Ed-Tech Retro-Futurism and Learning Engineering

I don’t know what I am allowed to say about this yet, but recently I was recorded on an awesome podcast by someone that I a big fan of their work. One of the questions he asked was what I meant on my website when I say “Ed-Tech Retro-Futurist.” It is basically a term I made up a few years ago (and then never checked to see if someone else already said it) in response to the work of people like Harriet Watkins and Audrey Watters that try to point out how too many people are ignoring the decades of work and research in the educational world. My thought was that I should just skip Ed-Tech Futurism and go straight to Retro-Futurism, pointing out all of the ideas and research from the past that everyone is ignoring in the rush to look current and cool in education.

(which is actually more of what real futurists do, but that is another long post…)

One of the “new” terms (or older terms getting new attention) that I struggle with is “learning engineering.” On one hand, when people want to carve out an expert niche inside of instructional design for a needed subset of specific skills, I am all for that. This is what many in the field of learning engineering are doing (even though having two words ending in “-ing” just sounds off :) ). But if you go back several decades to the coining of the term, this was the original goal: to label something that was a specific subset of the Ed-Tech world in a way that can help easily identify the work in that area. Instructional Technology, Learning Experience Design and other terms like that also fall under that category.

(And for those that just don’t like the idea of the term “engineering” attached to the word “learning” – I get it. I just don’t think that is a battle we can win.)

However, there seems to be a very prominent strain of learning engineer that are trying to make the case for “learning engineering” replacing “instructional design” / “learning experience design” / etc or becoming the next evolution of those existing fields. This is where I have a problem – why put a label that already had a specific meaning on to something else that also already had a specific meaning, just in the pursuit of creating something new? You end up with charts like this:

Which are great – but there have also been hundreds of blog posts, articles, and other writings over several decades with charts almost exactly like this that have attributed these same keywords and competencies to instructional design and instructional technologist and other terms like that. I have a really dated Master’s Degree portfolio online that covers most of these except for Data Scientist. Data Science was a few years from really catching on in education, but when it did – I went and got a lot of training in it as an instructional designer.

There are also quotes like this that are also frequently used for instructional designers as well:

https://twitter.com/jaymesmyers2/status/1130836367230029824

And also tongue-in-cheek lists exactly like this for IDs:

(except for #4 – no instructional designer would say that even jokingly because we know what the data can and can’t do, and therefore how impossible that would be :) )

One of the signs that your field/area might be rushing too fast to make something happen is when people fail to think critically about what they share before they share it. An example of this would be something like this:

Did the person that created this think about the significance of comparing a fully-skilled Learning Engineer to “white” and a totally unskilled Learning Engineer to “black”? We really need a Clippy for PowerPoint slides that asks “You put the words ‘Black’ and ‘White’ on a slide. Have you checked to make sure you aren’t making any problematic comparisons from a racial standpoint?”

But there are those that are asking harder questions as well, so I don’t want to misrepresent the conversation:

There are also learning engineers that get the instructional design connection as well (see the Ellen Wagner quote on the right):

Although as an instructional designer, I would point out we aren’t just enacting these – we were trained and given degrees in these areas. The systems we work for currently might not formerly recognize this, but we do in our field and degree programs. Of course, instructional designers also have to add classroom management skills, training others how to design, convincing reluctant faculty, mindfulness, educational psychology, critical pedagogy, social justice, felt needs, effects of sociocultural issues such as food insecurity, and many other fields not listed in the blue above to all of those listed as well. Some might say “but those are part of human development theory and theories of human development and systems thinking.” Not really. They overlap, but they are also separate areas that also have to be taken into account.

(Of course, there is also the even larger field of Learning Science that encompasses all of this and more. You could also write a post like this about how instructional designers mistakenly think they are the same as learning scientists as well. Or how Learning Science tried to claim it started in 1990s when it really has a longer history. And so on.)

I guess the main problem I have is that instructional design came along first, and went into all of these areas first, and still few seem to recognize this. To imply that instructional design is a field that may also enact what learning engineers already have could possibly be taken as reversing what actually happened historically. I am still not clear if some learning engineers are claiming to have proceeded ID, to be currently superseding ID, or to have been the first to do what they do in the Ed-Tech world before ID. If any of those three, then there are problems – and thus the need for Ed-Tech Retro-Futurism.

So You Want to Go Online: OPMs vs In-House Development

As the Great OPM Controversy continues to rage, a lot is being said about developing online courses “in-house” (by hiring people to do the work rather than paying a company to do so). This is actually an area that I have a lot of experience in at various levels, so I wanted to address the pros and cons of developing in-house capacity for offering online programs. I have been out of the the direct instructional design business for a few years, so I will be a bit rusty here and there. Please feel free to comment if I miss anything or leave out something important. However, I still want to take a rough stab at a ballpark list of what needs consideration. First, I want to start with three given points:

  1. Everything I say here is assuming high-quality online courses, not just PowerPoints and Lecture Capture plopped online. But on the other hand, this is also assuming there won’t be any extra expenses like learning games or chat-bots or other expensive toys… errr… tools.
  2. In most OPM models, universities and colleges still have to supply the teachers, so that cost won’t be dealt with here, either. But make sure you are accounting for teacher pay (hopefully full time teachers more than adjuncts, and not just adding extra courses to faculty with already over-full loads).
  3. All of these issues I discuss are within the mindset of “scaling” the programs eventually to some degree or another, but I will get to the problems with scale later.

So the first thing to address is infrastructure, and I know there are a wide range of capacities here. Most universities and colleges have IT staff and support staff for things like email and campus computers. If you have that, you can hopefully build off of that. If you don’t…. well, the OPM model might be the better route for you as you are so far behind that you have to catch up with society, not just online learning. But I know most places are not in this boat. Some even already have technology and support in place for online courses – so you can just skip this part and talk directly with those people about their ability to support another program.

You also have to think about the support of technology, usually the LMS and possibly other software. If you have this in place, check to make sure the existing tools have capacity to take on more (they usually have some). If you have an IT department – talk with them about what it would take to add an LMS and any other tools (like data analysis tools) you would like to add. If you are talking one online program, you probably don’t need even one full time position to support what you need initially. That means you can make this a win/win for IT by helping them get that extra position for the ____ they have been wanting for a while if they can also share that position with online learning technology support part-time.

This is, of course, for a self-hosted LMS. All of the LMS providers out there will offer to host for you, and even provide support. It does cost, but shop around and realize there are vendors that will give you good service for a good price. But there are also some that won’t deal with you at all if you are not bringing a large numbers of courses online initially, so be careful there.

Then there is support for students and teachers. Again, this is something you can bundle from most LMS providers, or contract individually from various companies. If you already have student and faculty tech support of some kind on campus, talk with them to see what it would take to support __ number of new students in __ number of new online courses. They will have to increase staff, but since they often train and employ student workers to answer the calls/emails, this is also a win/win for your campus to get more money to more students. Assuming your campus fairly treats and pays its student workers, of course. If not, make sure to fix that ASAP. But keep in mind that this can be done for the cost of hiring a few more workers to handle increased capacity and then paying to train everyone in support to take online learning calls.

Then there will be the cost of the technology itself. Typically, this is the LMS cost plus other tools and plug-ins you might want to add in (data analytics, plagiarism detection, etc). Personally, I would say to avoid most of those bells and whistles at the beginning. Some of them – like plagiarism detection – are surveillance minded and send the wrong message to learners. Hire some quality instructional designers (I’ll get to that in a minute) and you won’t even need to use these tools. Others like data analytics might be of use down the line, but you might also find some of the things they do underwhelming for the price. With the LMS itself, note that there are other options like Domain of One’s Own that can replace the LMS with a wider range of options for different teachers and students (and they work with single sign on as well). There are also free open-source LMS if you want to self host. Then there are less expensive and more expensive LMS providers. Some that will allow you to have a small contract for a small program with the option to scale, others that want a huge commitment up front. Look around and remember: if it sounds like you are being asked to pay too much, you probably are.

So a lot of what I have discussed is going to vary in cost dramatically, depending on your needs and current capacity. However, if you remain focused on just what you need, and maybe sharing part of certain salaries with other departments to get part of those people’s time, and are also smart about scaling (more on that later), you are still looking at a cost that is in the tens of thousands range for what I have touched on so far. If you hit the $100k point, you are either a) over-paying for something, b) way behind the curve on some aspect, or c) deciding to go for some bells and whistles (which is fine if you need them or have people at your institution that want them – they usually cost extra with OPMs as well).

The next cost that almost anyone that wants to go online will need to pay for no matter what you do is course development. Many people think they can just get the instructors to do this – but just remember that the course will only be as good as their ability/experience in delivering online courses. You may find a few instructors that are great at it, but most at your school probably won’t fall into that category. I don’t say that as a bad thing in this context per se – most instructors don’t get trained in online course design, and even if they do, it is often specific to their field and not the general instructional design field. You will need people to make the course, which is where OPMs usually come in – but also in-house instructional designers as well.

With an average of 6-8 months lead time with a productive instructor, a quality instructional designer can complete 2-3 three quality 15 week online courses per semester. I know this for a fact, because as an instructional designer I typically completed 9 or so courses per year. And some IDs would consider that “slow.” More intense courses that are less ready to transition to online could take longer. But you can also break out of the 15 week course mindset when going online as well – just food for thought. If you are starting up a 10 course online program, you would probably want three instructional designers, with varying specialties. Why three IDs if just one could handle all ten courses in two years easily? Because there is a lot more to consider.

Once you start one online program, other programs will most likely follow suit fairly quickly. It almost always happens that way. So go ahead and get a couple more programs in the pipeline to get going once the IDs are ready. But you also need to build up and maintain infrastructure once you get those classes going. How do you fix design problems in the course? When do you revise general non-emergency issues? What about when you change instructors? And who trains all of these instructors on their specific course design? What about random one-off courses that want to go online outside of a program? Who handles course quality and accreditation? And so on. Quality, experienced instructional designers can handle all of these and more, even while designing courses. Especially if you get one that is a learning engineer or that at least specializes in learning engineering, because these infrastructural questions are part of their specialty.

The salary and benefits range of an instructional designer is between 50K-100K a year depending on experience and the cost of living where you are located. These are also positions that can work remotely if you are open to that – but you will want at least one on campus so they can talk to your students for feedback on the courses they are designing. But remote work is something to keep in mind because you also have to consider the cost of finding an office and getting computers and equipment for each new person you want to hire (either as IDs or the other positions described). Also don’t forget about the cost of benefits like health care, which is pretty standard for full-time IDs.

Another aspect to keep in mind is accreditation – that will take time and people, but that will be the case even if you go with an OPM as well. You will need to pull in people from across the campus that have experience with this, of course – but you will also have to find people that can handle this aspect regardless of what model you choose. And it can be a dozy, just FYI.

Another aspect to consider is advertising. This is a factor that will always cost, unless you are focused solely on transitioning an existing on campus program into an online one (and not planning on adding the online option to the on-campus one). But even then, if you want it to scale – you will need to advertise. Universities aren’t always the best at this. If yours is, then skip ahead. If not, you will need to find someone that can advertise your new program. Typically, this is where OPMs tend to shine. But it is also getting harder and harder to find those that will just let you pay for advertising separate from the entire OPM package.

I can’t really say what you need to spend here – but I will say to be realistic. Cap your initial courses at manageable amounts – not just for your instructors, but also for your support staff. I can’t emphasize enough that it is better to start off small and then scale up rather than open the floodgates from the beginning. Every course that I have seen that opens up the first offerings to massive numbers of students from the beginning has also experienced massive learner trauma. Don’t let companies or colleges gloss over those as “bumps in the road.” Those were actual people that were actually hurt by being that bump that got rolled over. Hurt that could have been avoided if you started small and scaled up at a manageable pace.

So while we are here, let’s talk scale. Scale is messy, no matter how you do it. Even going from one on-campus course to two on-campus courses has traditionally led to problems. All colleges have wanted to increase enrollments as much as possible since the beginning of academia, so its not like OPMs were the first to talk or try scale. However, we need to be real with ourselves about scale and the issues it can cause.

First of all, not all programs can scale. Nursing programs scale immensely because the demand for nurses is still massive. Also, nurses work their tails off, so Nursing instructors often personally take care of many problems of scale that some business models cause. I’m still not sure if the OPMs involved in those programs have even realized that is true yet. But not all programs can scale like a Nursing program can. Not all fields have the demand like Nursing does. Not all fields have the people with the mindset like Nurses have (no offense hopefully, but many of you know its true and its okay – I’m not sure if Nurses ever sleep).

All that to say – if you are not in Nursing, don’t expect to scale like Nursing can. Its okay. Just be realistic about. Also, be honest about any problems that are happening. Glossing over problems will only cause more problems in no time. Always have your foot on the brake, ready to stop the scaling before issues spiral out of hand.

Remember: education is a human endeavor, and people don’t react well to being herded like cattle. I feel like I have only touched the surface and left out so much, but I am as tired of typing as you probably are of reading. Hopefully this is giving some food for thought for the people that have been wondering about in-house program development.

So why go in-house development rather than OPM? Well, I have been making the case for the cost-saving benefits plus capacity-building benefits as well. Recently I read about an OPM that wanted to charge $600,000 to build one 10 course program. All that I have outlined here plus stuff I left out would easily half of that for a high-quality program. And I am one of those people that usually advocates for how expensive online courses can be to do right. But even I am thinking “Whoa!’ at $600K.

Look, if you are wanting to build a program in a field like Nursing that can realistically scale, and you want to deal with thousands of students being pushed through a program (along with all the massive problems that will bring), then you are probably one of five schools in the nation that fit that description and OPMs are probably the best bet for you. For the other 3000-4000+ institutions in the nation, here are some other factors to consider:

  • Hiring people usually means some or all of those people will live in your community, thus supporting local economies better.
  • Local people means people on your campus that can interact with your students and get their input and perspective.
  • Having your people do things also typically means more opportunities to hire students as GTAs, GRAs, assistants, etc – giving them real world skills and money for college.
  • When your academics and your GRAs are part of something, they usually research it and publish on it. The impact on the global knowledge arena could be massive, especially if you publish with OER models.
  • Despite what some say, HigherEd is constantly evolving. Not as fast as some would like, but it is happening. When the next shift happens, you will have the people on staff already to pivot to that change. If not, that will be another expensive contract to sign with the next OPM.

The last point I can’t emphasize enough. When the MOOC craze took off, my current campus turned to some of its experienced IDs – myself and my colleague Justin – to put a large number of MOOCs online. Now that analytics and AI are becoming more of a thing in education (again), they are turning to us and other IDs and people with Ed-Tech backgrounds on campus as well. For people that went the OPM route, these would all be more (usually expensive) contracts to buy. For our campus, it means turning to the people they are already paying. I don’t know what else to say to you if that doesn’t speak for itself.

Also, keep in mind that those who are not in academia don’t always understand the unique things that happen there. Recently I saw a group of people on Twitter upset about a college senior that couldn’t graduate because the one course they needed wasn’t offered that semester. The responses to this scenario are those that many in academia are used to hearing: “bet there is a simple software fix for this!” “what a money making scam!” “if only they cared to treat the student like a customer, they wouldn’t make this happen!” The implication is that the problem was on the University’s side for not caring about course scheduling enough to make graduation possible. Most people in academia are rolling their eyes at this – it is literally impossible for schools to get programs accredited if they don’t prove that they have created a pathway for learners to graduate on time. It makes good business sense that not all courses can be offered every semester, just like many business do not sell all products year round (especially restaurants). Plus, most teachers will tell you it is better to have 10 students in a course once a year than 2-3 students every semester – more interaction, more energy, etc. But schools literally have to map out a pathway for these variable offerings to work in order to just get the okay for the courses in the first place. Those of us in academia know this, but it seems that, based on what I saw on Twitter recently, many in the OPM space do not know this. We also know that there is always that handful of students that ignore the course offering schedules posted online, the advice of their advisers, and the warnings of their instructors because they think they can get the world to bend to their desires. I remember in the 90s telling two classmates they wouldn’t graduate on time if they weren’t in a certain class with me. They scoffed, but it turns out they in fact did not graduate on time. So something to keep in mind – outside perspectives and criticism can be helpful, but they can also completely misunderstand where the problems actually lie.

And look, I get it – there will always be institutions that prefer to get a “program in a box” for one fee no matter how large it is. If that is you, then more power to you. There are a few things I would ask if you go the OPM route: first of all, please find a way to be honest and open about the pros and cons of working with your OPM. They may not like it, but a lot of the backlash that OPMs are currently facing comes from people just not buying the “everything is awesome” line so many are pushing. The education world needs to know your successes as well as your failures. Failure is not a bad thing if you grow from it. Second, please keep in mind that while the “in-house” option looks expensive and complicated, going the OPM route will also be expensive and complicated. They can’t choose your options for you, so all the meetings I discuss here will also happen within an OPM model, just with difference people at the table. So don’t get an inflated ego thinking you are saving time or money going that route. Building a company is much different from building a degree program, so don’t buy into the logic that they are saving you start-up funds. They had to pay for a lot of things as a for-profit company that HigherEd institutions never have to pay for.

Finally, though, I will point out how you can also still sign contracts with various vendors for various parts of your process while still developing in-house, like many institutions have for decades. This is not always an all-or-nothing, either/or situation (see the response from Matthew Rascoff here for a good perspective on that, as well as Jonathan D. Becker’s response at the same link as a good case for in-house development). There are many companies in the OPM space that offer quality a la carte type services for a good price, like iDesign and Instructional Connections. Like I have said on Twitter, I would call those OPS (Online Program Support) more than OPM. Its just that this term won’t catch on. I have also heard the term OPE for Online Program Enablers, which probably works better.

“Creating Online Learning Experiences” Book is Now Available as an OER

Well, big news in the EduGeek Journal world. I have been heading up a team of people to work on new book that was released as an OER through PressBooks today:

Creating Online Learning Experiences: A Brief Guide to Online Courses, from Small and Private to Massive and Open

Book Description: The goal of this book is to provide an updated look at many of the issues that comprise the online learning experience creation process. As online learning evolves, the lines and distinctions between the various classifications of courses has blurred and often vanished. Classic elements of instructional design remain relevant at the same time that newer concepts of learning experience are growing in importance. However, problematic issues new and old still have to be addressed. This book aims to be a handbook that explores as many of these issues and concepts as possible for new and experienced designers alike, whether creating traditional online courses, open learning experiences, or anything in between.

We have been working on this book on and off for three or more years now, so I am glad to finally get it out to the world. In addition to me, there were several great contributing writers: Brett Benham, Justin Dellinger, Amber Patterson, Peggy Semingson, Catherine Spann, Brittany Usman, and Harriet Watkins.

Also, on top of that, we recruited a great group of reviewers that dug through various parts and gave all kinds of helpful suggestions and edits: Maha Al-Freih, Maha Bali, Autumm Caines, Justin Dellinger, Chris Gilliard, Rebecca Heiser, Rebecca Hogue, Whitney Kilgore, Michelle Reed, Katerina Riviou, Sarah Saraj, George Siemens, Brittany Usman, and Harriet Watkins.

Still skeptical? How about an outline of topics, most of which we did try to filter through a critical lens to some degree:

  1. Overview of Online Courses
  2. Basic Philosophies
  3. Institutional Courses
  4. Production Timelines and Processes
  5. Effective Practices
  6. Creating Effective Course Activities
  7. Creating Effective Course Content
  8. Open Educational Resources
  9. Assessment and Grading Issues
  10. Creating Quality Videos
  11. Utilizing Social Learning in Online Courses
  12. Mindfulness in Online Courses
  13. Advanced Course Design
  14. Marketing of an Online Course

So, please download and read the book here if you like: Creating Online Learning Experiences

There is also a blog post from UTA libraries about the release: Libraries Launch Authoring Platform, Publish First OER

And if you don’t like something you read, or find something that is wrong, or think of something that should have been added – let me know! I would love to see an expanded second edition with more reviewers and contributing authors. There were so many more people I wanted to ask to contribute, but I just ran out of time. I intentionally avoided the “one author/one chapter” structure so that you can add as much or as little as you like.

Working With Resistant Faculty as an Instructional Designer

One of the questions I get most often from people new to instructional design is how to work with faculty that are resistant to making changes to their course ideas (or maybe even resistant to working with an instructional designer all together). To be honest, once you have gotten to the place of resistance, you can generally find all kinds of advice for dealing with disagreements that will work. There really isn’t anything special or different about your interactions with people that you don’t see eye to eye with even when you are an instructional designer.

However, I have found that there are ways to start off the working relationship in an instructional design context that can set a tone for collaboration or disagreement on down the line. There are a few things that I try to do with the first contact with faculty to get off on the right foot. So my biggest piece of advice is always to set up the relationship the right way from the beginning, and then you should have a smoother relationship with faculty to begin with (and if disagreements arise, a good foundation to work towards agreement).

The first thing I tell people to do is to get your view of the faculty members in the right context in your mind. Of course, this includes setting aside an pre-conceived notions you might have gained about them from other people – but it is more than that. I try to keep in mind what the work flow of the faculty actually looks like, especially how they are very busy. Not necessarily more or less busy than you are, but just on an entirely different context of busy. They are having to deal with hundreds of student emails, and then all kinds of research-related emails, and then all kinds of department-related issues, and so on. When you send them that initial contact email, you can probably guarantee that it will be filed away until there is a lull in their work flow – later that day, later that week, or even later that month. That filing system might be anything from a folder system in outlook to a paper notebook next to their computer (I have seen it all). But the key thing is that they are likely to put it aside without a whole lot of thought about it at first.

This is an important factor to remember. Some faculty might respond right away, but others will file and get back to you once the dozen or so urgent requests in front of them are taken care of. At this point, while you are waiting for a response, don’t make things more complex by having other people contacting them as well. Many instructional design groups will do this differently: the manager will contact the faculty to “introduce” the ID, then if there is no response from the faculty after a few days, the ID will then email again… possibly introducing more team members as they do so. By the time the faculty gets to that lull to respond, they have all these people contacting them and they have to figure out if they are all working on the same project, or different people working on similar projects. Then they have to figure out who specifically to reply to, who was just adding extra information to the discussion, and so on.

And right there is a place where you can start to get off on the wrong foot with faculty. Instead of responding to one person, they have to take extra time to read through these emails from different people to figure out what is going on. Again, some will be fine with that, but others will feel that you and your department are “piling it on” to try and pressure them to respond faster.

So, for the sake of focus, make sure to only have one person contacting the faculty member or members until they respond. If you need to send multiple emails to follow up and nudge the faculty, respond to your last message so those that use threaded email system will just end up with one email thread rather than several. Since the goal of having the first meeting is usually to set up a first meeting, you can make sure that the other people they need to meet are at the first meeting.  And if at all possible, wait to bring those people into the conversation at the first meeting. If you really have to bring them in earlier, then at least wait until after the faculty has first responded to the initial emails.

Quite often, a manager or other person like to make the first email to connect the ID and faculty, and then step out of the picture. If you can avoid that, I would. If the faculty doesn’t respond right away, then the manager will have to nudge. If the ID nudges, it introduces that complexity that I have found best to avoid at this stage. So if you are a manager, get used to letting your people do the initial contact. If you are an ID, get used to doing the initial contact. It just saves time and avoid miscommunication down the line.

Remember: that first response from faculty is usually the signal that they have the open head space to deal with course design – or that they are at least ready to free up some head space for the design. So feel free to nudge them if needed, but don’t add anything else to that nudge beyond your initial “let’s meet” message.

Also, I should mention this “let’s meet” message. Be careful how you phrase that request. So many people jump out of the gate with suggestions, like “we can meet once a month” or “once a week” or some other frequency based on what they think the course needs. And they are probably right about this suggestion. But remember that the faculty you are meeting with have already possibly thought about how many meetings they need with you as well. They may be flexible, but they also may have a specific need for meetings. If you come out right away and suggest a specific schedule, you may stress them out by not suggesting enough meetings compared to what they want, or maybe by suggesting more meetings than they thought they needed.

Of course, you might get lucky and suggest the exact frequency they were thinking of, the heavens will open, collaboration glitter will float down, and every one rejoices.

But you might also set up a foundation of frustration if you get it wrong. My suggestion? I always like to say that I want to “discuss a method and frequency for consistent communication to keep the course design process moving forward” or something to that effect. When you say something like this, what ever method or frequency they were thinking of will fit into that description, and they will feel like you are there to help their course, not impose deadlines.

Which, of course, you usually are… but you don’t want to default to that position from the beginning.

However, make sure you don’t jump out first with “how about meeting twice a week” or some other specific suggestion. From this point on in interacting with faculty, always lead with questions intending to draw out what the faculty thinks. I have found that leading with questions is a good way to collaborate more than disagree. Don’t just say “well, what we need to instead….” But also, don’t beat around the bush, either. Just ask them directly: how often do you want to meet, and in what context?

Of course, there is a good chance they will suggest something that is more often or less often than you thought, or they will suggest face-to-face meetings when you thought email would work, and so on. When this happens, try to find out (by asking questions) why they want their suggested frequency instead of going into “correction” mode.

  • “That seems to be a high frequency of meetings, and you are pretty experienced in online course design. How are you feeling about working on this specific course?”
  • “Do you think you will be able to meet the deadlines for the course design? Would it maybe help to have more frequent check-ins with me to meet deadlines?”
  • “I know you are used to face-to-face meetings with our organization. How do you feel about email check-ins? We could possibly meet less frequently if you think it will work for you to email me questions as needed.”

A quick note: multiple meetings per week is probably going to send the wrong message to faculty. They usually have multiple meetings only with students that are struggling the most in their class, or with colleagues that can’t stay on track when working on research projects. There is kind of this stigma against being asked to meet multiple times per week in many academic circles. Don’t be against that if they are the ones that say they need it, but don’t be the one to suggest it first. Not all faculty think this way, but I have learned the hard way to not be the one to bring it up with the ones that do have a preconceived notion about it.

So, really, from this point out, I would say if you stick to asking questions first rather than jumping into correction mode, and then follow other methods and guidelines for dealing with workplace conflict or disagreements, you will know how to deal with most situations. By taking into account how you start off the working relationship with faculty, you are getting started on a better foundation for future interactions. There is a lot more that I could cover, but this post is getting too long. If you have any suggestions for dealing with resistant faculty, let me know in the comments – there is still a lot I can learn in this area as well!

Decreasing Design Presence

With the Humanizing Online Learning MOOC in full swing, I wanted to dig more into a topic that I tend to allude to at conference presentations. While educators often talk (rightly so) about increasing teaching, social, and cognitive presence, there is also one form of presence that needs to be decreased when designing and teaching courses: design presence.

I’m using “design presence” here to cover a wide range of user interface, instructional design, and learning theory issues. In my mind, there are at least three areas that are heavy on design presence, and therefore design presence needs to be decreased in these areas:

  1. Technological Design Presence: tool/technology interfaces and instructions
  2. Instructional Design Presence: tool and content instructional design decisions
  3. Epistemological Design Presence: underlying learning theory choices

While some might notice there is some overlap with these areas and teacher, social, and cognitive presence, I have found that there are still some differences. Working to decrease design presence also ends up helping to increase teaching, social, and cognitive presence in the long-run.

Technological Design Presence

This is an area where user interface and instructional design collide, and for many courses designers the options are pre-determined by institutional adoptions. However, where choices are allowed, utilizing tools that have the least complex user interface options is ideal. For example, if you really want to use a listserv, but the tool you have to use is complex to sign-up and use, why not use Twitter? The user interface on Twitter is very simple compared to some older mass email tools. If you have to have a really complex set of instructions to use a tool, why not consider using something with less instructions and stress on the learner?

Or if you have a listserv tool that is easier to use than Twitter, why not use that instead of Twitter?

Where there are several options within a tool (like an LMS), why not choose the least confusing, most ready-to-use tool? Newer features in larger LMS tool sets often have a steep learning curve. For example, the blog feature in Blackboard was very confusing when it was first released, and it really worked more as a re-arranged discussion board. If you have to stay within Blackboard, then stick with the tools that take the least amount of time to explain to learners.

Additionally, think about other issues that cause unnecessary technology confusion. Blackboard was infamous for allowing course designers to set-up boxes within boxes within boxes. Avoid using tools and content structures just because you can. Avoid using desktop tools that make no sense online (like “folders” inside of online content). Avoid using complex navigational structures just because you can.

Once learners have to click around a half dozen times just to get somewhere, or dig through complex tool instructions, or spend too much time figuring out what you want them to do, they are running into too much technological design presence. Decrease what you can where you can.

Instructional Design Presence

This next facet has many connections to the first one, so there will probably be some overlap. Many times, course designers will make tool and content design decisions that are unnecessarily complex. For example, complex grading schemes that require dense explanations and calculators to figure out. Why go there? Obviously, there is merit to the idea that grades are problematic altogether, but many instructors are stuck with them. So why make them so complex? Why not just base course grades on a 100 point scale (which most people understand already), and make each assignment a straight portion of that grade. Complex structures based on weighted grades and 556 point scales and what not are a burden for both the instructor and the learner.

Rubrics are also a part of this area. Complex rubrics with too many categories and specific point values are, again, a burden for learners and instructors. Compare the complexity of this rubric with this one. I realize some people like the first one because it has so much detail, but to be honest, it is something most readers aren’t going to read through, because just glancing at it could cause stress.

Or another issue might be design choices that add unnecessary complexity, like having students upload Word docs to discussion forums for class discussion. Why not just use blogs? That is basically what you are doing with Word Docs and discussion forums.

Course designers typically make many choices with tools and content in their courses. Do these choices increase the instructional design presence of those decisions? Or do they decrease the design presence and allow learners to focus on learning rather than figuring out your designs?

Epistemological Design Presence

This area is a bit more difficult to get at, as it probably affects overarching decisions that affect everything in your course. For instance, if you lean more towards instructivism that places yourself at the center of everything in a course, you will probably choose many tools and interfaces that support your instructivist leanings: lecture capture, content heavy videos, long reading assignments, multiple choice tests, etc.

Now, just to point out, I am not a person to bash instructivist lectures across the board no matter what. There are times when learners need a well executed lecture. However, in education, many instructors use lectures too much. They use lectures to fill time when learners should be doing something hands on and/or active. If you are using lectures on video (or textbook readings) when learners should be creating their own knowledge, or applying concepts hands-on, or collaborating in groups, you have increased the epistemological design presence of your preferred learning theory at the expense of what the learners really needed. Time to decrease that facet of design presence.

There are times when learners don’t need to socially connect or listen to lectures, but work on their own. There are times when they need to connect with others rather than work individually. Don’t stick with instructivism or social constructivism or connectivism or any other theory you love just because you like it best. Put the learner first.

But what about the times where learners are at different levels and need different theories? Or, when no one theory fits and it is really up to the learner? I say, give them the choice. Build in multiple pathways for learning in your course. Build in scaffolding for learners to change into different theories. But avoid the mistakes I have made in the past and make sure to decrease the design presence of those options and pathways as much as possible. Don’t focus on the difference between the pathways – just focus on the fact that learners can make the choices they need at any given moment and then show the choices.

Decreasing Design Presence

edugeek-journal-avatarIf you are a good course designer, you probably already know everything I have touched on here. There is nothing new or different about what I am outlining here – this is solid instructional design methodology taught in most instructional design courses or learned on the job. However, it is seldom examined from the angle of decreasing design presence, and since I am one of the “wayfinders” in a course on the Community of Inquiry framework that covers teaching, social, and cognitive presence, I thought it would be a good idea to have a place to point to every time I mention “decreasing design presence.”

(image credit: Human Presence by Manu Mohan)

Non-Linear Instructional Design

A great Twitter conversation recently got me thinking about non-linear instructional design. Now, of course, we often look at instructional design itself as a non-linear process, but that is not what I am referring to here. Most of the instruction we see in formal education is almost always designed as a linear road-map to be followed in exact order from beginning to end. And for some topics, this is great – I don’t want engineers skipping steps when designing solid bridges. But in many other topics, there aren’t really ultimate steps that have to be taught in a certain order as much as there is really just a preferred order that many in the field lean towards that becomes a default “sequence” for all learners. Which, unfortunately, leads to very little room for improvisation, flexibility, emergence, etc. A lot of this can be attributed to our formal education systems that often encourage behaviorism and pedagogy over connectivism and heutagogy. Too many times the education system looks at “planning” as a linear week by week script.

We often end up with two problems in this kind of system. One is that people come up with an outline that they stick with even if the course isn’t flowing that way. And when the course isn’t flowing well, instructors get bored or distracted and they put off planning specifics until the last minute. They tell learners that they are improvising, but learners can often tell the difference between lack of planning and planned improvisation.

The other problem is that instructors do plan well, but then think of something better at the last minute and change plans. Which usually ends up being a great lesson, but also means they wasted a lot of time on a plan that wasn’t used and might not ever get used.

However, designing a course in a non-linear manner can allow for courses to be well-planned as well as being emergent, flexible, and student-centered.

The first step is to actually make space in your course plan for flexibility, rabbit trails, new ideas, and extended time on more interesting ideas. What I mean by this is cut back on the number of weeks of content overall. If you have a 15 week course, only create 10 weeks of content. Just flat-out force space into the schedule and leave it there.

The second step is to stop looking at your topic in a linear fashion. Make a list of ten topics you want to cover, but don’t number the list. Intentionally shuffle that list. Think of it more as a jigsaw puzzle, with each piece being a topic / week. Once all of the pieces are together, then you have a full picture of the topic of your course.

The idea would be that you would sit down and talk with your class to socially negotiate an order to go through the topics. As a course, you could come up with the order that your learners want to go through. Or even more advanced – don’t even have a pre-defined list, but take time each week to figure out where to go next week.

Finally, you need to do the instructional design. I know that seems weird to say that right after I just said let the learner choose the topics, but you as the instructor still need to be prepared for what ever topic could be chosen next. You can still create something akin to an assignment bank that you choose from depending on what topic is being covered that week. In fact, you would probably need to design a large ranges of fairly open-ended activities that could fit in with a wide-range of topics within your field. Instead of a jigsaw puzzle, you are really looking at your class like a Lego project or play-dough sculpture that is being built by several people at once. You have several specific pieces (activities) that you add at certain moments when the learners choose to pull out certain other pieces (topic).

Another way to a look at this idea is like this. Most courses are already designed in pieces, but these pieces are part of a specific path that has one way in and one way out. They generally look like this:

Wooden-Train-Track-Amazon-Toy-Deals

One way in, one way out – linear in design. Which works well in many situations, but not in others. To accomplish non-linear instructional design, the pieces of the course have to take on different structures:

183381239

lego-feat1

edugeek-journal-avatarA play-dough design would be a more malleable design where the different pieces have the ability to shape into different directions and even blend with other pieces. The Lego design would be made of smaller more defined pieces that connect easily with other pieces to form changing designs and pathways as the learners define the path. There is really not a major distinction between the two – just different ways of looking at the design theory. If you look at the different assignments in the ds106 assignment bank, you can see hundreds of activities that are designed in either Lego or Play Dough fashion to connect with or plug in to any part of the ds106 course.

(header image credit: Dima V, obtained from freeimages.com)

Which Came First: The Learning Design or the Tool?

Back in the day when I taught 8th grade Science, I worked at a school that most would label “inner city.” I had a room that was not designed for Science experiments, a small stash of equipment (most of which didn’t fit the state standards at the time), and $200 to cover all supplies and experiments for the whole year. Which doesn’t go very far considering the price of Science equipment, even back in 2000.

Oh, and I was fortunate that at some point they had replaced the standard school desks the other classrooms had with those huge black science desks that re-arrange more easily.

So I was forced to get creative (i.e. cheap) with my lab experiments. My favorite experiment was using a handful of dirt to explain the big bang theory. All you need is a white poster board and a handful of dirt and pebbles from outside. The handful of dirt represents the universe before the bang as you squeeze it your hand. Throwing that handful of dirt at the poster board represents the big bang. The resulting splatter on the poster board shows what happens after the bang. Simple, effective, and low cost.

Sometimes people think when I refer to “teaching the big bang with a handful of dirt” I am insulting something, but the truth is its really just a reference to doing the best you can with the tools you are forced to use. If I had had a better classroom set-up (with sinks), I could have let the students do the experiment. More money would have meant being able to buy kits that do the same thing, but that make a better “splat” (big bang) on a piece of paper. Even more resources and flexibility would have meant being able to show computer simulations on an overhead projector so that the students could have compared their splats to the model. And so on.

This post is inspired by a Twitter conversation with Whitney Kilgore, which I think eventually indicated we were talking about different angles on the idea of what drives design. Ultimately, I hope Whitney saw that I wasn’t disagreeing with her or debating, but saying that out of the two over-arching ways to approach design, I prefer one over the other while not thinking one is better than the other.

To explain what I mean, I’ll start off by looking at how we as instructional designers really have two over-arching approaches when we design courses: one where we are have to let the tools drive the learning design because of various limitations, and the other where the learning design drives the tool selection because we have many options. One is where we make do with what we have, and the other is where we get to do whatever the design dictates.

You can design really good courses either way. However, when you are limited in your tool selection due to budget or even campus policy that says you have to use a specific tool, you have to make concessions to get those tools to work for the design.  Most of us that are in education have been used to being either limited by budget or administrative decisions for so long that we don’t even realize the concessions we are making based on these limitations.

A lot of what I am talking about here was covered by Jim Groom in his “there’s more to education than the LMS” keynote at the OLC Emerging Technology conference last year. Its not that the LMS is evil – all technology has its possibilities and its limitations. Being forced to use a tool like an LMS means being forced to accept those limitations, even if your learning design will suffer immensely from those limitations.

Of course, there are also those courses that work well within the possibilities of an LMS, and others that use parts of the LMS in connection with outside tools very well. I teach a highly rated college course for the UT Brownsville Ed Tech department that just uses the LMS, a discussion board, a textbook, six pages of content (including syllabus) and four projects. This course was very well designed by the staff at the University (I am an adjunct for the course, so I can’t claim the design :) ), and almost always receives glowing responses from the students. This is because good course design is not about finding new emerging technology to make it “work,” but using good theory to design a solid learning experience. The course that I teach is also highly rated because it’s designers let the learning design drive the tool usage, instead of letting the tool drive the learning design.

For those that are curious, this course only uses the LMS to collect and grade the projects that students create, which are everything from videos they create to webpages they design. Other than that, the course is mainly in WordPress. Oh, and we also usually get really good responses on the discussion board.

This is probably where I go all metamodern on my five readers, but neither method is necessarily “better” by default. When I worked as an instructional designer, I designed award-wining classes that resided entirely within the LMS. There are also really, really bad classes that ditch the LMS and do a horrible job in the open web. Whether you let the tool drive the learning design or the learning design drive the tool selection – that is no indication of design quality. It just dictates what possibilities and limitations you deal with, and whether it is your choice to choose tools that match the possibilities and limitations you need for the design or if that choice is made for you regardless of what your design needs are.

Of course, as we found out at Jim Groom’s keynote last year – you start mentioning the limitations of the LMS and those that love the LMS will push back. As Jim pointed out, all tech tools are designed by people for a specific purpose. This means that they have a certain paradigm or theory coded into the design. Audrey Watters and many others have written and spoken on this also. These biases don’t mean that you shouldn’t use those tools, but we should all be aware of these very real limitations that exist.

One of the reasons I get frustrated with LMS companies is that they slap some social tools in their LMS and suddenly claim that they are social constructivist or connectivist or active learning or whatever the current buzzword is. Adding a social element to your course does not suddenly mean its social constructivist in nature. Instructivism just means that the instructor is the center of the course, and discussion boards, Twitter, VoiceThread, etc can all be designed in a way that still makes the instructor the center. But there are other claims that also don’t live up to the claims. Giving students the ability to click on more links does not make something interactive. Inserting YouTube videos does not create an active learning experience. I could go on and on, but I rarely see tools in the LMS that truly count as connectivist, constructivist, interactive, or active by themselves. Which wouldn’t be that much of a problem if the LMS companies weren’t claiming otherwise.

edugeek-journal-avatarSo the question is, which one is better: letting the learning design determine what tool possibilities and limitations you teach with, or letting the tool drive the design? In a real world scenario, you usually end up with a mixture of both. Even if you are forced to use an LMS by institutional decisions, there are many tools to choose from within that LMS. However, even when you are allowed to choose what ever tool you want, you may still not find the perfect tool. In that case, you would still have to let the tool drive the design in some ways once you have let the design considerations drive the tool choice. In the real world, these are not Yin/Yang opposites that never cross over into the other. You will use elements of both in most learning contexts. Metamodernism to the rescue!

(image credit: Gozde Otman, obtained from freeimages.com)

Instructional Design and the Search for the Golden Child

One of the things you quickly learn as an instructional designer is that you precariously straddle two worlds that don’t always like to interact: practical and theoretical. Most academic fields have some level of tension between these two sides. In education its usually between the more practical Curriculum and Instruction side and the more theoretical Educational Philosophy side. And, of course, there isn’t a hard line between the two – they tend to mix a lot in the middle. You often find the instructional designers hanging out in that middle mix.

That’s really what the instructional designer does – take the theory and mix it with the supporting research on what practically works and produce effective and engaging design.

Easier said that done.

One of the issues that designers often deal with is getting the instructors to focus enough on good theory in order to form a strong foundation for quality practical design. The fine line between good and bad design or even okay-ish and good design is often held back by lack of theoretical focus more so than lack of technical knowledge about technology tools.

But….

Most instructors seem to be convinced that there is a “golden child” technology out there just waiting to be discovered. If they can just find this technology, or combination of technologies, or even hidden features in technologies they already use… then their classes will magically transform into glorious utopias of engaged learners. Students will be happy, completion rates will skyrocket, everyone will hold hands, pass out flowers, and start a drum circle chanting the praises of how awesome the course is.

What most instructional designers know is the harsh reality that learning more and more about technology and tools often makes it harder to design a good course. Instead of a concentrated focus on what works best for what you want students to learn, technology becomes the driving focus. And this means the course often gets worse, or at best trades one okay-ish design for another okay-ish design.

Some of the most innovative and effective courses out there are being taught with things like blogs and Twitter and YouTube videos – basically just a bunch of tools that most people know how to use already. No golden child magical technology tool doing cool stuff that no one else seems to be aware of. Just really good theory and focused instructional design.

This blog post is one of many that I am working on inspired by the OLC Emerging Technologies Symposium this week, and the conversations that occurred around/at/because of that event. I was in the test kitchen there playing with cool new tools and apps as much as the next person. I love emerging technology and finding new websites and tools and services to use. I also love it when people find great educational uses for these cool new things. But most of the really awesome courses out there are not coming from people getting more technical training, but from people that dig into the theory side and said “I want to accomplish this theoretical idea” and then found the basic technology to realize their vision.

Of course, that is easy to say for people like me that love the theoretical side of learning, whether it is epistemological, ontological, or just purely philosophical. For those that find theory to be more on the dull side, its not quite so easy. But we need to push back against the slow creep of technological solutionism in instructional design that tells us we need to “get more technological training!” to fix our courses.

Think of it this way: if you need to have more technical knowledge in order to improve your courses, then your IT department is going to be the best instructional design department on campus. But your IT department will be the first ones to tell you they can’t help you with digital learning, because that is (generally) not what they know.

So, if you find theory a bit intimidating, I get that. Find something you already know and dig deeper. You don’t have to learn it all.

If you find theory boring, well, I don’t get that. :) But I see where people could feel that way. Find the one part that is least boring and dig in to see if maybe it will surprise you.

If you think you already know theory well enough (but you don’t work primarily as a theorist in some way)…. ummm…. let’s talk a bit about scale. One of my incredibly brilliant professors once told me he had read one book by Jurgen Habermas over 20 times and still maybe grasped about half of it. Habermas has many books, and is himself just one of hundreds if not thousands of thinkers that influence educational theory. You may understand the cliff notes version of theory in general or maybe a few specific theories at a Wikipedia level, but that is not nearly all there is out there.

edugeek-journal-avatarThe people that are exploring the depths of theory out there are the ones that are coming up with truly revolutionary ideas like connectivism or rhizomatic learning, or creating revolutionary tools like ProSolo or a Domain of One’s Own. Or to tie back to OLC this week, its not the people that find a better tool than Twitter that are going to change education, but the people that Bonnie Stewart that dig into an existing tool like Twitter to see what is going on there that will. I promise you – if you dig more into Bonnie Stewart’s work than you dig around for technical training on a tool, you will see bigger and better changes to your course.

(image credit: Mariana Figueroa, obtained from freeimages.com)

DALMOOC Design and Scaffolding

Returning again to the design of DALMOOC and more specifically the visual syllabus, I wanted to take a look at the scaffolding decisions that were made. In some ways, this course was a unique challenge because we had to do some true scaffolding that could possible span several different levels of experience, from complete newbie to seasoned expert. This is different than most instances of scaffolding, because typically college curses are really more along the lines of linear constructivism than scaffolding. What I mean is this: for most courses on the college level, you assume that your learners have a prerequisite level of knowledge from either high school or earlier pre-req courses. You aren’t introducing, say, physics for the first time ever – but instead you are building on the Intro to Physics course in order to help students learn how to build rockets and predict launch patterns. So you don’t scaffold as much as take chunks of knowledge and skills and plug them into (linear constructivism) existing knowledge. This is scaffolding at the basic level, but you may or may not go beyond one level of scaffolding.

With DALMOOC, we knew that learning analytics is still new for many, but old news for some that may just want to learn some different tools. Additionally, we were adding in new technology that we knew for a fact that no one had ever used. Throw in that mix an international crowd that won’t all be speaking English and then even add the idea to create a visual syllabus (which few are familiar with). This is a tall order covering a huge range that most courses don’t have to consider.

So where to start? Well, with the first page of the syllabus. It needed to be visual, with minimal text, but clear where to start. A wall of text that basically says “start here” kind of violates a lot of what it needed to be. But if you look at anything from OLC to Quality Matters, most online course evaluation tools recommend having a clear and simple indication of where to start. What is more simple and easy to understand than a basic “1, 2, 3, etc”? I have traveled to Asia and Europe and Africa and even people who don’t know English still understand enough about our number system to know that a web page with those numbers on them would indicate you start with number 1.

Of course, a small number of people felt that this was still too confusing. I’m not sure what to say to that. You are presented with a page that says “Welcome to the Class” and then some big buttons that are labeled 1, 2, 3, etc. I’m not sure what is simpler than that.

Of course, I realize that there are those that really, really need the text because they have been programmed to look for it their whole lives. The buttons were given a rollover effect that gives a more detailed description of what they are leading to. This serves two purposes. One, it gives detailed descriptions that are there when you need them, but aren’t filling the screen and overwhelming people that are completely new. Two, they make you actually do something with the syllabus instead of just passively reading a wall of text. You have to mouse over or click on various items to get more details. This moves you from passive to (slightly) active. This was on purpose to get learners engaging more with the content on the very first page. Additionally, this idea was continued on the other various visuals.

For those that are not new to all of this, links were provided on the upper right hand corner – where they usually are on most websites. We don’t expect people to follow the path laid out for them. In fact, we encouraged learners to skip around and make their own path as needed. And that was also possible from the design.

As expected, there was some push back from a few learners (about 5-10 out of the 6,000 that were active at some point) on the design. The basic feedback was that they didn’t like the roll over effects. They wanted the text to be there without rolling over. This probably tells me that the right decision was made, because that was exactly what the rollover effects were designed to do: make the learner do something instead of passively absorbing text. Of course, there are other ways to accomplish the same goal, so other ideas might be used in the future.

The biggest challenge in describing the structure was how to explain the nature of the dual layer course. Course themes are always helpful, as the many versions of ds106 have proven. Of course, it would have been nice to have enough time to have carried out the theme for the whole class. Many of the problems with understanding the structure can probably be traced to the fact that we were not able to inject this theme throughout the entire course (of course, those problems could also come from the fact that we initially designed the daily email to be the central anchor for the course (and therefore, the place were scaffolding and structure sense-making would happen)). It seems like that aspect fell short. However, I think that a consistent theme that is carried throughout the course as a true sensemaking/guidance tool would alleviate many of these issues. Of course, scaffolding in general is a problematic concept in this dual layer approach, but that will have to be a topic for another blog post.

The theme itself was chosen early as an initial idea that ended up sticking. I think the Matrix “blue pill/red pill” theme was a good place to start, but gets a little murky once people start mixing the two and bringing in their own ideas (which is, of course, what we want). My first idea was actually a table full of play-dough – all kinds of colors just waiting for learners to pick and choose and make into whatever they like. Ultimately, this leaned too much towards my connectivism bias and was probably too unstructured for new learners who wanted instructivism. I think that a mixture of the two ideas might work as a better theme in the future: learners are initially given the choice of blue or red play-dough, but they can choose one or the other or mix together to make their own shade of purple – or bring in their own colors to create what they want.

Of course, some of the more complex ideas that were thrown around earlier, like creating scaffolding out of objectives or dynamic group formation and changing, never made it into the course. Interestingly enough, some learners (around 10-15) asked for various versions of these ideas, so they may bear exploration in the future.

Underlying these design decisions were some different theoretical perspectives that go beyond Connectivism and Instructivism (LTCA Theory, Heutagogy, Metamodernism, etc) that will need to be explored in a future blog post.

MakerSpace Instructional Design

I know MakerSpaces are kind of a rising buzzterm, but I like the idea behind them. Today we met with a few people from around campus to discuss a MakerSpace for the entire campus. I was there because I would totally rather do instructional design this way. Meet together with faculty and students (why do we always leave students out of course design?) to brainstorm crazy ideas for course design. Just have instructors throw out what they want students to do in class and then let the creativity and weirdness flow.

Also image if we had online MakerSpaces for technology tools? In many ways, that is what Jim Groom (one of coolest guys to drive around and chat with) did with his Reclaim Your Domain Demo session at the Sloan-C Emerging Technologies conference. What if that demo space could go online full time and then just blow open the doors for all kinds of other sites and experimentation? What ever the new site social media site of the day is, create a dummy account on it and let people create like crazy. Whatever the open source tool is, let them install it from Installatron and experiment like crazy.

So, yeah, in many ways this would just be open learning design, occupy instructional design, or Massive Open Online Ed Tech, or however else you want to mangle the buzzword metaphor… but basically we need more brainstorming for the design process. Not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination, but something that needs to get more attention.

Oh, and you know Harriet and I would totally create and 3-D print the word ADDIE with a knife in it….