The Wales-Wide Web

I am involved in several projects involving the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs.

E-learning was seen as the salvation for SMEs by many policy makers and researchers alike. Policy makers in particular were concerned at the lack of training in SMEs and the associated threat to competitiveness. The reason for the failure to provide training, the argument ran, was because SMEs cannot afford to release workers form the workplace. But with the ability to provide training directly in the workplace the problem would be solved. Voila!

Problem is it didn't quite work like that. Despite hundred of well intentioned projects, the SMEs refused to play. Why? The reasons are complex. The two biggest - I would suggest - are the lack of a training culture and the short term approach of most SME managers.

Thats not to say that no learning takes placed in SMEs. It does. But most of that learning is informal learning - from colleagues, from friends. And most of the e-learning on offer - coming out of the paradigm of the 'virtual university' or the virtual classroom' has been based on formal courses drive provision.

We still have few tools which build on informal learning and tacit knowledge.

Anyway - to get to the point - in one project I work on - e-Compete - I was asked to produce a Handbook on e-learning for SMEs. I attach the draft below. I don't claim to have got all the answers but I think it does start from the right point - from the needs of learners not from the technology.

One problem in writing the Handbook is just that people (including the project commissioning the Hnadbook) still expect learning to be about courses. I have tried to lead fro

Working and Learning.doc
m courses into the wider learning context.

This is still a draft. It is covered by a Creative Commons License. In the near future I want to publish it as a Wiki in the hope that more minds might be able to develop and build on some of the ideas. In the meantime I would welcome any feedback. Also note that this version is not referenced - neither does it have the further resources section completed.

NB Sorry about the bad numbering. Had to produce this version in MS Word. The numbering system in Word has always sucked and still sucks. I will try to get out a version in a more usable format soon.

National Guidance Research Forum - Formal and non-formal learning in the workplace:
there is an ongoing debate about recognizing wider forms of learning. I am strongly in favour of this but am concerned that formal assessment and accreditation processes will alienate learners and restrict the learning which takes place.

The following quote is from a contribution from Alan Brown to a discussion of work based learning on the excellent National Guidance Research Forum web site.

"From the above it is possible to construct an outline of the type of assessment that could support the current work-related learning of a majority of learners and leave them with a positive attitude towards learning for the future:

* The assessment will contain a strong dialogical component: allowing reflection upon achievements, why certain actions were taken, what difficulties were encountered, what has been learned, how to build upon that learning
* The assessment should be driven by the learning (not as so often the learning being driven by the assessment)
* hence the assessment should map directly onto those characteristics that the learning is seeking to promote. So, for example, for employees learning to be change agents in supply chains, the assessment review may use the following criteria:
* can the learner talk knowledgeably about key aspects of practice?
* can the learner effectively engage a range of other people in talking about practice (operators, team leaders, suppliers, customers etc. as appropriate)?
* can the learner influence changes in practice in the workplace?
* can the learner reflect upon how to transform aspects of existing practice?
* The assessment should be primarily formative, with the primary goal being encouraging learners to engage in further learning and skill development. Note here value of mediating artefacts (diaries; records; photographs etc.) in encouraging active reflection and review.
* The assessment process should add value to the learning process in recognising the achievements of the learner and the context in which the learning took place.
* The summative role of the assessment could be principally just an authentication of the role played by the learner and the significance of the learning. This authentication would for most learners be a worthwhile outcome in itself, and it would recognise that for most people most of the time they are not particularly interested in getting their work-related learning formally assessed. On the other hand, the authentication would also act as a potential component of a formal qualification. If used as part of a portfolio, or with a complementary assignment, or as part of a more formal assessment of experiential learning, it could be used to help gain access to further education and training and/or formal qualifications. The outcomes could also be used to inform the construction of a CV or help in making a case for promotion or employment selection.
* Above all, learners would value the process and outcomes of assessment as supportive of their learning and further development."

Just before Christmas I had a drink with my friend Barry Nyhan, who works for Cedefop. We were talking about the increasing interest in work based learning, informal learning and non formal learning - see for instance the upcoming Bridges for Recognition Conference or the EC funded Self evaluation project.

One of the issues is differences between researchers on terminology - which itself reflects different views about knowledge and how it is constructed and used.

The meaning of words like non formal learning informal learning is contested.

Barry suggested that this debate is not particularly healthy and is distracting attention from the real issue. We both share the concern that in the rush in Europe to recognise non formal learning, attention is focused on accreditation and certification of learning. Such an instrumental approach may be holding back research and practice and my ignore the value of different forms of knowledge both for individuals and for organisations.

Barry suggested adopting the term 'Natural Learning' to describe all those forms of learning which take place in every day in work-life and in personal life.

This seems to me a useful approach - especially as it allows us to focus on the contexts in which learning takes place - and conversely on those contexts in which learning does not happen.

i4donline.net ~ About i4d:

A note to myself more than anything. Found this interesting site, whilst looking for something else. That's the way of the web.

The i4d (Information For Development) print magazine is one its kind, and is intended to provide a much-needed platform for exchange of information, ideas, opinions and experiences, both inside and outside the Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) sector. While several electronic publications do currently exist, i4d is perhaps the first that addresses the need by utilizing the strength and potential of the print media.

EDITORIAL PROFILE

i4d encompasses the role and relevance of ICT in various development sectors such as Rural Development, Gender, Governance, Micro-finance, Education, Health, Wireless Communication, ICT For Poor, Local Content, Culture and Heritage, and more.

Internet Archive: Text Archive:
"Our goal in digitizing these texts and putting them online is to provide easy access to a rich and fascinating core collection of archival texts.

By providing near-unrestricted access to these texts, we hope to encourage widespread use of texts in new contexts by people who might not have used them before."

There are an increasing number of open archive projects. Not sure what all this means or how it will evolve. I think the key question raised in the text from the excellent Internet archive here - is what kinds of new contexts might such texts be used? Secondly how can we link the original resource - in terms of a 'text' to those contexts in a way which brings added vale. This means improving how we track discussion - so that the discussion (and use) becomes an associated part of the text.

Wired News: We're Creative Commonists, Bill:

Big stir over Bill gates latest pronouncement on Creative Commons. Wired News reports: "The kerfuffle started when Gates was asked in a News.com interview if intellectual property laws should be reformed. He replied:

"No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist," he told News.com."

Wired says "the comments show just how out-of-touch Gates is with a large and growing community of people who have embraced the ideas of open source and building on one another's creative works, proponents of copyright reform say.

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford University law professor and chairman of the board of Creative Commons, mocked Gates' comments at the organization's second anniversary party Thursday night in San Francisco. He said Gates was mistaken: Copyright reform advocates are "commonists," not "communists.""

The whole debacle does show the need for more debate over the economic and social nature of the campaign against the copyright laws. Some proponents of reform claim this is a fight against restrictive monopoly practice. In Europe, the fight against copyright does tend to be seen as part of a wider social struggle. I think there are tensions within the movement and ultimately different options for how copyright - or copyleft - is handled.

I'm quite curious about what Lessig means by commonist. The term is very similar to ideas put forward in the 17th century by Gerald Winstanley - leader of the pre-communist Digger movement who called for the creation of a cooperative Commonwealth.

EdTechPost: E-Learning and Sustainability - Report by Graham Attwell:
E-Learning and Sustainability - Report by Graham Attwell

http://www.ossite.org/Members/GrahamAttwell/
sustainibility/attach/sustainibility4.doc

"I am kind of surprised this hadn't been posted on yet as it makes such extensive reference to ideas being promoted in ed tech blogs, but I couldn't see any references so far. This report by Graham Attwell "commissioned by the University of Bremen as part of its contribution to The European Commission Socrates supported Lefo Learning folders project" could well be considered a survey of most of the discussions I have seen unfolding both in ed tech blogs and other forums for the past 2 years, but wrapped in the context of 'sustainability.' Some of it won't seem that new to those already immersed in the discussion, but taken as a whole it seems a valueable report and a bit of a summation of a seemingly widespread call to shift directions in the elearning world."

Thanks to Scott Leslie and also Stephen Downes for their kind comments on my paper.

I'd say Scott's comments are pretty fair. The sustainability angle came in because that was what I was commissioned to write - but having said that I think it is a fairly useful approach. I want to see sustainable innovation - not vast expenditure on sterile and uninteresting approaches to e-learning. I was also trying to bring some of the debates form the tech blogs etc to a wider European audience involved in innovation in learning - though I fear the length may have put many of them off.

Stephen Downes is right to say that it is in need of an edit (afraid it is still first draft - and when it comes to editing I always seem to be able to find something more important to do!). I am reworking much of the material as a series of seven shorter papers, designed mainly as a resource for students learning about e-learning. I will post the url here shortly for access to that lot.

Open source

Develop and adopt strategies of implementing open source software. There are very good open source programmes available for most applications in education and training. Open source not only offers major cost savings but can provide higher quality and reliability.
Of course institutions cannot change to open source overnight. Firstly, when new software is required open source applications should be considered first. Secondly, institutions should develop strategies to migrate from proprietary to open source software.
Larger institutions may consider forming partnerships or contracting to the many open source companies providing support and consultancy services.

Establish data repositories or contribute to collective repositories

Compelling and attractive materials are the key to e-learning. In terms of sustainability those resources will mainly be generated by teachers and trainers. Materials repositories sallow the sharing and reuse of resources. Critically, repositories can be independent of learning programmes and applications preventing lock-in to any one technology or platform. Larger institutions should consider establishing their own materials repository or a distributed repository across the institution. Smaller schools may consider the technology too advanced and demanding of resources and should consider partnerships and networks to contribute to a shared repository. In all cases it is important that as far as possible repositories are open and do not impose proprietary standards.

Look at what free resources are available

There are many free resources available on the web and collections and repositories of free learning resources are growing fast. The biggest barrier to using these free materials may be the lack of awareness of teachers that they exist and the lack of skills and knowledge ion how to search for free materials. Searching for and using free materials should be an integral part of any training for teachers and trainers in e-learning.

Encourage staff to share resources

Teachers and trainers have the skills to produce learning resources and materials. What is commonly lacking is a culture of sharing those materials. This requires an organisation culture change and a redefinition of occupational profiles. The creation of materials should become an accepted part of teachers and trainers every day work. This does not mean merely adding an extra burden of work; institutions should review their policies to include materials development as part of the everyday activities of their staff.
At the same time teachers and trainers should be encouraged to share materials through institutional and shared repositories.

Establish licence agreements

Sharing learning resources requires culture change and it is important that the effort and contribution of materials creators is recognised and their rights protected. Licensing is not an esoteric exercise or something to be left to legal departments or senor managers. Institutions should promote and encourage the use of licences with ‘some rights reserved. Adopting and promoting the Creative Commons Licence is a positive step in this directions although it is still based on US law.
Think carefully about alternatives to Virtual Learning Environments Think as to whether you need a full-blown Virtual Learning Environment. Even the many excellent Open Source VLEs can be time consuming and difficult to install, configure and maintain. If learning materials are accessed through standards based open repositories there are many different ICT based options in how they are delivered and used in a pedagogic context. It may be possible to use different learning applications dependent of learner needs
Develop a framework for professional development
Staff development and training is central to successful and sustainable e-learning. However, all too often, such training is instrumentally focused on the technology of e-learning. As such it fails to allow teachers an appreciation of the role of pedagogy and does not develop the broader skills needed to implement ICT as part of the curriculum and pedagogy in the longer term. Institutions should develop framework for prfessional development in which the skills and knowledge to develop e-learning plays an integral part of everyday practice.

Develop and review strategies

Institutions, whatever size and sector, should develop and review strategies for implementing e-learning. Sustainability should be a key goal of those strategies and as a starting point I would suggest they consider the issues raised in this section of the paper! Strategies should start from the needs of the learners and the institutions’ role in meeting those needs, and not form the availability of technology. Institutions have to develop communications and feedback mechanisms to ensure that strategies are understood by every member of the organisation. Strategies should be evaluated and reviewed on a regular basis and updated in reflection of the fast changing context on which e-learning is developing.

Look at total resources – integrate services

Many different people on institutions have a role to play in e-learning and these roles are changing fast. Institutions should look at the total; services they deliver and at the roles of the people who deliver them. As an obvious example, librarians play a central role in cataloguing ands supplying resources. A sustainable strategy should consider how different services can be integrated or can interoperate at a technical, pedagogic and human level.

Consider metadata and standards issues

The provision and use of metadata and conformance to standards are key strategic issues for the sustainability of e-learning. Having said this it may not be appropriate or possible for every institution to move to fully standards compliant e-learning practices in the immediate future. If institutions do decide to become standards compliant the Learning Design Standard may be seen as more appropriate for education than SCORM. Take pedagogies seriously Institutions must take pedagogy seriously. This seems obvious but all too often it is forgotten in the fervour of technological advance and implementation.
We are still in the course of a steep learning curve when it comes to using ICT for learning. Institutions should look carefully at what pools of innovation exist in e-learning practice and should seek to promote exemplary practice throughout the organisation.
e-Learning should be seen as part of the total pedagogic approach of the organisation, rather than as an add on or alternative to traditional teaching and learning practices.

Integrate ICT within the whole curriculum

Institutions should adopt a whole-curriculum approach to e-learning. Rather than see e-learning as a separate activity, appropriate only to individual target groups or courses, they should look at how e-learning can be used to enhance present learning provision. This does not mean all courses should be delivered through e-learning. it means an understanding that there are many different e-learning applications which could be integrated in the organisations s part of a learning and teaching strategy, including for example, access to resources, the use of games or the provision of portfolios for students following traditional learning programmes

Use project funding wisely

Project funding is important in allowing opportunities for innovation and experimentation. Unfortunately, many projects falter or cease when project funding runs out. Institutions need to consider how project funding can be used as part of developing an overall institutional strategy for e-learning. this does not mean projects should not be undertaken if they do not match precisely with the institutional strategy. But, organisations do need to consider what the potential benefits, products and outcomes of a project might be and how they can be further developed. Institutions also need to think how project findings can be disseminated internally and the results mainstreamed within organisational practice.

Seek funding opportunities

Institutions should encourage staff to actively seek funding opportunities. Whilst sometimes grants may be available for hardware or infrastructure development, more important is the opportunity for experimenting and innovation. Project work and innovation should be seen as part of the mainstream life of the organisation and participation in this work should play a major part of the professional development plan.

Develop partnerships and networks

Institutions should actively seek to develop partnerships and networks for e-learning. These partnerships and networks may take many different forms, dependent on need and include the sharing of resources and resource development and the delivery of courses and programmes.
The effective use of collaboration and groupware environments can enhance the operation of such partnerships.

Institutions should also consider forming partnerships with software companies and materials developers which go beyond customer/supplier relationships to iteratively and actively co-develop e-learning applications.

Share practice throughout organisation

There are pools of experience, expertise and innovative practice in e-learning within most institutions. The issue is how best to exploit and use such resources. Institutions should review the resources and expertise available to them and develop strategies to disseminate and utilise innovative practice throughout the organisations.
Make sure sufficient support is available
The development of sustainable and innovative e-learning practice requires support. In particular, teachers need support in using ICT for teaching and learning and in developing e-learning materials.
Evaluate e-learning practice
We are still at a stage of experimentation in e-learning. It is important that institutions know what works and what does not. This means developing a rigorous evaluation strategy which not only focuses on the technology but on learning.
Formative evaluation should be an integral part of all plans and projects for e-learning with the results of the evaluation informing further development and the review of strategic plans and future directions.

Off to Gut Gremmelin tomorrow (anyone bored can waste a little time trying to work out where it is!) to the final workshop of the European Commission e-Compete project. I am doing a presentation on e-learning and Small and Medium Enterprises and attach a pdf of my slides.

ecompete.pdf

Like all of us I guess, I have been having a sneaky look at what of my stuff Google Scholar pulls up. Results seem a little odd - there are things I had forgotten I had written - including quite a few German translations - and no mention of some stuff I thought was quite good. Never mind - it is still in beta.

But I loved this strange juxtaposition. Now i know that some of my and Jenny Hughes writings can send you to sleep but I didn't know we made this much impact!!

Wired News: Worming Into Apple:
"Skunkworks projects are a long-standing tradition in Silicon Valley. Many engineers work on personal projects in the hope they will be turned into products, even if they've been previously canceled. Companies like Google recognize the tradition, allowing staffers to spend 20 percent of their time on private projects."

I was surfing around with no greta purpose and happened to open this article (which is not particularly interesting in itself). But the final comment on Google policy did catch my attention. I wonder if this policy could be transferred into education. It could be the most economic and most productive strategy for professional development in schools and colleges.

Had sadly less time than I would have liked yesterday in Gut Gremmelin and could only promise participants at the workshop that I would post references to the issues and software I was talking about.
So - in a bit of a rush to my next meeting - here we go.

I will post the presentation on the Knotes software here tomorrow.

The presentation on ICt and learning in SMEs can be found in a previous blog entry.

To see it in use - see either my blog here - or better look at the Guidance Research Web site. There is more information about the different products and communities on the Knownet web site, including downloadable software.

Finally the papers and handbook about which I talked earlier can be accessed on the Open for Learning web site - which is the Knownet's e-Compete portal.

If anyone wants to know more about any of these products please email me.

When I tell people what my job is they frequently say how lucky I am to get to travel so much. They cannot understand when I say you can have too much of a good thing. Well here is yesterdays travel story.

Went to the e-Compete meeting in Gut Gremmelin yesterday. Gut Gremmelin is a beautiful place - an old manor house converted into a training centre with facilities and food which many 5 star hotels would find it difficult to match.
The only problem is the location - it is in the middle on nowhere. Well not quite - but its just that every time I go there things seems to go wrong. It is a three and a half to five hour train journey (normally) from Bremen - depending on which train you catch, connections and the like.

Last time I went there I was doing well until I fell asleep 10 minutes before the station I was supposed to change at (only 10 minutes away from where I was being picked up by a shuttle provided by the centre) and ended up miles away in Rostock. I waited 40 minutes to go back down the line - and then got off at the wrong stop. Sign-posting can be a little tricky in that part of Germany (which my friend Lars insists on calling 'the zone'). Nevertheless i have to say the mess up was all my fault.

This time I prepared myself. I got all the print outs etc from DeutcheBahn's excellent web server (why can't the airlines produce something as good as this). Trouble was - when I got to my second change in a place called Bustrow, my destination (and where I was being picked up) - Lallendorf - was not on the destination board. talked to the helpful ticket person who told me the train I was on does not indeed stop in Lallendorf. Thankfully I found out in enough time to get off in Gustrow and ring the ever helpful Nicole in the Gut Gremlin office and get the shuttle diverted.

OK - caused a few laughs for the partners in the e-Compete project for whom my vain travel attempts are becoming a running joke.

Guardian Unlimited Football | Special Reports | Irony not lost on Dortmund:
Question: What do you call a football team which regularly attracts crowds of more than 75,000, yet currently suffers from a financial crisis unparallelled across Europe?

Answer: Borussia Dortmund

Following up on previous postings on the German football scene, this Guardian article provides a useful analysis of Dortmund's decline.

Much of my work involves research and development work into on-line communities. Another chuck of work is research and development in education - mostly undertaken through European funded projects, typically involving parters from five to eight countries and lasting two to three years.

Problem is many of the so called communities have little to bind them together - other than that as individuals they have all joined an on-line community. But they do not 'know' each other - neither do they usually work together on a collective task.

The projects do meet together - usually two or three times a year and do have a series of collective work tasks. The projects also are more or less expected to maintain a web site which may or may not include group-ware tools, bulletin boards etc. The problem is that the project are frequently too small to develop any real community.

The answer - I think - is to encourage clusters of projects to share common community portals. These clusters which obviously need some areas of commonality in their work - could then focus the public areas on the services and tools their projects are producing - whilst economies of scale should allow the deployment of reasonably sophisticated communication environments for project development.

Seems a win win situation to me. I am going to try to get two projects I work with to develop this idea. The first is the Self evaluation project for which I have just launched a new web site. The second is the new Leonardo da Vinci ICOVET project which is looking at the assessment of non formal learning for socially disadvantaged young people.

Email to Stephen Downes

Dear Stephen

Thanks for bit on National Guidance Research site in OL Daily. Small point - my name is spelt with two tts as in Attwell.

I normally don't really care what people call me but in age when net identities has become so important it does raise some issues. Out of curiosity I did a search on Graham Atwell and to my amazement found nearly 10 pages on Google with my name wrongly spelt!

Is this a case of split virtual personalities?

I was talking about this to my friend Alan Brown the other day. He mentioned Google Scholar. Whilst I suppose Google intend the search engine to be used for topic based searching, along with many others I suspect, I tend to use it to search for work by people. Sort of works for Attwell - although there is an interesting juxtaposition of a paper of mine followed by a citation to something called "Secondary Insults to the Injured Brain". But - more to the point - he pointed out if you have a name like mine, there is no chance of finding anything he has written in the deluge of A. Browns.

So - names matter - could this be a future consideration for parents in choosing kids names?

Cheers

Graham

There is great interest in europe at present in the potential for recognizing competences which may not be included in formal certification etc. There are a number of different projects looking at this including the Self Evaluation project. I received the following email form Lizbeth Hoejdals who although she says she is only thinking out loud - I think raises a number of important issues.

"If we are to develop a tool that can meet the requirements that we put up ourselves - assist people in the process of discovering possible competences,  "discover" tacit knowledge and competences we are not aware of.........We need a different approach than simply ask for a set of specific competencies - can you do that, do you have this or that skill....The whole point is - in my opinion - that people are often not aware of their competencies...........



The tools that I have developed are based on that assumption and I, therefore, use a different approach.
"My tool" is inspired more by constructivist thinking, the socio-dynamic approach and developmental theory. Among others, I draw from Vance Peavy (Constructivist Counselling: Theory and Practice/SocioDynamic counselling) and Donald Super (The Life-span, Life-space Approach to Careers).

Therefore the tool I'm working with is different (I wil translate them into English ASAP) -  based on a narrative and contextual approach.

This implicates, that I'm not (in the tool) on the look-out for specific competences, but it encourages the counsellor to help the trainee to explore ALL possible competencies.

The self-evaluation process is in 7 phases, being:

1) My life-story (e.g. life-span, relations and learning experiences)
2) My present situation (e.g. life space, context and tasks for personal development)
3) My "future-scenario" (possible, thinkable and prefereable futures)
4) How do I moove ahead (e.g. visualizing steps needed to be taken - e.g. to get formal accreditation)
5) My professional and personal competencies (collected from life-story and additinal narratives)
6) My options and barriers (e.g. how to overcome personal and structural barriers)
7) My personal goals and sub-goals (short and longterm goals and action plan/what do I want to accomplish)
 
A number of Career researchers has stressed, that an individual's perception of competencies (self-concept/self-efficacy beliefs) is a context specific concept. My self-beliefs can be influenced by many factors.I think that these work in concert and operates through experiences, conceptions and expectations evolving around the past, the present and the future (I also measure myself according to my Outcomeexpectations, according to e.g. Albert Bandura/Self-efficacy and outcome expectations)."

EducationGuardian.co.uk | News crumb | Wiltshire school abandons 'old-fashioned' homework:

Personally I've long been in favour of abolishing secondary schools - as we know them - but at last we see someone saying something sensible about how education is 'delivered' in schools. Right on Mr Hazlewood.

"A comprehensive school in Wiltshire has just written off homework for 12 year olds deeming it, and the national curriculum, a "dinosaur".

Dr Patrick Hazlewood, head of the 1,450-strong St John's School in Marlborough, wants students to "manage their own learning" so that they learn to love learning for learning's sake.

Homework is "repetitious" and "generates marking that is often just a load of ticks and causes conflict at home," he said.

Instead, he has decided to test a programme thought up by the Royal Society for the Arts, which rejects the notion that a teacher's job is to transmit a body of knowledge to pupils."

Sounds like a strange concept. And it is. passive offside is football rule which allows a player to be offside (if you don't know what offside is you will probably be better off going to the next post) if they are not involved in play. Trouble is how you interpret passiveness. Why am 5 going on about it. Because on Saturday Werder Bremen lost 2-1 to Shalke and the player who scored the goal - ex Werder striker Ailton - was judged to be passively offside when the killer pass was made despite the fact he was only about a meter from the ball.

I don't blame the referee - its the rule which needs sorting out.

Otherwise a good game which as so often this season werder could and should have won. Ah well - there's still the Champions League to aim for.

Note to ed-tech people who have syndicated the Wales Wide Web. Sorry about this, but one of the quirks of Wales wide Web is a weekly footy slot. Hope you enjoy it.

Scott Wilson's Workblog:
The VLE of the Future

"UCISA recently asked for people to come up with ideas on a "VLE of the future". I'm not sure if my response is exactly what they were after, but I've included it below as I think people from a wider audience might find it interesting. In summary, the VLE of the future isn't a VLE, doesn't belong in institutions, and isn't a portal...", says Scott Wilson who works for the UK JISC e-Learning Framework.

Scott gets it about right in seeing the future VLE as "personal, and it will have features that support informal as well as formal learning situations, and a whole range of social activities that we would barely recognize as "learning" today."

Many e-learning researchers will recognise Scott's vision and at least within the open source development world there are signs of emergent applications which can do the job.

The problem is that e-learning is still dominated by large enterprises and by educational institutions. The former see e-learning as providing costs effective just in time training solutions, whilst the institutions are generally using e-learning applications to extend access to existing courses.

This begs the question of just who is going to lead the change to personalised non-formal learning. One argument, I suppose, is to say it will just happen as more and more people use different software applications "to create their own contexts and invite others to join in, publishing their activities and materials either through simple hosting services, or perhaps directly". That sort of supposes that changes in the institutional organisation of learning will be driven by a bottom up demand for new forms of learning.

I am not convinced. Take the UK Open University for example. Although they have great researchers and developers the UK OU still uses (non interactive) television as one of its main teaching media. with FirstClass being used for communication. OK, FirstClass is at least a communications platform. But it is hardly the creative environment Scott dreams of. I talk to many developers and researchers working in universities. Almost to a person they cannot get their own universities to adopt the more creative pedagogic approaches they talk and right about, still less to abandon their addiction to existing VLEs.

Things are maybe beginning to change - mainly because of the increasing use of web logs and the potential of standards like RSS. But I think we have somehow to firstly mainstream our ideas and secondly, have to close the gap between research and practice. This means building up more cross disciplinary development projects and groups involving pedagogists and educational researchers and learning technologists as well as the managers or whoever else makes decisions.

It also means we have to start exploring what the new roles for educational institutions might be and how they can support networks for developing less fomalised knowledge creation and sharing.

European Inventory on validation of nonformal and informal learning:
Yet another major initiative around informal and non-formal learning. This topic is certainly the flavour of the month. On the one hand I welcome such approaches as a means to open up learning in different contexts and especially as attributing more value to work based learning. On the other hand I remain concerned that the direction of this and similar projects is constrained by the emphasis placed on validation and the development of tools, instruments etc. for formal accreditation of learning.

This moves us away form looking at how and where learning occurs and from developing those learning opportunities. It echoes my concern with the whole direction of ICT based learning, in attempting to replicate classroom learning with a heavy emphasis on measuring attainment, instead of recognising and developing new forms and opportunities for learning.

More on this later - especially when I can find the time to read some of the many papers posted on the Ecotec site.

"During the last four years a number of initiatives have been taken at different levels (European, national, sub-national, industry, third sector) supporting the development of new approaches to validation of non-formal and informal learning. Validation of non formal and informal learning has been identified as a European priority on repeated occasions, including the Communication on Lifelong Learning (2001), the Education Council Decision Concrete future objectives for European education and training systems (2002), the White Paper on Youth policies (2002) and the Copenhagen Declaration (2002).

A set of Common European Principles for the validation of non-formal and informal learning have been developed by the Commission in collaboration with a range of partners. This political emphasis on validation was further strengthened by an initiative to organise an informal ministerial conference on the subject in June 2004. These initiatives reflect the strong political momentum existing in this particular policy field and make the inventory project highly relevant for forming current and future policy debates at European, national and other decision-making levels."

Scott Wilson's Work blog

I am sure there will be many, many links to this picture by Scott Wilson envisaging what a future VLE might look like. The interesting thing is although it is a 'future VLE' almost all of the software exists. Another point is how it uses web based standards - a lot less complicated than the LOM and similar such things.

But most fascinating for me is Scott's short comment under his picture:

"btw, Neither LearnDirect nor Bolton provide these sorts of services yet, but like most other learning providers they probably could do if they were sufficiently motivated. Most of the other services do exist (if only in alpha form or requiring transformation at the other end)."

So the question remains - how do we motivate Bolton Institute and LearnDirect to provide these sorts of services? Why are they not motivated.

Scott Wilson's Workblog:
The VLE of the Future

"UCISA recently asked for people to come up with ideas on a "VLE of the future". I'm not sure if my response is exactly what they were after, but I've included it below as I think people from a wider audience might find it interesting. In summary, the VLE of the future isn't a VLE, doesn't belong in institutions, and isn't a portal...", says Scott Wilson who works for the UK JISC e-Learning Framework.

Scott gets it about right in seeing the future VLE as "personal, and it will have features that support informal as well as formal learning situations, and a whole range of social activities that we would barely recognize as "learning" today."

Many e-learning researchers will recognise Scott's vision and at least within the open source development world there are signs of emergent applications which can do the job.

The problem is that e-learning is still dominated by large enterprises and by educational institutions. The former see e-learning as providing costs effective just in time training solutions, whilst the institutions are generally using e-learning applications to extend access to existing courses.

This begs the question of just who is going to lead the change to personalised non-formal learning. One argument, I suppose, is to say it will just happen as more and more people use different software applications "to create their own contexts and invite others to join in, publishing their activities and materials either through simple hosting services, or perhaps directly". That sort of supposes that changes in the institutional organisation of learning will be driven by a bottom up demand for new forms of learning.

I am not convinced. Take the UK Open University for example. Although they have great researchers and developers the UK OU still uses (non interactive) television as one of its main teaching media. with FirstClass being used for communication. OK, FirstClass is at least a communications platform. But it is hardly the creative environment Scott dreams of. I talk to many developers and researchers working in universities. Almost to a person they cannot get their own universities to adopt the more creative pedagogic approaches they talk and right about, still less to abandon their addiction to existing VLEs.

Things are maybe beginning to change - mainly because of the increasing use of web logs and the potential of standards like RSS. But I think we have somehow to firstly mainstream our ideas and secondly, have to close the gap between research and practice. This means building up more cross disciplinary development projects and groups involving pedagogists and educational researchers and learning technologists as well as the managers or whoever else makes decisions.

It also means we have to start exploring what the new roles for educational institutions might be and how they can support networks for developing less fomalised knowledge creation and sharing.

European Inventory on validation of nonformal and informal learning:

Yet another major initiative around informal and non-formal learning. This topic is certainly the flavour of the month. On the one hand I welcome such approaches as a means to open up learning in different contexts and especially as attributing more value to work based learning. On the other hand I remain concerned that the direction of this and similar projects is constrained by the emphasis placed on validation and the development of tools, instruments etc. for formal accreditation of learning.

This moves us away form looking at how and where learning occurs and from developing those learning opportunities. It echoes my concern with the whole direction of ICT based learning, in attempting to replicate classroom learning with a heavy emphasis on measuring attainment, instead of recognising and developing new forms and opportunities for learning.

More on this later - especially when I can find the time to read some of the many papers posted on the Ecotec site.

"A set of 'Common European Principles' for the validation of non-formal and informal learning have been developed by the Commission in collaboration with a range of partners. This political emphasis on validation was further strengthened by an initiative to organise an informal ministerial conference on the subject in June 2004. These initiatives reflect the strong political momentum existing in this particular policy field and make the inventory project highly relevant for forming current and future policy debates at European, national and other decision-making levels."

Still thinking on all this informal and non formal learning stuff. I have written before about problems of definitions and basic ideas. What distinguishes informal form non formal learning etc.

Jenny Hughes suggested to me that the real problem is not the issue of definitions as such, but the unsophisticated tools for analysing different forms of learning.

She suggests that 6 Category Intervention Analysis may offer a good starting point. The categories of of analysis are posted below. Each category represents a continuum on which teachers or trainers may be operating at any one time. I copy the categories below.

Jenny's idea is that we could adopt or develop a similar scale for analysing and describing non formal learning
Will do a little research and return to this with references etc.

Daniela says "We know where you are from your blog". Nice to know someone is reading it.

I am off to Portugal for a couple of days - working sadly but at least I'm hoping to see the sun. At a meeting of the Self-evaluation project. Will try to report on the work of that project - although have no idea on connectivity. And then on to Bristol Monday evening for a meeting of the JISC e-learning programme. Back here Tuesday night.