Learner Profiling

When we look at the three pillars of learning design – learner, pedagogy (I will include learning theory, content and instructional design in this) and technology – we have been talking a lot about pedagogy and technology. I would like to start a discussion around the learner and how we can synthesize what we know about the other two pillars into this discussion.

The focus points of the discussion are:

1. What is the value in trying to build a model of a learner?
2. What would be components of the model?
3. How would these components be combined with pedagogy and technology to create more effective (personalized/adaptive) learning?

I would love to hear views around these. Here are some references that could serve as a starting point.

• Epsilon Learning
• Personalised trails and learner profiling within e-Learning environments
• Training Educators to Design and Develop ODL Materials/Developing Learners’ Profile
• User Modeling and User Profiling in Adaptive E-learning Systems
• Learning Orientations

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Sliced PLEs and Soft Peer review

I read about soft peer reviews on George Siemens’ blog and immediately went on to read more about the concept. I am very intrigued because of a discussion I had not long ago with an academician at a prominent university in India about the feasibility of starting an online journal based on intellectual property originating from within India. He was of the opinion that expert quality hard reviews are mandatory for the journal to become widely accepted.

So on the one hand we have a non-scalable, “final”, low volume nature of the traditional journal/learning places, while on the other we have the latest modes of collaborative learning 2.0 experiences.

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Notes on Instructional Design

A lot of good thinking has been provoked by Tony Karrer’s provocative questions. Manish and Geetha have also been responding to these thoughts. Here are my 2 cents.

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Microsoft Surface

Amazing is the word to describe it. Please do visit it at Surface. This is really much much more than a touch screen. It recognizes physical objects like digital cameras, mobile phones and Zunes and enables sharing of files and data between them. It allows you to use your hand movement to perform routine actions and use smart applications that can exchange information. Set to come out in the Spring of 2008, Surface deserves a close look by proponents of collaborative classroom learning. It has possibilities such as gaming, co-authoring, sharing, Internet access, multimedia and rich interactive application development.

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