Attaching more than the network to open courses

Alan Levine summed it up nicely:

And frankly, the open courses, marched to the beat of a fixed time length syllabus, might be seen as an incremental step from (I guess they would be called) closed courses? Non open courses? Are there other models than attaching the open network to a fixed course?

We have been attaching a network to the fixed course. It doesn’t matter if not all aspects are fixed, but there is sufficient resemblance through a fixed time length syllabus to a traditional course to bring Alan to think of these as an incremental step (actually, there are other startling contrasts that have been pointed out in the Educause article by Dave and George).

I have been thinking about NBT and Native Collaboration for some time now and been raising the same question. It actually started with a brief online exchange with Stephen and others prior to CCK08 where I proposed that you need to look at aspects such as time and content structure from a 2.0 lens. Of course, I learnt a lot more during CCK08 and thereafter, getting the distinction Tom Werner made between looking at the problem from an instructional lens vs. from a network lens.

Maybe we need to think of a model that stands contrasted in every way to a fixed course. So are there other models we can propose? Illich states:

The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity. (Deschooling Society)

Maybe we can look at the learning web and think of a continuously running learning environment which teaches everything and to everybody who wants to learn. All the experts are there and there are millions of people who come to learn for varying periods of time – some with the same needs as you but connecting to different resources than you – based on their preferences and learning comfort. The effectiveness or efficiency of learning would be dictated  in some large part by the way that environment is designed.

Illich takes it further by stating:

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education–and also to those who seek alternatives to other established service industries.

He talks about universal education not just education. That is an important distinction, more on the lines of initiatives like the Education for All. He could be correct there because of the sheer scale if that distinction is accurate. If he talking about all types of education being done like this, the problem is not of scale but of developing appropriate methods – methods that result in accomplishing the goal of “transforming each moment”, methods that embrace complexity and non-deterministic but desired outcomes – for different educational domains.

In the professional space, learning happens in the way that Illich conceived – a Wengerian network of practice transforms everyday activities into learning and performing in a networked environment. It happens tacitly or explicitly; by mistake, accident or on purpose; by fear of failure or intrinsic motivation. That’s why I am so intrigued by thinking around connective simulations.

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Innovative Learning Formats

I am looking at the history of web based training. Found an interesting timeline here and here. Google’s timeline search throws up some more interesting links. In particular, I liked reading this 1998 thesis by Mattias Moser. I am sure I could be pointed to more (and it would be great if you could point me to more).

The present state of WBTs is complex whether you use Bloom’s Taxonomy to classify different levels or think of extending each level with learning implements such as games and simulations. Instructor Led Training (ILTs) have also grown in sophistication in terms of tools and features for virtual interaction. Both have also been packaged with heuristics around what each level looks like making them commoditized and easier to comprehend for decision makers.

Although, the history of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) seems to start parallel to the development in computing, I believe that the last 10-12 years have seen a proliferation of variants in these two learning formats.

New features that take advantage of newer developments in technology and the Web in general are being accommodated within the same framework by both LMS and Authoring tool vendors. Take, for example, Composica, that allows templates to be embedded for inclusion of social media like blogs (“Social Learning with course blogs, comments, RSS feeds, rating and more, right within the content”).

The underlying developments in technology have been one important component behind this evolution from CBTs to WBTs. The other, as Moser points out, has been in responding to changes in learning theory and pedagogy – from programming instruction to creating carefully crafted non-linear sequences of instruction. Mobile based training (never coined as MBTs but as mLearning) is another example.

The NBT concept (Network Based Training) that I have been proposing also seems to be a logical extension of the WBT taking into account the various new development in social media, networking, Web 2.0, PLNs (Personal Learning Environments/Networks) and Learning 2.0. And I think one of the strongest early similarities of the NBT approach are through innovative learning formats such as Alternate Reality Games and Open Courses such as the CCK08 experience (the “training” word is of course, recast to imply less of programmed instruction and more of open, self-directed, facilitated learning).

Wondering if there are other alternative and innovative online learning formats that I have missed or that are in the making?

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Open Courses

This is in addition to the discussion on the Open Courses Educause article by George and Dave.

Interestingly, being one of the 18 students who sought accreditation, I sought it because I believed that I needed to get personal attention and direct mentoring from an expert. The concepts I networked with were (and are) serious areas of work for me and so is the feedback and evaluation. Both are part of my learning.

As Chris Anderson suggests in his new book, Free, commodities can be free. And I would assert that “open” does cost.

Different people may have their own take on what they do as “open” or as “free” – some for the market, some in the pursuit of knowledge or altruism, maybe both. To each, his or her own. If I can learn something from them that I want to, that is where I derive value. If that “service” has an economic value that is affordable for me, I will invest in it. If there is a conflict of interest or if I have any other issues with it, I will not.

CCK08 and edFutures are experiments in dealing with scale (and many other dimensions). Personal attention does not scale too well (even in traditional education) and therefore, learner responsibility has to reign supreme. Unlike traditional assessment, which has formal well researched assessment frameworks, the new medium does not lend itself to easily to assessment.

It is, as Network Singularity pointed out, an environment where “intention triumphs perfection” each time (actually, if we were to look at assessment deeper at the classroom level, we would uncover the same or similar imperfections).

I am not sure that we may not want to find ways to accredit such courses or certify people in open courses. I think accreditation and certification are both processes that are important for people and organizations, both for themselves and for a network that values their achievements and expertise. They act as quick references that simplify a host of other related processes such as recruitment.

I think they should be overhauled or adjusted for the new medium, not sure how yet, and this I believe would result in far greater efficiency in processes like recruitment. Maybe we are over-amplifying the imperfections and need to keep it simple & let it evolve.

As far as I am concerned, I would say this is great work and thinking in practice by these experts. Rather than denigrate these efforts, it would be more constructive to either contribute to the discussion or to propose alternative ideas that could be more effective. I am sure the same experts would willingly offer their time and energy to help validate new ideas or respond to critique.

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Learning and Architecture

I was prompted by Howard to think more about the intersection of Learning and Architecture. Howard states:

I’ve been thinking about how to create educationally relevant physical and social spaces for networked everyday learning. The similarity is in the importance of physical space and tacit learning.

And poses the question:

So . . . how do you think that architecture can help design diverse boundary social spaces where learning can occur in everyday and serendipitous circumstances.

Being a complete novice at architecture, and mindful of constraints of space, time and money in countries like ours, responding to Howard is difficult. The few things I have come across in Learning Space Design (Johnson and Lomas, Brown, Oblinger) make me think the ideas are interesting because they are taking the habits, behaviors, preferences, teaching and learning styles more suited for the new generation and intersecting them with solutions that can respond to these behaviors.

On the other hand, the web-social and physical learning spaces now have examples with initiatives like CCK08, EdFutures, spaces on virtual worlds like SecondLife and the designs mentioned in the above links.

But I think that there are a few spaces I would like to design – from perhaps an intuitive, self satisfying perspective – but spaces where I would feel happy learning in. These spaces would have to conform to a few aspects:

• They would have to immerse me in the content I want to learn about – not just digitally, but also experientially – not just for a moment, but for the entire duration of my learning.
• They would have to be spaces that are free-form, encouraging group collaboration as well as have a way that is unlike the traditional lecture hall design for a facilitator/teacher to address students
• They would have to be open, in the sense that I can leverage more resources than just my peers and the instructor and that there are many other sources that influence and inspire
• They have to be intelligent, draw and engage everyone in the classroom, providing the teacher a way to judge intensity of involvement
• They have to be analytic – be able to track learning actions and allow the teacher to modify the course of the class dynamically
• They have to be interactive – be able to give me ways of resolution of my issues and engage with content immersively
• They have to take advantage of location – in a world where we are digitizing increasingly, the value of a location is starting to diminish
• They must have simulated components – components that enable me to operate in a constrained world, yet at the same time allowing me to make mistakes
• They must have tools for structured collaboration – like a Six Thinking Hats tool

In essence, I would design a classroom that is immersive, open, experimental, has structured tools coexisting alongside informal learning, participatory and where the teacher has real-time tools and data on the group.

How do these ideas result in an architectural design? This would depend on time, effort and most importantly, money. My challenge to architectural experts (as also learning technologists) would be to design spaces that can keep these features while keeping costs low and replication easy, particularly from a developing country. The sheer number of physical classrooms required in these countries are enough to sustain enough businesses over a long period of time, provided they address considerations such as these and others like environment protection, terrain, infrastructure etc. as well.

I would also understand and agree that designing a new architecture for learning also needs to take into account teaching methodologies and curricula, as well as account for cultural differences. Some of my ideas may be very specific based on influences that theories such as Connectivism have had on me and maybe altogether irrelevant in traditional space or even social space) design. But I hope some of this makes sense. Thanks for providing an opportunity for me to think and research about these idea, Howard!

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Connective Simulations

Trust Stephen to come out with another super presentation. The presentation titled The Representative Student seeks to explore two challenges related to the modeling – the role of simulations or models in both delivering and learning about learning; and the relationships between adaptive courseware and social learning environments.

This comes close on the heels of the interesting debate/discussion between Stephen (Atoms and Reasons),  Heli (Criteria-CritLit and How to assess Learning), Alan Cooper (Assessing Learning) and John (Enculturation). Also comes close on the heels of an interesting post by NetworkSingularity (John?) (Marsh) who writes that “In today’s fast moving media ecologies intention trumps perfection every time”.

Also, the great presentation by Alec Couros (Networked Learning 101) and the great discussions I have been having with Al and Luisa, the team behind OPUS 2 and the research around the PENTHA ID model and complex AI based adaptive learning environments.

I have to mention George Siemens’ Changing Roles article as well as some of my own work around NBT and Connectivism Impacts and Jay Cross’s Learnscapes particularly because of Stephen’s comments around the role of the observer in networked learning environments.

Stephen makes the point that Critical Literacies (cognition, change, pragmaticism, syntax, context and semantics) are all aspects of thought, experience and communication. They are not only the various dimensions of these models but also the key skills involved in working with these models. In the Atoms post, he makes the point that assessment cannot be thought of as based on atomic learning units – there are none. In fact, given his post on Connective Knowledge, it is logical that some theory of assessment will follow from the basic attributes or types of knowledge that he had listed. And, in Having Reasons, he remarks “How connectivism moves beyond being a ‘mere’ forming of associations, and allows for a having, and articulation, of reasons” is what interests him at this point.

But what really got me excited is the possibility that all these ideas could probably merge if we started looking at simulations on a wider scale – connective simulations that could provide a way to abstract from the richness and complexity of our learning  process in a meaningful manner – allowing us to not only gain better insight about learning, but also to be able to guide our efforts to architect/enable observation based assessments.

The challenge, in my opinion, is also to prove that the new forms of assessment are scalable and accurate. That is, a large number of people can reliably be observed (or can demonstrate) “being” or “doing” in a manner that is reliable, accurate and consistent. The accuracy problem is important because simulations can only do so much in abstracting from a complex real-world.

If we had that method, and it was proved superior to traditional methods, then we would have buy-in. After all, the problem confronting us at this moment really is that we still end up trying to observe and assess people’s performance afresh whenever they start on a job, despite qualifications and proof from reliable assessments.

As an example, let us take a virtual worlds simulations based approach to learning and assessment. In a virtual world, combined with a simulation, it is easy to observe (physically) a participant learning to be or learning to do. Let us take the specific case of a hardware training LAB virtual world. The student can be joined in the room not only by his peers but also by an instructor or expert who observes the steps taken to resolve a technical problem.

It could be a virtual simulated world where the learner is attempting to construct a mind map or even a new piece of architecture or design from physical and virtual social media resources, using the richness of a real world – color, shape (maybe smell at some point or things that Stephen points out – linguistic structures, mathematical representations, videos, paintings, songs, gestures, behaviors and more), and being observed at the same time – by an AI based connectionist system or by a human observer.

And then let us imagine if there was a system that allowed multiple assessing sources to bring inputs on things that Stephen mentions, like dissonance, participation gap and resolution (Heli quotes Stephen on these in her Criteria post) based on observation – which could take subjective input as well bring together statistics from behavior recording or some such online tracking mechanism based on some intelligence/social collaboration or connectivist metrics that I proposed – and we could perhaps have a more complete connectivist methodology.

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PLE Architecture

Rita Kop mentions Stephen Downes’ charter/vision for a PLE extending on from a discussion of critical literacies and the eXtended Web, building on Steve Wheeler’s Web 3.0, George Siemens’ xWeb and Stephen’s Web X, to which I would add some of my own thoughts from a couple of years ago on Learning X.0:

The components that were formulated in Stephen Downes’ vision for a PLE at the start of the PLE project of the National Research Council of Canada are the following: 1. A personal profiler that would collect and store personal information. 2. An information and resource aggregator to collect information and resources. 3. Editors and publishers enabling people to produce and publish artifacts to aid the learning and interest of others. 4. Helper applications that would provide the pedagogical backbone of the PLE and make connections with other internet services to help the learner make sense of information, applications and resources. 5. Services of the learners choice. 6. Recommenders of information and resources.

Interesting. Without really attempting to reverse engineer or second guess Stephen’s thoughts, I think this is an evolutionary approach to design the PLE. By that I mean, an approach that says, look at the emerging technology, networks and way people are learning and sharing, and create a solution that would mashup or cross-pollinate technology and context sensitive “intelligent” recommendations.

I have mixed thoughts about this approach. On the one hand, the cross-pollination is a perhaps inevitable in a personal learning environment (to various degrees as evidenced by that discussion on xWeb…), but for me it doesn’t feel like it captures the entire scope that we are confronted with.

Rita points to one such “leak” in terms of critical literacies.

The reality, however, is different and research is available to show that not all adult learners are able to critically assess what they find online and might prefer to receive guidance from knowledgeable others. There is also research available to show how difficult it is for anybody to reach and access a deep level of information by using search engines.

I have not seen the research, but it seems to be confirmation to an intuitive feel that I have. Particularly in India, there is a culture of a very strong “touch and feel” in almost all spheres of life – difficult to substitute the “guru” as the guide. And since search engines are what they are, architecturally, the latter finding also seems intuitive.

The other “leak” I feel is fundamental. “Helper applications that would provide the pedagogical backbone” does not sound quite right. These need to be “core” infrastructure for the PLE inasmuch as pedagogy needs to equally reside at the core as technology and the learner. Of course, what the pedagogical backbone consists of is of prime importance – the reason for building  a PLE as opposed to a PageFlakes.

One more concern is with “personal information”. How is personal information defined? Is it defined as your core demographics, interests and preferences, or is it defined as your actions as implicitly recorded by a search engine, or is it defined as the log of your learning activities captured explicitly by an intelligent system, or is it a combination or extension of that into your professional lives? As a corollary, in the context of the PLE, how is that information useful for recommender systems except in an information management and presentation algorithm?

Again, integrating “services of the learners choice” presents problems. Its like saying, I could add-on a service without worrying about how it helps integrate with my learning in a particular context – sort of like a widget that displays an aggregated feed. To have context built-in and some pedagogy to be in place within the context of a PLE is important and it will determine rules that services will have to follow if they want to integrate into the learning experience. Otherwise, it becomes just a site where various services coexist.

I am not sure what the alternative is to Stephen’s vision, but the above comments have been my starting points when thinking about PLEs.

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Learning Innovation

To communicate an elusive and esoteric concept such as corporate values or leadership skills in a way that learners at all levels imbibe the spirit and passion with which the company has been created and is driven on a daily basis, is a task that requires continuous engagement and time. It also requires continuous reiteration and elaboration to make sure that values persist even as daily challenges are negotiated by employees.

For employees, it is not only a behavioral change, but also one that requires hard skills to conform to. The employee’s responsibility, additionally, does not end with his understanding, but in making shared that understanding and best practice across peers, team and supervisors.

This is where I feel that simulations, serious games and vibrant collaboration aware learning environments will make a significant impact.

My focus in this area is to provide a mechanism that transcends traditional eLearning approaches such as WBTs and Virtual Classrooms and focuses on behavioral and skill development skills, which has long been the subject of face to face classroom training.

Traditional face to face classroom training has its own advantages. Good instructors can learn a lot from observation of learner performance, the medium lends itself to some wanted unpredictability and creativity and students are immersed better into their learning through role-plays, collaborative activities and inter-personal sharing.

Be that as it may, simulated 2D/3D immersive simulation environments also have their own advantages. Firstly, environments can be created that are physically impossible to recreate or replicate (i.e. situate a large number of learners in) e.g. a production unit. The domain/content environment can be made vastly more informative and dynamic through the use of simulation technology e.g. simulating a business downturn – a complex model with many inter-related variables that change in complex ways as learners make changes to the environment. Thirdly, experimentation with scenarios in a repeatable manner with no real world consequences of decisions is a powerful feature. Fourthly, scaling beyond the reach and capacity of a traditional classroom is made obvious with the use of technology. Fifthly, the knowledge of the most expert and knowledgeable resources in the domain is captured in the simulated environment and training environments are not easily susceptible to individual differences in interpretation, while allow for multiple interpretations to be made possible at the same time. Sixthly, the medium is inherently visual allowing learners to navigate the simulations just like they would do in real life – which, in turn, drastically reduces the need for entry level IT competency.

Of course, there are trade-offs between the two. But I believe that technology can reduce the gap to a significant extent, firstly by the level of immersion that can be created and secondly by the depth of the domain modeling that can be achieved.

With our business simulations for sales (for which we won the Brandon Hall Award in 2009) and customer support, for example, we have seen drastic improvements in performance and performance assessment at a scale much beyond the reach of the traditional classroom. These improvements in performance have resulted from learners identifying and immersing themselves within the simulation environment, believing the simulation to be an effective replica of their business lives. In all over 10-12,000 learners have gone through these simulators till date and these simulators continue to be used and expanded in scope and coverage on an ongoing basis.

Essentially, the approach builds on immersing the learner employee into an environment that is very similar to his daily work environment. We want to model a period of time where the employee, operating at a certain level and in a certain role, will interact with his environment, which consists of stakeholders he engages with in pursuance of his daily tasks, and negotiate challenges that exemplify his understanding of one or more key concepts.

Network Based Training (NBT)

I believe that just as the CBT (Computer Based Training) paradigm transformed into the WBT (Web Based Training) paradigm, it is time now for a new transformation to NBT – the N standing for Network. This belief is strongly grounded in new theories of net pedagogy and in particular, the theory of Connectivism, which stands firmly contrasted against the traditional behavioral, cognitive and constructivist theories.

Connectivism leverages the revolutions in technology and social networking and frontally attacks the problems of our current conceptions and methodologies. It deals with the problem of sense-making in a world with a supra-abundance of information and knowhow. It focuses on learning as a lifelong skill and a framework for understanding and implementing communities of practice and informal learning in the enterprise.

Our system of learning and training is inherently on the lines of a production system. For example, we talk of induction training, then role-based training and then training for career progressions as distinct and discrete phases. In the process, we build barriers between the expert practitioner and a real separation between knowledge and practice. Consequently, we bring upon ourselves problems of inefficiencies, non-standardization and scale which require fresh techniques such as buddy-mentoring and on the job training.

NBTs seek to alleviate some of these issues by bring the expert practitioner, the learning community and the facilitators together on a single platform. Learners form an instant community with each other and people they will work with in the future, sharing knowledge, sharing fresh new approaches and creating new ways to deal with challenges at the workplace.

I believe that learners will benefit immensely from this informal network and collaboration by keeping content fresh, sharing rich and learning experiences meaningful and relevant for learners.

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We don’t need no education

I was reading with interest Will Richardson’s Motivating DIY Learners and his links to Alan Levine’s The Gaping M Shaped Void for DY Education and then following up on Anya Kamenetz who has written a new book called DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education which I have to read, and I couldn’t stop getting into an uncontrolled bout of expression, perhaps more an unsubstantiated vent.

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Do we have a reason to learn? Sure. Depending upon the context, which could range from generating income to enabling ourselves to perform a task to whatever. 

Who benefits when we learn? We should (and perhaps mostly do), but our employer, collaborator or the society at large, directly or indirectly, benefits from our actions that result from our learning.

How are the choices made? Of course, we may exhibit individual agency and demonstrate our choice over what we learn, but that in turn is partly conditioned by our constraints and the expectations we have about the results from learning, material or not. In part it is conditioned or influenced by what is expected of us.

When Alan Levine asks “What is going to motivate the large swath of a society to become educated or to learn something in a self-directed fashion?”, in the context of Anya’s new DIY U concept (and book), I am reminded of the question that was posed in CCK08 – “What do you think it will take for this change to happen?” (in the context of Connectivism and its potential impact). Both questions are about change, and the change being discussed is as much about the “why” of our learning as about the “how we are learning”. Both questions focus on the traditional systems of education as the reference point.

And this leads to a chain of things – the way the curriculum is designed, the certification process, linkages to placements when we finish a program of study etc. Not that this chain is always something that is well applauded for its outcomes, in fact in India we see a flurry of activity under names such as “Industry readiness programs” which seek to “bridge the gap” between academia and industry. These programmes demonstrate that there is a gap and academia/policy is not moving fast enough to bridge that.

Even when we pass through this chain, it is difficult to estimate what amount of knowhow we are made to pickup, that we would actually be able to push into the field when employment starts. I scratch my head sometimes and ask myself if it was really worth spending time learning about the Gangetic plains in India when today it is a click away, in resplendent glory, on the web. Alternately, if I had chosen to major in Geography, and didn’t know about the Gangetic Plains, that would be a distinct shame, wouldn’t it (actually most of us do forget by the time we get to that stage anyways). This is indeed a personal reflection, by definition not generalizable.

But educators can’t foresee where we will eventually land up, right? So their job is to prepare us for anything – build the foundations. And they are not depressed if we end up turning everything upside down and do something they did not think of preparing us for. In fact I believe that most schools, through their emphasis on discipline and values, try and engineer a well-rounded personality more than just a score-making machine.

Actually speaking then, there is no determinism then in what happens as we progress through the cycle. What does definitely determine where we ultimately land up are the opportunities we get and the choices we make. The opportunities are a function of competition too. And good scores are the embedded rules for smooth propagation in the system (now even those are being supplemented by an additional screening layer of entry assessments).

What equally stands out in my mind is the fact that every passing day, I am able to make better sense of the opportunities or appreciate why I need to learn something. If today, I decided to study as an engineer, I would perhaps do much better than I would have if I had taken an engineering course right after school.

Wait a minute. That doesn’t sound right, does it. What would schools do then? The one question I have never asked is why do we require 12 years of schooling; why not 5 years of primary education and then increasing specialization for the next 10 years; or for that matter, any other logical breakup? Like in Japan, education is compulsory from 6-15 years. Finland starts its students at the age of 7! I believe, in countries like Japan and Finland, post 15 years of age students can branch off to either an academic stream or a vocational stream. Finland, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand are ranked jointly the highest in the UN’s Education Index. The vocational and academic streams have started allowing some cross-credit exchanges as well (RPL in Australia).

But the fact is, that school starts a year or so later and ends in about 9 years, by the time the child is 15 or so. Then it is time to make decisions to go one way or the other with opportunities to merge at some point.

I like the concept better than what we have here. I would prefer that schools actually cut down on curriculum, maybe by 50% (borne out of experience with my daughter completing 5 years of primary school in 2011 – please don’t teach her India’s 5000 year history in a 4 page chapter). The time “allowed” to learn versus the time actually required to “learn” is probably the best indicator of what we are putting our young minds through.

We did not learn anything from Pink Floyd when they sang “we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control” – instead, we are overloading our curriculum, overburdening our young minds (now President Obama has initiated “adding” 21st century skills curriculum to STEM!) and generally not aligning with what the economy and society require. 

I somehow think we are really putting the burden of growth on our children rather than dealing with it ourselves. 

So if someone is listening, please do give some more thought to this meandering:

cut down school content, start school later, end it earlier, focus on growing the mind, building teamwork and other “21st century” skills, enabling our children to become responsible and knowledgeable citizens with a global perspective, reshape the assessment tools and frameworks that we have today to evaluate richness and variety of expression in our young minds, build new avenues and focussed curricula to strategically align with what we really need, get industry to recognize vocational education on par with regular degrees – basically – give our children a break, they don’t need this education.

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The production of learning

I came across a recent article in Forbes titled What Educators are Learning from Money Managers. The article is rife with purported linkages between how corporations work and how education could be if it learnt its lessons from the “money makers”. The point made is that if public money (and private funding in public education through donations) in education has poured in, it is not seeing the results it should because the approach may well be wrong.

And the approach by companies such as Wireless Generation, is to infuse assessment and monitoring of student and teacher performance with the help of technology combined with professional practices. Larry Berger, the founder and CEO of Wireless Generations says that Education is in a revolution of sophisticated analysis of the data set. Essentially he is talking about software that lets teachers evaluate their students better and take corrective action very rapidly (“every two weeks”) and the availability of cloud-computing and portability/ubiquity as technology innovations that can support this revolution.

So this is about Charter school operators such as Achievement First, who bring in a professional management and execution of performance based processes (for the student, teacher and school). Joel Klein, chancellor of the 1.1 million student New York City Department of Education, is taking a portfolio-theory approach to education reform, meaning that he wants a selection of large, professional organizations to choose from when he sets up a new charter school. He has learnt, through his experience as an Assistant Attorney General under the Clinton administration, two things – “competition and accountability“.

Chief among strategies are:

1. Expand the good schools and close down the bad ones
2. Rely on young teachers coming out of training programs like Teach for America and University of Chicago’s Urban Teacher Education Program
3. Pay teachers higher, but expect longer days and hours; enforce performance based indicators
4. Employ technology to bring about rapid personalized response
5. Focus on curriculum and leadership, rather than on bureaucratic roles
6. Focus on lagging students first
7. Replicate and scale these best practices

Some of this is kind of an approach is already incubating in India as I have referred to in my other posts. There are professional school operators bringing in technology and best practices, higher accountability and competitiveness, funding is on the increase, teachers do get paid higher, curriculum development is an exciting place to be and there are movements afoot to enhance the quality of teacher training programs and professionalization through movements similar to Teach for America. In fact, I believe, that 6000 high quality model schools, are being set up in India.

There is also, of course, student education loans (given the extremely low fee structures in public institutions) and heavy advertising by private education that is accompanying these trends (and many more market phenomena expected soon).

I am inherently uncomfortable in this notion of productionizing (if there is such a word) education. The problem is that in India the scale is many many times higher (and the infrastructure – physical and human – is many many times lower) that these models instantly would appeal to planners. There is no doubt that we need systems that ensure that a well-qualified and satisfied workforce comes into place sooner than later, that curriculum would benefit from ICT and advances in pedagogy, that teachers also need better working conditions and incentives, that there should be ways to monitor quality etc.

But education as the systematic production of learning, inherently a concept fraught with dangers that theories such as Connectivism identify, by whatever technique or best practice, seems to me the wrong abstraction. I think there are alternate ways that must be tried and tested at the point where we are at in India, rather than playing copycat to the ideas like the ones in the Forbes article.

Why – because what works elsewhere (if it does) may not be the best or viable methodology for us here – our scale, diversity, history, culture, geo-politics, economics and legacy are all different and unique; because Western systems of education and educational technology are under terrible critique at the moment, which means there are important lessons they are learning post implementation that we must take note of; because there is a lack of organized debate on what else could be; because we have a tendency to be motivated by hype more than substance; and because there is serious research happening worldwide that can change the way we think about education and educational technology.

Concretely, WBTs have failed to live up to expectations in terms of quality and effectiveness, but we embrace them as the mode of national level content development; Virtual Classrooms have ended up being more or less meeting rooms with facilitation tools, but we are investing in national level classrooms; Learning Management Systems are changing the world over to include AI, Web 2.0 and social learning, but we are stuck in the bureaucratic management of learning processes; Gaming and Simulations, as also Virtual World technology, are recognized as game changers, but we would rather not go there; and many other examples. I think we are so preoccupied with reach/access that we have not thought hard enough of the what after reach/access? question, assuming it is all there and is the best that can be.

As a consequence, we will go the way the market predicates, and that market will be large with plenty of innovation. But it may not be a market, in my humble opinion, that will provide the largest social benefit.

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Learner Responsibility

We have often, actually most of the time, decided to focus on teachers, teaching methods, institutional structures, assessments and certifications, but what is the responsibility of the learner herself in this experience? I am not talking about defining learners by the characteristics (autonomous, takes responsibility for her own learning…) under the category of responsibility, but trying to pinpoint a share of the responsibility in the current scenario.

In scenarios with multiple available educational options, one of the ways learners demonstrate responsible behavior is through making explicit their choice and preference among alternate options. This choice may not be voluntary (viz. parental pressure, social influences) and is influenced heavily by media advertisements, the tell-tale sign of private participation in education. Of course, in scenarios where there are no real options (either due to availability or other socio-economic factors), choice is non-existent too.

This is at the point of entry into the organized educational structures. But there is also learner responsibility that is demonstrated at the point of exit (at the award of a degree) which relates directly to employability and any possible threat to it. This was exemplified by the massive upheaval witnessed all over India (with perhaps the first instances of suicides related to education, linked directly to livelihood) in the wake of the Mandal Commission of 1990 in India which proposed strong affirmative action (through 27% reservations) for the underprivileged backward classes in central government jobs, universities and affiliated colleges and recruitment to public sector undertakings and government aided private institutions. There are more examples of student activism influencing their wider ecologies.

An interesting example happened in 2009 in Germany as a consequence of the Bologna process calling for all educational systems in Europe to be integrated. Examples of student activism from India also exist, primarily as polarized “youth” vehicles for the larger political parties/parents from which they obviously derive.

And I came across the International Students Movement as well which is a platform for “groups and activists around the world struggling against the commercialisation and privatisation of public education and for free and emancipatory education to network, share information and co-ordinate protests together”.

In between entry and exit, there is mandated responsibility (by the institution) with norms related to attendance, conduct and grades.

However, when, where and how does the learner have any control or choice of redress over the quality of the learning experience? And as a corollary to this question, what should be the responsibility of the learner in  the system – really what should the duties be – and how do they change or adapt to new influences such as privatization?

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New models for Indian Education

In this post, I would like to propose some new models/directions for Indian Education by addressing some core problem areas that I have been able to identify. I would like to focus on, in particular how some strategic new models could change the way we are addressing the huge scale and diversity in India.

The underlying realization is since we are a nation with huge disparities and diversity, there is no one size fits all solution, despite vast proclamations for the following (witness strategies like lets build the network and the content and we should have addressed the equity issue, look anyone can access and learn from high quality content prepared by the best minds). And the scale of issues is magnified many times as compared to any other country with perhaps the exception of China.

Democratizing Education

In such a situation, let us think of a model that truly democratizes education. By democratizing, I mean make it by the people, for the people and of the people.

I know that one of the ways to handle scale is technology. Another is a weighty institutional structure designed top down by the government. But I think a powerful way, is to meet scale with scale – to empower local communities to meet educational needs while at the same time being connected to national and global networks of practice. This is a sustainable strategy. But it means that power needs to be devolved in a strategic manner. Loosen some control and let local communities do the job – however, make sure we empower them with the skills and the perspectives of the planners. Use technology and bureaucratic structures to engender creation spaces (as John Seely Brown and co-authors argue in The Power of Pull) or Learnscapes (as Jay Cross would suggest).

The model will scale. It will recognize local constraints, indigenous capability and meet the aspirations of local communities. It will be sustainable since it is bottom up instead of top down. It will adapt faster to national planning needs. It will create opportunities for innovation and growth.

The motivation for this model arises from the fact that we have an over-weight bureaucracy and fragmented educational intelligentsia and polity. It also arises from that fact that people are disenfranchised from the policy-making or educational planning or quality assurance dimensions.

What will this take? Firstly it will take awareness building. Secondly, it will take capability building (not only leadership for the community, but also the vital skills deemed fit to make education a high quality practice). Thirdly, it will take creation of formal structures or spaces where communities can be facilitated, trained and supported. Fourthly, it will take a shift of control and a corresponding alteration of the power structures. Fifthly, it will take the loosening of barriers – legal or procedural – to promote freer flow of resources through the local systems.

This would be a strategic shift in policy. From being responsible for implementation, to being responsible for coordinating, supporting and training local communities to support the national needs and vision.

Make Education a social business

By social business, I mean the kind of change brought about by Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2006) and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Yunus showed that it is possible to lend to the poor and in doing so, he managed to create a new way of doing business – a kind of “not-for-shareholder capitalism”.

The social business would be one that is a partner to  the local needs of the region. Maybe defined outside the legal frameworks that are in use today for profit and non-profit organizational forms, the social business, for example like Grameen Bank, could be owned by its customers. Of course, it would need to be supported (and there is plenty of scope for private and public partnership to make this work) by R&D, finance, support centers etc.

Its an intriguing idea. Can we make students, parents, teachers, educationists and administrators actual stakeholders in a social enterprise? Can we think of a network of such businesses working together to meet national level planning goals? I think we can, but it will require a major shift in perspective.

Such a model will leverage local resources to the maximum, thus alleviating the need for massive and centralized planning and execution of schemes for scholarships, disadvantaged sections, setting up infrastructure etc. The opening up of scale would render these businesses attractive for not only social investment but also for private capital and R&D.

Bring down barriers

For these to be successful, we must bring down a lot of barriers. Let us take, for example, the issue of having enough skilled teachers (not only new recruitment, but also in-service teachers). Models which can leverage existing skills such as the Teach For India movement or the Teach India movement by the Times of India are important movements that seek to break down the barriers with clear empowerment of a specific class of people. I think we are ignoring the informal coaching/tuition sector massively too. What if we strategically empowered this segment, which has a lot of skill and experience and reach, to be counted as regular teachers in our system through a process of certification and training?

Could we lower barriers elsewhere? John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid suggest an interesting model in The Social Life of Information. They suggest that we democratize the degree granting function itself. Typically universities and special institutions are degree granting bodies (DGBs). Suppose we were to enable the local art and craft guild to also take on a degree granting role? Further these DGBs could empanel local scholars/formal teachers certified to teach students as per the needs of the guild.

Faculty could find their own facilities, whether for teaching or for research. Technology, libraries, LABs and classrooms could all be pressed into service with this model. Further, private investment could be welcomed to set up, say, 2000 K5 libraries in a specific region. And remote scholars could become consultants for students, teachers or the DGB itself.

The other lowering of barriers is in the flow of information and the connectedness of communities. In India, the networks of practice do not have a strong digital presence. As a result, thinking at all levels cannot leverage collective insight, serendipitous combustion of ideas and all  the other benefits of social media.

This kind of a distributed and democratic system will benefit from the lowering of traditional barriers in accreditation, teacher certification, number and type of certifications/degrees etc.

Summary

Models such as these could be made to work in my opinion and more effectively than we are doing today. As always, would invite critical opinion.

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Indian Education Services

I was discussing the formation of a specialized cadre, perhaps on the lines of the Indian Administrative Services, for providing a set of well trained educators and educational administrators that have a pan Indian impact. I was told that former Education Secretary, Anil Bordia, has been empowered to investigate this. Subsequently, I found a recent news report talking about just that and a rather old reference here.

We have to conceptualize the IES in a way that it does not become bureaucratic and rigid. It needs to be the main driver of educational reform with all the regulatory infrastructure at its disposal, aligned to its mission. I think it is being thought as an adjunct of the Ministry of HRD, just like the IAS serves the government. That may kill it from two perspectives – from the point of view of conflict with the existing bureaucracy and from the point of view of yet creating another rigid, subservient structure.

An interesting part of the news report was the focus on helping universities train their own future staff. I think this would be a great thing if it can happen. There needs to be proper focus at the university level, to build up an infrastructure that meets national and local teacher needs.

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Future Ready Indian Higher Education

FICCI (the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) and Ernst and Young took out a report for the FICCI Higher Education Summit 2009. They called it “Making the Indian higher education system future ready”. The report uses trends and understanding of the underlying structures in higher ed in India and proposes alternate educational futures for India.

Some overall comments. The report contains references to many useful data sources and collates some major statistics as part of its argument for specific steps to take to derive an alternate future for Indian Higher Ed. The emphasis is majorly on public-private partnership (PPP) and more transparent and minimal governmental control. The focus is also on aligning Vocational Education and Training (VET) with Higher Education. It takes the challenge as one of being that of introducing the freer play of market forces in education, while at the same time playing lip service to problems of equity, rural-urban and gender disparities, social inequities, poor quality of existing education and inadequate access.

There are five “game changers” for this report – financing (with focus on telling the government not to fund low quality institutions and to allow fee ‘rationalization’, reduce burdern on governmental financing of higher ed, tax sops for private endowments), ICT (ICT read as virtual classrooms and digital content, read as more purchase orders for IT procurement; national repository for free content), research and innovation (means to incentivise research; i.e. get some more marketable patents, I guess), VET (only teach what industry wants and needs, reduce VET-HE mobility barriers, let private sector in) and Regulatory reforms (consolidate, simplify, reduce entry barriers, become more transparent).

According to the report, these five game changers will “solve” three problems – Access, Equity and Quality. Mark that, solve.

Lest you get me wrong, I think we need to innovate on all these fronts and the private sector needs to be involved. These are clearly problem areas. But I am looking for solutions that do not accentuate the disparities or perpetuate increasing returns. The disparities are great, even within the outputs of governmental funding. For example, less than 20% of institutions participate in research and the top 10% contributed to 80% of that research (the IITs and IISC are at the very small top of the pyramid).

The data offers rich analytical possibilities. Of course there are important gaps, but that is to be expected based on the fact that reports usually start from the desired end result and then reverse engineer the data to fit those aspirations. For example, a glaring loss of focus is on teachers.

Interestingly, there is a negatively correlated trend for three countries – USA, India and China. In terms of HE enrolments, China leads (25 mn) followed by USA (17.7 mn) and then India (12.8 mn) in 2007. However the number of HE insitutions shows the perfect reverse – China is last (4000), followed by USA (6700) and then India (21000), in 2007. That is, the number of students per HEI, on average, in China is 6250, in USA it is 2650 and in India it is 581!  To add to that, China has the best student-teacher ratio (13.5), followed by the USA (14) followed by India (26).

This means that we have a major problem, on average, of capacity planning, too many HEIs and a small teacher base. What if we strategically reduced the HEIs instead and promoted PPP in an effort to modernize and equip the existing HEIs rather than to add completely new ones that would only create artifical competition for qualified teachers and raise barriers for students who cannot pay? Would that work? Does the private sector think that it cannot turn around a state HEI if given the chance to?

But this would mean that the private sector has to get into relationships that do not give it direct benefits i.e. does not result in trained manpower for its projects, in patents for its markets, in picking the right input talent (cream) to groom, in supporting urban cities, in contributing to the growth of arts, humanities and sciences (which incidentally forms 65% of the colleges), in not resulting in a market for its products (insurance, education loans, IT equipment) etc.

I hope to delve deeper into the report and present it on this blog for comments soon. It is possible that I may understand it better on subsequent reading. Would love to hear your remarks and suggestions.

Update: April 3, 2011 – The E&Y Report in detail along with a newer one that they released recently.

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EdFutures – Futures Map – India

Here is a brief CMap on what I think are some of the major components of a possible Indian educational future. There are trends (and data) to back a whole lot of these elements. Needless to say, this is a first attempt! Please click on the image to get a better view.

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Schooling for Tomorrow

I came across this fascinating OECD-CERI project through Dave Cormier and George Siemens’ Open Course in Education Futures. Please download the Schooling for Tomorrow StarterPack document here. It gives practitioners, administrators and other stakeholders a way to think about key questions such as:

• What is shaping the future of schooling?
• What might schooling look like in the future?
• How to go about it?

It provides a framework based on an analysis of trends (such as growing inequality, economic globalization, population trends, the expanding web and social interaction), realistic scenarios based on these trends (such as bureaucratic systems and system meltdown) and considers five dimensions (attitudes, goals, structures, geo-politics and teaching force) on which the scenario can be contextualized and analyzed as a possible alternative future. Taken together, this framework could provide an effective way to construct our future realities and allow us to then transform our beliefs through powerful, coherent and effective plans of action.

Scenario 3 is interesting. Schools as core social centres are visualized within “new community arrangements with learning at the core”. The Right to Education Act, that came into effect this year in India, sees a similar approach. However the Act and its main vehicle, the Sarva shiksha Abhiyaan, does not seem to focus on the community apart from the administrative and quality dimension. The Starter Pack scenario goes ahead and explores many new dimensions that I believe would be helpful in shaping policy and outcomes. For example, the goals:

Schools continue to transmit, legitimise, and accredit knowledge, but with intense focus on social and cultural outcomes.

Competence recognition also developed in the labour market, liberating schools from some credentialing pressures.

These goals are  extremely important in the Indian context. Specifically, we need to move away, perhaps, from thinking about facilitating the emergence of a new engineer, to facilitating the emergence of a new engineer who will bring value in the context of the region’s natural resource and abilities; which in turn, will play into a wider national strategy.

I would suggest that a bit of all and perhaps a preponderance of one will be the dominant paradigm in most countries around the world. Within any country’s educational system, there will be a rich diversity and discussion around many forms and systems of education.

Take for example Scenario 4 (The extended market model), that talks of a “demand-driven”, highly developed learning market responding to stakeholders dissatisfied with the public school system and with the obvious threat to social equity – sums up pretty much the debate around privatization in education and the common school system in India.

I believe that this is a useful approach to try to bring some collaborative direction to our problems. This should help not only clarify the problem, but also point us to possible scenarios unique to our region and how to go about thinking of the change.

Postscript: I re-evaluated using trends as a basis for a model such as this.

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HE Summit Keynote: Prof. Pillai

HE cannot be separated from other types of education. The challenge is to provide firstly, access (GER – Gross Enrolment Ratio – is 12% of 18-24 age group, world average is 23%); secondly, the quality of teaching learning is a bottleneck – if it improves, the GER will go up – this will improve by enhancing the domain knowledge of the teacher; technology cannot teach, teachers can. We must provide the appreciation and knowledge of ICT but also provide the best content. Pedagogy is important and it is important to focus on Technology enabled teaching and learning.

Teacher training has become very important for pre-service and in-service teachers as well as contiunuous enhancement right from KG to HE. ICT@Schools and National Mission on Education are two important initiatives. National Knowledge network is also getting funded now.

According to NASSCOM, only 25% engineers are rated employable. How can we link in an emphasis to Vocational Education – this needs to be looked at. Only 5% of our workforce has a skill based certification. There are 230,000 VETS in the country.

HE cannot function without a strong research program. Funds are being pushed into scholarships and research programmes to support our PhDs and HE scholars. There is, to an extent, some dilution in research at the HE level. We need more stringent quality definitions and criteria for promotion and advancement.

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Digital Learning Higher Ed Summit 2010

A small group of educators, technologists, bureaucrats and private companies are sitting together to dliberate the use of Digital Learning in Higher Education in India. We have Prof. VN Rajasekharan Pillai, VC, IGNOU, Prof. Deepak Pental, VC, Delhi University, Prof. A K Bakshi, Director, ILLL, DU, Dr. B K Murthy, Director, DoIT and many more eminent names. More details here.

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Should education be free?

…and should education be not-for-profit?

The recent Right to Education Act being implemented from April 1,2010, is catching flak on a wide range of aspects. Advocates of the common school system, like Prof. Anil Sadgopal, want a school system that is defined as follows:

Common School System means the National System of Education that is founded on the principles of equality and social justice as enshrined in the Constitution and provides education of a comparable quality to all children in an equitable manner irrespective of their caste, creed, language, gender, economic or ethnic background, location or disability (physical or mental), and wherein all categories of schools – i.e. government, local body or private, both aided and unaided, or otherwise – will be obliged to (a) fulfill certain minimum infrastructural (including those relating to teachers and other staff), financial, curricular, pedagogic, linguistic and socio-cultural norms and (b) ensure free education to the children in a specified neighbourhood from an age group and/or up to a stage, as may be prescribed, while having adequate flexibility and academic freedom to explore, innovate and be creative and appropriately reflecting the geo-cultural and linguistic diversity of the country, within the broad policy guidelines and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education as approved by the Central Advisory Board of Education.

According to this article, the main objections to the RTE Act are:

It will demolish the entire government school system except schools in certain elite categories (for example, kendriya vidyalayas, navodaya vidyalayas, the Eleventh Plan’s 6,000 model schools, and similar elite schools of states/UT governments).

The Act will provide neither free education nor education of equitable quality. Rather, it will legitimise and maintain the multi-layered school system built through the World Bank’s District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) during the 1990s, and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in the current decade.

The central agenda of the Act is clearly to privatise and commercialise the school system through neo-liberal schemes such as public private partnerships (PPPs), school vouchers, adoption of schools by corporate houses, religious bodies and NGOs.

There is a strong undercurrent from these arguments that emphasize the responsibility of the State as the fundamental provider of education and the role of private unaided schools (for-profit) is being refashioned. There is also a movement against privatization of higher education (by allowing foreign universities to set up shop in India), claiming that it would not only perpetuate iniquity but also result in a brain-drain with the best teachers moving to more lucrative positions in these new foreign universities, thus undermining the ability of state run institutions to be or become centres of excellence.

I am forced to ask: what solution or approach can we take to cover the educational needs of 200 mn school going students, 12.27 mn Higher education students, the 500 mn economically active population across 35 distinct states and union territories, 22 official languages (out of over 1500 mother tongues), 64.8% literacy, 70% rural population, 3.28 mn square kilometres (about 1/3rd the size of the USA) in size, 1.25 mn schools, 471 universities, nearly 22,000 colleges, 6.5 mn teachers, 1.2 mn new teacher vacancies, 0.7 mn untrained teachers and 0.5 mn para teachers in an economy worth USD 1.4 trillion? And yes, we are talking of conservatively 500 MILLION economically active (by ILO stats, nearly 600 mn) people today, poised to expand by another 100 mn people by 2020. The problems of governance and challenges of equity are obviously complicated by politics, law and order, the social system, skewed development indices etc.

Not only that, there is a huge drop out rate (68% students cite the need to work to supplement family income as the reason to drop out), leaving about 44 mn children out of school in the 11-14 age group. Out of the 134.38 mn students at the primary level, the retention rate is close to 75%, reducing the pool for those who would enrol in upper primary education to about a 100 mn. Statistics correlate by showing that only 53.35 mn were enrolled at the Upper Primary level. What is even more interesting is that 2008-09 enrolment in Higher Education was 12.37 mn which means that only about 23% of students enrolled in upper primary levels actually make it to college.

The economy of 1.17 bn people, sectorally, has 60% agricultural share, 17% industry and 23% services shares. Taking 500 mn as the economically active group, 300 mn people would be employed in agriculture, 85 mn in industry and 115 mn in services. The fastest growing sectors are mining and quarrying, manufacturing, electricity/gas & water, and, trade/hotels, transport/storage/communication/BFSI/Real Estate. India’s IT and ITeS sector contributes to 6% or USD 71 bn to the GDP.

The problem is systemic from what I can see. I have not been able to find a single consolidated report of a plan of action or any vision document to leverage the immense manpower that India has and will continue to have in the foreseeable future, to spur India’s growth (social and economic). The statistics are incomplete or non-existent – I could not even locate in which sectors the 500 mn people are distributed as a work force and how India plans to educate (and on what) and how it plans to empower them for equitable national growth. This is an appalling state of affairs.

In my opinion, the debate on whether education needs to be free or for-profit, is the probably the least of our problems. We have to go figure why about 25% of the 35 states and union territories in our country have less than 10% schools that HAVE electricity or overall why only 35% of our schools HAVE an electricity connection. We have to figure why the entire North Eastern region ranks the lowest in the educational development index published by NUEPA. We have to figure where we are going in terms of agricultural, industrial and services sector strategic growth plans, the backdrop of international developments in trade and technology, our mushrooming social sector, working conditions and so many other important and impactful considerations. We have to figure what each state or region brings into national growth from the skills dimension and how those skills can be brought into play by removing barriers in a focused manner.

No doubt it is a really challenging task and there are some really good minds out there with grassroots experience (that I do not currently have) facing real problems and solving them. I hope that at some point of time, we have enough power of self-organization to come together as a team and make a real impact!

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Digital memory against forgetting

In 1978 Milan Kundera wrote a novel , The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and said: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Now in 2010, in our context, perhaps, this statement might be revisited. Our struggle, in the digital medium, is not of forgetting our digital memories (look at Zoetrope). Rather, it is a struggle to make meaning against acquiring instant information.  Translated, I mean the struggle is of the use and development of technology (and techniques) to make meaning over the use and development of technology (and techniques) to acquire information.

The two are often mutually exclusive, and I don’t count ordering search results or ranking them or retweeting, as making meaning.  Meaning (and knowledge) can be variously defined though, but I use it in the sense that Meaning is made when there is a dialogue (or soliloquy) or experience that generates a resonance (or connotation) within us.

The struggle is all around us. When we see the huge  amount of investment in technology and marketing that goes around us, much of it is around information or relating bits of it – where to get it, how to store it, how to search it, how to bookmark it, how to share it – but not much (atleast from what I have seen so far) in other more critical areas – how do we use it, how does it contribute to widening our horizons, how does it empower us, how does it help us in the struggle of “man against power”.

The struggle gets skewed at the idea stage itself – is this a mass market application, can it scale to millions of users, what is the cost per user/instance, is it potentially viral – of a new product or service idea. Perhaps because few people believe that they can really make a difference or are motivated (risk taking?) enough to step forward and be counted.

The struggle perpetuates a continuously evolving asymmetry. What others invest in is what you get. What you get is information. It is upto you to figure meaning and if you don’t, nobody really cares.

The networks have created their own divide, because the more you follow it, the more spaces you leave unseen, the more meaning you ignore. For example, “how should we use Facebook or Google Groups in education?”  or “does your LMS support blogs?” become important topics for debate when  the real questions perhaps should be “what kind of networking platform needs to be created that will engender meaning-making” or “is there a way that structured scientific thinking can become mainstream in such and such area?”.

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3D Immersive Technology – Some thoughts

Almost every kind of IT has a potential impact on education. If you look at the various dimensions that constitute mainstream adoption, you want to look at the fit to the educational need, the capability of the audience to consume it, the access and availability of both platform and content, supporting infrastructure required and of course the cost & scalability factors.

Most forms of IT interventions in elearning, I always say, fail due to the death by technology syndrome i.e. an overwhelming emphasis on technology and delivery. I would place many forms and methods of generating elearning content, especially the same umbrella term of technology.

We know that the space has potential, but the problems we face with traditional elearning and elearning technology such as the ability to personalize learning, to make it experiential & engaging and to demonstrate a return on investment, get a little more complex as we look at 3D immersive technology and we must build solutions keeping this in mind.

So firstly we need to focus on the learning needs. India is uniquely positioned because we have the youngest population. We must ask ourselves what will our needs be and thus our expectations be from the workforce in the next few years and work towards aligning all efforts in that direction. That direction must also be inclusive and equitable, and this is critical for us.

Then the way our young population has embraced the changes in the global workplace, and especially in the next generation Internet based technologies/movements like social networking, open source collaboration and mobility, needs to be leveraged as a 21st century skill, the way other countries are doing in a concerted manner.

Then we need to ask what kinds of segments we can address with which solution. For example, 3D immersive technology is a no-brainer for vocational training, manufacturing, technical training on hardware, product marketing, brand presence, eCommerce, generic collaboration etc. In the K12 segment, there are a host of possibilities such as for discovery-based learning, virtual laboratories, educational games and simulations that can make the experience come alive for our children. This technology is appealing because it is based in a visually immersive setting, like the world around us, and therefore lends itself to collaboration, discovery, exploration, problem solving, critical thinking and many other key learning dimensions.

We must then build capability with teachers and educationists to navigate these possible solutions. Traditional assessment solutions also need to be reworked in the context of the rich feedback that some of these solutions can provide on student activity and competency.

Creative content is then going to be an important part of the solutions we create. In my opinion, technology solutions that offer easy and cost effective ways to generate 3D based learning solutions will be critical in this space.

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Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)

I had not heard of  games of this genre before, but they are pretty exciting and I must thank Ulises Mejias for my first introduction to  this medium. There are many definitions including the one here where ARGs are contrasted with serious games.

Apparently, the first such “game” dates back to 1996! Wikipedia defines it as “is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions”.

Think of it as a dramatization parallel to the real world. The organizer, or Puppetmaster, starts by telling a story or leaving a cue, as in a puzzle. Real people and real technology are drawn in to real world dialogue and just like in real life, information is pieced together by the participants. The “game” word is a misnomer, really, because an ARG is very different than a game – in fact ARG creators follow the TINAG (This Is Not A Game) principle. Read about The Beast to get a deeper sense.

If you think of it, some aspects of the CCK08 course run by Stephen Downes and George Siemens in end-2008 resembled an ARG, in fact, hold true to the concept of sense-making in connectivism. I think a new analogy/metaphor of an educator could be the puppetmaster.

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eyeOS

For those interested in operating systems for education, such as the OLPC Sugar project, you must check eyeOS out. The OS is completely browser-based and built on open source technologies. Apart from being painless to administer, it has amazing possibilities for the classroom. From their website:

eyeos can provide schools and universities with a full web platform where students, teachers and parents will have a personal yet collaborative desktop to work and, communicate between themselves and get organized inside and outside the school. The students and teachers will have an intuitive and easy-to-learn Desktop System, to work with school resources and communicate with other students and teachers.

One of the interesting features is their re-architecture of how the operating system should look for children of different ages. The interface can be used anywhere. It also has some creative applications for learning support – such as a mindmapping application. It has special affordances for the teacher, for example, an exam mode that blocks off applications that are not permitted to be accessed during exams.

They also have a developer outreach program where developers who are proficient in pHp can build applications for that platform.

This broadly mirrors what Sugar can do in terms of functionality, although their are  substantial differences in their instructional and technical architecture and design.

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Picolearning

Check out Microvision’s SHOWWX. The SHOWWX Laser Pico Projector is a pocket-sized projection device that can connect to iPods, PCs and other TV-Out devices expected to be made commercially available in March 2010 in the US. Microvision also offers an evaluation kit for other companies who want to embed this technology in their digital products e.g. mobile phones.

While there are obvious uses, this is really intriguing technology from a learning perspective. For the mobile learning folks, this should be a cause for some celebration because of now the ability to use a much larger and high resolution screen estate for animations, videos and regular learning materials.

For elearning, as such, this becomes another platform for individuals and small groups to learn on. What would be interesting is if Pranav Mistry’s efforts putting a camera + projector + motion recognition could be embedded on top the mobile phone or wearable headsets commercially thus making enhanced learner interaction possible. Perhaps an embedded flip open mouse pad on the mobile phone as one of the connected devices could be invented as an option in the meantime.

Learning that requires physical experiences can also be augmented and supported by this technology. For example, a class taking water samples to check purity, using a laptop with a sensor kit and instrumentation software, could augment physical conditions with other sources of information, such as from a Wiki. (See for example the automobile location charting initiatives).

Using a camera and various technologies to recognize visual objects (that have been demonstrated recently in addition to tag-based solutions like QRCodes and Microsoft Tag), physical information can be marked up and even analyzed across other learners and data sources, thus enhancing the learning experience.

In the classroom, we could have one or more hubs actually sharing out information, if so designed to be used, even while the class is in-session – with multiple displays replacing or supplementing the traditional whiteboards.

Perhaps new media forms will emerge as a result. For example, clusters of pico units could integrate into a central console that instructors could use to flip between for the entire class. The experience itself could result in the classroom experience being captured and rendered with different perspectives in mind.

Perhaps, applications will start becoming gesture-enabled as projects such as Microsoft Natal and Mistry’s Sixth Sense begin to capture commercial and popular interest.

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Alternate Education

I have started research on alternative education systems. Right off the bat I found a website that summarizes some of these initiatives in the Indian context – Alternative Education in India. Two really interesting categories were Alternative Schools and Learning Cooperatives. I like the fact that the latter prefer not to be called “schools” at all.

Among the Alternative schools is the Atma Vidya Educational Foundation in southern India. If  you look at the KPM approach (they started in Kerala and now have an extension in Austin, Texas), the focus is heavily on guidance, teacher involvement, learning freedom and experiential learning. I am impressed by the examples – but still need to research on how they really accomplish their goals. I next looked at a cooperative, Bhavya, which also looks like an interesting approach, particularly as it attempts to merge with the mainstream systems at a particular age.  Mirambika is an example of a K8 school with an alternative approach too. I particularly liked the idea that there is a community out there that encourages and provides support for home education. Wonder how that works!

In the US, the trend in public education around Charter Schools is also encouraging. These schools are set up to innovate within the public school system as this report shows.

More on these systems as I move ahead. Would love to hear from you if you know an educational system or movement that is an alternate.

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Centenary Post

For my hundredth post, I would like to focus on a few key questions that attack various aspects of what I have experienced and learnt in the past two years. These questions are extremely important for me to attempt to answer and I hopefully will, atleast in part, as I go on. The questions may seem disjointed, but perhaps have a common set of answers.

The first, and overarching, question is:

Are there (or what could be) education systems that have (or would) worked outside the box (in contrast to what exists today) and have proved their reliability and validity in the context of today’s and future needs?

This is important to me because I need to understand if we can really envisage an alternate system of education – one more geared towards achieving a vision of a just, inclusive and humane society – than the one we have now. Not that an educational system is solely responsible for all that is wrong today, but in the sense that the educational system is an important enough component of achieving that vision.

There are many strands of thought that connect to this question, not the least being whether this disruptive change is at all required, but it is a question worthy of building an informed belief around. I would further acknowledge that perhaps this change could happen in a way that replaces a portion of the existing system.

The second question relates to the qualifications of a teacher in higher education in India. 

Do undergraduate and post-graduate teachers need a qualifying degree/diploma in educational theory, instructional design/methods and learning technology with a model of internship before they start teaching?

As I have noted before, this question puzzles me no end. I can’t understand why this is not a pre-requisite already (rather than a possible refresher down the line). School teachers require certification, but others do not? It is a different matter that existing certifications in India may perhaps need to be effectively revamped to meet today’s and future requirements.

But I think the answer to this question may have huge implications for achieving the overall vision of any educational system. In particular, it may help bring disruptive change that partially replaces the dominant paradigm.

The third question relates to the role of assessments in an increasingly collaborative world.

How does one assess learning based on principles of collaboration, free thinking and reflection?

What happens when we remove the boundaries of formal curricula, competency models and organizational metrics? This is an important gap, I believe, in connectivist thinking. I am particularly interested in this because the traditional model has an answer that can be tied directly to economic models, social aspirations, development and growth paradigms.

To build an alternative, intelligible and acceptable bridge to other parts/components of our world, we will need to answer this question. Lots of these other systems depend upon the ability of an educational system to provide these assessments to be efficient and effective.

And finally, the question:

What will it take for the change to happen?

I believe that a change is needed and that it should be disruptive change. The change has to be wrenched out and has to stand tall. What will  the drivers be? I think we need to look outside the educational system in order to assess these drivers. 

Perhaps we need to ask ourselves what the political system needs, what the justice system needs, what the economic system needs, as inputs that will help reshape their own destinies in the quest for a just, inclusive and humane society.

These are all overall questions that impact my thinking at this point. As is the fact with questions, I am sure many would share them with me. If anyone has what they think could be answers, I would greatly appreciate your stopping by!

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3 Idiots: Educational Pedagogy or Fantasy

In case you didn’t know, 3 Idiots is now a record-breaking Hindi movie, that explores and exposes the educational system. As of the time of this post, it has been released worldwide and is the highest grosser in Indian cinema history (about US$68mn in 19 days and also made 43 million pounds worldwide to date).

The movie is based in a “traditional” academic setting in an engineering college, reputed for its excellence and for its no-holds-barred-excellence-is-the-most-important thing principal. The story revolves around 3 students who get to live together in the college hostel and become lasting friends. The story tries to bring to the front the problems created by a severe focus on grades and book knowledge and essentially laments the restriction of freedom of thought and reflection that has become a hallmark of the educational system. The term “idiot” is used to refer to not someone stupid but to an irrepressible free thinker who follows his heart.

It has caught the imagination of an entire nation of learners. And that fact bears important testimony to the popular perception that the academic system discourages free thinking, diversity of opinion, creativity and innovation because of it’s over emphasis on grades, bookish knowledge, competitive spirit and teacher-centricity.

The main “idiot”, played by Aamir Khan, is, in my opinion, the only idiot in the film. Born to the assistant of a rich man, he proxies all the way through engineering college for the rich man’s son. As a result, he gets to go where his interests take him, to whichever subject and teacher that excite his imagination. He is naturally inclined to be curious, his questioning ways earning him the ire of his teachers and the ridicule of his peers. But he is brilliant and ultimately emerges as a scientist with a large number of important patents to his name.

Aamir believes in free thinking, of questioning the dominant paradigm. Ultimately he converts the principal of the engineering college, who is fanatically entrenched in the “traditional” mindset, to seeing things in a different light. The movie ends with shots of Aamir in a “school” in Ladakh doing what he believes – teaching kids to let their imagination, innovation and creativity take over.

But there is a bit of demagoguery here, with no clear indication that the ideas are as revolutionary as they seem. For example, a point of discussion should be what is exactly being proposed. The movie is not clear on what or how this pedagogy and system really to be made possible. If it is argued that ultimately it is a movie and not a research project, I would argue that it is not a trifling matter given the reach and success of the movie and its ability to shape popular perception.

The applicability of these ideas and their sudden, almost inexplicable shift from a higher education setting to a school, is a little puzzling too. There is no evidence of Aamir’s school principal having the same endgame delirium as was the case with Boman Irani, who played the engineering college principal. The dynamics are very different between the two scenarios. 

Also, there is little evidence that creativity, innovation and imagination does not at all exist in the traditional system -sometimes teacher-heroes led and sometimes with an organizational focus. It then begs the question – are we talking of a change from inside the box or are we talking about something revolutionary that is at odds with tradition. I don’t see that debate happening around me. Most of the debate seems to be around how the movie has borrowed more from Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone than anything else.

Conflicting verdict at the end for me, though. It leaves me wanting for more because it was hugely entertaining. And a trifle irritable because perhaps the matter should not be trifled with.

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Online Certificate Depository

Finally! Indian minister for HRD, Kapil Sibal, has announced the start of an initiative, to be completed in 2011, of pushing all academic qualifications from school to Post Graduation, to a secure, authenticated online depository. The ostensible aims are to provide electronic access, reduce the forgery of certificates and link schools and academic institutions directly to the depository. This is indeed a welcome step from many perspectives.

The initiative will spawn an entirely new set of opportunities. For example, IMS Learning Profile and IMS Reusable Competency Definitions standards could be effectively used to model the data in a standard way. Other enhancements could include things like a Learning Styles Inventory, eportfolio summaries (projects, internships data) and extending it onwards, employment information. Obviously, securely used and properly modeled, this could also provide an amazing amount of research information that will help us improve our education system as well.

This could simplify things drastically. Whether it is transferring from a school to another, seeking internship or project work, applying for a job or any other process requiring verification of these records (like maybe a visa application), a secure, signed certificate with these credentials would remove the hassle and authenticity issues at one go.

Obviously, privacy and authenticity would still be major concerns. I would not want this metadata to be turned over to a telemarketing agency, nor would I want to hire someone whose credentials are not proven (in fact there are companies offering just these verification services).

This means that an effective digital rights management programme, a registrar and an ombudsman would definitely need to be incorporated.  

Information could be personally stored and updated on student/employee ID cards as well that could connect up to the depository and be use to “swipe”  information into a form when required.

This is certainly a good initiative in a country of this scale. I would like to see some more thinking around the possible benefits and linkages that this depository could provide, maybe also track teachers and their ongoing certifications/publications as well. Kudos!

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Is content king?

I have really been wanting to write about this news article ever since I saw it some time back. The company, Demand Media moved to #24 in the comScore top 50 web properties in the US, owns eHow.com, Pluck and eNom, and has succeeded in attracting 31 million unique page views in July, 2009. Since then, the October 2009 report shows them climbing to #16 with 51mn unique visitors. Interestingly, Wikimedia group sites climbed to 69mn from 62mn across these two months. Looking at the lists, we can see Fox, Ask network, answers.com etc pretty much near the top with the leaders consistently being Google, Yahoo, MS, AOL and Facebook. Twitter was somewhere in the top 100 in July, perhaps still there in October.

Structured content based sites seem to be garnering the market share at least in terms of unique visitors, well above and beyond social media sites such as Twitter. (Disclaimer: comScore doesn’t provide too much intelligence on its methodology or definitions, though, and I am not able to search-verify its accuracy on these reports.)

What interested me about Demand Media was that it’s site eHow.com is a repository of how-to (and other types of) articles contributed by users who also get paid for their contribution. They back this up with editorial teams pumping in and reviewing content as well.  Seems to be over a million pieces of content already in there with claims of being the #1 contributor to You Tube.

So, there is a structured content enterprise that is, in terms of access, somewhere in between search and social tools such as Twitter (with the notable exception of Facebook), and has a working business model.

Is this the face of how learning could possibly look in the future? Content by the community, of the community and for the community – a marketplace not overtly one – powered by advertising (and enrolments?) rather than, or in addition to, by direct trade in/collaborative interaction in learning experiences – augmented by search, exploration and collaboration tools that we know today?

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2010 Predictions

It’s again the new year and time to review some of the predictions I had made for 2008 and 2009.

From my 2008 predictions:

• PLEs will be sharable – tools shall arrive on the web that shall allow entire learning experiences to be sliced and shared between users. This shall be followed by ratings on which PLE slices are great. Any learner wanting to learn about a topic will take a PLE slice of a person who the community says has mastered it and follow the learning path.

2009 was slightly better in this regard, although I still did not see many meaningful attempts at conceptualizing this kind of experience. We seem to be meandering more around technology than learning. Once that finishes, that is everyone figures out the base technology behind concepts such as informal learning, it will perhaps be time to think about PLEs and slices. Not much luck here in 2009.

• Hybrid VLE + PLE systems – LMS/VLE enterprise systems shall incorporate many social constructivism inspired features and organizations will pick up this trend.

I predicted that this will pick up in 2009 and it did. And how. Almost every major LMS vendor has integrated social collaborative learning features.

• The first classification systems to manage and search the huge amount of tagging will start to surface. Folksonomies will start getting structured in some way.

Difficult for me to find much about the progress so far in 2009. Would welcome links where I could get abreast. Space to watch. Don’t miss the bit about Powerset.

• The shift to rich Internet applications in e-learning using Flex and Silverlight among other tools, shall become a reality thus providing a boost to gaming and simulations for learning.

Silverlight, now in version 4 Beta, seems to be making solid progress. RIAStats shows a 45% hit ratio over 17mn unique browsers across 84 sites in the past 80 days which is pretty good. I have seen more and more websites start using SL.

• Learning process outsourcing will get established as a business model for small and medium companies.

Expertus seems to have made substantial progress despite the downturn. The top companies seem to be Raytheon Professional Services, Lionbridge, GeoLearning, ACS Learning Service, Adayana, RWD Technologies, General Physics, Intrepid, Expertus and Global Knowledge.

From my 2009 predictions:

• Silverlight (more so) and Flex for learning development and tools will see a significant rise

Yes, really can see that happening. In fact, I have been involved in multiple projects where this has been a requirement.

• LMS mindshare shall start being significantly impacted by Learning 2.0 solutions such as Mzinga and ELGG. As the adoption starts, enterprise measures/metrics will also start falling into place. Adoption of Learning 2.0 approaches will start in earnest in the second half of the year

Yes, sure enough there is now great momentum here. Metrics, I am not too sure about – I don’t think they have gone beyond capturing hits and comments yet.

• LPO or Learning Process Outsourcing will gain momentum in 2009

As I said, the position is not very clear on this one, atleast from my limited research so far.

• The use of the mobile as a learning platform shall see renewed interest – the start of ubiquitous learning being made possible by technological developments in the handset, services and network space

This one is more interesting. I know Nokia Life Tools initiative is making a strong concerted effort in making this happen. I have seen more impact coming in from companies like foursquare.

• The use of virtual worlds for learning will acquire more importance – if things are right, it should mark the beginning of the end for traditional virtual classrooms.

I don’t think this made much headway in 2009 from what I can see.

• Games and simulations will see an increased adoption

I certainly see some increased interest in using games and simulations. See for examples the winners in gaming and simulations for this year’s BrandonHall Awards.

For 2010, I think the following would happen:

1. Silverlight will come into prominence and we will see it taking out some, not insignificant, marketshare from Adobe Flash as a learning technology creation platform
2. LMS vendors will start differentiating themselves by adding on focus for new Learning 2.0 features, maybe advanced PLEs.
3. I am pretty sure this year we shall see some significant mobility-related advancement in learning technologies. Gaming and simulations will keep on picking up momentum, especially as companies are recovering from the downturn.

Will continue to trace LPO and Virtual Worlds, but I think they will make good sustained progress in 2010. That’s it for now. It is the start of another exciting year soon!

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Reverse Search

I have a special interest in reverse searches. It has been used in many forms such as reverse looking up IP from domain name , looking up a phone number using an address etc. But I have seen a couple of examples lately that go a step further.

Straight or forward search involves entering key words or phrases and then finding an assortment of different media results – get web pages, definitions, images, videos and other resources.

Reverse search, as implemented by Google Goggles and TinEye, uses the very result of a search as an input. While Goggles lets you use a photo as an input, TinEye lets you use an image as an input to your search. I have read about similar technology for videos too somewhere.

I am pretty sure things can get complex with patterned searches – say – find videos where a speaker is addressing a large crowd and there are more than a million tweets relevant to that event and bring up the associated communities – maybe do that temporally (like Zoetrope) to see how popular a leader is over time.

What I am also interested in is, for want of a better phrase, anti-search – a mechanism whereby information finds me rather than me having to painfully enter keywords or upload symbols and sort through a large number of results (by the way that method can be and is still  a very useful way in which I learn from diverse perspectives) to get the information I need.

I am still thinking how that can happen. It would be like some gigantic personalized database which could understand my digital context and provide intelligent inputs.

I am sure there are existing agent driven architectures (and semantic web agents?) that can contribute to this. Maybe then I should also be worried about getting information overload and thereby argue for effective (network trust based) filtering mechanisms.

But perhaps, this is still not what would I mean by anti-search.  What happens in a case where I need to solve a problem? Search has become central to my problem solving ability, sometimes bypassing in no small measure whatever necessity I had to think critically & apply commonsense. Further it has become one of the most time-consuming activities in my schedule.

Anti-search would probably start by promoting critical-thinking in problem solving situations suggesting views/dimensions that could be possibly related to solving my problem. Almost certainly, the inputs to such an engine would be complex. For example, when creating a website and looking for help, I could upload a flowchart of my home page instead of, or in addition to, some key – words/images/audio/video/webpage. That way, I would set context for an intelligent agent or community or network to “feed me” information that helps me create a really good website.

That’s a thought, really. How about if I upload a business document and it not only finds me information-about, but also templates, designs, best practices, seminars, training……

I am not sure how much of this makes sense right now. But definitely something that needs more articulation from my end.

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