Learning in Networks Utopian?

Some work on the conference wiki after the online Connectivism conference, and a post by Terry Anderson entitled Learning with Networks, made me think about the possibilities that online networks could offer in changing the way we learn. Anderson referred to work by Jon Dron and reflected on the value of networks to formal and informal education. He defined a network as Stephen Downes does, not so much as a confined group, but as an open, free flowing entity that links individuals.

Stephen Downes emphasised the need for diversity, openness, connectedness and autonomy for networks to be successful. George Siemens and Stephen Downes developed theories of learning on the premise that networks and their numerous connections could facilitate learning successfully.

By participating in online networks, for instance as bloggers, people commenting on blogs, producers of videos, or as people who silently take in what other people on a trusted network have to say, they would develop their knowledge. Propositional knowledge provided by tutors does not form part of the theory, as autonomous and interest-driven individuals on an open, diverse network, would be able to learn by truly engaging in the networks.

How important would diversity of a network be?
Andersen argues that the quality of network interaction would be determined by the quantity of participants, as the larger the number of people participating, the better the chance of a heterogeneous network. In addition, he states that the quality would be dependent on the culture in the 'real' world of each network member, but also on the culture in the virtual world of the particular network, as 'individual posting and network deliberation are all situated and culturally bound'.
The more diverse the people partaking in the network, the greater the need to reflect on and think about views and ideas that are different from their own. According to Terry Anderson, if the nature of the network is heterogeneous, a certain level of competency in critical thinking and evaluation would be required. I would like to add skills in media and information literacy to this to ensure an awareness of how online companies generate content and what the purpose of this information is.

How diverse are networks?
I haven't found much research on the nature of online networks with regards to diversity. I came across a number of publications, though, that made me wonder if it would be premature to build theories of learning on the assumption that networks are heterogeneous:

Technorati's 'State of the blogosphere' report this month showed that 37% of blogs are in Japanese, 36% in English, 8% in Chinese and in Farsi 1%. Bloggers in other languages would be thinner on the ground. In a global networked environment this shows that a large number of people do not have a voice, or will be communicating through a language that is not their own.
National UK Statistics showed that in the UK still only 57% of the population had Internet access at home in 2006. The people least likely to have Internet access at home would be older people and people from lower socio-economic groups. It seems that still only particular groups in the population would engage in online debate.

People most likely to use the Internet would be young white and middle class. Even young people don't engage with web 2.0 technology in the way some enthusiasts would like us believe. Selwyn in his paper 'Dealing with digital inequality: rethinking young people, technology and social inclusion' The Net-generation seems to use it for fairly trivial activities related to chatting with their friends rather than the collaborative and connectivist learning experience envisaged by enthusiasts.
In addition, Oliver Kamm in an article in the Guardian pointed out, when speaking about political bloggers, that they are 'by definition, a self-selecting group of politically motivated who have time on their hands'. He argues that the 'conversations bloggers have with their audience are an echo-chamber in which conclusions are pre-specified and targets selected'. They result in abuse at public figures and poisoning of debate because of lack of accountability. Tim Dowling, engaged in the current debate on etiquette in the blogosphere noted that 'the blogging world has faced criticism, from without and within, for the low tone of cyberdebate. Online discourse, it is said, is characterised by personal insult, childish mudslinging, meaningless feuds, self-serving digression, pranksterish vandalism and empty threats'. He mentioned two female bloggers who have been insulted for the sole reason that they were female or that they took down insulting hatemail from their site.

This does not seem the climate and culture in which learning for all would thrive. I realise that a more traditional class room is not always a heterogeneous learning environment either, but there the tutor would be expected to show more sides of a story and keep in check unacceptable behaviour.

Another issue that sits not quite comfortable with me is the denouncement of propositional knowledge. As a teacher of infants, older children, disaffected adults and postgraduate learners throughout my career, I am not convinced that providing people with the means to learn online will automatically ensure their engagement in online networks. Not all learners have the autonomy and confidencethat would be required for this. In addition, Bill Kerr in a presentation at the connectivism conference referred to Alan Kay's non-universals. Kay explains that there are a number of areas that are hard to learn, based on studies in anthropology of all human societies . They are: reading and writing, deductive abstract mathematics, model based science, equal rights, democracy, perspective drawing, slow deep thinking, agriculture, and legal systems. When thinking about connectivism, and distributed learning, this list causes me concern as I am not convinced that people won't need the external incentive of a qualification that has currency in the workplace, or formal teaching to take on these areas.

It seems premature to expect that autonomous people in an open, connected environment will learn in depth, just because the tools, connections and the information are available. The environment might be there, but there might be prerequisites for people to engage successfully.

Blogs, reflection and assessment

Another issue that kept nagging at me throughout the Shock of the Social conference was the way blogs are being used in some Universities.

I was quite shocked to find that informal, reflective tools were being used in a very controlled manner: Writing blogs would form part of the assessment process and in some instances their use would be very much controlled by the tutor: make people write a mini-essay posting and make other students comment.

In my view this takes away the strength of the tool: instead of fostering individual reflection and critical thinking about certain subjects that the student is interested in, it makes a blog into another tool to satisfy the needs of the tutor and the institution.

The writing by Boud and Walker (2002, p94) would suggest that reflection on demand does not work. Although they emphasise the importance of reflection in context, embedded in the learning activities, they point towards a carefully balanced process in which reflection is linked to conceptual frameworks and learning outcomes, but is not prescribed by the tutor. In their view, 'writing a 'reflective journal' [, which a blog is,] and the 'expectation that they will be read by an assessor leads some students to censor their reflections so much that they fail to engage with their felt experience and avoid learning'. The role of the tutor would be to balance between 'recipe - following' and providing enough guidance to avoid students losing focus.

The argument for including blogs as assessment at the conference was that if not linked to assessment, people would not use them.

You would have to question if blogs were right for purpose to the activity in which they were being used.
I am an educator with first hand experience of how students used asynchronous discussion boards while the activity was included and not included in the assessment process. I know that including them ensured that people used the tools, but not in the way I would have liked them to: It made them write mini-essays for me, rather than that they communicated with each-other over course concepts.

I think it would be a shame for blogs to be used in this way as in my view it destroys their potential for reflection. Perhaps it would work to only make the use of blogs compulsory, but to not prescribe and control the way they were being used.
Boud and Walker referred to papers in which it was advocated to assess reflective journals in terms of reflective writing, rather than in terms of standard academic writing. This might be another option to make them part of the formal educational structure.

Second Life

At the 2007 The Shock of The Social conference in Oxford in the UK last week, I had my first experience of Second Life. An enthusiast showed us how he bought clothes, gave hair to his person that flew us around the virtual world. Showed us adults flying planes along interesting buildings and led us to a university area. He showed us to an educational presentation area as well.

I have to say I did not feel comfortable playing a computer game like this and was wondering if it really is the way forward in engaging our future learners as some learning technologists might like us to believe. Was Lyotard right after all in his final book to be concerned about us moving towards an inhuman society? How far will we remove ourselves from reality?

It makes me wonder if the real world has become so complex that people have the feeling they are no longer in control and see playing a game in which they can control their imaginary lives and living in a dream world, as the way out.

The Net has given us a great opportunity to connect with people all over the world in a variety of networks and to me that is one of its major strengths. Although this is Second Life's strength as well, the unnatural 'game-like' atmosphere could make that people will use their other networks instead.

Educause has a feature here on the uses in education.

YouTube ethnography project

I have followed with interest the videos that have appeared in YouTube in relation to Web2.0. The original one made by the Digital Ethnography group from Kansas State University gave a view on Web 2.0 in which learning technologists and other enthusiasts can recognise their current work.

Cory the Raven posted a counter video on YouTube that questions what this kind of medium has to offer in addition to traditional media such as text and film.

The video itself has a very interesting pace to it and I would say the number of comments, communications and discussions on YouTube at the moment, ranging from McLuhan to Welsh, show that the level of communication that has been made possible through the Internet has changed these two older media into something new. It has made that text and film have been transformed from one-to many media in broadcasting mode, into many-to-many media, where information and discussion encourage the creation of knowledge. This in my view makes a big difference. The information is discussed and reactions to the older media mean that new thoughts and ideas are created. The videos have already been viewed by more than a million people and hundreds of comments have been made.

I agree with Cory that it is becoming problematic that half the population is not taking part in the online discussions. It makes that the knowledge in networks is less reliable, as it might only paint a one-sided picture on a subject. As somebody who has worked hard over the past five years to engage people with technology it seems a waste that a vast number of people are excluded from valuable learning opportunities. It seems to me that the higher the rate of convergence of technologies, the faster the engagement of disengaged people will be: the easier and cheaper it will be to access technology on digital televison or mobile phone, the quicker people will be tempted to take part.

Cory seems overly concerned with the move from living in the real world to living in a virtual world. It reminds me of Lyotard's final book in which he was very concerned about the move humans are making towards the 'inhuman'. I would argue that most people who venture online are firmly grounded in the real world and that problems in the real world quite often make that people move online to find information and to discuss whatever makes them tick in reality.

The Net-generation and confidence

I have just spent a very frustrating afternoon trying to get all the features back on my computer that were there before my 16 year old son wiped my profile and restored the default. You will probably say, you could have avoided this by password protecting the profile, but I have never liked to do this as I feel it is important for Pieter to know that I trust him to stay out of the areas on my machine that he should not be touching. He has a brand new very good computer him self! It surprises me how (over)confident the net-generation is. They dare to tackle any problem on a computer and think they know all the solutions to problems relating to their needs. They don't always take into account the needs of other people!

I have to retract these last sentences as Pieter just asked me why I wouldn't just do a 'systems restore'. Of course I have to admit that his confidence might be justified as I have all precious files, folders and feeds back.

Research methods

At the moment I am thinking about research methods that could capture the new developments in technology. I am especially interested in personalisation and 'free-roaming' across Internet networks. If students have more control over their learning and move outside the formal educational setting, it will be much harder to track their 'knowledge creation'.

I am thinking of using Social Network Analysis techniques to analyse what actually happens in networks. How easy/hard is it to be accepted in a network and to learn from people and information flows in networks? How important is the communication that takes place? Is 'parallel learning' as mentioned by George Siemens on his connectivism blog at all possible, or as Bill Kerr post in his learningevolves blog, do people advocating 'connectivism' take their thinking too far and deny the importance of the individual and the learning that occurs inside their heads? How dense are these networks and how diverse are the participants?

I am also considering the use of integrated design research frameworks, as advocated by Terry Anderson' at the 'Connectivism' conference, to see if they would capture all aspects of an intervention to move to a more negotiated, personalised online learning experience. As I am most interested in the learner experience, I am not convinced that such a structured approach would be suited to research educational processes as they are usually 'too messy' as researcher, tutor, learner, design and context all interact. This might mean that an ethnographic approach would work better to capture all the connections.

Free roam learning - versus informal learning

Informal learning has been heavily discussed this week online. All or nothing could see informal learning integrated in training together with formal education. Stephen Downes and Tom Haskins
do not agree with this but view informal learning as non-formal, as not linked to any marketable entity, in which control is inposed by others than the learner. I like Tom's analogy of free range chickens with learning. It seems to me that Tom's and Stephen's sense of informality entails for learners to roam freely from node to node in online networks, and I would call it free roam learning as free range still holds some connotations of restrictio and control. It would be good to keep free-roam and informal seperate as there is still a high proportion of the population that does not have access to the Internet, thus also does not have access to freely roam from node to node. In Wales that is about 51% of the population. These are in general older people and people from unskilled and semi-skilled backgrounds. Should we leave all these people out of the equasion as they do not have access to the technology? I don't think so. Informal learning, and with this I mean 'first step learning' relevant to the needs, aspirations, and interests of learners, is offered as a stepup to other forms of learning all over the UK. It is informal as it is very much negotiated with the learners and there are no formal assessments involved in the process. It is not free roam learning as lack of confidence and efficacy means that a number of steps need to be taken before these learners can move from informal to free roam learning. It is important when discussing connected knowledge that we keep in mind that the most vulnerable people in society are excluded from the discussion.