Here at UMUC, our LMS uses a couple of different methods that facilitate communication between instructor and student. The two primary vehicles for communication are the announcement area and the discussion board. The announcement area is used as a ‘one way’ communication from the faculty to the student, while the conference area is used as a discussion area for both student and faculty. The former is a ‘push’ medium where the latter facilitates participation in a conversation.

I suggest making the announcement area more like a blog. Breaking the paradigm of one way communication in the announcement area will help facilitate interaction between faculty and student. What if a student has a question about something in an announcement? Currently, we force the student to post this question inside a ‘questions’ conference, away from where the inquiry originated. Adding a comments area, a common blogging feature, to each post in the announcement area allows students to question and comment at the original point of communication. Keeping both the announcement and response interface on the same page works to reduce the student’s cognitive load—they don’t have to remember the text in question because it is adjacent to where the comment is being posted. It also encourages questions and comments by students which enriches the communication for all.

Adding the ability to categorize announcements, as do most blogs, would allow instructors a wider variety of information on the front page of the class without having to resort to the conference area. I see instructors do this all the time. They have materials they want to post, but want to categorize it. Sometimes responses are required by students, sometimes they are not. By providing blogging elements such as categorization of posts and comments, instructors can post such materials in way that better fits the genre of the information.

I am convinced that adding blogging features to the announcement area would create a rich environment of communication that is currently lacking in our classrooms at UMUC. Blogging is popular because it serves a certain genre of information and interaction. I believe that WebTycho’s announcement area is a similar genre of information as blogging, thus incorporating blogging feature seems an ideal solution.

In Alan Cooper’s “The Inmates are Running the Asylum” and “About Face 2.0“, he talks about how the user’s goals are the most important thing to consider when making design decisions. He also mentions the need to consider the person who is buying the product as well. If you can’t sell the product to the customer, then designing for the end user becomes a moot point.

In the situation that I am currently in (see previous post), we have a problem where instructors are not using the course modules that are being provided for them. In this case, they are like the ‘customer’ that Cooper refers too. If we cannot sell the module to the instructor, then fulfilling the user’s goals, again, becomes a moot point.

During the research phase of this redesign, I will be very interested to see why these instructors are ‘working around’ these course modules. What is it about the current product that frustrates them? What goals does the instructor have that are not being met?

It will be interesting to see how the importance of the instructor’s goals compares with the importance attributed to the customer in Cooper’s texts. Will the instructor be treated as the ‘customer’ in the research and modeling process, or will he become another primary persona that needs to be considered in the design process?

This guy’s blog is all about what he calls ‘Connectivism’ in learning. He sees, as I do, a role for ‘Learning Communities’ in the future of distance education. In this post, he talks about adaptive learning and the ways to achieve it through the use of Bogs, Wikis and RSS. I particularly like his take on implementation of these technologies into a curriculum:

This is obviously a very simple way to add some adaptability into a course, but at least it’s a start. We need to start having this important discussion. We have many resources available that can create a richer learning experience. We don’t need to rely on learning management systems as our primary learning tool. We can start the learning experience by focusing on connections first and content second. Our most limiting challenge is our existing views of learning. I think I’m going to make a New Year’s resolution to spend 2006 being discontent with existing approaches to learning…and to stop accepting notions of learning that have little to do with the instructors and even less to do with learners. We can do better. We have the tools for change.

Education is changing, and in a BIG way.

Traditionally, education has been a top-down information delivery system with knowledge locked behind the doors of educational institutions. This knowledge is disseminated as a curriculum through courses conducted by instructors. The act of learning and acquiring this information requires a large commitment of time from the learner, which is usually spent at the institutions harboring this knowledge.

Then, along comes the web. Now the whole paradigm of education and learning is beginning to shift. A massive conversation is taking place on the web. This conversation is not merely an exchange of words, but a communication of information in all forms. The culture of information, as found on the web, has become a bottom-up construct where individuals contribute to a larger conversation. This type of phenomenon is illustrated vividly in the realm of political blogs.

Here is an image that represents a large number of the political blogs that link to each other. You can probably figure out what the red and blue colors represent.

http://www.blogpulse.com/papers/2005/AdamicGlanceBlogWWW.pdf

These blogs connect to each other through linking. This mass amount of linking creates a collective consciousness facilitating conversations of political philosophies inherent to the group.

This is how I see education manifesting itself in the future: learning facilitated through a mass conversation. The representation of this conversation will be similar to, for example, the conversation of the ‘blue state’ blogs that have formed a community around their beliefs and ideas. This network of knowledge and conversation, centered on a common topic and interest, is a powerful construct where the individuals have control of the discourse. The tools of this conversation are blogs, wikis and RSS feeds. The power of this conversation is the network created through the linking of what is essentially personal publication platforms.

I predict there will be great resistance to this fundamental change in education, especially from the major stake holders of the institutions. A bottom up model of learning is not controlled by Presidents, Provosts, Deans and Program Directors. It may still be guided by them, and definitely will benefit from their influence, but the future of e-learning will transfer more control of the learning process into the hands of the learner.

And that, I think, is a good thing.