Decentralised learning (H800, week 18, A1)
June 17, 2009This week in course H800 sports the headline “Web 2.0, therefore Education 2.0” and – as the title lets us expect – deals with the significance of Web 2.0 technology on education.
When I first saw the headline, I quickly read on. I regularly use Web 2.0 technology myself, mostly to stay in touch with friends and colleagues. Using some of the tools for education seems sensible; collaboratively creating content, actively doing things and thus learning and developing seems promising. Maybe participate in a wiki once in a while, subscribe to a few feeds – that kind of stuff.
But then I came upon this week’s first reading assignment, an article by Weller (2009): “Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change”. In his article he starts off by stating
I suggest that the reason the centralised learning management system (LMS) is not the answer to the ‘web 2.0 problem’ for education because in its software DNA it embodies the wrong metaphor. It seeks to realise the principles of hierarchy, control and centralisation – the traditional classroom made virtual.
Yeah, well – he’s kind of right here, I thought. Just reading these two sentences suddenly opened a completely new vision, seeing education in a way I hadn’t done before. But to be honest, more than it was fascinating, this vision was frightening for me. OK, modelling virtual learning environments according to real buildings and structures may not be state of the art – but at least it doesn’t deprive us of our treasured control! :)
As a teacher, I like to have things under control. How do you feel about it? I think learning processes may be as open as possible – if in the end I can see who is doing what when and how. If my students work on their own for a couple of hours, there is a lot of self-control and peer feedback. But in the end I gain again control over the situation by being able to reconstruct the work that’s been done.
And now someone proposes making use of “decentralised learning”, letting learners wander off on their own, using tools to which not everyone in class necessarily has to be subscribed. May I panic a bit here? A wiki outside my beloved Moodle platform? Hardly imaginable at the moment for me. Twittering about some “serious” subject instead of collecting discussion posts in a central forum? I wouldn’t encourage my students to do that – even though I highly appreciate Twitter as a socialising tool.
I must be a coward. And then – I consider the responsibility that we teachers are given by … society? by ourselves? by our ethics? Can we really allow ourselves and our students to set off on some learning path that might lead into spheres outside our control, might lead them into cul-de-sacs or even lure them into situations of not-learning? Are school children to be treated differently than university students, who are often used as study subjects in surveys?
I’m still thinking … and processing … and I will tell my mates at H800 about my posting right now. Let’s move away from FirstClass for a while and see how engaging discussions might evolve over Twitter and blogs. I may still be convinced … ;) By some braver souls than myself!
Have a nice evening. Good night. ;)
18. June 2009 um 04:54
Yes it is an interesting thought…I am still thinking about the place of metaphor. I wonder whether ‘Higher Education’ is itself a metaphor. It certainly does not have to be a synonym for learning or knowledge creation. Two points for consideration here:
1. Do universities seek to control their students learning…yes in many ways. VLE are a part of that. As a current example the OU is switching form First Class (FC) to a Moodle based platform (H800 is using both at the moment). One of the worries for tutors is that as it stands you can not maintain surveillance of students activity on Moodle in the way that you can on FC. In addition on another OU course some students made their own group on Facebook and used that rather than the official (censored) forum. Many tutors became quite distressed about that with worries about all the things the (silly) students would think without our guidance: despotism benevolent maybe but despotism nonetheless.
2. Can we afford to let go: yes and no. This is about the role of students co constructing their own learning. Maybe we need to distinguish here between training: by which I mean being made fit for a particular role..teacher, pilot, engineer; and learning which has no specific vocational end point. For example you can train to be a teacher but you can also read for a general degree in ‘education’ or even ‘distance and on line learning’. Both these can run together of course and I suspect that this happens on many courses. The students making their own breakout group on Facebook in the example above was on a ‘training course’ but indicated that ‘learning in the sense of knowledge creation’ was also taking place.
In term of design maybe we need to think whether we are fostering one or the other…or indeed both approaches.
18. June 2009 um 06:13
Dear Les,
Thank you very much for your comment! :)
I’m working a lot with moodle here in Austria and I instantly recognised parts of it (ePortfolio, blog, personal profile) when I came across the OU’s VLE in my last course H808. I was wondering then why the OU makes such an effort to do so much programming in the background instead of using moodle more or less out of the box. We’re successfully running all of our 100% online teacher training seminars via moodle. I don’t know however if a whole semester of online activity would be too chaotic and confusing.
I don’t know much about the tracking activity of FC other than seeing a history of a single post but I know from experience that moodlle is a shining example for “Big Brother is watching you”. ;) You can see anything in moodle - every single click can be traced back; every single action is monitored. Of course you don’t know if a participant really read a document when it says “… viewed resource xx”, but then you also don’t know in FC.
I appreciated your thoughts on “censored” forums! :) This is exactly the feeling I have: “all the things the (silly) students would think without our guidance”. For me however it’s less that I trust students’ work if they really want to do it but more that I don’t trust many of my students that they would work at all in a place that can’t be monitored by me. You see, apart from running teacher training seminars, I’m working with schoolkids mainly. And my theory still is that in contrast to advanced university students and adults pursuing postgraduate studies, not all schoolkids (and lower level university students?) actually want to work. Many just want to get past an exam, a grade as cheaply as possible. That’s the main reason for eyeing decentralised learning in schools with suspicion. If I can’t monitor their work, I’m simply afraid there will be no work at all - and then I have failed acting responsibly as a teacher, who is - in lower levels - still up to an extent responsible for his students’ development.
Stephan :)
06. July 2009 um 14:14
Hi,
My information might be wrong about Moodle, however think about the difficulties the OU faces. First the whole course will be taught through Moodle, H800 might work but then we are by definition competent both technologically and academically. This is not true for many OU students, we have a high proportion of students making their first use of Higher Education very often on Foundation degree courses. The second problem is that we have large numbers, I think about 180,000 students worldwide: this presents a challenge.
Thinking about power relations in education I wonder if the gift that technology will bring is a great rise in informal education (maybe at the expense of formal HE). It could be that universities are left with the training of researchers, so that the organisation can replicate itself, and custodians of gateways into the professions.
08. July 2009 um 22:37
Hi Stephan,
Quite enjoyed reading your post and the subsequent discussion it started between you and Les. Two ideas sparked in me from observing the discussion so far, so although they seem disjointed, I’ll include them both in this comment.
The first thing I wanted to address is the issue of monitoring capabilities of VLE activity. Although I’ve primarily played the role of a student in Moodle, I have quite a bit of experience using WebCT as a designer and administrator. From my experience, activity stats were mainly used to evaluate the perceived usefulness of course content and overall site designs (i.e. the more pages and resources were used, the more useful it was understood that students found them). This type of evaluation would then eventually lead to tweaks and updates for future deliveries. Most of the time, students didn’t know they were ‘being watched’. That was quite a sticky topic!
The second point that stuck out for me relates to something you wrote in your original entry:
“Let’s move away from FirstClass for a while and see how engaging discussions might evolve over Twitter and blogs. I may still be convinced … ;) By some braver souls than myself!”
How does bravery play a part in this type of engagement for you?
All the best,
Katherine