind just is the kind that brought us the excesses of the 20th century, and more recently

the debacle in Iraq478. He most properly should be ashamed of himself for setting himself above the likes of you and me. But as is so common among the realm of the self-declared expert, he

feels no shame.

Moncton, Canada

August 15, 2015

478 http://www.federalistjournal.com/fedblog/2006/08/26/debunking-the-bush-lied-us-into-war-slander-once-

again/

p.555

Scaling the Heights of Language, Its

Learning, and Its Teaching

This is a summary of a talk by Diane Larsen-Freeman at TESL 2015. It was a treat to listen to.

Errors and omissions are entirely my own.

This is a beautiful location - and I hear that Canadians are fond of nature. And you'll hear a lot

today about ecology and nature.

Complex dynamic systems. The have captured my attention. I've been talking about it for 21

years. I will start there, but the central focus of my remarks will be about fractals.

I'm going to try to make the case than language is a fractal - and if that is true, what does that tell

us about language learning and teaching?

Complexity theory - scientists seek patterns and relations within systems. Complex is not the

same as complicated - an automobile is complicated, but not complex. In complex systems you

have systems made up of components which interact, and give rise to patterns at other levels of

complexity. The example of a murmuration is an example of complexity.

p.556

I think of language that way. The interactions of people communicating creates patterns.

The perturbation - addition of an element to a system around which organization occurs. Eg.

puppies forming a pinwheel around a bowl of milk. 'Emergence' is the arising of these patterns

our of a complex system.

Mandelbrot described the inability of traditional geometry to describe natural phenomena -

clouds, mountains, coastlines, bark, lightning. (Photos of fractals in nature). The term is from the

Latin 'fractus'.

Anuradha Matur and Dilip de Cunha were asked to devise a strategy to build resilience in the

face of rising sea levels in Norfolk, VA. They thought, think of the coastline not as a line but as

discontinuous 'fingers of high ground'. They augmented the coast with similarly shaped

engineered landforms.

Controlling or imposing from the top down does not work with natural systems.

Fractals are self-similar at every level of scale. If you look at the whole thing and see a certain

design, as you look at each smaller piece you see the same (similar) pattern repeating.

These patterns are generated as a result of iteration. Eg. the Koch snowflake. See also the

animated fractal mountain. Also, I've been told that the paintings of Jackson Pollack are fractals.

Also, rhythm in nature. Christopher Joyce, Feb 21, 2012.

Fractals are modeled with differential equations - the output of one iteration becomes the input of

the next. Eg. Mandelbrot set, sample zoom. Algar 2005 p. 20 - structure of patterns from the

repeated applications of a single algorithm.

Nature uses fractals - they are a very efficient means of squeezing a lot of material into a small

amount of space. Eg. the lungs have an enormous surface area.Eg. the brain is a fractal.

So...

Language is n o different from other natural phenomena in that form follows functions. For

example, Zipf's power law - the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the

frequency table. The most frequent word occurs twice as often as the second, which occurs twice

as often as the next, and so on. Eg., in the Brown corpus, the words the, if, etc. The other half is

composed of the hapax legomena - words that only occur once.

Why is this? Zipf argues for the conservation of speaker effort, which would prefer that there

only be one word, contrasted with conservation of listener effort, in which each word has a

specific meaning. This is a trade-off. So here is where the fractal effect is clearest. Zipf's law

accounts not only for a large corpus as well as for specific writers - the 10 highest-frequency

words account for 24 percent of a text (Schroder, 1995).

p.557

Zipf's law is not controversial. Fractals follow a power law as they reduce in size by a fixed ratio.

See eg. the words of Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick.

Fractals emerge from dynamic processes that are recurrent. In similar fashion, patterns in

language emerge from meaningful recurrent interaction among language users.

Language learning:

Humans are sensitive to the frequency of linguistic features they are exposed to which is

reflected in their language development. So structures latent in language usage make language

usable.

Eg. Goldberg (2004) L1 - mothers (% of tokens) proportional to children (% of tokens). Eg verb

locative. ('go') Verb object locative ('put'). VOO ('give').(MacWhinney 1995). It's not

behaviourism - it's not a 100% match - but clearly the mother's use is leading the child's use.

Second language acquisition (or development). Language processing in all domains is sensitive

to frequency of usage. But exposure is not enough. Learners need to experience language as a

dynamic system, molding and using it to adapt to the current situation.

But language emerges 'upwards' in the sense that innovative language-using patterns emerge

from a person using the language interactively. It's a socio-cognitive process. Think of the

phenomenon of 'emergence from exemplars' Eg. examples of fuzzy images of Tiananmen

Square, Brandenburg Gate, Mt. Fuji, or the great Pagoda. Corinne Vionnet - compiles them from

many different photos. The image, the view, etc., is 'socially negotiated' - we are around that

spot, but no two people are in the same spot.

We all have our own language resources, they're overlapping, but they're ann unique as well.

Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008) - the cognitive process are inextricably interwoven with

their experiences in the sopcial and physical world. The context of language is socially

constructed and negotiated on a moment to moment basis.

This counters the tendency to portray learner language as being an incomplete and deficient

version of the native speaker language.

But it is also important that this implicit process be accompanied by explicit guidance in noticing

and practicing features of the target language, especially where L1 operates differently from L2.

But how can we cooperate with the natural processes as defined by nature, just as we don't want

to build a wall against the rising tides?

If we think about fractal patterns, we're going to think about iterations. So how about designing

activities where language-using patterns as defined by context of use, in keeping with learners'

goals, are iterated - not repeated, not the same thing, but similar.

p.558

Eg. as a model - 36 views of Mt. Fuji - under the wave off Kanagawa. Sanjurokkei.

Complex systems are built up through iterations. They encounter and use the patterns repeatedly.

But not repetition. navigating the tension between convention and iteration. Eg. a text. read.

Then do a cloze analysis. Remove a few words.

And teach adaptation. What is learned in one context needs to be used in another. Take what they

know and (not 'transfer') transform it. How can we teach adaptation? Take their present system

and mold it to a new context. Maybe Earl Stevick's idea of technemes. Change the conditions

slightly for completing a task - eg. change the time allowed, etc. Same task, use the 4-3-2

technique. (Tell a story in 4 minutes, in 3 minutes, in 2 minutes - forces them to be more fluent,

they extend their usage of lexical items, etc).

Also - bilinguals' languages are nit separate and complete, but create a repertoire emerging out of

local practices. Use bilingualism as a resource. We are, after all, teachers of learners, not only

teachers of language. Eg: allow a student to read a text in their own language first, or provide

many opportunities for low-stakes writing in any language they wish. Eg June 2015 - Juan Pelipe

Herrera - mixture of English and Spanish.

Also, create multilingual spaces (Helot, 2014), where students are not silences because they

cannot use their L1.

And finally, assess earners' progress in a self-referential way, not against some idealized target,

but looking at what the learner is doing over time.

It's not about conformity to uniformity. Through iteration and adaptation learners find the

balance, and help all of us along the way.

Lake Louise, Canada

October 31, 2015

p.559

That Old Canard

In yesterday's New York Times the Arthur C. Brooks argues479 that there is systemic bias against conservatives in academia. This is my response.

It must be coming around to election time again, as this old canard (complete with a 1975 study)

makes the rounds again.

First of all, it should be no surprise to find more left-leaning people in a public service industry,

just as it is no surprise to find that the boardrooms of banks and corporations are staffed almost

entirely by people from the right wing.

It should also be no surprise to see people from the left in occupations with a focus on reason and

intellect, as generally the more educated a person is, the more left wing they tend to become.

Third, it should be no surprise to see people in academia adopting aa more liberal stance because,

as they say, "reality leans left." The right is known for its support for creationism, climate change

denialism, anti-vaxxing, an apocalyptic would view, and a host of non-reality-friendly positions.

Finally, it's not even clear that the data brought forward by the right actually supports the

contention that there is a right wing bias in academic. The cases are carefully selected, picking

from research in sociology rather than, say, schools of business or medicine. And they compare

apples and oranges; the same data set might *not* lead to the same conclusion when studying

poverty and skin rashes, as these are very different phenomena.

This sort of reasoning is reflective of differences in the way the left and the right regard science,

just as we saw here in Canada under ten years of conservative rule. On the right, science follows

policy. It follows politics. It is manageed to show support for conclusions (and for industries)

that have already won political support. But on the left, policy is derived from science. The

political positions supported are those, typically, which are supported by evidence and research

in the field.

Indeed, the idea that diversity is a virtue in society is a left-wing idea, not typically supported by

conservatives. The great movements that created and shaped a more inclusive society - from

feminism to anti-racism to aboriginal rights to GLBTQ-friendly policy - are left-wing

movements.

It is typical of the right that it would view diversity not as a policy end in itself, but a piece of

'science' that can be taken out of context and used to prop up and rationalize the unsubstantiated

479 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/opinion/academias-rejection-of-diversity.html

p.560

conclusion that academia is out to get them. Why would they reason the left would work this

way? Because that's what they, the right, would do in a similar position.

I have no objection to the existence of academics and professionals who can articulate and

advance the right-wing argument. I personally do not believe such arguments can be sustained.

But I don't think that 'diversity' means that we should promote conservatives to positions of

academic responsibility simply on the ground that they are conservative. That's not how diversity

works. And if the right were concerned with *understanding* diversity, rather than using it to

promote their own self-interests, they would understand this.

Ottawa, Canada

November 1, 2015

p.561

Role for Educators in MOOCs

My comments to the Networked Learning Conference 'hot seat' on the role of educators in

MOOCs. Read the full discussion here. 480

# # #

At the risk of self-reference, I'd like to contribute to this discussion by pointing to something I

wrote on the role of the educator a few years ago - The Role of the Educator481 - which was based on a few talks, including We Don't Need No Educator482.

The point of these presentations is to say two things: first, that as the learning environment is

reshaped by technology, it doesn't make sense to think of it as being provided by a single artisan

manually performing a wide (and increasing) range of professional tasks; and second, that the

role of the educator(s) is far more varied than one might think, even in the age of the MOOC.

After all, it's not as though the one task of the educator was to present content, and it's not as

though the educator disappears once a person begins to be able to manage their own learning and

find and view resources for themselves. Rather, it means that the same number of professionals

(probably more) can now begin to offer specialized services to a much larger number of people.

# # #

@hsp483 writes, "I have no issue with social constructivism per se, but I do have an issue with the relative and subjective knowledge that it can generate. It leaves room for groups of people to

come to different conclusions based on the same facts."

We've digressed a lot from the topic of 'the role for educators' but in an interesting and necessary

way. And indeed, many of my discussions of MOOCs begin with a discussion of the nature of

knowledge.

Allow me to begin, though, by dividing the discussion into a practical thread and a theoretical

thead:

480 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/t/role-for-educators-in-moocs/168/36

481 http://www.downes.ca/post/54312

482 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/311

483 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/users/hsp

p.562

 the practical matter of whether educators ought to see themselves as conveyors of

authoritative knowledge, whether or not such knowledge actually exists, and

 the nature of truth, and whether there are truths that can be known in an absolute sense, as

opposed to the relativism described by @Zerove484

With respect to the second matter, I think that the net result of some 2600 years of philosophical

enquiry into the nature of knowledge and truth is that knowledge and truth are at best relative to

a community, a symbol system, a model, a perceiver, or some such non-global entity.

It does not matter that "a further dialectic process towards a global understanding of facts" is

hampered by this. [x] Arguably, this is beyond our reach - we could engage in the process

forever, but never know whether we are even getting closer to a conclusion.

We could discuss the state of knowledge and truth at length, but that might best be a separate

thread.

The practical question is whether, despite this, and for more pragmatic reasons, teachers out to be

seen as conveyors of authoritative facts and knowledge.

Several reasons have been advanced in the discussion this far:

 it may be the case that students are unable to learn unless facts and knowledge are

presented in this way, ie., there are pedagogical reasons

 it may be the case that there are cultural reasons for presenting knowledge and

information this way, ie., there are cultural reasons

 it may be that the stability and prosperity of society as a whole may depend on a common

understanding (or, if you read Rawls, agreement) on certain propositions, ie., there

are social reasons

Against these arguments I offer my own proposition that social, pedagogical and cultural issues

are better addressed by encouraging learner autonomy than by encouraging teachers to act as

sources of authoritative facts and knowledge.

 first, it is arguable that students learn better if they are able to understand and reconstitute

the knowledge for themselves, rather than having it distributed to them as already known

and authoritative. There have been some recent discussions1 around the Common Core approach to mathematics that are illustrative of this.

 second, it is arguable that culture, rather than being harmed by a decline of authority, is

actually strengthened by it. This is a long digression which I won't explore here, but a

significant topic worthy of discussion.

484 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/users/zerove

p.563

 third, society as a whole is more stable if the ondividuals in it are viewed as autonomous,

pursuing (as Mill says) "their own good in their own way". There has been a lot of recent

discussion showing the quality of decisions and stability of social systems are increased

when organized as networks of diverse autonomous members.

One final note. We will not doubt touch on the distinction between 'authority' and 'expert'. The

two are very different. The former represents a perspective that is imposed on the learner. The

latter represents a perspective that is given weight by being recognized as such by the learner.

Contrary to the perspective of cMOOCs offered in the paper cited by @Vivian below, the

position of connectivists (or, at least, of me) is that while teachers should not take on

an authoritative role, they can and certainly should function as experts.

Their role is not merely to facilitate - that is a conflation of connectivism with constructivism.

Their role is, to put in slogan form, to model and demonstrate.

[x] In the same way the assertion that "we do not have wings" hampers our ability to fly. But no

much it hampers our ability to fly, it does not follow that we have wings.

# # #

@Fleur_Prinsen485 I guess I would ask first of all why it is wrong for people to come to different conclusions based on the same facts. This is a very common phenomenon, and it is indeed this

diversity of opinion that strengthens our own cognitive processes and the cognitive processes of

a society as a whole.

But also, secondly, I challenge the presupposition that there is such a thing as the "same facts".

To my knowledge everybody experiences the world in different ways, and while there may be

social and linguistic conventions concerning our shared experiences (eg., the sentence "Paris is

the capital of France") even these are experiences by different people in different ways.

What we call 'facts' are theory-laden representations of the world and experience, and are

literally different depending on whether one believes in spiritual entities or not, on whether one

believes in an underlying reality or not, on whether one interprets the perceptions as particles or

waves. They vary from perspective and point of view, in significant and importance and

relevance, in salience, and with reference to background knowledge, context or understanding.

So I do not think that it is an objection that people come to different conclusions. I think it is a

strength.

485 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/users/fleur_prinsen

p.564

# # #

@jeffreykeefer486 Most of the research on 'theory-laden data' was actually done on research in the hard sciences. This slide show487 outlines some of the foundational work by people like Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend to establish this. Even the nature of observations

themselves, much less theoretical statements, are interpreted differently depending on one's

theoretical perspective.

This is important not because it puts astronomy and astrology on the same level - it doesn't - but

because it corrects a persistent misunderstanding about the nature of knowledge and scientific

theory.

There is no 'foundation', there are no 'basic truths', no particular 'facts of the matter' carry a

special status over and above the rest. Knowledge is not an edifice, construct, or canonical

representation of the world. It is far more complex (and far more interesting) than that.

A couple of examples, one from Lakatos, and one from my own writing:

 the Millikan oil drop experiment488 was one of the foundational moments in chemistry and physics. It involved dropping oil drops between two charge plates, measuring the

effect of the plates, and deducing the value of the charge of a single electron. Previous

efforts had attempted the same with water, but because the results were so fickle,

Millikan employed oil instead. "The Millikan–Ehrenhaft controversy can open a new

window for students, demonstrating how two well-trained scientists can interpret the

same set of data in two different ways."

 'basic' mathematics. It has long been held that children should learn 'basic arithmetic',

such as addition and subtraction, multiplication and division. But the selection of these as

'foundational' is completely arbitrary (and are not surprisingly challenged by Common

Core). Mathematics itself may be thought to be based on a foundational set of axioms,

such as are represented by Peano arithmetic489, based in the concepts of set theory, identity, and succession. Or perhaps we could employ Mill's methods490, which derive mathematics from as a set operations on a series of pebbles. In view of modern

486 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/users/jeffreykeefer

487 http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/wuthrich/teaching/2013_145/Lect07_PopperEtAl.pdf

488 http://www.umich.edu/~chemstu/content_weeks/F_06_Week4/Mullikan_Erenhaft.pdf

489 http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sacook/csc438h/notes/page96.pdf

490 http://www.philosophyideas.com/files/papers/Mill%20defended%20against%20Frege.pdf

p.565

computation (and to help in their later understanding of modal logic) perhaps the core

concepts taught ought to be transitivity, substitutivity, and symmetry.

Ottawa, Canada

November 5, 2017

p.566

Analysis and Support of MOOCs

My contributions to the Network Learning 'Hot Seat' addressing the question, "How do we

analyse and support the networked interactions of thousands of people learning together?" View

the whole discussion here491.

# # #

These are two very different questions and I'm not sure it's useful (or even appropriate) to ask

them together.

With respect to the analysis of the networked interactions, it's not clear to me that we should

even be doing this, at least, not in the sense suggested by the question. If someone had said "how

do we analyze the conversations of university students one to another" or "how do we analyze

the thousands of phone calls between people" we would quite rightly question the breach of

confidence required to undertake such a task, beyond very gross calculations about the numbers

of calls and conversations (and even then, we're treading on dangerous grounds). One of the

differences between mass courses (at least the way I see them) and more traditional forms of

online learning is that students discussions are not automatically located in the LMS not subject

to ownership and use by the institution.

I'll leave discussion of the second point until later.

# # #

@jonathanbishop492 I would be more inclined to say that Etienne Wenger was drawing some the same foundational concepts as George Siemens and I, though I was aware of Wenger's work as

far bacl as 2004 (you can hear me mispronounce his name through this entire presentation493, the first I ever recorded, from 2004).

The ideas of connectivism, communities of practice, etc., are derived from a network view of the

world, and are rooted in ideas of network theory, 'small pieces loosely joined', the computational

491 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/t/analysis-and-support-of-moocs/169

492 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/users/jonathanbishop

493 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/102

p.567

theory of connectionism, and the work of people like Francisco Varela, Paul and

Patricia Churchland494, Stephen Kosslyn495 and J.J. Gibson496.

It has been occasionally suggested that MOOCs have their origin in the work of Ivan Illich. I'm

sympathetic with his view, but his work has no influence on the development and design of

either connectivism nor the MOOC. If people must credit someone writing specifically in the

educational domain, then I would say I was far more influenced by John Holt's How Children

Fail. But for me, the origins are from the scientific and philosophical domain, not from

educational theorists or social scientists.

# # #

Connectivism is another neologism. It is essential Barry Wellman's work from the 80s

and 90s with the rhetoric of Vygotsky, and indeed Ivan Illich.

No it isn't. Wellman497 is interested in the formation and definition of community, and social network theory. This work is interesting, but is not the same as connectivism, which is a theory

about knowledge and learning.

What you'll find in connectivism, but not in Wellman:

- 'to know' is to be organized in a certain way, as in a set of connections (such that 'to know x' is

to recognize x)

- 'to learn' is to to grow, adapt and change that organizations, ie., to grow and shape connections

Contrast with Wellman, who when he talks about knowledge, talks in information-theoretic

terms, such as 'knowledge transfer' or 'knowledge mobilization'. He depicts networks

as conduits of knowledge, rather than as instances of knowledge.

Finally, though I am indeed the person who coined and described e-learning 2.0498 (based on the earlier concept of web 2.0) I am not trying to "sell" it, or MOOCs, or connectivism. People can

decide for themselves, based on the evidence, whether any of these concepts has any merit.

494 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/12/two-heads

495 http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=kosslynlab

496 http://ione.psy.uconn.edu/~cespaweb/docs/MC.pdf

497 http://groups.chass.utoronto.ca/netlab/barry-wellman/

498 http://www.downes.ca/post/31741

p.568

# # #

I see MOOCs as "Closed Educational Resources" for the reason that they

are stand alone, unlike say SCORM packaged learning objects.

This may be true for xMOOCs. It is certainly not true for the cMOOCs George Siemens and I

created. Indeed, you could attend one of our MOOCs from beginning to end without even

visiting the platform, solely through the use of syndication technologies like RSS. Moreover, our

MOOCs were not in one place, like an xMOOC, but were distributed across a web of

connections linking students’ resources, OERs from multiple locations, groups and conferences,

and more.

Ottawa, Canada

November 5, 2017

p.569

What Else Can Work At Scale? And

Techniques from Social Media

My contribution to the Networked Learning Conference 'Hot Seat' discussion. You can read

the whole discussion here499 .

# # #

Anything that can be automated works at scale. Anything that cannot be automated must be

distributed, and if so, works at scale. Only centralized non-automated things do not work at

scale.

# # #

This is a good question:

"Humans scale, and have scaled before any automation existed, so what made us scale?

Localized transmission of knowledge (oral tradition), the automated cell/gene replication in

combination with adaptations? "

And I think that the answer is inherent in the nature of life: that we are autonomous, and

interactive, so we create a distributed network of diverse activities, adapting to local conditions,

and scaling naturally.

Life seeks conditions of success. Humans, crickets, birds, plants - we migrate to the places where

we flourish and avoid the places we don't, each making our decisions one by one.

Too dense a network and society fails. Too sparse a network and society fails. Autonomy is

productive; eliminate it and society fails. But where autonomy is extended to point where it

disrupts the network, society fails. (These aren't truisms; they are empirical observations, and

subject to verification.)

# # #

Also, comments from the thread titled 'Educational Designers and Techniques from Social

Media'. 500

499 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/t/what-else-works-at-scale/170

500 http://forum.networkedlearning.net/t/educational-designers-and-techniques-from-social-media/167

p.570

I have argued that the design for MOOCs should take more from games than from social media

(though there are some pretty strong overlaps), including in a talk just last week501. My point was that instead of trying to design learning, which is focused on content, we should create

environments in which people can practice.

Social media is a bit like an environment. It is a space (mostly) not bounded by structured

presentation of material or decision trees (Facebook's stream is an oft-criticized exception).

People are able to try out new ideas and new personals. The problem with social media is that the

interaction is (mostly) limited to conversation. I would much rather see people interact by

solving problems, figuring out puzzles, playing games, and creating things.

# # #

Again, I have not clearly stated my point.

I use games as a metaphor to talk about MOOCs:

There are two types of games:

 those that depend on programmed design and memorization, and

 that create an environment.where players and objects interact

In the same way, there are two types of MOOC:

 those that depend on programmed design and memorization – xMOOC

 that create an environment.where participants and objects interact – cMOOC

The first type of game was a failure. They could be defeated by mere memorization and were not

interesting. They disappeared from the market.

The second type of game was a success, and should be used as a model for MOOCs (and indeed,

were a part of the model George and I used when we developed cMOOCs).

So this second type of games is the type of games I am talking about.

When comparing this second type of games and social networks, I agree with you that there are

many elements in common. They are both environments, they are based on the interaction

between participants, and they can be used to solve problems, negotiate and communicate.

501 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/367

p.571

But there are also some important differences:

 games are inherently about solving problems or responding to challenges, while social

networks can be much more passive.

 games typically involve a wide range of different types of objects (even objects in the

physical world) while social networks involve conversational elements only.

This not to say that we must choose between either games or social networks. Both inform the

theory of environmentally-based learning, where participants interact in a common space with

objects and with each other.

But it is to say that a model based on social networks alone will be insufficient to inform the

design of successful MOOCs. The elements of a successful networking environment need to be

taken into account.

Because, yes, the connections are of the utmost importance. We cannot learn from each other

without connections.

But the manner, organization and structure of those connections must be designed with the intent

of creating the most interesting and accessible environment. People will learn from each other,

not from the MOOC.

# # #

I don't agree with this: "It's important what the discussion is about, what the goal of the

discussion is..." I think there is too much desire on the part of educators to shape the learning of

individuals. We should see our function as more supportive than directive.

# # #

You say: "The content - or the concrete problem - should be the center in dialogue for learning."

And yet: "not that this should be determined by the instructor/teacher/facilitator."

Two things:

 First, I don't think both things can be true. If you are going to say something should be

the case in learning, then you cannot say that it should not be determined by the

instructor/teacher/facilitator.

 Second, there are many cases wher this need not be the case. Where someone is learning

merely for pleasure, for example (which explains how I acquired a knowledge of the

Roman Empire). Or where different people are working on different problems, not a

common problem.

p.572

Ottawa, Cannada

November 5, 2015

p.573

Ought and Is

Experts are typically expert in two types of things:

 what is the case

 what ought to be the case

And for that matter, we all have attitudes and beliefs regarding both types of statement. For

example:

 it's 20 degrees in here

 it ought to be warmer

That's fair enough.

Science and research are sometimes depicted as consisting necessarily only of the first sort of

statement: that is, researchers should confine themselves to discussing what is, and not

what ought to be the case.

I don't agree with this. I think that unless research is guided by some sense of ought there is no

motive nor even mechanism for determining what is. For example, if it didn't matter what the

temperature is, why would anyone bother measuring it, and indeed, what sort of scale would we

even use?

Indeed, it's pretty hard to make sense of any human endeavour without invoking both an is and

an ought. Any action plan, indeed, contains these two elements: the action plan is a description

of the route from the is to the ought. And all research is based on this formulation.

Having said all of this, there are two hard and fast rules that apply regarding inferences

involving is and ought:

1. You cannot derive an ought from an is

Suppose it's 20 degrees in here. Does it follow that it should be warmer or colder? No. It depends

on your point of view. If you're a duck, you're probably OK with 20 degrees. But if you're me,

you want it warmer. And if you're a rock, it doesn't matter at all.

It's sometimes hard to see this. "Look at that starving child," someone will say. Well, yes, the

child is starving. But that by itself doesn't allow us to infer that the child should be fed. The

inference follows only if we have an expression of need or value, for example, "allowing children

to starve is wrong."

p.574

This is sometimes called the 'naturalistic fallacy'. People say, for example, "It's human nature to

do such-and-such, so such-and-such is OK." Or, conversely, they say something is wrong

because "it's not natural."

2. You cannot derive an is from an ought

"If wishes were horses," goes the old saying, "then beggars could ride." There's wisdom in that.

Certainly we may believe things ought to be one way or another. But this belief doesn't mean

that anything actually is one way or another. This would be nothing more than wishful thinking.

These lead to a third rule:

3. An ought is derived only from an ought, and an is is derived only from an is.

It follows from these two rules that the veracity of is and ought statements is determined very

differently for each.

There are two very different forms of logic. The first - the logic of wants and desires - is

called deontic502 logic. Other forms of logic (propositional logic, for example) describe the other sort of inference.

So why is all this important?

Well, as I said, or pretty much any enquiry, including scientific research, you need both an is and

an ought. So, on the one hand, you need data, to tell you what is the case, and on the other hand,

you need some sort of problem or domain of enquiry, which tells you why you need the data and

what you hope to do with it.

This means that the citations for any research should include some from column A and some

from column B. Good research requires a clear context, problem, or domain of application, and it

requires facts, data and evidence. And - even more importantly - the references supporting each

of these need to be of the right type.

4. Define context, problem or domain of application from expressions of need or obligation,

including social, political and economic perspectives, and not from data.

This should be obvious, but isn't. Even your unit of measurement is going to incorporate these

perspectives, and will in some sense define the desired state. The units of measurement are not

inherent in the facts of the matter.

502 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic

p.575

We often hear sentences like "the data dictates that...". No. The data does not dictate anything.

The only thing a set of data can produce for you is more data.

For example, the data may say "5 percent of the people finish the course." Nothing about the

quality of course design follows from this. You only get this sort of statement if you've already

agreed that "not finishing reflects a design flaw" or some similar ought statement (which in turn

needs to be substantiated).

I see in the academic community a lot of expressions of value or obligation criticized on the

basis that it's not derived from data. The idea these critics express is that all reference in an

academic paper ought to be peer reviewed, and the statements of value and obligation therefore

grounded in some sort of fact. But that's an error. There is not some sort of fact-based

mechanism for determining value or obligation.

5. Define data in terms of empirical measurement, and not in terms of expression of need or

obligation .

This is probably the most consistent flaw of research provided by the education policy 'think

tanks'. The 'data' they provide owes as much to the center's political orientation as it does to

'facts'.

Take a statement like this: "The professional expectations for today’s teachers are

undoubtedly high." This looks like data; it looks like a statement of fact (as indicated by the

word 'undoubtedly'). But it's a statement of what ought to be, in two senses: first, it describes

'expectations', and second, it uses a relative value-laded term of measurement, specifically, 'high'.

Of course, it's OK to make statements like that. But they need to understood as expressions of

what ought to be the case, and subject to assessment in terms of value and obligation, rather than

represented as data and misused as the starting point for an action plan.

There's a lot more that could be said on the subject of ought and is, but I'll leave it here for now,

happy if I've managed to alert the reader to be sensitive to these two types of statement.

More reading:

Is ought - University of Texas503

The Is-Ought Problem – Wikipedia504

503 http://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Is-ought.html

504 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

p.576

The Is-Ought Gap – YouTube505

Hume on Is and Ought - Philosophy Now506

Is/Ought Fallacy - Fallacies Files507

Casselman, Canada

January 8, 2016

505 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT7yXG2aJdY

506 https://philosophynow.org/issues/83/Hume_on_Is_and_Ought

507 http://fallaciesfiles.weebly.com/the-isought-fallacy.html

p.577

What I Learned Using Paypal

Doug Belshaw wrote an item this week called 3 things I’ve learned from 200 weeks of sending

out an email newsletter508 which made me smile and think "newbie" to myself. That's not even four years!

But it's actually a major commitment and I respect anyone who can carry out something on a

regular basis for 200 weeks. I have a good sense of what it takes, not only in terms of effort, but

also in terms of computing power and servers.

He draws three lessons:

- "You are the most important audience". By "you" he doesn't mean "you, the reader," he means

"you, the author." If the newsletter didn't mean something to me personally, I would not keep it

up. Belshaw has learned the same lesson.

- "People like commentary". I can attest to this. I've run surveys509 a couple times over the years, and I always ask whether people like the commentary or whether I should shut up and just

deliver the news. The responses are unanimous. Readers want the opinion. Informed opinion.

- "A little bit of personality goes a long way." Like Doug, I don't just stick to a narrow diet of

education technology tools and applications, or some similar specialization. My items reflect an

interest in a range of disciplines, and the articles orbit around a set of core ideas, not some

market managers conception of a vertical.

But also, like Doug, I have asked for donations. As I explained in my Donations page, my

website costs me $200 a month to run, or $30,000 over the years. The traffic510 demands it; I have tried to run OLDaily and the rest of the website on a cheaper server, and simply crashed the

server. It has created some financial stress, so I asked for help.

But I was also curious. Some people say that you simply have to ask, and you will receive, but I

don't really fit the demographic. I'm not private-school pretty, I'm prickly and annoying, I'm not

exactly a supporter of the corporate and entrepreneurship agenda, and I don't really have an

interest in self-promotion (that doesn't mean I don't do it, it just means I feel guilty whenever I

do).

508 http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2016/01/22/200-week-newsletter/

509 https://downes.typeform.com/to/UpU7FJ

510 http://www.downes.ca/stats/2016/awstats.downes.html

p.578

But, you know, I always wonder, if I ever wanted a backup gig, could this be it? I look at some

of the other people who started out as ed tech pundits and became self-employed as writers or

consultants. There are some who make a living doing it, but I don't see people retiring early on

the money. It looks like a tough life, with a lot of work in the trenches.

So how did I do?

From 30 donors I received about $1478. Most of the donations were the minimum $25 but I

receive a large number of $75 contributions and a couple of people gave $250. Nobody selected

the $1000 option (I thought maybe a company or two might want their name and link on the

logo, but it didn't happen). It really is a tremendous response, and it comes close to covering my

server costs for the year, and I'm grateful.

Here's what I did: when I redesigned the site to make it mobile-friendly over the holiday break, I

added a donation page. I put a donate button on the home page511, and ran one link512 in the January 4 issue of OLDaily. That was it for advertising. I thought anything more would be crass.

But given that the link had (as of this writing) 67 views, maybe it wouldn't have been so crass.

I thought I would get a flurry of donations right away, and then nothing, but that's not what really

happened. I've had a steady flow of donations spaced out over the last three weeks. Sure, I got 12

donations in the first two days, but it's averaged a steady one-a-day since then, in varying

amounts.

I got my thank-you emails sent out today. At first I didn't think I could even send them - while

PayPal faithfully reports the incoming donations, it downplays the sender's email. It has a co-

branded service whereby it will print shipping lables and handle delivery for you - for a fee.

Smart. But that was more than I wanted to pay just to send an email.

Sending out 30 individual emails took some time, and I was always afraid I would get the

person's name wrong (happened once) or misrepresent the amount they donated (happened

once). Cut-and-paste seems so impersonal, but retyping the same message would have been too

much, but I was able to add some personal touches. Were the frequency of donations to increase,

I would create a 'thank you' script.

I received a few comments on the list of options. Feeling very clever, I created the following

range of choices: $25, $75, $250, $1000. And as we see on donation pages everywhere, I offered

incremental rewards for each level (I resisted calling them 'gold', 'platinum', 'sustaining', etc.).

Within a day I had to add two additional notes on the donations page: one telling people they

511 http://www.downes.ca/

512 http://www.downes.ca/post/64848

p.579

could choose whatever amount they wanted, and another telling them they did not have to have

their name listed on the page. A few people chose their own amounts, and two people took the

extra effort to mail me a cheque instead of using PayPal.

Would I do it again? Definitely. I feel people appreciated the opportunity to say thanks. The

money was significant. And server costs aren't going away. And hey, maybe a few companies

will start using that $1000 option. :)

Casselman, Canada

January 22, 2016

p.580

Personal and Personalized Learning

Published as Personal and Personalized Learning in EMMA Newsletter Online Feb 17,

2016.

We hear the phrase ‘personalized learning’ a lot these days, so much so that it has begun to lose

its meaning. Wikipedia tells us that it is the “tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning

environments by learners or for learners in order to meet their different learning needs and

aspirations.” i

Even this short definition provides us with several dimensions across which personalization may

be defined. Each of these has been the subject of considerable debate in the field:

• Pedagogy – do we need to differentiate instruction according to student variables or ‘learning

styles’, or is this all a big myth

• Curriculum – should students study the same subjects in the same order, beginning with

‘foundational’ subjects such as reading or mathematics, or can we vary this order for different

students

• Learning environments – should students work in groups in a collaborative classroom, or can

they learn on their own at home or with a computer?

In personalized learning today, the idea is to enable technology to make many of these decisions

for us. For example, adaptive learning entails the presentation of different course content based

on a student’s prior experience or performance in learning tasks.

What these approaches have in common, though, is that in all cases learning is something that

is provided to the learner by some educational system, whether it be a school and a teacher, or a

computer and adaptive learning software. And these providers work from a standard model of

what should be provided and how it should be provided, and adapt and adjust it according to a

set of criteria. These criteria are determined by measuring some aspect of the student’s

performance.

This is why we read a lot today about ‘learning analytics’ and ‘big data’. The intent behind such

systems is to use the data collected from a large number of students working in similar learning

environments toward similar learning outcomes in order to make better recommendations to

future students. The ‘optimized learning path’ for any given learner is found by analyzing the

most successful path followed by the most similar students.

It’s an open question whether we improve learning employing such methods. Presumably, using

trial and error, and employing a wide variety of pedagogical, curricular and environmental

p.581

variables, we could come upon some statistically significant results. But the question is whether

we should apply these methods, for two reasons.

First, individual variability outweighs statistical significance. We see this in medicine. While,

statistically, a certain treatment might make the most sense, no doctor would prescribe such a

treatment without first assessing the individual and making sure that the generalization actually

applies, because in many cases it doesn’t, and the doctor is sworn to ‘do no harm’.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, it shouldn’t be up to the education system to determine

what a person learns, how they learn it, and where. Many factors go into such decisions:

individual preferences, social and parental expectations, availability of resources, or

employability and future prospects. The best educational outcome isn’t necessarily the best

outcome.

For these reasons, it may be preferably to embrace an alternative to personalized learning, which

might be called personal learning. In the case of personal learning, the role of the educational

system is not to provide learning, it is to support learning. Meanwhile, the decisions about what

to learn, how to learn, and where to learn are made outside the educational system, and

principally, by the individual learners themselves.

Personal learning often begins informally, on an ad hoc basis, driven by the need to complete

some task or achieve some objective. The learning is a means to an end, rather than the end in

itself. Curricula and pedagogy are selected pragmatically. If the need is short term and urgent, a

simple learning resource may be provided. If the person wants to understand at a deep level, then

a course might be the best option.

Personalized learning is like being served at a restaurant. Someone else selects the food and

prepares it. There is some customization – you can tell the waiter how you want your meat

cooked – but essentially everyone at the restaurant gets the same experience.

Personal learning is like shopping at a grocery store. You need to assemble the ingredients

yourself and create your own meals. It’s harder, but it’s a lot cheaper, and you can have an

endless variety of meals. Sure, you might not get the best meals possible, but you control the

experience, and you control the outcome.

When educators and policy-makers talk about personalized learning, they frequently focus on the

quality of the result. But this is like everybody should eat at restaurants in order to be sure they

always get the healthiest meal possible. It may seem like the best option, but even the best

restaurant can’t cater to the wide range of different tastes and nutritional needs, and no restaurant

will help the person learn to cook for themselves.

Ultimately, if people are to become effective learners, they need to be able to learn on their own.

They need to be able to find the resources they need, assemble their own curriculum, and forge

p.582

their own learning path. They will not be able to rely on education providers, because their needs

are too many and too varied.

i https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalized_learning

Ottawa, Canada

February 17, 2016

p.583

New Models of Open and Distributed

Learning

Published as New Models of Open and Distributed Learning in Open Education: from

OERs to MOOCs, Editors: Jemni, Mohamed, Kinshuk, Khribi, Mohamed Koutheair.

Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2017.

513

Historically most learning that has ever taken place has taken place in a classroom with a teacher

giving instruction and students reading books and writing on paper. Though the 20th century,

however, more and more learning has been taking place outside the classroom, using technology

to reach students at a distance. For example, Australia’s ‘School of the Air’ used wireless radio

transmissions to send lessons to children growing up on isolated sheep stations.514 And of course

institutions like Britain’s Open University became expert providing learning by correspondence.

The first online classes were offered starting in the 1980s and over the last 30 years the internet

has been used to offer lessons at all levels all over the world. These new technologies have

513 BBC. Victorian Schools. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/victorian_britain/victorian_schools/

514 School of the Air. Website. http://www.assoa.nt.edu.au/

p.584

changed the way educators look at learning. The need to adapt to students working from home

and at a distance caused educational institutions to examine their practices more closely.

For example, one of the first technological developments was the ‘course pack’. This was

typically a package of printed material containing all the guidance that would normally be

provided in class by a teacher: lessons, readings, quizzes. Course packs are still used to this day;

the Open University offers them online as part of its OpenLearn initiative.515 These packs need to

be created ahead of time, so their authors had plan every detail of a distance education class

ahead of time. As they did so, their understanding of the process changed.

From Passive to Active

The first and most important lesson learned by distance educators concerns the role of the

student in his or her own learning. Where students were once thought as passive recipients of

learning, today it is understood that they must be willing collaborators in the educational process.

And where once it was thought that an education consisted mostly of the facts and data to be

remembered, today it is understood that becoming educated is a developmental process, like

becoming physically fit.

Understanding the student’s role is important because it directly informs the design and

methodology employed by online learning technology. At one time, learning may have been

thought of as the simple transfer of information from one person to another. In such a model,

online learning could then consist just as the presentation of information - put up some videos,

give students some texts, and they will learn. But because learning is more than just the transfer

of content, online learning must consist of something more than the presentation of content.

These define some of the major design criteria for any learning system online today:

Prior learning - learning resources may need to be adapted to a learner’s background and culture,

their work, their language, and their understanding of the world, and so history and coherence are

important element of online learning;

 Learning styles - learning materials may need to match the individual's preference to

learn visually, or through concrete experience, or by solving problems, and so on, so

choice and variety are important;

 Motivation - the learning environment may need to stimulate a student’s interest and

engagement, so there needs to be a way to stimulate social presence and interaction with

people they can relate to;

515 Open Learn. The Open University. Website. http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

p.585

 Knowledge-formation - the student’s environment may need to help a student visualize or

construct internal models or representations of the content being learned, so there needs

to be a way to compose or construct or create objects to share with others;

 Community - the student may need social engagement to comprehend the implicit and

unwritten aspects of a discipline, such as a feeling for what is relevant, ways of observing

and approaching problems, and standards for success.

When online learning technologies were first being developed in the 1990s their designers

sought to incorporate not only the presentation of content and learning materials, but also to

support these other aspects of the learning experience. Consequently, learning management

systems consisted not only of text-readers and video players but also additional tools supporting

the active engagement of students.

These systems - with names like Atutor and Blackboard and WebCT (short for ‘Web Course

Tools’) sought to encourage student participation by replicating the classroom experience. They

included at a minimum discussion boards or online conferencing tools, a conversation or chat

area, online exercises and quizzes, personal profiles and activity lists, and scheduled activities

involving readings, exercises, interactions and assessments.

Through the first decade of the 21st century, traditional learning management systems came

under increasing criticism precisely because by emulating the classroom experience online they

did not sufficiently support student engagement and participation. The new models of open and

distributed learning described in the remainder of this chapter can be seen largely as attempts to

reinforce the student’s active and participatory role in learning, to move beyond what is possible

in an online classroom, and to embrace the potential of the wider internet.

Today, though, the learning management system (LMS) remains the dominant model for online

learning. Virtually every institution along with most large corporations and governments use

LMSs to manage training and education. The LMS market is worth $925 million in the U.S. and

more than a billion dollars worldwide.516 Learning online today means taking a course from an

LMS, which means being led through a series of lessons and activities by oneself or with a

cohort of classmates.

Learning tomorrow, though, will mean something very different as learners and education

providers push the limits of the traditional LMS in an effort to make learning increasingly

personalized and active.

516 David Mallon, Learning Management Systems 2011, Bersin & Associates, 2011.

http://www.bersin.com/uploadedFiles/121410_ES_LMS2011_DM_Final.pdf

p.586

From Formal to Informal

A second major trend in recent years concerns the management of learning. For the most part,

learning is managed formally under the auspices of departments of education, college or

university administrations, or corporate training departments. Formal learning involves the

statement of specific learning objectives or curricula, a rigorous mode of teaching such as

classroom instruction, and evaluation or assessment leading to credential or certification.517

Whether offered through an in-class or distance education setting, one of the central issues of

formal learning revolves around its cost.518 Savings expected through the use of distance or

online media do not materialize due to the expense of course design, formal instruction, and

assessment or evaluation. Through the 1990s as well criticisms began to be voiced regarding the

formal and inflexible nature of learning management systems.

A distinction between formal learning and a more bottom-up or democratic form of learning has

existed for more than 20 years. In 2007 an OECD report defined two additional forms of learning

in addition to informal learning519:

 Non-formal learning refers to a type of learning that may still be offered by an

educational institution but which does not have a formal credential or certification as an

outcome. Non-formal learning may thus be more loosely structured and delivered than

formal learning.

 Informal learning by contrast is not managed by an institution at all, but is rather

managed by the individual learner. Consequently, it may be thought of (from an

institutional perspective) as lacking any form of organization or objective.

Informal learning in particular has received increasing attention because of its relation to lifelong

learning. It may be thought of as ‘learning on the job’ or ‘experiential learning’. In particular,

learning occurs as individuals make sense of the experiences that arise during their daily lives on

the job. It is rooted in a person’s existing knowledge, skills and interests, and often adapted to

meet a participant's specific needs.

As a result, the development of informal learning systems managed by learners themselves tend

to focus less on the presentation of information and the remembering of facts and more on

517 http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED511414.pdf also http://www.knowledgejump.com/learning/informal.html

518 Knowledge Jump. The True Cost of Informal Learning. May 20, 2007.

http://www.knowledgejump.com/learning/cost.html

519 Werquin, Patrick. (2007) Recognising Non-Formal and Informal Learning: Outcomes, Policies and Practices.

OECD. http://www.oecd.org/document/25/0,3746,en_2649_39263238_37136921_1_1_1_1,00.html

p.587

descriptions of experience, discussions about practice, response to requests for advice, and

conversations of a more general nature. These systems arise outside the traditional learning

infrastructure and often outside learning institutions entirely.

The emergence of the Internet, and specifically the free and open source software movements,

have shown that peer-to-peer communications technology can put people in symbiotic, ‘you

answer my question, I’ll answer yours’ relationships.”

For example, self-organizing social systems arise in discussion web sites such as Slashdot and

Yahoo Groups.520 These are essentially learning communities organized around some topic of

interest, whether it be knitting or learning disabilities or bee-keeping. Instead of there being one

teacher leading instruction, people ask questions and are engaged by the community. Sometimes

an answer is provided, but just as often more questions are asked as people try to narrow the

context or reframe the question entirely from a more informed perspective.

Informal learning is often viewed less as a means of acquiring some body of knowledge and

more as a means of enabling or fostering some future action. In other words, informal learning

serves a different purpose from traditional learning. In formal systems, there is a greater

emphasis on educational progression through a body of knowledge, perhaps leading to a diploma

or other form of recognition, while in the case of informal learning the effort generated leads to

some form of community involvement, action or even activism.521

The principles of informal learning apply to any form of environment where informed and

effective action is the desired outcome.

Jay Cross, for example, writes about Company Command, an informal learning community

developed by two American company commanders who knew each other from West Point.522

The Company Command website states, “We are a grass-roots, voluntary forum that is by and

for the profession with a specific, laser-beam focus on company-level command.” Cross cites

some of the very specific advice found in comments on the site, varying from taking off armour

520 Wiley, D. and Edwards, E.K. (2002) Online self-organizing social systems: The decentralized future of online

learning. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, Vol. 3, No. 1. (2002), pp. 45-59.

http://www.oercommons.org/community/online-self-organizing-social-systems-the-decentralized-future-of-

online-learning

521 McGivney, Veronica. (1999) Informal Learning in the Community: A Trigger for Change and Development.

National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) See

http://ebooks.niace.org.uk/BookStore/pagedisplay.do?bookInfo=true&pub=niace&id=9781862015111

522 Company Command. Website. http://cc.army.mil/index.htm

p.588

in tents to wearing seatbelts in the vehicles. “Every community needs a clubhouse where

members can discuss things and draw conclusions,” he says.

Informal learning has become increasingly associated with the concept of online community or,

more formally, communities of practice. A good example is the Australian Research Council

funded project ‘Uncovering Learning in the Workplace’. This project emphasizes the role of

community in online learning, seeking to increase social interaction among staff at different

educational institutions in Australia. It points to the extent of everyday learning in workgroups

created in the educational system and their importance in ‘getting the job done’.”523

Open and Distributed Learning

A major element in the development of informal learning through the early 2000s has been the

emergence and development of open learning.

The term ‘open learning’ originally referred to “Policies that permit open entry to learning,

liberal transfer of credits and recognition of prior learning.”524 Institutions such as Britain’s Open

University and Canada’s Athabasca University were created in order to offer access to learning

without admission barriers by offering distance and online learning, though in a formal mode,

with clear learning objectives leading to a certificate or degree.

That said, open learning has over time come to be associated with flexible or distributed learning

and in particular to be associated with the following characteristics:

 separation of teacher and learner in time or place

 use of mixed-media courseware

 two-way communication between teacher and learner

 industrialized processes including development and delivery teams525

A significant proportion of the investment in open learning is toward the learning materials to be

used in course packages and other delivery media. The course packages would be constructed

out of reusable modules of digital learning content called ‘learning objects’. Beginning in the late

1990s the development of these ‘learning objects’ and associated infrastructure has become

523 Leontios, M., Boud, D., Harman, K., Rooney, D. (2003) Everyday learning at work: communities of practice in

TAFE. The sixth Australian VET Research Association Conference “The Changing Face of VET” 9-11 April 2003.

http://avetra.org.au/publications/conference-archives/conference-archives-2003/2003-papers

524 Farrell, Glen (ed.). 2003. A Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth. Vancouver: The

Commonwealth of Learning. http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=269

525 The Commonwealth of Learning. (2000) An Introduction to Open and Distance Learning.

http://www.col.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/ODLIntro.pdf

p.589

central to online learning. Consequently, open learning has come over time to also be associated

with the concept of open access, which is to say, a lowering of barriers to the access to these

educational materials themselves.

A number of academic and technological initiatives emerged in support of open access. The

concept of open access covered not only learning objects but also any resource involved in

education, including for example books and journal articles. Open-access (OA) literature is

digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.526 An early

advocate of open access was the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

(SPARC), formed in 1997 by the association of research libraries. The Budapest Open Access

Initiative (BOAI) was the first major statement by scholars in support of open access.

The first major technological development in support of open access was probably the Open

Archives Initiative (OAI, 2011). This project described a set of specifications for the provision of

open content through repositories, and included methods for submission, indexing, search and

retrieval of content. The initiative was designed primarily for research materials, but its wider

applicability to educational materials is apparent.

The Open Archives Initiative was the basis for the DSpace Project, founded at MIT as “a turnkey

institutional repository application.” Numerous journals have declared themselves to be ‘open

access’ journals, either by making their content freely available online (this is known as the

‘Gold’ model) or by allowing authors to self-archive their content (the ‘Green’ model).527

The expansion of open access over the last decade has been nothing short of dramatic. The The

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) indexes 36 million documents from 2,000

repositories. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 8,000 titles. The Internet Archive

contains 670,000 movies, 100,000 concerts, 1.3 million audio recordings, and 3.5 million

texts.528

526 Suber, Peter. (2004) Open Access Overview. Web page. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

527 Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C.,

Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The green and the gold roads to Open Access.

Nature Web Focus. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html

528 Morrison, Heather. (2012) June 30, 2012 Dramatic Growth of Open Access. The Imaginary Journal of Poetic

Economics. Weblog. http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2012/07/inevitability-of-open-access-june-30.html

p.590

Open Licensing

In addition to lobbying and the provision of technological infrastructure, the primary mechanism

employed in support of open access, and therefore open learning generally, is open licensing.

This term may be used to refer to any of a number of licenses that support open access.

Open licensing is based on the similar innovation in software development, the open source

license. These licenses were based originally on the four freedoms outlined by Richard Stallman

in 1996:

 The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

 The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as

you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

 The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

 The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3)

A core element therefore of open licensing is not merely access to the content in question, but

also the ability to share the content thus accessed.

In the realm of educational content, the license most frequently used to support open access is

Creative Commons. This form of licensing preserves copyright in the material thus licensed, but

allows free access and distribution with, as the website notes, “some rights reserved.” Creative

Commons licensing allows the author or copyright holder to stipulate some or all of the

following conditions:

 that the author of the work be attributed

 that the work be used non-commercially

 that the work be shared under the same license it was granted

 that the work be shared as a whole, without a derivative being made

p.591

Numerous funding institutions have begun to require that materials produced under their

programs be released as open access, typically under a Creative Commons license. These open

access mandates, as they are known, have been implemented by such agencies as the Wellcome

Trust, the US National Institutes of Health, the World Bank, and others.

The development of learning management systems, discussed above, led to the development of

repositories of learning resources similar to the Open Archives Initiative. These learning

resources, called ‘learning objects’, were designed in such a way as to be discoverable, sharable

and reusable in learning management systems. Examples of learning object repositories include

the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT),529

Europe’s ARIADNE project,530 Canada’s Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects

(CAREO) and Australia’s EdNA (Education Network Australia).

Many of the resources offered through these repositories were licensed under Creative Commons

or more specific licensing schemes, such as the Open Content License531, created by David

Wiley in 1998, or the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), created to support open

source software. Then in 2002 MIT launched the Open Courseware (OCW) project, offering

open access to teaching and learning resources under the Creative Commons ‘Attribution

Noncommercial Share Alike license’ (CC By-NC-SA). By 2003 materials from 500 courses had

been posted online. To date OCW has seen 140 million visits by 100 million visitors from

around the world.532

In 2002 the global effort to begin formally recognizing open educational resources began. The

term Open Educational Resources (OER) was adopted at a global forum convened to study

OERs, and the UNESCO OER project has been active since#533 focusing on research into

development, distribution and sustainability, and launching OPAL, an initiative to investigate the

quality of OERs.

Even with these initiatives, the number of open educational resources is dwarfed compared to the

number of open resources available generally. The Internet Archive, mentioned above, collected

millions of audio, video and text resources. Additionally, sites like Flickr and YouTube store

529 Website: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

530 Website: http://www.ariadne-eu.org/

531 Open Content License, David Wiley, 1998. http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml

532 MIT OCW project web page, July 21, 2012. http://ocw.mit.edu/about/site-statistics/

533 UNESCO. Open Educational Resources. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-

information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources/

p.592

millions more photos and videos: Flickr, for example, has more than 220 million photos licensed

under Creative Commons534 in addition to hundreds of millions more with all rights reserved.

YouTube sees 3 billion hours of video viewed each month.535 Additional services with millions

of openly licensed resources include Jamendo and CCMixter (music), Open Clip Art Library,

Photopedia and Pixabay (images), as well as Wikimedia, Europeana and SopinXpress (media).536

The impact of open licensing over the last decade is that hundreds of millions of high-quality

educational materials have been made available without charge to the educational community. In

some cases, these resources may be reused or incorporated into course materials. This was the

type of use envisioned by the developers of learning object repositories and open educational

resources. The resources would become a part of a course package; open licensing was used to

allow the resources being adapted into course packages and to allow for resale, if necessary.

But the growing ubiquity of web access begged the question: why incorporate materials into

course packages at all? Why not just send the student to the resource? This would make many

more resources available instantly. Some objections present themselves immediately: questions

about the persistence of materials was raised, their quality and provenance, as well as privacy

and security concerns. But the possibly suggests new models of online learning, and these began

to appear with the articulation of E-learning 2.0.

E-Learning 2.0

In 2005 the concept of ‘Web 2.0’ was first articulated. It represented a shift in the way

developers looked at the World Wide Web. Before, the Web was thought of as a collection of

documents. These documents were collected and hosted on web servers, and readers would

navigate from one document to the next to the next. After, the Web was thought of as a body of

interconnected data. Rather than viewing pages, Web users were thought of as using

applications. These applications might have a location, the way a web page does, but it could

draw data from anywhere else on the web.537

A good example of web 2.0 was the way Flickr worked with other services, such as Piknik. As

mentioned above, users uploaded and stored their photos on Flickr. So Flickr was like a big

database of photos. But if the user wanted to edit their photo, they could go to a different service

534 Flickr. Creative Commons. July 21, 2012. http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons

535 YouTube. Statistics. Viewed July 21, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics

536 Creative Commons. Media Search. http://search.creativecommons.org/

537 Tim O’Reilly. What is Web 2.0? O’Reilly Web. September 30, 2005. http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-

web-20.html

p.593

called Piknik. Once they logged in and gave Flickr permission, Piknik could access their photo

data. The user would use Piknik to edit the photo, and then the photo would be sent back to

Flickr, all behind the scenes.538 Flickr was one of a group of websites - two other notable

examples are Twitter and Del.icio.us - which gave users access to each other’s data. This allowed

users to use the sites socially - they could share links, information and photos. Because the data

was interlinked, these services came to be known as social networks rather than simply websites.

Before web 2.0, online services were provided by heavy enterprise programs (like a learning

management system) that would access data either locally or using web services to obtain it from

other systems. These programs would present that data as web pages, much like a course page

that might be viewed on an LMS. After web 2.0, online services began to be provided by

lightweight web applications (or ‘apps’) that could access data directly from the source and

manipulate it inside the web browser.

The concept of E-Learning 2.0 was based on this idea. It merged the idea of the ‘net generation’

learner with the concept of social networks and ‘web 2.0’ developed by Tim O’Reilly. The idea

was that individual learners could find and share resources with each other using social

networks. For example, they could each create their own blogs and use these blogs to link to

photos or videos they may have found on the web. These blogs were saved as data feeds that

could be read using feed readers. Thus a student could use a web application, such as ‘Google

Reader’, to read everyone else’s blogs.

While much of the attention paid to e-learning 2.0 focused on social networks, it is important to

understand how e-learning 2.0 changed the data model underlying online learning:

538 Piknik was eventually purchased by Google and closed in April, 2012. http://www.picnik.com/

p.594

 Before - learning resources were collected by institutional learning management systems

and stored locally; these resources would then be combined to form course packages, that

would be presented to students as an online course

 After - students would link to resources wherever they may occur around the web and

make these links available to other students; these resources would be viewed

individually with no preset order or organization.

E-learning 2.0 thus represents an unbundling of educational resources; what was once presented

as a single package is now presented as a set of discrete resources. It marked the transition from

the World Wide Web as a medium for presenting documents and other static content to the web

as a platform for social networking, interactive applications, and communications networks.

Social Learning

As noted above, examples of informal learning could be found in communities like Slashdot,

Yahoo Groups and content management systems. These communities followed the development

of the World Wide Web through the evolution of social networks and web 2.0. Though large and

informal, these communities became cohesive and offered substantial value to their members.

One example of a distributed social learning community is the “Webheads in Action”

community539. The Webheads, a community of language instructors, emerged out of online

sessions held at the Electronic Village prior to the community’s annual TESOL conference.

Eventually some conference sessions were held online as speakers presented remotely using

Wimba for voice and Yahoo for webcam broadcasts. By 2004 the community had created its

own Yahoo group540, which was active for about a year. They used a variety of media to

collaborate, including a PBWorks wiki541, online chats and more.

Another example is the ‘Edubloggers’ community. The community began as a loose collection of

individuals who blogged about education and found each other through comments on each

other’s blogs. Over time, loose networks of edubloggers developed. Those who attended the

NECC conference in the United States created an ‘edubloggercon’ ahead of the conference, and

a large informal network of school teachers using blogging542. Another branch developed with

539 Webheads website. http://webheadsinaction.org/

540 Becoming a Webhead. Yahoo group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/becomingwebhead/

541 Webheads 2011 PBworks wiki. http://baw2011.pbworks.com/w/page/29929454/FrontPage

542 Edubloggercon. Website. http://www.edubloggercon.com/

p.595

James Farmer installed a multi-user version of WordPress, an open source blogging tool, and set

up edublogs.org and invited teachers to join for free. Edublogs now hosts 1.3 million blogs

created by and for educators.543

Another important example is Wikipedia. Most readers will be familiar with Wikipedia, created

by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001544. It has 22 million articles (over 4 million in English

alone) and about 100,000 regularly active contributors. The principle behind Wikipedia is that

any reader may contribute to, or edit an article (this process has become more formalized over

time). Wikipedia has expanded in other ways as well; the Wikimedia Commons, mentioned

above, is a branch of Wikipedia and hosts several million images and other resources.

Wikipedia is just one example of a wiki. The wiki has become an alternative form of content

management and can be found everywhere from corporate intranets, school divisions, and

informal learning. They are a popular way for a learning community to gather and store

knowledge and resources. One example of this is the Audacity Wiki545. Audacity is a widely

used open source audio editing application. The Audacity wiki is used by the community to share

notes and tips about the software.

Some major education wiki initiatives have emerged as well:

 Wikiversity – an extension of Wikipedia, “devoted to learning resources, learning

projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school

to university, including professional training and informal learning.”546

 Curricki – “the result of work done for GELC - the Global Education and Learning

Community - an online project started by Sun Microsystems to develop works for

education in a collaborative effort.”547 Curricki is focused on K-12 schools and contains

about 43,000 resources.

 WikiEducator – “WikiEducator is a community project working collaboratively with the

Free Culture Movement towards a free version of the education curriculum by 2015.”

This wiki is focused on offering full online courses in collaboration with participating

institutions.

543 Edublogs. Website. http://edublogs.org/ See top of the page for the blog count.

544 Wikpedia page on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

545 Audacity Wiki. http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audacity_Wiki_Home_Page

546 Wikiversity. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page

547 About Curricki. http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/About

p.596

These wiki-based initiatives have led to what may be called the hybrid-institutional model of

online learning. There are several versions of this model, but it is most clearly articulated by the

‘logic model’ authored by James C. Taylor and adopted by WikiEducator and illustrated

below548:

549

The idea is that educational institutions and other collaborators provide free online learning

materials, much along the model of Open Courseware. These resources are used to create online

courses with learning support and tutoring provided by a network of volunteers. Finally,

credentials are provided by accredited educational institutions through some sort of learning

assessment. This logic model was used as the basis for OERu, founded by the Commonwealth of

Learning with Wikipedia and formally inaugurated by founding partners at a meeting in new

Zealand in 2011.

Another example employing a similar model is P2P University550 which “provides an online

space for people to work together to learn a particular topic by completing tasks, assessing

individual and group work, and providing constructive feedback." Yet another example is

CodeAcademy551, which provides community-contributed resources helping people learn to

write software. Yet another is Khan Academy552, which features about 3,000 resources on

548 Jamews C. Taylor. Open Courseware Futures: Creating a Parallel Universe. e-Journal of Instructional Science and

Technology (e-JIST) Vol. 10 No. 1, October 2007. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/e-

jist/docs/vol10_no1/papers/full_papers/taylorj.htm

549 WikiEducator. About OERu. http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/About

550 P2P University. http://info.p2pu.org/about/how-we-learn/

551 Codeacademy. Website. http://www.codecademy.com

552 Khan Academy. Website. http://www.khanacademy.org/

p.597

mathematics and physics. Once again, the model is to offer a set of open and freely accessible

learning resources, and then to provide some degree of coaching or tutoring offered by

volunteers.

Personal Learning

A major objective of online learning has always been to provide more personalized learning. As

indicated above, new pedagogies enabled by internet technologies allows designers to adapt to an

individual’s learning styles, adapt to prior learning, and respond to a students’ needs and

interests. Learning management systems adapted to these needs through a combination of

customization and personalization#:

 personalization is the process of tailoring content and presentation to an individual’s

characteristics or preferences. For example, when Google logs what sites you’ve visited

and tailors search results, that’s personalization

 customization is provision of mechanisms that allow a user to explicitly state what

content they want and how they want it presented. For example, when you narrow a

Google search range to ‘Creative Commons only’, that’s customization.

The combination of customization and personalization provide some, but not all, of the

objectives set my new pedagogies. Students are limited by the capacity of the LMS. Community-

formation is limited to the students enrolled in the course. Students can participate and interact,

but their creativity is limited by the LMS environment, and they lose access to their work at the

end of the semester.

Many LMS developers adapted by adding e-portfolio capability. An e-portfolio is a collection of

a student’s work presented for display to an external audience, much like the way an artist would

collect a portfolio of her work to show to prospective clients. Students can select their best work

and customize how the work is presented. LMS vendors began offering e-portfolio applications

as extensions to learning management systems. Additionally, open source e-portfolio systems,

such as Mahara, were developed for use with open source e-learning software.

But what if the e-portfolio were a web 2.0 application instead of just another part of a learning

management system? This idea led to the development of what has come to be known as the

personal learning environment, or PLE. Although no commercial PLE software yet exists, the

concept of the PLE represents a significant transformation in the idea of online learning:

 the PLE uses lightweight data and communication standards characteristic of web 2.0

rather than the server-side application based LMS software

 the PLE is centered around the person rather than around the institution; each person has

his or her own PLE, which they customize according to their own tastes

 the PLE connects to a variety of services and resources around the Web rather than being

limited to course contents contained in a single LMS

p.598

The idea of the personal learning environment is that it takes advantage of the many sources of

open educational resources available on the Web, including not only those available in formal

learning repositories, but also those contained in sites such as YouTube and Flickr. In addition,

the design of the PLE encourages students to create and contribute to this wider community by

creating blog posts and uploading images and videos. Finally, the PLE supports participation in

open social networks to a much greater extent than the traditional LMS, for example by reading

from and sharing to social network services such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.

While the PLE is thought of as being based on a particular application, a secondary concept, that

of the Personal Learning Network has also emerged, this not being based on an application at all.

The idea of the PLN is that a learner uses existing social network applications, the most popular

being Facebook and Twitter, and assembles a network of contacts with whom to share

educational experiences such as discussions, live chat sessions, and learning resources.

Both the PLE and the PLN emphasize learning as something that takes place in a network. As

such, PLEs and PLNs support informal learning based on open educational resources (indeed, it

is arguable that they require open educational resources, in order to support modification and

resharing). But in addition, learning networks differ from traditional LMS-based learning in four

major respects:

 Autonomy - because each learner supports and manages his or her own learning

environment, PLEs and PLNs support a great deal of individual autonomy, with each

learner making his or her decision about which resources to use and what course of

studies to follow.

p.599

 Diversity - while an LMS and the resources offered in traditional courses tend to be

standardized and formalized, learning networks support a diversity of resources, online

learning systems, pedagogical styles and formats, and more. In addition, the members of

a learning network will use diverse technologies and resources.

 Openness - a learning management system is typically a closed environment, meaning

that only those with appropriate credentials may access the resources and community,

typically by means of a login. A network, by contrast, is formed by means of peer-to-peer

communications between its members, which means that any person may join and share

resources.

 Interactivity - in a learning management system, the same content is passed from an

instructor to all participants; this content forms the core of the learning, and

communications are distributive, that is, from the centre distributed to the whole. In a

network, however, there is no centralized content, and consequently communications are

interactive, with diverse contents being passed from many distinct sources.

Connectivism

Concurrent with the development of e-learning 2.0 and the personal learning environment was

the development of a web pedagogy known as connectivism. Coined by George Siemens in

2004#, the term captures the essence of a new model of online learning based on networks and

community.

As Siemens writes, connectivism integrates some important properties of networks such as

chaos, complexity and self-organization. Learning, meanwhile, is a process that occurs within

these networks, “nebulous environments of shifting core elements”.

Importantly, knowledge is something that does not simply exist inside a learner - it exists as well

in the wider community or network. Learning therefore can occur in any network, not merely in

the individual. Learning is constantly changing, constantly shifting, and as Siemens says, “the

connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.”

Siemens summarizes the principles of connectivism as follows:

 Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.

 Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.

 Learning may reside in non-human appliances.

 Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known

 Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

 Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.

 Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning

activities.

 Decision-making is itself a learning process.

p.600

Connectivism offers a new model of online learning because it presents a different view of the

nature of knowledge and learning themselves. It draws not only on the formal theory of networks

but also on recent work in artificial intelligence and neuroscience.

Normally we think of knowledge as something that is concrete and discrete. A sentence like

“Paris is the capital of France” is a typical example. The meaning is contained in the sentence, it

is true by virtue of correspondence or reference to the external world, and ‘learning’ this bit of

knowledge is tantamount to acquiring or remembering the sentence that contains the information.

But as noted above, educators have come to view learning as more than merely remembering bits

of knowledge. Connectivism explains why. The knowledge that “Paris is the capital of France” is

not actually contained in the sentence itself. Understanding the sentence requiring understanding

an entire language, and understanding the language requires knowing things about thousands of

other words, the people that speak them, and the community that gives those words meaning.

The knowledge, in other words, is distributed – it doesn’t exist in any one place, but is rather

spread out across a network of interconnected entities, whether these entities are words, brain

cells, textbooks or computer circuits.

The theory of connectivism therefore amounts to this: the knowledge is itself a set of connections

in network, a pattern of connectivity. A person cannot simply acquire this pattern of connectivist,

it has to be grown through repeated interactions. Learning therefore needs to be active, it needs

to be network-based, and it needs to be constituted essentially of interactions between networks

of users.

Massive Open Online Courses

In the fall of 2011 Sebastian Thrun, a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, and

Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, announced that they would offer an open online

course in artificial intelligence. No credit would be offered, but students who finished the course

would be issued a Statement of Accomplishment. 160,000 people signed up, and the world took

notice of what had become a phenomenon, the Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC.

The MOOC had two major precedents: the Wiley Wiki and the open course. The Wiley Wiki

pioneered the idea of open online content that can be edited by course participants; created by

David Wiley in 2007. Like other wiki course initiatives, it could be edited by participants and

accepted contributions from the web as a whole. What made the Wiley Wiki different was that

the wiki was the online home for a university course being offered at Utah State University.

p.601

Participants from outside and people enrolled in the course would enjoy the same resources and

the same interactions.553

Open Teaching, meanwhile becomes possible when you take the synchronous conferencing

application you are using and open it up to visitors from across the internet. The model was

pioneered by Alec Couros in his online Social Media and Education class beginning in 2007.554

Sessions were offered using the Elluminate conferencing system (now Blackboard Collaborate)

and typically featured guest presenters as well as visitors from around the world.

The first MOOC was offered by Stephen Downes and George Siemens at the University of

Manitoba in 2008. Originally planned as a small course on connectivism, 24 students signed up

for credit. When the course was opened to anyone who was interested, however, an additional

2200 signed up. This large contingent of students helped create some of the innovations that

made the course a MOOC, rather than simply a large course online.

When the course – called ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2008’, or CCK08 – was set

up, the authors decided to follow an explicitly connectivist model. This meant that thought here

would be a start date and an end date with a list of course topics in between, there would be no

‘official’ curriculum. Additionally, the course was designed as a network, with participants

encouraged to use their own websites and weblogs and to register RSS feeds with the central

course website. An application designed to aggregate feeds and distributed the results as a daily

email newsletter, gRSShopper, was incorporated into the course design.

One of the course participants created a map of the course on launch day:

553 Wiley, David. Wiley Wiki Design Courses. Open Content. Website. 19 February 2010. Retrieved 12 July 2012

from http://www.opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Wiley_Wiki_Design_Courses

554 Couros, Alec. (2010) EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education. Website. Retrieved 14 July 2012 from

http://eci831.wikispaces.com/Session+List

p.602

In the upper left of the diagram are the last vestiges of a formal course structure: the structured

design of a learning management system, in this case, an open source Moodle installation.

Another square structure, at the top middle of the diagram, is the course wiki, on which the

planning for weekly course topics took place. The remainder of the structure of the MOOC

consists of distributed services linked together by the RSS aggregator: a Technorati search on the

#CCK08 tag, a Bloglines harvester, a PageFlakes web portal, Flickr, del.icio.us and Twitter tags,

a Google Group, a CCK08 blog, and The Daily, the course newsletter.

The second year the same course was offered, a new wrinkle to the model was added. Students

returned from the first year, began adding their own materials, and in many ways began to teach

the course themselves. This mirrors a phenomenon that was beginning to be seen in traditional

classrooms: the idea of the 'Fisch Flip'555 whereby students watch videos, read books, and

otherwise receive instruction on their own time, outside of class, and then bring their knowledge

and insight into the class, which is focused on students relating these insights to one another in

discussions and other activities.

In 2010, two MOOCs combined the idea of personal learning with the MOOC. Offered by Will

Richardson and Dave Warlick (educational consultants who were influential in the edublogger

movement), the ‘Personal Learning Networks’ course used a PBWiki for course content and

555 Daniel Pink, Think Tank: Flip-thinking - the new buzz word sweeping the US, the Telegraph, September 12, 2010.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/7996379/Daniel-Pinks-Think-Tank-Flip-thinking-the-new-buzz-

word-sweeping-the-US.html

p.603

offered a series of ‘challenges’ leading participants to construct their own personal learning

networks (PLNs).556 Downes and Siemens were joined by Dave Cormier and Rita Kop to offer

‘Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge’ (PLENK2010) to explore the idea

of the personal learning environment and related concepts.557

Another MOOC of note, offered by Jim Groom at Mary Washington University, was

‘Distributed Storytelling 106’. This MOOC was based on a WordPress blog. Students (and

participants from around the world) were asked to submit storytelling assignments (for example:

describe a movie in four icons; create an animated image; rewrite a movie poster to reflect a

current event). Participants would complete the assignments; these were then aggregated and

displayed on the central DS106 blog558. The course spawned some innovative side-projects, such

as DS106 Radio, a live web radio service created by participant to share their audio projects.

The MOOC Model

The structure of the MOOC was essentially established by these early MOOCs. The course could

be as short as 8 weeks or as long as 30. Each week would have its own topic, would be

introduced with a set of readings, would involve a guest speaker or host, and would invite

participants to add their own resources and build on the comments offered by the hosts.

Basic MOOC technology entailed the following elements:

 A host web site – very often a wiki, either hosted at an institution website or using a free

wiki services; a content management system such as Drupal or Joomla could also be

used, or a site hosting service such as Google Sites.

 A synchronous conferencing environment such as Elluminate, Big Blue Button, WizIQ,

Adobe Connect or Wimba. Some MOOCs used what might be called the ‘WorldBridges’

option, broadcasting audio using ShoutCast or IceCast, and video using UStream or

LiveStream. In more recent years, Google Hangout has been widely used.

 An RSS aggregation service – the Downes-Siemens courses used gRSShopper, and thus

added an email newsletter to the mix; other courses used WordPress, which has a feed

aggregation module, or Drupal, which has the same.

Students used:

556 Dave Warlick and Will Richardson. Personal Learning Networks online course.

http://plnlab.pbworks.com/w/page/17277257/FrontPage

557 Downes, Siemens, Cormier, Kop. PLENK2010. http://connect.downes.ca/

558 DS106 course website: http://ds106.us

p.604

 Blogging tools, for the participants: recommended services include Blogger, WordPress,

EduBlogs, Tumblr, or Posterous.

 Media upload sites such as Flickr or YouTube.

 Social networking services such as Twitter or Facebook (the open source identi.ca service

was also used)

 Disscussion boards such as Google or Yahoo Groups; some MOOCs also offered

discussion boards through LMSs such as Moodle (but these tended to be less useful with

large numbers of participants).

As important as the basic MOOC model was the structure of activities. Participants in MOOCs

were expected to interact with each other and the wider web, actively searching for relevant

learning materials. The overall structure of MOOC participation is the ‘ARRFF model’:

 Aggregate – though the course hosts might provide a central email newsletter or feed,

participants in the course were encouraged to find their own sources and aggregate their

own learning materials. As Siemens explains in his Connectivism paper, the decision of

what to select is as important a part of the learning process as reading what’s inside it.

 Remix – this refers to the idea of combining resources from different sources to create a

new resource. This could consist either of assembling them in the same environment, like

a bricolage, or to meld them into a single new entity, called a mash-up.

 Repurpose – this refers to the idea of shaping the aggregated and remixed materials into a

new form or adapting it to a new purpose. For example, two images might be combined

into a single graphic, thus remixing them, and then turned into a cartoon image, thus

repurposing them.

 Feed Forward – this refers to the practice of sharing the new creation with a wider

network, most easily accomplished by posting it into a blog, where the blog contents are

harvested or aggregated by the course hosts and other participants.

Also in 2010 Downes and Kop offered another MOOC, ‘Critical Literacies’. “The intent of the

course was to determine whether it would be possible to use a MOOC in order to teach the skills

needed to be successful in a MOOC. But what were these skills? We determined that they would

be described by critical literacies, as described by six major elements of language and cognition:

syntax, semantics, pragmatics, cognition context and change.”

Learning Environments

Though the design and development of personal learning environments and massive open online

courses have caught most of the attention in the online education community, the reality is that

the same design and structure can be observed in a wide range of applications varying from

corporate communications to arts to fire management.

p.605

For example, Cisco’s own internal learning network, called the Integrated Workforce Experience

(IWE), is based on open and distributed learning resources (albeit behind a corporate firewall).

Company employees established their own network of informal tools, including a wiki,

microblog tools, and video sharing. These tools were combined to give each employee a “single

place to access tools for asking questions; finding and sharing documents, videos, and other

content; and exploring ideas with colleagues.”

Lessons learned in the Cisco experience were similar to those observed elsewhere. Staff will not

participate in online social learning if it becomes burdensome or involves a lot of overhead. They

need to be able to customize their experience. Subcommunities will form, and in some cases, will

not be visible to the wider community as a whole.559

In another example, the the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and

Commerce in Great Britain (RSA, 2012) conducted an analysis of social networks used by its

members. Its Connected Communities action research programme was established in 2009 “to

explore how social networks and social capital can be better understood, visualised and

mobilised to address local social and economic problems.” It identified a thickly clustered

network core, “the ideal network structure through which to address community problems and

make change.”560

Emergency services in Australia employed learning networks to facilitate the development of

adaptive management to deal with rapidly changing situations. They write, “successful adaptive

management depends on effective facilitation. When individual conversations are strategically

linked for broader learning and sharing they become a learning network.” The networks link not

only firefighters but also residents, friends’ groups and staff from other government

organizations. The same learning dynamic exists in this case as in connectivist courses: “As

people shared their different perspectives, a broader understanding of the land and fire

management ‘picture’ evolved. As understanding grew, participants’ perspectives began to

change.”

Ottawa, Canada

August 18, 2016

559 Cisco Systems. (2011) How Cisco IT Evolved Enterprise Social Software and Collaboration. Case Study.

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ciscoitatwork/collaboration/docs/Cisco_IT_IWE_Deployment_Case_Study.pdf

560 Broome, Steve. (2010) RSA - Connected Communities. Case Study. Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).

http://www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/BCC/BuildingTheBigSociety/GrassrootsDevelopments/?parent=7820&chi

ld=7865

p.606

Looking at the Future of Online Learning: a

rejoinder to Contact North 2016 Report

Published as Looking at the Future of Online Learning: a rejoinder to Contact North 2016

Report (在线学习未来之我见 — —评 2016 年度 Contact North 报告) in Distance

Education in China 2017:2 5-17 Feb 28, 2017.

Abstract

Although we have entered the era of online learning, the era of change in learning has not ended.

Indeed, most of the structures and institutions of the pre-internet age of learning remain. It is

unlikely that this will continue to be the case. In this paper, I argue in general that the

development of online learning will increase engagement and empowerment, allowing people to

manage their own learning, rather than propelling us to a new enterprise driven education

marketplace in which this valuable social support system is placed under the control of private

industry.

This discussion is addressed specifically toward a Contact North article looking at the future of

online learning in Canada in 2016. However, each of the points made by the Contact North

author reflects a widespread and commonly held point of view. The intent therefore is not only to

offer a second look at one particular article, but to offer a greater perspective on an array of

presuppositions.

Keywords

Learning, internet, future, education, technology

Introduction

In The Future of Online Learning (Downes, The Future of Online Learning, 1998) I took into

account three major sets of factors. The first was the obvious basis in technology. Internet and

digital systems were advancing rapidly, in ways that could be known. The second was human

nature. Here I refer not only to the inherent conservatism in society, but also in the infallible

human inclination to use new things in new and unexpected ways. So while I did not predict that

the internet would become the largest distribution network for cat photos in history, this

development would not have surprised me a bit.

p.607

Contact North's look at the future of online (Contact North, 2016) learning captures the first part,

I think, but misses completely on the second part. And it's too bad, because the internet is now

rich in lore that makes the second part easier to predict and project than ever. From the outburst

of Napster, fan fiction, selfies, friending, phishing and LOLcats, the internet serves up a daily

dose of humanity, served on a platter for all to see. It's a beautiful thing.

In this article we examine the Contact North predictions (note that I refer to the 'Contact North

Author' throughout because the author is not named). We'll take them in the same order they do,

but we'll paint, I think, very different pictures.

Let us look at the actual predictions The Contact North author predictions will be stated in

italics, with my own commentary following.

Seven Key Technology Patterns

1. Machine learning and artificial intelligence will increasingly be used to enable adaptive

learning.

There is a mismatch here. 'Adaptive learning' is essentially a name for differentiated instruction.

The idea is that, based on your previous work, you will be presented with new content or

assignments. Neither machine learning nor artificial intelligence are needed for this, and for the

most part, adaptive learning won’t simply be a new form of differentiated instruction..

Existing adaptive learning systems are a lot like computer programs. (Dreambox Learning, 2016)

The student is guided through a set of decision trees and loops, and the processor serves up

resources according to a pre-defined algorithm. To the extent that these will improve (and they

will!) they will become more like sites such as CodeAcademy (www.codecademy.com) in an

environment that responds to the student's input.

2. Handheld, mobile and integrated devices will continue to develop and become the de facto

tools for learning, communication and peer networking.

The evidence disagrees. It is true that for communication nothing beats the handheld. And the

tablet is an invaluable work environment for people who need to be mobile (we see cases such as

tablets for pilots (Reddit, 2015) and health care workers (Adil, 2012) for example). But the future

lies not in extending the utility of such devices through apps, it involves the integration of these

into other devices, for example, the tennis racket that teaches you. (Serafin, 2014) And the large

computer isn’t going away; people need their space. (Meyer, 2014)

Third party apps and add-ons, meanwhile, are in the midst of a transition from a centralized

computing environment, where everything is based on the single device, to the distributed

computing environment, where applications live in the cloud and are accessed on an as-needed

basis. It would be a mistake to expect today's world of proprietary platform-dependent apps to

p.608

continue into the long term. Nobody's making money on them - except the platforms. (Taves &

Tibken, 2015)

3. Predictive analytics will grow in significance in terms of student retention and learner

support.

This is a another class of analytics that instead of recommending resources, as in adaptive

learning, is employed to predict what students will do. The ability to predict student achievement

is core to the future of the instructor-led model of learning, but the instructor-led model of

learning will be on the decline. So the need for prediction in education will decline.

Where analytics will be really useful in learning is in the environment of personal knowledge

networks and feedback mechanisms. Outside education there is a boom in the quantified self

movement (Watters, 2012) (I use RunKeeper (www.runkeeper.com) myself). And we don't need

predictive analytics, we just need good sensors and good calculation mechanisms - how many

calories did my 13 km walk burn? What blood pressure does my heartbeat indicate? How can I

track my increasing knowledge of French. We need feedback, not prediction.

4. Interconnectivity of devices and systems will be a significant feature of the “Internet of

things” and activities.

“Imagine these developments for learning,” writes the Contact North author. “Instant flagging of

new developments in fields of study, on the fly testing for competencies and skills, instant

connections to global expert presentations on topics studied in a course, and real-time viewing of

skills in action for apprentices are among the possibilities.

These developments are promising, but pose risks. It's great to have a car that is connected with

the mobile phone, but it is not so great when my driving habits are reported to the insurance

company. (Gollom, 2013) It may be fun to use 23andMe (www.23andme.com) to do genetic

tests, but no fun to be denied health coverage because of family history. (Schultz, 2013) As we

develop devices that support real-time assessment, we will have to adapt in two significant ways:

First, the exchange of information - whether it be performance results, test results, environment

and infrastructure, or any other personal data – must be genuinely voluntary. A system that

creates a mandatory form of assessment is very likely to be misused. For example, a car

insurance service that reduces premiums for people who use a GPS to monitor performance

raises premiums for all those who don’t participate. But arguably, people not using the GPS

should not be penalized in this way. (CBC News, 2013)

Second, people need to be protected in some way from the consequences of these assessments.

For example, it should be unacceptable to simply deny insurance coverage or sharply raise rates

merely on the basis of automated assessment. The use of automated assessment should arguably

be coupled with the public and non-discriminatory services, such as public health and auto

insurance.

p.609

5. Gamification and virtual reality will enable significant advances in teaching a range of

subjects, especially laboratory based subjects.

By 'gamification' we mean the addition of game elements (such as points, competition ladders,

badges, etc.) to traditional learning. As Yu-kai Chou writes, “Gamification is the craft of

deriving all the fun and addicting elements found in games and applying them to real-world or

productive activities.” (Chou, 2016) A really good example from the Gamification Wiki is the

use of frequent flyer points. (Gamification Wiki, 2016) Gamification is not the same as

converting learning into games (this is known as serious gaming, which is a very different thing

(Marczewski, 2013)). I think both will play a role, but that their impact will be limited and will

be quite different.

Gamification is a motivation mechanism. It feeds back into performance. Eventually, it will be

subsumed into the quantified self. People will begin to mistrust gamification after being

subjected to disappearing points or diminishing prizes (Miller, 2014) too many times. Serious

games will move through various phases, from simple memorization games (such as versions of

Jeopardy) to simple branching storyline games (Riedl & Young, 2006) to more complex gaming

environments intended to stimulate deep knowledge and causal reasoning.

Serious gaming is a presentation mechanism. It involves setting up a challenge or problem for

the learner in a virtual environment of some sort, which may be more or less realistic. This,

though, is a specialized use of simulations and virtual environments generally, and so the

discussion of serious gaming is likely to be restricted to niche applications requiring very

specific uses of these environments.

6. Translation engines will continuously improve and become embedded in a great many

applications.

Translation will be everywhere. I can use my phone to translate Turkish signs. But for a while it

will be really interesting, because people express themselves very differently in different

languages.. It will be interesting to see how translation services are able to approach direct

translation without losing the cultural and metaphorical flavour behind different languages.

7. Collaborative technologies and knowledge sharing will emerge as key resources for all forms

of learning.

We will need to think in terms of cooperation, rather than collaboration. (Harvard University,

2016) Collaboration is based on common goals and implemented through management, where

people sacrifice their own needs in interests for the group. Collaboration requires a leader and

output is often for the benefit of the leader, while in cooperation each person contributes and

each person benefits.

p.610

The leaders in this space - Slack, (slack.com) or Atlassian (www.atlassian.com/software/jira) -

are based around the idea that groups are self-organizing, that each person defines their own

contribution, and that the purpose of the software is to help with communication rather than

coordination, to share rather than to direct. It's the digital instantiation of digital-age forms of

organization such as agile development (Martin, 2002) or wirearchies. (Husband, 2015)

Five Key Features of Online Learning Which Technology

Patterns Will Enable

1.Learning is Mobile – Anywhere and Anytime

It is true that learning will be available anywhere and any time. Learning will be like a utility,

like electricity in a plug, or water in the pipe. But this is only half the story. In order to make this

work, we need to have an advanced understanding of environment and especially context.

(Gómez, Zervasb, Sampsonb, & Fabregat, 2014) People trying to rescue a crashing airplane, do

not have time for a three-week course. People working in an explosive environment can't just

pull out a mobile phone. Sometimes people need to figure out how something works, and

sometimes they just have to remember the code.

2. Learning is Interactive and Engaging

This prediction from the Contact North author is unclear. Does the author mean that learning will

be engaging because it is interactive? Why link these together? Or perhaps it is a restatement of

this point: "Given (that) collaboration is the key, not just to knowledge development and

learning, but also to finding work, students will use the emerging technologies to collaborate and

connect." But engagement and interactivity are two very different things. Learning is engaging

only if it's something you want to do. And it's interactive only if it includes exchanges with other

people (and maybe devices).

It would make more sense to say that learning is immersive and engaging. By 'immersive' I don't

mean simply based in virtual reality (though others do (Burns, 2012)), I mean that the learning

and the doing become one and the same. 'Learning by doing' is a well-recognized and

increasingly popular approach to learning. (Felder & Brent, 2003) Indeed, we can't imagine

learning how to play sports or acting or baking without doing). People need more than artificial

and mechanical 'interaction' - it's support, competition, reassurance, and someone to taste my

latest pie.

Educators who talk about collaboration (or even 'personal learning networks') often depict other

people as agents to be used to support something or another. (Wheeler, 2010) But this is to

misunderstand the motivation for working with other people. Mostly, when we work with other

people, it's because we like other people. Educators have to stop objectifying them with notions

like 'interaction' and 'collaboration'.

p.611

3. Learning is Personal and Instruction is Differentiated

What the Contact North author is writing about is personalized learning, and we read the list of

the newest personalization darlings: Knewton, ALEXS, Capterra, DreamBox, Cognitive Tutor,

Knowillage LeaP, Planet Sherston and Grockit. These all focus on differentiated instruction. But

the jury is still out on whether it works. And the early evidence is that it will not. (Jarrett, 2015)

We've been through this with learning objects, with learning design, and more: the problem of

learning is not a search problem. The problem of learning will not be solved by discoverability.

(Berkun, 2012) At best, it will improve material selection. But ultimately, learning is not

something that's done for you, it's something that you do for yourself. I wrote an article recently

drawing the distinction between 'personal' and 'personalized'. (Downes, 2016) In a nutshell,

something is 'personal' if you do it for yourself, while it's 'personalized' if someone (or some

system) does it for you. Learning is improved, not with less learner control (which is what these

systems provide), but with more learner control. (Kay, 2001)

4. Learning is Intelligent

The Contact North author writes "Doctoral students can be connected not just to their own

instructors, but to the communities of interest and practice associated with their field and up-to-

the-minute developments. They can be much more engaged researchers, especially if the volume

of new material is filtered through intelligent filters. Imagine courses which automatically update

themselves, based on new research and newly available, quality assured open educational

resources."

These are useful, but as I suggested above, they don't solve the problem of learning. Moreover,

we are being told what happens, but far more interesting is why it happens, as it gives us clues to

the affordances these new systems will offer. Without a definition of 'intelligent', it's difficult to

understand what exactly is meant. There are various types of intelligent systems. Here's a quick

(and partial) taxonomy:

- decision engines - these are expert systems (Engelmore & Feigenbaum, 1993) that are based on

rule-driven strategies (Newell, 1984) drawing on an established knowledge base that assists the

user in making decisions.

- pattern recognition - these are neural-network type perceptual systems that identify patterns

from partial or disorganized data (Bishop, 1995) (sometimes even if the pattern is not actually

there) (Hern, 2015))

- cluster detection - these are graph-based algorithms for detecting nearest neighbours (Körting,

2014) and categories of things (Sayad, 2016)

Notice that these are ways that machines can be intelligent. But they do not speak to assisting

human learning at all. It's nice to have a tool that will recognize patterns or divide things into

p.612

clusters. But we will want to be able to use these tools to do far more interesting things than to

simply pick out the best movie to watch. What sort of things? For one, helping us understand the

thing we are studying by using these algorithms, tweaking their major parameters, to see

different things, organize data differently. It's when we do stuff that we learn, not when stuff does

something for us.

5. Learning is Global

Very few people are actually global. We may interact with marginally more people

internationally than we used to, but we remain rooted in our families and our communities.

These connections may help us think globally, which is good, but human nature forces us for the

most part to act locally. (Jocz & Quelch, 2012)

We may think we can have a global impact through the internet, but this impact is limited. For

example, there's a phenomenon called 'hashtag activism'. (Augenbraun, 2011) I think that the

Arab Spring taught us very clearly the limits of that concept – the well-intentioned intervention

of people worldwide on their computers was overwhelmed by physical events in the countries

themselves. Even as I write in the relative peace of Istanbul we watch helplessly while the

remnants of hashtag activism play out in a violent and destructive civil war just a few hundred

kilometers away in Syria. The same holds true for online learning. The actions and interests of

people working locally will always prevail.

It's easy, for example, to say, "There is no reason for a student to be disconnected from peers,

experts or sources of knowledge and understanding from anywhere in the world, especially given

the growing efficacy of translation engines." But it takes the disappearance of only one long-

distance friend to realize how tenuous that connection may be. When a physical intervention is

required, even one so simple as a hug or a pat on the back, the person at a distance is helpless.

(Experience Project, 2010)

Institutional Context for the Development of Online Learning

Most pundits focus on the future of institutions such as universities or governments. But there’s

nothing special about them. Institutions have played both positive and negative roles through

history; civilization as we know it is impossible without institutions, but so also is fascism.

Having said that, there is no doubt that new technology, and the social and environmental

context in which it is developed, is causing significant changes to institutions. It is causing some

to retrench (Mohler, 2016), others to adapt (Coe, Paquet, & Roy, 2001), and others to disappear.

(LaFrance, 2015) The word 'institution’ connotes defiance to change. But with institutions

changing all around us, society is far more fluid than people realize. Longtime institutions like

newspapers and churches are becoming less and less important, while new forces, such as

wireless networks and mass transportation come to dominate our lives.

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1. Institutions are Complex and Competitive

The writer means more complex and more competitive. It's not clear that either is true. After all,

the word 'byzantine' refers to an institution (or more accurately, a set of institutions) that

organized around this very city of Istanbul a thousand years ago, and is today a synonym for

'complex'. (Byron, 2014)

We should say institutions are becoming more interdependent. Complexity is a byproduct of

interdependence. (Chenciner, 2012) Increased interdependence is a natural result of increased

communication (increased interactivity, if you will).

What interdependence means is that competition is a very bad idea; hurt your neighbour and you

may well find you have hurt yourself. The concepts of collaboration and competition are artifacts

of the days when society was organized into large and largely independent corporations, nation-

states and other institutions bumping against each other like giant icebergs in a global sea.

Today, however, the heat has literally increased, and bodies that collide are just as likely to

shatter into nothingness. (Investopedia, 2016)

The only way to succeed in an era of interdependence is to cooperate, to disregard parochial

interests, and work toward the betterment of society as a whole.

2. Resources are Constrained

What is meant by the Contact North author is that "public per capita funding for post-secondary

institutions in some parts of the developed world is falling at a time when demand for student

places (at least in most jurisdictions) is rising."

In fact, there has never been enough money to offer everyone a university-level education, at

least, not using the mechanism of universities. This has been true as long as there have been

universities. This shortage was originally addressed by reserving universities for the rich.

(Fitzgerald, 2008) The post-war universities were fueled by the post-war boom and veteran's

spending. (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2016) The last forty years have been funded

through debt (which many of us spent decades paying back). (Project on Student Debt, 2015)

What has changed is the demand. In my lifetime, a post-secondary education has changed from

being optional to being mandatory. A modern technological and industrial economy cannot

function without highly skilled labour. The more labour is squeezed - both in terms of funding

for education, and in terms of wages and benefits - the harder it becomes to run a modern

economy. Skills shortages develop, and the skills shortage becomes a barrier developing nations

find it increasingly difficult to surmount. (Bessen, 2014)

3. Demographic Shifts Impact Activity

p.614

The 'demographic shift' is mostly a phenomenon of the western world (that is, North America

and Europe). (Winkeljohann, 2015)

That is to say, the phenomenon in which the proportion of older and retired people in increasing

rapidly is a phenomenon seen only in North America and Europe. Through the rest of the world,

if there is a demographic shift at all, it is toward youth. In countries like India and Colombia, for

example, the vast majority of the population ois young, and the problem isn’t too few people to

do the jobs, as in North America and Europe, it is too few jobs for the people to do.

4. Quality Is an Imperative

This is more of an opinion than it is a projection of a future state. It is based on the presumption

that institutions are now "in a highly competitive environment" where only the best will survive.

But this is often not what actually results from competition. “Sometimes, the increase in

competition does not increase quality where one expects it should. Further, in some unique cases,

more competition actually reduces quality and may give rise to significant health and safety

issues.” (Ezrachi & Stucke, 2015)

Even more to the point, students are assuming more of the cost, and states today fund a minority

of the costs of state universities. (Douglas & Lombardi, 2006) With this decline in public

support, it is difficult to justify demands that universities satisfy public objectives such as

"learning outcomes based on achievement measure." And students begin to act like customers

(not surprisingly when they are paying the freight). (MacIvor, 2016)

Colleges and universities will be increasingly torn between their two major constituent groups:

rich students who are looking for a lifestyle experience, and less affluent students looking to

learn. They will probably divide into two types of institution. If history is any judge, the lifestyle

institutions will continue to be subsidized by the state, while the learning institutions will be on

their own.

5. Change Is Inevitable, but Difficult for Colleges and Universities

I think the educational system will fragment, with different entities taking on different roles.

(Downes, 2010) To a large degree, the massive institutions will be replaced with an

interconnected network of specialized providers. In particular, we will find networks of

individuals and small companies offering the following services:

- hands-on tutoring and support services (a lot like Sylvan learning centres)

- educational testing services, ranging from test-prep to proctoring to certification agencies

- content and resource providers

- advanced privately and publicly funded research organizations

A century from now, the word 'university' will have as much of its original meaning as the word

'guild' does today (and for the same reasons).

p.615

6. Relevance and Value Shape Strategy

There is no model in which the university as a business-value driven organization has a future as

an academic or research-driven enterprise.

The conversion from academic principles to business principles is driven by what is called

'value-based management'. (Koller, 1994) According to this principle, the purpose of all

activities is to 'create value'. Value is measured by revenues; the enterprise is customer-driven,

and customers recognize value by providing revenues. In turn, the description of the product or

service to the customer is not in terms of process or features, but rather, in terms of outcome,

which is the value realized by the customer.

The university environment is not configured to operate in this way. The bulk of academic staff

has made the conscious decision to avoid the value-driven workplace, often at the cost of lower

salary expectations. People study physics because they are interested in physics, not because they

want to teach or work for some business enterprise. The majority of professors prefer scientific,

conceptual or cultural challenges rather than business challenges.

The structure of publicly funded research will either collapse entirely or be reshaped

significantly. Most likely, public funding will accrue to individual researchers or researcher

cooperatives. Only in the worst case scenario will research become the domain of private

corporations where all public funding of research is driven to those corporations.

Transformations in Students, Programs, Teaching and

Learning, and Policy and Government

This moves us into the second part of the Contact North article, and the structure of the

presentation in the article changes somewhat, it will be kept consistent here.

Student demand will continue to grow and change

The bulk of the predictions offered by our writer are as regards demographics: more older

students, more international students, etc., which have been observable for the last decade.

(Seurkamp, 2007)

If we want to understand the 'changing nature of the student' we need to understand the

following:

- there will be more people than jobs; at a certain point the increased productivity created by the

information age will have to be returned to people, rather than companies, in the face of growing

economic instability, either through guaranteed incomes or dramatically shorter work days.

(Bivens & Mishel, 2015)

p.616

- at the same time, those jobs that remain will demand higher order skills, not the sort of skills

you can get from short-term training; this is what produces the skills shortage. There seems to be

an expectation that students will pay to acquire these higher order skills, but this expectation will

be thwarted by the students’ inability to pay. (Laucius, 2016)

- as indicated before, we are shifting from an era of competition to an era of cooperation (though

some companies, countries and political organizations are slower to realize this than others),

which speaks to an environment of mutually supportive and integrated workplaces

The idea that we should transform educational institutions into businesses producing economic

value by providing students with job-ready training in shorter and more flexible intervals is

pernicious and destructive, and will cause a lot of harm before we reconfigure education into a

diverse and multipart publicly funded support system driven by personal and professional needs

and interests. The 'institution', as we know it, will no longer be there, or, more accurately, to the

extent that it remains, will also be the extent of lingering (and destructive) economic competition

and inequality in society.

What it means - beyond lower prices, which is a given - is that traditional standards and

expectations of a university education will be waived. We've already seen this phenomenon in

the executive MBA where you "earn a full MBA without taking time from your career."

(Wharton, 2016) In the 'competitive international market' a similar sort of 'convenient' education

will be the norm, such as Nottingham's 'Flexible MA' with a range of "module options to create a

personally and professionally meaningful qualification" and "modes of delivery to take account

of individual needs and professional." (University of Nottingham, 2016)

The same people offering these programs will resist the idea of the average (low-paying) student

designing their own programmes. But these models will emerge. The Contact North writer even

picks up on some of them: the need for programmes that lead to employment, and the need for

shorter (micro) programmes.

Programs will look very different

1. More flexible program designs

As mentioned above, it doesn't seem reasonable to think of a thing called a 'programme' when it's

different for everyone. The idea of a 'mix and match' program is at best an intermediary notion;

it’s like the idea of introducing menu selections at a restaurant instead of a fixed menu, when

what would really offer choice is to do away with the restaurant altogether, and employ a buffet

or a grocery store instead. A program model is ultimately rooted in certification, but as I’ve

suggested elsewhere (Downes, 2014), certification will look very different in the future, and the

idea of institutional structures such as PLAR and credit articulation will appear archaic. Indeed,

even the outcomes-based model (Brandt, 1998) will be archaic - what is an outcome worth, if we

p.617

have actual performance data? Nobody cares about the 'outcomes' of spring training; what counts

is the regular season.

The focus on 'outcomes' and 'competencies' (U.S. Department of Education, 2016) is in my view

a transitory phenomenon. It's the last refuge of educational Taylorism, (Perruci, 2014) taking

shelter in institutions of learning, where it could be decades before it can be dislodged.

2. More use of open educational resources

There is no denying the phenomenon of open online learning. “More people signed up for

MOOCs in 2015 than they did in the first three years of the ‘modern’ MOOC movement.”

(Shah, 2016) However the future of open educational resources, (UNESCO, 2002) properly so-

called, is less clear. The idea of an open educational resource is that it is used in teaching, which

presupposes, first of all, a teacher-student model of learning, and secondly, adherence to a certain

educational structure (for example, the requirement that a learning resource contain some sort of

assessment). The key to the definition, however, is that the resource be used to support learning,

and this goes far beyond more traditionally 'educational' objects, to include free papers and

videos, blog posts, online communities, and that much more.

As a consequence, the concept of the 'course' changes, and it is arguable that future MOOCs will

resemble the Connectivist MOOC than the more traditional courses offered by, say Coursera

(which have in fact ceased to be instances of 'open online learning' now that they charge tuition

fees). As I said when we started the first cMOOC in 2008, the meaning of 'course' in my

vocabulary resembles the concept of the traditional 'course of lectures', (Donnelly, 2014) where a

professor will hold forth on some topic of interest, supplemented by a host of open online

resources, and where it's up to the students to attend or not, or to conduct activities or not.

3. More creative assessment processes

The Contact North writer cites the common distinction between formative assessment

(assessment used for learning) and summative assessment (assessment of learning). (Eberly

Center, 2008) Most people are interested mostly in the former and almost not at all in the latter

(unless, of course, they're assessin g other people). We’ve discussed assessment above in a few

places: first of all, in the quantified self movement, and second, in new social-net forms of

assessment based on performance. But aside from producing personal feedback, it is arguable

that assessment is over-rated. In the future, our assessment will be our work and our

performance, which ultimately will be inseparable from our learning.

4. More micro-credit and nano-degrees

If we just called them 'points' would we be saying there are 'more points'? It reminds me of

pinball machine inflation. In the early days of pinball machines, you played for hundreds or

maybe thousands of points. By the time the electronic pinball machines rolled out, you were

p.618

playing for billions of points (and yet bumpers still scored 25 points). But more points did not

mean more gameplay - indeed, games were typically a lot shorter on the new machines, and the

play a lot less satisfying. Getting more 'degrees' doesn't mean you're getting more education, and

there's no real purpose for it except to disguise the fact that you’re getting less for your money.

5. More co-op and experiential components within programs, more international collaborative

programs, more transfer and qualification recognition agreements for programs between

nations, blurring of lines between college and university.

None of this matters. None of it is relevant.These predictions suppose that the existing system of

educational institutions will remain largely intact, but as discussed above, the focus on

institutions is misplaced in a rapidly changing and fluid society.

Teaching and learning will change

1. Learning will no longer be defined by time, place or institutional offerings.

If this is true, then almost none of what the Contact North author had to say about institutions is

relevant. And, yes, this is true. And, indeed, even the paragraph that follows this statement is

irrelevant.

Why, for example, would there be "admission to programs and courses will allow for multiple

start dates?" And why would there be "a growing number of short courses (2-3 weeks in

duration), which carry credit?" These remind me of modern arcades, where the games get

shorter, the lights flashier, and you get less and less for your quarter. Ultimately, there are no

more arcades and people play the Sunless Sea or some other game on their own computer.

2. Learners will create their own learning agendas, which reflect their own career, personal and

lifelong learning goals

It is true that people will design their own online learning, but it will be far more likely to meet

the needs of the moment than to satisfy long-term goals. That doesn't mean that there won't be

long-term goals. But a person will work toward these goals in all facets of their lives (or not, as

they wish - some people (quite legitimately) drift with the tide). Nobody will "set the agenda" -

the idea that we can plan for a lifetime during a four year period in our late teens and early

twenties does not respect the fact that we are entering a complex and rapidly changing

environment. We learn as we need to; with some few exceptions, recognition is through

performance, not certificates.

3. Learners will secure their learning outcomes through a combination of formal, informal, self-

directed, instructor delivered, in class and online learning

The best that can be said of this point is that it doesn't include seances and divine intervention.

p.619

Again, though, the problem here is the employment of education-centered language - that

learners "will secure their learning outcomes". One of the distinctions Jay Cross used to make

was between formal and informal learning, and one of the markers of informal learning is that it

is intended not to satisfy learning outcomes but rather to get something done. Credit recognition

and the rest don't enter into it. (Cross, 2012)

4. Learners will expect personalized learning services and supports for their learning agenda

I think that in the chaotic and turbulent economy and environment of the future, nobody will

expect anything. Why would they?

There will probably be a marketplace where "personal investments of time, money and energy in

education increase expectations of service and quality." By the same token, the investments we

can actually afford to make may well lower our expectations. We may all want more, but in

learning as in everything else, we'll take what we can get (but it won't matter so much, because

we'll be a lot more self-sufficient, and our entire futures won't depend on the quality of a

particular education provider).

It is instructive to look outside the formal education market for good guidance about what to

expect, to the fitness, sports and hobbyist communities, for example. Sure, you can get a full

personalized fitness plan. But most of us will settle for something simple, inexpensive, and

commonly available, like a bicycle. Why would anyone expect this to be different in learning?

When the Canadian government decided fitness was important for the country, it launched a

national program, distributed guides, and ran commercials. (Government of Canada, 2016) It did

not set up a personal gym for everyone in the country.

5. New mechanisms for meeting personal learning agendas will appear in the market as the

“unbundling” of learning continues.

The many roles in education were mentioned above. It remains to be noted that if 'unbundling' is

a fact - and it is - that all of what was said above about institutions is moot.

6. Courses will be less important than mentoring, coaching, counselling, advising and

assessment

None of these will be more important than the educational equivalent to the bicycle. And the

assessment functions in a tool like this are the least important part. What matters is the network

of support and encouragement the application can bring you.

7. Diverse and new forms of credentials will appear which reflect the varied needs of learners,

employers, social agencies, innovation organizations and entrepreneurs

Another way of saying the same thing is that we are about to enter a credential bubble.

Credentials will still be deemed to be valuable, but everybody will be able to create credentials.

p.620

It's hard to imagine that people will display reams of credentials on their resumés, but it could

happen. This will be an intermediate stage, but an important one, because as the educational

institution loses its monopoly on the credential, its marketplace advantage essentially vanishes.

This will be a difficult time for institutions - their funding will disappear, their market will

disappear, and yet they will have experienced and professional staff. Just like newspapers had.

Policy and Government

In this section the Contact North author purports to describe "what we can expect to change in

terms of public policy." What we actually get are (bad) policy recommendations framed by a

systemic misunderstanding of the environment. It is important to address these:

 Continued pressure on public finance as a result of demographic shifts, shifts in the

energy economy and the new financial implications of international trade and related

agreements;

The facts listed have nothing to do with the continued pressure on pubic finance. There are two

major causes: first, the power to tax business and industry is at a nadir, and second, spending

decisions lean toward business subsidy and military. Public finance is reflective of pervasive

income inequality,

 The increasing complexity and competiveness of higher education systems placing new

demands on governments to re-think their roles as stewards and regulators – the demand

being to reduce controls so as to enable institutions to make effective responses to market

conditions, while at the same time protecting the public interest and the efficacy of their

investments; and

What this point says, in so many words, is that the pressure is now on to privatize education.

This is in no way a response to "increasing complexity and competition in education" - these are

(as discussed above) artificial contrivances. The key question here is: has deregulation worked in

other key economic sectors? The answer, almost uniformly, is no.

 Growing investment in education within the private sector and a growing number of

public - private partnerships to deliver to educational outcomes.

There is no doubt that there are more public-private partnerships in education. The charter school

phenomenon is an excellent case study. There's growing evidence that charter schools are failing.

(Buchheit, 2015) Nearly 2500 were shut down over the last decade. (Persson, 2015) And

educational outcomes are indifferent, at best. (Loveless, 2013) What would the point of such an

initiative been except to continue to drive public money into private hands, increasing the fiscal

inequity that is already paralyzing the economy.

Now let's look at the projections:

p.621

1. Significant Changes in the Way in Which Higher Education Is Funded

The author asserts that "the shift will be to funding social, economic and learning outcomes and

away from funding processes and enrolment." I've seen no good evidence to support this (and the

author provides none). The description is essentially that of the No Child Left Behind act (U.S.

Department of Education, 2016) in the United States, but this program did not actually improve

outcomes. (Weigel, 2011)

The author suggests that "a comprehensive re-think of the role of government is what will

unfold," but what is meant is that such a rethink is required. But if the rethink is still ahead of us,

then how is it that the redefinition of the funding process has already happened? No - this is a

policy recommendation, and a bad one.

What is needed from government is not evaluation but support, not funding to companies and

public-private-partnerships, but direct support to individuals. I think that we will see a shift in the

funding model, but it will be one where institutions are consolidated and in which they achieve

greater efficiency through free and open learning resources and support systems. It is costing us

more to make education expensive than we would lose were we to make it free.

2. Strong Focus on Quality Assurance, with a New Understanding of Quality

This section appears to be written as though the entire and existing structure of higher education

will be privatized, with these mechanisms in place to ensure it doesn't change.

If students really are able to manage their own education, why we would need a special program

of quality assurance to ensure "programs which have meaning and value and engage them in

authentic learning, faculty members defined by how engaged they are in supporting the learning

needs of students and how creative they are in designing engaged and authentic learning?

In what the Contact North author calls "a growingly complex market" ( sic), a focus on quality

assurance is a necessary precondition for privatization. This serves two functions. First, it is an

offloading of some of the more significant costs of an educational system, accreditation. And

second, it prevents private industry from delivering low-quality product to consumers, which it

will do if unregulated.

3. A Commitment to Learner Mobility

For example., there is the European Bologna Process (European Union, 2016), which ensures

that students will be able to transfer from one institution to another across the European Union.

Given the complexity of the European process, it appears difficult to imagine how a global

equivalent would work. We are told "Canada currently is lagging behind many other

jurisdictions with respect to learner mobility," which is essentially the same as saying "Canada

needs a Bologna Process". But all this presupposes a model in which credentials are very

important. But this will not be the case.

p.622

We will need to interpret learner mobility a different way. The Contact North author has already

suggested that education will be "unbundled", something that has been in the works for many

years. When the credential monopoly is broken, the educational system will split into two major

parts: a system that provides learning, and a system that evaluates learning. At this point,

'mobility' takes on a completely different form. And in retrospect, it will seem very backward to

imagine that a student could or would attend only one institution; learning will be everywhere

and the idea of monopoly providers will be forgotten.

4. More Public - Private Partnerships

Once again we are presented with the recommendation that the public education system be

wholly or partially privatized. This is presented as a fact when it is in fact an opinion. It is very

difficult to entice private enterprise to contribute to the public good, and it will be vital to

remember that the objective of private enterprise is to make money. It's a model that has been

touted for decades (Nelson, 2004) (Pusser & Doane, 2001), but has failed to fulfill its promise.

Given the essential public purpose served by education, a different model - one in which private

enterprise acts solely in the role of service provider - is preferred.

5. A Strong Focus on Outcome-Based Accountability and Public Assurance

Why would we pay "more attention... to measures of student engagement, learning outcomes,

value added to the economy, and impact of the work of colleges and universities on

communities, industrial sectors, innovation and health" when students are paying most of the

cost of education?

In fact, in a more privatized system, we should expect a more consumer-oriented system of

assessment, one in which public policy is secondary (if it is allowed to play a role at all (Choi,

2016)). Such a consumer-based system would fall under trade regulation, and (if the past is any

indication) while outright negligence would be punished (to a degree) quality control would be a

case of caveat emptor. There is no reason to believe that regulation in the educational sector

would be any more effective than it was in the financial sector.

What Do Colleges and Universities Need to Do?

What we should do is far more a matter of policy preferences, priorities, values and principles

than it is some sort of necessary response to a projected future.

I cannot believe that Canada is headed toward a privatization of higher education; this does not

speak to the nature of the country, nor the shared assumptions Canadians have had about the role

of public policy over the years. Having said that, let us consider the proposals:

1. Start engaging in strategic foresight as the basis of strategic planning

p.623

Strategic foresight is a good idea, but it cannot be based on an alternative reality or wish list. We

cannot depend on the institution in its present form to be the source of employment and

productivity, and we must think beyond stock responses to address the new economy. The

current learning system is not preparing students for future success. It stresses increasing

competition, privatization and a focus on jobs when we should be teaching students to adapt, to

cooperate, and to solve problems together and as a community.

2. See students as partners, not customers

Students will be unlikely to see themselves as partners when they pay tens of thousands of

dollars, when they are in a power-relationship with graders and assessors, and when they have a

basic income one tenth that of their professors (though roughly equal to that of the people

actually teaching the courses). And the goals and objectives of business value management and

full or privatization are undermined if students are not seen as customers. The real goal here is to

make them think they're partners, when in fact they're customers. I'd like to think they'll see

through this.

3. Re-think the Role of Faculty

Once the predominate ethos was that “we the faculty are the university.” The reference in this

recommendation to 'the faculty' in the third person is telling. The university is no longer an

institution in which the faculty collectively performed a valuable social service. It is one in

which the faculty are employees, under increasingly tenuous employment conditions, and in

some cases (notably sessional and term lecturers) exploitative conditions. So the role of the

faculty should indeed be rethought, though perhaps not in the manner intended.

The old constructivist model of faculty shifting "from instruction to coaching, guiding and

mentoring" does not apply in this instance. If the university would like to hire coaches and

mentors, it should hire coaches and mentors; faculty are quite by contrast legitimate and

recognized experts in their fields, and the idea of their not sharing their insight is an affront. If

we are to rethink the role of faculty as anything, it should be to move them out of the role of

wage-labour instructional staff, and to move them back into the world of research and

development, doing the things they actually studied ten years or more to do.

What of teaching, then? It can be managed more efficiently.

Colleges and universities will themselves be forced to rethink their role in society (it's

fascinating that the Contact North document does not make this point at all). Who do these

institutions serve? I think there are several choices here, and room for several models for the

future:

p.624

- the public mandate - they serve the public through the development and dissemination of

research for the public good, including full and open access to the means of production and

distribution of that research, in return for sustainable financing from the public

- the scientific mandate - they serve the goals of science - original and pure enquiry,

contemplation of the difficult questions, with no particular regard as to the present or future

utility of the work, and are funded through the public, through foundations, and through the

activities of scientific societies

- the innovation mandate - they serve as a research and development organization, operating as a

self-funded research institution serving shorter-term needs of business and industry, which in

turn underwrites the full cost of this work

All three models serve a teaching function, but not through the mechanism of classes. As with all

professions, people interested in working in any of the relevant fields actually work with these

institutions, being paid and gradually assuming greater responsibility as their capacities - as

demonstrated by their work - increase.

4. Re-think outcomes and impacts and re-imagine assessments and accountability

Some institutions will transform away from research and teaching institutions entirely, with a

desire to focus on certification and assessment. I wish them the best of luck.

5. Build collaborations (local, provincial, national and international) and partnerships

This is written as though it never happens. That is far from the case. There are numerous

associations and organizations fostering inter-institutional and departmental cooperation

(collaboration is a lot harder). There's nothing wrong with that, but it would be a stretch to

imagine it would address the issues addressed in this report.

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p.631

Emergence / Recognition

Emergence

Alan Levine writes561, "I am looking for a metaphor or a real example of something maybe

complex or just larger/valuable that does not arise solely from adding up many small

components.”

The meaning of a sentence does not arise solely from the meanings of the words that make it up.

For example: “Look out” is a warning, but neither “Look” nor “out” contain any element of a

warning.

A journey is not composed merely of many small trips. The very same set of small trips can

either mean “a pilgrimage to Mecca” or not, depending on the intentions of the traveler.

A school of fish (or a murmuration of starlings) is not made up solely of individual fish; they

have to be swimming as one unit, not merely happening to be in the same place at the same time.

A holiday is not merely a sequence of days with no work (the same thing could describe

unemployment).

A song is not merely a collection of noises; they have to be arranged in a particular way, and

they have to be pleasing to a listener.

A fact is not merely a collection of perceptions or observations (not even if joined together with

logic).

Etc.

In general, reduction can be defeated by the following principles:

 function, where the whole has a function one of the original parts can have

 coherence, where the whole forms a shape or structure none of the individuals can form

 purpose, where the whole forms an intent that cannot be ascribed to an individual

 meaning, where the whole can have a sense or reference none of the individuals can have

 emotion, where the whole can evoke a response none of the individual parts can evoke

(This is not an exhaustive list)

561 http://cogdogblog.com/2016/03/piles-of-things/

p.632

Recognition

He also asks, Would you have any spare time in the not urgent future to share some thoughts as

to how certifications might be done that are not badges or just by exam

I have thought about it, quite a bit.

All of the properties I allude to above (function, purpose, meaning, emotion, etc) are emergent

properties. They depend in some way on the entities underlying them (this is known as

‘supervenience’) but they have properties none of the underlying entities have. This is exactly

the case for knowledge, learning or achievement.

The mechanism for identifying emergent properties is recognition. For example, pattern

recognition enables us to identify shapes out of a complex array of perceptions. Recognition is a

result of the interaction between a perceiver and the entities being perceived.

Networks (specifically, neural networks, but arguably, networks generally) are recognition

systems. We generally think of networks as pattern recognizers, but networks will recognize

emergent properties generally. This is in fact how we evaluate achievement today (though we

don’t always identify it as such):

- an aspiring doctor is observed by an expert doctor, who will assess the intern’s overall

performance and recognize the intern as qualifying as a doctor

- a PhD candidate I given an oral exam by a committee, with the sole purpose of determining

whether the committee members recognize the candidate as a peer

- an apprentice mechanic works under a supervisor, who will recognize the person’s expertise

with cars

p.633

- the contests on Hell’s Kitchen present their plates to a committee who will recognize whether

the food is of the highest quality

But there’s no reason why this needs to be restricted to individuals. A network can recognize

expertise as well as an individual expert (and importantly, recognize different expertise). That’s

the principle behind democracy (though of course we’ve seen it interfered with a lot).

It’s also the principle behind things like tagging, and behind the invisible hand of the

marketplace, etc. It’s not perfect (human perception is not perfect either) and needs to be subject

to constraints and conditions in order to be reliable.

I talk about it here: http://www.downes.ca/presentation/344562

Ottawa, Canada

March 26, 2016

562 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/344

p.634

Types and Tokens

Look at this picture:

Did you see a cat? Or did you see my cat Alex? This is a question of some significance, since

one of them exists and the other doesn't. And therein lie some important lessons in theory and

theorizing.

This post was prompted by a post on Language Log563 describing the speaking styles of the current presidential candidates. It's a simple comparison, graphing the candidates' word use by

tokens and types, as follows:

To count tokens, you simply add +1 to the count each time the candidate utters a word. To count

types, you add +1 to the count each time the candidate utters a new word. So, for example, if

Bernie Sanders says,

563 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=24904

p.635

A sparrow has landed. This sparrow is a sign.

then Sanders has uttered nine (9) word tokens, but seven (7) word types (because the words

'sparrow' and 'a' are each repeated twice).

A token is an instance of a thing. A type is, well, a type of thing.

This is pretty important because almost all of our scientific reasoning in education (and just

about everything else) is about types, not tokens. Scientific theories don't tell me about my can

Alex, it tells me about cats. As in "cats will take possession of new objects in the house," and

things like that.

The problem is, as I suggested above, types don't exist. There is nothing that exists in a type over

and above the individual instances of that type. And if only statements about things that exist are

true, then statements about types are literally not true.

These are not new issues; in fact they're very old. You've probably heard about Ockham's

Razor564. The actual and original statement of Ockham's razor is:

Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.

In other words, if you have a bird in the house, you have only one entity, this bird, and not two

entities, this bird and a bird.

What does this mean? Well, technically, it means that we have to treat a type as a set, so that the

type 'bird' equals the set of {'this bird', 'this bird', 'this bird', etc...}, and the word type 'sparrow'

={sparrow,sparrow) and so on. A set is a mathematical entity, and doesn't have to exist in the

world to be useful. And 'truth' can be redefined as "true over the set of 'sparrows'", or some such

thing. So we're good.

But we have to be careful. Just what is a type? Sure, it's a mathematical entity. But when we say

" this is a type," what do we mean by that? To make a long story short: a type is something

we make up. We decide what counts as a type. Because types don't actually exist, so there's

nothing in the word that defines a type or distinguishes one type from another.

(This view is called nominalism. The view that opposes this conclusion is called essentialism,

and is the idea that things have inherent 'essential' natures. A lot of naturalism is based on

essentialism. For example, if someone says "Man's essential nature is to be at war," they are

564 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ockham/

p.636

asserting that there is something in nature that is 'man' and that it is definable as 'has the nature of

being at war'. Saul Kripke565 is a prominent proponent of essentialism).

Let me give you an example. Let's add another sentence the speech by Bernie Sanders:

A sparrow has landed. This sparrow is a sign. Landing is a sign.

Now we have 13 tokens; no dispute about that. (Right?) But how many types do we have? At

first blush, we want to say there are seven (7) word types in the sentence, that is, that Sanders

used seven different words.

types = {a,sparrow,has,landed,this,is,landing}

But did he? Maybe 'landed' and 'landing' are actually the same word. After all, they describe the

same event. They are merely different forms of the verb 'to land'. If I say "I land" and "Paul

lands" we are not saying different things about I and Paul.

Sure, you could say that the actual sequence of letters is what matters, so that if I use different

letters, then I am using different word types, and if I use the same letters, then I am using the

same word type. But let's add another sentence to Barry Sanders's speech:

A sparrow has landed. This sparrow is a sign. Landing is a sign. And I will sign my

support.

So now Sanders has used the word 'sign' twice. It's the same sequence of letters, but is it the

same word? One is a noun, a 'sign', which is a thing that stands for something else. The other is a

verb, a form of the verb 'to sign', which means to put one's mark on paper. Sure, they're related.

But are they the same word? Argubly they are not; they just happen to be spelled the same way.

What counts as a 'cat'? What counts as the word 'landed'? What counts as a 'millennial'? As a

'learner'? As a 'student'? Our theories about language, learning, and the world in general are all

based on types, but a type is something we make up. Indeed, even the concept of a type is

something we made up.

Naming things, counting things, generalizing over things - these are really useful tools we have

created for ourselves in language and in thought to make the world easier to navigate (and,

sometimes, to rationalize after the fact why we navigated on one way rather than another).

This is where the 'construction' in constructivism comes from. The actual act of learning, in

constructivism, is the act of counting, naming, and associating things into types. The reason there

565 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Kripke

p.637

are dozens and dozens of different theories under the heading of 'constructivism' is that there are

many ways to construct something.

And this is what is meant - literally - by 'making meaning'. When we learn to use a word like

'cat', what we are learning is the name and nature of the set of things 'cat' stands for. Creating this

set and populating it with entities is, literally, making meaning. And it is over this set of entities

that we will draw inferences, make conclusions, and determine truth and falsehood.

This is also why constructivism is so hard to criticize. There are many different ways to make

meaning. If you show that one way of making meaning is inadequate, then the constructivist

always has another one to show you. After all, the theory (mostly) isn't about some specific way

of making meaning. It's about the idea that 'to learn' is 'to make meaning', and these can be made

in different ways.

Caasselman, Canada

March 27, 2016

p.638

The People’s Manifesto

Our society exists to provide the means and opportunity for each of us to fulfill our maximum

potential and reach our highest aspirations, whatever we perceive them to be, while respecting

the right and opportunity of others to do the same.

The land and the resources we have inherited from our forbearers belong to all of us equally,

organized and protected in order to serve the purpose of society, and imposing on us a

responsibility to protect and preserve them, so that we may pass them down to our descendants.

Our systems of laws and governance are created to enable and protect our individual and

collective rights and opportunities, while at the same time ensuring we respect the

responsibilities we have to each other and to future generations.

We are freely joined and assembled as one. We desire a peaceful society and a compassionate

society, one which lives in harmony and cooperation with others, which welcomes our

neighbours with open arms, and grants ourselves and others the right of free movement and

settlement within and outside our borders.

To this end:

- no person should live in want, and it is the primary duty of government and society to see to the

safety and security of each of its members, including full and proper provision for food, shelter,

clothing, health care, education, transportation, communication, and the other necessities of life;

- to that end, and in recognition that all wealth is to a degree created by society as a whole, it is

the responsibility of people of means to contribute to the support of society, progressive to the

size of their wealth; and it is the duty of society to ensure that this responsibility is not shirked,

and to ensure a rough equity in the distribution of wealth;

- beyond that, it is the right of people to live in quiet enjoyment of their lives, according to their

own beliefs and values, without interference or control beyond what is needed for the reasonable

conduct of society, such that each person may access the full rights and benefits of society,

including civil society, without discrimination, fear or prejudice;

- and finally, as individuals and as society, we agree to work toward the preservation and

betterment of the world, respecting and valuing the environment as a whole that we hold as

stewards in trust on behalf of each other and of future generations.

Ottawa, Canada

May 9, 2016

p.639

The Audience Experience

There's a debate running around a few posts recently on the question of whether to reuse old

presentations or offer new ones.

Martin Weller writes about it in The New or Reused keynote Dilemma566. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, he says.

This is in response to a James Clay post on The Half Life of a Keynote567. He writes, I know of one individual who delivered forty eight virtually identical keynotes over a

four year period across different events, I never even came close to that!

I think I might know who that is; I think I've seen some of them.

How do you decide whether or not to reuse a previous presentation? Clay writes,

Sometimes I feel that I have a back catalogue of keynotes and that though I may want to

deliver the new album, people would rather hear the classic hits from the past!

This carries flavours of Kathy Sierra's attitude568, which Alan Levine cites in a comment on Weller's post:

this presentation is a user experience. And if it's a user experience, then what am I? Ah...

now we’re at the place where stage fright starts to dissolve. Because if the presentation is

a user experience, than I am just a UI. That’s it. I am a UI. Nothing more... I am not

important. What is important is the experience they have. My job is to provide a context

in which something happens for them.

OK, there's a point to that, but if I am indeed nothing more than a UI, then they could bring in

just anyone to deliver the same content, or they could just play one of my videos. But I don't

think that's what people want.

566 http://blog.edtechie.net/conference/the-new-or-reused-keynote-dilemma/

567 http://elearningstuff.net/2016/05/05/the-half-life-of-a-keynote/

568 http://seriouspony.com/blog/2013/10/4/presentation-skills-considered-harmful

p.640

I've done more than 350 presentations. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, "that's a lot". And as you

can see from my Presentation Page569, I rarely if ever use the same presentation, and while I reuse slides, you can actually see them evolve over time.

In other words, I treat each presentation as a new creation, and strive as much as possible to give

people a unique experience570. It's harder, I think - a lot harder.

As Martin Weller says, it takes time. Now it takes a lot less time for me than for him, but for me

a presentation, even if it's only an hour, can be a full day event. But I consider it time well spent.

And also, I think, it's what people have come to expect and want from me. Because I'm not just

delivering content. Lt me explain.

I sometimes think in terms of the music metaphor the way James Clay does. But

the presentation isn't the song or the album.

For me, my 'greatest hits' are my ideas. I've had a bunch of them over the years, some more

popular than others. Like all greatest hits, they're derived from previous work done by others, but

with a solid dose of my own creativity.

You're probably familiar with them (at least, I hope you are). Here's some of them:

 relevant similarity

 distributed online community

 hacking memes

 rules for good technology

 learning objects as tools for conversation

 knowing the future by reading the signs

 learning management as content syndication (gRSShopper)

 syndicated learning audio streams (Ed Radio)

 topic-based learning content feeds (Edu-RSS)

 resource profiles

 community-based sustainability for OERs

 distributed digital rights management

 syndication-based adaptive workflow (Synergic)

 learning networks qua networks that learn

 personal learning environments

 the semantic condition (autonomy, diversity, openness, interactivity)

569 http://www.downes.ca/presentations.htm

570 http://theprinceexperience.com/

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 the Downes theory of learning

 personal prrofessional development (relevance, usability, interactivity)

 the massive open online course (MOOC)

 content as a McGuffin

 the critical literacies

 learning as recognition

 personal learning

And there's a lot more; I'm not exactly Prince571 but I have a pretty good catalogue. And together these ideas (along with a liberal borrowing of ideas from other people) form a comprehensive

theory of learning which has come to be known under the heading of 'connectivism'.

But the think with ideas, as opposed to content, is that you're not just an interface. You don't just

deliver them. You have to use them (and hopefully in a way that prompts the audience to use

them as well).

Like Prince, what I feel is that I am delivering an experience. The content per se is irrelevant (I

could literally talk for an hour on any topic, without notes; I've learned how572). My ideas are the tools I use to frame the talk, to give it a perspective.

Having said that, there are two major principles I use when giving a presentation; each of these

constitute key reasons why each presentation must be unique, at least for me.

The first is the Mike Bullard573 approach to comedy:

 Find something you have in common with the audience

 Turn them around to make them see it from your perspective

 Make them laugh at themselves

Now I do like to make people laugh :) but my final point is:

 Make them learn something about themselves

And that's the basis of the experience. I come into a presentation not thinking that the audience

is lacking something which I can provide, I come in thinking that the audience already has the

essential skills or abilities, which I can help them realize.

571 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_(musician)

572 https://www.amazon.ca/Keith-Spicer-Winging-Everybodys-Speeches/dp/B00IBOZAXO

573 http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0120028/bio

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This means every presentation is different, because every audience is different. Even the same

group from the same place (as I discovered delivering this talk574 three times in two days to the same conference). Every place is different. Every context is different.

To use the jargon of the discipline, my talks are localized. But for me, localization is a bit

different; it's a process where I fuse my own understanding of the locale (which you see though

my photos I take, the references I make to other talks in the same conference, and the stories I

tell about my local experience, plus a je ne sais quoi). You can't repeat that one talk to the text.

And, of course, my talks are interactive. They're not interactive in a typcial sense (they're not, for

example, 'question and answer' sessions). But like any experienced presenter, I read the audience.

I adapt what I'm doing on the fly. I sometimes make use of backchannels (I built my own

software to do this before Twitter became a thing).

The second principle, which is essential for removing the pre-presentation jitters (as Kathy Sierra

says, they never disappear), is this:

 Love your audience575

This piece of wisdom is attributed to Luciano Pavarotti. As an opera singer he has a unique

challenge: he is rendering interpretations of songs that aren't even his. Anyone could sing them.

Yet the audience is in place to hear Pavarotti sing them. It isn't the content, it's the experience.

Loving your audience isn't just a one-way relationship. It's not simply about serving your

audience or meeting their needs, as Kathy Sierra suggests. It's more. It's a sharing of the

experience, where I bring what I have, and the audience brings what it has, and we see what we

can create.

People want to be heard, they want to contribute (before, after and during the talk) and I want to

let them, because each piece of audience engagement leads to the next idea (and my unique skill,

if I have one, is to be able to recognize them, pull them out of the conversation like a diamond in

the rough, polish them, and share them for all of us to see, as something we created).

Finally, there's one other reason why keep each presentation unique: since 2004, when James

Morrison suggested it to me, I have recorded nearly every talk, and so now the slides, audio and

video for each of my talks is presented as its own presentation page. As I said, there are more

than 350 of them. And just as I could not post 350 identical essays, so also I can't post 350

identical presentations.

574 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/18

575 http://chrisguillebeau.com/luciano-pavarottis-secret-for-online-success/

p.643

Not everyone needs to do it this way. But this is what I do.

Ottawa, Canada

May 12, 2016

p.644

Assessing MOOC Quality in Terms of

Provider and Participant Objectives

Summary

Our institution does not have a policy framework for MOOCs. In this position paper I seek to

outline major aspects of the development and application of MOOCs, and to address them to the

specific objectives of both MOOC providers and MOOC participants. The design of policy,

environment, ethics or implementation needs to be measured against these objectives, and not

some arbitrary third-party standard.

Introduction

MOOCs should be viewed as a means for government and institutions to promote public policy

by increasing capacity and supporting the learning aspirations of the population. Rather than

specifically addressing centrally or institutionally defined learning objectives, MOOCs should

embrace the diverse objectives of the many people who participate.

Institutional Policy Frameworks

Our institution does not have a policy framework for MOOCs, and does not generally offer

MOOCs (the exceptions are those offered through its e-learning research agenda, which

developed the first MOOCs and continues to work in this domain).

From an institutional perspective, MOOCs may be offered in two ways: as an official

institutional program, funded and supported by the institution, and possibly offering certification

provided by the institution; and second, as an unofficial course offered by staff members of the

institution, as part of ongoing research, collaboration with another institution, or individual

outreach on the part of academic staff.

An institution should have a policy regarding the former program, stating clearly the institution’s

objectives in offering MOOCs, criteria for the assessment of these MOOCs with respect to these

objectives, management and accountability, academic criteria, and program or certification

affiliation. With respect to the latter type of MOOC, the institution should be permissive, should

encourage academic outreach in the form of MOOCs, and recognize the role and impact of

academic staff.

p.645

Corporate Academic mix

Our institution does not have a policy with respect to corporate-academic mix in academic

offers. The institution does have a mandate to engage with both academic and corporate partners

to meet a wide set of objectives related to innovation in Canada.

There is a long history of corporate involvement in online learning. This involvement may be

characterized across the following dimensions:

- technology companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and many others) engaging with

academic staff at all levels to support and encourage the use of their technologies in academic

environments

- learning support companies (Blackboard, Saba, Desire2Learn, MoodleRooms, Colleague, and

many others) providing essential learning and support infrastructure to academic institutions

(including in some nations provision of the schools themselves)

- content provision companies (Skillshare, Alison, O’Reilly, Lynda) providing off-the-shelf and

custom content for both government and corporate clients

In the case of MOOCs, corporate engagement can be seen in all three areas, as the private sector

seeks to encourage technology use, provide learning infrastructure, or deliver course content.

We’ve seen both cooperation and conflict across all three dimensions. Clearly the claims of some

entrants (for example, Sebastian Thrun) that the private sector will replace higher education

institutions created friction. In fact, both sectors are required, and the focus needs to be on

defining the conditions of engagement.

In my own view, private sector providers of the three types of services above should not be

viewed as partners, but specifically as service providers. The objective and outcomes of

technology deployment (including MOOC technology) ought to be defined by the government,

higher education institution, or corporate learning department providing the service. Private

sector service providers must be held accountable to the client agencies, in order to ensure

proper and full provision of the services required.

The changing boundaries of the MOOC target

The initial mandate of the MOOC movement has been research and development. It is easy to

overlook this in the wake of the accompanying publicity blitz, but even the courses created by

commercial entities such as Coursea and Udacity, as well as non-commercial entities such as

FutureLearn), has been experimental in nature. As a result (and not surprisingly) the average

MOOC participant has mirrored the demographic of the research community in general: affluent,

well educated, and based in the west.

p.646

The early commercial MOOC offerings have been recast as more traditional for-profit

educational vendors, while meanwhile we are seeing a much wider educational sector

engagement with MOOCs, including the aforementioned FutureLearn, EMMA, MOOCs for

Development, etc. If we include open online learning generally, we could include such

organizations as UNESCO, the Commonwealth of Learning (including OERu), and the

Organisation internationale de la francophonie. Regional MOOC initiatives have developed in

the Arab world (RAAQ) and east Asia.

As this change in focus has progressed, the target audience has shifted from one which will

provide immediate financial return (the research demographic, traditional 18-24 year old

students) to one which will increase access to higher education – non-traditional learners, adults,

people in developing countries, people outside the Anglo-American tradition. This has created a

need for things like greater engagement, cultural sensitivity, multi-lingual capacity, and a

practical focus.

Care needs to be taken to ensure that MOOCs do not merely become the fast food of educational

offerings. MOOCs developed to support wider access should not be designed as cheaper

alternatives to residential academic programs, but should be designed as the primary educational

delivery vehicle for society generally, with the infrastructure of the residential educational

system repurposed to provide specific as-needed educational support.

Designing learning environments

The experience of traditional education from the past leads us to envision the development of a

single ‘learning environment‘ designed to support the population as a whole. It is better to

envision a range of individual learning services that can be accessed as needed through

individual or personal learning environments.

This paper isn’t the place for a lengthy discussion, however it is important to recognize that

digital environments in general are transitioning from an application and platformed-based

model to a service-based and cloud-based model. Some of the key services that need to be

supported include the following:

- authentication and certificate handling – this is already the norm in secure computing

environments, where individuals present their credetnials before accessing resources, and will be

carried over into the personal environment; institutions should consider what certificates will be

produced and accepted

- data persistence – people are already using cloud services (DropBox, OneDrive, Drive, AWS)

to store data, and much of their online presence is hosted though social infrastructure (Facebook,

Twitter, YouTube, Instagfram, etc). Governments and institutions should be developing open

data services and policies.

p.647

- resource libraries, analytics and artificial intelligence – people will be able to access, filter and

enhance content with a variety of intelligent services; government services (from employment

registries to licensing and certification) should be available as a service

- applications and scaffolds – people will be able to manipulate data and create new products in a

variety of authoring and creativity environments (for example, Photoshop, Spreadsheets,

Authoring Tools, Gliphy)

The challenge for individual learning environments is to support access to these services in an

intuitive and usable manner. In addition, there is a requirement to provide open access to a range

of alternative services and (with respect to content) perspectives and world views. It will be

essential to provide mechanisms not just for consuming and creating content, but also for sharing

it, commenting on it, evaluating and assessing it, and criticizing it.

In this environment I think that the ‘teacher‘ is not so much the presenter of content, instruction,

scaffolds and services, but rather, a model user of these.

Bridging the academic divide

We tend to think of a MOOC as a body of content (for example, some notes and video and

maybe some quizzes) but this is a carry-over from the initial days of the commercial MOOCs.

These MOOCs were based on the design of sites like Khan Academy and sought to monetize

provate sector educational delivery by addressing the ‘core value proposition‘ , which they saw

as content, in a disruptive manner.

In fact, content is only a small part of the core value proposition of formal and higher education,

and in the era of digital communications, one that has become increasingly commodified. In fact,

a modern education provides for its participants the benefits of access to community (which

includes access to resources and markets), mutual support and cooperation, and the capacity to

create change.

A MOOC should best be viewed as a temporary academic community centred around a topic of

interest, and considered to be successful to the extend it enables participants to attract, create or

join longer-term national and international communities and to participate effectively in them to

their own benefit and the bemnefit of others. The MOOC’s results are measured not in terms of

completion or percent of knowledge acquired, but rather, the effect created.

To this, we return again to the institutional objective in offering MOOCs, and individual

objectives in participating in MOOCs. Understanding what we are trying to accomplish is key to

understanding the success of educational initiatives. Often, the acquisition of content or skills is

only part of the objective, and sometimes not even a primary objective. Education comes in

many forms.

p.648

Anacapri, Italy

June 24, 2016

p.649

The Importance of Faculty in the Higher

Education Experience

Speaking notes for for Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey National

Faculty Meeting, Mexico City, July 4, 2016. Presentation page576 .

1. New Forms of Learning

By now in educational institutions around the world we(*) have firmly entered into the

technological era. There is no question any more of whether we should embrace new learning

technologies; we have done it.

Today we employ tools such as learning management systems, digital learning resources and

eBooks. We engage in online discussions, conferencing, and collaborative authoring. More, we

have embraced online video, virtual reality, 3D printing, and much more.

We have also embraced 21st Century pedagogy. While there are pockets of resistance from

traditionalists, we have generally recognized that teaching is not just about transmitting content.

We employ active learning methodologies, project and problem-based learning.

We create challenges for our learners and where possible let them take control. Learning today

involves building drone for competitions, launching companies, doing environmental research,

creating art, and participating in the community.

2. The Changing Shape of Learning

All of that said, however, even as we cling to our old ways, the shape of learning is changing yet

again.

For example. If we look at the organization of learning in our own community, we can see the

continued focus courses, programs, and disciplines, like biology, engineering, literature, and the

like. But this is changing. On the one hand, we’re looking at microcredentials, tiny fragments of

learning to small even for a course. And on the other hand, looking at overarching competencies

like digital literacies such as critical thinking or collaborative decision-making.

Additionally, we have been looking at same standardized package for every student. We still see

this in the push for curricular reform and standardized testing. But this, too, is changing. We’re

looking for ways to adapt learning to each individual need using technologies such as adaptive

576 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/387

p.650

learning and personalization. And if we look at the progressive school districts of today we see

programs focused on art, sport, religion, science, and more.

It’s true that the old institutional silos still remain. In Canada, for example, the process of

‘articulation’ remains a challenge; moving course credits from one institution to another is

complex, and there are limits to what you can transfer. As most migrants can assert, credentials

created in one country are not accepted in another country. But this too is changing. There are

multinational initiatives like the Bologna process, though are complex and difficult.

And we have not advanced significantly in assessment. Tests and essays are not adequate, and

while part of the community looks to PISA results, LSAT and SAT scores, others are looking for

genuine learning, rejecting these traditional measures as inadequate or even irrelevant. And while

issues around recognition of learning, initiatives to modernize prior learning assessment continue

to make progress.

3. New Technologies Changing the Landscape

New technologies are being addressed directly at the problems described in the previous section

and will drive the change into the next generation of learning.

One of the most discussed is machine learning and artificial intelligence. A lot of research is

focused toward using artificial intelligence to support adaptive learning by being able to

recognize individual learning needs and recommend resources and learning paths.

But artificial intelligence is not simply for adaptive learning. We talk about predictive analytics

as though finishing a course is the problem. This way of thinking is to cling to the old model of

courses and programs. The next generation of learning will be structured as an environment with

continuous monitoring and adaptation. The real future is in the quantified self; using technology

to solve immediate needs, in context.

Another major area of innovation is handheld and mobile computing. More than three billion

people have mobile devices today, according to market-watchers like Mary Meeker. But the

future of learning isn’t the mobile phone; this is to depict learning as simply the consumption of

content. The future is in the integrated performance support system, for example, in devices that

help us learn.

A third set of technologies involve the creation of digital credentials. For example, there are the

Mozilla Badges and Backpack initiatives. These allow people to display credentials in their own

digital portfolio, and more importantly, allow anyone to create credentials. What happens when

colleges and universities lose their monopoly on degrees?

Blockchain technologies could be used to support a microcredential system. This is a type of

encryption that is used to secure digital currencies. The idea is to encrypt transactions into a

p.651

series of public ‘blocks’ that cannot be changed once created. While financial transactions can be

secured, so can non-financial transactions, such as the awarding of badges and degrees.

A fourth type if technology is called the ‘Internet of Things’. The most immediate use is the

deployment of sensor networks to monitor for fire, floods, storms, or anything else. Beyond this,

the internet of things will allow devices to communicate with each other, as for example when

self-driving cars negotiate with each other on the road.

But what happens when companies know the state of all your devices? For example, will your

car insurance be increased if you drive on non-approved roads? The internet of things raises the

question of personal privacy and the ownership of data. The mantra used to be that “information

wants to be free” but what happens when the information in question is your bank account?

Fifth, we are seeing a widespread interest in games, simulations and virtual reality. This could

occupy an entire discussion on its own. It’s worth drawing a distinction between using this in

learning, and turning learning into an instance of this.

For example, with respect to games, there is on the one hand ‘Gamification’, in which game

elements are added to learning. So for example students might compete for points, unlock levels

or achievements, and compete against each other. On the other hand, there is the idea of

‘learning games’ or ‘Serious Games’, where a game is employed to facilitate learning. In the

same way, simulations, virtual reality, or other visual and kinesthetic technologies can either be

added to learning, or used to create instances of learning.

Finally, we should look at translation and cooperative technology. These are the tools that allow

us to interact with each other and work together. Communication is already everywhere and we

will continue to use text audio and video conferencing. Automated translation and

improvements to usability will make electronic communications as easy as – indeed, easier than!

– talking to someone in the same room.

But this does not mean we will suddenly start working in teams, sharing common goals, or even

thinking in the same way. The future lies in cooperation, not collaboration. Each of us remains

individual, unique, and rooted experience. Our perspectives are our own, and communications

will help us work independently, rather than in groups. If in the past we trended toward single

large taxi companies, in the future we trend toward Uber.

It should be noted that cooperation includes machines as well as people. The internet is the first

large-scale example of cooperative computing. It is nothing more than a system that connects us

– our commonalities lie in protocols and syntax, not (despite ‘the Digital Citizen’) shared goals

or ideals.

Imagine, if we can, a world in which we can interoperate with and use tools, services and

resources as we need them (Uber meets self-driving cars) rather than owning them.

p.652

4. Learning in the Future

If we take all of this together and ask where it leads, where does it leave us? It is arguable that

many of the traditional roles of the educational faculty will no longer be relevant.

Take learning contents, for example. We are entering a world of open elearning resources. Entire

school divisions, entire college and university systems are embracing not merely digital

resources, but free and open resources. This means far more than eBooks and course packages; it

means any resource you can imagine. The MOOC, which was created as a response to open

learning resources, is only the first example of what will follow.

We might think that there is still a role for faculty to write learning materials and create other

resources, but we shouldn’t be too certain. A recent experiment at Stanford fooled students with

an electronic tutor. Associated Press is using an artificial engine to write sports stories. The

Atlantic reported on an initiative to use robots to teach classes. Computers are becoming skilled

at creating content, including learning content.

Even if computers don’t create learning materials, students will. The internet has already seen a

proliferation of content generated by average users – social networks, photos, artwork, self-help

videos, and more. As I have argued in the part, the most sustainable resources are those produced

by the community for their own needs. Resources created by professional faculty may be

considered unnecessary and expensive.

Today we think of these resources as fixed and immutable (hence there is a ‘discovery’ problem,

or a ‘reuse’ problem). In the future these resources will be created as they are needed (the way

you give advice to somebody over the telephone). They will be addressed to specific needs or

competences. There won’t be the need for a faculty member to know students personally.

Computers will know far more than a professor ever could.

Our future learning environments will change as well. Here I am thinking not only of MOOCs,

but of a single, complex, interactive learning environment that surrounds each person like a

personal bubble. I’ve called this the ‘personal learning environment’ in the past. We will be

linked to our friends and relevant resource people, linked to tools, and linked to a distributed

network of services we access as we need them.

People when they think of personal learning in the future tend to think of it as operating a lot like

Google search. But this again is to think of the problem of learning as a problem of content. Our

learning environments of the future will be based on 21st century learning and scientific

methodologies. They will consist as much of services and scaffolds as they do content and

videos. They will help us work through simulations or scenarios, and will transfer seamlessly

into real-world applications and problems.

p.653

The practice of teaching – even the practice of coaching and support – will be irrelevant. Already

people get more support from their digital technologies than they do from their professors. That’s

why they carry them to class.

Assessment and recognition will also shift dramatically. While it may involve microcredentials

and a variety of recognition services, it will be based less and less on tests and exams and more

and more based on actual evidence. Indeed, at a certain point it will be questioned why we need

credentials at all (much less tests and marking and the like). Information about what we’ve

actually done will feed directly into employment or project support tools, and instead of ‘grades’

you’ll get job offers.

This is already happening; we’re working on a ‘micromissions’ project at NRC to help Canadian

public service people fill jobs on a temporary basis based on their online evidence base. Artificial

intelligence can very easily match specific experience to existing problems, and does not risk

losing information through the artificial mechanisms of credentials or even competencies.

5. The New Role for Faculty

We have traditionally thought of the role of faculty as having three parts: the teaching part,

where they share their knowledge and expertise though classes, books and resources; the

supportive part, where they coach and mentor individuals through the non-cognitive challenges

they face; as the assessment part, where they observe student progress and make

recommendations for recognition or remediation.

What happens when we no longer require faculty to fulfill these roles? Do they become

irrelevant?

The challenges are significant. Students don’t need contents any more. Students don’t need

experts any more. Indeed, we want them to figure things out, translate, try activities, work with

others. They don’t need encouragement or motivation any more. Their learning will be engaging,

immersive and wanted. They will want to be there, they will believe that they’re there, and

they’ll believe that they are making a difference.

Think about your own learning. Think about what you do today, as a professional. For the most

part, you no longer take courses. You receive learning and support from your environment. You

select learning resources that are that is relevant, usable and interactive, be they friends, books,

or even classes.

It’s all about context. It’s all about what you need when you need it. The airplane cockpit is no

place for a two-week course. You need learning support you can use right away, and even more

importantly, that directly helps you solve your current problem. Learning will be like water or

electricity – or text. There when you need it. As infrastructure.

p.654

Think about your own learning, the type of learning that sticks over time, like learning a

language or learning to fly. “To learn is to practise and reflect.” You need support, sometimes,

but mostly you need examples and models. Then you try it. Think about learning a computer

system. Learners today don’t wait for a course or even read the instruction manual – they try

things and see what happens. They keep at it until they become skilled.

Think about your own learning, the way you share it with others outside the class. “To teach is to

model and demonstrate.” You probably know by now that you can’t just tell people how to do

things, you can’t convince them that this or that is important. You show them – you demonstrate

the function, and you describe how you see it in your own mind, explaining using models and

demonstrations.

As Alfie Kohn says, if we have to ask “how do we motivate people” then we’re taking the wrong

approach.

The new role for faculty is to show how to be a practitioner in the field – be a carpenter, a

physicist, etc. More, it is to show how you try, fail, learn, etc. To show the way you think about

problems. To be open with your mistakes and your failings as well as your successes. To be

a part of the learning community, the one who forges ahead, the one who discovers a new path.

From the institutional perspective, the shift must be form management to meaning. Pre-network

work and learning was about giving directions and telling people what they need to do. In the

network era, we don’t do things to people, do things with people, and even more importantly, we

help people do things. The success in the future economy will not be the one who takes the most,

it will be the one who gives the most.

The new model of work and learning – and ultimately, the true importance of faculty in the

future, will be based around three principles:

- Sharing – by working openly, modeling and demonstrating one’s own practice, including the

application of specific skills, but also how we think and how we see the works, by creating

linked documents, data, and objects within a distributed network

- Contributing – by helping, supporting and being there when needed, supporting their learning

or work objective, responding to their priorities and interests

- Co-Creation – by working with other people in social networks, facilitating and acting as a role

model for group communication, group communication, by being a co-creator (rather than an

aloof expert or a disengaged coach)

The traditional role of the faculty – even faculty currently working with learning technologies

using 21st century pedagogies – is changing. Work that today seems essential will in the future be

done by students themselves or by computers.

p.655

But the role of faculty becomes something even more important. It is no longer enough to tell

students what they need to know and how to learn about it, faculty must be part of this active

learning process. In a rapidly changing environment, both teacher and student work and learn at

the same time, and the role of the teacher is to be the role model for our students.

This is not a role we have always excelled at. Certainly our politicians, business leaders, and

other officials have not excelled as role models. We, the teachers, must hold ourselves to much

higher standards in the hope that they, eventually, will learn.

(*) “we” = “the educational community as a whole, in general with exceptions noted, as

interpreted by me”

Mexico City, Mexico

July 4, 2016

p.656

How the Internet May Evolve

The Pew Research Center is inviting a select group of people to participate in a survey that asks

people to answer five questions about how internet may evolve – about the tone of social

discourse online, education innovation for future skills, the opportunities and challenges of the

Internet of Things and algorithm-based everything, and trust in online interaction. If you would

like to share your knowledge, please access the survey here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PD6772K

Here are my responses:

In the next decade, will public discourse online become more or less shaped by bad actors,

harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust?

Online communication becomes LESS shaped by negative activities

Online communication becomes MORE shaped by negative activities

X I expect no major change in the tone of online interaction

I think it's important to understand that our perception of public discourse is shaped by two

major sources: first, our own experience of online public discourse, and second, media reports

(sometimes also online) concerning the nature of public discourse.

From both sources we have evidence that there is a lot of influence from bad actors, harassment,

trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust, as suggested in the question.

But a great deal of public online discourse consists of what we and others don't see. For example,

you don't see the discussions I have on my Facebook feed or on Twitter with interesting and

informed participants. Indeed, I am even sometimes inclined to think of it as private discourse,

because of course it doesn't take place on some troll-magnet like YouTube, but it is nonetheless

public discourse.

So a couple of things are happening. First, I'm biasing my own perception by taking a particular

stance on the meaning of 'public' (as equivalent to 'mass'), and second, I'm receiving a

confirmation bias because the main thing mass media says is that it is dominated by bad actors,

harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust.

I expect people, because of these biases, to project that there is more and more of this sort of

behaviour, even though the rate remains steady. It's a lot like people's perception of crime rates

when they are informed by mass media. And because media says (incorrectly) that this sort of

behaviour is then norm, I expect a certain level of it to continue.

p.657

Hence I project no real change.

In the next ten years, do you think we will see the emergence of new educational and training

programs that can successfully train large numbers of workers in the skills they will need to

perform the jobs of the future?

X Yes

No

I think we will see educational and training programs that can successfully train large numbers of

workers because for the most part mechanisms will be in place that enable them to train

themselves. Within ten years, we should be beginning to see that the idea of 'providing' training

education or training is misguided, because it's overly expensive and less effective than self-

managed learning.

I find it interesting, even, that the question itself presumes that stills must be 'taught'. "Which of

these skills can be taught effectively via online systems?" It's not that the skills are taught, per se,

but rather than the skills are learned. A wide range of activities may enable skills to be learned -

especially multidisciplinary skills, such as critical thinking or social interaction - without

specifically teaching those skills.

There are very few skills that require specific and personal instruction from an expert to learn -

frankly, I can't think of any - which means that within ten years we should at least be able to

countenance the possibility that all, or nearly all, educational programs may be automated. Or

course, they will continue to require the time and participation of the individual learner, and in

many cases, social interaction with other learners, but the labour-intensive learning industry we

have developed to this point will not be required.

I see two major objectives to this argument:

- first, it may be argumed that personal interaction is required in order to get to know a student,

and therefore anticipate what they need.

However, in ten years it will be arguable (and probably demonstrable) that your own computer

networks will know you better than any individual instructor could, even an instructor who

worked with you your entire life. Sure, there are disasters like the Facebook news stream, but

people are already amazed at how much Google knows about them. And we know that with

enough data analytics can outperform humans even in complex tasks..

- second, it may be argued that personal interactyion is required in order to evaluate a student's

level of achievement.

p.658

Most actual assessment (not to be confused with multiple-choice tests) in school or professional

programs is based on expert recognition. The submitted behaviour (an essay, performance in

surgery, piloting an aircrafdt in a simulation) is not assessed according to whether a set of

indicators is achieved (this would possibly be a necessary, but never a sufficient, condition). The

expert looks at the overall behaviour and assesses whether that competency has been met.

The expert is serving as a proxy for the community at large. With modern communications

technology, this proxy is no longer required. Through the course of any given day, as a person

goes through various activities, they interact with dozens of other people, either in person, or

through online interaction. Each person responds to them in some way, not by testing them, but

by (for example) engaging them in conversation, asking questions, following advice, etc. These

responses, over time, form a comprehensive (and constantly changing) assessment of the person.

Will the net overall effect of algorithms be positive for individuals and society or negative for

individuals and society?

X Positives outweigh negatives

Negatives outweigh positives

The overall impact will be about 50-50

The sort of discrimination, social engineering and other societal impacts we have today often

have a negative impact because they are based on crude stereotypes and result in inappropriate

measures. Their impacts are magnified when deployed by social systems causing harm to

individuals based on these crude measures.

But new algorithms will have profoundly beneficial effects because they will:

- provide a person an accurate picture of themselves, and not a negative self-image reinforced by

media messaging and stereotypes

- prevent other individuals from basing their assessments of us on unreliable intuition,

incomplete or inaccurate data, or bias and prejudice

The negative expectations that exist - for example, fears of loss of employment, termination of

health insurance, discrimination in housing opportunities, unfair denial of credit, media 'bubbles'

and tunnel-vision, government surveillance and control, etc., are all reflective of *today's*

reality. They are not properties inherent in the new technologies, they are things that are done to

people every day today, and which new technologies will make less and less likely.

Some examples:

Banks - today backs provide loans based on very incomplete data; It is truie that many people

who today qualify for loads would not get them in the future. However many people - and

p.659

arguably many more people - will be able to obtain loans in the future, as banks turn away from

using such factors as race, socio-economic background, postal code, and the like to assess fit.

Moreover, with more data (and with a more interactive relationship between bank and client)

banks can reduce their risk, thus providing more loads, while at the same time providing a range

of services individually directed to actually help a person's financial state.

Health care providers - health care is a significant and growing expense not because people are

becoming less healthy (in fact, society-wide, the opposite is true) but because of the significant

overhead required to support increasingly complex systems, including prescriptions, insurance,

facilities, and more. New technologies will enable health providers to sift a significant

percentage of that load to the individual, who will (with the aid of personal support systems)

manage their health better, coordinate and manage their own care, and create less of a burden on

the system. As the overall cost of health care declines, it becomes increasingly feasible to

provide single-payer health insurance for the entire population, which has known beneficial

health outcomes and efficiencies.

Retailers - Alvin Toffler predicted an era of mass custom production, where a good is not

manufactured until it is ordered. We are on the cusp of providing this today, from sourcing of

raw materials on a real-time basis through production and deliver via automated vehicles or

drones. Additionally, software provide efficiencies in many industrial systems, from energy

production to storage, distribution and use, resulting in a more environmentally friendly

economy.

Governments - a significant proportion of government is based on regulation and monitoring,

which will no longer be required with the deployment of automated production and

transportation systems, along with sensor networks. This includes many of the daily (and often

unpleasant) interactions have with government today, from traffic offenses, manifestation of civil

discontent,unfair treatment in commercial and legal processes, and the like. A simple example:

one of the most persistent political problems in the United States is the gerrymandering of

political boundaries to benefit incumbents. Electoral divisions created by an algorithm to a large

degree eliminate gerrymandering (and when open and debatable, can be modified to improve on

that result).

Will people’s trust in their online interactions, their work, shopping, social connections, pursuit

of knowledge and other activities, be strengthened or diminished over the next 10 years?

Trust will be DIMINISHED

X Trust will be STRENGTHENED

Trust will stay about the same

p.660

This is a very similar question to the first question. We experience many reasons to distrust our

interactions, and traditional media are reporting numerous cases where they should be distrusted,

so we think rising distrust is the norm, and yet on a personal basis, as time goes by, we are more

and more trusting.

People who did not even know people in other countries, much less trust them, now travel half

way around the world to participate in conferences, rent and live in their homes, meet on a date,

participate in events, and more. Sure, things like catfishing are problems. But the exception is a

problem only in the light of the trust that is the rule (Wittgenstein: a rule is shown by its

exceptions)

People who did not trust online retail a decade ago now purchases games, music and media on a

regular basis (they're still a bit wary of deliveries from China, but they're coming around to it).

People who did not trust online banking a decade ago now find it a much more convenient and

inexpensive way to pay their bills. They also like the idea that their credit cards are now

protected.

People who were sceptical of online learning a decade ago now like in an era when, in some

programs, some online learning is required, and where there is no real distinction (and no way to

distinguish) between an online or offline degree (and meanwhile, millions of people flood in to

take MOOCs).

We can see where this trend is heading by looking at a few edge cases. For example: what would

we say of a pilot that never trained in a simulator? What would we say of a lawyer who did not

rely on data search, indexing and retrieval services? We trust them more in the future because

they are taking advantage of advanced technology to support their work.

It seems like less trust, but it's more trust.

When we hear only one voice, we trust that voice. When we hear many voices, we trust that one

voice less. As we should. And it feels like less trust, But we trust all of those voices, and the

overall dolidity of our information, more. Feels like less, but is actually more.

As automobiles, medical devices, smart TVs, manufacturing equipment and other tools and

infrastructure are networked, is it likely that attacks, hacks, or ransomware concerns in the next

decade will cause significant numbers of people to decide to disconnect, or will the trend

towards greater connectivity of objects and people continue unabated?

X Most people will move more deeply into connected life

Significant numbers will disconnect

p.661

It is true that attacks, hacks, or ransomware concerns impact our enjoym,ent of modern

technology. But it's important to note that what they impact is almost exclusively our enjoyment

of modern technology.

A person choosing to disconnect from modern technology suffers the same fate as the person

who has been hacked. They lose the enjoyment of modern technology. So disconnecting from

technology isn't a viable response to attacks, hacks and the rest.

People won't be looking to withdraw from modern techn ology, they will be looking for better

and more secure modern technology (to a point; as people's choices of passwords such as

'123456' show, they are willing to sacrifice a certain amount of security for a certain amount of

convenience - ondeed, if anything forces people off new technology, it will be the security

measures, not the crimes).

Ottawa, Canada

July 12, 2016

p.662

Ascent from Social Media

The sad part is, most of you won't read this message.

Not because you don't want to. You probably do. You actually followed me just for that purpose.

But because your social network is lying to you.

As of today my Facebook page OLDaily577 has 638 'likes'. This mean s 638 people think they are following the page. Yet when I post an article on that page, it reaches a small percentage of that

audience. This item578, for example, which as of today has reached 33 people.

There are ways to increase the size of my audience on Facebook. I can advertise - specifically, I

can 'sponsor' the post. If I spend $4 I can increase its reach by an estimated 10-11 people.

Surprisingly, people are paying to boost their posts on Facebook.

What they're trying to do is to insert themselves into my news feed. My news feed is where I

read the messages my friends and family have posted. It has long been the target of unwanted

attention, as spammers through out clickbait and exhort readers to 'like' and 'share' these empty

posts.

These are annoying, but at least my friends actually recommended them (and there are ways of

blocking these shares based on where they originate, so when Shirley sends me another meme

from the radio station, I no longer see it, because I've blocked everything from the radio station -

it takes a while to do this, but at least it can be done).

The sponsored posts weren't recommended by anyone - there's no hint of 'social' about them.

They're just inserted into my feed. And while (in theory) I can block messages from a specific

source, I can't keep them out of my feed altogether.

I used to be able to do this. For years I've browsed the web with ad-blocking software in my

browser. It selects what I want to see, and eliminates the advertisements. It's able to spot the

advertisements because reader views of advertising are tracked and reported, and the software

can spot this.

Regular advertising - "Eat at Joe's" - slips right through, because it's just content. That's what all

advertising used to be. But today's advertising spies on you, installs software on your computer,

577 https://www.facebook.com/oldaily/

578 https://www.facebook.com/oldaily/posts/373699192753675

p.663

adds extra seconds to page loads, and generally makes your life miserable. So I blocked it. But

now, Facebook has disabled my ad blocker. 579

All this - the clickbait and spam and sponsored posts and advertising - is inserted into my feed

instead of the observations and comments from my friends. And that's why my useful post that

638 people want to see is actually seen by only 33 people. Facebook wants me to join this

cavalcade of sponsored posts. Not so much because of the money but because it legitimizes the

whole thing.

And - frankly - what it legitimizes are the the greasy bottom-dwellers of the internet. As I go

through my feed today this is what I see: Search-Engine Optimization (SEO) services. Gambling

houses. Skeezy political organizations. Sexist domain name registrars. 'Bank owned

homes'. Health heart institute (with a fake Princeton URL). There are reasons why I avoid all

these sites!

So not only is my personal information being bought and sold by Facebook applications, it is

being sold to these guys. Ewww.... where can I wash?

What Facebook has done very deliberately is to insert itself between you and your friends.

Nowhere is this more clear than with Facebook messenger, where Facebook no longer allows

you to use a mobile browser to send messages to your Facebook friends - you are required to use

their proprietary app. It won't let you read what they send you without the app either.

And it has inserted itself there not to serve any higher purpose (such as, you know, actually

letting me communicate with my friends). It has inserted it there because it thinks it has me,

because it thinks it has managed to eliminate all of your choice in the matter, because it thinks

that Facebook is better than nothing.

After all, some other sites have been responding to my ad blockers as well. Sites like Wired and

Forbes are preventing me from viewing their content, throwing up a big advertising window

instead in which they require that I turn off my ad blocker if I wish to view their contents. But I

can easily view other sites, and so I read (and link to) their competitors.

But without Facebook, what to I route around to? How, for example, do I find out about this

story580 about Ulrike Reinhard (as of today, 52 reads on Facebook, 972 reads on my web site)?

The value I get from Facebook is that, when my friends' messages finally get through, they're

worth listening to.

579 http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-will-force-advertising-on-ad-blocking-users-1470751204

580 http://www.downes.ca/post/65656

p.664

Facebook has me going both ways. They make me pay money in order to allow people to read

my content, and then they throw advertising at the people who are trying to read that content.

And now they're tightening the screws.

And even as it clamps down on content, Facebook favours the wrong people, siding once again

with the bottom-dwellers of the internet. It has no qualms about encouraging catfishers and other

scammers to operate with impunity. Alec Couros has been struggling581 with this for years as Facebook allows scammer after scammer to use his image to defraud innocent

victims. Breastfeeding582, however, bothers Facebook a lot. It has no problems with hate

speech583, but generally dislikes584 plus sized women, cannabis advocates, sexual health organizations, indigenous people, reporters, and mentions of Facebook censorship.

Why do we tolerate this?

To a large degree, we don't. People have tried to build alternatives,

like Elgg585 and Diaspora586 and App.net587 and pump.io588 and GNU.social589. Though they've all had some success and reached some level of usership, none has really caught on, and all are in

various stages of abandonment. There are enterprise590 social networks like Yammer591 which are poorly used592.

It's like we don't want to replace Facebook. We've seen social networks and we don't need

another one. Younger people are using things

581 http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/information-for-romance-scam-victims

582 https://www.breastfeedingbasics.com/laid-back-lactivist/facebooks-war-nipples

583 http://www.dw.com/en/german-justice-minister-tells-facebook-to-curb-hate-speech/a-19406616

584 http://qz.com/719905/a-complete-guide-to-all-the-things-facebook-censors-hate-most/

585 https://elgg.org/

586 https://joindiaspora.com/

587 https://alpha.app.net/

588 http://pump.io/

589 http://www.gnu.org/software/social/

590 http://mashable.com/2013/06/14/enterprise-social-networks/

591 https://www.yammer.com/

592 https://hbr.org/2015/04/why-no-one-uses-the-corporate-social-network.

p.665

like Tumblr593 and WeChat594 and YikYak595 and Tinder596. And of course Pokemon Go597.

And Instagram and Snapchat598. None of these is perfect, but also none of these seems to be so closely associated with the seamy side of the net the way Facebook is.

So, maybe just maybe, we can live without Facebook. And after all, if my stuff on Facebook is

actually not being read, why continue to bother with it.

So I think it's time to move on from Facebook. Not to try to replace it, but to rather ascend from

it, to get away from the bottom-feeders and think about new ways to connect with family and

friends, new ways to cooperate with colleagues around the world.

Over the next few days I'm going to turn off the feeds and shutter the Facebook pages (I won't

delete them, because then some SEO creep will pretend they're me). But first I'll make sure there

are other ways to contact me.

And over the next few weeks I'm going to revisit what I do with my core offerings, my

newsletter and my other work, and think about making my incoming content feeds work better

for me, and my outgoing feeds work better for my readers. Thoughts and comments are

welcome, as always.

Ottawa, Canada

August 11, 2017

593 http://www.fastcompany.com/3004676/teens

594 https://web.wechat.com/

595 https://www.yikyak.com/

596 https://www.gotinder.com/

597 http://www.pokemongo.com/

598 http://www.brightspark-consulting.com/teens-use-social-media/

p.666

In Defense of Ascent

I've actually spent quite a bit of time with Facebook, not just a user but also as a developer,

working with the Facebook Graph. There's a lot that's really innovative about Facebook (React,

for example599). So I don't think I'm "old fashioned, out of touch and ill informed." But hey, I

don't have grey hair for nothing.

That said, I can't say I agree with the content and even the tenor of the criticisms. Let's deal with

the points raised, one by one (comments by Pen Lister('Webteach') in italics600).

First rule of FB: Make your bed, to lie in the one you want.

Ah, if only. I doubt that anyone gets the FB they want out of Facebook. It's like squishing the

come-on posts from clickbait sites - squash one, another one pops up. I could spend the rest of

my life blocking feeds from Facebook. But humans cannot block at the speed algorithms can

generate.

If you are a completely passive social media user then the majority of what you’re

describing is what happens. This is the bottom-line of non active algorithm, defaulting to

basic content provision and ad placement (gee, just like free cable channels I guess). My

feed is cool. My feed is intellectual. My feed is all round a winner.

Am I a completely passive social media user? Oh, hardly. I've spend a lot of time tweaking the

settings and trying to configure Facebook to what I want. I've also tried various experiments (like

trying different ways of using 'like' and 'share'). I've gone through campaigns of deleting users

who share offensive content only to find it popping up again from the sponsored posts. So, no,

I'm not passive. Indeed, I've put a lot more work into it that I should have to.

Why do you think Facebook is anything more than a huge (the biggest ever) TV cable company,

syndicating content from any and every source, in this case, individuals, to you, another

individual

If Facebook were just a neutral broker of syndicated content from "any and every source" I

wouldn't have a problem with it. But Facebook selects from that content using its famous

algorithm. Yes, the algorithm can be tweaked, but it can't be overridden, and it is designed to

favour content partners and to cater to its very peculiar set of 'social standards'. So it's not just a

599 https://facebook.github.io/react/

600 http://webteach.penworks.net/2016/08/16/response-to-ascent-from-social-media-by-stephen-downes-aug-11-

2016/

p.667

cable company. It doesn't just present the content, it presents the filtered and commerce-

friendly content, which is the core of my objection.

Yep, fat cats from the algae of web life do have the most money to waste on blanket target

sponsored ads. Get over it.

Why should I "get over it"? My better option is to work toward a medium of communication

which is not owned and dominated by commercial interests attempting to manipulate my

perceptions and mental states. I can use the telephone without being interrupted every few

seconds by a commercial message, so why can't I use the internet that way?

You want to change this? Not only money is the answer – TIME is the answer. If you

care, or had the time, you would facilitate your community and my guess is, more people

would see your content organically, because it would be ‘seen’ as useful and engaging by

the algorithm. Just like Google, in fact.

Nobody has spent more time working with other people on the internet than I have. I've been at it

for more than two decades (hence the grey hair) and even today spend hours a day doing it. Now

it might be the case that what I have to offer is inherently boring - it is pretty niche, after all - and

I'm prepared to live with that. But seeing the scam artists with their fake weight loss pills and

seamy meetup sites purchase their way to the head of the line reminds me that no amount of

facilitation and curation is going to counter the effect of sleazy people with big bank accounts.

Why do you think that FB will syndicate your content *forcably* into other people’s feeds

unless they really want it – i.e. have engaged actively with it fairly recently? (I note the

last post by other people was in February this year and that none of your page posts get

any activity at all… yes it’s a vicious circle but you have the control to change that)

I don't think Facebook will syndicate my stuff forcibly into other people's feeds. It only does that

for people who pay them money - as Facebook itself reminds me repeatedly whenever I post

content into the site. In fact, in order to get me to pay for placement, Facebook's algorithm makes

my stuff harder to find.

Now you might say (as is suggested by your comment) that I should make my pages and sites

multi-user in order to generate more traffic. Sure, if I had what might be called 'guest posts' then

more people might come. But my objective is not to bring in other people's content for

Facebook, it's to share my own content. I know I don't have a lot of comments, but when the

'reach' of a post is 11 people, it's not going to generate a lot of comments (thank you for your one

comment on that post, by the way).

Semantic web controls web behaviour. I suspect you know this. The more clicks (activity)

the higher the visibility in the ‘rank’. Logic, really.

p.668

That's a nice fairy tale. It describes what may be version 0.1 of the Page rank. But the actual

behaviour of the site is far different. In a nutshell ( again) people can buy greater rank, which

increases clicks, and Facebook depresses all sorts of content, which decreases clicks.

The challenge we have as the body of users is to teach the algorithm what we want, as

individuals, as groups, as global communities. Smart data is not necessarily evil, unless

we sit back and do nothing. Much like democracy then.

The snideness gets to me a bit.

If you examined democracy, you would find an algorithm that has been so badly gamed that

people now find it impossible to elect governments that represent their interests. I won't go into

this in depth because it's really obvious, and I'm surprised you used democracy as an example to

make your point.

And similarly, it is not possible to 'train' the Facebook algorithm to respect my interests. Like so

many politicians, it can be bought for a surprisingly small amount of money (adding up to

surprisingly large amounts of money).

I agree that data are not necessarily evil, but it is hopelessly naive to think that we're looking

only at data and evenly applied algorithms.

I liked your FB page. Because I’m interested in your great mind, I selected ’see first’

from the follow options (directly beneath the like button). This way, I won’t miss the

action

I'm glad to hear that. Because if you want to continue following the action, you'll have to venture

outside Facebook and into the wider internet. I'm planning my departure as we speak.

I am now off to write copious academic-nonspeak about your fab work in my thesis. Have

a great social media day, guru of the e-learning glocality.

I'm sorry you have to write academic-nonspeak but I'm glad you like my work. I think it applies

directly to the current Facebook discussion.

You know that I prefer open and distributed networks to closed and centralized ones. It

disappoints me that social media has evolved into the latter. I want our social networks to

become better and smarter but the best evidence right now is that they're

becoming worse and stupider.

I blame this not in the individuals involved (though it's true that they are responsible for some

reprehensible behaviour) but rather the structure of dysfunctional networks like Faceook and

Twitter. I'm pointing to symptoms in the other paper, but let me point to some causes.

p.669

The very metrics cited above (clicks, rank, views) are mass metrics. Your interactivity with

others is based on these. They are metrics that benefit from the first-mover effect (which is why

some Facebook users and pages have large audiences despite not advertising) and are easily

manipulated (which is why advertising works).

Facebook also limits scale on individuals (there's a 5,000 follower limit) but is scale free for

larger accounts (especially those that pay). This results in the oft-cited long tail effect (which we

also see on Twitter) and the corresponding 'big spike' populated mostly by commercial (and

frequently slimy) interests.

The way to fix this is to change the metrics for connection with the intention of

building communities rather than markets. But this means moving away from mass indicators

and instead looking at relevance indicators, and most importantly, preventing commercial

interests from gaming the system by buying access.

Facebook also privileges the content over individuals and relationships. There is no real organic

community-building or clustering available in Facebook, only the pages and groups people form

deliberately (which are either immediately overrun by spammers or must be private and hence

invisible to genuinely interested people). Contrast that with Snapchat601, which doesn't even keep the content, or WeChat602, which is simply a communications system.

Facebook also makes it very hard to work with community outside Facebook. Anyone working

with the graph will understand this. Facebook likes users to bring other users and content in, but

is very reluctant to let any of that out. Indeed, Facebook is so closed that some users actually

think Facebook is the internet. I can build, and have built, a chat application that includes Twitter

comments, but I can't build one that includes Facebook comments.

As I said in my previous post, Facebook's strategy is to insert itself between you and whomever

you're talking to, and to ensure there's no alternative route. That's why it's so hard to leave

Facebook - you're literally cut off. There's nothing in the response that refutes that, or offers a

solution to that.

I've described an architecture (and maybe we're seeing it built? 603). Here's how Facebook stacks up:

601 https://www.snapchat.com/

602 https://web.wechat.com/

603 http://www.downes.ca/post/65693

p.670

- autonomy - no, Facebook will not let you use what platform or software you can use, and is

aggressively (eg., Facebook Messenger) working to limit that choice.

- diversity - Facebook is based on principles of mass, which means that it encourages everyone

to view the same resources, to the point of privileging some content providers over all others

- openness - the Facebook graph is not open; there are numerous types of content that cannot be

exported from the graph. Facebook is the classic walled garden.

- interactivity - Facebook privileges content over relationships, and focuses on what is shared

rather than on the network of interactions between people, and has no mechanism of

comprehending the wisdom of the community rather than the popularity of the meme.

Ottawa, Canada

August 16, 2016

p.671

p.672

My Watershed Moments

I'm following in the footgsteps of Dean Shareski, who originally posted the challenge604, and Chris Kennedy, who posted a response605 of his own.

The idea is to identify some key events in our own professional development, some 'watershed

moments', if you will. Shareski writes, "Watershed moments are those occasions where there the

lightbulb came on or something profound was shared or understood."

These are my own, and I'll use the same categories they do.

PD / Conference

I've had a number of key events in my professional life; most of the core ideas of my own

approach to education and technology have been formed while on the road. On a trip through

604 http://ideasandthoughts.org/2016/09/01/watershed-moments-of-learning/

605 https://cultureofyes.ca/2016/09/09/my-own-watershed-moments/

p.673

Australia in 2004, for example, I was inspired by Olegas Truchanas606 in Strahan607, to think of teaching as stewardship and by the Aboriginal cave drawings in Kakadu608 to understand that we read the world. Or for example my visit to South Africa where I encountered the cattle boys

of Lesotho609, or how I learned about groups and networks610 in New Zealand. The list goes on.

But if I had to identify one conference that was an eye-opening moment for me, it would be my

visit to Bogota611 in July, 2006. I gave two talks612613, both on the subject of learning objects and learning object repositories, at a conference titled Objetos de Aprendizaje (OA) y Redes de Alta

Velocidad held at the Escuela Colombiana de Ingenieria.

It was my first time in Latin America and my first time outside the western world. I didn't learn

so much about learning objects and such as I did people's attitudes towards learning and

development outside my own culture. I saw a modern and technologically advanced school, met

with staff and students who were knowledgeable and eager to build something better, and I saw a

city and a culture ion what can only be described as a springtime for the country.

If affected me so deeply I made a movie about it614, spending the next four weeks after the visit learning video editing and painstakingly piecing it bit by bit on a machine vastly underpowered

for the job. It recounted not so much my experience at the conference - though it did cover that -

as it did my experience in the streets, walking and talking with Diego Leal, talking about

learning, seeing and feeling the powerful juxtaposition of people who have everything and

people who have nothing, and how to bring them together.

"It all comes back to the children. What they see. What examples they follow. What they learn to

value. What they see in life. Diego and I talked about this as we wandered through the

Candelaria. That learning isn't saying the right thing or presenting the right content. It's doing the

606 http://www.downes.ca/post/56624

607 https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/albums/72157594389789818

608 https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/albums/72157594376469328

609 https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/albums/72157594285719508

610 http://www.downes.ca/post/42521

611 https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/albums/72157594212015307

612 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/124

613 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/123

614 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HU-RkHNLOs

p.674

right thing and living the right way. And that's the learning that I was seeing in the park in

Bogota that day."

Presentation

As I would write later615: "In 1989, the pieces came together. I watched the rise of 'people

power' 616 around the world. I had seen Francisco Varela617 speak on AIDS and immunology at the University of Alberta hospital. I began to see how networks, whether of individuals of cells,

could take shape, form patterns, act with purpose. And how this would reshape how we

understood the world."

It's hard to explain why this talk in particular had such a profound effect on me. I'm not sure

there is any extant record of it, except for what might be in my own notes. 618 The technical part of the talk was an explanation of how the immune system and the nervous system had in

common the property of being a network. He was explaining how the entities in these networks

communicated. And he identified a 'sweet spot' - not too many connections, not too few - that

would enable optimum functionality.

I knew about connectionism by then - that was why I was in the room - and I had been working

on a network theory of knowledge. This talks emphasized to me that there were ways to

understand networks themselves that would be of interest, and of use, to this understanding.

But there was more to Varela than that. It's when you look deeply at a person who is presenting

and you see the resonance not just of superficial theory but of a way of seeing the world. That's

also what I saw that day. A few weeks later I would write my entire dissertation in just a few

days sitting on the top of a hill listening to folk music.

"If everybody would agree that their current reality is A reality, and that what we essentially

share is our capacity for constructing a reality, then perhaps we could all agree on a meta-

agreement for computing a reality that would mean survival and dignity for everyone on the

planet, rather than each group being sold on a particular way of doing things." - Varela.

615 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2009/03/tnp-20-years-on.html

616 http://www.harvardir.org/index.php?page=article&id=1341

617 http://www.enolagaia.com/Varela.html

618 http://www.downes.ca/post/3622

p.675

Book

I've had the privilege of reading a large number of powerful books in my lifetime. Some - like

Patrick Watson's The Struggle for Democracy, Kenneth Clark's Civilisation or Carl Sagan's

Cosmos - were born as TV shows. Others, though, were the classics of literature and philosophy

- Tolstoy's War and Peace 619 is probably the greatest book I've read, while Gibbon's Decline and

Fall 620 much be the most vital nonfiction, followed by Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third

Reich. 621

But the watershed moment for me comes with the reading of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. 622

I read it in the Devonian Gardens in downtown Calgary around 1983 or 1984. The gardens are

actually indoors, occupying the fourth and top floor of a downtown mall in TD Place. They were

as large as a city block, fully tropical, and filled with nooks and crannies where someone could

hide and read. Which is what I did. It was the beginning of a habit, for me, of reading great

works of philosophy in malls and gardens.,

What Mill said two me was twofold: first, that every person has as much inherent dignity, worth

and capacity as every other person, and that they are held back only by circumstances of poverty,

poor education, or some other form of oppression; and second, the only defensible definition of

society was one in which each person is free to pursue his or her own good, in their own way, so

long as it doesn't interfere with others' rights to do the same.

Now of course the latter part of Mill's dictum has been taken on by neoliberals to justify some

sort of libertarian non-society, but both parts of Mill's thesis are essential, and no view of society

that treats its subjects simply as means (as Kant would say623) to someone else's ends is worth defending. There is a type of freedom that Mill envisioned which is essentially one of stepping

lightly through the world, redressing wrongs, and working for the betterment of oneself and one's

fellows.

Public gardens, I find, are the perfect place to read enlightened philosophy.

619 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2600/2600-h/2600-h.htm

620 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm

621 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Third_Reich

622 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm

623 http://faculty.philosophy.umd.edu/SKerstein/Kersteinmeremeans.pdf

p.676

Tool

I am tempted to write 'the computer' or 'the internet' here. But I'll be more specific.

NCSA's Mosaic624 was the first graphical we browser. It transformed the web from a linear text-based environment to a non-linear link-and-graphics based environment. It's hard to describe the

impact of that.

Before Mosaic, I actually had my feet firmly planted in both worlds. By the time it came out in

1993 I had had several years of internet experience, building bulletin boards systems,

programming multi-user games, and traversing the depths of FTP, Usenet and email. And I also

had a history in graphic design, working first with wax-and-paper based layout and design, and

then tools like Quark xPress625, to create pages, posters and more. I had even authored a guide, Practical Graphic Design.

The resulting fusion of those technologies enabled my two greatest passions: to create, and to

explore. I began building web sites almost immediately. And I began to navigate the world by

hyperlink, spending thousands of hours exploring tens of thousands of websites, peering into

minds and lives I never knew could possibly exist.

And I never stopped. My career today is an extension of these two passions, and if I would be

said to have a research method, it is the same: to create, and to explore. Returning to a world

bound by linear and physical limitations has never been an option.

Person

Rik Hall626. You may never have heard of him, but he was of fundamental importance to me.

Rik was moderator of the online WWWDEV627 mailing list (archives no longer extant, because who cares about history?) and chaired the NAWeb conference in Fredericton for ten years, 1995-2005. I attended seven or eight of them, often financially supported by the conference, as an

unknown academic who could do workshops on interesting topics. I also managed the NAWeb

Awards for a number of years, then gave it up so I could win some, and was the keynote speaker

in the tenth and final year.

624 http://web.archive.org/web/20090201015748/http://www.ncsa.edu/Projects/mosaic.html

625 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuarkXPress

626 http://rikhall.com/about-rik/

627 http://web.archive.org/web/19970710162854/http://www.unb.ca/wwwdev/

p.677

I remember one time when Rik was introducing me to someone else him describing me as "one

of the good ones." He didn't mean 'good' in the sense of capable, skilled or qualified, but rather,

'good' in the sense of working for the betterment of others and advancement of learning. You

never saw these traits more clearly than in Rik, and it was high praise that made me glow inside

but also engaged me with a sense of mission.

Through Rik I met people like Terry Anderson and Rory McGreal, who were also both important

influences and role models for me. He also connected me with a etwork of developers and

inventors. And NAWeb was leading edge - I connected to wireless internet for the first time at

NAWeb. NAWeb connected me to AusWeb (where I did my first video editing in 2001) and

with a number of great people from Down Under.

Rik is a sharer, a connector, and a demonstrator. He encouraged me when I explored with RSS

and content syndication, he taught me to look for and appreciate the best in the many people

around the world working in education, and he linked me to a community I had hitherto not even

known existed. Like the best of them, he taught through example and not though lecture, and

one of the many people he increased in life was me.

Ottawa, Canada

September 9, 2017

p.678

Diversity and Diversity Training

Donald Clark appears to be settling into the role of the voice of the closed society. His latest

foray into this is his recent column 628 arguing that diversity is "wrong-headed". Leaving aside the question of which monoculture we would settle upon were we to do away with diversity (I'm

thinking Hopi, maybe, or perhaps Maori) his argument is based on a short-sighted and narrow

interpretation of what diversity means.

Clark's point of departure is Goran Adamson’s TheTrojan Horse629 . It is naturally not available as open content, so we have to rely on additoonal sources to look at the argument. An earlier

report of his, Immigrants and Political Participation 630, he argues "successful assimilation of immigrants mainly is achieved by downplaying the exotic implication of group-based

difference." (p.40)

Terri Murray summarizes631, "multicultural ideology makes a fetish, like the racial theories of yore, of ethnic diversity... the multicultural view of immigrants doesn’t treat them as individuals

who have a basic human need for self-determination; rather, 'the immigrant' is an abstract type, a

species, a race." Worse, writes Murray, "When it comes to ethnic groups themselves, the rights

of dissenting minorities within these groups are rarely defended. That’s because the multicultural

agenda treats ethnic subcultures as homogeneous groups."

Clark takes this one step further, addressing diversity training. He writes, "Major studies

from Dobbin, Kalev and Kochan show that diversity training does not increase productivity and

may, in fact, produce a backlash. Most don’t know if it works as evaluations are as rare as

unicorns"

Clark makes his case in ten points, and we'll address them in turn. The headings are Clark's, not

mine.

1. Ideology of Diversity

The case in both Adamson and Clark is that the choice is being force upon us between individual

freedom and the rights of a culture to assert itself. We'll revisit this theme many times. But to

628 http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.ca/2016/10/10-reasons-that-show-diversity-as-wrong.html

629 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trojan-horse-leftist-critique-multiculturalism/dp/918704353X

630 https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/221-Immigrants_and_political_participation_2006.pdf

631 http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-principled-left-wing-case-against-

multiculturalism/18703#.V_rPbySo7Ms

p.679

begin, the argument in favour of diversity is itself being presented as an ideology, against which

no dissent is allowed.

"‘Diversity’ is a word that cannot be questioned," writes Clark. "The rhetoric that surrounds

diversity in itself seems to censor debate, a diversity of views being the first victim."

The existence of Adamson's report and Clark's column are, of course, counter-examples to this

proposition, and there is no shortage of writing against the concept of diversity available for

anyone to read. A quick search reveals the article Against Diversity632 published by the National Association of Scholars, a similar article published633 in the Economist, Walter Benn Michaels against diversity634 in New Left Review, and the list goes on and on.

Indeed, I wonder just what sort of opposition it is that they feel has been prohibited. Some of the

more extreme expressions against diversity (of which, again, there have been many) speak of

dress codes, language restrictions, and prohibitions against some religions. At a certain point the

opposition to diversity tends to blend with outright racism. It is no surprise to see people react

poorly to this (though one observes in the Trump and UKIP campaigns a suggestion that even

this maay be tolerable).

Clark seems to suggest that this 'ideology' in favour of diversity is what supports the

phenomenon of diversity training, despite evidence speaking against it. "The vast amount of time

and money spent on diversity training, when evaluated, is found wanting, mostly ineffective,

even counter-productive," he writes. It's an old argument635, a favourite of the Harvard Business Review set, and not surprising to see it repeated here.

The same could be said (and, indeed, has been said) about training in general. Yet workplace

training persists, not because whatever it promotes is held forth as some sort of ideology, but

because workplace training officers don't know better, and because managers cling to traditional

and outmoded views about training.

It's not surprising at all that forced diversity training can be ineffective; people respond poorly to

coercion. But at the same time, "When attendance is voluntary, diversity training is followed by

632 https://www.nas.org/articles/against_diversity

633 http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2010/06/against_diversity

634 https://newleftreview.org/II/52/walter-benn-michaels-against-diversity

635 https://hbr.org/2012/03/diversity-training-doesnt-work

p.680

an increase in managerial diversity," said Alexandra Kalev636, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, (once of the researchers cited above).

The 'ideology of diversity' argument is a red herring. It is not based in fact. And it fails as an

explanation of the failure of training.

2. Groupthink

Clark writes, "Companies, worldwide spend many hundreds of millions of dollars each year on

diversity training. The tragic truth is that most of this is wasted. Groupthink seems to be at the

heart of the matter."

'Groupthink' is a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis637 to describe what occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental

efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment” (p. 9).

Is that what is happening here? Clark cites "groupthink among compliance training companies,

who simply do what they do without supporting evidence and tout ineffective ‘courses’.

Groupthink in HR, who find it easier to just run ‘courses’ rather than tackle real business

problem." This sounds like the problem of a monoculture, not one particular to proponents of

diversity.

Indeed, diversity - a broader sense of diversity than the caricature being criticized by Clark here -

is often offered as a response against groupthink. As this article states638, "Groupthink occurs when a highly homogeneous, cohesive group fails to critically analyse and evaluate alternative

ideas for the sake of harmony and conformity. In such a group, disagreement with the consensus

is discouraged, which eliminates independent thinking and creativity."

It is important to understand that diversity is more than the mere celebration of exotic cultures.

There are many ways in which people can be diverse, and the promotion of diversity is centered

around encouragement of distinct perspectives and points of view, not just the elimination of

offensive behaviour.

This is called 'thought diversity'. "Thought diversity “ goes beyond the affirmation of equality -

simply recognizing differences and responding to them. Instead, the focus is on realizing the full

potential of people, and in turn the organization, by acknowledging and appreciating the

636 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/19/ST2008011901990.html

637 http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm

638 http://www.aperianglobal.com/leveraging-hidden-diversity-to-alleviate-groupthink/

p.681

potential promise of each person’s unique perspective and different way of

thinking ”, summarizes a 2013 study by Deloitte Consulting.639

3. Ill-defined

It may be that Clark was thinking along similar lines as he wrote his piece, as his next argument

focuses on the vagueness of the term 'diversity'.

"One could invoke the idea that individuals are unique, and this uniqueness is paramount.

Unfortunately, it then focuses on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical

abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies," he writes.

What Clark sees to be doing is drawing a distinction between what might be called individual-

based diversity and group-based diversity. Individual-based diversity might include a person's

unique point of view, perhaps their income level, and the like, while (he says) "But ethnicity,

gender and so on are terms associated with the collective, not the individual."

I'm sure this would come as a surprise to people who happen to find themselves Chinese,

women, or gay. I still remember seeing a documentary about race, where the speaker was

objecting to the idea of people being 'colour blind'. "My blackness is who I am," said the man. "It

is myself, it is my identity."

And that's the thing about race, culture, religion, gender, orientation, and the other terms

associated, as Clark says, with the collective. There is no 'black collective' . Or, to put it another

way, all forms of diversity apply equally well to the group and to the individual. It is a simple

and fundamental point of logic, known since Aristotle, that any property can be used to define a

category.

One of the fundamental elements of diversity training is the effort to show people are

fundamentally individuals and that it is inappropriate to treat them as though they were all the

same. Even in a close-knit community (the Mormons, say, or Cook Islanders) it is a category

error to create and apply 'collective' properties (like, say, "all Mormons wear white shirts", or "all

Cook Islanders love the ocean") to individuals.

We don't need to define diversity; only people consumed with group identity need to do that. The

core idea behind diversity is that we encourage and respect differences between individuals. The

principle is the sae whether we are talking about their race or their taste in motorcycles.

639 http://dupress.com/articles/diversitys-new-frontier/

p.682

4. Lazy Cultural Relativism

As someone who has spent a lifetime as one who would be defined as a 'cultural relativist', I can

say with assurance that there is nothing lazy about it. It is a constant effort to remind myself that

other people may have different values, beliefs, and world-views than I do.

At the same time, I find that my own unique set of values, beliefs and world-views are

substantially different from the majority, and I must struggle with this every day as well. For

example, I believe that showing McDonalds advertising to children is morally wrong, I believe

that people reason by means of similarity and metaphor, not logic and mathematics, and my

world view does not include universals or laws of nature.

Clark writes, "a lazy cultural relativism descends, disallowing criticism of illiberal cultural

norms. Freedom of speech is under attack from ‘trigger theory’, art is censored, honour crime not

ruthlessly dealt with, FGM still prevalent. Any definition of diversity is glossed over and

replaced with diversity plans."

This one-paragraph argument is itself lazy and poorly thought out. I understand that some people

find the cultural practices of other cultures to be morally repugnant. I recognize they feel that

way and may indeed even argue that way. Where we come into disagreement is when the other

person represents their moral perspective as fact, and depicts their own culture as obviously

superior to the other.

In the case of the four items listed by Clark, there are well-tolerated practices in my own culture,

and his own culture, that are equally barbaric, and yet treated as normal. For example, one

society that opposes 'honour killings' is fine with 'stand your ground' laws that permit legal

homicide. Other societies that condemn female genital mutilation (FGM) as barbaric are fine

with the routine practice of MGM (male genital mutilation).

For my own part, I believe that both murder and mutilation are both wrong, yet I have not found

one culture on earth that believes these without reservation.

No, cultural relativism isn't lazy. Expressing a sanctimonious belief in your own world view is

lazy. One-paragraph dismissals of difficult ethical philosophies are lazy.

5. Not an Intrinsic Good?

Clark argues that diversity is not an "intrinsic good", giving examples where sameness may be

preferred to difference.

"Is polygamy better than monogamy? Will your coding team always benefit from having an even

gender and ethnic mix or a ruthless focus on competence? Diversity rhetoric praises ethnic

presence but could be a substitute for excellence and ideas?"

p.683

Clark slips into this short paragraph the old idea that support for diversity means sacrificing

excellence. The suggestion is that by focusing on including (say) a person of colour on a team,

we may be excluding a more qualified (or more competence, etc.) person who is not diverse.

This proposition depends on the idea that there is one set of properties - coding excellent, for

example - that is relevant to team formation, and there are other sets of properties - cultural

background, for example - that are not relevant. This presupposition depends in turn on the idea

that the relevant set of properties could be identified and that differences in those properties

could be measured in a statistically significant way.

And even if we can address all that it may well be that it is better overall to accept a less

productive team in support of the principle that teams should be diverse. Because there is always

more at stake than the performance of the individual team. If diversity is a value in society as a

whole, this value may prevail whether or not it is a value in any particular case.

For example, consider airline pilots. It is arguable that we should ignore diversity in the cockpit

because we want excellent pilots. But, first, it is arguable that even if women pilots aren't as

good as men (a proposition which I doubt, by the way) it is demonstrably the case that they

are good enough. And there is a need for girls to see examples of women pilots as role models. 640

This depends on the idea that diversity is a social good, of course. I believe it is - but again, this

belief isn't a lazy belief, or even a popular belief. It most societies around the world, it is a

minority belief. Which is what makes Clark's style in this article all the more astonishing.

6. Diversity as Conservatism

I don't automatically dismiss conservatism as wrong. But if it is, would it be an argument against

diversity that it supports conservatism?

"Diversity is a deeply conservative idea masquerading as progressive," says Clark. "It replaces

meritocracy with multiculturalism."

Let's stop right there for a moment. The concept of 'meritocracy' is deeply flawed and almost

universally misapplied (this is the other part of the argument from the previous section). There

are numerous arguments against the concept: it presupposes we can measure merit, it

presupposes that merit reflects a person's worth, and it presupposes merit reflects an individual

rather than their social of cultural background.

640 http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/26/business/woman-26-easyjet-youngest-pilot-captain/

p.684

As Yong Zhao says641, "The ideal of meritocracy is built on four assumptions. First, a society/authority can correctly identify the merit. Second, there are ways to accurately measure

the merit. Third the merit is only individuals’ innate potential plus their efforts. In other words, it

has nothing to do with their family background. Fourth, everyone has the same opportunity to

develop the merit. None of these assumptions is true."

Moreover, meritocracy is morally wrong. As David Freedman writes642, "Smart people should feel entitled to make the most of their gift. But they should not be permitted to reshape society so

as to instate giftedness as a universal yardstick of human worth." Moreover, it is the gifts one has

received643 in life that contribute to whatever qualities we call 'merit' - and luck does not convey any sort of moral primacy or quality of judgement. One only needs to observe the behaviour of

the wealthy and gifted of British society to see that.

Where Clark is correct is that diversity brings with it difficult choices. As he observes, "From a

feminist point of view, diversity may tolerate attitudes, cultural norms and behaviours that may

prevent gender equality." Quite so. Nobody is automatically right in a diverse society. Every

form of difference needs to, and has the right to, make a case. Ultimately it's about choice and

deciding for oneself.

He also writes, " It prevents us from taking a secular view of the world, as we give in to

relativism and acceptance." This is not true. I take a secular view of the world, as everyone

knows. I also encourage those who wish to pursue a religious view of the world to do so. What

'diversity' means is that they can't force me to be religious, and I can't force them to be secular.

Indeed, it's even a matter of bad taste to even try.

"The group trumps the individual," he writes. "It pits the poor against the poor. Ultimately, it is

the dull traditionalism of conservatism." It does so only if we view these as struggles in which

one or another type of diversity must ultimately prevail. But this is unreasonable. Nobody thinks

that it is 'diversity' to hold that Sharia law ought to apply in all cases.

The people who oppose diversity are the ones pitting one group of people against another; they

are, indeed, the ones who are representing them as groups in the first place.

641 http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/from-deficiency

642 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-war-on-stupid-people/485618/

643 https://www.ft.com/content/3b73bf58-079f-11e6-9b51-0fb5e65703ce

p.685

7. Diversity does not lead to increased productivity

This was the major point raised by Adamson and others, and yet it begs the question: who said

the objective of diversity was to increase productivity in the first place?

So we have Thomas Kochan saying, "There are no strong positive or negative effects of gender

or racial diversity on business performance." But big deal. " According to the American Society

for Training and Development's 2002 state of the training industry report644, only one in 10

companies attempts to create results-based evaluations of its training programs."

Companies engage in diversity training to avoid litigation and human rights cases. They also do

it because women and ethnic minorities (among others) are larger and larger parts of their

customer base. To work in a global environment pretty much requires understanding of, and

acceptance of, other cultures.

The five-year study645 referenced by Clark earlier and in this section provides an unambiguous statement in support of diversity:

Diversity is a reality in labor markets and customer markets today. To be successful in

working with and gaining value from this diversity requires a sustained, systemic

approach and long-term commitment. Success is facilitated by a perspective that

considers diversity to be an opportunity for everyone in an organization to learn from

each other how better to accomplish their work and an occasion that requires a supportive

and cooperative organizational culture as well as group leadership and process skills that

can facilitate effective group functioning.

The same authors continue:

training programs must help managers to develop the leadership and group process skills

needed to facilitate constructive conflict and effective communication... raining programs

that improve the skills of managers and team members may be particularly useful, but

training alone is not likely to be sufficient. Organizations must also implement

management and human resource policies and practices that inculcate cultures of mutual

learning and cooperation.

644 http://www.braunconsulting.com/bcg/newsletters/winter2004/winter20042.html

645 https://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/research/Documents/kochan_fulltext.pdf

p.686

It's always a good idea to read the articles you cite.

8. Diversity shows virtually no effect

No doubt Clark means to say here that diversity training shows virtually no effect. Then it would

make sense to quote Frank Dobbin saying "Practices that target managerial bias

through…diversity training, show virtually no effect.”

Clark has cited this study646 numerous times through the years, though the number of

citations647 it has received (969, according to Google Scholar) suggests that he protesteth too much when he says it was "ignored".

It is worth noting, first of all, that Dobbin et.al. are not opposed to diversity itself. Indeed, the

paper reads as supportive of diversity, with the authors surveying companies to find out what

workss. That's why we read not simply that diversity training has no effect, but rather, a range of

programs that do have an effect:

The most effective practices are those that establish organizational responsibility:

affirmative action plans, diversity staff, and diversity task forces. Attempts to reduce

social isolation among women and African Americans through networking and mentoring

programs are less promising. Least effective are programs for taming managerial bias

through education and feedback.

Fair enough. But that's certainly not the perspective Clark would have us believe the authors

represent.

9. More harm than good

Once again it is not clear whether Clark is talking about diversity in general or diversity training

in particular (he appears to conflate the two throughout the article).

I think we can take it as a given that diversity programs, including training programs, can spark a

backlash. There is ample empirical evidence of the backlash. The mere presence648, for example, of women with an opinion seems to be very threatening to a certain subset of society. It is not

surprising to see this in response to training programs as well.

646 https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/cfawis/Dobbin_best_practices.pdf

647 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=18373662958137193840

648 http://gawker.com/what-is-gamergate-and-why-an-explainer-for-non-geeks-1642909080

p.687

The anti-diversity backlash isn't unique to diversity training. Human resource writers have

observed649 the backlash to all sorts of diversity programs, not just training. Even when the program is voluntary, it has triggered a backlash. It happens because the people who used to

benefit from a monoculture no longer benefit. "The researchers reported that diversity efforts

have led to increased numbers of women and minorities attaining managerial positions, but

sometimes those efforts “can stimulate backlash among non-beneficiaries who may feel unfairly

disadvantaged by these policies,” the report states."

It is not at all clear that this backlash constitutes "more harm than good". There was significant

backlash against the freeing of the slaves in the mid 1800s in the United States, but this backlash

not mean that the freeing of the slaves caused "more harm than good". Any time an unfairly

privileged class of people loses that privilege, there will be a backlash.

10. No evaluation

It is not true that there has been no evaluation of diversity training programs, because then it

would be impossible to state - as Clark has done consistently through this article - that diversity

training has had no effect. Obviously some evaluation has taken place.

Clark cites another of Kalev's studies, this one a 2008 review of 830 companies. According

to this article650, the study found "the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by a 7.5 percent drop in the number of women in management. The number of

black, female managers fell by 10 percent, and the number of black men in top positions fell by

12 percent."

But even this isn't the condemnation of diversity training Clark contends it is. The article

continues:

The analysis did not find that all diversity training is useless. Rather, it showed that

mandatory programs -- often undertaken mainly with an eye to avoiding liability in

discrimination lawsuits -- were the problem. When diversity training is voluntary and

undertaken to advance a company's business goals, it was associated with increased

diversity in management.

So not only was there not no evaluation, the evaluation shows that in some cases diversity

training let to positive outcomes.

649 http://blogs.hrhero.com/diversity/2016/02/14/fairness-in-diversity-programs-know-how-to-avoid-a-backlash/

650 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/19/AR2008011901899.html

p.688

Overall

I get that Clark is trying to be cute, layering the objections to diversity into a series of objections

to diversity training. Had he given his writing a bit more effort and thought this intent may have

shone through. But it did not, and I am not convinced that he cared.

Many of the articles offered by Clark against diversity training are arguments against the concept

of diversity itself. And if you don't support diversity in the first place, you're not going to support

the idea of diversity training.

But the problem with diversity training isn't the fact that it is intended to promote diversity. It

can be argued (and I have done so in this post) that diversity itself is substantially valuable (and

whether or not it promotes business productivity is irrelevant). You cannot have a fair and just

society of any type without diversity, much less one that expects to work and thrive in a global

economy.

And the failures of mandatory training are, well, failures of mandatory training. Ascribing the

failure to the desire to promote diversity is inaccurate and unsupported by the evidence. Indeed,

it feels like the purpose of this approach is to oppose diversity.

Clark is free to oppose diversity. Goodness knows, a substantial portion of his own compatriots

do, to the point that they want to expel immigrants from the country (they probably have bad

things to say about curry too). If he wants to align with the likes of Elizabeth Theresa May and

Nigel Farage, he should just say so. This little dance around diversity training is a sham not

worthy of the little effort it took to write.

Ottawa, Canada

October 9, 2016

p.689

Institutions and Openness

Setting Up the Discussion

Let's be precise about what was claimed by Michael Caulfield in his paper Putting Student-

Produced OER at the Heart of the Institution651:

People make things possible. Institutions make them last.

His italics. His point is specifically that unless something is institutionalized, it does not last. He

makes his position explicitly clear:

I had worked my heart out for this thing, evangelized widely, written up the prototypes

and the stubs, explained it to the college. But I hadn’t institutionalized it. And so it was

bound to die the minute I left.

He is also pretty clear about what that means:

While we like to scoff at all the mucky-muck bureaucracy around training, budgets,

policy and messaging, it’s precisely that stuff that prevents your dream initiative of today

morphing into rotting infrastructure of tomorrow.

It’s because I respect the work that all of us do in the open — faculty, students, staff —

and want to see that work plugged as deeply into the university as the textbook industry

used to be.

I take pains to reproduce exactly what he says because of his response to my criticism (and also

Jim Groom's criticism652).

My criticism653 is this:

You can't depend on institutions. And in a sense, you don't need them. Institutions aren't what

make tests and exams happen year after year. Institutions aren't what guarantee there will be

course outlines and reading lists. What makes this last - the only thing that makes this last - is

culture.

651 https://hapgood.us/2016/09/07/putting-student-produced-oer-at-the-heart-of-the-institution/

652 http://bavatuesdays.com/the-overselling-of-open/

653 http://www.downes.ca/post/65788

p.690

Caufield says654 we have misunderstood what he meant by "institutionalize". What he means is:

To instutionalize is to set up policy and technical architecture that favors activities you

want to promote.

I said655, "Pretty sure I've not misunderstood. Where do you set up policy? Where does staff

turnover happen? In institutions. To be open, it has to be supported by more than just an

institution. They're fickle. As I said, it must be part of culture."

The point here is that to institutionalize is to set up policy and technical architecture inside an

institution. There's no other place these things can really happen. And my response is, contra

Caulfield, doing this does not ensure persistence. Indeed, quite the opposite: if your innovation

depends on an institution to survive, it won't.

Institutionalized

Caulfield responded to this exchange today with a longish paper called Institutionalized656 that

deserves to be considered in full.

He first responds to my contention that culture, not institutions, preserve the good things we

want to preserve:

Institutions are one of the mechanisms we use as a society to perpetuate, change, or

disseminate culture. There are other means, but seeing culture as an alternative to

institutions is a bit like seeing travelers as an alternative to cars. I understand the

relationship of culture and institutions can get a bit chicken and egg. But they aren’t

alternatives to one another.

First, and technically, this is not a category error657. Institutions and culture have the same

ontological status: they are human constructs, they cause changes of state in each other, and they

can both be found empirically to be necessary (or not) and sufficient (or not) to preserve

openness. We can disagree about the role each plays, but not about the existence or causal

efficacy of one or the other.

654 https://twitter.com/holden/status/776102193476751360

655 https://twitter.com/Downes/status/776183327804035072

656 https://hapgood.us/2016/09/14/institutionalized/

657 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake

p.691

Second, and much more substantially, he offers an example of 'institutionalizing' a practice

through Hostile Architecture658 "that purposely limits certain uses; here the addition of a middle

bar to the bench. People don’t lie down on the bench because the bench prevents it." The best

authority I know on this is Dan Lockton659, who I've followed for years on the subject of

architectures of control660.

Caulfield's point, and I take it as given, is that institutions perpetuate and control things.

Sometimes they exercise negative control, as when they keep the homeless off park benches,

keep black people from voting, or keep poor and coloured people off city beaches. Sometimes

they exert a productive influence, such as voter turnout through registration, clean cities through

the fixing of broken windows, and the like.

Where we disagree is when we say that the institution is necessary in order to produce and

preserve these things. Caulfield offers an example and it's worth quoting in full:

You can say, well — you just need a culture of acceptance, or people just need to be less

racist, or whatever. But that’s incorrect. When you put a sign on the bathroom that says

“Men” you institutionalize one thing. When you take it off, you institutionalize another.

And when you put up a sign that says “All-Gender Bathroom” you institutionalize a third

thing. (And no, not having any sign on it is not “de-institutionalizing access”. You’re all

smarter than that, right?)

Well - let's think about that. The vast majority of bathrooms do not have signs on the doors. I

have two bathrooms in my own home and neither has a sign on the door. What happens? Do

people pee on the floor? No - they find the bathroom and use that. In my office, if we removed

the signs from the doors people would still use the bathrooms. Having a sign on the door is not

necessary to promote the use of bathrooms in order to pee.

By contrast, we also have a room in our office dedicated to eating and drinking; it's called a

lunch room. There is a sign on the door that indicates this. Now, observe, first, the sign is not

sufficient to induce people to eat there; many people eat in their offices, or at local restaurants.

Second, imagine we created two separate lunch rooms, one for men and one for women. Would

people obey these signs? Probably not - the institutionalization of segregated lunch rooms would

(in this culture) be laughed at.

658 http://rainystreets.wikity.cc/hostile-architecture/?path=&t=Hostile%20Architecture

659 http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/

660 http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/what-are-architectures-of-control/

p.692

Institutionalization by means of signs is neither necessary nor sufficient to preserve social

behaviours. Culture does. Culture says we pee separately, and not in our offices, but eat together,

or sometimes in our offices.

Sure you can build things, like low-level bridges, to attempt to enforce policy through objects.

Sometimes these objects last longer than the institutions that created them.

Learning Technology

Part of Caulfield's argument revolves around the choices institutions make.

They impact everything. And again, the point of all those ranting blog posts I wrote when

I was a younger person was that the LMS institutionalizes a pedagogy that we don’t

really want. And I think the point of those early rants was if you want real change you’re

going to have to dismantle — or at least change — the LMS. The LMS chooses what

counts. And that effects what gets done. It’s the CompStat of education.

Speaking of category errors, we see one here. An LMS doesn't choose what counts. It is a piece

of software, and software does not choose - that is a function reserved for sentience. People

choose what counts. Sometimes they choose it directly, and sometimes they choose it

(sometimes inadvertently) through their choice of software.

And sometimes - as in the case of institutions - other people make the choice for you, and then

enforce it (or, at least, promote it) through policy or technology. That's what Caulfield is reacting

to. Witness:

If you want real change, styrofoam padding isn’t going to cut it. Eventually you have to

remove the damn bars from the bench. That’s what institutional change is. You make it

so people don’t have to be your level of superhero to get it done.

Yes. If you want institutions to change, you have to create institutional change. QED. But do we

need - or want - institutions to change in order to support open access, open source, or open

educational resources? Or could we get the desired result if (to take the extreme position) the

institutions simply went away?

Why would I ask this? Because, from where I sit, institutions are typically the bodies preventing

things like open access (and often in the same ways, and sometimes for the same reasons, they

prevent the homeless from sleeping on benches or black people from going to the beach). And to

take the point even further, what I've observed over the last two decades or so is a substantial

struggle between culture - which wants these these things to be free - and institutions - which are

trying to prevent that.

p.693

Caulfield lists half a dozen or more ways the institution reinforces the textbook and the banking

model of education661, and yes, this is one of the harmful effects of some of the choices

institutions have made for us. I agree with him that these pose a "structural barrier to open

pedagogy." But again we may ask whether we need an institution to support open pedagogy, or

whether we would get the result we want were we simply to get the institution to cease and

desist.

What's happening here, I think, is that Caulfield is imagining that the institution must be

implicated in pedagogical choice, one way or another. So if we want something that is a non-

banking model of pedagogy, the only way to get that is to change the institution:

We have made it simple to send hundreds of millions of dollars to textbook companies

and difficult to use student dollars to build curriculum in-house for students.

Doesn't it seem from this that he is saying these are the only real options we have?

Look at how he expresses the way culture is changed:

Or imagine another world where there was just a “college store” instead of a bookstore,

and where professors had to coordinate directly with publishers to get their books

shipped.... What would happen? Suddenly “culture” would change, wouldn’t it? People

would walk around and say, wow, you have such a culture of OER on this campus, the

same way people walked around the park benches and noticed there was no culture of

visible homelessness.

Culture would change, he says. On. this. campus. Because there's no imagining in Caulfield's

scenario that the change could happen outside the institution, or without the institution.

Pirate Libertarianism

The alternative to institutionalism is not libertarianism, Caulfield's argument to the contrary

notwithstranding. Institutions can easily be used support libertarian (and neo-liberal) structures

(indeed, that's what many of them are used for). And libertarianism is often used as an excuse

(by institutions) to ignore culture.

Let's take the case of web archiving. It's a fact that institutions failed us with Geocities and with

much more besides (we would also have lost all of UseNet, and we have lost countless websites).

There are two ways to address this:

1. Set up institutions to archive the web.

661 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_education

p.694

2. Let anyone who wants to archive the web.

Caulfield wants to do the first. Indeed, he suggests that doing the second amounts to nothing

more than putting out fires or catching babies on an ad hoc basis. The problem of archiving

should have been address structurally, institutionally:

A big part of it is the fact that a notion of archiving is not built into the model of the Web.

If you want to fix that you’re going to have to get people on some committee meetings, a

lot of them. You’re going to have to influence the W3C. You’re also going to have to

engage with use of Terms of Service, and the regulation of orphaned content. You’re

likely going to do that not as a private citizen, but through your institutions: colleges,

policy boards, government.

Suppose we had done this. Would we even have the web? What made the web possible at all is

that all this overhead wasn't built into it. All of this overhead costs money and resources. This

sort of overhead was what made services like Compuserv and Prodigy so expensive.

This - indeed - is the sort of overhead that weighs down our educational system today.

Committee meetings. Governing boards. Terms of service. Regulations. It is not clear - and the

case has not been made - that this is necessary in a digital society to support learning.

But even more to the point: it is harmful.

If we look at the second option - "let anyone who wants to archive the web" - we can see that, in

fact, this is what has largely happened. We have the people who saved Geocities, the people who

saved UseNet, Brewster Kahle who created Internet Archive, Google images and Google cache,

we have Napster that created MP3s of everything, even Sci-Hub to ensure that academic papers

and publications do not (like so many books before them) simply disappear from sight.

The institutional response has been to do whatever it takes to stop this. The institutional response

have been to create terms of service, to create regulations and laws, and to put people in jail for

what they call piracy. Yes, even though the content would otherwise disappear. Indeed, the net

effect of the institutional response has essentially been to enshrine it into law that only

institutions can ensure open access. Not because we can't depend the public in general. But

because we can.

It's ironic. On the CBC last night I listened to the announcer implore the public to look for a

recording of the first ever episode of 'The World at Six', which was broadcast only 50 years ago.

Less than my lifetime, and the recordings were lost. But maybe - just maybe - some individuals

saved the recordings. It would have been illegal, of course. But maybe they did it anyways.

I don't trust institutions because they have proven time again that they can't be trusted. And I've

found just as often than not when I go upstream that it's the institution lighting fires and throwing

babies into the river.

p.695

Making it Work

I'm not saying people shouldn't work together. I'm not saying we should never build things. What

I am saying is that we cannot count on institutions - organized economic and political units - to

ensure the lasting value of these things is preserved.

And I am saying, therefore, that policies that make things like open access or non-banking

education dependent on the good-will of institutions are misplaced and misconstrued. Because

sooner or later someone is going to object (or forget, or simply retire), and the good work goes

down the drain.

People do not value education not because we have educational institutions. Rather, we have

educational institutions because people value education. And educational institutions are only

one of many ways people support their own education, because what people value is the

education, not the institution. The people inside educational institutions often miss that point.

We need policies that support education (or, more broadly construed, knowledge and learning).

Because these are the things that are valued. And because people value education (and

knowledge and learning), I believe they will value open access - indeed, that they have shown

this to be the case - even though educational institutions do not.

Institutional change, in this context, is about saving the institution. But if the institutions don't

change, culture will find another way. It always has.

Ottawa, Canada

September 15, 2017

p.696

Open Practices

This post is a response to a request for my thoughts on the value of open practices and

methodologies for putting them into practice.

1. Do you have any insight into working with educators to help them see the value in open

practice, to help share their learning more openly, and how we might scaffold the entire

process? It is in building the compelling case for change that I am having some challenges. I

work to craft messages for specific audiences but I am missing the mark in helping education

leaders see the VALUE in open practice.

My first though on this is that you are not alone in this experience. Proponents of open practice

(open anything, actually) have experienced difficulties in translating the idea into practice.

People like Stevan Harnad and Peter Suber have talked about the same phenomenon with respect

to open publishing, for example. I've had pushback in my own organization when promoting

openness. And I've had numerous people tell me about the same thing when I've presented on

this. The objections break down into two major categories:

p.697

- first, there is a reluctance to share based on a fear of consequences. Some fear their own work

isn't worth sharing. There's a fear of embarrassing oneself and looking foolish in public. Others

(quite reasonably) are concerned about violating privacy and confidentiality (aka FOIPP). Others

argue that people can speak more freely in private spaces. There is concern about practices (such

as sharing of copyright materials) that might have to be discontinued if done openly. And there

are concerns about the consequences, such as being fired, if people dislike what they see being

shared.

These are legitimate concerns and cannot be dismissed lightly, or at all. People need private

spaces. Any discussion of working openly has to include a discussion of when it's possible and

appropriate to work privately. At the same time, there's a 'flipping of the switch' that needs to

happen. Currently, the default is to do everything privately, and make an exception for sharing.

The challenge is to make the default to work openly, and make an exception for keeping things

private. This is the trend behind initiatives such as 'open data' and 'open science'.

The key here is that flipping the switch has to be seen as safe. Nobody wants to open up if it's

going to blow up on them. There needs to be a space for confidentiality, and there needs to be a

sense of security about the implications of being open.

- second, many people simply don't care. This is especially the case among academics, and has

been well documented. All else being equal, people will not change their practices. They see no

compelling reason to work openly. In addition to exposing them to risk, as noted above, it creates

overhead and paperwork. Institutions say they want staff to share openly but in practice are

nervous about what staff will share (this is especially strong in government, I can attest) and so

they put in policies and procedures (for example, I've see all of these in action: requirement for

legal review, requirement for IP screening, requirement for conformity to ADA, requirement for

bilingual versions, requirement for institutional wordmark and branding).

Commercial publishers have taken advantage of this and though they also create overhead they

have removed much of the work and risk involved in publishing, and they offer reward in terms

of promotion criteria and sometimes financial incentives. This only exists for certain categories,

however; we don't really see the equivalent for classroom teachers (though things like Discovery

Education Network have made some inroads here). And of course they often limit access to those

who can pay for it (and create a rights and payment overhead in the process).

To date, at the institutional level, only one strategy has countered this: an openness mandate. We

see examples in freedom of information legislation, open data policies, funder requirements for

open access publication, and institutional archiving mandates. These requirements create a lot of

pushback but create much more openness than we see in the same environment without a

mandate. Obviously a mandate is not an ideal strategy. It's hard to argue for the value of

something while at the same time being in a position of having to force people to do it.

So, what then?

p.698

My best results have come when I ask people to stop thinking of themselves as teachers and start

thinking of themselves as learners. By changing the role I am changing how they perceive they

might benefit from open practice. That said, it's not one big giant step; it isn't the idea of

openness as a default that attracts people, it's the idea of a bit of sharing producing a bit of

benefit. So I find that the value is seen in open practices, rather than the concept of openness

itself.

For example: when we were developing MuniMall (an online learning, resources and knowledge

community for the municipal sector in Alberta) we asked town managers how they got answers

to problems that would happen from day to day (where to send a grader for repair, new

guidelines for sewer inspection, examples of planning law litigation, etc). The run-away winner

was: pick up the phone and call someone they know. There is no questioning the benefit of direct

person-to-person sharing. They don't even think of it as 'open practice' (though of course, it is).

It's a small jump from this to seeing the benefit electronic media. A lot of discussion boards

operate like this, with a question-answer format (you see this in communities of practice, for

example) but they're cumbersome and people don't use them if the community is too small. We

can draw out three examples that do work, providing enough people get involved: direct person-

to-person text messaging; text messaging in an open environment such as Twitter; and question-

answer sites like Stack Exchange. None of these by itself is sufficient, but the set of them work

quite well together, and are often more convenient than making a phone call (especially for

people who have a lot of client-facing work and can't stop to answer a call).

In a lot of environments, though, these media are used as broadcast media by the administration.

There is a tendency to 'clamp down' on official channels (for example, I've seen cases where

administrators terminated a mailing list because it was being used too much). Once people see

the benefits of these simple forms of working openly they can be encouraged to take control of

them as a means of managing their own learning and development. The technologies that seem to

work the best, to my observation, are those which preserve the following values:

- relevance - the communications are directly relevant, when and where needed. They offer

means to focus on exactly what you need (that's why we see a progression from text messaging

to question-answer sites) in a format that is directly usable (a short web page as compared to a

two week class).

- usability - they don't require any extra work to learn how to use. There isn't 'navigation'. The

interfaces are intuitive and predictable.

- interactive - they support dialogue, and not just broadcast. Questions can be refined, particular

circumstances addressed. They provide a means for the same people asking the questions to also

answer the questions. More here: http://www.downes.ca/presentation/138

p.699

Over time, this evolves into open practice. This is a desirable result. But it isn't the goal. The

goal is to help people with learning tasks in their day-to-day lives, and to help them reflect on

that. As they begin to see what is working for them, they begin to see that it works for others.

2. How does open practice impact knowledge mobilization? Are we able to show that open

practice can impact student learning much faster than traditional forms of professional learning

for teachers?

This question has a half dozen separate questions built into it. These make it difficult to offer a

single response. Here's a quick reprise of some of the questions:

- how are we defining open practice? As suggested above, it's really a suite of tools and

methodologies that leads to an overall default of openness.

- is knowledge mobilization a desirable outcome? It has overtones (as does knowledge

translation) of the idea of diffusing knowledge from central sources.

- is the objective to learn faster? To learn better? Or to learn better things?

- how would we characterize more traditional forms of professional learning for teachers? None?

PD day? Staff room gossip? Board retreats?

- what does it mean to show open learning has had an impact?

My comments will address each of these in turn.

- open practice

As I've suggested above, there are gradations of open practice. It's not something we simply turn

on and off. Moreover, it's not clear that 'open practice' as a goal in and of itself is desirable. It is

an outcome of various tools and methodologies, but the objective is always to provide learning

and performance support. Environments vary, so this discussion has to begin with the question,

what would provide learning and performance support? What are we trying to accomplish here?

I've been doing workshops on personal learning with educators in various countries. The hardest

thing to do is to shift them from thinking of teaching strategies to thinking of learning strategies.

I use a type of format used for software design, working back from objectives to tools to a

definition of a minimal viable product (MVP). I find participants focus on access to information

they need to do their jobs - calendars, forms, resources. So it leads me to think that, before asking

them to work openly, to consider whether they are working in an open environment. It seems to

me that they are less likely to share if they're not working in a sharing environment.

This works both ways. A large organization I know embarked on a program "Dialogue on the

future of X". They're assembling panels and tiger teams. There's a video and web page and

brochure to promote the initiative. But in this entire environment, there is no place for

p.700

individuals to contribute their comments or take part in the dialogue. I think it would be difficult

to promote any sort of open practice after such a process. But maybe this degree of openness isn't

desired. There can be many reasons to moderate or control an open discussion; we've seen

discussions get really out of control on the internet.

I think understanding the need for openness is the first step, where openness is defined as much

as possible in terms of specific types of information and resources, different types of tools and

methodologies, and different degrees of openness. Simply being behind a password barrier

doesn't necessarily mean something is closed, but if everything is behind a password we need to

question what objective the password protection is intended to achieve.

- knowledge mobilization

The origin of 'knowledge mobilization I would say is in the concept of 'knowledge translation',

which is essentially the idea researchers and theorists (or consultants and executives, in a

dystopian version) create knowledge, which is then 'translated' into practical tools and processes.

By using the term 'mobilization' we are agreeing explicitly that knowledge originates not only in

the back room, but also in the everyday practices and experiences of practitioners, so that there

needs to be a two-way flow of information and communication.

Given such a characterization, the argument to the value of openness is very short: without this

communication, which by definition requires a degree of openness, there is no knowledge

mobilization, and therefore, no improvement of practices. But even here there is nuance. Some

practices require the shared development of expertise (the best way to move a patient, the best

use of a Smart Board to collaborate in a class) while in others there is a more regulatory or

policy-driven flavour (safety hazard recognition and protocols, gender and diversity issues

awareness, terms of employment and contracts).

But moreover, in some cases there simply isn't knowledge, and the deployment of knowledge

mobilization might be inappropriate. I think for example of a lot of the 'advice' I received before

teaching in First Nations communities. Though there are some culturally-driven tendencies, the

generalizations about working on First Nations reserves turned out uniformly to have exceptions.

The 'knowledge' of 'teaching in First Nations communities' doesn't exist; at best what we have

are shared stories, experiences and histories. So there could and probably should be sharing, sure,

but it's something different here.

- objectives

The objective of learning technology and practices (such as 'openness') is very frequently stated

to be "faster" learning. It would not take a lot of effort to compile a list of vendors with products

and theorists with theories about how to learn a subject faster. It's probably second only to the

promises to increase test scores and to help people learn the subject better. These form the basis

for an 'outcomes oriented' philosophy of education.

p.701

What you may have noticed in the section on 'open practice' above that I did not talk about

outcomes; I talked about the need for different types of resources, tools, and degrees of openness.

I find a definition of outcomes to be a lot less useful in practice than it might appear to be. The

groups of educators I have worked with may have commonalities, but each has a different set of

outcomes they require from learning and support resources and technology. The same is true, I

would say, of the students in their classroom.

Part of the reason I ask educators to focus on their own training and development needs is that it

forces them to recognize this.

Key, I think, to seeing the value of openness is seeing how it contributes to one's own outcomes,

rather than to policy or institutionally mandated outcomes. Learning and development is personal

in a way that other aspects of employment are not. There's an old naval slogan, "One hand for the

ship, one hand for yourself." Learning and development is most often thought of as being the one

hand for oneself. It not only prepares a person for their current position, it prepares them for their

next position.

- traditional forms of learning

All the data and surveys I see about corporate and professional learning suggest that in-person

classes remain the dominant for of learning. The nature and structure of these classes has

changed a lot over the last few decades, from lecture and demonstration to a lot more

collaborative activities and hands-on work (think of the 3-day f2f session/retreat you just

completed).

But as I mentioned above, when a person is on the job (that is, the 95% of the time they are not

in a class or at a retreat) the predominant form of learning is simply to 'ask someone'. As people

like Jay Cross and Harold Jarche have emphasized, informal learning constitutes the bulk of

workplace learning. This is no doubt as true for teachers as it is for board members. It's even true

to a large degree for students themselves (through the percentages are different).

I think the process of introducing open practices in a traditional environment is one where the

SAMR (Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition) model applies. We don't begin by

thinking about how we are replacing traditional practices. Instead, we look at these practices and

ask where tools, resources and openness can be applied in such a way as to make the traditional

practice more effective or more efficient. Only once we have moved to the new environment will

other affordances become visible, and at that point we can think of augmenting and ultimately

redefining a practice as 'open'.

In a sense we're turning the question of how openness 'can impact student learning much faster

than traditional forms of professional learning' on its head. The new practice (whether it's a type

of openness or, more likely, a type of technology that will ultimately lead to more openness)

p.702

would not be implemented unless it 'can impact student learning much faster than traditional

forms of professional learning' (or some similar statement of objectives and values).

- impact

Let me quote you: "The second structure we are trying to interrupt is this the 'flow' of learning

from Superintendent to Principal to Teacher. The concept that we need to 'feed' teachers in this

way is outdated in a world where teachers can access learning anytime and anywhere. I argue

that a higher yield strategy is to encourage teachers to become self-directed learners and to teach

them where to find what they need, how to build a PLN, and how to be savvy in accessing

learning online."

I agree with this. It follows, though, that an assessment of the impact is not going to be found in

demonstrations of better learning by means of tests or evaluations against a body of content. Nor

will it be found in demonstrations of better learning by means of tests or evaluations of their

students against a body of content. We're looking for an outcome where teachers become self-

directed learners, and the only measure of that is whether teachers direct their own learning (here

defined for the sake of argument as knowing "where to find what they need, how to build a PLN,

and how to be savvy in accessing learning online", though again this will vary for each of them).

The fundamental question, I think, is whether that (teachers becoming self-directed learners) is

valued by administrators and supervisors, and if not currently, then what would lead them to

value it.

The answer to this, I would suggest, is created with a two part structure consisting of a value

proposition and a logic model.

The value proposition is a statement of what administrators and supervisors actually do value,

and how it is measured. The value needs to be stated as outcomes, as concrete and tangible

benefits the program produces. We need to be careful not to overgeneralize about this; the

'knowledge' of 'satisfying the needs of administrators and supervisors' doesn't exist. Each will be

different: some will be looking for financial efficiencies, some will be looking for improved test

scores, some will be looking for better community relations, and some will have very specific

learning outcomes they need to see. What's important is that there needs to be a value

proposition, something you know the administrators will support.

The logic model is a description of how the effort that will be undertaken leads to a satisfaction

of the value proposition. The logic model is necessary because there isn't (and never will be) a

strict measurement of cause and effect. You can't measure 'x' in the program and see it correlate

to 'y' in the value proposition. What the logic model does is to show how implementation of the

program as a whole will implement the value proposition as a whole. It's a way to connect the

idea of enabling employees to meet their objectives with the idea of enabling boards and

supervisors to meet their objectives.

p.703

In my own work I've tried to hit several value propositions over the years with different logic

models: self-directed learning (SDL) reduces recruitment costs by enabling a pool of applicants

to quality themselves; SDL reduces retention costs by enabling career advancement and personal

development; SDL reduces administrative overhead by enabling peer-to-peer knowledge sharing

(thus reducing the need for courses); SDL creates motivation by enabling a teacher to be a

member of a professional community, motivation results in greater enthusiasm in the classroom,

which results in increased motivation on the part of students, and hence better grades. Etc.

In sum…

Open practice isn't a specific thing: it's a set of practices, tools, and policies the combination of

which results in what we might call 'openness by default', but which has a specific objective the

ability of people to support their own learning and development more easily and effectively than

before.

Boards and supervisors might not directly value people being able to support their own learning

and development themselves, but they can be shown how this leads to benefits that they do

value, such as lower costs and more effective teaching.

All of this needs to be developed and implemented iteratively; there are no general principles.

Different learning objectives are supported by different technologies, leading to more or less

great degrees of openness, and these will lead to varying board and supervisor objectives in

different ways.

Ottawa, Canada

October 21, 2016

Photo from the Metcalfe Fair

p.704

p.705

On Teaching Critical Thinking

As someone who was teaching critical thinking for a living well before anyone thought to call it

a '21st century skill' it bothers me to no end to read articles like this 662 arguing that we should not be teaching critical thinking in schools.

It feels to me that the critics of critical thinking do not understand what critical thinking is, nor

why we would teach it. Thus Carl Hendrick describes the critical thinking as follows:

the aim is to equip students with a set of general problem-solving approaches that can be

applied to any given domain; these are lauded by business leaders as an essential set of

dispositions for the 21st century.

Well.... no. That's not what critical thinking is. Critical thinking is neither "a set of general

problem-solving approaches" nor is it a "disposition". Critical thinking does apply to any given

domain, for reasons I'll explain below. And it's irrelevant whether they are lauded by business

leaders.

The most common argument against critical thinking (favoured 663 also by Daniel Willingham) is this:

to be good in a specific domain you need to know a lot about it: It's not easy to translate

those skills to other areas.

and

This non-translatability of cognitive skill is well-established in psychological research

and has been replicated many times.

Moreover, they argue that critical thinking does not contribute to improved learning outcomes.

Citing a study of 'brain training' games, Hendrick quotes:

We know of no evidence for broad-based improvement in cognition, academic

achievement, professional performance, and/or social competencies that derives from

decontextualized practice of cognitive skills devoid of domain-specific content.

Fair enough. Let's take all this as a given.

662 http://theweek.com/articles/665551/why-schools-shouldnt-teach-critical-thinking

663 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/AEPR.109.4.21-32

p.706

Critical thinking, however, is not the translation of specialized skills from one domain to another.

Nor is it even intended to support the learning of a specialized domain - you need a lot of

practice and hands-on experience to do that. Nor are the 'brain training' games an example of

critical thinking.

So what is critical thinking good for? Hendricks almost had it when he said this:

we all know people who are "clever" in their professional lives yet who often seem to

make stupid decisions in their personal lives.

Yes! Exactly! Critical thinking is designed to prevent this!

So how can critical thinking accomplish anything useful? After all, it is true that you do need to

know things in order to reason critically about them. Happily, first, we almost never

have no knowledge of a subject. And second, critical thinking is one of those things we need to

know.

Let me offer an analogy: mathematics. This is a type of very general knowledge that is applied in

a wide range of domains. There are some useful things to note about mathematics:

 it applies everywhere, regardless of context. There are no domains in which 2+2 does not

equal 4.

 nobody pretends that it is the whole of any other discipline. Of course you have to have

some knowledge about physics to use mathematics in physics. And the knowledge of

physics doesn't transfer to other domains (but the mathematics does).

 knowledge of mathematics will help you a lot in everyday life, and help you spot (or

prevent) glaring errors of reasoning even in domains you know little about.

For example, I know nothing about aviation. But I can demonstrate that 100 kilograms of fuel is

different from 100 pounds of fuel, which tells me that if the pilot uses 'kilograms' and the ground

crew uses 'pounds', someone is in for a rude surprise. 664 Or if the range of the aircraft is 1600

kilometers, and the flight plan is 1605 kilometers, there's a risk the flight might end tragically. 665

This might seem pretty basic. But so are the principles of reasoning that characterize critical

thinking (and as someone who taught it, watching people get it wrong feels the same as watching

someone say 2+2=5 ... and getting away with it).

664 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

665 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38165757

p.707

So if critical thinking isn't a problem-solving set of dispositions (nor empty advice to 'consider

all perspectives' and other de Bono truisms 666) then what is it?

In the first place, critical thinking is the application of the basic principles of logic, usually

beginning with the propositional calculus and categorical syllogisms (if you took my course

you'd know what those terms mean). Here's an example of each:

Propositional calculus:

If A then B

A

Therefore B

Categorical syllogism

All A are B

All B are C

Therefore, All A are C

The point of both of these principles is that you can replace A, B and C with anything, and it still

works. It doesn't matter what domain you are working in. Just as 2+2 always yields 4, If A then

B, and A always yields B. There are many more such principles, and indeed whole other

branches of logic that form the basic of our comprehension of any domain: inductive reasoning,

quantification, modalities, probabilities, and more.

Now there is a skill involved in applying these. There are, for example, many ways to say "If A

then B". A lot of the time, in practical life, people skip that statement entirely, and it has to be

assumed. Being able to read text, and identify these patterns, is an essential skill (even more

essential than the 'word problems' that are their counterpart in mathematics). And these skills

apply independently of the domains. The words may vary, but the principles remain the same.

This leads us to consider a second example of a generic skill that applies in a wide range of

domains. Mathematics was the first. And the second? Grammar.

In all disciplines, a sentence needs to have a subject and a predicate in order to have a fixed or

specific meaning. Pronouns need to agree with nouns, or at least be employed in a context where

some sort of agreement can be assumed. The role of propositions is the same in geography as it

is in avionics, and they appear in the same places in sentences.

666 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking

p.708

Grammar, and language generally, are not a part of physics (or of any specialized discipline), but

physics cannot operate without them.

There is a close relationship between critical thinking and grammar. The formal "If A then B, A,

therefore B" maps to the linguistic structure of a language, and we express the condition in the

subjunctive sense (" if wishes were horses... ). Knowing how to form a sentence is part and parcel

of knowing how to reason. For this reason, a great deal of critical thinking revolves around

reading comprehension.

Another, broader, part of critical thinking involves the comprehension and criticism of larger

cognitive structures. here are generally thought to be four major types of structures (and favious

lesser structures, such as interrogation):

 Argumentation - the offering of reasons that lead to a conclusion

 Explanation - the identification of causes or reasons that something is the case (and

ultimately the basis for the scientific method)0

 Definition - the fixing of meanings of terms through reference, representation, ostension

or other means

 Description - the presentation of events and states of affairs, including attributions of

properties, categorizations, relations, and connections

Each of these operates in any given discipline (indeed, the absence of any of these four major

types of structures in a discipline is prima facie evidence that it is a pseudo-discipline).

Most critical thinking courses focus on argumentation, since the giving of reasons to believe a

conclusion is fundamental to pretty much any discipline (argumentation, for example, is always

offered in response to a question like 'what should I do?'). And the principles for evaluating

arguments do not vary from discipline to discipline.

That's not to say that every discipline is the same as every other. There are key differences

between disciplines. Some of the major differences include:

 what makes a question worth asking (and what questions are really worth asking).

 what facts are relevant to the resolution of problems and states of affairs

 what counts as evidence, and what makes a statement true or false

These are pretty big differences. Cavernous. These are what make the arguments offered by

Hendricks and Willingham seem so intuitive. Any time you need to know whether or not

something is true, you've gone outside the bounds of critical thinking, and entered into one or

another specific discipline.

p.709

And that takes us to the third major area of critical thinking: identifying errors or fallacies of

reasoning. And as you may suspect, you don't need to be an expert in a discipline to be able to

tell that an error of reasoning has been committed. These have been drawn up in various

guides, including one of my own 667, to the logical fallacies.

And here's the kicker: there are no disciplines in which any of these fallacies count as good

reasoning. The whole point of a fallacy is that it is not an error of fact or of evidence

(again, these are the things that are domain-specific). A fallacy is a common form of error (just

like failing to carry 668 is a common error in mathematics).

It takes skill to identify and correct logical fallacies. If you have domain knowledge you will be

better at it in a specific domain, but even if you have no domain knowledge, you can avoid the

consequences of some of the more egregious errors. Invalid syllogisms, misrepresentation of

information, distortion of data - all these are errors in all disciplines, and can be spotted by

amateurs and experts alike.

The teaching of critical thinking equips students with essential core skills that are needed in any

discipline, based on principles that are as fundamental as mathematics and language (indeed, for

the purists, you can read an argument shoring that they are all in fact the same things 669).

Like the teaching of any discipline, it requires not so much the presentation of facts and

principles as it does the application of these principles in varied and authentic environments. And

like mathematics, the teaching of critical thinking can be adapted to a student's existing

knowledge, developing skills and abilities that will be useful - and transferable - to much more

complex disciplines in later life.

Ottawa, Canada

December 14, 2016

667 http://www.fallacies.ca/

668 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carry_(arithmetic)

669 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/principia-mathematica/

p.710

Wiley’s Misguided Advocacy

David Wiley once again launches670 into advocacy for the CC-by license. We've been through this many times, so I'll keep it relatively brief. His text is italicized.

> There is a growing consensus among those who work in open education that the Creative

Commons Attribution (BY) License671 is our preferred license.

No there isn't. The list of organizations hasn't grown over the years, and the number people from

this list remains stable.

> Since the first release of the Creative Commons licenses, newcomers to the field have been

attracted to licenses containing the non-commercial (NC) condition.

There's a whole paragraph devoted to depicting advocates of the Non-Commercial license (NC)

as "newcomers". As if I am a newcomer. As if MIT's OpenCourseWare is a newcomer.

> The BY license best reflects our values of eliminating friction, maximizing interoperability, and

promoting unanticipated and innovative uses of OER.

>No one knows what the NC license condition means, including Creative Commons. The license

language is so vague that the only way to determine definitively whether a use is commercial or

not is to go to court and have a judge decide.

This vagueness is cited by proponents of CC-by but hasn't actually been a problem. There are

some good rules-of-thumb which can guide you:

- if you have to ask whether your use is a commercial use, it probably is

- if someone has to pay to access your resource, it probably is

> Example – I want to use some NC-licensed content in my course, but students can only attend

my course if they pay tuition. Is that a commercial use?

It's a commercial use if the only way people can access the resource is to pay you tuition. But if

the resource is free to access for everyone, it doesn't matter whether your students use it also.

670 http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/4818

671 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

p.711

> For would-be authors of NC-licensed content, the only way to resolve the confusion arising

from someone using your content in a way that you think is commercial but they think is non-

commercial is to lawyer up and send a cease and desist letter.

This isn't unique to the NC condition. It applies to all CC-licensed content. In practice, I find that

there has been more of a problem enforcing the attribution condition. But nobody has suggested

removing it on these grounds.

> The primary thing you gain by choosing a license that includes the NC condition ...

The primary benefit is that you prevent people from turning it into a commercial product and

selling it. There are numerous reasons why you may want to do this.

> Why would someone go to all the cost and effort involved in selling copies of your CC BY

licensed material (e.g., paying for ads to drive traffic to the site where they’re selling it) when

every copy will include instructions on where people can get the same material for free instead?

Because this access is often theoretical. Should the original ever disappear (or in the case of

OpenStax, should the URL ever change) there is no resourse; the user must pay for the resource.

Saying things like "there would be very little incentive..." creates a nice hypothetical, but we

have no way of knowing that there won't be an incentive. We've seen that large businesses can be

created out of very marginal returns, soour "very little incentive" is someone else's business plan.

> The CC BY language gives you practical protection from newcomers’ concern that some

interloper is going to make a million dollars from their work (even if it does not offer protection

against all theoretical possibilities).... This is why you don’t see Pearson, McGraw, or other

major publishers reselling copies of CC BY textbooks.

If we limit the example to textbooks, the statement is possibly true. However, publishers have

made millions selling out-of-copyright works, such as the classics of literature. Walt Disney

made a fortune by appropriating folklore and fairy stories and marketing them as Disney

property.

> The only counterexample I can offer to this line of argument, and it’s not a direct one, is

the CC BY simulations created by PhET672 . As I understand it, at least one major publisher includes PhET simulations in their offerings. The publisher doesn’t sell the simulations as a

product – I don’t think they could sell the simulations this way for the reasons I’ve described

above. But they do include the simulations as a “free extra” to make their textbooks or

courseware more attractive than those offered by other publishers.

672 http://phet.colorado.edu/

p.712

This sounds like exactly the sort of situation I would like to avoid.

And it's not nearly as rare as described here. Consider, for example, companies like

ResearchGate, which have slurped up all the open access publications they can find, and then

require that readers log in to read them, thus creating data they sell to advertisers and publishers.

> On the one hand, the faculty member you speak to may feel like this possibility represents a

lost opportunity to make some money.

I don't actually think this is what motivates supporters of NC. Mostly, people don't want their

work to become part of a commercial product that people would have to pay money to access.

> Personally, for the OER that I create, I want every learner in the world to use them –

regardless of which major resource (commercial or open textbook) their faculty have decided to

adopt. If publishers decide to throw my OER in as free extras with their textbooks or courseware,

that just decreases the amount of search engine optimization and other work I have to do to

make sure people know about the OER I’ve created. It’s free advertising for my OER.

It's the existence of commercial content that makes SEO and advertising a requirement. This

alone should be a reason to discourage CC-by. It shouldn't be necessary for us to have to

advertise open access content. It's a requirement only because commercial publishers want

to make sure readers cannot find the free content.

Most of us do not want to become entrepreneurs or publishers or whatever. We simply want to

share the work we've created. It's the commercial publishing system that makes that hard.

As always, I argue that people should adopt whatever license best suits their interests. I continue

to fail to understand why David Wiley doesn't respect that choice.

Ottawa, Canada

December 18, 2 017

p.713

My Workflow

I was thinking about working openly recently and decided to document my workflow, such as it

is. As you can see I need to devise a way to make my projects and courses more transparent.

There's also a PowerPoint version 673 of the image with working links. No HTML version, sorry.

Ottawa, Canada

December 19, 2017

673 http://www.downes.ca/files/workflow.pptx

p.714

Detecting Fake News

After the spate of fake news in circulation over the last year or so numerous guides have been

published to help you spot fake news. Unfortunately, few of them are effective.

The reason for this - which you can spot for yourself as you look at them - is that they tend to

focus on whether or not the source is authoritative. But to spot fake news, you need to focus on

whether the news is authoritative.

The reason for this - and again, you can verify this for yourself - is that the authorities lie.

Whether they're an old school newspaper, or just an old school, these days they all have a vested

interest. They want you to believe them.

So how do you cope? That's what this article is about.

First rule: Trust no one.

Start with this. Don't believe anything just because someone says so. It doesn't matter who they

are. Don't even trust me. Read this article sceptically.

It's not that there's nobody to trust. The problem is, you don't know who they are, and you don't

know how far to trust them. Trust is something that has to be earned.

You can't trust someone simply because they have a degree or a collar or a title. You can't trust

them simply because they own a newspaper or a corporation.

It's not that they're all untrustworthy. Many people - maybe even most people - are upstanding

citizens and will tell the truth most of the time. But some won't. And the problem is, you don't

know which is which. Not at first.

Second rule: Look for the evidence.

Much of what you are presented can be discounted based on this one rule alone. If the author or

the teller does not present you with a reason to believe, you shouldn't believe it.

What counts as a reason to believe? Quite a few things, happily. There isn't a simple list.

Different things will carry different weight. Here are some examples:

- verification. This means you can see your yourself that something is the case. If I say the house

burned down last night, you can verify this by going to the house and looking for yourself. In the

first three paragraphs of this article you can see to examples - I'm inviting you to verify

something for yourself.

- replication. A lot of things can't be directly verified, or can only be verified after it's too late.

But they're the sort of things that can be tested, and the test comes out the same way. Science

p.715

works on this principle. If someone says they have produced cold fusion, they should be able to

produce cold fusion again.

- confirmation. If something is true, then something else should be true. If it rains, the sidewalk

gets wet. That's how you know rain is made of water. You can confirm this by looking out the

window and predicting that the sidewalk will be wet. Successful predictions count as

confirmation, and give you a reason to believe 'rain is made of water' is true.

- falsification. What makes confirmation work is that the predictions must be falsifiable. If the

sidewalk bubbled and melted when it rained, then you would know it wasn't made of water.

Acid, maybe. So something is confirmed only if it can be falsified. If there is no way a prediction

could be wrong, then the prediction proves nothing.

These are all forms of direct evidence. The advantage is that they're solid. Do them right, and

you have good reasons to believe. But the disadvantage is that they require personal

involvement. You can't go to Syria to check things out for yourself. Prediction and falsification

give you some reach, but they still depend on direct evidence at some point.

Plus, these four principles are hard to get right. There are numerous ways to get them wrong.

Thus, you need to add another rule.

Third rule: Avoid error.

Avoiding error is partially a matter of knowledge and skill, and partially a matter of ordinary

prudence and caution. There are numerous errors you can make - I list many f them in my Guide

to the Logical Fallacies - but you don't have to be an expert to avoid common sense errors.

Here are some of the major sources of error:

- prediction. We make predictions using logic and mathematics. Logic and mathematics are skills

that can be learned (and verified directly for accuracy). You can't fake this; you have to do the

work. Deduction, induction, calculation, probability - get them right and you've eliminated a

huge percentage of the errors other people make.

- precision. Being precise is a virtue. If you are predicting something, then measuring the result,

you need to be sure you're measuring the same thing you are predicting. Vague terms (like

'knowledge', 'value', etc) are difficult to evaluate. Non-standard units of measurement ('serving',

'car length') cannot be measured. If there are sources, are the sources named?

- relevance. It's easy to become distracted from the subject at hand.It's important to focus on the

message, not the messenger. It's important to focus on whether something is true or false, not

why or why not you want it to be true.

- perspective. We are fooled by our senses. We think we see the whole truth when we only see

part of it. We live within a world view that shapes our perceptions and affects our judgement.

p.716

Did we see a tiger in the bush, or just black and orange stripes? It's easy to jump to conclusions

through bias and prejudice.

Take your time. Don't jump to conclusions; evaluate the evidence. Even if you are not an expert

in reasoning or perspective, be aware that these are sources of error. Practice making your own

inferences and predictions.

Fourth rule: Take names.

You are finally in a position where you can begin to trust others. After all, the proposition that

someone is trustworthy is just another fact about the world you can learn for yourself.

Use the four mechanisms above to assess the trustworthiness of people:

- trust. How do they reach their beliefs? Do they careful observe and weigh the evidence, or do

they tend to believe rumours and innuendo? Are they swayed by certain people or do they make

up their own mind?

- evidence. Do they provide you with reasons to believe? Do they describe what they're seen for

themselves clearly? Have you caught them lying or misrepresenting the truth? Is it the sort of

thing you could have seen, had you been there? Do they have a track record of making good

predictions (that could have been wrong)?

- errors. Do they avoid errors? To the best of your ability, can you determine whether they reason

correctly, whether they use language clearly and directly, whether they stay on topic and talk

about ideas, not people? Can they separate their own interests from the facts, and keep

perspective?

- trust. Do they themselves have a network of people they can trust? Are they trusted by other

people you can trust?

Final rule: Diversify.

No matter how careful you are, you can still be misled. It happens all the time - people make

honest mistakes, they overlook factors they should have considered, or something may be hidden

from view.

Never depend on just one source - not even your own eyes.The first thing you should do is to ask

someone else, "do you see this too?"

This is what good newspapers do. They get the same information from multiple sources, and

don't publish it unless they have multiple sources. When the reporter says an interview said

something to them, they have an editor call the person back and confirm that they actually did

say this. At least - they used to do these things.

p.717

In a conflict, learn from both sides. That doesn't mean both sides are equally trustworthy - but

without learning from both sides, you'd never be in a position to evaluate this. Get multiple

points of view, if you can.

Remember - the truth isn't "in the middle". Don't treat all sides equally if they're not all

trustworthy.

That's it! Yes, we could explore each of these subjects in more depth, and as someone serious

about detecting fake news, you should. There are no shortcuts - you need to study and practice.

Casselman, Canada

December 29, 2016

p.718

Open Learning in the Future

Published as Open Learning in the Future in FutuOER November 2, 2016.

This morning Dan Colman updated his master list of free and open courses from top universities,

a list that now includes 1200 courses and roughly 40,000 hours of audio and video instruction.

(Colman, 2016) This is actually only a small percentage of the tens of thousands of learning

resources available freely and openly on the internet.

To get a sense of the depth and breadth of free and open online learning resources, look at

YouTube coverage of the Stirling Engine (also known as the external combustion engine). As of

today, I count 154,000 results. (YouTube) These are not advertisements or spam – they are

individual contributions raging from ‘Jim Tangeman's wood fired Stirling engine powered

tractor’ to ‘Homemade Stirling Watts Beam Engine, Hot Air Engine’ (“this is something I’ve

been working on for five months,” says the author). (Knight, 2014)

The question we face is no longer whether we will live in a world of free and open learning

resources, but rather, one of what that world will look like. We will produce these resources,

what will they look like, how will we sustain their production, how will people find resources

and how will they use them? None of these questions has a simple answer, and each offers

several possibilities for a future of open learning.

Who Will Produce?

As suggested by the Dan Colman article, we might suspect that open learning resources will be

produced by educational institutions. That’s part of the thinking behind the initial roll-out of

MOOC companies like Coursera and Udacity, and part of the plan behind things like lecture

capture software.

But educational institutions will find their traditional role challenged. Non-educational

institutions are entering the learning resources market and offering courses and programs of their

own, many of them free and open. Today, “The World Bank, PwC, and Fundação Lemann offer

MOOCs on Coursera. Microsoft, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, and the

Inter-American Development Bank all offer MOOCs on edX.” (Lequerica, 2016) These courses

exist not to make money but to serve other business interests: to sell advertising, to promote a

product, or to enhance recruitment.

Finally, individuals and communities are producing innumerable resources. This may be the

largest area of growth in the future as the technology for creating compelling video and

multimedia becomes increasingly affordable and usable. A person living in Ottawa who wants to

p.719

learn beekeeping, for example, can find resources from the Ontario Beekeepers’ Association, the

Toronto Beekeepers’ Collective, and Gees Bees Honey Company. (YouTube, 2016)

What Will Resources Look Like?

The traditional approach suggests that open online learning will consist of courses. While

courses may well persist (there are occasions where a linear, focused and deep study into a

subject continues to be a good idea) they are occupying a smaller and smaller space in open

online learning.

As the connectivist MOOCs started in 2008 demonstrated, even the structure of courses may

change. As opposed to the traditional format of a series of lectures offered by a leading

academic, contemporary online courses are clusters of short and focused learning resources,

often videos, linked together with a web of narrative, interaction, activities and assessments.

Where these elements are not provided by the course provider they are created by the course-

taking community.

Indeed, a lot of open online courses resources will be non-digital. When we offered open online

courses participants used Meetup to create local in-person groups. Although organized digitally,

community-based groups meet in person. We are seeing a proliferation of such groups, whether

or not affiliated with courses. A person living in Ottawa, for example, could find any number of

free and local learning activities. (Meetup, 2016)

Online discussion groups, mailing lists, and other forms of community have continued to thrive

and prosper. While many of these occupy sites like Facebook and Google Groups, many others

have created their own web presence. Low-cost web hosting is widely available and free and

open source software, such as Drupal and WordPress, makes this accessible to the wider

community.

How Will They Be Sustained?

Proponents of free and open learning resources are constantly challenged to produce a ‘business

model’ for MOOCs or some other technology, for example, by Alex Usher. (Usher, 2016) This

may be needed for resources that cost thousands of dollars to create. “The problem is there’s no

revenue model here… 35 million users, with a 3% conversion rate, at $50 per user, and you’ve

got a grand total of $52.5 million in total revenue. Over five years.”

Such a scenario presumes that the costs of open online learning would (and should) be borne

entirely by the learner. But as the scenarios above suggest, other agencies will have legitimate

reasons to pay for open online learning, especially in the form of inexpensive resources (as

opposed to expensive formal courses). Numerous examples already exist.

p.720

Future open learning resources and opportunities will be offered by government agencies to

promote positive role models, to encourage compliance with legislation, to inform citizens of

rights and obligations, and to support services such as voting and registration. Companies will

offer training to their own employees and potential recruits, support products with free learning

and promote literacy and other programs. Community groups will offer events, seminars,

meetings and resources related to their areas of interest.

Formal learning will be less and less focused on resources – which will be available to everyone

– and much more focused on activities. Tuition will pay for materials, environmental support and

equipment, and professional assistance (often on an as-needed basis).

How Will People Find Resources?

In a world with an abundance of resources they won’t be difficult to find per se but selecting the

appropriate resource for the task may pose a considerable challenge. One of the primary learning

skills will be the selection and evaluation of resources.

Learners today face a similar challenge selecting college and university programs. Of course

financial constraints prevail – most people can’t choose Harvard, for example – in traditional

university choice. Otherwise, studies seem to show that distance (as opposed to say academic

rank) plays the most important role. (Drewes & Michael, 2006)

As finding learning resources becomes more and more difficult on Google (partially because of

the number of resources, and partially because of the proliferation of sponsored listings and

search-engine optimization) a similar factor will prevail online. The ‘distance’ of a resource from

a potential recipient can be considered a function of the relation between that person and one of

their friends of friends who has used (and would recommend) the resource.

The purpose of connectivist open online courses is that it reduces that distance in a manageable

way. The purpose of the course isn’t to create a thread of instruction, but rather to help people

interested in a topic discover and recommend resources to each other, creating a local and

temporary network linking events, groups and communities, and videos and activities.

How Will Resources Be Used

Traditional education is centered around the amassing of knowledge in a particular discipline in a

series of courses that cumulates in the awarding of a degree or certificate. Many of the structures

and discussions of open online learning (for example, OERu) base based on this model; see, for

example, the Taylor ‘logic model’. (Taylor, 2007) Thus we may see people predict open

credentials, open assessment and open course articulation (for transfer of credit) focused on

qualifications and competencies.

p.721

It is likely that in the short term at least an economy of sorts based on these credentials will be

developed and possibly backed by a cryptographical framework such as blockchain. But over

time, I think, this will be overtaken by a mechanism of personal reputation that is backed by

evidence of achievements instead of credentials, where by ‘achievements’ we mean artifacts and

accomplishments that can be inspected directly rather than through the proxy of an educational

institution.

To support their employment and other objectives, people will create open learning resources.

These resources are direct evidence of their own learning. Often these resources will be produced

cooperatively. An excellent example of such a model is open source software. We also people

become leading figures in their own communities by providing help and assistance. A person’s

standing in their professional community will be their educational credential.

The resources will be used, therefore, as much by the people who create them as by the people

who follow in their footsteps. These resources will continue to be of use on an occasional and

informal basis by browsers, but the major educational activity supported by an open educational

resource may have taken place during its creation. What remains has a stigmergic effect, creating

a path for others to follow.

Colman, D. (2016, September 29). Open Culture. Retrieved from A Master List of 1,200 Free Courses

From Top Universities: 40,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures: http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/a-

master-list-of-1200-free-courses-from-top-universities.html

Drewes, T., & Michael, C. (2006). How Do Students Choose a University. Research in Higher Education.

Knight, G. (2014, Junr 7). YouTube. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from Homemade Stirling Watts Beam

Engine, Hot Air Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3MSX9KEwnQ

Lequerica, A. (2016, September 4). What Do Forbes, NYT, And Sotheby’s Have In Common? They Make

Online Courses. Retrieved from Class Central.

Meetup. (2016). Ottawa. Retrieved 29 September, 2016, from Meetup:

https://www.meetup.com/ottawa/

Taylor, J. C. (2007, October). Open Courseware Futures: Creating a Parallel Universe. e-Journal of

Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST), 10(1).

Usher, A. (2016, September 22). Higher Education Strategy Associates. Retrieved from MOOCs at Five:

http://higheredstrategy.com/moocs-at-five/

YouTube. (2016). Beekeeping. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from YouTube:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=beekeeping&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=yy7tV7ikBcPZe8Kxnhg

YouTube. (n.d.). Stirling Web Search Results. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22stirling+engine%22

p.722

Ottawa, Canada

September 29, 2016

p.723

Is Technology Making Us Smarter? Yes!

This Column published as Is Technology Making Us Smarter? Yes in The Costco

Connection Volume 30, Number 4 15 Jul 03, 2017.

To understand the ways technology is making us smarter in 2017, let’s examine the ways we are

told technology is making us less intelligent.

- One study says “Using digital platforms such as tablets and laptops for reading may make you

more inclined to focus on concrete details rather than interpreting information more

abstractly.”674

This is because when we use digital technology to communicate with people around the world,

we realize that few generalizations are actually true, and we’re less inclined to leap to them.

- Another study says we tend to scan digital media rather than reading articles from beginning to

end.675

This means we are reading more efficiently. Instead of simply consuming content, we are

making judgements as we read. Because reading takes so much less effort, we can look at many

things and focus in on the ones we want.

- Digital media encourages multitasking, which a UCLA study tells us makes it more difficult to

learn and remember.676

Becoming better at multitasking makes us more able to adapt and thrive in a complex

environment. Learning isn’t simply about consuming content remembering it; it’s developing the

skill to keep one’s eyes and ears open and to recognize and react instantly, even if we’re doing

something else.

674 Digital media may be changing how you think. Science Daily.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160508151944.htm

675 How Little Do Users Read? Jakob Nielson. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/

676 Don’t Talk to a Friend While Reading This. UCLA. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Don-t-Talk-to-a-Friend-

While-Reading-7212

p.724

- Our use of technology is changing our brain so that we become less deep and contemplative

when we use digital media, says another report.677

This is called ‘plasticity’ and is one of the key advantages humans have over animals, which

must rely on instinct. Instead of simply learning by remembering, we learn to learn quickly and

efficiently.

Yes, we think and learn differently when we use technology. But we become less set in our

ways, more able to adapt to changing information, and more able to make judgements. These are

all ways of being smarter, not less able.

Ottawa, Canada

January 29, 2017

677 The Internet May Be Changing Your Brain In Ways You’ve Never Imagined. Carolyn Gregoire, Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/internet-changing-brain-nicholas-carr_us_5614037de4b0368a1a613e96

p.725

We Are Not Agreed

A few days ago University Ventures authored a piece 678in response to a post from the New America Foundation comparing 679 Republicans who defend for-profit colleges to climate change deniers. The unattributed University Ventures article argues "this piece re-fights

yesterday’s war... the many challenges and opportunities facing higher education lend

themselves to bipartisan consensus – perhaps more than any other area of public policy."

Bipartisanship is of course a U.S. phenomenon. But it is worth noting that there are many things

U.S. lawmakers agree upon that are opposed in corners around the world. I find myself

frequently occupying those corners, and today is no exception. So, setting aside the for-profit

colleges debate for another day, I'd like to take the time to point to the points where I disagree

with what is taken to the the emerging consensus.

The text in italics is their contention; what follows is my response.

1. Completion is the most powerful lever

The author makes the very reasonable point that "drop rates approaching 50% at many four-year

institutions and 80% at many two-year colleges" represents a failure of traditional post-

secondary institution, and responds that "there’s no 'free college' silver bullet to the complex

completion challenge."

But completion is not the powerful lever that drives everything else; it is the pointless anchor that

weighs everything down. It is becoming increasingly untenable to stop everything in your life to

complete four or eight years of studies, especially when the mechanisms for delivering that

education are increasingly inefficient and expensive.

Indeed, completion would be irrelevant as a lever were it not for the mechanism of granting

recognition only at the end of the four or eight year program. To be sure, students value those

degrees and diplomas. They have no choice; there's no other way to earn recognition for their

learning.

As recognition becomes more distributed, however, we will see other more fundamental levers

emerge: the requirement that learning be relevant, that it help us solve problems, that it support

networking and collaboration, and that respect our personal interests and abilities.

678 http://universityventures.com/publications.php?title=inaugural-edition

679 https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/gop/

p.726

2. Bachelor’s degree “addiction” is hurting students

The author argues that "it takes a Candide-like idealist to continue to insist that a bachelor's

degree is the optimal or only path to establishing the core cognitive and non-cognitive executive

function skills that lead to successful white collar careers."

The disagreement here is not whether we're questioning the relevance of the Bachelor's degree. It

is actually rather more subtle than that.

First, this second point can be seen as code for "we need to restrict the number of people

admitted into Bachelor's programs," with the idea that alternative schools - trade schools,

business skills schools, etc. - would emerge to pick up the slack. We see this in the allusion to

"successful white collar careers", which already assumes the separation between advanced

education and trades. The idea here is that white collar workers are the new tradespeople. But

returning universities to their original position of offering education to the elite is not what I

would consider a progressive step forward.

Second, this second point continues to carry the presumption that the point of education is to lead

you step by step toward a future career. We see this in phrasing like "optimal or only path". The

presumption that education amounts to preparation should be challenged. This may be one

function of education, but it is not the only one, nor even the most important one. There's no end

to the stories about students being 'prepared' for a future that no longer exists. Education should

be addressed toward capability, not preparation.

3. Colleges need to do much more to help graduates get great jobs.

The author's point here is that colleges and universities "must ensure students are equipped with

the technical skills employers increasingly require for entry-level positions." The idea of colleges

and universities being preparation for the employment, whether for one's first job or eventual

career, is anathema to many. From my perspective it's not a matter of faith but of common sense:

chasing after "what employers want" is a mugs' game you can never win, and is increasingly

irrelevant in a world where you make your own employment.

First of all, if employers want certain outcomes from our education system, then why don't they

pay for that themselves, rather than requiring governments and students to pay for it?

Second, if employers want certain outcomes from the system, why don't they hire on that basis,

rather than on (among other things) college pedigree, connections and friends, biases and

stereotypes, proximity, and willingness to work for lower wages?

Third, employers lobby for certain outcomes from the education system - computing science

grads, nursing students, engineers, etc. - in order to drive down labour costs. Why should any of

us support a mechanism that actually reduces our negotiating position in the marketplace?

p.727

What about that New America survey 680 showing that the reason students enroll is "to improve employment opportunities (91%); to make more money (90%); and to get a good job (89%)"?

When you read the survey, you find it is "an online survey of 1,011 U.S. residents ages 16-40,

who were largely prospective college students." So this reflects the sales pitch, but does it reflect

the reality?

Colleges and universities - indeed, all of education - should help students become self-sufficient.

That's what the elite programs do. That's what they should all do.

4. Employers bear much of the blame

We can certainly agree with the author that "Opaque Applicant Tracking Systems and imprecise

job descriptions have turned getting in front of a human hiring manager into a 'rigged' game. And

"campus-based recruitment at a select number of schools" merely reinforces this perception.

Employers (and banks, and venture capitalists) aren't looking for qualifications in new

employees; they know that the right person can always adapt to the needs of the position,

especially entry-level positions. They are looking for the right pedigree.

That's why the proposed 'agreed upon' solution won't work, and indeed distracts from the core

issues. Here's what the author suggests: "utilizing new People Analytics technologies to identify

competencies that are predictive of success, incorporating these skills into job descriptions, and

proactively searching among passive job seekers and current students will become a competitive

advantage for farsighted employers." Nonsense.

If it accomplishes anything at all, identifying competencies will fit only short-term positions for

specific tasks. As a mechanism for long term employment and career-readiness, competencies

will prove to be an unmitigated failure. Employers will care about a few very general core

competencies (can they speak and write reasonably well (and without an accent), do they know

the jargon of the field, can they work with other people (and especially our team), do they dress

well and bathe themselves, have they done this kind of thing before, are they connected?).

Should it be this way? Of course not. I too would like to see "a shift from degree- and pedigree-

based hiring to competency-based hiring... while also increasing workforce diversity." But

changing the way we educate people won't accomplish this result. Much broader social changes

are needed, not just in the U.S. (where they are engaged in a political struggle over this point) but

also around the world.

5. Accountability shouldn’t start and end with for-profit colleges

680 https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/collegedecisions/

p.728

The author argues that "if we can agree on desired and measurable outcomes... while for-profit

schools may need to be held to a higher standard given the potential for abuse, there’s zero logic

in letting traditional colleges off the hook entirely." This is based on the dubious premise that

traditional colleges ever were "off the hook", which is demonstrably false. In the U.S., there are

numerous federal, regional and occupational accreditation bodies. 681 In Canada, colleges and universities are accredited by provincial governments. Other countries have similar requirements.

What the author's argument glosses over is that the existing set of regulatory bodies hasn't been

nearly enough to accommodate corruption in the private sector. The profit motive in education

(as in health, as in justice, as in government...) creates incentive for dishonesty that doesn't exist

in an environment where dishonesty doesn't provide financial rewards.

Nor is accountability itself any guarantee of appropriate behaviour. The U.S. is one of the most

regulated economies in the world, yet conflicts-of-interest converts much of that regulation into

tools to protect existing markets and to cater to specific lobbies and entrenches interests. I just

referenced an article the other day showing how pizza has been classified as a vegetable 682 in U.S. school lunches.

Education is better viewed as a profession with core ethics - akin to medicine, law, accounting,

ect. - than an industry depending on legislation and accountability to constrain fraudulent

behaviour. That means that the core objective of education has to be something other than the

pursuit of profit, otherwise the only ethic is (as it is in the financial service industry) the bottom

line.

6. Outcomes should be about “distance traveled”

This is the author's "pizza is a vegetable" moment. "When we measure outcomes, we need to

ensure we’re not focusing on metrics that correlate entirely with inputs, but rather on 'value

added' by the institution to students."

On the surface the intuition is sound: "providing extra points to institutions with a demonstrated

track record of enrolling low SES students and producing strong education and employment

results."

On the one hand, this simply replaces one form of institutional cheating with another one.

Instead of denying admission to low SES students, the focus turns to 'force marching' them along

predefined paths (think: 'special education for poor people'). And because the only measure is

681 https://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/agencies.aspx

682 http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/school-lunch/

p.729

'distance traveled', it remains acceptable to produce graduates who are unqualified in terms of

competencies and skills, and in addition bereft of self-management or self-sufficiency skills.

On the other hand, the representation of education as a 'path' is itself fundamentally misguided.

I've talked about the weakness of the path metaphor 683 in the past. And I've talked about the key requirement that educators prepare people not to be followers, but to be explorers.

7. Technology is key to improving learning

The gist of the author's argument here is that technology can make the delivery of instruction

more efficient. There is a nod to the idea of better outcomes, but the emphasis is on more

productive delivery of existing outcomes (and of reducing or limiting educational faculty

salaries).

We see this in the reference to the Baumol effect, 684 "a rise of salaries in jobs that have experienced no increase of labor productivity," which is part of the jargon of the productivity

movement. As Wikipedia (correctly) explains it, "Baumol's cost disease is often used to describe

consequences of the lack of growth in productivity in the quaternary sector of the economy and

public services, such as public hospitals and state colleges. Since many public administration

activities are heavily labor-intensive, there is little growth in productivity over time because

productivity gains come essentially from a better capital technology."

So the point that is 'agreed upon' here is that, in education, human labour can (finally!) be

replaced with technology to improve productivity and achieve outcomes more efficiently (where,

as we've seen above, outcomes will be measured in 'distance traveled' toward 'competencies'

which result in 'employment outcomes').

This may be how education is viewed from the outside, from a corporate, financial and perhaps

political perspective, but few people actually employed in education view it this way. Oh sure,

we'd like to see our graduates get jobs and succeed economically. But we like to see this as the

result of the student's efforts, not as something we merely provided for them. We see it as the

capability, growth and self-sufficiency we've provided, rather than as the terminus of our own

efforts in the field.

So technology plays a very different role in education than it plays for people

talking about education. Technology increases the capacities of educators and helps them focus

on the hands-on tasks (which they're never really had time for before) while automating the

things that can be automated. Technology held address many of the needless expenses associated

683 http://www.downes.ca/presentation/384

684 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease

p.730

with education - like content and content delivery, records management, unwanted and unneeded

courses, etc) - and to focus on the real and present needs of students.

The objective here isn't 'efficiency', though it's easy to see why outsiders cast in in this light.

It's precision - being able to target our work where it will do the most good for the greatest

number of people. Precision isn't simply a matter of hitting a target more often than not (that's

efficiency). It's hitting the right target, at the right time, in the right way.

8. Assessments are needed to save the liberal arts

The author's argument here is that students (especially poorer students) have been increasingly

turning to "pre-professional degrees" like business, healthcare, education, and technology while

turning away from the liberal arts, and that unless schools can actually document the outcomes of

liberal arts programs, they "will be increasingly a plaything for rich kids (who’ll use connections

to get good first jobs, so it doesn’t matter what they study)."

My own education qualified as liberal arts. I majored in philosophy but took strong

concentrations in the sciences, history and geography, and religious studies. As I've often said,

there was a sign on the wall in the University of Calgary Philosophy Department warning student

not to expect employment as a consequence of a philosophy degree. Despite taking out the

maximum in students loans (totaling $25K in 1980s dollars) I didn't care.

Why not? The 1980s were recession years in Canada, and having spent time in

industry before my university education I could see first-hand the fallacy of believing that a

specific university program would get me a job. It didn't really matter which degree I had; they

were looking only for the persistence and tenacity (and wealth and upbringing) that

having any four-year degree demonstrated.

And also, I lived in Canada, and we don't starve in the streets just because we're unemployed. I

knew that, and I knew that no matter what happened (as I often said at the time) "they can't take

my education away from me". Not that they didn't try - the Universities withheld transcripts and

collection agencies destroyed my credit. But they couldn't take the knowledge back out of my

head - all they did is to create a healthy scepticism and distrust of institutions.

Societies that truly want to 'save the liberal arts' will derisk the pursuit of them. It's not a question

of documenting outcomes - the benefits of studying grammar, logic, communications,

mathematics, the arts and astronomy are actually pretty self-evident. No really successful person

has succeeded without them (even Steve Jobs talks about how important the study of

p.731

calligraphy 685 was to him). When students take pre-professional degrees, they are saying, in effect, "maybe later, it's too risky now".

9. Follow the money

The author writes, "colleges and universities get paid no matter what." As with some of their

previous premises, this is demonstrably false. Colleges close all the time - in the U.S. the 10 year

average 686 is five a year. Look at the struggles 687 faced by the University of Phoenix over the last year or so. Look at the decades of declining state funding 688 for institutions in the U.S. The story is told in other institutions in other countries. It is simply false that "colleges and

universities get paid no matter what".

The author uses this premise to argue that 'we are agreed' that "the federal government has two

choices: it can condition funding on outcomes (à la Gainful Employment) or require schools to

put 'skin in the game'" in the form of "risk capital" for each and every student. Forcing

institutions to bet on students' future financial prospects would certainly change institutional

behaviour. But not for the better. It would convert 'education' into 'venture capitalism'.

I won't get into the problems with this approach in detail. It suffices for the purposes of this post

to point out that there is scarcely unanimity behind the proposition that education is

fundamentally an economic activity that should be financed the way we finance business and

industry. But this sort of perspective should not be surprising coming from 'university ventures'.

After all, there's money to be made in 'student IPOs'.

10. Colleges are worth saving (especially the one you attended!)

The author's point is exactly the opposite of the bullet point: "we don’t have enough resources to

save every college (or, for that matter, to discharge every student loan)." The point is essentially

that not every college can be saved and not every student can be funded. We should "avoid the

myopia" that sees our own college as something that "represents the apex of civilization."

685 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/03/08/the-trappist-monk-whose-

calligraphy-inspired-steve-jobs-and-influenced-apples-designs/

686 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/28/moodys-predicts-college-closures-triple-2017

687 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/28/moodys-predicts-college-closures-triple-2017

688 http://www.chronicle.com/interactives/statesupport

p.732

It's true. Colleges rise, colleges fall. Civilizations rise, civilizations fall. Even Plato's Academy 689

shut down after a successful 300 year run (or 800 year run, depending on who you talk to).

But there's a difference between observing that colleges and civilizations fail and arguing that we

should just stop supporting them. What we should be doing is to preserve the good that these

institutions provide society rather than giving up on the enterprise wholesale. A company can be

happy to sell its legacy to the highest bidder. A society should not. Yes, there are "natural limits"

to almost everything, but this does not constitute an argument for being the agent that applies

them.

It's not a question of whether or not colleges and universities are "worth saving". To view the

question in such terms is to treat them merely as economic entities and assessing them against

their financial value. But they are just vessels.

What we have, in societies around the world, is a millennia-old legacy of educational institutions

as stewards and purveyors of our collective wisdom not as an engine of employment or

economic development, but as the reason employment and economic development exist.

In a sense, the role played by the educational system in society is the same as the role played by

an education in an individual. It may result in income and employment, but that is not

the purpose behind it. It is to help us not only adapt to the winds of chance and fortune but to rise

above them, to create our own place in the world as free and fully realized beings, to flourish in

every sense of the word.

That's not something a venture capitalist will invest in. But it's something each one of us lives

for, each and every day.

Ottawa, Canada

February 15, 2017

689 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy

p.733

p.734

How We Know

In my view, knowledge is a subjective feel, but there's a nice story behind it.

The subjective feel appears circular: I say that I know when I can't not know.

The story lies in the cause of this subjective feel: to know is to recognize.

Recognition is involuntary, hence the modality of 'can't not know'. It is also non-grounded. The

subjective feel is the knowledge.

It's like recognizing a person. Your mother walks through the train station and you pick her out

of the crowd. This recognition is not based on any particular rule or principle, not based on any

essential features, not based on any inferential process.

Yes, you could be mistaken in the train station - an alien disguised as your mother may have

appeared instead. But your knowledge is not at fault. You know what your mother looks like;

that's where your certainty lies.

Recognition is a property of neural networks, and this is what explains why you recognize, why

it's involuntary, and why it's not based on any rule or principle.

Your previous experiences seeing your mother have over time resulted in the growth of an

associated pattern of connectivity in your neural network (ie., in your brain, ie., in you).

When a person with the appearance of your mother is presented to you this pattern is activated. It

is automatic and involuntary. This pattern in turn activates associated patterns. Hence: mother!

The pattern is subsymbolic; the brain is not a physical symbol system. Hence, no rules or

principles, nor either models or representations.

The neural network part of the story, note, is an *explanation* of how we know, and not the

justification for it or evidence for that knowledge.

Ottawa, Canada

April 22, 2017

p.735

p.736

On Rights and Religious Liberty

Without commenting on the particular events in U.S. politics that give rise to these issues, I want

to consider the argument that it is reasonable to allow religiously-based schools to discriminate.

Here is the argument advanced in a column from Michael J. Petrilli690, and it's a good argument: Just as we wouldn’t expect a Montessori school to hire teachers who aren’t trained in, or

committed to, the Montessori method, we wouldn’t expect a Christian school to hire

teachers who are not committed to the Christian faith. The same holds true for Jewish

schools, Muslim schools, and those of other faiths.

This is a premise that can be accepted. I'm not saying that I would endorse it personally, but the

premise is certainly defensible, and I can imagine a reasonable person holding this view.

As I've documented before691, there was a case in my own history when I was asked to please not return to Vacation Bible School because it was pretty clear I didn't have faith. I understood that

request, and we amicably parted ways.

So why wouldn't this work for the school system? Why, in particular, wouldn't it work in a

school voucher system, as suggested in this article? Petrilli suggests this line of reasoning:

There is great value to all Americans in preserving and promoting a pluralistic school

system that allows schools to come in all shapes, sizes, and moral codes, and that

empowers families to find schools that match their own values and educational priorities.

I've written about this as well.692 Diversity is a strength. School boards should enable students with different wants and needs to attend different types of schools. I am comfortable with

schooling that is based in religion. It's not for me, of course, but neither is hockey school.

So, abstracting from the hot-button issue of religion in schools, what can we make of the

argument in its more general form to the effect that different types of schools can and should

focus on different types of needs and methods, and that this necessarily means excluding some

teachers and some students from them?

690 http://educationnext.org/school-vouchers-lgbtq-rights-religious-liberty/

691 http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2006/10/that-group-feeling.html

692 http://www.downes.ca/post/44259

p.737

This is on the face of it pretty reasonable. You wouldn't enroll a non-dancer into dance school,

and yet we have schools for young dancers in Canada. It would be absurd to close them.

So where does the Petrilli argument break down? It's in the difference between the public system

and a system funded by vouchers.

In a voucher system, where schooling is offered by private providers, when a person (whether

non-religious, or gay or lesbian, or whatever) is excluded, then the education of that person

becomes someone else's problem.

It's not simply that the voucher school provides specialized learning, it's that it takes no

responsibility for those outside the special group of students it serves (and teachers it hires).

When a publicly funded school system, by contrast, offers specialized schooling - be it sports-

focused, religious-focused or Montessori-focused - it automatically assumes the responsibility to

offer an education to those students not thusly specialized.

Education is a social responsibility.

That's why people without children (like me!) pay taxes to support education. We pay not just to

support our own children, but to support all children in our society. The need for this is clear: if

the only people who paid for education were people who had children in school, then few people

could pay for education.

Too often the proponents of voucher systems turn their back on that responsibility. What do we

do about a person who has a voucher but no school? How have we addressed this person's need?

A proponent of a voucher school for one type of person has by that fact a responsibility to

provide a school for the other type of person.

And this brings us back to discrimination.

It is reasonable to support a school based on certain values and principles. But it is not

reasonable to deny the same degree of support for people without those values and principles.

Not just equivalent services: but equivalent community, and sociality, and acceptance.

You don't get to exclude people from society. You don't get to exclude those people who are not

like you or your children from all the comforts and benefits of society. Especially children:

excluding children is a cruel form of abuse.

The more you wish to exclude a certain sort of person from a school, the more you have a

responsibility to welcome them in your home.

Casselman, Canada

June 6, 2017

p.738

Open Learning, Open Networks

Publication forthcoming in Distance Education in China.

Abstract

Open online learning entered the mainstream with the growth and popularity of MOOCs, but

while interest in open online courses has never been greater MOOCs represent only the first step

in a broader open learning infrastructure. Adapted from a talk given March 9, 2017, at the State

University of New York in Syracuse, this essay describes several key innovations shaping the

future of open learning: distributed social networks, cloud infrastructures and virtualization,

immersive reality, and personal learning environments. It outlines the challenges this evolving

model will pose to learning providers and educational institutions and recommend policies and

processes to meet them.

Keywords

MOOC, Personal Learning, Social Networks, Cloud Infrastructure, Virtual Reality, Artificial

Intelligence

Preliminaries: Openness

Downtown Syracuse. Photo: Stephen Downes

p.739

In the centre of the city of Syracuse, New York, there is a scene that represents openness for me,

musical instruments that anybody can play. You've got the mallets there. I can just imagine,

when it's warmer, people coming to the center of the city just jamming on those things and

making all kinds of noise. I would love to see it.

I have three examples of openness from this talk:

First, from an earlier presentation that I saw, everything was up on Google Docs, and anyone

could edit it. I decided to copy that; it’s at http://bit.ly/2n3bptm. I have the different slides and all the links, etc., from this talk on this page. It's open for any of you to edit. Please do. Enjoy. Add

links, add commentary, whatever you want.

Second, this is the presentation page: http://www.downes.ca/presentation/468. This is where you can get your slides and, later on, audio and video. This will be up there as long as I have my

website.

Third, I know there's a Twitter chat. I like to give alternatives to people who do not like to sign

up to social media, because I know you're out there, and I feel for you. I don't use Facebook

anymore and I sometimes feel like an outcast now, so I get it. This is the live chat on my website,

http://downes.ca/cji-bin/cchat.cji?chat_thread=753. If you use the #cotesummit hashtag, your Tweet will also show up on this page. From time to time, I will go back to this page and

randomly look at a Tweet, because I can.

My Current Work

I'm going to begin by pointing out probably the obvious. We're living in a time of challenges,

aren't we? We've got the usual four -- famine, war, pestilence, and, of course, death -- and we've

got a lot more going on besides. We've got climate change; here I refer to the NASA climate

change, which as of this writing is still there,693 though I thought about using the Wayback

Machine archive reference, just in case it’s deleted by the new U.S. government.

We've got the problem of "fake news" and "fake, fake news," which isn't real news.694 Double

negative does not apply online. We have the problems of poverty, inequality, inequity,

injustice,695 and social media itself.696 These are challenges that we're all facing today. We face

693 NASA. 2017. Climate Change Website. https://climate.nasa.gov/.

694 2017. The Shattered Mirror. https://shatteredmirror.ca/

695 OECD. http://www.oecd.org/social/inequality-and-poverty.htm

696 NPR. 2016. Did Social Media Ruin the Election? http://www.npr.org/2016/11/08/500686320/did-social-media-

ruin-election-2016

p.740

not exactly the same, but similar challenges in Canada. We face them in Europe. We face them

in Asia and Australia.

It's a difficult time. That's life these days, and we figure we understand it. We just saw a

presentation, a good presentation, which had the theme, "OK, we've finally figured this out.

Here's what you do. Here are your 10 steps. Here are your 20 ideas," and everything's changing

again. That's what's going to happen and that's a big part of my message for this talk.

I've been reviewing and making recommendations for the Canada School of Public Service.697

We have 250,000 federal civil service employees in Canada. The School of Public Service

manages all of their training and performance support. I've been working with them, getting into

the details of their system. They use a big Saba learning management system. They've got a

Skillsoft system, and SAP.

697 Canada School of Public Service. http://www.csps-efpc.gc.ca/index-eng.aspx

p.741

In the last few years, they've adopted social and informal learning. They've hooked it all together

with a Drupal content management system, with Moodle, with Kaltura. They're beginning to

understand the new technology, and I was studying this, evaluating it, and working on a

development plan for the next three years, the next six years.

I’ve also been studying the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative’s Competencies and

Skills Systems (CASS) program.698 I'm not directly related to the ADL project, but for the

National Research Council, I'm keeping tabs on that. I'm making sure I know what's going on.

I've been following the meetings of the IEEE Learning Technologies subcommittee.699 There is a

lot happening behind the scenes there, which we address below.

I am still working on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC).700 People say MOOCs are dead.

In, what was it, 2015, more people took a MOOC than in all previous years combined. In 2016,

they took double the number of MOOCs as 2015.701 MOOCs are not dead. MOOCs are here and,

believe it or not, MOOCs are here to stay. But as with everything else, the environment is

continually changing.

For example, both Udacity and Coursera are changing business models and finding revenue

streams. Open edX, which is gone, though edX itself remains. FutureLearn from Britain is

charging money for certificates and credentials. And I’ve been carrying on with my little, free

MOOCs, the way I've always been doing it for nine years. I've been working on a thing we just

call the MOOC Aggregation Engine. It's going to be hosted at mooc.ca.702 I've been running that

site for a little while, but I'm in the middle of making changes to that.

I continue to work on personal learning environments. Even though I'm no longer leading that

program, I think personal learning environments are important. We talk about them below. In

particular I am working on something called gRSShopper in a Box. Grasshopper703 is the system

that I've built over the years to manage my website. It's the system that I built to create the

world's first MOOC and I still use it for many things. It's not commercial software; it’s my online

698 Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL). 2017. Competencies and Skills Systems (CASS).

https://www.adlnet.gov/introducing-the-next-big-thing-cass/

699 IEEE. 2017. Learning Technologies Subcommittee.

700 Stephen Downes. 2017. Connectivism and Learning. Federica.eu.

http://www.federica.eu/c/connectivism_and_learning http://candl.mooc.ca

701 Reference to Class Central

702 MOOC Aggregation Engine – http://www.mooc.ca

703 Stephen Downes. 20176. gRSShopper. http://grasshopper.downes.ca

p.742

research lab. But I've been setting it up so that now you can get it in a box, and you just install a

virtual server, run a single command, and you've got Grasshopper in a Box..

And finally, I continue to work on Connectivism, the idea that ‘to know’ is to be or to instantiate

a network of connections in the brain, in society, or wherever you can find a network. To learn is

to create, to grow, to weaken, to traverse those connections. There's a lot of importance behind

that understanding of learning. With deep learning and artificial intelligence today, people are

beginning to see, in a way they didn't see even 10 years ago, the validity of this approach to

learning, the validity of this approach to knowledge.

The artificial intelligence software that everybody's talking about is using the same kind of

neural net technology that George Siemens and I have been talking about all along. We're not

saying we invented AI. That was done back in the 1980s, but the approach that we copied from

the 1980s is the approach that artificial intelligence researchers are using to this day.

New Developments

MOOCs

Let me talk for a few minutes about MOOCs (not long, because people have heard the story).

The “true history of the MOOC”704 (I sometimes have to talk about it that way) is that George

Siemens and I decided that we would mount an online course to talk about connectivism. We had

released the theory in 2005, three years before the first MOOC, George first with his

introductory paper "Connectivism" and my work before and since on learning networks, which is

what I preferred to call it. Connectivism, as a term, stuck. Learning networks did not, because

I'm terrible with titles.

Our experience was nobody knew what we were talking about and couldn't get the concept.

What we decided to do is to host a course, which we called "Connectivism and Connective

Knowledge."705 We would make this course a connectivist course. In other words, we would

design this course as a learning network, and that's what we did.

‘Connectivism and connective knowledge’ is a niche subject, and by that I mean it was not

widely known or popular. We expected no more than 25 people. In fact, 25 people actually

signed up for the certificate version of the course. But George and I advocate open learning, and

the course was structured as an open network, so we opened it up to everyone and were surprised

with 2,200 people. At the time that was a big deal. Now with 2,200 people your course is

considered a failure. But at the time, that was a big deal. The reason why it was worked, the

704 Stephen Downes. 2010. The MOOC Guide. Google Sites. https://sites.google.com/site/themoocguide/home

705 CCK08

p.743

reason why we didn't get swamped marking papers, moderating discussions, etc., is that we

designed it as a network.

That was the first MOOC. Since then other people have developed what have come to be called

the xMOOCs, for example, on Udacity and Coursera.706 From my perspective, they represent a

step back. We heard a little bit in the previous talk about, "Oh, yeah. They had the things where

you could vote up the comments and all of that." That's a technique that's been used over the

years. Stack Overflow uses it. Reddit use it.

One commenter on Twitter said at the time, quite accurately, voting up doesn't always work. If

you look at Reddit and sites like 4chan, etc., you find that simply counting votes doesn't work.

Network epistemology is different from mass epistemology. Network construction is different

from voting, and network knowledge is different from accumulated knowledge. That's an

important thing to understand. They built mass. We built connection. They built a big pile of

knowledge, videos, and all of that. We built an interconnected web of ideas, concepts, people,

technologies, etc., and that's what made the difference.

Personal Learning

706 Tony Bates. 2014. Comparing xMOOCs and cMOOCs: Theory and Practice.

http://www.tonybates.ca/2014/10/13/comparing-xmoocs-and-cmoocs-philosophy-and-practice/

p.744

Personal and Personalized Learning. Graphic by Stephen Downes.

That's what leads me, ultimately, to distinguishing between what they call "personalized

learning" and what I call "personal learning."707 I've got the diagram there. The main idea is

personalized learning is that pre-packaged learning is altered to suit the individual. It’s

‘personalized’ but you are managing doing the learning for the student. It’s like (in English)

‘chocolatizing’ the flavor for them – it’s made to appear like chocolate, but it’s not real chocolate

Personal learning, by contrast, is where students manage learning themselves. It's like your own

personal professional development; nobody is managing for you, you're doing it for yourself. For

example, you're choosing to come to this conference, you choose to attend this talk, and you can

leave the room if you want. You choose what subjects are important. You choose what materials

you're going to read. That's the difference. Connectivism is a theory that supports personal

learning as opposed to personalized learning. I think that's a really important distinction, and this

is going to underlie many of the changes and many of the challenges that I'm talking about today.

Distributed Social Networks

Images: left, Anne Helmond, 2009708; right, Savoir-Faire Linux, 2016.709

Let me address distributed social networks. When we discuss learning as social networks people

think of Twitter, Facebook, 4chan, Yelp, LinkedIn, Yammer, and the other services in the

diagram on the left, above. But those social networks are centralized social networks. They're

centralized social networks because users sign in on a central go to their site and you might have

a presence on that site. They have a Facebook account or Twitter account or whatever but the

company owns the site, not the user. The companies own the news, they own the newsfeed. They

707 Stephen Downes. 2016/ Personal and Personalized Learning. http://www.downes.ca/presentation/380

708 Anne Hellmond. 2009. Social media dataflows. Flickr.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/silvertje/3582297307/in/photostream/

709 Savoir-Fair Linux. 2016. Blockchain, a revolutionary tool for Ring. Distributed Network.

https://blog.savoirfairelinux.com/en-ca/s/distributed-network/

p.745

present advertising to you. They tell you whether you're allowed to be on the network or not, etc.

When Twitter goes down or fails, the entire Twitter network goes down.

Distributed social networks, by contrast, are networks that you own. That's why I created an

alternative chat for this presentation, so you don’t have to use Twitter. You use your own

computer and communicate directly with me, as in the image to the right, above. I'm using my

site to host the back channel not Twitter. Yeah, sure I tap into Twitter because it's there, I'm

using my site. That's what these distributed social networks are about.

Distributed social networks have had a difficult history. I'll be very blunt and very honest about

that. They are not in widespread use yet. I admit it's a possibility that they might never come to

fruition. I think they will, I think they should, but the idea of the personal server isn't an idea

whose time is here yet, but I think it's coming.

Companies have tried.

- Opera Unite, for example, eight years ago,710 was a web browser with a server in it. They

discontinued it three years later because nobody was using it. The Mozilla operating system also

had a server.711 It was a web-based operating system for mobile, but it had a server built into it as

well so that users weren't just consuming, they could also share content.

- Diaspora 712 was a crowd funded project, which was released and was widely criticized because

it was insecure, it was buggy. Diaspora exists but now we begin to look at the future.

- Solid (which is a terrible name if you're searching for it) short for “social linked data.”713 Tim

Berners-Lee is working on it with a bunch of people at MIT on this and basically, it's a

distributed social network where you each have your own presence.

- Keybase 714 is a mechanism whereby if I have Keybase on my machine, I can do file sharing and

direct linking with other people, no intermediary required.

- The interplanetary file system (I love the name) is the idea that instead of depending on the

server to give us web pages, everybody's server also becomes a host for web pages as well.715 It's

710 2009. Mashable. Opera Unite - http://mashable.com/2009/06/15/opera-unite/

711 2017. Mozilla OS - https://www.npmjs.com/package/fxos-web-server

712 2017. Diaspora - https://www.joindiaspora.com/

713 Tim Berners-Lee. 2017. Solid - social linked data. https://solid.mit.edu/

714 Keybase - https://keybase.io/

715 InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) - https://ipfs.io/

p.746

modeled after BitTorrent. If I access the SUNY web page, I bring the SUNY web page to my

computer. Now, because I've got it on my computer, I make it available to other people, so the

resources don't disappear from the web.

People say that anything you do on the web is permanent. But this is not true. So much of the

stuff that I've done online is gone. Some of it is on the Wayback Machine, but the Wayback

Machine itself only started in 1997, so some of the early stuff is gone. For example, the first

online ad-supported website with fictional characters was called The Spot. You can't find it, it's

gone. Or for example, for many years I ran a site for many years called News Trolls. It’s gone.

Hundreds of pages are gone because when you take the site down, it disappears. The distributed

social network and the interplanetary filing system would prevent that.

Cloud Infrastructures

Systems like that are coming. The question we need to ask is, what happens when instead of

handing in a paper or a document, your student gives you a URL, says, "Here, it's here." It's a

different way of looking at communication in general. People are still using email. Why?

Because nothing better has come along. Not Twitter, not Facebook, not instant messaging. But

when we have our own web presence, then something better will have come along and we'll use

that, but it's going to take some change.

Right now, we've got good download speeds. But we have terrible upload speeds. The

communications environment that we live in right now is dedicated to making us consumers and

not producers, and that's not an accident. That's one of the problems, one of the pestilences we

have to face.

The answer to the asymmetry dilemma will be found in cloud infrastructures and virtualization.

This is not new technology; people who manage information technology (IT) for corporations

and institutions have been using it for many years. Now, virtualization716 is becoming

mainstream and products such as VMWare, Virtual Box, or Parallels are appearing on more and

more personal computers.

With these, with one command, you can have a Linux box running on your system, and in that

box, a Linux supported website. A whole infrastructure has developed to support this sort of

technology. For example, tools like Vagrant manage and configure virtual boxes. Tools like

Docker organize boxes into ‘containers’ so they can be scaled as needed to meet increased server

load. Applications like Chef and Puppet automate virtual server configuration.

716 Kevin Patel. 2017. Key Trends to Watch in the Field of Virtualization. V&C. http://www.vcloudnews.com/key-

trends-to-watch-in-the-field-of-virtualization-kevin-patel/

p.747

In the last few years, internet service providers have made it easy and affordable to run virtual

servers in the cloud. So instead of carrying around your ‘web server in a box’ around on your

computer, you can save it in Amazon Web Services (or IBM cloud, or Microsoft cloud) and

access it from where you are. And now your personal server no longer faces the asymmetry

dilemma.

The cloud infrastructure created the xMOOC. The novelty of Coursera wasn't that it had videos,

it wasn't that it had voting up or voting down, or even that it had automated quiz marking. It was

that it had server virtualization in the backend (on Docker, specifically717) so that the course

could expand as it needed to.

A person (you, me, anyone else) can have server virtualization on the backend now. I run a

Docker cloud on Amazon Web Services. It's cheap, not super cheap but it's cheap. It's definitely

affordable. I'm just renting it because I want to experiment on it, so I can run these major

infrastructures for just a couple of dollars a day.

• Environments: VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox

• Provisioners: Docker, Vagrant

• Configuration: Chef, Puppet

• Providers: AWS, MS Server

• Services: MS Cognitive, Wolfram Alpha, Segment

• Serverless CMS - http://www.downes.ca/post/66459

People are now talking about things like ‘the serverless content management system’ (CMS)718.

The

idea is that through the use of cloud data storage and lightweight cloud servers-in-a-box, you

can share a database with your friends without hosting your own server at all. You use Dropbox

or other cloud technologies to store data and you provide access to it using JavaScript that is

written for the client environment for your browser and that's it. You have your own web server

without a server. That begins to address some of these bandwidth problems.

It used to be that only Google and Microsoft could have these web-based services. But now

anyone can. It changes the game.

Immersive Reality

717 Brennan Saeta. 2016. Rust & Docker in production @ Coursera. Coursera.

https://building.coursera.org/blog/2016/07/07/rust-docker-in-production-coursera/

718 Anibal. 2017. Awesome Serverless. GitHub. https://github.com/anaibol/awesome-serverless

p.748

People talk a lot about immersive reality.719 What's going on here? To understand immersive

reality and open learning we need to back up and look at the early days of the internet and the

division between producer and consumer, and how this relationship changed over time.

I can remember a time, believe it or not, before there was a World Wide Web. Not before there

was an Internet, but I was around at the time when the Internet had serious competition. It had

competition from Prodigy, from CompuServe.720 From America Online, remember them? These

were destination services that you logged on to from your home telephone, and you accessed the

discussion board, articles, data services, and all that.

At the same time there are people around that time messing around with things like FreeBSD and

other free and open source software. Those people eventually won. Those people eventually

created this free and open system that we call the Internet, where we can have home pages,

create our own bulletin boards, play in open online games, and develop their own applications

and software.

You paid a lot of money to use these services; CompuServe, for example, cost $6 per hour (in

1980 dollars) to access721, but the internet was essentially free, and that’s what attracted people

to it. But in the last 10 years or so there has been a retrenchment and a return to the model of

CompuServes, and the AOLs, and Prodigys. We're in that mold now, except our destination

services are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, and we pay for these services (for

now) with our information rather than our dollars (though we can look at services like Netflix or

LinkedIn Pro to see the model for the future).

There are still people messing around today, people like Tim Berners-Lee, with things like

Keybase and Solid, which will, I think, eventually win again.

Immersive reality is a good case in point. When I talk about immersion of reality, what do you

think of? You think of Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear, the new display

technology, high-tech wearable screens, and 3D virtual reality.. There's a whole bunch of them,

now. (I can see it now “Man charged for driving while wearing an Oculus Rift.” He says, "Ah! I

719 Daniel Newman. 2017. CES 2017: How Immersive Virtual Reality Points To The Future Of Product And

Experience Design. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2017/01/08/ces-2017-how-immersive-

virtual-reality-points-to-the-future-of-product-and-experience-design/#b16856c655a1

720 Ken Gagne and Matt Lake. 2009. CompuServe, Prodigy et al.: What Web 2.0 can learn from Online 1.0.

Computerworld. http://www.computerworld.com/article/2526547/networking/compuserve--prodigy-et-al---what-

web-2-0-can-learn-from-online-1-0.html

721 Peter H. Lewis. 1987. Peripherals; Communication’s Cost. New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/16/science/peripherals-communication-s-cost.html

p.749

thought I could do it.") These are interesting technologies. But these are not the future of

immersive reality or immersive learning, because they are not what is core to being immersive.

Immersion isn't the technology, it's the state of mind. You're only immersed if you believe you're

immersed (It's like George Costanza from Seinfeld: it's not lying if you believe it722). It's not

reality if you don't believe it, but if you do believe it, it is reality.

It was mentioned during the introduction, I messed around with MUDs. I did. Multi-User

Dungeons. We adapted them for academic use (we called them Multi-User Domains, because

nobody would support a Multi-User Dungeon in a college; all the wrong connotations). These

were text-based multi-user virtual environments. But they were immersive because people

believed in them.

I still play video games a lot. I was one of the people who paid for No Man's Sky, which was an immersive virtual world, but the thing with that kind of game (and maybe you know this feeling,

maybe you don't) is that you're in your exosuit, and you're traveling, you're bouncing along a

planet that you've never visited, and you encounter some creature, and this chill goes down your

spine.

That's a unique feeling. At that moment, that world is real, as real as it needs to be. At that

moment, you're engaged. That is the core of immersive reality. Whether or not you're using a

video screen, whether or not you're inside a VR helmet or whatever, that's not what makes

something immersive.

What makes something immersive is working on something that matters, with real people at the

other end, with real consequences to your actions, with hopefully multi-modal interaction (but

this not strictly necessary). As long as it matters to you, it's immersive.

People talk about virtual reality. They talk about games and gamifications. I'm thinking more

about producers and consumers. When they talk about learning from a game they say “we will

provide the game. We will provide the learning. You just go in there and have a good time, and,

‘Hey! Now I know French!’”. I don't think it works like that.

Not even with learning to fly an airplane. Yes, you need the simulation to learn to fly an airplane

(I wouldn't want to fly in an airplane with a pilot that had never used a simulation) but at the

same time, you need to know something about how an airplane works and why it stays up in the

sky. When you're in an airplane, actually piloting the airplane, a simulation is not going to help

you. A game is not going to help you. You are going to need support right then and there

Personal Learning Environments

722 Seinfeld. 1996. The Beard. Via Internet Movie Database quotes. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697654/quotes

p.750

In another talk we heard of the “in-the-moment” phenomenon. The fact is, we all live our lives in

the moment. It's the only way we can live them. What that means is that most of the time what

we need is not a simulation, is not a game, is not a course or a class, but we need something that

supports or helps us in the momen t.723

Why? Because the stuff that we did in the past to prepare ourselves increasingly no longer

prepares us for what's coming. Who could have prepared themselves for today's environment,

today's social environment, today's political environment? Who found themselves prepared for

that? We need mechanisms and tools to adapt, rather than to prepare.

That takes me to personal learning environments, because the personal learning environment to

me is the opposite of a course.

The personal learning environment, to me, is this immersive form of learning based on

distributive social networks, based on virtual clouds and things like that, that give us the

day-to-day learning support that we need. So that, among other things, we don't have to take

eight years of our lives, or whatever, and go off to school and prepare, but rather we're able to

live our lives right away.

Now, you might dismiss this as the talk of somebody saying, "Oh, everything's going to be

disruptive. That didn't happen in the 1980s, so, it won't happen now."

A lot of things didn't happen in the 1980s that are still happening now. Newspapers, you might

remember them. I remember not too long ago people saying, "You know what? People just like

the feel of a newspaper." You can take the newspaper anywhere. Today, newspapers are

struggling, not only for subscribers, but for actual relevance. Not to mention credibility.

Newspapers were important, now they're not.724 People still say, "Radio didn't stop newspapers,

television didn't stop them, CD-ROMs didn't stop them. The Internet won't stop them.” But it's

the end of the era of the newspaper, and we get our news online, now. Especially young people,

but all people get their news online. How many of you read a newspaper this morning? Two?

Three? Maybe four, five, out of a room of what? 100, 100 and whatever?

Sometimes the thing that never changed in the past changes now. Maybe they will look a bit

different, maybe they will be invented by Sebastian Thrun or by MIT, but they will change.

There will be a personal learning environment and it will have these elements.

723 Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher. 2012. Are You Meeting All Five Moments of Learning Need?. Learning

Solutions Magazine. https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/949/

724 Robert Levine. 2012. How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers. The

Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/aug/14/robert-levine-digital-free-ride

p.751

It will have a resource repository network. This is also known as, "that part of the Internet you're

interested in" set up in such a way that you don't have to go look for stuff. The stuff comes to

you, and organizes itself, and puts itself in your server-less content management system all by

itself, ready for you to use.

It will have the personal cloud. This is where you store that stuff, where you store stuff that you

create, your blog posts maybe, your finances perhaps. That's where I store my finances, in the

cloud. Am I crazy? Yeah, but where else am I going to store it?

It will have the personal learning record. This is a challenge. A personal learning record is a

person's learning record, not an institution's learning record. At some point in time, whether it's

on LinkedIn, whether it's on Monster, whether it's on something else, people will have their own

personal learning records.

When I worked with the School of Public Service, it was a challenge. I checked my personal

training record over 15 years with the government of Canada, and the School record said I had

taken one course in all of that time, that this was the extent of my learning. I concluded at that

time that they have issues with learning records. If any of your students has issues with learning

records, you might think, "No, no, no. All of their records are in our records store." Yeah, except

for the stuff that they didn't take at your institution. What will you do, then?

Robot Tutors

It will have a personal learning assistant. We get quite a bit of laughter at that. "Oh, yeah, yeah,

sure, robot tutors.” Then, there was the case of, I don't have the link here, but the professor who

provided his class with a robot teaching assistant (TA)gave a section of his class a robot tutor,

and nobody noticed.725 That's a sad, sad statement about tutors, good statement about robots.

This year, we've had Siri, and Alexa, and Cortana726, and various other personal assistants. These

are really clumsy first attempts at being a personal assistant. They will get better. They're not

going to get worse. They will get better. There will be artificial intelligences that help you learn,

that help you navigate all that data from the personal repository, help you manage your finances,

your taxes.

725 Jason Maderer. 2016. Artificial Intelligence Course Creates AI Teaching Assistant: Students didn’t know their TA

was a computer. Georgia Tech News Center. http://www.news.gatech.edu/2016/05/09/artificial-intelligence-

course-creates-ai-teaching-assistant#more_photos

726 John Koetsier. 2017. Alexa, Google, Siri, Cortana: 24.5M Voice-first Devices Will Ship This Year. Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2017/01/26/alexa-google-siri-cortana-24-5m-voice-first-devices-will-

ship-this-year/#1be85a327237

p.752

It will be based on distributed intelligence, using machine learning as a service. For example,

there is an automated transcription system that we saw yesterday that's running off of the IBM

cloud. The idea here is that, that site, you can upload a video in the supported format, which is

OGG or WAV, but not MP3, or, you can record. Upload your audio and it will give you a

transcript.

That's what I mean by machine learning as a service, because it's machine learning, these neural

networks humming in the background of the big servers at IBM, that are providing this service.

This is coming. This will be part of every website. This will be part of YouTube or IBM's video

service. This will be part of your online classes, and not just an automated transcription but

automated translation, grammar checking.

Any cognitive function you can think of will be available as a service727, and you'll simply plug

in your server-less server, into that service. Now, all of your content that you've created, you can

translate into Urdu simply by clicking a button.

Why you'd do this, I don't know. But, you could, that's the point. Or, you could encrypt it, or you

could decrypt, or whatever. We have, at NRC, algorithms right now that take tweets on Twitter

and evaluate them for sentiment.728 This one was hostile, this one was pleasant, this one was

aggressive, whatever.

Things like that. I don't know how that will be useful, but it will be useful. All of this will be part

of your personal learning environment. You'll have a more powerful tool at your disposal, in

your browser, that doesn't actually exist anywhere, but is just JavaScript connections to a bunch

of services. That'll be a lot more useful than the 39-hour class on introduction to critical theory in

post-war Europe, guaranteed.

Challenges

Let’s look at some of the challenges we face and individuals and institutions. They result from

the dichotomies inherent in these new technologies. These are not, I think, false dichotomies,

although you could probably plot a mental path through some of them. They’re certainly not

"both ands" (I know people like to say "both and" instead of “either or” but sometimes "both,

727 Thomas H. Davenport. 2016. Will AI Companies Make Any Money? Harvard Business Review.

https://hbr.org/2016/07/will-ai-companies-make-any-money

728 Saif M. Mohammad, Xiaodan Zhu, Svetlana Kiritchenko and Joel Martin. 2015. Sentiment, emotion, purpose,

and style in electoral tweets. Information Processing & Management. 51-4, pp 480–499.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306457314000880

p.753

and" doesn't work - when you're in the voting booth, you can't go "both and", or when you're

picking IBM or Apple). You're working with one of them or the other.

For learning providers: are you providing content knowledge or, are you providing literacies?

By ‘learning providers’ I mean you, I mean the instructors at your institution, the tutors at your

institution, anyone who provides learning directly as a service. And by ‘content knowledge’ I

mean teaching, as so many people say, mathematics, or classic literature, or other essentials.

I fall on the literacies side. That's a framework that I've been working with over the years, and I

fall on the literacies side because the content knowledge changes a lot, a lot more than we think.

Even math changes. We think of foundational math as addition, subjection, multiplication, but at

any moment foundational math could change to substitutivity, set theory, things like that, which

actually are more foundational. Science changes. When I grew up, there were nine planets. There

are still nine planets, we just don't know which one is the ninth anymore.

It's hard to deal with. Are you preparing people for employment, to get a job? Or, are you

preparing them for the post-employment, post-job world that we are definitely entering into? All

of our jobs are going to be replaced by machines. Why are you training people for a job? Are you

preparing people with courses or with performance support? Are you preparing them ahead of

time? Are you solving problems for them now?

What is the source of your knowledge? Is it authority, the president knows all, the newspapers

know all, the professors know all, or is it the wisdom of crowds? Not social proof. That's voting,

but the wisdom of crowds is described by people like James Surowiecki, where the organization

and the structure of society represents the knowledge that it contains.

Are you ready to live with the fact that your class might know more than you? That's a reality I

deal with every day when I do one of these talks. I walk up here, and I know the audience knows

more than me. It's intimidating, but it's also true. At any given point, anything that I say, any

sentence that I say, one of you knows more about that topic than me. Probably more than one.

Are you providing people with credentials? Is that the thing that you sell, credentials? Really?

Badges. People want badges. Did you get up this morning, say, "Yeah! I'm going to get a badge

today." Or, are you offering learning? Or, are you offering connections?

I sometimes talk about what I call the Yale advantage. People certainly don't go to Yale for

badges. I don't know if Yale offers them. They don't even go to Yale for learning, because

frankly, it’s not really that great. I've worked with institutions all over the world, and it's not the

learning.

Actually one of the neat things is when these universities started opening up their coursework,

their course materials with open course and all that. I went and looked because I studied

Philosophy at the well-known institutions, the University of Calgary and the University of

p.754

Alberta (which are actually very good schools) and not only was the course material in

Philosophy similar at MIT and Harvard, they used exactly the same books, and they covered

exactly the same curriculum. I would have got the same knowledge paying $40,000 at Harvard

or Yale, or MIT, as I get paying $1,500 at the University of Calgary.

But there still is this Harvard and Yale advantage. What is that? What is that they are really

selling at Yale? It's not credentials, it's not badges, it's not knowledge. It's connections. If you're

really, truly, seriously interested in open education, accessibility, etc., then that's the advantage

you need to address. How are you addressing it? Are you addressing it? Or are you offering

employment training, because that's the best you can do? For jobs that won't exist?

Speaking of challenges to educational institutions, consider this chart. You've all seen the chart:

government support, state support is bottomed out. That's the yellow line there, that's in free fall.

Your students are now paying the bills. That's why your students are acting like consumers

because they're paying the bills.

p.755

University of Washington, 2014729

Even today, I heard somebody refer to "the competition." You guys in the public education

business, why is there competition? How does that make sense? Unless you're viewing yourself

as an organization that sells something for profit.

Is that the model? Is that going to be the model in the future when everybody has their personal

learning environment? How are you funded? Tuition grants? Research? Are you part of the

patent? The whole patent pile, patent mess? The privatization of knowledge itself?

Are you using enterprise software? Enterprise sign-on? Enterprise learning records? Or are you

thinking distributed? What about transcripts and what do you do when blockchain comes along

and somebody can get all of their learning records in a blockchain and they don't need you to

attest to their education anymore because I do to your market, what does that do to your value

proposition?

These are challenges. Things that didn't change in the past are still going to change in the future.

It's going to happen, just ask your local newspaper. Moving forward, are you really going to do

competencies for job performance or are you going to focus on capabilities and capacities? Are

you really going to do badges?

What about when everything a person does is available on the Internet through their personal

server and artificial intelligence that already exists today can look at everything that they've done

and tell you with more accuracy than a degree or diploma what their qualifications are? That's

the credential of the future. The credential of the future is the online presence.

Why am I standing up here right now? It's not because I have a degree from Yale, because I

don't, and they wouldn't have me and I wouldn't want it. It's because of the online presence. I got

into the game a bit sooner, that's all. I'm not special, just you guys can tell what I can do. I've put

400 and some-odd presentations online, you can see that. I'm going to give a good talk or I'm not,

whatever.

Are you offering classes? You're still offering classes. Do you offer performance support? Has it

even crossed your mind that that might be 90 percent of the educational market in 10, 20 years?

Microlearning, have you been thinking about it? What about spaced learning? Again, as opposed

to classes. Are you thinking about being the Netflix of learning?

729 University of Washington. 2014. Special Report on State Disinvestment in Public Higher Education.

http://depts.washington.edu/opbblog/2014/03/special-report-state-disinvestment-public-higher-education/

p.756

There already are Netflixes of learning. Or maybe subscription-based learning? Again, fine, but

applying to be admitted to an institution, in a world where education can be almost free, the

whole idea almost doesn't make sense anymore.

Finally, in this world of challenges, what does it mean to do the right thing? It's now an open

question. We have war, pestilence, famine. We have social media, fake news, and all of that. Are

you doing the right thing? Challenges to ask yourself, "Who are your clients? Who are you

serving? Are you doing your work for the state or for the governor?

"Are you doing your work to support technology companies? Do you view them as your

clients?" I face that every day at NRC, "Your client is the technology company that will

commercialize your invention." I say, "No, I'm not working for the tech companies. Are you

crazy?"

Is your primary loyalty to your department or your institution? I always see a lot of that when I

come to these conferences. "I'm from SUNY. My loyalty is to SUNY." Is it really? You get up in

the morning, say, "Yeah, I want to go support SUNY." Or, are your clients the students who are

in your classes and, even more importantly, the students who are not in your classes?

A Final Note

What is it to do the right thing? This is a time of crisis and conflict, a time of criticism, a time of

marching in the streets and all of that.

To my mind, activism is building more than anything else. Ask yourself, "What are you

building?" Are you reacting against costs and events, and crises, and growth, and fear, and

everything else? Or, are you pursuing what I might put into the category of attractors -- values,

goals, desires even, needs? Do you see yourself as working towards something or reacting

against something? What is it to do the right thing?

A final note. The final note. In Canada, we have a guy called Stuart McLean who's been on

public radio, CBC for many, many years. He recently passed away. He's a storyteller, and he

would talk like this, and I would always parody the voice, but he told good stories.

One of the stories he told was about a boy who believed he could predict the future.730

"Tomorrow, I predict I'm not going to clean my room." Behold, tomorrow came and the room

had not been cleaned.

730 Stuart Mclean. 2016. Sam’s Predictions. Vinyl Café. CBC Radio 1. http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/vinyl-

cafe/episode/9993634

p.757

This created a crisis of confidence for the boy, because he kept predicting bad things and they

happened. He was worried, "What if I predict a bad thing, and it happens, and it's my fault?" He

gets a piece of advice: “The story always ends on a happy note.”

The story always has a happy ending, always. He says, "What if the story doesn't have a happy

ending?" Well then, he was told, "The story isn't over yet."

And that's what ‘doing the right thing’ means. It means that you know that you're working

toward the end of the story. It means not being afraid to work for change. Perhaps you won’t be

successful today, but there’s always another day, or another person, and success will come

eventually.

Syracuse, United States

March 9, 2017

Table of Contents

Book

Introduction .......................................................................................

Contents ...........................................................................................

Experts and Empowerment ............................................................................

Transparency, Radical or Otherwise .................................................................

Connectivism as Epistemology .......................................................................

Feelings of Science ................................................................................

New Forms of Assessment: Measuring What You Contribute Rather Than What You Collect .. 35

Computer Use Guidelines ............................................................................

The Robot Teachers .................................................................................

K-12 MOOCs and Communities .........................................................................

Questions from Students at Vancouver Island University .............................................

Responsible Internet Use ...........................................................................

Cloud Computing and Learning Theory ................................................................

A Level Playing Field ..............................................................................

The Content on Websites ............................................................................

Innovative Tools ...................................................................................

Implementing Online Learning .......................................................................

Being a Philosopher ................................................................................

The ‘Course’ in MOOC ...............................................................................

Improving Canadian Post-Secondary Education ........................................................

2. Making Teaching Central .........................................................................

4. Accountability Benchmarks .......................................................................

5. Canadian Online Platforms .......................................................................

Learning in the Digital Age: The Reality and the Myth ..............................................

The Paradox of Democracy ...........................................................................

Free and Not Free...................................................................................

People Don’t Need Experts; They Just Need Someone Who Knows ........................................

What Makes a MOOC Massive? .........................................................................

Sustainability and MOOCs in Historical Perspective .................................................

Evaluating a MOOC ..................................................................................

The Quality of Massive Open Online Courses .........................................................

The Purpose of MOOCs................................................................................

MOOC Success Factors ...............................................................................

Measuring Success ..................................................................................

Assessment in MOOCs ................................................................................

MOOC – The Resurgence of Community in Online Learning ..............................................

Massive ............................................................................................

Open ...............................................................................................

Online .............................................................................................

Course .............................................................................................

MOOC Pedagogy ......................................................................................

Language ...........................................................................................

Aggregation.........................................................................................

Repurposing ........................................................................................

Feeding Forward ....................................................................................

The Purpose of a MOOC ..............................................................................

Connectivism .......................................................................................

Learning, Again ....................................................................................

The MOOC as Community ..............................................................................

Community of Practice ..............................................................................