LMS New Vision

Is FaceBook the Best Online Implementation of Educational Theory We Have So Far?

I have talked to many people that have taken a class online entirely through FaceBook. I can honestly say that none of them liked it.  They found it really hard to go back and read things they missed, or to keep track of what was said in the class group. FaceBook groups and pages are good ideas that are poorly implemented in the overall program, so I can see their points. But I think the core of FaceBook’s success rests squarely on good, old-fashioned educational theory… and most educational software companies are missing that and still missing the boat on how to really engage learners online.

Whether you follow Dewey or social constructivism or connetivism, the main thread to most educational theories is that we learn best when we are sharing what we have learned with others (or when we are teaching others, or making social connections, or whatever your particular slant is… they all say the same basic thing).  We also know that we humans are curious creatures at our core that like to learn.

What if FaceBook (and Twitter and blogging for that matter) is not about narcissism…. but about us sharing what we have learned? What if the whole genre of “Web 2.0” is really just the best implementation of educational theory that we have observed so far (and is popular not because it is cool, but because it is helping us to learn)?

“Okay,” you might be saying “I see how sharing links to current events and fighting for our political beliefs might be learning… but what about all of those posts that are just about our lunch? How is that learning? That has got to be pure narcissism, right?”

Don’t we need to learn as much about ourselves as we can? How can we understand the world around us, if we can’t even figure out ourselves? What if all of those so-called narcissistic status updates and tweets and blog posts are just us learning about ourselves…. in the best way possible, by sharing what we have learned with others?

The more I think about it, the more I think that is mostly what it is. As many times I have read someone’s update about brushing their teeth, I have also seen the profound update where that same person has made a major self-discovery. And this profound experience helps me learn about myself… making all of the mundane updates that I read worth it.

To be sure, FaceBook is really just a mirror that reflects more of our true personality than we would like… the part that we hide behind masks when we are in face-to-face communication.  So, if you are a very narcissistic person, then your status updates will be narcissistic in nature. But if you are a learner at heart (as I believe most people are), then FaceBook is just reflection of your desire to learn – both about the world around you and yourself. And about how to brush your teeth. Learning is not always pretty :)

Of course, FaceBook is missing some keys administrative details that make it difficult for the focused learning that needs to happen in a true class setting. If only ed tech companies would catch on to this and take their tools in a different direction, I think we could have some truly great tools created.

That is exactly what Harriet and I are trying to do with the “New Vision for the LMS” series that we are pushing for. Hopefully, there will be more on this in the new year. For now, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Web is Changing. Time to Dethrone the LMS!

Earlier this year, Harriet and I went to a few conference presenting on “Will Web 3.0 Change the Way We Educate?”  It was a fun presentation that involved play dough, audience participation, and our New Vision for the Learning Management System.

As we were getting ready to present another round of conferences in 2010, we realized that the term “Web 3.0” is soooo 2009. So we updated the presentation:

TITLE: The Web is Changing. Time to Dethrone the LMS!

ABSTRACT: Rapid changes in online learning concepts – such as learning communities, personal learning environments and complexity – are driving a need to dismantle the Learning Management System as we know it. LMS software programs and instructional design theories are in danger of becoming obsolete if they don’t evolve. Students need a place to connect and collaborate at complex levels rather than hide inside a “walled garden.” Two colleagues at UT Arlington will present a new paradigm that is intended as an innovative alternative to the existing LMS concept as we know it.

We really just noticed that the typical “Web 3.0 concepts” weren’t driving the need for change as much as some of the concepts mentioned above are. The main gist of the presentation will still stay the same, of course – we would like to see LMS/CMS/VLE concept go away, to be replaced by a Social Learning Environment or a Personal Learning Network Aggregator of some kind. And there will be even more play dough!

We also plan to have a few new things, like an interesting viral video that will mock the LMS mercilessly and even a working model of New Vision to also show everyone.

First up on our conference schedule will be the EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference in February.  Stop by and say “Hi” to us if you are there!

New Vision LMS and Personal Learning Environments

I have to admit that I am not an expert in Personal Learning Environments. I really don’t follow much of the thought on them, not because they aren’t important, but mainly because I tend to focus on other areas of education. But when it comes to the “New Vision for Learning Management Systems” discussion, they are very important… so I want to talk about where they fit in the New Vision equation.

In many ways, the Learning Management System is the antithesis of the Personal Learning Environment.  So, as we talk about creating a new vision for the LMS, are we talking about something that competes with or super-cedes the PLE as well as the LMS?

I hope not, and here is why.  The New Vision for LMS is not meant to create a new way of managing learning, but rather it is meant to get rid of the current idea of an LMS totally and go in a different direction.  That different direction would take the focus off of a centralized learning management system and place the focus on the personal learning environment.  The difficulty of that is the personal part – what you personally choose to use might not easily interface with what I choose, or might require a lot of work for me to find. Then multiply that by 30 (or more) for the instructor.  We want to begin to think of the LMS as a PLE aggregator.  The main reason for this is to make it easier for instructors to track student learning and to assign grades or give feedback, but another good reason is to also help other students track each other more easily.  Sure, there are systems now (such as RSS feed readers and bookmarks) that can help us track everyone’s personal stuff, but these weren’t really designed for educational purposes. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of cobbling together stuff that was made for other purposes in to a franken-monster collection of good ideas that kind of works. I want something made by educators, for educators!

Of course, even though we are working on a sample idea of how this would work (built on top of Moodle), we also envision that this will not take on the form of one “New Vision LMS” program that everyone would have to use.  We would like to start seeing all LMS solutions drop the LMS label and go for the SLE (social learning environment) approach.  We would like to see an SLE built on top of Google Wave… and as plug-ins for WordPress… and as a whole host of options that aggregate PLE in different formats, so that you can choose which SLE design works best for your class.

Ultimately, we don’t just want to see the students get a personal learning environment – we want to see teachers get to choose a personal teaching enviornment.  Wouldn’t it be great if, someday, your institution doesn’t have to choose a program for delivering classes online?  As an instructor, you choose the one you want, plug-in a custom code from your school, and then your Personal Teaching Environment (where ever it resides) would be plugged in to your school? Students would be automatically enrolled, grades would be ported back and forth, etc.?  Student authentication / log in would be handled by a central program on your school servers maybe, but clicking on the link for your class takes them to your class where ever you choose to host it.  Maybe it is in a Google Wave, maybe on your own website where you self-installed your own program, or maybe even on a third party hosting solution.  The technology exists to do this now – we are just trying to get it all put together. Just wish that it didn’t take so long to get the first Alpha release out there!

What Do Educators Really Want in an LMS?

If you were at the session that Harriet and I presented recently at the Sloan-C Emerging Technology conference, you probably saw us take a different approach to the session.  Well, other than the play dough and Tupperware Shape-O-Ball toys we used.  Props are just standard for us.  No – what we first did was asked the people there what they wanted in a Learning Management System.   Harriet wrote those suggestions down, no matter how far out there they were.  Most sessions don’t start with feedback like that… maybe at the end, or as they are going along.  But we wanted to start with feedback first and then go from there (and, to be honest.. I didn’t even know Harriet was going to do that. She just walked in with this huge piece of paper.  That’s just how we roll…)  We got a surprising and intriguing list from the participants:

  • a menu of tools
  • adaptability / accessibility
  • interactive virtual agents
  • ease of collaboration
  • seamless integration
  • tactile activities for any sense (smell, touch, taste, etc)
  • modular learning (customizable)
  • holodeck
  • capture, evaluate, and weigh user created content
  • useful
  • game based interaction with in game assessment
  • simulation
  • translate into different languages, including American Sign Language

As you can see, quite a diverse list… even some crazy ideas.  I like crazy ideas.  This was at our presentation on New Vision for Learning Management Systems.  Interesting how people that had come from all over the country came up with many of the concepts we are trying to capture with New Vision.  Coincidence?

Opera Unite Brings In a New Idea Out of Left Field

Okay… scratch my last post.  What if the browser was your LMS?  Think about it – what is the biggest problems with most social networking sites?  Privacy and ownership of content.  Huge battles are being fought over who owns what when you upload it and issues like “how private is your stuff anyways?”  Opera released a new product today called Opera Unite.  The basic idea is that you take control of what you share online because your browser is a web server.

Interesting concept.  You retain all rights and controls over everything you want to share, because it is served up from your computer.  What a crazy thought.

So, what if the browser itself becomes the LMS?  What if the instructor created a bunch of activities that students worked on and then shared back with the class through something like Opera Unite?  The technical details would be crazy to make it work right, but think if it could get to work right?  You would have to authenticate all students and instructors through an official school database, of course.

But this could take our New Vision for Online Learning in a whole new direction.  Just some crazy thoughts.

Also think of combining this idea with Google Wave?

My head hurts from the possibilities….

EduPunk Movement Gains More Attention

If you haven’t already read the interesting article on how some colleges are weighing using blogs instead of Blackboard at The Chronicle, check it out here:

Colleges Consider Using Blogs Instead of Blackboard

It has a fairly balanced look at both sides of the issue. The last paragraph proves my point that I have made over and over again about Blackboard: the people in charge just don’t know what they are talking about.  Here is the direct quote:

Blackboard is trying to keep up.

Michael L. Chasen, the company’s chief executive, has told The Chronicle that the latest version of the software integrates some Web 2.0 tools and still offers plenty of features that blogging packages can’t match, like online gradebooks.

Good point.  Except, of course, for the fact that WordPress has a grade book plug-in (well, two actually). And some really cool social networking plug-ins, too.

My question has always been – why do you need an LMS or program of any kind?  Why limit your students to just a blog or a LMS?  Why not create a simple platform that aggregates whatever tool they use into one spot for easy of collaboration accross tools?  That has been the question we have been asking with our New Vision for Learning Management Systems idea, that will hopefully morph into an open source project soon.

UPDATE:

I forgot to also respond to this legitimate concern raised in the article:

Some professors asked whether it was possible to run a blog that only students could see, noting that they had concerns about making course activities public.

The short answer is, in WordPress and a few others, yes.  The University I work for installed WordPress MU for anyone (student or teacher) to use.  They were easily able to connect it to our university system – you log in with the same ID/password you use for email, and your blog is automatically set-up. Custom blogs for, say, groups or departments can also be created.  There are also a few instructors that keep it private for only their classes.  Our IT department was able to connect specific blogs to specific class rolls.  But even if you can’t do that, there are plug-ins that let you authenticate with users you want and then only authenticated users can see the blog.

A Glimpse At The Future of Online Education

Are you tired of the way LMS programs are going?We’ve formed a group at FaceBook to air gripes and discuss ideas for something new –  a continuation of our series on a new vision for Learning Management Systems.  Join the group and add to our discussion – you can find it here:

FaceBook Group for a New Vision for the Learning Management System.

Let’s Continue the Discussion on a New Vision for the Learning Management System

This past week, Harriet and I began to present our ideas on a new vision for the Learning Management System at the TxDLA 2009 conference.  We will continue to present these at other conferences, including the Sloan-C Emerging Technology conference.  We had some rough ideas, but the common feedback we heard was: we need to make some big changes… now!  A few really good ideas were shared as interacted with people and received feedback.  So, coming soon, we will be opening up an area to discuss what the new vision could look like.

The biggest missing piece right now is the name.  We have plenty of ideas for how this can look, and even for a new instructional design method to accompany a new LMS… but we need to come up with a new term to describe this system. ‘ Learning management system’, ‘course management system’, ‘virtual learning environment’, and most all other terms have problems.  Well, problems in addition to being over-used.  We want to create a system that focuses on connectivism, active learning, social connections, constructivism, etc.  The best I have in ‘Connection Environment.’  Harriet came up with ‘Connection Console.’  Both console and environment have connotations in other areas… so they might not work.  Maybe that is what we can brainstorm also.

Stay tuned for links to discussion areas and other assorted EduPunk-ish goodness coming soon :)

A New Vision for Learning Management Systems (part 4)

As much as I have disagreed with the concept of living in flat world (because the world is truly not flat or anywhere close) – I still think that we need to have a flat world goal when looking forward in anything – especially in Instructional Design and the future of the Learning Management System. Not only do we need to find ways to turn the LMS into a hub of collecting student work, but we also need to find ways to get the program to intuitively seek out related content and pull it together for us.

Let’s look at blog commenting for example. You post a blog entry, and then people comment on it. Pretty simple – right? How that be improved? Here’s one thought. You have probably seen this happening: someone will quote your blog in their blog, usually by creating their own blog entry for commentary instead of directly commenting on your blog (two examples are here and here – not the first time I have been called Mark). When someone does this, they should leave a trackback link or comment on yours. However, so many trackback functions have to be turned off because of spammers (or they are just confusing to figure out). But most people that quote your blog tend to forget to let you know that. They do link to you, of course – and that is all they should need to do.

This is why I use the Google Alerts service to let me know when someone has posted a link to EGJ. It catches some interesting commentary and discussions on our ideas that I would never have known were occurring. With this in mind, my question is: why does it have to matter where comments are made on your blog entries (or any other content you create for that matter)? Wouldn’t it be great if any comment made anywhere about something you posted would automatically be pulled in as a comment on your blog? And if you replied to that collected comment – it wouldn’t just post on your blog, but the other blog as well? There are some solutions already being worked on out there, and thanks to RSS feeds, tags, Google Alerts, etc, etc – stuff like this can happen. We need something like this in education. But there is no one “killer” system that accomplishes this totally, and then there is that pesky Spam problem.

Come to think of it – there is just so much progress that is hindered because of spammers. I guess it is not cool to suggest the death penalty for anyone, even annoying spamming, huh? Maybe we can just find a deserted island somewhere and the global penalty for spamming would be to cast them on this island – with no electricity or computers. Then they will be begging for the death penalty. Hey – one can dream….

Anyway, there could be some great benefits to education if a system like this could be created. Think of the discussions you could have with other classes at other universities anywhere in the world, and not even have to set anything up officially. Or if you do set something up officially, all you have to say is “go to this blog and comment on their post, making sure you include a link to the post – the program will take care of the rest!” The LMS makes all of the connections for you. You just log in to your blog or wiki or whatever to moderate the comments and then respond where needed and everything goes where it should.

See other posts in this series

A New Vision for Learning Management Systems (part 3)

As I continue to look at a new vision for online LMS programs, I want to start brainstorming what this could actually look like. But first, I want to share a quick story of a conversation I had with an online learning student this week that highlights my reasoning on why we need a new system. This student is taking two classes online – one hosted in Blackboard and one hosted in FaceBook, a few blogs, and a couple of other sites (an obvious EduPunk class). In our conversation, he pointed out that he knew that BlackBoard wasn’t that great and had some problems, but he really hated the way the EduPunk class was set up. “There just has to be a better way out there – it is just so tiring and time consuming to track all of these sites and figure out where to go each week.” I got the impression that he really didn’t like having a class in FaceBook.

So, my idea is to create a Learning Management System that is more like a Course Management Platform. There should be parts of it that are open to the web for public discussion on course subjects, and then a closed section that operates more like a centralized dashboard, pulling in RSS feeds and embed codes from around the Internet rather than trying to play keep up with every cool tool that is invented online.

But what would this look like? Maybe something like this blog. For now, EGJ is hosted in a Moodle installation with a hacked front page that pulls the blog entries on to the front page. The blog is public, but there are still many tools hidden behind passwords. I could see this being the way online classes could look: each class has a front page like ours – residing in a specific directory for that class. What goes on that front page would be controlled by the instructor – but they would have the ability to let blogs and some discussion threads reside in the public arena (this site does have a fully functional discussion board open to anyone who wants to register and post, but we don’t use it). So, for example, let’s say you have a college junior level English class online that is ENGL3301. You would go to this schools website at exampleu.edu/engl3301/ and that would pull up the public area for that class. Maybe a blog is there where the instructor posts about current literary issues, a discussion board where book authors can interact with students online, and a link to the course syllabus. Then, to the right there is a block to log in, and instructors would get an area that pulls in RSS feeds from group blogs and puts them in one place so they can be easily compared to the rubric for the assignment. Communication would be centralized there, as well as links and embed codes submitted for assignments. Students would also get a centralized place to look at and critique other students’ work, as well as tools that lets them export due dates and other information to whatever management tools they use.

Instructors would also have the ability to keep the class open after the course is over to extend learning beyond the date the class is over. They might want to hide some content to keep some students from cheating, but at least the communication tools could be left open.

I would also think that whatever you see behind the scenes once you log in would need to be in a centralized area that pulls in content from any class you are enrolled in. Most LMS programs have each class compartmentalized as a separate area. While that is not bad, it does cause problems when you start thinking about portfolios and keeping classes going after the date the class is over. Centralizing this system would allow students and instructors to keep track of older classes and assignments in portfolios. To this end, BlackBoard NG might be on the right track in their iGoogle-clone dashboard page – if they come through with their hype.

Those are some really rough ideas, I know. Any other ideas out there?

See other posts in this series