Personalized Learning Systems and YOU

PLE ConferenceUniversity of Manitoba

March 26, 2006

Terry Anderson, Ph.D.Canada Research Chair in Distance Education

terrya@athabascau.ca

CongratulationsYou - as a contributing

lifelong learnerAre the

Person of the Year!

This Person of the year

Wants to learn things

Continuously moves between on and offline

Is learning to recognize and demand quality when investing in learning

Knows there are many paths to learning

Uses a wide set of information and communications tools

“The decline of the compliant learner’. P. Goodyear 2004

How do professional educators deal with these

“persons of the year”?

“We must look at today's radical changes in technology, not just as forecasters but as actors charged with designing and bringing about a sustainable and acceptable world.”– Herbert Simon, 1916-2001

Presentation Overview

Context and the Net

Affordances of the Net

The personal learning environment– Definitions– Implementation issues– Athabasca examples

Your comments or questions

Importance of this conference

Educational problems are not solved through evangelism, threats or technologies alone.

Change happens when teachers, administrators and learners make it happen– Perceived benefits – Personal– Readiness - Organizational– Pressure – Inter-organizational

Chwelos; Benbasat; Dexter, 2001)

Each of us is an agent of change

Maybe the Sky Really is Falling!

The Net Creates – Great challenge and Great Opportunity

Values

We can (and must) continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience.Student control and freedom is integral to 21st Century life-long education and learning.Education is an academic, individual and a social experience – both on campus and online.

University of ManitobaCanada’s leading

Web 2.0 University !!Checkout your Myspace profile

The Ubiquitous Net Context

Context creates and constrains learning

Context affords learning opportunities

Context and Content are created:– through interaction, – through use and creation of artifacts

Canadian Connection to the Net

67.9% of Canadians use the Net Computer Industry Almanac (2005)

85% access from home – Canadian Internet Project (2006)

Average 13.5 hours/week

76% Broadband

Affordances of the Educational Semantic Web (Anderson & Whitelaw, 2004)

Abundance of Content

High quality, Low cost Communication

Agent Assistance

Read/Write

Web 2.0

Filtering,Mashups,Updating

Automated

Facilitation

Net as OS

Connected

Learning

Affordance 1. Massive Amounts of Content

Any information, any format, anytime, anywhere

Customizable content

Interactive content

User created content

Open content resources

Wiki and Open CoursewareImagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. – – Terry Foote, Wikipedia

Content - conclusion

Cheap or freeNeed to learn to share and re-useDon’t build your value on your contentContent is necessary, but not sufficient to create a quality educational experience for the persons of the year"Centuries of specialist stress in pedagogy and in the arrangement of data now end with the instantaneous retrieval of information made possible by electricity." Marshall McLuhan 1964 p. 346

Affordance #2High Quality, Low Cost Communication

Multi synchronous– Synchronous, asynch– Text, audio and video– Stored, indexed and retrievable

MobileEmbeddedPervasiveLearner, teacher, community and publisher instigated

Each person operates a separate personal community network and switches rapidly among multiple sub-networks – WELLMAN, BOASE & CHEN 2002

Learning Happens through Interaction in

Communities of Inquiry

At home

At work

In third places – “not work and not home”

Affordance 3Agents

Google Alerts

Meeting Wizard

RSS

Athabasca– Freudbot AIML– E-Advisor– Are you ready

for AU? Agents

These Affordances Stimulate Development of a Participatory Culture

relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorshipmembers believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another – (at the least they care what other people think

about what they have created).– Henry Jenkins, Media Education of 21. Century

2006

Creating Incentive to Sustain Contribution

Pedagogical Basis

Connectivism – “Knowledge exists in the network” (Siemens, 2005)

Community of Inquiry (Garrison & Anderson, 2003)

Integrated Virtual learning – pedagogy of nearness (Mejias, 2005)

Learner construction and sharing of artifacts (Collis & Moonen, 2001)

New learning Environments John Seely Brown, 2006

Our educational discourse is largely stuck in a time warp, framed by issues and standards set decades before the widespread use of the personal computer, the Internet, and free trade agreements.”

Stewart and Kagan (2005)

Convergence between new learning and new technology

New Technology– Personal– User centred– Networked

– Ubiquitous– Durable– Affordable

New Learning– Personalised– Learner centred– Situated, Mobile– Collaborative – Ubiquitous– Lifelong– Expensive

Towards a Theory of Mobile LearningSharples, Taylor, Giasemi (2005)

Learning Networks

Imagine a world where there are tens of thousands of online learning paths, communities, experiences and objects.Imagine that they can be aggregated to demonstrate competence and accrue accreditation.How will learners find and connect to particular paths?Where will be the U. of M. be in this world?

Who does the work when learning on the Net?

Students used to dropping in and watching the teacher perform. Net learning demands and creates opportunity for engaged learnersNet instruction theory and practice must not: – Increase teacher work load

Use and re-useDon’t over teach or over moderateUse agents and sophisticated tools

– Make busy work for learners

Net learning does not emerge naturally from traditional instructive approaches and experiences –it takes work, incentives and experimentation.

We have to move learning out of an education context into one that stimulates, creates, rewards and evaluates learning anytime, anyplace, anywhere, for any reason.

Are today’s education tools helping create lifelong learners?

• John Seely Brown • New Learning Environments for the 21st Century 2006

Moving Learning from Institutionally Centered to Learner Centered

The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) Solution

Dallsgaard, 2006 http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htmr

What is a PLE?

“The logic of education systems should be reversed so that the system conforms to the learner, rather than the learner to the system.” Futurelab 2006

What is a PLE ?

PLE is a concept, an idea, an ideal?

A reaction to institutional Learning Management Systems?

All the tools that you use to learn?

Cool new name to drop at cocktail parties demonstrating how ‘with it’ you are?

What is a PLE?

A PLE is a web interface into the owners’ digital environment.– Content management integrating personal and

professional interests (both formal and informal learning),

– a profiling system for making connections– A collaborative and individual workspace– A multi formatted communications system– All connected via a series of syndicated and

distributed feeds.

"The PLE is an approach not an application." Stephen Downes

An approach that:

–Values and builds upon learner input–Protects and celebrates identity–Respects academic ownership– Is Net-centric–Supports multiple levels of socializing,

administration and learning –Supports communities of inquiry across

and within disciplines, programs, institutions and individual learning contexts

Technologies used to create PLEs

Mobile computing

Wireless

High bandwidth

Cell phones

Digital photography, video and audio recording

Internet video, audio and conferencing

Low cost hardware - $100 laptop

PLEs are not LMSLMS were designed, built for and operated by institutions of formal learning– Designed to meet teacher needs – Based on dissemination model of education– Contributions are owned by the institution– Student is forced to learn a new system at each institution– Designed for a push rather than a pull learning context– Course centric view of learning– Hard to interoperate with competitive or OS products– Designed to protect intellectual property, not make it

freely available– Very poor record of innovation

PLE- Learner Links their environment to that of education institutions

My hobbies

My calendar

My social Life

My school(s)

My files

My publicationsE-portfolios

My profile

My conversations(s)

My work

My identity

Learner Centred OLE.doc – Derek Wenmoth, March 2006

Early PLE Prototype products

Welcome to Flock, the safe, spyware free web browser that makes it easier to connect with your friends. With Flock it's a snap to upload, comment, and discover new pics. Read all the news you care about, in one place. Blog freely. Get search results as soon as you start typing in the search box, and much more.

RSS Reader on steroids

Blogs and ProfilesWith RSS

Formal education paradox?

Many PLE applications today are challenging to learn how to use, very unstable and not as administratively effective for either students or faculty as LMS substitutes.

Blogs vs Threaded DiscussionCameron & Anderson, 2006

Cognitive presence– Context beyond the course allows for enhanced verification and

application– Harder to follow threads and quickly find new contributions

Social Presence– Increased depth from chronological background– Openness may inhibit self-disclosure, humour

Teaching Presence– Poor navigation and tracking – Difficult to follow conversations– Harder to assess– Little institutional support

Individual

Space Cooperative Space

Profiles

Blogs

Group Ware

Wikis

Communities groups

Selective

Disclosure

Self-paced

Social learning

E- Portfolio’s

Each linked via RSS

Calendars

Typical PLE Applications

An elgg instance http://elgg.net

BloggingConnections

Real TimePacing

Social Presence

ContentAdmin

Asynchronous Int.

DisseminationKnowledge Polling

M2U.Athabascau.ca

Portal Products

Learning Objects

Elluminate Furl

Moodle

Technologies of AU’s MDE 663 Fall 2006

CMAP

Usefulness over 8 Educ Functions

Email

Blogs

Moodle Dis-cussion

RSS

Cmap

Web Conf

Profiles

BookMarks

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5

Usefuln...

N= 9 of 13

Advantages of PLEs

Identity

Customizable and control

Ownership

Social Presence

Capacity and Speed of Innovation

Open Connectivity (API, mashups, web services)

See my blog posting at: Are PLE’s ready for prime time?

http://terrya.edublogs.org/

Advantages of LMS’s

Advantages of LMS– Purposefully designed– Mature– Safe and Secure– Ease of Use– Centrally Supported

Some see PLE’s as just for informal learning

Learning is “a continuous, (largely) self-organized process of change” Sebastian Fiedler] PLEs:– provides learning systems for the vast majority of

people who are not enrolled on formal learning programmes.

– helping learners organize informal learning. – allow people to form their own (transitory) networks

for learning. Learning is a social activity and takes place in communities of interest and communities of practice. (from Graham Attwell)

Response to my blog posting Are PLE’s ready for Prime Time?Who are "we" in this case? We in the ed-biz or we human inhabitants of the earth? I may be being hyper sensitive but all too often we in the ed-biz see it as our job to operationalize things for them, the (demonic) other. Through this, Terry appears to be perpetuating the teacher/learner divide. Too many discussions are about how can we do things for you/them. Not until we realize that we are them and they are us - without abdicating responsibility for mentorship, inscription, facilitation and, indeed, teaching - can such ideas as PLEs be realized.

Seb Schmoller

http://my-world.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/01/personal_learni.html

PLE Activities

Making connectionsSharing artifactsApplying knowledge on and offlineSharing experiences and creating new contextsTeacher’s job is to help learner’s determine and satisfy their learning needsNeed to create and support environments from which learning emerges

Institutions are moving to PLEs

From computer owners (Labs)

To ISPs (email and web space)

To online architecture (LMS) and portals

To web services, open standard and access applications, accessible through many, learner owned interfaces

From PLE Reference Model Presentation by Colin Milligan/George Siemens

A PLE Roadmap

Transitioning to PLEs

Be the person you want your pupils to be – model desired behaviour (Stephen Downes).

Support a culture of innovation and teaching scholarship

Use only open standard and interoperable tools

Try a new tool in every course you teach

2006 EduBlog Survey

Scott Mcleod N=160

“Time Inc. to Eliminate Nearly 300 Magazine Jobs”

(Jan 19, 2007)

"It really is a different world, and these legacy businesses are going through a wrenching transition . . . they have to run the old business while building the new one." Harold Vogel

Conclusion

The context of both formal and lifelong learning is changing rapidly, creating great opportunity and considerable risk.Taking advantage requires allowing student and teacher choice, support and opportunity to exploit affordances of Net technologies.Role of management is to create an ecology of innovation.There is no single ‘killer app” in this environment - rather an evolving set of personal and social tools, pedagogies, and resources

The Great Community

..a subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive art of communication must take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and breath life into it. When the machine age has thus perfected its machinery, it will be a means of life and not its despotic master.– John Dewey (1927) The great community

Your Comments or QuestionsMost Welcomed !

Terry Anderson

terrya@athabascau.ca

Final reference: futurelab (2006) Social software and learning

Learning in a Networked Era Focuses on:

Even in formal learning, Learner Choice to co-determine and negotiate:– Tools for learning– Content– Time and place– Pace– Means of evaluation– Ways to learn– Relationships– Openness

Rod Boothby. ,2006 http://www.innovationcreators.com

ThreadedDiscussions

Choices Appropriate learning Environments

Skills and Knowledge Feedback

http://www.nestafuturelab.org/research/personalisation/report_01.htm

"First Law of Technology":

"A consistent pattern in our response to new technologies is we simultaneously overestimate the short-term impact and underestimate the long-term impact. – Roy Amara of the Institute for the Future.– “Learning a living” – The Age of Information demands

the simultaneous use of all our faculties, we discover that we are most at leisure when we are most intensely involved, very much as with the artists in all ages” McLuhan, 1994 p. 347

Net-Gen TeacherAction Research

Lisa Suben, 23. told her supervisors she was going to produce her own fifth-grade math curriculum.

A year later, her students achieved the largest one-year math score jump ever seen at a KIPP school from the 16th to the 77th percentile

Jay MathewsWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, December 19, 2006

Suben said: "My primary goal as a teacher is to help my students understand the reasoning behind math rules and procedures. – Understanding is constructed by the learner, not

passively received from the teacher.– Understanding is built by making connections

between as many strands of knowledge as possible.– Understanding is galvanized through communication.– Understanding is only valuable when you reflect on it

and question it." Jay Mathews

Terry’s Technology of the Year Award

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) society aims to distribute a laptop to every child in the world in the next 5 to 10 years

“Our display has higher resolution than 95% of the laptop displays on the market today; approximately 1/7th the power consumption; 1/3rd the price; sunlight readability; and room-light readability with the backlight off.

www.laptop.org