Having an assessable element to contribution can be hard to measure. Do you, as the tutor, grade based on the number of postings which is easy to measure but doesn’t measure value of contribution and is therefore meaningless as a method of group cohesion. A better (and fairer) method of assessment would be to measure quality rather than quantity of postings. However, this involves more work by the tutor and is less easily manipulated by learners. In this scenario it is vital that the user has clear guidelines concerning what is expected of them prior to undertaking the discussion group or they are less likely to actively contribute and therefore achieve good marks. In my experience as a learner, a well designed discussion group has become a very valuable resource with sharing of ideas and references, while other courses I have attended without active groups jealously guard references from each other. This is an outcome that be avoided when the benefits of collaboration have been fully described to all users.

With the continuing march of technology available to learners, we as educators have a responsibility to update our teaching practices to reflect new demands. However, simply adopting new technologies to maintain our existing current practices may lead to internal efficiencies for us, but will probably not lead to new learning experiences for our learners. Younger learners are accustomed to using technology to augment all areas of their lives for both work and social aspects. They expect to be able to collaborate and form groups for all areas of studies too. Young learners also expect to be able to access information immediately and from multiple sources - gone are the days of spending hours in the school library and of finding sources checked out by other learners.

So how as educators do we expect to pass on knowledge in a medium that we ourselves are new to and have not experienced learning using them ourselves? The answer is that we need to be imaginative in our approach. I think that the first step is to encourage collaboration between students. In the e-learning environment that means creating a group sense of identity and mutual support. A discussion group is a good start but there must be some discernible benefit to the user or they will not wish to get involved - there must be a payoff! Whether that payoff is demonstrated as a learning outcome to the user(Collaboration in itself is a valuable outcome), or as an assessable element (which has it own issues and will be discussed later). Left their own devices, with considerable workloads, extra work will not usually be undertaken without some form of reward. Another consideration is the amount of input undertaken by users because if a learner posts but receives no response they are unlikely to post again. This encouragement of collaboration outside the tutorial space was not something that was previously possible to such an extent prior to introduction and adoption of new technologies.

If you are interested in e-learning you cannot possibly have missed the interest in Second Life! Businesses are falling over themselves to establish a presence in this vitrual world. The ‘hip’ value of this means of advertising will not be doing any of them any harm.

One possible area of development has been using th virtual world as a learning space and some users have embraced the possibilities . Others are waiting for the hype ‘bubble‘ to burst.

My interest in this discussion is why are we so excited by it? Is it ’shiney new toy’ syndrome or does it hark back to a real need that e-learning sometimes misses out on - the need for human interaction?

I have experienced two different forms of e-learning, one that creates a real group dynamic and a sense of community, and one where all the information I required was available online but the group identity was only half-heartedly encouraged and tutorials were available but not compulsory. Both courses where interesting and I achieved quite good marks. However, the more focused web-based course that I am doing now has worked hard to encourage a sense of group identity between the students and it has really added a new dimension to my learning.

Conversations with peers has open new avenues and concepts that I would have missed on my own. To encourage this group identity, connection has been through a vibrant discussion forum, messenger meetings and Second Life sessions. The discussion forum has proved useful when I have had problems that do not require immediate resolutions. The messenger and second life sessions have fostered a more ‘face to face’ approach.

This is all very interesting, but does the interaction aid us in learning, or simply make learning more interesting? I think that the possibility is the second - it improves the experience. As long as the content is good and the topics interesting, interaction is not a necessity but a bonus. Interaction can never make bad content good, but it can make good content better - and that has to be a bonus for the learner.

There is a school of thought that lack of interaction between tutor and pupil engenders a lack of authority, but I have yet to see that in my own experiences. But if that is true, can that relationship be re-created in the virtual world? I am a big fan of online gaming (world of warcraft is a particular favourite) and I can see the benfits of using such an environment to communicate with others, but I find Second Life is difficult and unweildy. The technology seems slow, with many stutters in movement. The graphics are not brilliant and communication can sometimes be a struggle. This does not need to be the case, and I feel that this is a serious limitation with Second Life. Games like World of Warcraft and Everquest are enourmous enterprises, with millions of players and yet the graphics are slicker and the communication and movement controls faster and more intuative. I can appreciate that Second Life offers many opportunities for individual expression but I can’t help thinking that the slow technology diminishes the importance of this virtual world. If SL becomes more like a ‘game’ I think many more users will be attracted to it and use it to the maximum potential for more human-like interaction.

In conclusion, I believe that Second Life has many exciting opportunites to offer us as learners and as tutors, but I think that it is not yet ’slick’ enough to tempt those casual users who cannot see past the ‘clunkiness’ of the interface. To become a real tool for learning I think that this needs to be overcome before it can really live up to the hype.

So what is all the fuss about? Surely learning is learning? Well not exactly. It is well known that people learn in different ways, and that some methods of learning are more effective than others. In most case, deep learning is really the one you want to encourage.
So what is ‘deep learning’ and how does it differ from ‘surface learning’? These were two types of study originally identified by Marton F and Saljo (1976) and they describe two different learning styles.
Surface learning is basically a memorising of facts, figures and processes etc. with a focus on task completion for assessment purposes. Deep learning involves understanding the processes and applying and linking them to previous knowledge and apparently unrelated experiences. Deep learning is often a more exciting approach to learning because it involves developing a different understanding of reality and often occurs because the learner already has some kind of engagement with the ideas/topic. This is the type of learning that prepares the learner to use that knowledge in ‘real world’ situations and is the most beneficial to life long learning. It is important to consider that it is a learning approach, and not an individual type that we are discussing here. Therefore as educators we should be concerned with encouraging our learners to be ‘deep learners’ rather than surface learners simply guided towards passing assessments. Deep learning equals better learning.
It seems to me that one way of doing this is to engage the learner is using new technologies.

So how can e-learning encourage deep learning?
1. Access to information – the internet. The internet is a huge mine of information and can be used to access a wealth of interesting reading.
2. Encourage collaboration between individuals (using wikis, discussion forums, weblogs, etc). This encourages discussions between people who may never actually meet and stimulates the development of new ideas and concepts. This technology also offers a ‘level playing field’ when considering the relative ‘weight’ of the contributor.
3. Removing barriers to education including time constraints, geographical, social and economical issues. Users can access education from anywhere and it is often possible to start course as any time giving maximum flexibility to the e-learning consumer.
4. Linking ideas. Technologies like e-portfolios and hypertext allow users to create actual links between knowledge items which often would not seem related. This enables the user to link between their ideas and the ideas of others. This is a main function of deep learning because it develops a mapping element between experiences and knowledge.
5. Making learning fun – fun learning is better learning. Just look at the way children learn through play and adults are just the same. It is possible to make the most mundane tasks interesting if they are presented in a fun way (as I know as a keen World of Warcraft player). This is an idea which is gaining ground with the development of learning games and simulations for adults. It also offers the opportunity to ‘learn by doing’ because a simulated environment can be created where a real-world situation would be too costly or too dangerous to recreate in a learning environment. For example, the French government has released a game called “cyber-budget”, which allows citizens to pretend they are in charge of the nations finances. This is designed to give them some understanding of the decisions that need to be made by the government in order to ensure that the economy works. This would not be possible in the real world and can facilitate a better understanding of their own taxation system.
Obviously these benefits are only really experienced through good e-learning courses. Problems that can be experienced by learners:
1. Boring content. Just because the course is provided online does not mean that the content is well designed. A course based on a collection of word documents will not promote deep learning any more than giving the learner a huge pile of paper to wade through.
2. Technology. If there is not adequate access (i.e. access to decent hardware or broadband) the user will become frustrated and demoralised.
3. Isolation. I believe that it is important to foster some sort of social element between learners to replace that face to face contact that they would achieve in a classroom environment. This encourages discussion between learners and allows the exchange of ideas, and avoids the sense of isolation that can occur when studying alone. I am currently taking an on-line course at Edinburgh University and I have found that the sense of community we have built up has added to my learning experience, opening me up to different points of view, and sometimes just saying ‘I know, I didn’t understand that either!’
4. Learning outcomes. Good learning should really be supported with a clear understanding of the intended outcomes of the course. I always ensure that learners are clear on what these are prior to the course so they understand what they can expect. This is just as important with e-learning, especially as the resources available to the e-learner are so vast. Some sort of guidance is also required to prevent information overload occurring while surfing!
So in conclusion, I think that a well constructed online course where students are adequately supported enables us as educators to encourage a deeper level of understanding in a topic. This arms the learner with the tools to apply skills learnt to different situations and enhances their learning experience.

Read about the Cyber budget here

MARTON F and SÄLJÖ (1976) “On Qualitative Differences in Learning — 1: Outcome and Process” Brit. J. Educ. Psych. 46, 4-11

In my last post I lamented that the lack of facial expression in a digital world would create a barrier between learners and learning providers. And as usual, technology was one step ahead of me! Hiroshi Ishiguro is a reasearcher who has created a remote control copy of himself with very accurate looking facial expressions.
View it here
Hiroshi plans to send the driod to meetings in his stead and speak through him. The droid is very impressive, down to making all those subconcious little hand movements we all make when we speak. Perhaps this is the future - instead of attending meetings we will pack up our droid and courier it to the site instead while we sit our office and watch it all on a video screen.
What I did find interesting was my own reaction to the droid. I was impressed but detached until someone prodded his face and he responded with a look of distaste. At that point I felt like they were being cruel, like poking a puppy. Which is rediculous when you consider that he is a machine. But if a machine looks and behaves like a human, how do we in all conscience treat it with anything other than respect? Will we have to have a new class of rights, human, animal and robot? Who can guess but maybe we will look back and see this moment as the point where it all changed! Or maybe I watch too many sci-fi films and read too many Asimov novels!!

Why does anyone keep a weblog? There are literally millions of weblog out there on the web created to keep track of more topics than I can even imagine. They perform social, political, philosphical and plain entertainment functions. I started my weblog as part of a course that I am taking at the moment at Edinburgh University. It was an assessible element of my course and so had to be completed. However, I quickly found that I enjoyed writing in it and so chose to continue with it in this current form.
The joy of the blog is how easy it is to set up and maintain. This one you are reading is created using a free application called WordPress. It took a matter of minutes to set up, and then I was able to download a huge choice of templates allowing me to customise it. Now I can simply log on when I have a few minutes and write down whatever I have been musing over today. I can publish immediately or save it as a draft and return later to finalise the content. And that is the important thing about a blog - it is all about the content! Blogging takes the concept of websites to the next level because it allows you to interact with the reader. Blogs allow readers to leave their comments for the author, and the author can respond. It is like letting someone read your diary, and then giving them a pencil so they can write all over it. Quite liberating! I love reading comments that people leave so if you want to express yourself please feel free…

And as usual there is always someone taking technology that extra step. Blogging Goes Mobile accessed 24/04/07 states that “programs like FoneBlog, Manywhere Moblogger and Wapblog will allow bloggers to post details about their lives from anywhere, not just from a computer “. This was 4 years ago but it still may take off! Who know what will be the next big thing?

So what is the future of e-learning? And how does it compare to what we already have? I am a classroom trainer by trade and I work for a large British software house. This means that I spend much of my time shooting up and down the country providing training and consulation services to our customers on their sites. This can be anywhere in the UK and Northern Ireland and involves me spending many a night away from home, in one hotel or another. So do I expect this to stop as e-learning evolves? At the moment I would have to say a resounding ‘no’. Much of the work I do is very site specific and therefore requires indepth discussion between myself and the delegates as to the most efficient approach that they can use with the software. This sometimes means changing their business processes but minly it is a collaborative approach between myself and the customer.

However, there are also large areas of my work that are the same everywhere I go. This is where I believe the future of e-learning within my company will develop. E-learning as a method of supporting training, and re-enforcing the learning that has already taken place. Another division of my company has already thought ahead and they are starting up such a programme as we speak (and yes I did go for an interview but with no success at this time - not enough e-learning experience!). The plan behind the new programme is to offer standardised courses where possible, where a fee can be charged instead of a consultant attending site. The courses will be designed by the appropriate subject matter expert and priced at half the cost of a consultant for the day. I feel that this is an appropriate direction for us at this time. The technology is available already to support this and many companies already do. I hope that my division will catch up soon and enable me to get involved too.

The concept of using the internet for social networking is an idea that I am becoming increasingly interested in as I continue my studies and use more of these technologies including Facebook, blogs, wikis etc. I am aware that this makes me a bit of a ‘late bloomer’ in many users eyes but I am catching up fast. However, this interests me in terms of how it could affect our relationships in the future.

I was just reading the latest PC Pro magazine (not available online yet so no link I am afraid) and one article quoted some quite scary figures. According to the Annenberg School Centre for the Digital future, 43% of people who belong to an online community say that the virtual world is AS important to them as the real world. And of those people, over 56% log in every day. It made me wonder how people can possibly make the time to do this - I struggle to fit everything into the one life at the moment. It also made me wonder where this will eventually take our view of relationships. Will we move into the more easily controlled world of the virtual world. The same study said that on average we will make 4.65 friends online who we will never meet (ignoring the implications of .65 of a person…) and only 1.6 who we will actually meet.

This reminds me of Isaac Asimov’s novel The Naked Sun. In that we meet the Solarians who are an extremely rich race of humans who have taken the idea of social networking to the extreme in that they ONLY inteact online. Personal contact is considered disgusting and even contact with a spouse is distasteful and only undertaken if really necessary. The physical contact that we see as necessary to our survival at this point in our evolution has been ‘bred out’ of the Solarians. The fact that they rigidly control the birthrate and that they are very wealthy ensures that they have the space to avoid each other. They also use robots to replace humans servants and therefore need to do little real work.

The humans who live on Earth are the antithesis of this. They live on a severly overcrowded planet where there is no concept of personal privacy - even sharing communal kitchens and bathrooms. They do not communicate virtually, and the Solarians consider them ‘backward’. Which version is our future? I can appreciate that this might be considered two extremes of opinion concerning the route that we as a species make take in the future, but I think it is a valid concept if taken to the final conclusion. Will technology replaces relationships because we have evolved past the point where teamwork and co-dependence is vital for survival - therefore leaving us with a world where we can be independent of anyone else and never have any real contact again. I hope not.

In yesterday’s blog I mentioned internet censorship with relation to China and I want to explore this further.

China is a very well documented case of censorship through the internet and the variety of sites that are blocked is quite broad. The methods used are fluid and resource hungry, meaning that the unitiated user would not necessarily be able to navigate their way around the restrictions.

However, it got me thinking about less obvious forms of censorship that the internet exposes us to.

I watched an interesting webcast on The Oxford Internet Institutions website by Ted Nelson. It is quite a long long podcast but discusses in an engaging manner why many of the things we use today are ‘the way they are’. He then moves on to the fact that many of the information technologies exist in the current form due to political and personal reasons of the people involved with developing them. This then become an industry standard and gets adopted by other users.

This means that the interfaces that we use are are designed and governed by other reason than usability. These reasons are not transparent and users are not aware of why they are there. I think that the same is true of the search engines. I ran a couple of tests between Google and Ask.co.uk where I entered exactly the same search options in each engine, and got different results. The reason for this is the algorithms used by search engines are valuable and highly secret; supposingly avoiding websites ‘fiddling’ the results; and therefore return differing results. However, without transaprency, how can I tell what rules are used to respond to my search request? Is there a political or social bias in the results? There is no way for me to tell why I am being offered certain options. This is a worry.

In one of our second life study sessions my tutor Rory mentioned a book about a “Second Life” like cyber-existence called ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson. The conversation resonated with me so I went out and bought the book. Due to the course and work commitments I have only just begun to read it. I am still getting ‘into’ it, but something that has already piqued my interest is the idea of the ‘Library’.

The protagonist Hiro makes a modest living collecting information which is stored in the ‘Library’; a huge searchable database containing something about everything. Hiro is paid whenever someone searches and extracts information that he has entered into the library. This struck me as interesting because it reminded me of a course weblog entry that I made back in February about wikis and whether the content could be trusted if it is entered by ‘anybody’. In the Snow Crash the information is ONLY added by ‘anybody’. There is no control of the information, and it only has value if it is searched by someone else. I wonder if this is the way that our society will move.

There is already a mind-boggling amount of information available on the net, and much of it is of dubious value. This will only increase over time and this will surely have an impact on how useful this amount of data would be. If it took an age to search for a piece of information, would the net-user bother? Or would we simply stick to a small number of websites that we are familiar with and know that we can get the required data from. We use search engines for this purpose, but that would lay us open to the political and social machinations of multi-national agencies who would be able to control what we see in our list of search results.

This is a very real danger in countries with restrictive regimes like China (Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China by Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Law School have studied the extent of such restrictions.)

If that was the case, despite the vastness of the net, the individual user would only use a tiny fragment of it. It would become insular and inward looking which is the opposite of the ideal.