The following post is a think-piece I’ve written to help prepare for the upcoming Technology in Learning and Teaching Unconference being hosted by Macquarie University and the Islands of Jokaydia in Secondlife, being held this Friday, 25 September.

I will be facilitating a session that examines alternatives to learning management systems and other centralised platforms used in education to facilitate the learning and teaching processes.

Initially I was going to cover just the frameworks, but I quickly realised that it was insufficient to talk about solutions without first taking about the aims, objectives, philosophical or pedagogical views and indeed questions that the frameworks seek to address and support.

Therefore this morning I read through a document called the Guidelines on Learning that Inform Teaching at UNSW. As described in the introduction to the document:

“These guidelines are designed to support and assist staff in reflecting on and improving their teaching, in order to enhance the educational experience we [UNSW] offer our students.”

In the following post I highlight the guidelines that I feel are particularly relevant to the debate about social media versus learning management systems in education, and discuss what the implications are based on my own experience and observations.

Rebuttals Encouraged

That being said, I know a number of educators who would (and do) disagree with my position on social media versus learning management systems, as well as that of networked learning, distributed frameworks and open education.  So I’m sincerely hoping to hear rebuttals from the other side of the fence regarding areas of disagreement.  If you do post a reply (whether in agreement or otherwise), please be sure to include a trackback so your post is listed in the footer of this one and others will be able to gain a more holistic view of the discussion.

Synthesizing the Guidelines

All that said, my thoughts on eight of the guidelines are as follows:

4. Structured occasions for reflection allow students to explore their experiences, challenge current beliefs, and develop new practices and understandings.

Blogs facilitate the exploration and preservation of reflections over an extend period of time, thus enable the identification of trends over time and the development of metacognition. Their open nature also opens the door to comments by others – both student peers, teachers university staff and those outside the institution. Commenting can take on many forms, not the least of which are more in depth discussions, debates and expressions of opposing views, and serendipitous tangents into other areas.

5. Learning is more effective when students’ prior experience and knowledge are recognised and built on.

While proper course design does take prior experience and pre requisites into consideration, learning management systems themselves do not support this notion in practice particularly well because they are course centric and therefore limited to a homogeneous, high level view of the student.

Student-centred spaces like blogs, by contrast, can maintain a record of all previous work, including reflections, half-baked ideas and/or formal assignments. As such they provide a far more comprehensive view of each individual learner, which can be used as the foundation for further inquiry and investigation.

7. If dialogue is encouraged between students and teachers and among students (in and out of class), thus creating a community of learners, student motivation and engagement can be increased.

Social media is by definition and practice, social. Tools are designed to facilitate active discussion, collaboration and sharing of ideas – and empower each individual with the opportunities to engage and participate. Barriers to entry and use are low, with individuals themselves possessing a great deal of control over the circumstances in which they engage, how they do so, and what they do with the results of the interaction.

Social media is also trans-locational – it operates independent of place. As such students (and indeed teachers and administrators) are not limited to activities within the classroom; only where access to internet connectivity and/or mobile technology is available. With these options available, connections and networks can emerge virtually anywhere.

Social media is is both real-time (synchronous) and time agnostic (asynchronous). Interaction, discussion, debate and sharing can occur instantaneously through IM, web conferencing, web casts, virtual worlds (like SecondLife), and live chat; or it can take place when time permits via discussion forums, blogs, wikis, microblogs, social networks, image sharing, or video on-demand.

As students interact through various media, a sense of connectivity, networks and community grows because they are interacting and communicating with people independent of place. Thus the feeling of community emerges – because the ties are developing between people.

8. The educational experiences of all students are enhanced when the diversity of their experiences are acknowledged, valued, and drawn on in learning and teaching approaches and activities.

As with item 5 above, person-centric frameworks are far more capable of capturing, retaining, and depicting comprehensive views of the individual, their experiences, and unique qualities than those that revolve around a course in the way the LMS does.

Learning Management Systems are concerned with a very specific slices of disciplinary information and activity – commonly at the exclusion of other subjects. Furthermore, from the student’s standpoint, interaction and knowledge building is splintered and fractured into seemingly unrelated spheres of activity that exist for finite periods of time.

The result of this is that representation of diversity in an LMS is stifled and superficial, and its progress and evolution cannot be adequately tracked over time relative to, say, the aggregated reflections and discussions of a cohort of students during their studies at university – and indeed beyond.

9. Students learn in different ways and their learning can be better supported by the use of multiple teaching methods and modes of instruction (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, and read/write).

While use of different media formats to suit different learning styles is possible on many platforms, a key question to consider is what happens to the material after the course draws to a close. Housed solely within the confines of an LMS, content commonly becomes inaccessible when the course ends. This eliminates future uses, such as reflection and review, and effectively severs and terminates any discussion that had been occurring.

There is also the question of framework suitability to consider.

By necessity software has to, after a point, focus on a specific niche or activity, and do it well, rather than try to include everything to far poorer results. Centralised systems and distributed ones are no different. Systems that attempt to include a vast suite of tools, and be all things to all people, quickly become bloated, and frequently difficult to use and yet incorporate functionality that may be no better – if not worse – than products with a singular or relatively targeted focus.

Use of video sites for hosting and sharing videos, streaming audio sites for audio files, image sharing sites for photos, etcetera are therefore logical for two very important reasons.

First, they are the right tool for the job, designed specifically to support the format in question. Blogs and LMS alike are not designed to stream media. Uploading a 200 MB video file to either platform will be a painful viewing experience for anyone who tries to access it, since the entire file will need to be downloaded before it can start playing. Media streaming sites are designed for the specific purposes of online viewing, where the content can be played before then entire file has been downloaded. They are also frequently transcoded to different formats – most notably Flash – which renders nicely in the browser and yet drastically reduces the file size, making it easier to download.

Second, they will commonly support embedding in other sites, which means a single piece of content can be included in many different sites and spaces – be this a blog, a wiki, or a locked-down LMS. However significantly, locking down the content in an LMS does not preclude use of the content elsewhere or beyond the end of the course, because it is only that one instance of the content that is affected – not the source content itself. It will continue to exist long after the student has moved on to other activities.

11. When students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, they are more likely to develop higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

By and large, LMS are designed to facilitate two spheres of activity: the administration and management of courses, students, grades and assignments; and the delivery of content. Yes there are tools in place to enable restricted interaction amongst student cohorts, but you can hardly call this students taking responsibility for their own learning. Ultimately in the LMS students are restricted to specified activities, on predetermined subject matter, for finite periods of time, and have virtually no control over the conditions or circumstances in which these activities occur, nor the ability to export their efforts when the course is finished..

This is not an environment characterised by learner empowerment.

Social media is inherently different, for reasons I’ve already discussed. What I will say though, is that it’s quite interesting to look at the LMS in the context of the Guidelines on Learning that Inform Teaching, because in my view it draws into serious question the notion of learning management systems as pedagogically valid learning and teaching tools.

If the 16 points outlined in the guidelines are considered to be “one important – and highly practical – vehicle for implementing the university’s commitment to excellence in learning and
teaching ”- which I believe they are, then it would appear that the LMS stacks up pretty poorly.

13. Learning can be enhanced and independent learning skills developed through appropriate use of information and communication technologies.

I think I’d be labouring the point if I rehashed my previous arguments here, suffice it to say that the notion of “independent” learning skills require access and opportunities for working independently, and this is arguably not what Learning Management Systems were designed to achieve.

14. Learning cooperatively with peers – rather than in an individualistic or competitive way – may help students to develop interpersonal, professional, and cognitive skills to a higher level.

Again, much of the argument and logic I’ve already expressed holds true here as well. Collaboration and social construction of knowledge are key components of the dynamic seen in social media – and this spans social media platforms. Collaboration occurs on wikis, in Google Docs, in SecondLife; planning can take place in blogs, during discussions that emerge in their wake; discussion via email, instant messaging, or Twitter.

These elements can take place to a degree in learning management systems as well, and yet the key ingredients that are missing in the LMS are learner control over their environment, transparency and openness in the learning process, and continuity and retention of artefacts that emerge along the way.

Furthermore, control isn’t just significant from the standpoint of empowerment and the opportunity to envisage your own learning journey and the methods and meanderings this entails – it also incorporates peripheral elements like literacies; knowing how to ethically and civilly interact with others; how to recognise the difference between confidential information that must not be shared and that which can be shared openly and freely; how distinguish valid information from false information, even how to deal with conflict resolution.

These opportunities arise because interaction is taking place in the open, amongst a myriad other people, discussions, and networks, and above all on the learner’s terms.