The Xplanation

Welcome to this morning’s Daily Research Update. Today’s themes are VLEs, social learning, and online teaching. If you want more context for this research, take a look at our Education and Technology Trends for 2010. You may also be interested in our Weekly Research Index, or you can follow our live, daily research on our Current News page.

(Click here to see a simple listing of today’s suggested reading)

John Fontane, Senior Director of Platform Evangelism for Blackboard, has written a thoughtful post on virtual and personal learning environments, in which he discusses the core factors driving products like BlackBoard and Moodle, and defends the mission and productivity facilitated by these environments. Fontane summarizes much of the criticism around LMS platforms (VLEs) and this alone makes the post valuable. Related to this theme, although indirectly, is Stephen Downes’ excellent article, “Social OS and Collective Construction of Knowledge.” It is a foreword written by Downes for a collection of essays, and his comments on Facebook and, in particular, the control of architecture in cyberspace, are key.

If there is a sense, though, in which Facebook can become popular by mirroring existing communities in society, there is a sense in which it can draw upon that popularity by exerting its own structure into communities. As Schimkus and Gruffat remind us, [10] Lawrence Lessig writes in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace that architecture in cyberspace is law, it is control. As he writes, “Architecture regulates behavior; its constraints are simultaneous; but its constraints get enforced not through the will of the state, or through the will of a community. Its constraints get enforced through the physical power of a context, or environment.” [11]

The inherent controlling nature of product architecture in cyberspace is neither good or evil. It simply is. Products can be designed with more or less controlled structure at their foundation. VLEs, by nature and mission, exercise a high level of control. Again, this is not necessarily positive or negative, but this control does have a strong impact on the types of learning that can best be facilitated in such environments. My preference as a teacher and product designer is for less control and for containerless models, but that is a personal preference as opposed to a criticism of other models.

Scott McLeod is certainly thinking about evolving educational models in his open letter to the Ames (IA) School Board. He writes as both an expert on school administration and a parent. Here is one segment of the advice/encouragement he offers:

We no longer live in an information push-out world where we passively receive information that is broadcast out to us by large entities. We all now can have a voice. We all now can be publishers. We all now can find each other’s thoughts and ideas and share, cooperate, collaborate, and take collective action. Time and geography are no longer barriers to working together. This too is destroying entire segments of our society. Long-existing barriers to learning also are disappearing. We now have the ability to learn anything from anyone, at any time, anywhere. Our informal learning is exploding. Formal learning institutions are scrambling to reinvent themselves for the new digital paradigm. Our school system must prepare graduates who are masters of our new information landscape.

Continuing with the idea of new models in education, I also enjoyed David Wiley’s post on his TEDxNYED talk. The post contains a link to his slides for the presentation as well as his notes. His thoughts on the conflict between new technologies for openness and old ways of thinking are insightful to say the least.

In our own day, as new media and technologies provide us with mind-boggling capabilities for sharing and education, we occasionally run into outdated policies and ways of thinking. For example, we see technology being turned against its potential and made to conceal and withhold. For example, a course management system like Blackboard theoretically has the potential to greatly improve educators’ capacity to share. But instead CMSs takes the approach of hiding educational materials behind passwords and regularly deleting all the student-contributed content in a course. If Facebook worked like Blackboard, every 15 weeks it would delete all your friends, delete all your photographs, unsubscribe you from all your groups, etc.

Also, if you’ve been teaching online courses for years, or if you are preparing for your initial foray, take the time to read Joshua Kim’s suggestions. Kim addresses the topic from a personal perspective and offers valuable tips. His takes on peer review and emotional labor resonate strongly with my own online teaching experience.

Not surprisingly, giving e-books away correlates to higher print sales. This corresponds to digital-analog marketing/sales trends in other markets. And finally, also in the world of e-books, Alex Halavais has a fun riff/rant on why Penguin’s new books for the iPad aren’t really the future, and why monthly subscriptions are the obvious thing.

I was talking with my ophthalmologist the other day, who has published medical books. We got on the topic of the future of books, and he said that there was really just one obvious outcome: that people will subscribe to libraries and pay a monthly fee for access to new books. It’s obvious to my doctor, to me, and to most people I meet. Why? Because we’re already moving to that model for music, and have gotten most of the way there for movies at home.

Suggested Reading

Edufountain: Virtual and Personal Learning Environments My Thoughts | Fountains of Fontaine

Blackboard Buys Mobile Messaging Company Saf-T-Net For $33 Million

Half an Hour: Social OS and Collective Construction of Knowledge

The status quo no longer suffices: An open letter to the Ames (IA) School Board | Dangerously Irrelevant

My TEDxNYED Talk « iterating toward openness

Blog U.: Online Teaching Advice for Matt Wasowski | Technology and Learning | Inside Higher

iPad Goes Back to the Future

E-Book Giveaways Correlate to Higher Print Sales | Epicenter | Wired.com