The UVU campus is nearly uninhabited today as we swing into spring break. There’s no spring break at BYU, though, so I took advantage of my lightened workload to make it up to David Wiley’s IPT 692r – Intro to Open Ed course early, motivated in part by the fact that Russ Carlson, President of Blackboard, would be joining us in a discussion of the future of the learning management system (LMS) with respect to open education.
I have been critical about aspects of LMSs in the past. I’ve been critical of Blackboard in particular–primarily because of my complaints about the functionality of the Vista LMS, the “must use standard LMS for everything” attitude of some university CIOs, and Blackboard’s past behavior with respect to patent claims. And while one professor encouraged me to wear my “Supporting Innovation, Not Suing It” t-shirt to class, and while I at some point last night woke up saying, “If we tell you all our ideas, will you patent them and sell them to us later?”, I wanted to open my mind to the potentials of the discussion and not be obtuse as a matter of course.
(The following notes identify ideas by speaker, but please note that the words are only verbatim if I use quotes.)
Dr. Wiley began by directing us to consider the history of the LMS, it’s purpose as manifest through functionality and initial usage experiences. A common conclusion was the LMS attempted to replicate what happens in the classroom online: requiring little faculty tech expertise, providing quizzes, assigns, grades, content delivery (paper reduct), discussions [JMS: yes and no. online discussions are both similar and dramatically dissimilar], admin and teaching functions, and integration with campus academic and student information systems.
In response to our growing list, Russ responded, “This is just a collection of things… but there is new capability, and by tying the corporation together we enable new processes. Technology enabled a transformation.”
(JMS: Agreed as a potential. Technology is nothing without appropriate training and inspiration on proper educational application. Through the LMS we quickly accomplished teaching with technology, but not technology-enhanced teaching. But if we ask, how can we leverage technology to make teaching and learning better and easier? We must examine our educational goals, audience, and environment. We must problem-solve, creatively using applications of the available tools.
(Also, there are some ways in which the technology itself has changed the way we teach, albeit slowly:)
- Quizzes become more reasonable as self-assessments and formative learning activities when done online
- Discussions become fully participatory, time-liberated dialogs that allow participants to branch and focus on strands that are personally relevant.
- Digital content is searchable – discussions, texts, etc. This provides different, easier, faster access to materials and ideas that support a participant’s focused interest
We began speaking of the cultural shift associated with (or accompanied by) Web 2.0, and how that may impact education.
Justin makes the good point, if LMs is adaptation of teaching, it also seems this idea of PLE/PLN is just a 2nd generation adaptation of the LMS, i.e., teachers consider, How can I do X, Y, Z — which I did in the LMS easily — without the LMS?
JMS: Some who look at the PLE see it as something constructed by new media, connectivism, not as a substitute for the LMS. Those folks admit they don’t know what a PLE looks like and are uncertain if learning outcomes are similarly measurable. Those most comfortable with the idea of a PLE have some confidence in the organic conditions of it as a learning environment, despite it’s fuzziness.
Granted, some do see the PLE simply as an escape from the LMS, and even though they might be trying to simply recreate what they did in the LMS, they can gain some advantages just by being open: Openness, adaptable, personalized, ownership, persistence, authenticity.
I caught something of Justin saying that the open source (OSS) community is ignoring hard problems… OSS technology fails to provide sophisticated learning features like adaptive release, adaptive testing… The OSS community not taking it on…
(JMS: I accept that specific example as an inadequacy of available open PLE/PLN or Web 2.0 tools. There aren’t currently automatic gatekeeping (pre-programmed or “smart”) tools for PLE/PLN tools and media. Siemens and others might say teachers are naturally the gatekeepers. Users are the gatekeepers (though perhaps this is inadequate). Or maybe we don’t need those gatekeepers at all, that is, we can encourage the fundamentals of information fluency by directing students to assess and re-direct themselves.)
JMS: OS community is not taking on education in general. Why would they? Education is still a niche. Adaptive release is a very education-centered feature. OSS e-learning, like Moodle, include or plan to include it.
David Wiley: “Data. Through the LMS I can capture and use data in a way I never could before.” Also, liberty of users to control consumption of content. E.g. playing course media at 2x speed.
Justin Johansen: Teachers can teach to a style, users can adapt to their preferences (disruptive).
Sara Joy challenges, suggested/asked if LMS can be a “disruptive technology”.
David: At USU an instructor with no budget for “clickers” went to the dollar store and bought $1 laser pointers to accomplish the same thing. Throw up a slide, students with laser pointers indicate choices anonymously on screen. It’s personalized (and probably more fun).
Russ: “Isn’t one of the fundamental issues also location independence?”
Justin: “Definitely, esp. when gas prices were $4/gallon.”
Dr. Wiley whips out slides of 6 changes:
- analog –> digital
- tethered –> mobile
- consume –> create
- generic –> personalized
- isolated –> connected
- closed –> open
Jon Mott: There’s a book about organizations being like spiders, which can regrow a leg, or starfish, which have legs that, if severed, can grow into a new starfish. Are we like spiders or starfish? Best organizations are hybrids. Starfish-like activities. eBay features of a spider.
JMS: Some in education want that severed starfish leg to turn into a bird. But education’s history doesn’t show that we’re evolutionary–there’s no dramatic mutation between generations that changes the species. Education is certainly not, historically, subject to revolution either! It’s adaptation at best. It’s incremental change.
Aaron Johnson: Web 2.0 can be transformative in, for instance, using a blog publishes homework online, for the world to see–maximal exposure.
Dr. Wiley points out that several class blog posts have been picked up by Stephen Downes, which impacts the community, impacts the class, impacts the writer.
Justin: In the old system publishing homework was your mom putting your assignment on the fridge with a magnet.
Aaron: It’s also transformative in a way that democratizes access. But how are things changing in how people behave and interact? Do I get more out of that?
(JMS: We’ve seen that young people’s sense of privacy may be changing, and also that online exposure can bite us in the rear.)
Justin: I haven’t had a transformative e-learning experience in the classroom discussion forum. It’s usually, “do this boring thing for class or else”.
JMS: I have. (That’s what put me in e-learning over a decade ago, and I have them with some regularity now)
Jon: I learn something everyday on Twitter. I follow about 150 people, all of the ed tech related. My network has expanded, and for the better.
JMS: And learn to filter junk out, hopefully!
Russ: Yes, adding people, one by one… “adding diversity, accumulating collected knowledge… but at some point you reach a threshold.”
JMS: At first there’s a lot of noise, but you learn to filter that out, or cut it out. I follow around 60 people, but that changes from week to week. I’ll follow a lot of people who I will later un-follow, not because I don’t like them, but because their use of Twitter may not contribute to or match my own personal way of valuing Twitter. (JMS: I’ve talked too much. Time to listen more.)
Aaron: A lot of us still use the web for adaptations of normal life. Despite my tech-savvy nature, I hear about Web 2.0 stuff and I think do I really need that? Is the real transformation in the things that we do, or in helping people understand what they can do now, with this ability to use technoloy?
Jon: Novelty of technology is not enough. You have to be evaluative. How is using this going to help me? I user twitter not to be social, but to be professional.
JMS: The beauty of these tools is the personalization. The beauty of the PLE is the personalization.
Jon: I’ve used delicious for my own purposes, but have finally found a use for it in collaborative environment.
Justin: (To his group) Why aren’t we using delicious on our OER project?
(JMS: Note to self, we might put our group’s open ed project links list on a wiki instead of a Google Spreadsheet. Then reach out to community and get additional links for free.)
We somehow manage to move the conversation back to the future of the LMS.
JMS: I see the future of the LMS being not a replication of these open, existing tools, but a way to structure, organize, and adaptively control or smart-sequence these. As Justin pointed it, adaptive releasing, setting and resetting paths, etc.
Justin: Would we, by using the LMS as a place to integrate Web 2.0, personalized tools, push folks away from using those tools?
(JMS: Is Justin talking about the creepy treehouse-ness? I don’t get a chance to ask…)
Russ: “Is it not a false choice to give proprietary vs open source? … Is it not a distinction without a difference?”
(JMS: There are potential advantages in both that we should not lightly dismiss, e.g. proprietary may have quality advances, resource advantages, corporate attention, collaborative integration and first-choice with publishers; openness may have adaptability, customization, lower cost, ownership. [To me the subscription model is so painful, I personally want the ability to keep and maintain code perpetually, for example, stay at WebCT CE 4.1 for a decade if we wished.])
Russ: For a while technology was pulling the practice, but now (as we talk about web 2.0 tools) but now it seems we’ve flipped that.
Wiley: “Forget open code source for a minute. Forget APIs. Look at YouTube, Flickr, GoogleMaps. They all have a common language: RSS. APIs are great if you like that. But these tools are bleeding syndication, and they don’t punish you for mashing it up.”
John Hilton: Free access vs. open source vs. paid license.
Jon: “Once upon a time there was a Blackboard.com where you could create your own course for free.”
Russ: “It’s back.”
So we are talking about interoperability of the learning object (LTI)?
Wiley: “But LTI is so complex. RSS is sooo easy. Some clever folks, like Tony Hirst, will use Pipes or APIs. There’s technical accessibility, then there’s an expertise-less accessibility.
Jon: Having APIs and web services is critical. Maybe we need more than single sign-on.
Russ: “To Dave’s point about the data, if you want to use the data you have to have that captured in an environment.”
(JMS: Data can be made accessible through APIs, no?)
Jon: Livetext does program assessment and portfolios. You can build and expose your portfolio. Creators can easily export.
Dave: Yes, let’s just get data out of the end. Because even with standards everyone speaks their own dialect.
Aaron: Searchable.
John: By Google?
Aaron: Internally? Or… What do we mean by LMS for open ed?
Wiley: “Simplest example–and OCW is 1.0 simple–I built my course in Bb. How do I publish as OER? I probably need 30hrs to do it.” (JMS: Push-button public publishing?) Content publishing, content importing.
Justin: A lot of our Bb courses are full of PDFs, PPTs, DOCs, maybe HTML…
Aaron: What does Bb add in terms of content ability? It sounds like you’re talking about the same thing, replicating a course structure. Or how do you get the content out without having it trapped in the LMS’s structure?
JMS: You could do it both ways:
JMS: You have a “repository”, though I dislike that word. It’s a plain web server, or a wiki, or WP, or even an LMS repository. It contains the content–PDFs, PPTs, DOCs, HTML. You can share those straight off of the repository as disagreggated pieces. OR you can link to them directly from your individual LMS course structure. This eliminates course-to-course redundancy. OR you can link to them directly from your opencourseware platform. AND/OR your LMS has a way to select which pieces of the individual course to “open”, and then publishes an open version of your course with some parts hidden.
Wiley mentions OpenShare mod.
JMS: OpenShare does part of this for Moodle: lets you incrementally tag license metadata for resources and activities, and then mark those resources and activities as open or closed. Public can view those open items; registered students can view all the items.