A combination of a fairly feisty state of mind and George Siemen’s latest post on his Connectivism blog titled “Technologically Externalized Knowledge and Learning” has got me seriously riled up tonight – not at George mind you, but at the state of education as we know it.

In setting the scene for a discussion on “finding a cure for stale ideologies,” George discusses some of the issues with traditional views on learning, as well as some of the shortcomings of those who seek to affect systemic change in formal education.

Of more traditional ideologies on learning, he writes:

“…these views reflect an ideology that is growing in obsolescence in relation to the world outside of classrooms and training labs. When does a student know the structure of a problem in advance of solving it when she’s trying to create a YouTube video? When do a group of children know their learning outcomes when they choose to create and play a game? When does a salesperson know in advance that their is a correct way to engage a foreign client and thereby when the business of their organization? Learning, occurring under contrived conditions in classrooms, bears only a faint resemblance to real world problems and challenges.”

He points out, rightfully so, that we’ve been aware of these shortcomings for decades, and yet despite this we, as educators, have still failed to overcome the “stale” ideologies.

The reason for this, he argues, can be attributed to an inability to “rethink the learning model.” He continues:

“Reformers have largely worked within, rather than on, the system of education. Working within the system has resulted in status-quo preservation, even when reformists felt they were being radical.”

Certainly there is a great deal of truth to this criticism, however I’d like to add to the discussion by pointing throwing some additional ideas into the mix.

Systemic Integrity and Resilience

There can be little doubt that there is a strong and growing tide of discontent amongst some educators in formal education who believe the system needs to change. One need only glance quickly across the myriad of educational blogs, discussion forums, and Twitter for examples of this. And yet despite what are at times extremely vocal expressions of disapproval and calls for change, formal education has remaining largely unchanged in the wake of recent innovations. Why?

To borrow two terms from the life sciences:

Integrity refers to “The ability of an ecosystem to maintain its organization (i.e.,structures, processes, diversity) when confronted with environmental disturbance and change. ”

Resilience refers to “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance without shifting to another regime.”

In my view both of these terms would accurately describe characteristics of formal education. Contemporary educational institutions are in very real terms self-preserving systems.

While progressive mavericks may gain prominence, notoriety and indeed infamy within educational spheres, the reality of their influence at a systemic level is not necessarily as profoundly felt. Extraordinary webs of bureaucracy and a tendency for increasingly conservative philosophies in the upper echelons of institutional hierarchies combine to stifle many of the radical propositions of reformers.

It is little wonder why the disconnect between senior managers and front line instructors is so pronounced and so profound. The two realms are worlds apart.

So really, attempts to change the culture and underlying ideology, despite their sincerity, are largely absorbed by a system in which there not a direct and singular route to the top, but rather an endless interconnected web of catacombs and obscured pathways.

In such an environment it is very understandable how youthful fiery visions of making a difference begin to fade with professional maturity and eventually expire, leaving only jaded cynicism or a Borgian acceptance that “Resistance is futile.”

Some reformers vote with their feet

Continuing his commentary on the relatively minimal impact reformers have had, George argues: “Illich failed to account for how educational institutions are integrated into society.”

There is little doubt in my mind that George knows more about Illich and his work than I do, but just for a moment consider the following: Just because something is integrated into society doesn’t make it right. Perhaps Illich knew full well the extent to which educational systems, and their embedded ideologies, were deeply rooted in society. That doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion that these structures should remain, or that he failed to account for them.

Thoreau once wrote, “He who shall be a man, must be a nonconformist.” He also spoke of Civil Disobedience, and the idea that, should we be ethically (or indeed philosophically) opposed to a standing policy or even law, we are morally obligated to defy it.

These individuals didn’t necessarily argue for remaining in a system they felt was inherently defective, they – in one way or another – decided to break from the system completely.

In the case of John Holt, for example, he went on to become one of the most famous and influential advocates of homeschooling.

“Holt’s philosophy was simple: “… the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don’t need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it.”

To me, Holt’s views bears close resemblance to George’s critique of traditional views on learning, and the idea that “Learning, occurring under contrived conditions in classrooms, bears only a faint resemblance to real world problems and challenges.”

What I’m really suggesting here, I guess, is that reformers come in many forms. Some choose to remain within the system and fight the good fight, some fall prey to disillusionment and cynicism, and others chose to leave the system entirely.

Educational Sacrilege or a Symbol of Change?

Here’s where things get interesting. Some would consider educators like Holt – who is perhaps the homeschooling movements most well known advocate – as though they are betrayers of learning, hardly reformers of education, and indeed not worthy at all of the title “educator.” Yet if what George is saying is true, and the failure of educational reformers lay with the fact they “have largely worked within, rather than on, the system of education,” then a complete split with the formal educational system is perhaps the ultimate symbol of a desire for change and reform.

Going further, if all this is true, and advocates of alternative methods of learning are indeed worthy of the titles Reformer and Educator, then no survey of the impact of educational reform or pedagogical innovation is truly complete without considering all forms of learning – not just traditional schools and institutions.

Indeed, if I may be so bold as to say, when considering the notions of Networked Learning and Connectivism in their uninhibited practice, homeschooling is perhaps one of the better places to witness it.

That’s a post for another day though…

The article discusses the notion of open educational resources (OERs), and the increasing trend for many universities to open up their content to the public, share their lectures, curricula, syllabi, reading lists and other course related materials.  It continues to discuss how people are beginning to reference these resources, and use them either as leaping off points for degrees or certifications, or general interest.

So, what’s the problem?

What’s so wrong with sharing educational material and content, you might ask?  Nothing, that is, if the sharing is part of a larger vision, process or continuum.  The problem is it’s commonly not.  What is making me increasingly irate about the topic of OERs is that, by themselves, open educational resources are simply not enough, and yet are being touted as a momentous achievement in the annals of education.

Whether they’re just token gestures or altruistic attempts at freeing up teaching materials, the outcome is pretty much the same.  The materials are released devoid of any context, peer interaction, learning networks, filtering systems, ways of interpreting, discussing or synthesizing the knowledge.  It is an classroom model without the classroom – worse than the instructivist model, because there is no teacher or expert to consult with in times of confusion or uncertainty.

Now hang on a second…

Now I’m not for a moment saying that open educational content should require a gatekeeper in the way classrooms have historically operated – with teacher at the top, students at the bottom in nice, neat rows, all learning by rote.  What I am saying is classrooms offers a critical component that OERs do not: a network with which to explore information and synthesise knowledge in a socially constructed way.  Networks, incidentally, which are both formal and informal.

When you release OERs to the ether – regardless of your motives – there is no network.

In some ways OERs are just another facet of the traditional view of education, where there are sharp delineations and clear distinctions between subjects and especially between classroom and the outside world. This is particularly true with respect to the sharing of entire courses and curricula.

When you release OERs to the public, you release them into the outside world – where perspectives and reality are far more complex, dynamic, and above all NOT scripted in the way they are in the classroom.

What’s missing…

So what really needs to be factored into the discussion on OERs – and indeed what is inherently absent in the current model – is the dynamic process of learning, and the context the learner. Intended or not, OERs inadvertently maintain echoes of the context of the content creator – and yet omit the peripheral social aspects in which the content initially appeared.

In order to be truly useful, and yield an optimal impact, learners need to be able to – and know how to – develop their own learning networks within which to socially construct and interpret what the OERs mean to them.  Yet for most people, the notion of learning networks is inherently foreign and unknown.

Open Educational Literacies

What this might ultimately entail is an offshoot of Digital Literacies – “open educational literacies” – that relate very closely to education.  Having access to content is not the same as understanding how it can be used effectively, or having access to peers and mentors to engage with in the learning processes.

Mind you I’m not trying to be prescriptive about what open educational literacies are in any definitive sense. They could range anywhere from a complete replication of a classroom environment (physical or virtual) to a loosly linked network of global enthusiasts using distributed technologies.

The point is that releasing OERs to the masses and thinking it’s good enough, just isn’t.  If education and educators are really intent on making a difference world wide, and helping facilitate the learning experiences of a vast range of people, then we must start considering global diversity, and individual contexts.

To me the moral of the story is to watch for learning opportunities in connections and don’t be afraid to explore them, no matter how obscure their connectedness may appear.

There were a number of YouTube clips that we watched, but this one in particular inspired the most discussion:

The series of connections and tangents:

Background on Concepts

In the paper, Wellman discusses the evolving nature of relationships and interactivity from little boxes, through Glocalization to Networked Individualism.

Little Boxes, Wellman, argues, are characterised by conditions where individuals are constrained by geography and minimal or no opportunities for transportation or communication, and as such are “socially and cognitively encapsulated by homogeneous, broadly-embracing groups.” In this culture, the role of place has a strong influence on the dynamic and relationships that develop. Namely, that there is a great deal of spatial familiarity, are more prevalent social hierarchies, since people are regularly in physical contact with one another and know a great deal about one another.

As opportunities increase in the wake of technological innovation and improvements in infrastructure, the role and place of individuals begins to change. Gradually the influence of place begins to decline, as people are able to move from one location to another, thus gaining exposure to different people, conditions and opportunities for interaction.

Finally, in the wake of even further technological innovation, particularly surrounding advances in wireless communication technologies – such as mobile phones, wireless internet connectivity, and online social media – relationships evolve to the point where they revolve around people, and independent from location. As Wellman writes, the people become the portals.

Parallels to Education

While reading the article, one paragraph led me to draw strong connections between Wellman’s theoretical discussion on sociology and network dynamics and the ongoing debate about educational change, and the existence of technology in the classroom – especially with respect to social media.

On page 3, Wellman writes:

“This is the world that much CSCW “groupware” has been developed for, including videoconferencing, collaborative writing, and workflow. Groupware assumes a defined, fully visible population; focused on aspects of a single joint task; with all directly accessible to all. These are viable solutions, but incomplete solutions and possibly minority solutions in their assumption that the small group is all encompassing and all-important.”

Upon reading this I immediately realised that much of education is founded on a “little boxes” view of the classroom, and the relationships and roles within it. Welman describes little boxes as being characterised by fairly rigid structures:

“These groups often have boundaries for inclusion and structured, hierarchical, organization: supervisors and employees, parents and children, pastors and churchgoers, organizational executives and members. In such a society, each interaction is in its place: one group at a time.”

“Little Box” Classrooms

Classrooms are still largely based on a spatial-centric model in which communication and access to information are seen as relatively scarce. In these conditions the role of the teacher is that of gateway to information, and in turn, knowledge. As such the relationship between teacher and student are clearly delineated – the teacher has a pre-existing understanding of the knowledge, cognisance of its implications, and access to the information while students did not. As a result, the teacher becomes situated at the centre of the classroom, bearing the sole responsibility of leading student through the content.

Yet access to information and experts who grasp its significance is no longer a scarcity. Neither are the opportunities to interact, communicate, share and explore restricted to the classroom. They can happen anywhere and everywhere, independent of place. In effect, classrooms need not be the sole spaces where learning occurs; it can – and does – occur anywhere the student is.

The Conflict

Herein lay the conflict. Educational systems are founded upon an outdated view that information and access to opportunities for communication and interaction are scarce commodities, and maintain an adherence to strict hierarchical structures that delineate roles of students and teachers.

This is clearly visible in existing technical infrastructure as well. Environments such as as Learning Management Systems (LMS) mirror the central view of the classroom, with course content and interaction revolving around the course, not the students. LMS are essentially virtual representations of the traditional classroom, with all the roles, restrictions and social hierarchies this entails. Perhaps not surprisingly, LMS continue to be one of the core components of computer-based learning and teaching in education.

When examining the use of social media in the classroom, the opposite is generally true. With the exception of pockets of use system wide, the prevailing view above and beyond confusion or lack of familiarity, is one of cautious interest, or scepticism. Teachers tend to look at how technology can be integrated into existing systems and structures – and thus retain continuity and the status quo – rather than how they can free up the classroom, pierce institutional barriers, level hierarchies, and enable students and teachers to explore new and different directions.

Importantly, the notion of what constitutes pedagogical validity remains in the hands of the teacher, the classroom, or the institution, rather than the student – with learning outcomes, aims and objectives defined not by the learner, but the teacher. Tools that are perceived to be of little educational relevance are not used, actively discouraged, or even blocked completely by filters.

Disruptive Technology

In my view, Wellman’s paper clearly exemplifies the notion of “disruptive technology,” and how organisations rally against it in attempts to maintain the status quo. Clearly, the implications of a new technology extend far beyond the tool itself, because in introducing new affordances you almost inevitably affect existing relationships, structures and ways of working.

As Marshall McLuhan famously said: “The medium is the message.”

It is in some ways of little surprise then why some people are so skeptical, averse or even in direct opposition to social media in education. Not only does it draw into question some fundamental logistical considerations, it introduces an entirely new dynamic that is virtually diametrically opposed to existing institutional systems.

Glocalisation as the Middle Ground

Having said this, one of the core benefits of course-based education is the ability to approach a body of knowledge with your peers, and thus enable the social construction of knowledge within a cohort of individuals with whom you have face-to-face access. So there are elements of both the little boxes models and networked individual that should be incorporated into the mix. Wellman’s notion of glocalisation may prove valuable here.

Glocalization represents the middle ground between little boxes and Networked Individualism (think global + localised). It marks the stage where people are still loosely tied to space and place, with the locally shared circumstances that entails, but have also begun to establish network ties that span locations and geographies – even cultures – and thus take on a global perspective as well

His discussion on the nature and advantages of glocalization is worth quoting at-length:

“…glocalized connectivity affords fluid systems for using ramified networks to access resources at work and in the community: material, cognitive, and influential. No more are people identified as members of a single group; they can switch among multiple networks. Switching and maneuvering among networks, people can use ties to one network to bring resources to another. Indeed, the very fact of their ties to other networks will be a resource, creating the possibility of linkage, trade and cooperation. Knowing how to network (on and offline) becomes a human capital resource, and having a supportive network becomes a social capital resource [2]. The cost is the loss of a palpably present and visible local group at work and in the community that could provide social identity and a sense of belonging. The gain is the increased diversity of opportunity, greater scope for individual agency, and the freedom from a single group’s constrictive control.”

This is particularly relevant from an an educational context, because it suggests that the classroom could retain its role as a gathering place for the course. Students would continue to share a common vision on an established curriculum they explored together, and yet also harness the opportunities in globalisation via social media where each individual seeks out ties beyond the institution for additional real-world relevance, which in turn could be shared with the rest of the class.

In effect, the cohort becomes larger than the sum of its parts, and the instructor becomes an active participant in the learning process. Rather than the single gateway to knowledge, they become a co-learner, as well as sounding board for synthesising information, and vetting it for accuracy.

That being said, glocalization represents a massive shift for the educational system too. However given the range of the debate it may prove to be a valuable middle ground.

Once again this year I’ve informally enrolled in two open online courses – Connectivism and Connective Knowledge ’09 (CCK09), and Social Media and Open Education (ECI831). Having done this I’ve begun to see a number of people posting clips to YouTube in which they introduce themselves and share a little bit about their professional background, personal learning objectives, and what they hope to get out of the course. I think this is a really great idea, so I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring.

Having said all this, I must admit I’m off to a terrible start engaging in both of these courses – though not due to lack of interest I assure you, I’m just running around like a headless chicken at the moment and need to carve out some time to come up for air and re-prioritise my focus to leave room for both courses. I’ll try to get to that this week.

The Connectivism posts are slowly starting to trickle through my Google Alert notifications, and being the obsessive sort that I am, I am trying to read them all. If the caliber of content and reflection from last year is any indication, I’ll have a lot of food for thought again this year.

Benjamin Stewart’s post earlier this week (“CCK09 – MOOC“) regarding the use of the term “MOOC,” or Massive Open Online Course, to describe the Connectivism course is one such example. He ponders “How many participants need to sign up or participate that warrants a name like MOOC?” and suggests that perhaps the only aspect of CCK08 and CCK09 that indeed make it a course is the fact it has a start and end date.

He goes on to point out the different levels and types of participation, formal and informal enrollment, and the fact the 2009 session is expected to include 4 mini conferences that facilitate even more intermittent participation – all of these factors, he says, diverge from the traditional notion of what a course is.

My interpretation is that’s what this course was designed to do – explore new and innovative methods of course design in a way that promotes personal empowerment, learning networks, and ultimately continuity above and beyond the formal end of the course.  Based on my own experiences in the wake of CCK08 I think it has accomplished just that.

George Siemens echoes this idea in the July 29th post on the CCK blog, saying “CCK08 was an attempt to destabilize the concept of a course.”  That entire post is devoted to explore the underlying logic of the course design in fact, and is well worth reading.

Benjamin’s final point of the post is what has really got me thinking.  He asks “Is a 12-week presentation and discussion of CCK-related content the best way to conduct interactions? Another option is to create an infrastructure (say Google Wave when it’s up-and-running) that promotes ongoing dialog on the topic.”

In my view, CCK is indeed creating an infrastructure that promotes ongoing dialog.  It’s just doing it through a distributed model, driven by the individuals themselves and the learning networks they form.

Personal Learning Environments

To me the act of exploring and developing personal learning environments is a critical phase that must not be excluded.  It establishes a vested interest in which each student can confidently declare “this is my space,” whether a personal blog or group discussion area.  Here the student becomes the hub for the environment, unlike traditional learning management systems where the course is the hub.  In these environments there is a distinct break in the learning process at the end of session.  The student finishes the course and finds all their work is still housed – or worse still, locked up – in the course management system.  There is no way to build upon the content or the work; it effectively ceases to exist.

If lifelong learning is considered a priority and attribute that educational institutions seek to cultivate amongst graduating students, they need to provide opportunities and allowances for the development of personal spaces.  Personal learning environments are one way of doing this.

Personal Learning Processes

Secondly, opening up the course to extreme flexibility where we can do as much or as little as we like, skip sections, explore tangents, and interact with whomever we choose serves to establish an equally significant sense of ownership over the learning process.  Critics might argue that the ability to skip sections of a curriculum  leaves opportunities for less dedicated students to slack off, and that may be true – however that is arguably no more true than in traditional institutions.  Ultimately we learn because we choose to learn; and if we choose not to learn, then why are we taking a course?

Furthermore, I want to emphasise that such criticisms are really only relevant to a specific type of education – one in which formal assessments or credentials are assigned.  I’m talking about the fundamental idea of learning; the exploration of new ideas and concepts, the acquisition of new skills or attributes and ultimate the furthering of our understanding.  The notion of how or whether this model sits within traditional formal educational structures is another discussion entirely.

For the bulk of our lives we are not in formal educational environments, with no curriculum dictating what we must study, or how much, nor assessments of how well or how poorly we comprehend the subject matter.  In my view it is of far greater importance then that we grow to understand the way we each learn and what we want to learn – e.g. our own learning preferences and processes – rather than constantly graded on how well we do it.  If we embrace learning, and find our own interests and passions within it, then self-assessment and the pursuit of improvement will arise naturally.  It is critical then that students be given the opportunities to explore and develop their own learning styles, as well as nurture and grow networks in which they continue their explorations and learning experiences.

Personal Learning Networks

From the standpoint of online learning, in the scheme of the entire internet locating peers and in turn developing relationships with them that lead to valuable opportunities for interaction is a very slow process.  For example my Twitter network is now a valuable resource for me that includes hundreds of experts, educators, and technologists.  However developing this network has taken me literally years to accomplish, and at times it has felt like a tedious process that was going nowhere at all.  Left to our own devices learning networks develop very slowly.

The existence of a course however greatly facilitates this process in that it acts as a magnet for like-minded peers with whom we can begin to develop relationships and networks.  The subject matter is integral to this process too of course in that it strews topics that can lead to interaction and engagement with others.  However from the standpoint of cultivating lifelong learning, the existence of a course as a portal to network development and more long term sharing, filtering, discussion, and debate is of critical significance.

Conclusion

Benjamin suggested that  “another option is to create an infrastructure…that promotes ongoing dialog on the topic.” In my view Connectivism and Connected Knowledge is doing just that – establishing an infrastructure that promotes ongoing dialog on the topic.  However the infrastructure I’m describing is perhaps slightly different. Here the course acts as more of a scaffolding or marketplace that sews and tends the seeds from which learning networks can form, and also facilitates the embracing and personalising of spaces and processes that promote continuity in the experience.  With these in place, when the course formally comes to a close at the end of 12-weeks, each student has established their own structures and networks that enable the learning process to continue.

It’s an open group and all are welcome. If you don’t have an account with the service you can quickly create one, or login using your Twitter, Google or Facebook accounts. The direct link to the group is: http://friendfeed.com/cck09

One aspect of the tool I’m likely to use quite a bit is the share discussion option. As far as I know this is unique to FriendFeed, and in my view it’s a really useful feature. It enables you to embed entire discussions in 3rd party sites like blogs and wikis. Because you are embedding the thread rather than copying specific sections of text the discussions are kept current. You can even add to the discussion from 3rd party sites. An example is included below.

I’m notoriously bad about checking for updates in discussions and discussion forums, so I’ve also enabled notifications for all posts and comments to the group. That way I’m reminded to return and participate.

NOTE: Due to the fine detail of the screenshots, this presentation is best viewed full screen.

These slides were prepared as a visual aid for a presentation for the UNSW Network of Faculty Educational Developers on 5 August 2009.

The primary foci of the presentation are the technical frameworks and environments used during Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2008, the distributed nature of the resulting systems, and corresponding learning networks that developed.

The expectation and hope is the presentation will inspire wider discussion on the opportunities and challenges of distributed learning frameworks such as Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and how they might be incorporated into courses – and importantly, how courses might be changed to enable learning networks to form.

For more information on UNFED, please see the following post on the UNSW TELT blog:

http://blogs.unsw.edu.au/telt/blog/2009/04/02/unfed-unsw-network-of-faculty-educational-developers/

Among other reasons, this course is all about learning through connections and learning networks. It would make sense then to open the discussion to the network as well and begin to work together.

Blog
As I’ve mentioned before, I am a highly reflective learner. I prefer to think at length on paper before I engage in discussion and like to be able to watch patterns and recurring themes unfold over time. Blogs are particularly well suited to my learning style, and as such I expect this blog will continue to see the bulk of my attention for the course.

Discussion is nonetheless a critical component to learning as well, as it enables people to gain exposure to different perspectives, interpretations, information and experiences. It can also serve to help filter, interpret, and find meaning in at times complex situations or contexts.

Blog comments are one way this can be accomplished, and in CCK08 this proved to be a very valuable and stimulating source of learning. However blog comments are perhaps not as useful for large groups because they rely on a post to stimulate the discussion and resulting conversations can become spread across many disparate and distributed spaces. So having additional ways to connect, share, discuss and debate is important.

Twitter
For short discussions and sharing of information Twitter has proven quite a valuable tool. Use of the hashtag #CCK09 also enables aggregation, syndication and location of related updates at a later time.

However the 140 character limit and the fact Twitter ties updates to people and not threads poses a constraint that eventually calls for another solution.

Moodle, Facebook
There are a variety of options for more long-form, threaded discussions and these are just two of them.

Personally I don’t tend to like engaging in mass group discussions much – and am unlikely to use the course Moodle installation – so my preference is for a small group.

Given many people I know from CCK08 are on Facebook and interacting with one another already it would seem to make sense that we create a group there. This would enable us to share links and resources and engage in discussion using the native tool.

Ultimately you need people and consensus to establish a group discussion space so I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this matter.

Google Reader
Given the distributed nature of the course there will be many, many different spaces where interaction is occurring, or information is being shared. So an RSS reader is critical.

My reader of choice is Google Reader, biut there are a myriad of comparable services that do the same thing.

I’ll be using my feed reader to subscribe to blogs, Twitter search results, video uploads and perhaps wiki updates.

Google Alerts
Feed Readers are fantastic for keeping up with the sites you know about, but in order to uncover unknown sources of information and discussion you need another approach.

Google Alerts is my preference there, and it’s a simple, yet fantastic tool. Basically you create a search criteria and a notification schedule and Google will send you an email outlining the sites that match the criteria at the frequency you specified in the alert.

Personally I create an alert that notifies me of all content created in the last 24 hours that has been tagged “CCK09.” I then go through the list and subscribe to any interesting sources in my feed reader.

YouTube
Video was not used extensively during CCK08, but it is nontheless an effective medium to convey information. Perhaps the most effective use of video that I saw during the last course was Wendy Drexler’s adaptation of the format made famous by the Common Craft show.

Podcasts & Vodcasts
I travel a whole lot during the week – 2.5 hours each direction to and from work – and have an enormous amount of time on my hands that can be spent reading, writing or studying. Gaining access to downloadable materials for me would be tremendously valuable, so I’m hoping these sorts of formats will be made available.

Skype, Elluminate, SecondLife
One of the challenging aspects of engaging in an online course of this scale and scope is the fact you never really get to meet with other students in person en masse. So it’s useful to find alternative means of bridging the geography.

Text-based mediums like IM and to a lesser degree Twitter do help establish a sense of social connectivity to a degree, but a tremendous sense of humanity is lost in the absence of voice and sight.

In this sense tools that support voice and especially camera-based conversations can add a great deal of depth to interactivity and enhance the connections that develop.

The issue in my case though, at least in CCK08, was with time zone differences. With many participants living in North America and Europe, many of the meetings were held late at night or early in the morning.

The facilitators of the course, George Siemens and Stephen Downes, really bent over backwards to hold multiple sessions – frequently late at night for them – which was fantastic. However many of the student-organised sessions fell in off-times.

Ultimately it’s just the nature of online communication, which I fully accept. Fortunately there are alternative opportunities available via asynchronous communication. However this does point to the importance of releasing videos that capture the human presence – if only to provide introductions to ourselves.

Building on the past

As mentioned previously, when I first dove into CCK08 last September I did so with a very poor understanding of many of the learning theories and concepts underlying the course.  This included fundamental ideas like Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism, Networked Learning, activities such as mind-mapping, and perhaps even the overall landscape in which the discussions were occurring.

Not surprisingly most of my energy went into exploring what these concepts were, and in turn how they related to (or conflicted with) elements of Connectivism and Connective Knowledge.

This time around I’m feeling much more confident and would like to approach the course from a slightly different angle that encompasses both some review and more in-depth exploration of previous ideas, but also an exploration of what their implications are in other areas.

Additionally, there were a few concepts last time around regarding neural connections that completely escaped me and I just could not get my head around (no pun intended).  I’d like to ensure I thoroughly understand these concepts by the end of the course.

A bullet-point list of objectives is included at the end of this post (and is expected to change and grow as I think of more things).

Learning Networks

In particularly though I’d like to spend far more time observing Connectivism and network growth as it exists in reality and develops in practice.  Using the example of students in the course, and the informal networks and cohorts that emerge is a key opportunity in that respect.

At this stage I’m uncertain about the best way to approach this objective though, since my experiences last time around showed that gaining a holistic view of who was in the course and what they were doing was a virtually impossible task given the size, diversity and distribution of the student population and the environments in which they interacted.  Nonetheless, the opportunity to observe the evolution of learning networks in reality, analyse their nature and dynamics and ultimately their strengths and weaknesses is a significant one.

Implications for Alternative Learning Models

One of the key areas of interest I have regarding Connectivism, Networked Learning and Rhizomatic Knowledge is their implications for alternative models of learning and education.  What I didn’t mention last time is that my family are homeschoolers (natural learners/unschoolers to be specific), and I therefore have a vested interest in exploring models and theories that afford learners the opportunity to explore, discover and interpret on their own terms according to their own schedules.

From observation of my kids and their networks, I see a number of similarities between the natural learning model and the theories we discussed previously concerning nodes, ties, the distributed nature of knowledge, even power laws.  I would therefore like to explore ways that these ideas might be factored into (or otherwise inform) facilitation in order to best empower natural learners, homeschoolers and learners from other alternative models – and essentially how best to help learners establish, maximise and explore their own learning styles.

Of course empowering learners and helping them help themselves is core to all learning models though.

Connecting in Filtered Environments

Arguably on the other end of the spectrum, I would also like to explore and discuss ways through while people can connect in regulated, restricted environments.  An unfortunate trend in education in Australia these days seems to be the habit of locking people out of online spaces in the name of security and safety, despite interest and learning opportunities to the contrary.

There is tremendous interest in exploring innovative opportunities for learning and teaching amongst teachers and students in these controlled environments, so exploring ways to work around the filters – and make the most of a restricted system – would be a worthwhile discussion to have.

These aims and objects are of course my personal ones and many may not be particularly relevant for the course, however they will nonetheless things I’m thinking about and exploring during the course of the session.

List of Aims and Objectives

• Review and pursue a more in-depth understanding of Connectivism & Connective Knowledge and related subject matter
• Develop a better understanding of neural connections
• Explore the implications of Connectivism for alternative forms of education
• Using the example of the students in the course, observe and analyse the nature of learning networks in practice, including how they form, why they form, the nature of the dynamics and relationships within them, and their apparent strengths and weaknesses
• Observe the different forms of social media used to connect and engage, evaluate how it is being used, and assess its relative effectiveness in supporting the learning process
• Explore ways to engage and connect in locked-down environments where sites are filtered and access to some/many online environments and applications is restricted.