What if We Could Connect Interactive Content Like H5P to Artificial Intelligence?

You might have noticed some chatter recently about H5P, which can create interactive content (videos, questions, games, content, etc) that works in a browser through html5. The concept seems to be fairly similar to the E-Learning Framework (ELF) from APUS and other projects started a few years ago based on html5 and/or jquery – but those seem to mostly be gone or kept a secret. The fact that H5P is easily shareable and open is a good start.

Some of our newer work on self-mapped learning pathways is starting to focus on how to build tools that can help learners map their own learning pathway through multiple options. Something like H5P will be a great tool for that. I am hoping that the future of H5P will include ways to harness AI in ways that can mix and match content in ways beyond what most groups currently do with html5.

To explain this, let me take a step back a bit and look at where our current work with AI and Chatbots currently sits and point to where this could all go. Our goal right now is to build branching tree interfaces and AI-driven chatbots to help students get answers to FAQs about various courses. This is not incredibly ground-breaking at this point, but we hope to take this in some interesting directions.

So, the basic idea with our current chatbots is that you create answers first and them come up with a set of questions that serve as different ways to get to that answer. The AI uses Natural Language Processing and other algorithms to take what is entered into a chatbot interface and match the entered text with a set of questions:

Diagram 1: Basic AI structure of connecting various question options to one answer. I guess the resemblance to a snowflake shows I am starting to get into the Christmas spirit?

You put a lot of answers together into a chatbot, and the oversimplified way of explaining it is that the bot tries to match each question from the chatbot interface with the most likely answer/response:

Diagram 2: Basic chatbot structure of determining which question the text entered into the bot interface most closely matches, and then sending that response back to the interface.

This is our current work – putting together a chatbot fueled FAQ for the upcoming Learning Analytics MOOCs.

Now, we tend to think of these things in terms of “chatting” and/or answering questions, but what if we could turn that on its head? What if we started with some questions or activities, and the responses from those built content/activities/options in a more dynamic fashion using something like H5P or conversational user interfaces (except without the part that tries to fool you that a real person is chatting with you)? In other words, what if we replaced the answers with content and the questions with responses from learners in Diagram 1 above:

Diagram 3: Basic AI structure of connecting learners responses to content/activities/learning pathway options.

And then we replaced the chatbot with a more dynamic interactive interface in Diagram 2 above:

Diagram 4: Basic example of connecting learners with content/activity groupings based on learner responses to prompts embedded in content, activities, or videos.

The goal here would be to not just send back a response to a chat question, but to build content based on what learner responses – using tools like H5P to make interactive videos, branching text options, etc. on the fly. Of course, most people see this and think how it could be used to create different ways of looking at content in a specific topic. Creating greater diversity within a topic is a great place to start, but there could also be bigger ways of looking at this idea.

For example, you could look at taking a cross-disciplinary approach to a course and use a system to come up with ways to bring in different areas of study. For example, instead of using the example in Diagram 4 above to add greater depth to a History course, what if it could be used to tap into a specific learner’s curiosities to, say, bring in some other related cross disciplinary topics:

Diagram 5: Content/activity groupings based on matching learner responses with content and activities that connect with cross disciplinary resources.

Of course, there could be many different ways to approach this. What if you could also utilize a sociocultural lens with this concept? What if you have learners from several different countries in a course and want to bring in content from their contexts? Or you teach in a field that is very U.S.-centric that needs to look at a more global perspective?

Diagram 6: Content/activity groupings based on matching learner responses with content and activities that focus on different countries.

Or you could also look at dynamic content creation from an epistemological angle. What if you had a way to rate how instructivist or connectivist a learner is (something I started working on a bit in my dissertation work)? Or maybe even use something like a Self-Regulated Learning Index? What if you could connect learners with lessons and activities closer to what they prefer or need based on how self-regulated, connectivist, experienced, etc they are?

Diagram 7: The content/activity groupings above are based on a scale I created in my dissertation that puts “mostly instructivist” at 1.0 and “mostly connectivist” at 2.0.

You could also even look at connecting an assignment bank to something like this to help learners get out of the box ideas for how to prove what they have been learning:

Diagram 8: Content/activity groupings based on matching learner responses with specific activities they might want to try from an assignment bank.

Even beyond all of this, it would be great to build a system that allows for mixes of responses to each prompt rather than just one (or even systems that allow you to build on one response with the next one in specific ways). The red lines in the diagrams above represent what the AI sees as the “best match,” but what if it was indicating the percentage of what content should come from which content pool? The cross-disciplinary image above (Diagram 5) could move from just picking “Art” as the best match to making a lesson that is 10% Health, 20% History, 50% Art, and so on. Or the first response would be some related content on “Art,” then another prompt would pull in a bit from “Health.”

Then the even bigger question is: can these various methods be stacked on top of each other, so that you are not forced to choose sociocultural or epistemological separately, but the AI could look at both at once? Probably so, but would a tool to create such a lesson be too complex for most people to practically utilize?

Of course, something like this is ripe for bias, so that would have to be kept in mind at all stages. I am not sure exactly how to counteract that, but hopefully if we try to build more options into the system for the learner to choose from, this will start dealing with and exposing that. We would also have to be careful to not turn this into some kind of surveillance system to watch learners’ every move. Many AI tools are very unclear about what they do with your data. If students have to worry about data being misused by the very tool that is supposed to help them, that will cause stress that is detrimental to learning. So in order for something like this to work, openness and transparency about what is happening – as well as giving learners control over their data – will be key to building a system that is actually usable (trusted) by learners.

Hybrid MOOCs and Dual-Layer/Self-Mapped Learning Pathways MOOCs: My Perspective on the Differences

A recent tweet from Aras Bozkurt highlights a question we often get about the work we do with dual-layer/self-mapped learning pathways courses (most often in MOOCs, but also starting to bleed over into traditional courses as well):

As soon as we started using the term “dual-layer MOOC” in 2014, people pointed out the similarities between that idea and “Hybrid MOOCs.” These are important points because they do share many concepts. However, there were some key differences as well. In my mind at least, there are some differences that exist along various continuums rather than hard divisions into two distinct ideas.

The original distinction between layers into “instructivist layer” and “connectivist layer” proved to be problematic, as many courses have aspects of both, and learners tend to mix both at different times (if given the choice) instead of choosing one or the other. So I think it is better to look at the distinction as one that focuses on who does most of the decisions of what to mix together in the course. If most of the decisions to mix together/hybridize the course content and activities lies with the instructor, I tend to look at those as “Hybrid MOOCs” because it is the MOOC itself that is a hybrid. Even if there are choices (“write a paper or create a blog post or Tweet a thread”) and some of those are connectivist in nature, if those choices are more restricted and designed into the course, I see it more as a Hybrid MOOC. If the learner is more in control of those choices and how they mix the hybrid layers together, I see it more as the dual-layer concept we tried with DALMOOC. Of course, the layer idea focuses on the design too much, so that is why I like to refer to those courses now as “self-mapped learning pathways” because the focus should be on the pathway that the learner maps instead of the layers.

This is a continuum, of course – with a completely instructor controlled course on one side (all possible activities, even social/connectivist ones, chosen by the instructor) and a completely learner-driven course (like RhizoMOOC) on the other end. The DALMOOC and HumanMOOC courses I worked with/co-taught lean heavily towards the learner driven side, for example, while YogaMOOC leaned slightly more towards the instructor-driven side. All of those mix elements of xMOOCs and cMOOCs together in different ways (with RhizoMOOC most likely technically existing off the spectrum because it was all community driven – but it makes a good frame of reference. In contrast, typical xMOOCs exist off the other side of the spectrum because they are all instructor controlled and usually not that complex).

Additionally, I think an important dimension to look at with these courses is one that would exist on a perpendicular axis that measures the complexity with which the course organizes or scaffolds the choice for learners. For example, courses like DALMOOC were highly organized and complex – with maps of course structure, activity banks, course metaphors for descriptions of what that structure looks like, etc. Other courses like the EngageMOOC were less complex in that aspect of the structure, with the linear content in place – but learners were told they could do various other activities as they liked. There was some structure there as well, so it was not as far down that continuum as the RhizoMOOC would be.

So you would probably end up with a grid like this for explaining where courses fell on these continuums – some courses would probably shift from place to place as the course progresses:

Note: there was no scientific method for where I placed the example courses above – I just took a guess where they seemed to fall by my estimation. Feel free to disagree. The basic idea is that courses that mix various epistemologies tend to exist more on a continuum than at defined poles. Hybrid MOOCs are what I see as courses that lean towards the instructor deciding what this mixture is, and/or what the specific choices for the mixing are. Dual-layer/learning pathways courses are those that lean towards the learner deciding what this mixture is, and/or what the specific choices for mixing are. Either type can do so in more complex or less complex ways depending on the needs of the course.

Further Reflections on #OLCInnovate

After last reflecting on a specific issue at the OLC Innovate, I wanted to dive into a few random reflections and then cover my session. In many ways, I have been getting burned out on conferences. Going to session after session of hit or miss topics and then straight to mixers in the evening can be a bit of a chore. Of course, I realize that many people that attend are like me – they have to present something in order to get funding to attend. So I recognize that sessions are a necessary thing for many people. It just gets hard to go to sessions all day long.

I have always wanted to do a dual-layer conference in the same vein as our learning pathways model: one option of structured presentations and another option of unstructured unconference time that attendees can mix and match to their liking. Or even a day of structure followed by a day of unconferencing. The OLC Innovate conference had some different options like that with the Innovation Lab – a place where you could roam in and look at anything from games to design thinking to improvisation. It’s not exactly a dual-layer design, but still flexible. Due to some lingering headaches, I wasn’t able to attend everything in the Innovation Lab, but what I did see was quite enjoyable. Some of the highlights:

  • Game Design. I wish I could explore game design more in depth, but the taste of it I got at OLC Innovate will probably drive me back into exploration even more. Keegan Long-Wheeler and John Stewart from OU both do an excellent job framing game design in education. Keegan chronicled their lab activities better than I could, so read his post for a better summary. Also see me playing Nintendo Switch as well as hear about our epic dinner adventures.
  • Improvisation and Innovation. My last post described how I was not happy with some of the framing of Innovation at OLC Innovate. The Innovation Lab was a welcome counter point to that narrative. Ben Scragg, Dave Goodrich, and many others showed us how innovation can occur in every day activities, using everything from improv audience participation skits to the most excellent blues guitar improv of Rick Franklin.
  • Legos. Yep, there were Legos at OLC Innovate. I played with them. I tweeted about them. Apparently my Tweet about Legos was honest enough to win me an award. I can now prove to any doubters that I am certifiably honest now :)
  • The Prophet of Innovation Doom. Who ever created this Twitter account is weird. They should probably be banned from OLC events for life. Or put in charge of OLC. Not sure which one yet.

Now for my session at OLC Innovate. I was a bit nervous about this one. This year would be my fourth presentation along the topics of open learning and learner agency (the first two were at ET4Online and then the next two at OLC Innovate). The past three years were successful mostly because I knew many of the people coming to my sessions already, and I knew they were generally in favor of my work. It is easy to joke around, get audience participation, and go off on tangents when you already have that rapport with the attendees. Plus, the first two years I presented with my regular co-presenter Harriet Watkins. Last year Harriet was at my session even though we weren’t able to present together. This year, Harriet and many of the people I was used to presenting with or to were not going to be there. My security blanket was gone. Additionally, even most of the people that were there and that I already knew (like Keegan and John) were presenting at the same time. So I went into this session not knowing who would show up (if anyone) and even if they would want to participate in the discussion or laugh at my corny jokes.

Luckily, I had a great time. I would say that it was even my most interactive session yet. We had a great time digging through the practicals of designing a course that allows learners to self-map their learning pathway. And they asked some really hard questions. I like it when that happens. I had a line of people afterwards asking me questions. Someone even told me I was one of the few truly innovative presentations at the conference. Take that ELI! :)

(ELI rejected a presentation on the same topic a few years ago. I’m still a little bitter about that I am told.)

My only regret about my session is that special situations outside of work made me too busy to connect with Virtually Connecting to bring them into my session again. I did that last year and it was a blast. Keegan was a part of that last year and his blog post backs up how good of an idea it was to bring them into my session. Of course, it was thanks to Harriet, Rebecca HogueAutumm Caines, Whitney Kilgore, Maha Bali (I even practiced pronouncing her name correctly over and over again and then was too busy or sick to be in VC), and others with VC that made it so successful last year. Hopefully next time!

Here were some highlights from the session that will apply to future posts I am sure. Sorry that I didn’t capture names well enough to give credit to these ideas – if you said one of these let me know and I will update the post!

  • Competencies. My goal was to talk about how to convert objectives to competencies, because that is what I usually have to do with the instructors I am used to working with. The attendees at my session were coming up with great competencies already. What did they need me for? They even brought up several topics that were difficult to have in both competency and objective formats. They weren’t giving me a free pass, that was for sure. The best kind of questions are the hard ones that expose problems with your ideas.
  • Open Rubrics. While discussing the need to have less detailed rubrics, one attendee pointed out that learners could even create their own rubric. In other words, it would be a rubric with the conditions and criteria blank, for the learner to create in a way that allows them to prove they have learned the content or mastered the skill or whatever it may be. This was an idea brought up last year, but in a more general form of allowing learners to grade themselves. This is a more concrete idea that would lend itself more to situations where grades are required.
  • Gamification. Some one mentioned that in many ways, self-mapping is like creating a game out of one’s learning journey. In the Game Station at the Innovation Lab I was re-introduced to Twine. Twine is “an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories.” Teacher could look at creating their neutral zone and pathways options in Twine. Learners could use Twine in place of something like Storify possibly. I need to get in and play with the tool some, but I like the idea of looking at a self-mapped pathway as a game.
  • Real Heutagogy. Someone actually came to the session because he knew the term “heutagogy.” This is good, but also scary. Would my idea live up to scrutiny by someone that actually knows a lot about heutagogy? Apparently, it did. He liked it. That is a good sign.
  • Visualizing Pathways. There was a lot of interest in visualizing the pathways that learners take. My mock-up of what that could look like sparked that. We need to find ways to create visual representations of this, because I think it could actually help instructors gain insight into what is happening in their courses. Are there certain points where all learners come back to the instructivist option? Or maybe flee it to the connectivist option? Would those be places where the instructor is exerting too much control? If the learner could see those patterns, would that tell them something they maybe have missed? Is there something happening out in the less structured pathway they are missing? Learner self-analytics: it could be a thing.

There is probably more that I am missing, but this is getting long. As others have said, the conversations and connections were the real gold of this conference. If I get to go again in the future (you never know where the budget in the State of Texas will be at that point), my focus will definitely be on the Innovation Lab and the interaction times. And, of course, the OLCInnovateSnark Twitter Tag as well :)

Creating a Self-Mapped Learning Pathway

One of the questions I get about learning pathways (on the rare occasion someone actually reads this blog and ask a question) is “when we give learners the option to chose between instructor-centered options and learner-centered options, how do they record what they are doing?” Sure, learners could blog about what they do, but that often ends up being a narrative about the pathway they create rather than an actual visual representation of the pathway itself. A blog post is great in many ways, but I think people are often wonder if there is something different.

Currently, there is no tool that does what I would like one to do to cover everything in the process:

  1. Create a map of the learning pathway that one plans to take
  2. Collects artifacts as one follows (and adjusts) that pathway
  3. Adds a layer of reflection on the learning process that explains why choices were made and artifacts were created.

Blog tools can do this, but you have to scroll through multiple posts to see all of these elements, or set out a lot of ground rules on how to make one blog post to contain all of this. Again, those blog posts can be useful in many ways, but also still not completely cover the process in the best way possible.

At this point, there is really nothing that could do this “the best way possible.” However, if it were me, I would use a combination of a blog, Storify, and Hypothes.is to create the three steps above. Here is how I would accomplish that. I will use a hypothetical example to illustrate.

[Note: Storify was shut down after this post was published, and the main replacement for it – Wakelet – does not work with Hypothes.is annotations. This is stored here as a record of and idea with exports from Storify stored on my own server]

First, I would create a blog post that basically lists out the learning map I plan to follow. For example, let’s say that I am in a class on Artificial Intelligence and my task is to map out my learning pathway for the first unit. I would create a blog post that lists out thew steps I plan on taking, for example:

  1. Read chapter one from the textbook
  2. Read the Wikipedia article on Artificial Intelligence to learn about recent developments.
  3. Check Google News on AI for recent news stories.
  4. Read this blog post I found on AI and comment
  5. Tweet my thoughts on AI
  6. Join the #AIChat on Twitter
  7. Create my own video on AI to satisfy the Module 1 competency on AI

Alternatively, this list could also be placed at the top of a Storify about this module, followed by the next step. Or the link to the Storify could be placed in this blog post after this list. My link above has random links I found through Google, but those could also be more specific links if this were a real class :)

For those that are interested, here is what the example list above looked like in Storify (you can see later that it ended up looking different in the end):

In an ideal world where a pathways tool exists to do this for me, a Storify-like tool would exist that allows instructors to pre-populate a blank map with instructor suggested content, assignment bank options, scaffolding tools (for those not used to self-directed learning), and some generic social networking/connectivist options off to the side for learners to drag and drop into an interactive map with clickable links to whatever is needed.

Next, after the map is created, I would use Storify to create evidence of the pathway as I follow it. Technically, you could also use a blog to do this. I like Spotify because it makes searching social networks easy, and the drag and drop interface makes it easy to arrange things as you like. Of course, you can do that with cut and paste on a blog post, but I still prefer the way Storify pulls it together. Not to mention how you can embed or export your creations. You may like something different – that is great. Whatever works for you is great.

You can look at the mock-up of my learning pathway from Storify, or see the embedded version below:

Back to the ideal world, if the pathways tool existed, it would have something that looks a lot like Storify as a layer on top of map that existed. People looking at the tool could easily switch between the two to see the map the way that it was planned and then the pathway as it played out in real life. Or maybe the two would exist on the same page, with UX design elements that indicate what artifacts match with which map item, where map items were dropped, where map items were changed, where new ideas were added, etc.

Finally, I would reflect on the pathway process and why I made the choices that I did: Why did I choose this option? Why did I choose to create these artifacts for those options? Why did I add this option? Why did I abandon this thing that I mapped? And so on.

This again could be a blog post as well, or an addition to an existing map post. However, I would prefer to be able to give short explanations of specific choices, ideally where the reader could see exactly what I was talking about. Something like Hypothes.is annotating my Storify artifact pathway. The great thing about Hypothes.is is that I can explain specific parts of my pathway while pointing at that pathway, and it is a social system that would allow others to comment/reflect on my work as well.

If you have Hypothes.is installed, you can see the example annotations I made on my example Storify above by going to the page. If you don’t have Hypothes.is installed, you can try this page to see if the annotations appear there for you (click on the yellow highlighted text).

Annotation would also be a built in part of the pathways tool in the ideal world that I envision. Instead of installing a separate tool like Hypothes.is, learners could just click on any part of their pathway and add a comment like they would in Microsoft Word.

All of this is just one example of what I would do if I was a learner in a self-mapped learning pathway (aka dual-layer or customizable modalities) course. I actually had a lot of fun creating the examples, so I hope to use these ideas myself sometime soon. Most of what I have blogged about in the past on this topic was focused on the design and theory of these courses, but all of that needs to fade into the background to decrease design presence in a course with this degree of learner choice. The focus of what learners need to see is something like this that focuses on how they self-map their own learning pathway. Hopefully I will explore all of this in my OLC Innovate session next week.

Disruption is No Longer Innovative

How can you tell if an innovator is pulling your leg? Their lips are moving. Or their fingers are typing. I write that knowing fully well that it says a lot about my current title of “learning innovation coordinator.” To come clean about that title: we were allowed to choose them to some degree. I chose that one for pure political reasons. I knew that if I wanted to help bring some different ideas to my university (like Domain of One’s Own, Learning Pathways, Wearables, etc), I would need a title beyond something like “instructional technologist” to open doors.

But beyond a few discussions that I have on campus, you will rarely hear my talking about “innovation,” and I reject the title of “innovator” for almost anyone. Really, if you think any technology or idea or group is innovative, put that technology or idea into Google followed by “Audrey Watters” and get ready for the Ed-Tech history lesson the “innovators” tend to forget to tell you about.

In a broad sense, many would say that the concept of “innovation” involves some kind of idea or design or tool or whatever that is new (or at least previously very very “popular”). Within that framework of innovation, disruption is no longer “innovative.” Disruption is really a pretty old idea that gained popularity after the mp3 supposedly “disrupted” the music business and/or the digital camera disrupted the camera industry.

Of course, that is not what happened – mp3s and digital cameras just wrenched some power out of the hands of the gatekeepers of those industries, who then responded by creating the “disruption narrative” (which is what most are referring to when they just say “disruption”). And then proceeded to use that narrative to gain more control over their industry than before (for example, streaming music services). Keep this in mind any time you read someone talking about “disruption” in education. Who is saying it, what do they want it to do, and how much more control do they get over the educational process because of their disruption narrative?

Of course, there is debate over whether disruption is real or not. Both sides have good points. Regardless of if you believe that disruption is real or not, our current disruption narrative has been around for over two decades now… probably long past the expiration date that gets slapped on any “innovative” idea. If you are still talking disruption, you are not an innovator.

If you want to convince me that you are an innovator, I don’t want to know what cool ideas or toys you have. I want to know who you read and follow. Are you familiar with Audrey Watters? Have you read Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? Are you familiar with Adeline Koh’s work on Frantz Fanon? Do you follow Maha Bali on Twitter? If I mention Rafranz Davis and #EdtechBlackout, do I get a blank stare back from you?

If you were to chart the people that influence your thinking – and it ends up being primarily white males… I am not sure how much of an innovator you really are. Education often operates as a “one-size-fits-all” box (or at best, a “one-set-of-ideas-fits-all” box), and that box has mostly been designed by white males. Usually a small set of white males that think all people learn best like they do. How can your idea or technology be that “new” if it is influenced by the same people that influenced all of the previous ones?

So what has this “one-set-of-ideas-fits-all” box created for education? Think tanks and university initiatives that sit around “innovating” things like massive curriculum rethinking, “new” pedagogical approaches, and “creative new applications of a range of pedagogical and social technologies.” They try to come up with the solutions for the learners. Many of these are probably some great ideas – but nothing new.

Why not find ways to let the learners set their own curriculum, follow their own pedagogical approaches, or create their own ways of applying technology? Instead of walling ourselves up in instructional design teams, why not talk to the learners themselves and find out what hinders their heutagogical development? Why not look to learners as the instructors, and let them into the design process? Or dump the process and let learners be the designers?

What I am getting at is helping learners create and follow their own learning pathway. Each one will be different, so we need massive epistemological and organizational shifts to empower this diversity. Why not make “diversity” the new “innovative” in education? Diversity could be the future of educational innovation, if it could serve as a way to humanize the learning process. This shift would need people that are already interacting with a diverse range of educators and students to understand how to make that happen.

I would even go as far to say that it is time to enter the “post-innovation” era of Ed-Tech, where any tool or idea is framed based on whether it supports a disruption mindset or a diversity mindset. What does that mean about emerging ideas like big data or wearables? Post-innovation would not be about the tool or the system around it, but the underlying narrative. Does this “thing” support disruption or diversity? Does it keep power with the gatekeepers that already have it, or empower learners to explore what it means for them to be their one unique “human” self in the digital age?

For example, if “big data” is just used to dissect retention rates, and then to find ways to trick students into not dropping out… that is a “disruption” mindset. “We are losing learners/control, so let’s find a way to upend the system to get those learners back!” A diversity mindset looks at how the data can help each individual learner become their own unique, self-determined learner, in their particular sociocultural context: “Based on the this data that you gave us permission to collect, we compared it anonymously to other learners and they were often helped by these suggestions. Do any of these look interesting to you?” Even of the learner looks at these options and rejects all of them, the process of thinking through those options will still help them learn more about their unique learning needs and desires. It will help them celebrate their unique, diverse human self instead of becoming another percentage point in a system designed to trick them into producing better looking numbers for the powers that be.

edugeek-journal-avatarThis is also a foundational guiding aspect of the dual-layer/learning pathways idea we are working on at the LINK Lab. It is hard to come up with a good name for it, as we are not really looking at it as a “model” but something that turns the idea of a “model” or “system” inside out, placing each individual learner in the role of creating their own model/pathway/system/etc. In other words, a rejection of “disruption” in favor of “diversity.” We want to embrace how diversity has been and always will be the true essence of what innovation should have been: each learner defining innovation for themselves.

Personalized Learning Versus Dungeons and Dragons

Personalized learning is popular right now. But is that a good or bad thing? I can buy all kinds of personalized gadgets online, but do I really like or need any of them? If you decided to get me a custom dinner place mat that says “Matt’s Grub” – sure that is personalized. But its also a pretty useless personalized item that I have no interest in.

Many prominent personalized learning programs/tools are a modern educational version of the Choose Your Own Adventure book series from the 1908s. As I have written before, these books provided a promise of a personalized adventure for the reader, which was entertaining for a while. But you were really just choosing from a series of 50 pre-written paths, hoping to pick one of the ones that led to a happy ending. Of course, If you happened to have any physical characteristics that were different than the ones written into the story (I remember a classmate that had shaved his head making fun of one page that had the main character doing something with his hair – yes they were sometimes gendered stories even), then the “your” in “Choose Your Own Adventure” fell flat.

ChooseYourOwnAdventure

These eventually evolved into more complex books like the Lone Wolf gamebooks that had you doing your own battles, collecting objects, and other activities that were closer to role playing games.

LoneWolf

But let’s face it – the true “Choose Your Own Adventure” scenarios in the 1980s were really role playing games. And few were as personalizable as Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, whether you love or hate D&D, or even still think it is Satanic… please hear me out. D&D, at least in the 80s, was personalizable because it was provide different pathways that were scaffolded. New players could start out with the Basic D&D boxset – which came with game rules, pre-designed characters, basic adventures to go on, etc. And that wasn’t even really the starting point. If basic D&D was too unstructured for you, there were books like the Dragonlance Chronicles or the Shannara series that would give you this completely guided tour of what D&D could look like. Oh, and even a Saturday morning cartoon series if the books were too much for you.

But back to D&D, once you mastered the Basic set, there were more sets (Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal) – all of which gave you more power and control. Then, when you were ready (or if you found Basic D&D too pre-determined), there was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. This was a set of books that laid out some basic ideas to create your own characters and worlds and adventures. And you were free to change, modify, add to, or completely re-invent those basics. Many people did, and shared their modifications in national magazines like Dragon Magazine. Oh, and what if you want to make your own world but are still unsure? You had a whole range of pre-designed adventures called Dungeon Modules. Just buy one, play, and get inspired to create your own. Or, maybe the opposite is true: you were just tired of your creation and wanted to take a break in someone else’s world.

add

To me, Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s was a much better metaphor for what personalized learning should look like. You had completely mindless escapism entertainment (aka lectures) when you needed it, like the books and cartoons. You had the structured environment of Basic D&D to guide you through the basics (aka instructivism). You had a series of games and accessories like Dungeon Modules and Companion Sets to guide you (aka scaffold you) to the advanced stage. You had the Advanced books that set a basic structure for creating your own world (aka the Internet). Then you had a network of people sharing ideas and designs to keep new ideas flowing (aka connectivism). Many gamers would go back and forth between these various parts – creating their own world, sharing their ideas in the magazines, playing dungeon modules on occasion, reading the books, and dipping back to basic D&D when the mood hit them.

This scene from The Big Bang Theory shows how players can customize, adapt, and personalized the game experience, even as they play:

edugeek-journal-avatarOf course, there were problems with the gaming community. It was expensive, and often sexist and/or racist. So I am not painting the Dungeon and Dragons world of the 1980s as some perfect utopia. I am looking at the design of the tools and system here. It is one that in some fashion pre-ceded and informed what we are doing with pathways learning, and one that I think is closer to true “personalization” than what some personalized learning situations offer.

Evolution of the Dual-Layer/Customizable Pathways Design

For the past few weeks, I have been considering what recent research has to say about the evolution of the dual-layer aka customizable pathways design. A lot of this research is, unfortunately, still locked up in my dissertation, so time to get to publishing. But until then, here is kind of the run down of where it has been and where it is going.

The original idea was called “dual-layer” because the desire was to create two learning possibilities within a course: one that is a structured possibility based on the content and activities that the instructor thinks are a good way to learn the topic, the other an unstructured possibility designed so that learners can created their own learning experience as they see fit. I am saying “possibility” where I used to say “modality.” Modality really serves as the best description of these possibilities, since modality means “a particular mode in which something exists or is experienced or expressed.” The basic idea is to provide an instructivist modality and a connectivist modality. But modality seems to come across as too stuffy, so I am still looking for a cooler term to use there.

The main consideration for these possibilities is that they should be designed as part of the same course in a way that learners can switch back and forth between them as needed. Many ask: ‘why not just design two courses?” You don’t want two courses as that could impeded changing modalities, as well as create barriers to social interactions. The main picture that I have in my head to explain why this is so is a large botanical garden, like this:

01216 Scene at Fort Worth Botanic Gardens

There is a path there for those that want to follow it, but you are free to veer off and make your own path to see other things from different angles or contexts. But you don’t just design two gardens, one that is just a pathway and one that is just open fields. You design both in one space.

So in other words, you design a defined path (purple line below) and then connect with opportunities to allow learners to look at the topic from other contexts (gold area below):

pathways1-1

You have a defined modality (the path), and then open up ways for people to go off the path into other contexts. When allowed to mix the two, the learner would create their own customized pathway, something like this:

pathways1-2

The problem with the image above is that this really shouldn’t only be about going off the walkway in the garden to explore other contexts. Learners should be allowed to dig under the walkway, or fly above it. They should be able to dig deeper or pull back for a bird’s eye view as needed. So that would take the model into a three dimensional view like this:

pathways2

(please forgive my lack of 3-D modeling skills)

Learners can follow the instructors suggested content or go off in any direction they choose, and then change to the other modality at any moment. They can go deeper, into different contexts, deeper in different contexts, bigger picture, or bigger picture in different contexts.

The problem that we have uncovered in using this model in DALMOOC and HumanMOOC is that many learners don’t understand this design. However, many do understand and appreciate the choice… but there are some that don’t want to get bogged down in the design choices. Some that choose one modality don’t understand why the other modality needs to be in the course (while some that have chosen that “other” modality wonder the same thing in reverse). So really, all that I have been discussing so far probably needs to be relegated to an “instructional design” / “learning experience design” / “whatever you like to call it design” method. All of this talk of pathways and possibilities and modalities needs to be relegated to the design process. There are ways to tie this idea together into a cohesive learning experience through goal posts, competencies, open-ended rubrics, assignment banks, and scaffolding. Of course, scaffolding may be a third modality that sits between the other two; I’m not totality sure if it needs to be its own part or a tool in the background. Or both.

The goal of this “design method” would be to create a course that supports learners that want instructor guidance while also getting out of the way of those that want to go at it on their own. All while also recognizing that learners don’t always fall into those two neat categories. They may be different mixtures of both at any given moment, and they could change that mixture at any given point. The goal would be to design in a way that gives the learner what they need at any given point.

Of course, I think the learner needs to know that they have this choice to make. However, going too far into instructivism vs. connectivism or structured vs. unstructured can get some learners bogged down in educational theory that they don’t have time for. We need to work on a way to decrease the design presence so learners can focus on making the choices to map their learning pathway.

So the other piece to the evolution of this pathways idea is creating the tools that allow learners to map their pathway through the topic. What comes to mind is something like Storify, re-imagined as a educational mapping tool in place of an LMS. What I like about Storify is the simple interface, and the way you can pull up a whole range of content on the right side of the page to drag and drop into a flowing story on the left.

storify

I could image something like this for learners, but with a wide range of content and tools (both prescribed by the instructor, the learner, other learners, and from other places on the Internets) on the right side. Learners would drag and drop the various aspects they want into a “pathway” through the week’s topic on the left side. The parts that they pull together would contain links or interactive parts for them to start utilizing.

For example, the learner decides to look at the week’s content and drags the instructor’s introductory video into their pathway. Then they drag in a widget with a Wikipedia search box, because they want to look at bigger picture on the topic. Then they drag a Twitter hashtag to the pathway to remind themselves to tweet a specific question out to a related hashtag to see what others say. Then they drag a blog box over to create a blog post. Finally, they look in the assignment bank list and drag an assignment onto the end of the pathway that they think will best prove they understand the topic of the week.

The interesting thing about this possible “tool” is that after creating the map, the learner could then create a graph full of artifacts of what they did to complete the map. Say they get into an interesting Twitter conversation. All of those tweets could be pulled into the graph to show what happened. Then, let’s say their Wikipedia search led them to read some interesting blog posts by experts in the field. They could add those links to the graph, as well as point out the comments they made. Then, they may have decided to go back and watch the second video that the instructor created for the topic. They could add that to the graph. Then they could add a link to the blog post they created. Finally, they could link to the assignment bank activity that they modified to fit their needs. Maybe it was a group video they created, or whatever activity they decided on.

In the end, the graph that they create itself could serve as their final artifact to show what they have learned during the course. Instead of a single “gotcha!” test or paper at the end, learners would have a graph that shows their process of learning. And a great addition to their portfolios as well.

Ultimately, These maps and graphs would need to be something that reside on each learners personal domain, connecting with the school domain as needed to collect map elements.

When education is framed like this, with the learner on top and the system underneath providing support, I also see an interesting context for learning analytics. Just think of what it could look like if, for instance, instead of tricking struggling learners into doing things to stay on “track” (as defined by administrators), learning analytics could provide helpful suggestions for learners (“When other people had problems with _____ like you are, they tried these three options. Interested in any of them?”).

edugeek-journal-avatarOf course, I realized that I am talking about upending an entire system built on “final grades” by instead focusing on “showcasing a learning process.” Can’t say this change will ever occur, but for now this serves as a brief summary of where the idea of customizable pathways has been, where it is now (at least in my head, others probably have different ideas that are pretty interesting as well), and where I would like for it to go (even if only in my dreams).

Reclaim the Front Page of Your Learning Experience for #IndieEdTech

One of the most contested areas in online learning is what I sometimes call the “front page” – usually the user interface or splash page or whatever main area learners first see when they start a course/learning experience/etc (usually also the main area they have to come back to every time). Schools want to control the “front page” learners see first in their class (usually always the learning management system they paid big money for). Ed-Tech companies want to control the “front page” learners see when they use their product. Other non-educational websites that get used in education like Twitter or Facebook want to control the “front page” of what users see. Of course, the average learner uses many of these services and has to navigate through many tools that are trying to control what you see while they learn, to control the “front page” of their learning experience.

The “front page” is how companies gather data for analytics so they can monetize users. Think back to the major changes between MySpace and Facebook. As horrible as MySpace could look at times, users could insert CSS and control all manner of aspects of their front page. That control was a good thing, despite the eye sores it created from time to time. How can a company monetize a MySpace user page when users can completely remove portions of the page? How can a company monetize interactions when users rarely have to leave their “space” to interact with others? The changes between MySpace and Twitter/Facebook resolve a lot of those issues, and hence created the battle for the “front page” of users’ internet experience.

This may not seem to be a big deal to many, but as we have been researching learner agency by giving learners modality choice in a customizable modality pathway design (aka “dual-layer”), the “front page” becomes a very, very important space that existentially affects learner choice in major ways. The tool that learners begins a learning experience in becomes the place they are comfortable with, and they resist venturing past the “front page” of that tool. You might have run into this problem with, say, introducing Twitter into a course taught in Blackboard. Many learners start to complain that the Bb forums would work just fine. There is a stickiness to the front page that keeps learners in there and away from other tools.

Shouldn’t the learner be in control of this “front page?” Shouldn’t this “front page” display their map of what they want to learn? Shouldn’t the tools and content and things they want to learn with/from support this map, linking from the learners “front page” rather than competing with it?

This is pretty much the big problem we run into with the customizable modality pathway design. The “front page” control battle segments the learning process, pulls learners away, makes them comfortable with giving up control of that space, and enforces the status quo of instructor-controlled learning. Up to this point, we have been working on design and structure – all of which is, for better or worse, coalescing into a design theory/method of some kind. However, the technology is simply in the way most of the time, mainly because very few tools actually work to give the learner control. They mostly all attempt to put their tool in control, and by extension, the person (instructor and school admins) behind the tool in control as well.

edugeek-journal-avatarIn many ways, I think this issue connects to the Indie Ed-Tech movement. I’ll be blogging more about that over the next few weeks/months. I’ll need to cover how the technology that allows learners to reclaim the “front page” of their learning experience could look – turning the idea of a “Neutral Zone” into a learning map that learners build (and then connect artifacts to create a “portfolio” map of what they did). This will allow learners to mix and match what tools, services, course, etc they learn from, leading to alternative ways to prove/certify that they have specific knowledge and skills, fueled by owning their own domain, APIs, cool stuff, etc. Of course, since any work in Indie Ed-Tech needs a music reference, I will be taking up Adam Croom’s challenge for someone to write about grunge rock (not my favorite style of music – Audrey Watters already used that one – but a good genre to represent the angle I am going for). So, yes, I have a good dozen blog posts in mind already, so time to get cracking.

(image credit: “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” by Nina Vital)

Will The “Best” Best Practice Please Step Forward?

Whenever educational discussions turn towards student agency, learner-centered learning, and other less-utilized (non-instructivist) strategies, several common questions/concerns are raised about going this route. One of the more important ones is how do we put learners in control when there are so many learning mediums? How do we pick which one is best?

This is a great question. We should always strive towards what is best for our learners. The problem with this question comes not really with the question but the context that one or a few mediums are “best” and that we as educators can pick correctly for all learners at all times.

“Best practices” is a term commonly used in this context, and a problematic concept for many reasons. One of the bigger problems being that “best” is not really an objective line in the sand. What is “best” is constantly changing based on context, goals, preferences, and many other factors.

For example, different learning modalities each have their own set of best practices. Do you want a stereotypical instructor-focused course with lectures and quizzes? There are many ways to do that correctly, and many ways to do that incorrectly. Very incorrectly..

Do you want problem-based learning? Our field knows a lot on how to do that correctly, and a lot on how to do that incorrectly. There is also a lot we don’t know. And all of that changes drastically if you want, say, a well-defined contextually specific problem versus an ill-structured problem.

Other modalities (connectivist, cognitivst, social, independent, etc) have their own set of best practices, and each set of best practices changes within each modality depending on what flavor of that modality you are choosing. And even then there are still so many best practices that it really dilutes the term “best practice” down to “do the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff and be cautious with all of the stuff that we aren’t sure where it fits.”

Of course, sometimes when we say “best”, we are referring to choosing the “best” overall modality for a course, or even better, a given module inside a course. Anyone that has taught will know that once you choose a modality, half your learners will like it, and the other half will complain: “Why do we have to do group work? Why can’t you just tell us what to do?” “Why do we have to listen to you tell us what to do? Why can’t we just go do it on our own?” “Why can’t I have a group to help me?” and so on (even if you don’t hear them, you know they are happening in your learners’ heads.)

The truth is that different learners need different modalities for different topics at different times, some times even changing from one day to the next based on a whole range of internal and external reasons.

This means that the best device for choosing the best modality for any given learner at any given time is the learner themselves.

This whole post was inspired by a few tweets today that I think sum up nicely what I am really getting at:

The general idea is that our education needs to shift towards teaching learners how to learn, how to adapt, how to choose their own modality as they learn. We need to focus more on how to be learners and not just what facts and skills to learn. You, teach a person to fish and all that. This is the basis of heutagogy – the process of learning how to learn, how to adapt, how to self-regulate towards self-determined learning.

In other words, how do we get back to putting the human at the center of the educational process instead of our favorite tools and modalities?

edugeek-journal-avatarOne practical way some are working on this idea is the custmozable modality pathway learning design (my term de jour for what we used to call dual-layer). Shameless plug warning! Last week I was able to successfully defend my dissertation on this idea (and there was much rejoicing!). So hopefully after a few months of revisions and edits I will soon be able to start publishing the results on how diverse and personalized learners’ pathways are once they are given the choice. The educational field in general so rarely gives much true learner choice or agency that the outcome of enabling that choice is pretty eye-opening.

Can the Students Speak for Themselves?

The answer is, yes, of course students can speak for themselves. The real question is will we listen to them, and even start including them in the conversation about their own educational experiences? This is not just a question for the established educational power systems that we typically associate with ignoring the student voice, but also for the educational reformers that seek to change those entrenched structures.

Recently I have been digging more into the work of the Indian-born philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Possibly one of her best known works is “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, an eye-opening critique of the post-colonial movement. For those that haven’t read Spivak, I would recommend Benjamin Graves one extended paragraph review of “Can the Subaltern Speak?” as a quick introduction.

The basic concern is that those who wish to help the subaltern (the economically dispossessed) gain their voice are still forcing them to adopt one voice for the entire group, ignoring the differences that exist within that group. In other words, the post-colonialists are becoming a different type of colonialist. This leads to two problems: “1) a logocentric assumption of cultural solidarity among a heterogeneous people, and 2) a dependence upon western intellectuals to “speak for” the subaltern condition rather than allowing them to speak for themselves.” Sound familiar?

What if you replace “subaltern” with “student”? How about replacing “cultural solidarity” with “connectivism”? What about the recent claims that scaffolding is colonialist in nature? Pretty much insert any modern educational reformer’s idea that there are absolute good and bad solutions for all learners: “if we can just convince all learners that connectivism is good and that scaffolding is oppressive, we can improve education!”

But what if we are forcing learners to take on epidemiological solidarity when the are actually a very heterogeneous group? What would they say about that if we listened to them when they speak for themselves?

We would find out that some learners want to follow the instructor. We would find out that some want to follow their own path. We would find out that many want both, just at the time of their own choosing. We would find that some love connectivism, while others find it inefficient and pointless. We would find that some hate scaffolding, while others think it is necessary. While scaffolding might be oppressive to some, it could be supporting or liberating to others. Or it could be both at different times to the same learner. Contexts shift. People change their minds.

These are not speculations. This is based on what learners have stated in the research for my dissertation. Learners are all over the map once you give them true choice, true personalization.

Which takes me to my problem with what many call personalized learning. Those of a certain age will remember the Choose Your Own Adventure book series. The basic idea of this book series was that the stories were not presented as a singular, linear path. Readers would read a few pages and then be presented with options. They would choose an option and turn to that corresponding page for that option, and so on until the adventure ended. Usually it ended poorly or kind of neutrally, but the goal was to keep trying until you arrived at one of the “good” endings. There were generally about 12-40 full story lines in each book to mix and match.

Most people that read these books developed a strategy of gaming the story lines, usually by bookmarking the last few choices with various fingers. If one choice led to death, just back up a step or two and try again.

The reality was that these were less “Choose Your OWN Adventure,” as much as “Choose One of 40 or so Pre-Determined Pathways to Entertain You With the Illusion of Choice.” This is also the premise of many (but not all) personalized learning systems. The programmers create a pre-determined set of options, and the learner has the illusion of “choice” and “personalization” as they choose various pre-programmed scenarios.

To me, true personalized learning would allow learners to speak for themselves, while not forcing them to follow one person’s view of the “correct” way to learn. True personalized learning would treat learners as an epistemologically heterogeneous group, giving them the ability to speak for their own personal epistemology.

Because the bigger problem is that when the experts come in and say “connectivism is good, scaffolding is bad, here are the ways you are going to connect with others”, they are really just creating a form of neo-instructvism that still forces learners to follow what the expert at the front says to do (even though it may be pre-prescribed connected learning).

These neo-instructivist connected learning activities are not theoretically – they currently exist in online courses. Learners are told to go to write their own blog and then comment on three other blogs in order to pass. Or compose a tweet and then respond to three other tweets. Or post a picture on Instagram and then comment on three other pictures on Instagram.

Sure, that is connected learning and research tells us that learners will retain more because they applied it while connecting to others. But where is the student voice in forcing them to all have a blog and then forcing them to comment and interact (or else don’t pass the course you took out a big loan for)?

Or what of the instructor that doesn’t provide any guidance and just dives into student-centered learning… whether the learners want it or not? Where is the student voice in that pre-determined student-centered design?

edugeek-journal-avatarSure, these instructors will win awards and be praise all over the Twitter-sphere for innovative, connectivist learning. For fighting instructivist colonialism. And so on. But what if these post-instructivist crusaders are causing the same damages to learning that the post-colonialist crusaders were causing that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak noted? What if we are mistaking a statistically significant research result for the lone “voice” of what works for all learners at all times?