Distributed Online Learning Frameworks
Anne Marie Cunningham brought a post to my attention this evening that has really got me thinking about distributed models for online learning, and in particular the technical elements I believe need to be in place to establish a framework that affords the most opportunities to teacher and students.
As always the more holistic elements such as literacies and the cultivation of a nurturing participatory learning culture amongst students and teacher are of equal if not greater importance – but considering how late it is tonight I’ll be hard pressed to do the tech justice. So I’d best stick to that for now.
The post in question regards a communication model being used this session by David Silver for a Media Studies course at the University of San Francisco. According to Silver, “this semester, twitter is the main mode of communication used by my students and me.”
Silver continues to say that Twitter in fact replaces “at least” three distinct technologies:
- the class listserv
- email announcements
- the assignment submission box
The end result: “these days, my students write blogs, design flickr sets, upload vidoe [sic], and post works-in-progress. when finished, they tweet about it so that i – and, more importantly, their peers – can check it out. ”
Expanding on this
In reading Silver’s post I was both intrigued and inspired by the possibilities of this sort of model, and yet on reflecting further there are additional elements I think should be present – or perhaps expanded upon. Silver does make mention to other technologies, such as Flickr and video sites, however there are other elements I’d like to include as well, most notably:
Course Wiki or Blog to outline the syllabus, course materials, reading lists and assignments. Much of the interaction between instructor and students will take place in distributed, disparate spaces (particularly student blogs), and yet there is still likely to be a need for an centralised set of core materials and information concerning the fundamental structure and expectations of the course.
A course wiki to outline syllabus, course materials, reading list & assignments - in this example the Facilitating Online Communities course wiki at Wikieducator.
A course blog to outline syllabus, course materials, reading list & assignments - in this example the blogs, wikis and newmedia blog developed by David Wiley and made available on WordPress.com
Aggregation
One of the core considerations when adopting a distributed online model is how to gather, organise and repurpose the myriad of disparate sources of content. Here the combination of tagging/folksonomy and RSS is absolutely crucial, as it enables you to make sense of the deluge of data.
Hashtags – In the case of Twitter, this would involve the implementation of a hashtag convention in which course-related discussions always feature the term preceeded by a # – such as #blogging. Using the native Twitter search tool you would then be able to view all discussions featuring the same hashtag. Equally significant, you’d be able to grab the feed for the hashtag to use elsewhere.
Twitter Hashtags for Tweet aggregation - in this example all posts tagged with #cck08 are shown.
Once again, one of the key and most powerful opportunities in RSS is its capacity to facilitate the syndication of content. In the same way that popular radio stations are broadcast under different call signs in different parts of the country, RSS enables you to take content from one site and reuse it in another.
Course Portal – When you are part of a classroom full of bloggers – each with their own space – RSS aggregation will enable you to set up a blog portal featuring the recent updates of all sites. All that is required here is the creation of a free account on a site like Netvibes or Pageflakes and the population of a publicly visible tab with the RSS feeds of all the disparate content sources. This can include any site, and any format – audio, text or video; blog, Twitter post, podcast or YouTube channel. The only requirement is the presence of an RSS feed.
Pageflakes as blog portal - in this example a Pageflakes pagecast for the student blogs from Facilitating Online Communities
Other options
So at this point you’d have a communication system for announcements, discussion, and assignment submission; a central space for distributing course-related information and assignments; a legion of blogs to facilitate reflection, document progress and present assignments; a portal to present a quick view of all new blog posts, videos, podcasts, related articles or other information – and an underlying architecture of RSS to link everything together.
While this is indeed a powerful, flexible architecture it also facilitates only asynchronous communication. Particularly if a course is fully online it would be advisable to also include opportunities for synchronous communication. This could be achieved using a number of different technologies depending on the nature of the interaction the network wanted or needed to engage in, including:
- Webconferencing – Elluminate, Breeze/Connect or Dim Dim
- Video/Audio Chat – Skype/skypecasts, Instant Messaging
- Virtual Worlds – SecondLife
I’m of the view that the ideal framework would include a variety of formats (audio, video, text, images); be both synchronous and asynchronous; offer opportunities for both group work and individual reflection and synthesis; and above all be founded on a principles of openness and learner-empowerment that afford as much flexibility as possible to the individual, so they may explore the subject and build connections with others – both within the class and as importantly, outside of it.
Hello Mike,
Yet again, its my pleasure to select you as my Web site’s (http://elearningplanet.com/) favourite blogger of the previous week. Please find additional details in the following URl:
http://elearningplanet.com/?page_id=11
Have a good day. Expecting more innovative and useful information in your blog.
Regards,
E-Learning Tyro
http://elearningplanet.com
Hello Mike
Thank you for picking this up and running with it. I guess, I’d like to know what the advantage of this distributed model is over using a VLE, like Blackboard. Why could distributed be better?
Next, one of the reasons Silver seems to choose this approach is that is it open and public. Why is this better? Is learning in public really better than private? And if so why?
I think that these are pretty fundamental questions and may come under the aspects you didn’t have time to cover tonight. I’m sorry about that!
I guess we will be hearing a lot more about these ideas:)
Anne Marie
Distributed course models, networked learning, openness {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/WnBzQ02AWo_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”Distributed course models, networked learning, openness ”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/BKvsrOGGdD”}}}
Fantastic vision, Mike! Could every course in the uni have something like this? Oh, wait… Why don’t we pay BB to do much less and lock everything up instead…. ?
Inspiring change, modelling openness {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/glh2xTYwuy_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”Inspiring change, modelling openness ”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/sLVoKVgjTf”}}}
Hi Mike
Thank you so much for the great reply. It has made things so much clearer.
I see now the benefits of the distributed model. I suppose I havce been making some moves towards this by encouraging students to your delicious as a social book-marking tool.
Next, my query about public/private was not particularly related to the dangers for health related professions, though I am aware that this could be an issue. I use a discussion board to handle queries from 300 students, rather than respond to individual emails. This may save me some time as students may be finding that I have answered a similar query already. But my main motivation has actually been that it could be useful for students to see the interactions that I have with other students. So I do believe in being public to a certain extent. But I also feel that at least within Blackboard students are to a certain extent protected. If the say or do something silly then it stays within Blackboards walls so it is a relatively safe place. But if our discussions were completely public then this could have negative consequences for some. Perhaps I am being over-sensitive about that. Some students told me that others may be more likely to post on the discussion boards if they could do so anonymously but I thought that any possible benefit of this would be outweighed by the reduction in information for me and others. At the end of the day if a student emails and says that they want some advice in private then I respond to them by email. This happens rarely.
So thank you again for your great answers. And it was so much nicer to watch and listen to you than just read a reply. And you do anything but ramble!
Hi Mike
Thank you so much for the great reply. It has made things so much clearer.
I see now the benefits of the distributed model. I suppose I have been making some moves towards this by encouraging students to use delicious as a social book-marking tool. There is no SB tool in Blackboard (yet) but I am also aware that students need a way of keeping hold of their resources beyond university.
Next, my query about public/private was not particularly related to the dangers for health related professions, though I am aware that this could be an issue. I use a discussion board to handle queries from 300 students, rather than respond to individual emails. This may save me some time as students may be finding that I have answered a similar query already. But my main motivation has actually been that it could be useful for students to see the interactions that I have with other students. So I do believe in being public to a certain extent. But I also feel that at least within Blackboard students are protected. If they say or do something silly then it stays within Blackboards walls so it is a relatively safe place. But if our discussions were completely public then this could have negative consequences for some. Perhaps I am being over-sensitive about that. Some students told me that others may be more likely to post on the discussion boards if they could do so anonymously but I thought that any possible benefit of this would be outweighed by the reduction in information for me and others. At the end of the day if a student emails and says that they want some advice in private then I respond to them by email. This happens rarely.
So thank you again for your great answers. And it was so much nicer to watch and listen to you than just read a reply. And you do anything but ramble!
I am also thinking about the networked learning model. While I can appreciate that learning takes place through interaction, I suppose I doubt that the collective as a whole has the intelligence, rather than being distributed throughout the collective.
I must dig out your posts on networked learning too!
Leave your response!
Additional comments powered by BackType
Subscription Options:
Recent Posts
Archives
Recent Comments
Categories
Me @ Other Sites
Tags
Most Commented
Meta
Shared under CC-BY
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Support Open Education
Switch to our mobile site
Powered by WordPress | Log in | Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS) | Arthemia theme by Michael Hutagalung