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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Scaling

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A couple of weeks ago, I was in India for the #EDGEX2012 conference, an adjunct to an existing series of conferences that focus on improving educational opportunities in India.  Speakers included George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Dave Cormier, Jay Cross, Gráinne Conole, Les Foltos, and Martin Weller, as well as a host of Indian experts.

They introduced us to the context the night before the conference, with a series of presentations indicating the scope of the issue.  One fact kept recurring; the scope was trying to raise 350-500 million learners.  That is, the 150 million discrepancy between those two is just a rounding error – we’re talking hundreds of millions of learners!  Of course, this is in a country where power outages are common if you are lucky to have electricity at all, internet access can be dodgy at best, and smartphones are not ubiquitous.

Not surprisingly, the MOOC  models that Siemens et al use, as well as the Stanford model, are of interest, seeing as how they are designed to be open to large numbers of learners.  Downes reviewed the potential problems of their model of MOOCs in his presentation  including the issues I had raised.

However, there are ways to address my concerns.  Inge de Waard, in a MOOC presentation at the just completed Learning Solutions conference, indicated how she boosted success by supporting learning in such environments with some rubrics about how to deal with the information quantity, which addresses one of my concerns.

She also did have give them an (optional) activity, which I think is also important.  This, I think, is the strong point of the Stanford model.  I think a collaborative activity-focused, and well-facilitated discussion augmented MOOC could be a viable learning experience even for those not possessed of well-developed self-learning skills.  I also think it could help develop those learning skills.

However, as one of the attendees asked me, how do you scale it?  We are talking a lot  of mentors.  What occurred to me as a model was the notion of viral propagation.  The way things go big fast is to spread to others who spread to others.  It seems to me that a big opportunity is to not just train the trainer, but train the trainer’s trainer.

I would think that you could select some elite facilitators, and start a viral MOOC on discussion facilitation (noting the problem that such a topic needs a topic).  Then those facilitators would be trained to develop other facilitators to develop other facilitators.  Lots of other things would have to be put in place: jobs, for one, and some infrastructure, as at least some of these facilitators would need to be dispersed locally.  But as de Waard noted, her course (on mobile learning) was able to be participated in via a wide mechanism of means, including cell phones.

And it seemed to many of us that the focus could be not just on meeting the job categories that are estimated to be needed, but also on employability and creativity, meta-learning as a layer on top.  Others were concerned that learning to learn doesn’t mean much until you have a job (what’s more important, entrepreneurial spirit or a toilet?), but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

There are big challenges ahead for India, but as was pointed out, the country is in the midst of a shift in many ways, not least spirit.  Many inspiring entrepreneurs showed amazing energy and ability, and while there was still extreme poverty on display, the opportunities are also immense.  Here’s to lifting the human spirit, and the conditions for a better life for all.

Erik Wahl #LSCon Mindmap

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It’s hard to capture Erik Wahl’s dynamic presentation at the Learning Solutions conference (e.g. he painted three separate artworks during the presentation as music videos played). Still…:

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Reimagining Learning

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On the way to the recent Up To All Of Us unconference  (#utaou), I hadn’t planned a personal agenda.  However, I was going through the diagrams that I’d created on my iPad, and discovered one that I’d frankly forgotten. Which was nice, because it allowed me to review it with fresh eyes, and it resonated.  And I decided to put it out at the event to get feedback.  Let me talk you through it, because I welcome your feedback too.

Up front, let me state at least part of the motivation.  I’m trying to capture rethinking about education or formal learning. I’m tired of anything that allows folks to think knowledge dump and test is going to lead to meaningful change.  I’m also trying to ‘think out loud’ for myself.   And start getting more concrete about learning experience design.

Let me start with the second row from the top.  I want to start thinking about a learning experience as a series of activities, not a progression of content.  These can be a rich suite of things: engagement with a simulation, a group project, a museum visit, an interview, anything you might choose for an individual to engage in to further their learning. And, yes, it can  include traditional things: e.g. read this chapter.

This, by the way, has a direct relation to Project Tin Can, a proposal to supersede SCORM, allowing a greater variety of activities: Actor – Verb – Object, or I – did – this.  (For all I can recall, the origin of the diagram may have been an attempt to place Tin Can in a broad context!)

Around these activities, there are a couple of things. For one, content is accessed on the basis of the activities, not the other way around. Also, the activities produce products, and also reflections.

For the activities to be maximally valuable, they should produce output.  A sim use could produce a track of the learner’s exploration. A group project could provide a documented solution, or a concept-expression video or performance. An interview could produce an audio recording.  These products are portfolio items, going forward, and assessable items.  The assessment could be self, peer, or mentor.

However, in the context of ‘make your thinking visible’ (aka ‘show your  work’), there should also be reflections or cognitive annotations.  The underlying thinking needs to be visible for inspection. This is also part of your portfolio, and assessable. This is where, however, the opportunity to really recognize where the learner is, or is not, getting the content, and detect opportunities for assistance.

The learner is driven to content resources (audios, videos, documents, etc) by meaningful activity.  This in opposition to the notion that content dump happens before meaningful action. However, prior activities can ensure that learners are prepared to engage in the new activities.

The content could be pre-chosen, or the learners could be scaffolded in choosing appropriate materials. The latter is an opportunity for meta-learning.  Similarly, the choice of product could be determined, or up to learner/group choice, and again an opportunity for learning cross-project skills.  Helping learners create useful reflections is valuable (I recall guiding honours students to take credit for  the work they’d done; they were blind to much of the own hard work they had put in!).

When I presented this to the groups, there were several questions asked via post-its on the picture I hand-drew. Let me address them here:

What scale are you thinking about?

This unpacks. What goes into activity design is a whole separate area. And learning experience design may well play a role beneath this level.  However, the granularity of the activities is at issue.  I think about this at several scales, from an individual lesson plan to a full curriculum.    The choice of evaluation should be competency-based, assessed by rubrics, even jointly designed ones.  There is a lot of depth that is linked to this.

How does this differ from a traditional performance-based learning model?

I hadn’t heard of performance-based learning. Looking it up, there seems considerable overlap.  Also with outcome-based learning,  problem-based learning, or service learning, and similarly Understanding By Design.  It may not be more, I haven’t yet done the side-by-side. It’s scaling it up , and arguably a different lens, and maybe more, or not.  Still, I’m trying to carry it to more places, and help provide ways to think anew about instruction and formal education.

An interesting aside, for me, is that this does  segue to informal learning. That is, you, as an adult, choose certain activities to continue to develop your ability in certain areas.  Taking this framework provides a reference for learners to take control of their own learning, and develop their ability to be better learners.  Or so I would think, if done right.  Imagine the right side of the diagram moving from mentor to learner control.

How much is algorithmic?

That really depends.  Let me answer that in conjunction with this other comment:

Make a convert of this type of process out of a non-tech traditional process and tell that story…  

I can’t do that now, but one of the attendees suggested this sounded a lot like what she did in traditional design education. The point is that this framework is independent of technology.  You could be assigning studio and classroom and community projects, and getting back write-ups, performances, and more.  No digital tech involved.

There are definite ways in which technology can assist: providing tools for content search, and product and reflection generation, but this is not  about technology. You could be algorithmic in choosing from a suite of activities by a set of rules governing recommendations based upon learner performance, content available, etc.  You could also be algorithmic in programming some feedback around tech-traversal.  But that’s definitely not where I’m going right now.

Similarly, I’m going to answer two other questions together:

 How can I look at the path others take? and How can I see how I am doing?

The portfolio is really the answer.  You should be getting feedback on your products, and seeing others’ feedback (within limits).  This is definitely not intended to be individual, but instead hopefully it could be in a group, or at least some of the activities would be (e.g. communing on blog posts, participating in a discussion forum, etc).  In a tech-mediated environment, you could see others’ (anonymized) paths, access your feedback, and see traces of other’s trajectories.

The real question is: is this formulation useful? Does it give you a new and useful way of thinking about designing learning, and supporting learning?

MOOC reflections

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A recent phenomena is the MOOC, Massively Open Online Courses. I see two major manifestations: the type I have participated in briefly (mea culpa) as run by George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and co-conspirators, and the type being run by places like Stanford. Each share running large numbers of students, and laudable goals. Each also has flaws, in my mind, which illustrate some issues about education.

The Stanford model, as I understand it (and I haven’t taken one), features a rigorous curriculum of content and assessments, in technical fields like AI and programming. The goal is to ensure a high quality learning experience to anyone with sufficient technical ability and access to the Internet. Currently, the experience does support a discussion board, but otherwise the experience is, effectively, solo.

The connectivist MOOCs, on the other hand, are highly social. The learning comes from content presented by a lecturer, and then dialog via social media, where the contributions of the participants are shared. Assessment comes from participation and reflection, without explicit contextualized practice.

The downside of the latter is just that, with little direction, the courses really require effective self-learners. These courses assume that through the process, learners will develop learning skills, and the philosophical underpinning is that learning is about making the connections oneself.  As was pointed out by Lisa Chamberlin and Tracy Parish in an article, this can be problematic. As of yet, I don’t think that effective self-learning skills is a safe assumption (and we do need to remedy).

The problem with the former is that learners are largely dependent on the instructors, and will end up with that understanding, that learners aren’t seeing how other learners conceptualize the information and consequently developing a richer understanding.   You have to have really high quality materials, and highly targeted assessments.  The success will live and die on the quality of the assessments,  until the social aspect is engaged.

I was recently chided that the learning theories I subscribe to are somewhat dated, and guilty as charged; my grounding has taken a small hit by my not being solidly in the academic community of late. On the other hand, I have yet to see a theory that is as usefully integrative of cognitive and social learning theory as Cognitive Apprenticeship (and willing to be wrong), so I will continue to use (my somewhat adulterated version of) it until I am otherwise informed.

From the Cognitive Apprenticeship perspective, learners need motivating and meaningful tasks around which to organize their collective learning. I reckon more social interaction will be wrapped around the Stanford environment, and that either I’ve not experienced the formal version of the connectivist MOOCs, or learners will be expected to take on the responsibility to make it meaningful but will be scaffolded in that (if not already).

The upshot is that these are valuable initiatives from both pragmatic and principled perspectives, deepening our understanding while broadening educational reach. I look forward to seeing further developments.