DIFFUSION OF ONLINE COLLABORATION

WEB 2.0 & COLLABORATION
George Siemens is my hero when it comes to collaborative interactions and future trends for DE (Distance Education). I was first introduced to George Siemens’ alternative new learning theory “connectivism. ” (Siemens, 2010). George Siemens recognizes the changing personal learning environment and its advantages to the education process. Web 2.0 offers many interactive and collaborative opportunities for the business, education, and research communities on a global scale.

WHAT IS LEARNING?
I especially agree with Siemens’ vision of learning and the responsibility of the learner. From his conference presentation on "The Art of Blogging" (2004), George Siemens writes: … “learning is not simply a content consumption process.” Learning is also a content creation process. This can’t happen if the flow of knowledge is one way. Effective learning does not mean I absorb content, effective learning means I create content with my classmates and instructors, it’s not exclusively ‘me’ consuming.”

EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL NETWORKING
Social networking (PLNs Personal Learning Networks and PLEs Personal Learning Environments) are evolving quickly, starting in the early 2000’s (although some precursors actually started in the 90’s) with Wikipedia in 2001, MySpace, blogging, and Facebook in 2004 (which now has 500 million followers and brought in $800million in revenues last year). (Wikipedia, n.d.). More recently, Twitter has been the site of choice for following several conversations and interacting globally with colleagues. (Hopkins, 2010).

ADVANTAGES OF COLLABORATION
As technology improves and people experience interactions using web tools, the comfort gap is narrowed according to George Siemens (2008) and collaboration becomes a way of life. Some of the advantages include:
1) conversations are going outside to not-so-like-minded, global, diverse, international and corporate;
2) interactions can provide students with real life experiences in the Triple helix model with interactions between government, universities, and businesses;
3) and asynchronous collaboration in forums gives each student time to think, contemplate, research, and respond or pose higher level questioning – much better than being left behind in a f2f classroom; and
4) constraints for time and geography are not an issue with DE.


OPPOSITION TO COLLABORATION
There are some reports contrary to George Siemens’ that are opposed to collaborative learning strategies. Mr Sheey's blog (2007) on a case for collaborative learning in distance education did an analysis of negative comments from students and educators. Here is a summary of his findings:

1) mandatory interaction can be detrimental to learning and the need for interaction in DE is for voluntary conferring;
2) some distance learners are self-directed and resistant to team projects;
3) it takes more effort to maintain a community group and according to Brewer & Klien (2006) methods of small group collaboration have not proved to increase student achievement. I am not sure what measurement they used to come to this conclusion. Some measurement was from opinion surveys.
4) A pilot study was referenced that showed students agreed with the idea of collaboration, but 59% responded negatively in an opinion survey and the authors concluded that collaboration was a poor substitute for f2f communication.(McMurray et al, 1999). High trust and support is needed to be successful. I reviewed the course design and data collection in the McMurray report and concluded that this was an early study where the instructional design was mainly modeled after f2f classrooms, with the exception of discussion forums. There did not seem to be any attempt for learning collaboration. In addition, assessments were summative in the form of quizzes and tests, similar to an f2f classroom.

PERSONAL COLLABORATION EXPERIENCES
I have had limited experience through Walden in interactive projects and collaboration. I agree with the assigned community interactions being artificial. The concept of artificial vs natural conversation styles of blogging are discussed in a Distance Education course by an instructor (who does not post his name or the university), (2009, March 12). The author discusses the need to move away from an artificial style of discussions to a more natural style of conversation.
Also, I worked two wiki collaborations in Walden courses and they were little more than a place to post information, but not very interactive. According to Stephen Downes (2005), online learning is not merely for communicating information but to create a network and offer students the opportunity to push to higher order thinking. He would refer to my experience as cooperation but not collaboration. He also suggests the teacher participate and model collaboration activities and discussions.
I have not stretched myself yet to develop a PLN in my field and I am sure that will substantially increase my interactions and collaboration opportunities. The web tools to date are abundant. Some include: wikis, blogs, skype, breeze & eliminate, emails, Greplin (searches gmail, twiter, facebook, dropbox), and Google priority inbox.


AN ONLINE OPEN COURSE & COLLABORATION – INTRO TO PLNS & WEBTOOLS
George Siemens offers an online, open course called PLENK2010 (personal learning environments, networks, and knowledge). The following recommended PLN webtools are from Skipvia,(2010). In establishing your PLN, Skipvia recommends two reasons to create your own PLN: to build your own support system with 1) accessibility to colleagues and mentors and 2) responsibility to provide our own professional development, and offer help and answer questions of others.

What does a PLN look like?
1) for quick learning - Atomic learning, Wikipedia, youtube
2) for keeping up with your field - Diigo (social bookmarking tool and aggregate videos & text, research),blogs, news services, google reader, & instapaper
3) to publish & share tools – diigo, PBworks, flicker, youtube
4) for communication: email, skype & google wave (in depth communication with colleagues)
5) for collaboration: wikis, blogs, twitter (breadth and several conversations), LinkedIn & facebook (for depth), and
6) to find a way to follow several webtools by aggregating resources

An example of corporate collaboration can be found in a Cisco blog, where Cisco corporate is providing a new global interactive environment for its engineers and researchers with 30 embedded flash videos.(Schrotzberger, 2010).

SUMMARY
I agree with collaboration as a learning strategy and encourage it as much as possible in f2f classrooms. The inquiry-based processing should lead to higher level critical thinking skills practice if done correctly. The potential is already available for online global collaborative projects. The challenge is for each person to develop their own PLN in their field, for instructors to encourage their students to experience and practice using these tools in the learning process, and for organizations to take advantage of tapping into their global personnel for collaboration. Where there is opposition, there may be a deficit in trust, support, instructor modeling, or an artificial environment that needs to be more real.

Collaboration is a very different learning process and puts the center of learning on the learner, by requiring responsibility and accessibility on the shoulders of the learner, not the instructor.


References:

Distance Education course instructor blog (instructor unknown, 2009, March 12). Exploring theories, practice, and principles: Student collaboration in distance education. Retrieved from http://distanceed.byuipt.net/?get-id=354.

Downes. (2005, July 6). Are the basics of instructional design changing? Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2005/07/06/are-the-basics-of-instructional-design-changing/.

Hopkins. (2010, May 12). Dont waste your time: Twitter in education. Retrieved from http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/presentations/presentation-twitter-in-education/..

McMurray, D. W. & Dunlop, M. E. (2009). The collaborative aspects of online learning: a pilot study. Retrieved from http://ultibase.rmit.edu.au/Articles/online/mcmurray1.pdf.

Schrotzberger. (2010, July 21). Experience what collaboration is doing for Cisco. Retrieved from http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/comments/experience_what_collaboration_is_doing_for_cisco/#more.

Sheehy. (2007, April 2). A teacher writes: Collaboration at a distance: A case for collaborative learning in distance education. Retrieved from http://ateacherswrites.wordpress.com/2007/04/02/collaboration-at-a-distance-a-case-for-collaborative-learning-in-distance-education/.

Siemens. (2004, June 7). The art of blogging. Retrieved from http://www.madlat.ca/presentations/Making%20IT%20Click/summaries/session10Siemens.pdf.

Siemens, G. (2008). The future of distance education. (Vodcast). Principles of Distance Education DVD produced by Laureate Education, Inc. Baltimore.

Siemens. (2010, Feb 16). Teaching in social and technological networks - connectivism. Retrieved from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=220.

Skipvia. (2010, June 10). Personal learning networks for educators (video file). Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/user/skipvia#p/a/u/1/q6WVEFE-oZA.

Social networking websites. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites.

More Future Trends in Distance Education

What should be the future trends in Distance Education (DE)and Instructional Design (ID)?
ID should play a key role in building a research base to make decisions on ID for K-12.
The key is that the ID must serve the needs of students and the ID must ensure that the environment where the course is delivered is supportive for student-centered courses.
We may need to reorganization and hire professionals to develop DE curricula to meet these needs and to determine how we engage learners. Nationalize curricula like the AP courses are starting to emerge. We must honor that DE is not another quick fix educational program and we must focus on the needs of the learner.

George Siemens (2010) sees the role of teachers as radically different as students have varied access to information and collaborations, start asking their own questions. Siemens refers to it as “fragmentation of content” and sees the teacher role more as
1.Amplifying
2. Curating
3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking
4. Aggregating
5. Filtering
6. Modelling
7. Persistent presence

Refer to Siemens’ blog posting on connectivism, Siemens. (2010, Feb 16). Teaching in Social and Technological Networks and Connectivism. Retrieved from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=220.

In addition, it is always interesting to examine the Horizon Report for future trends. In the next four to five years, the 2010 Horizon Report anticipates gesture-based computing, retrieved from http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/chapters/gesture-based-computing/. A collection of future trends in Distance Education can be followed on Future Trends in DE Facebook, retrieved from
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Future-Trends-in-Distance-Education/137930219558379.
Learning and the role of the student and the teacher are rapidly changing. Jay Cross Blog reports that “individuals are becoming their own instructional designers and knowledge navigators.” Cross. (2005). Retrieved from http://metatime.blogspot.com/2005/10/george-siemens-connectivism.html


In conclusion, since there is such a gap in the research and when comparing DE to f2f, what research we have is not showing significant differences, we need to build a research base for e-learning and ID.

What are the future trends for ID (instructional design) and DE (distance education) in the K-12 world?

What is the e-learning and instructional design (ID) research gap in K-12?
What are the future trends for ID and distance education (DE) in the K-12 world?

What does K-12 DE look like now?

In the educational world of K-12, DE is not growing as exponentially as higher ed, but we re seeing a steady growth, especially at our own southern California charter school where we are challenged with thousands of K-12 students that are home schooled.
We are also starting to see the emergence of free AP and Honors courses developed with short animations and videos for each concept (hippocampus http://www.hippocampus.org/) and other sites (http://www.khanacademy.org/), Alex, UC Regents. Some are not courses, but are great video resources for individual concepts.
Our charter school is currently using Moodle as a vehicle for out teachers to develop curriculum for academy (hybrid of f2f and home) and full time home school students. These are basically a series of assignments that correspond to textbook and other resources. It is not a flowing, learner-centered ID and has very little technological activities with the exception of links videos and online tutorials. It really is more of an attempt to copy classroom activities or replace them with boring worksheets if classroom activities are not possible for the home school student.
This semester, we have hired a consulting firm (e-Concordia) to help develop two courses with more multimedia infused (at a very high cost).

What are the biggest concerns or fears for what DE could be?

Some of the concerns expressed in the Huett, et al (2008) article are the mixed student populations which may consist of students that are least likely to succeed in the autonomous DE environment. The fear is that DE will become a dumping ground for credit recovery and
dropout students from traditional schools. As a result, the ID opportunities may be seriously underutilized.
This mixed population of students may face several outside distractions in their life styles – travel, social commitments, looking for enrichment, employed, rural, hospitalized, homebound, incarcerated, and be more of a challenge to reach through DE.
The choice between synchronous and asynchronous is a significant consideration with the K-12 population and asynchronous may not be a viable option for most because of little personal interaction with students and teacher. There are several issues of supervision and accountability especially with the younger and/or more immature students.

There is definitely a gap in the research-based effectiveness of online DE and ID at the K-12 grades. Another concern is the lack of trained professionals in DE and ID and that the courses may be developed to look like an f2f class, which would be counterproductive (Simonson, 2000).
According to Simonson’s equivalency theory, DE needs to provide “different but equivalent learning experiences for each learner.” (pg 29).

What should be the future trends in DE and ID?

ID should play a key role in building a research base to make decisions on ID for K-12.
The key is that the ID must serve the needs of students and the ID must ensure that the environment where the course is delivered is supportive for student-centered courses.
We may need to reorganization and hire professionals to develop DE curricula to meet these needs and to determine how we engage learners. Nationalize curricula like the AP courses are starting to emerge. We must honor that DE is not another quick fix educational program and we must focus on the needs of the learner.

In conclusion, since there is such a gap in the research and when comparing DE to f2f, what research we have is not showing significant differences, we need to build a research base for e-learning and ID.

References:

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshey, W., Coleman, C. (2008). The Evolution of distance education:
Implications for instructional design and the potential of the web (Part 3: K-12). TechTrends
(52)5, pp 63-67.

Simonson, M. (2000). Making decisions: The use of electronic technology in online classrooms.
New Directions for Teaching and Learning, (Winter), 84, pp. 29-34.

Tags:
DE, ID, K-12 DE future trends, equivalency theory.