Confessions of an elearning skeptic

This is my last post for this class and its seems appropriate to look back on what I have got out of the experience:

• I’ve become an avatar four or five times over.
• I’ve strutted my stuff in second life (and walked into a lot of walls in the process).
• I’ve seen elearning from the outside and elearning from the inside.
• I’ve seen what’s been, what’s here, what’s to come and what’s really out there!
• I’ve caught the del.icio.us bug and even learned how to type del.icio.us without having to concentrate really hard
• I’ve sold JuJu beans (but I haven’t mastered typing JuJu with making at least one mistake - practice makes perfect!)
• I’ve had more emails in my home email than my work email (and that’s saying something!)
• I’ve posted essays in a pubic space (now that is nerve wracking!)
• I’ve seen the good the bad and the ugly of elearning
• I’ve felt old (there’s nothing like new technology to do that!)

Am I still an elearning skeptic? Sure, but I’m a much more enthusiastic, informed, experienced and even a little evangelical skeptic.  A little skepticism is a healthy thing I think. 

Thanks Anne, the JuJus and all my EMT 1 coleagues, its been fun.

The elearning skeptic.

In my researching this week I came across an interesting paper by Nick Bostrom, the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.  The paper, entitled “Are you living in a computer simulation“, puts forward the argument that there is a good possibility that we are already living in a matrix-like computer simulated reality! So forget Second Life, you’re already living it!  There is a wealth of other thought-provoking reading on Nick’s web site, www.nickbostrom.com.  Enjoy, though it might freak you out a bit!

I feel like I am making some progress here. Having read both Horizon reports I now know what I don’t know.  My plan now is to begin to understand what I don’t know about emerging technologies by immersing myself within each of them (I think that makes sense!!).  Coming from a very ‘conventional’ adult learning background I’d thought I’d start with a technology that is about as unconventional as it gets, Second Life. In preparation for my journey I looked around for some quick information about learning in Second Life and I come up with some very good, and short, YouTube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJTzNSV8pb0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFuNFRie8wA 

(Hey, I’m learning from Grassroots Video, maybe I’m not such a skeptic after all!!)

After watching the above videos I was ready to get my avatar’s feet wet inside Second Life so, after a brief registration and set-up process, I was off and running through the wonders of Orientation Island.My initial thoughts:

• The learning curve is a little step at first, but it gets easier fairly quickly (though I still can’t figure out why my avatar keeps veering to the left!!)
• Second Life offers some great possibilities for learning such as:
  • a unique combination of fun and learning
  • the ability to observe others as well as be an active participant
  • the ability to interact with a vast array of other people
  • the ability to create a unique learning environment tailored to the needs of the student; and
  • the ability to link into formal tertiary pathways though TAFE and university

Within my learning context, I see the key benefit of Second Life is its capacity for rich simulation.  Many of the skills that my organisation deals with are hard to teach in the real environment and we often rely on simulation to assist us, but these never give us the full range of experience.  Second Life offers the potential to simulate a range of scenarios with real-life consequences but in a safe and supportive manner.  The use of simulation in Second Life will now become the focus of my further explorations. I will give you a full update in the coming week or so.  In the mean time if you are interested in further reading I recommend the Second Life Education Wiki “SimTeach” as a good starting point for a study of learning in Second Life.

At the start of my elearning journey it seems wise to take stock of some of the trends in technology and see where my current practice sits, and could sit, in relation to this.  To do this I referred to the Horizon reports for 2007 and 2008 from the Horizon project web site: http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Main_Page.

The 2008 report identified the following six emerging technologies:

(1) Grassroots video: Like most internet users, my main experience of this phenomena is through YouTube and, like most people, I am amazed at the way sites like this have taken off over the past few years.  My experience with grassroots video as an educational tool is limited, though I have used some YouTube based videos as part of presentations I have run in relation to incidental learning and knowledge management including the following:

Introduction to wikis

Introduction to peer assist groups 

(2) Collaboration webs: I have a very limited exposure to the concept of collaboration webs, with my recent use of Ning and del.icio.us being my only real venture into this space.  Like many people I have heard of Facebook, MySpace and Filckr but I have had no real interaction with them. I am very keen to explore this area further and get a better handle on how these types of technology can be utilised for adult learning though, like many people, I fear that internal IT constraints may make the use of this type of space problematic, at least in the short term.

(3) Mobile broadband: Part of my time as a learning professional was with a major Australian telecommunications company, so I am very familiar with this type of technology. The technology has certainly come on leaps and bounds, through it can still be very cost prohibitive when compared to ’wired’ broadband.  I am also aware of the trends towards mobile learning (so called ‘mlearning’) but my experience of this type of learning remains theoretical only.

(4) Data mashups: This is another concept I have only a limited experience of.  I am a frequent user of Google Earth and am familiar with the integration of map data and Wikipedia locations that is available within it.  I have no experience of this technology within an educational setting.

(5) Collective intelligence: My main experience of the concept of collective intelligence is with Wikipedia. 

(6) Social operating system: Social operating systems are something with which I am unfamiliar.  Though I am aware of the precursors such as Facebook and MySpace (as discussed above).

My experiences, in the educational context, of the significant trends outlined in the report are limited.  My current context does not significantly utilise technology for learning and much of its IT infrastructure is restrictive to the use on the on-line space for collaboration and learning.  Of all the trends, the most pertinent to me is the final one, concerning the gap between the perception of technology by the user and by the educator.  Being at the forefront of elearning I have experienced this first hand and am all too familiar with the fact that there is a growing segment of our ‘customers’ who embrace what elearning has to offer more than some of our practitioners do.

The Horizon Report 2007 identified the following 6 key technologies:

(1) User-created content: As outlined above, I have some experience with the key user-created content sites, though my use of them in the educational context is still somewhat limited.

(2) Social networking: Online social networking is something I am only new to and, once again, not something that I have not utilised in the educational context.

(3) Mobile phones: Having worked in telecommunications for a number of years I am very familiar with mobile technology. I have read about the use of mobile phones in learning (mlearning), but have not engaged in this type of learning, nor utilised it for the learning of others.

(4) Virtual worlds: I have heard for the phenomenon that is Second Life, but have no direct experience of it in any context.

(5) New scholarship: I am personally familiar with the concept of on-line publication and have read a number of e-books and listened to a number of educationally based podcasts. I have started to dabble in the use of podcast for distribution of learning content.

(6) Massivley Multiplayer Educational Gaming: I am very aware of the huge rise in on-line multiplayer games, chief amongst these being World of Warcraft which has over 10,000,000 players world-wide.  The use of this technology for learning fascinates me and I have read a number of articles in this area, though my direct experience is minimal.

Final word:  There is huge potential out there in relation to the use of technology in learning and, as an educator, I need to start focusing on getting across these technologies if I am to continue to meets the needs of my learners.

The focus of my first set of readings was two papers by John Seely Brown, former director of the XEROX PARC facility:

Seely Brown, J. & Duguid, O. 1999, Learning, Working and playing in the digital age.
Transcript from a conference on Higher Education of the American Association for Higher Education.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/seelybrown/seelybrown.html

Seely Brown, J. & Adler, Richard P. 2008, Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0, Educause Review, January/February
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/MindsonFireOpenEducationt/45823 

The thing that struck me the most about these two papers was that the broad concepts proposed by Brown in his 1999 paper are as relevant in 2008 as they were in 1999, and this is certainly a credit to his vision.  From my perspective the key changes since the 1999 paper are:

• The web has become almost ubiquitous and can be accessed from a plethora of devices from mobile phones to fridges making it an even more fundamental part of peoples’ everyday lives.
• The huge growth of online social networking tools such as face book and virtual worlds such as second life have allowed people to create vast networks of like-minded people, no matter how obscure their interests may be.  This provides access to a level of knowledge sharing beyond anything possible in 1999.
• The online collaboration tools outlined in 1999 were cutting edge technology available only to researchers.  Today anyone with a computer has access to powerful, but free, collaboration tools, e.g. my 10 year old son can contribute to one of the world’s most popular encyclopaedias (wikipedia).
• The rise of the ‘open source’ culture has made vast amounts of information and knowledge accessible to everyone who is interested and has broken down the traditional learning pathways by allowing us to learn the bits and pieces we need to perform a task.

To a large extent the core issues raised by Brown are being adapted although, to some extent, this adaptation is occurring more in the public domain than within traditional educational institutions and workplaces.  This gives rise to issues of control over what is being taught and learned and the quality of the interactions that are occurring.  Educational institutions and workplaces need to further embrace new technologies such as Web 2.0, Second Life etc to ensure that the learning they provide compliments and leverages off the learning that occurs in the public domain.  

From my perspective the key challenge is to ensure that access to these new ways of learning is available for all, specifically:

• that we bridge the gap between the information ‘rich’ and the information ‘poor’ by ensuring that all people have affordable access to the internet
• that we address the divide between the digital natives (those that naturally adapt to learning on-line) and the digital immigrants (those to which this type of learning does not come naturally) to ensure that people are not excluded from these exciting learning opportunities

In the past the challenge was to give people the skills to find information.  Now that they have access to an almost unlimited amount of information the challenge is instead to give people the skills to be able to judge the quality of the information that they find and be able to sort though all the information available to find that which is valid.

I found the example Brown cites in relation to Xerox technicians to be a classic example of the type of knowledge management challenge that is facing organisations such as the one I work for.  We have an aging workforce with a vast amount of corporate knowledge stored in its collective heads.  Our challenge is to capture this before this workforce departs, particularly the tacit knowledge which is generally not recorded.  The collaborative tools outlined in the Brown articles offer the means to do this, provided we can overcome the ‘technology barrier’ perceived by our older employees.

The other key challenges I face in my workplace are:

• The lack of ‘bandwidth’ in all locations, meaning the user’s experience varies from site to site.  Some sites do not have broadband access.
• The perception that this type of activity is not ‘learning’ and therefore is not measured as such in the minds of staff
• The perception that there are some things than cannot be learned this way
• The perception that this is the cheap version of learning that you get when it is too expensive to deliver face to face learning.