Pedagogy for an Audience of One…..

E-learning and Digital Culture from the University of Edinburgh has been an incredible journey and experience in Massive Online Open Courses for 42,874 eager learners. From my understanding, this course was not structured using the format of the typical MOOC. Jeremy Knox in the overview video indicated that the E-learning and Digital Culture course would be “Experimental in Several Ways.” That prediction was incredibly true in a positive and spectacular way.

Most MOOCs are more closely related to Bricks & Mortar courses in structure and delivery. Lecture, quizzes, and tests with reading material are the usual format. The course content is relatively narrowly defined, the outcomes are relatively narrowly defined, and the student’s pathway through the experience is, again, fairly narrowly defined.

The structure of this course is broadly defined; creating an opportunity for the Participant/Student to basically design their own experience and design their own course.

Futurist Thinkers have predicted that massive amounts of information  would be accessible to answer specific search questions and provide unlimited learning opportunities:

 1895, Paul Otlet: “Repertoire Bibliographique Universel”

Predicted the massive collection of information and a system to organize and retrieve that information creating the first “analog search engine.”

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Otlet

“In 1895, Otlet and La Fontaine also began the creation of a collection of index cards, meant to catalog facts, that came to be known as the “Repertoire Bibliographique Universel” (RBU), or the “Universal Bibliographic Repertory”. By the end of 1895 it had grown to 400,000 entries; later it would reach a height of over 15 million.”

From YouTube: The Electric Telescope, 1934

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyfZkVgasI

 1936-38, HG Wells: World Brain

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brain

“World Brain is a collection of essays and addresses the English science fiction pioneer, social reformer, evolutionary biologist and historian H. G. Wells written during the period 1936-38. Throughout the book, Wells describes his vision of the world brain: a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent “World Encyclopedia” that could help world citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace.”

1988, Isaac Asimov:  Personal Learning

Asimov anticipates “Once we have computer outlets in every home hooked up to enormous libraries, where anyone can ask any question about something you are interested in……….. In your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, on your own time….Then everyone will enjoy learning…….”

YouTube:

 

1991, Nicholas Negroponte: Being Digital

“In the post-information age, we often have an audience the size of one. Everything is made to order, and information is extremely personalized. A widely held assumption is that individualization is the extrapolation of narrowcasting—–you go from large to small to smaller group, ultimately to the individual. By the time you have my address, my marital status, my age, my income, my car brand, my purchases, my drinking habits, and my taxes, you have me—– a demographic unit of one.”  (Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, pg 164)

E-learning and Digital Culture gives the individual Participant/Student an opportunity to design a personal learning experience within the broad parameters of the course. The content presented is massive with many, many options and activities from which to select.  Participants/Students can choose activities and experiences from a wide range of optional pathways in the course: Videos, Scholarly Articles. Popular Articles, Social Media, Structured Forums, and Learner-Led Group formation.  The Participants/Students are faced with a variety of strategies for navigating through the course.

Many Participants/Students were very energized by this opportunity to basically custom design and personalize their own course. However, some Participants/Students were actually very intimidated by the process. Often in conventionally taught courses, there is a body of information to acquire within fairly narrow parameters: a student attends the lecture internalizes material demonstrates learning via quizzes, tests, and papers. In Mike Orme’s personalized learning class, you had to make choices from a wide variety of potential activities, exercises, and experiences and gather points to demonstrate your learning. This personalized approach presented you with multiple pathways and a tremendous amount of content from which to build your course.

E-learning and Digital Culture moves fully away from the Teacher Centered format to the Student Centered Format.  The Participant/Student makes significant choices about the content to watch or read, and what digital environment to discuss the concepts presented in the course.

Not only does the Participant/Student select the major content to the for learning and choose a Pathway basically designing  course; the Participant/Student constructs their own final assessment. There are some parameters for the Digital Artefact; however, the options are many.

The whole concept of Connectivism is left out there to be discovered.

From Wikipedia:

“Connectivism is a theory of learning based on the premise that knowledge exists in the world rather than in the head of an individual. Connectivism proposes a perspective similar to Vygotsky’s Activity theory in that it regards knowledge as existing within systems which are accessed through people participating in activities. It bears some similarity with Bandura’s Social Learning Theory that proposes that people learn through contact. The add-on “a learning theory for the digital age”, that appears in Siemens’ paper[1] indicates the emphasis it gives to how technology affects how people live, how they communicate and how they learn.”

A variety of options allow students to find peer-to-peer interactions and discussion. Interestingly enough, individuals were drawn to the electronic environments in which they were most comfortable. Some folks like Twitter, some folks like FaceBook, some folks participated in forums, some folks used VoiceThread, and a variety of other peer-to-peer strategies emerged.

Was this course successful……Certainly. However, success will be determined by each Participant/Student; individual by individual. More importantly, E-learning and Digital Culture should not be evaluated by completion rates.

From my perspective, I did not have specific criteria or objectives that I wanted to achieve from the outset. The content was absolutely fascinating,. The topic very close to my personal interests and academic background. Consequently, I became fully immersed in the topics, structure, and content presented. Further, amongst my intimate small group discussion on Facebook 4,810 other students; we had a great time sharing information.

In many respects, the structure of this course is a grand experiment in learning and innovative pedagogy.

E-learning and Digital Culture from the University of Edinburg was designed specifically for me……..An Audience of One…….

MOOCs for Credit and Degrees..??

MOOCs have all of the characteristics of a dot.com entrepreneurial start up. Participation is free, a mass audience is recruited, the Internet is used, a brilliant idea emerges, the reach is Global, a speculative business model evolves, and venture capital is required.

In the Internet Era, countless software environments have been developed for an incredible array of services. Many have rapidly emerged and faded away as rapidly: Gopher, Netscape, WebVan, Flooz.com, eToys, Excite@Home, CyberRebate, and thousands more.

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_company

List of well-known failed dot-coms

“In the late 1990s (as well as today) many businesses were interested in investing in the Internet to expand their market. The Internet has the ability to reach out to consumers globally as well as providing more convenient shopping to the consumer. If planned and executed correctly, the Internet can greatly improve sales. However, there were many businesses in the early 2000s (decade) that did not plan correctly and that cost them their business.”

All sorts of ideas, configurations, and potential services have been developed and that trend is continuing.  Each technological breakthrough brings new opportunities, challenges and cultural changes.

However, ultimately the culture must value aspects of the activity if that activity will be sustained over time. When thinking about the intersection of credit online courses; massive online open courses; traditional classes delivered in Bricks & Mortar environments; credits, the Carnegie unit, degree programs; and a whole new set of challenges emerge.

Will Bricks & Mortar institutions extend their reach by evaluating and certifying experiences in MOOCs..??

What Colleges and Universities will allow students to earn credits via MOOCs, apply those credits for degrees, and to graduation requirements? Is the Carnegie Unit even relevant in this day and age..??  Will the MOOCs become Colleges or Universities as stand alone institutions…???

The politics and policies surrounding this question will resolved relatively quickly. However; there is tremendous sorting out related to articulation agreements for individual classes, and ultimately  transfer agreements for matriculating students.

Several initiatives are moving forward to create processes for awarding credits for students who complete MOOCs.

……………………

The Chronical of Higher Education February 7, 2013

American Council on Education Recommends 5 MOOCs for Credit

By Steve Kolowich

http://chronicle.com/article/American-Council-on-Education/137155/

“In what could be a major step toward bridging the gap between massive open online courses and the credentialing system that they are supposed to “disrupt,” the American Council on Education on Thursday endorsed five MOOCs for credit.

Two of the approved courses, “Introduction to Genetics and Evolution” and “Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach,” come from Duke University. Two others, “Pre-Calculus” and “Algebra,” come from the University of California at Irvine. The last, “Calculus: Single-Variable,” comes from the University of Pennsylvania. All five are offered through Coursera.”

…………………

“MOOCs” for Credit Come to California

by AUDREY WATTERS on 15 JAN, 2013

 

Take note, folks. It’s here: “MOOCs” for credit.

California Governor Jerry Brown, San Jose State University President Mo Qayoumi, and Udacity co-founder and CEO Sebastian Thrun held a press conference this morning to announce a pilot program that marks a first for the state: San Jose State will award college credits for special versions of select Udacity classes.

……………………….

If the debate regarding MOOCs, Bricks & Mortar Universities, Online Credit Courses ever ends; it will be the values and ideals that the society deems important which will determine the outcomes——-not the technological means to used to shape the outcomes. Technology is merely a tool to be used or not used, at the discretion of the society.  Values and ideals drive system. These ideals combined with technological advances are part of the continuing  evolutionary change of education. Other innovations, such as the universal adoption of  textbooks did not occur in one day.

What is the intersection of credit online courses and massive online open courses?

Eric Risberg / Associated Press

Gov. Jerry Brown makes a point Wednesday, watched by regent Russell Gould, at a San Francisco meeting of the University of California Board of Regents.

The progression of Distance Learning, Open Learning, Independent Study and other non-classroom-based learning environments, has a history. These strategies to serve a greater number of students in a flexible, responsive manner began before MOOCs emerged on the Higher Education scene. The approaches for using  technology beyond the Bricks & Mortar confines of a University or College campus is well documented in the literature.

The interplay between classroom-based Bricks & Mortar education and the rapid emergence of MOOCs is tremendous. Most MOOCs have a counterpart Bricks & Mortar originating class. Most MOOCs are simply video captured classed that are then redistributed on the Internet. This strategy of “Distance Learning” really dates back to Educational Television in the 1950s and 1960s.

The California Community Colleges have a long tradition of reaching out to larger populations beyond the campus-based student.  Online courses began developing rapidly in the mid-1990s and today over ten percent of all course sections are offered through distance education modes of instruction; most are credit online courses.  The asynchronous flexibility of online courses offered by the California Community Colleges has has allowed millions of students to have access to Higher Education.

Interest in MOOCs is currently driving tremendous policy and political changes in the state of California. Governor Jerry Brown has made presentations advocating the expansion of online courses at both the California State University and the University of California Governing Boards. California Governors rarely attend CSU or UC Board Meetings.

The Sacramento Bee

January 17, 2013

by David Siders

SAN FRANCISCO – “Gov. Jerry Brown anticipated resistance when he announced his plan last week to pressure state colleges and universities to expand their online offerings and reduce costs. Yet as he traveled to the Bay Area on Tuesday and Wednesday to promote online education, he could hardly have had it easier. One after another, California State University and University of California officials leaned into their microphones to thank the Democratic governor for the relatively favorable state budget he proposed – and to express their desire to educate more students online.”

The Bricks & Mortar California Community Colleges offer a strong base of online credit courses. With Governor Jerry Brown’s high profile policy interest in online courses, it will be fascinating to see the rapid expansion of campus based credit online courses at the California Community Colleges, California State university and the University of California.

What is the intersection of credit online courses and Massive Online Open Courses? California will be a major player in this action.

Where is all of this going…..????  I’m not certain that anyone really knows. However; things will never be the same in California Higher Education.  Things will never be the same in Global Higher Education.

Massive Choices and Learning Theory.

One of the most interesting courses I’ve ever taken in my higher education career was an Educational Psychology course at Indiana University. Professor Michael E J Orme structured the course in a way that individual students had the opportunity to design a personal learning experience within the broad parameters of the course. The Syllabus was massive with many, many options and activities selected. The course also had a series of MicroTeaching sessions with highly structured feedback.  Students could select activities and experiences from a wide range of optional pathways in the course: relevant literature readings, individual papers, group projects and group papers, and activities self designed by a student. Students could also receive points to be camera operators in the MicroTeaching sessions.There were a variety of strategies for navigating through the course. A points system allowed a student to compile a specific score and actually determine a final grade based upon the points accumulated. 

Many students were very energized by this opportunity to basically custom design and personalize their own course. However, some students were actually very intimidated by the process. Often in conventionally taught courses, there is a body of information to acquire within fairly narrow parameters: a student attends the lecture internalizes material demonstrates learning via quizzes, tests, and papers. In Mike Orme’s personalized class, you had to make choices from a wide variety of potential activities, exercises, and experiences and gather points to demonstrate your learning. This personalized approach presented you with multiple pathways and a tremendous amount of content from which to build your course. 

My experience with E-Learning and Digital Culture is very similar, in that, I am  having to pick from a wide variety of content and select things that are most interesting were more relevant to me. 42,000 students in the course and 4,820 students in the FaceBook social network are creating massive amounts of content.

Incredible challenge, a tremendous opportunity to learn, a global experience,  and incredible fun…….

An Audience of One.

“In the post-information age, we often have an audience the size of one. Everything is made to order, and information is extremely personalized. A widely held assumption is that individualization is the extrapolation of narrowcasting—–you go from large to small to smaller group, ultimately to the individual. By the time you have my address, my marital status, my age, my income, my car brand, my purchases, my drinking habits, and my taxes, you have me—– a demographic unit of one.”  (Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, pg 164)

From YouTube:

Perspectives from Nicholas Negroponte

 

The Electric Telescope.

From YouTube:

 

“Paul Otlet, a Belgian bibliographer, pacifist and entrepreneur imagined a day when users would access the database from great distances by means of an “electric telescope” connected through a telephone line, retrieving a facsimile image to be projected remotely on a flat screen.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyfZkVgasI

 

From Wikipedia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Otlet

“Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet (/ɒtˈleɪ/; French: [ɔtle]; 23 August 1868 – 10 December 1944) was a French-speaking Belgian author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer and peace activist; he is one of several people who have been considered the father of information science, a field he called “documentation”.

In 1895, Otlet and La Fontaine also began the creation of a collection of index cards, meant to catalog facts, that came to be known as the “Repertoire Bibliographique Universel” (RBU), or the “Universal Bibliographic Repertory”. By the end of 1895 it had grown to 400,000 entries; later it would reach a height of over 15 million.

In 1896, Otlet set up a fee-based service to answer questions by mail, by sending the requesters copies of the relevant index cards for each query; scholar Alex Wright has referred to the service as an “analog search engine“.[4] By 1912, this service responded to over 1,500 queries a year. Users of this service were even warned if their query was likely to produce more than 50 results per search.”

 

Technological Futures: Mass Media….Mass Culture….Mass Education.

Technological development often comes before the social, cultural, and economic configurations that support and interact with the technology. Mass Communication Media specifically: newspapers, radio, television, and movies; often precede the development of similar communications techniques in the field of higher education. Going back in time, 16mm training films were the direct result of technology developed and expanded by the Entertainment Industry in the 1920s. Movies brought visual learning into the schools. Further, the introduction of video technology was a direct result of the widespread use television for entertainment in the news.

 

Often there is a conflict in the marketplace when it comes to the diffusion and adoption of technology. An excellent example of this is the introduction of videocassette technology to the home consumer market.  Sony developed the Betamax and U-Matic videocassette formats.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax

 

Sony brought this new, breakthrough technology onto the market in 1975. Shortly thereafter in 1976, Universal City Studios and the Walt Disney company brought suit against Sony for the marketing and distribution of video cassette technology.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax_case

 

The Betamax could readily record and redistribute off air or cable television signals the content copyright holders were taken off balance by this new technology.

 

The negative reaction to new technology is often, simply the shellshocked reaction of major paradigm shift.  Ironically, within a few years Disney, Universal Studios, and your team industry were generating considerable cash flow by selling prerecorded the VHS video cassette tapes in the home consumer market

 

In similar fashion with new technologies are introduced higher education, particularly if they are very comprehensive and all inclusive, considerable reaction from the existing status quo institutions can be generated.

 

In the 1950s and 60s the Ford foundation funded extensive studies on the use of television and instruction. The concept was to select a master teacher, capture what shows on videotape and then rebroadcast those lectures to amass educational audience.

 

However, this technological breakthrough was not sustained or integrated into ongoing educational practice.

 

From Wikipedia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPATI

 

“The Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction (MPATI) was a special broadcasting initiative designed to broadcast educational television programming to schools, especially in areas where local educational television stations are either hard to receive or unavailable.

From 1961 through 1968, MPATI’s programming broadcast from two DC-6AB aircraft based at the Purdue University Airport in West Lafayette, Indiana, using a broadcasting technique known as Stratovision.

The undertaking began as a three-year experiment in 1960, with MPATI organizing, producing, and broadcasting instructional television with seed money from the Ford Foundation. This was a nonprofit organization of educators and television producers that pioneered instructional television for enriching education in public schools throughout the midwest. This was in times prior to the advent of satellite television transmission. By 1963, MPATI moved into its second phase where it relied totally on membership fees but it was never financially stable. MPATI found it difficult to get enough member schools to finance the organization. In its third reorganization, MPATI, unable to meet its expenses through membership fees, ceased producing and broadcasting courses in 1968 and became a tape library.”

Personal Learning and Global Internet Connectivity.

Absolutely Fascinating…..Incredible Insights To The Future And We Have Arrived ……..At This Future….!!!!!

Bill Moyers and Isaac Asimov share some insights on education in this 1988 interview. Dr. Asimov anticipates Global Internet Connectivity and MOOCS with an Optimistic, Utopian view describing very personal learning experiences facilitated by technology. Bill Moyers counters with the Dystopian argument that machines and computers dehumanize learning. Fantastic Point; Counterpoint Here.

Asimov anticipates “Once we have computer outlets in every home hooked up to enormous libraries, where anyone can ask any question about something you are interested in……….. In your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, on your own time….Then everyone will enjoy learning…….”

Sounds like E-Learning and Digital Cultures from The University of Edinburgh………To Me.

From YouTube:

E-Learning and Digital Cultures The Dystopian View:

Ultimately the most disconcerting aspect of the three videos presented  the week 2 resources is centered around the concept of control: “Sight, from Sight Systems,” “Charlie 13,” and “Plurality.”
Actually, it’s not the technology that creates this frightening Dystopian View of The Future. The three videos really do not address educational issues. The videos portray broader cultural, social, and political aspects of the potential application of technology in manipulative and pervasive ways.
So let’s examine the concept of control related to education. Thinking about the continuum of “Teacher Centered” versus “Student Centered”  Learning; becomes a good dialectic to examine the concept of control, the use of technology, and the future of Higher Education.
The 1988 Isaac Asimov interview with Bill Moyers defines and presents the concept of Personalized Learning:

 

Those of us who have been overwhelmed and enjoyed the cognitive dissonance of finding our way through the E-Learning and Digital Culture MOOC; now have a good understanding of the concepts Asimov introduced in the 1988  interview. In an earlier FaceBook post, I described a similar experience that I enjoyed in my academic career at Indiana University. A course where graduate students had the opportunity to navigate and design their pathway through massive amounts of content in a Educational Psychology course. This learning theory course was one of the most significant experiences of my formal academic career. Until my experience with this MOOC, I have not observed or participated in courses with similar methodology.
Navigating  and Designing  your own Personal Learning experience through massive amounts of information, experiences, and discussions  creates a very “Student Centered,” experience. Who then, is in control here…….???
Nicholas Negroponte, in his seminal work Being Digital, writes, “In the post information age, we often have an audience the size of one.” Internet technology creates an environment and channel of communication where significant digital content can be created specifically for an audience of one. Seeking and designing a Personal Learning Experience from the massive content presented in a Massive Online Open Course becomes an exercise in crafting content for an audience of one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_Digital
Think how different this is from the television era of 1964 when all of America was Tuned-In to the Ed Sullivan show Sunday February 9, 1964 and to the Beatles broadcast. Seventy three million viewers watched content from a single point of origination “Live” from CBS-TV Studio 50 in New York City. Mass Media transformed Mass Culture in a single evening.

From the Ed Sullivan WebSite:

http://www.edsullivan.com/artists/the-beatles/

“A record setting 73 million people tuned in that evening making it one of the seminal moments in television history. Nearly fifty years later, people still remember exactly where they were the night The Beatles stepped onto Ed Sullivan’s stage.”
Contrast that single point to mass point distribution to the multipoint distribution channels available over the Internet through:  Facebook, Google +, MySpace, SoundCloud, Twitter, and the numerous social networking configurations.

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
This E-Learning and Digital Culture MOOC has minimal locus of control and creates an incredible opportunity for participants to design a very Personal Learning Experience.
After all, the opportunity to enjoy the freedom of following our own Personal Learning Experiences may create cultural, social, and political forces that prevent the potential application of technology in manipulative and pervasive ways.

E-Learning and Digital Cultures The Utopian View:

Professional Educators often approach the use of Mass Communications and Technology from a distinctly Utopian Perspective. Major channels of communication that have evolved to be standard practice in Higher Education are drawn from the larger cultural milieu primarily from the Entertainment Industry and the News Media.

Technological development often comes before the social, cultural, and economic configurations that support and interact with the technology. Mass communications media specifically, newspapers, radio, television, and movies; often preceded the use of similar communications techniques in the field of higher education. Going back in time, 16mm training films were direct result of technology developed by the Movie Industry in the 1920s.  Further, the introduction of video technology was a direct result of the widespread use of television for entertainment and news.

The video clips “A Day Made of Glass 2”, and “Productivity Future Vision” project a Utopian perspective where the technology is presented as being very ubiquitous and ever present. The first classroom scene in “A Day Made of Glass 2” depicts a very “Teacher Centered” presentation with content repeated on student displays. The classroom configuration really does not create Personal Learning Experiences emphasized by Isaac Asimov. Advanced technology is presented with extremely conventional “Teaching/Learning” strategies. The “Class Community Activity Table” is more “Student Centered.” However, an explanation of the Pedagogy is woefully lacking.  The technological capabilities are underutilized in the concepts of education presented here.

“Productivity Future Vision” projects an incredibly useful mix of touch screen displays.

What I did not get was………Why were all of the people using iPhoneTens….. Or iPadsTwenty…..????? in a Microsoft produced video…..