Understanding transactional distance in web-based learning environments: An empirical study – Huang – 2015 – British Journal of Educational Technology – Wiley Online Library

This is a very important paper examining and verifying Moore’s theory of transactional distance. Sadly it is not open but those with AU accounts will be able to access it via AU Library.

The paper mostly confirms an inverse relationship between dialogue and transactional distance (more dialogue reduces the distance), and a direct relationship between structure and transactional distance (more structure increases the distance), that autonomy tends to slightly reduce the distance, and that a lack of both structure and dialogue is very bad indeed. But it also provides an interestingly nuanced view that appears to show high levels of both structure and dialogue are better still, as Moore himself predicts. I’m a bit sad that they used one of my earlier papers rather than my later book, Control & Constraint in E-Learning, because the findings strongly confirm my thesis in that book that modern forms of social media make it possible to have both high structure and high dialogue and that, consequently, transactional distance is lowest of all in such circumstances.  This paper appears to show that best of all worlds appears to occur when students use blogs, wikis, Twitter, etc, with notably lower transactional distance reported when compared with email/discussion forums.

There are also some interesting correlations between age and perceived transactional distance that the authors (I think rightly) put down to greater autonomy – older students tend to perceive lower transactional distance and tend to be more autonomous. There are also unexplained correlations with ethnicity that I am as puzzled about as the authors – this is intriguing and demands further investigation. I suspect cultural factors may explain this rather than ethnicity per se.

Though the studies are well conducted, I have some concerns with the measures and definitions used: I am particularly bothered by the split of interactions between people, content and interfaces. Structure here is defined by higher levels of learner-content and learner-interface interactions. I have always found ‘interface’ to be a very puzzling distinction as it is the interface that mediates both dialogue and learner-content interactions, so it is neutral to structure or dialogue – it ain’t what it is, it is how it is done that matters. It is precisely that neutrality that makes the value of social media so high because, out of dialogue, structure in the interface can emerge and/or the structure of the interface can help to shape dialogue. It is also interesting that transactional distance is (quite rightly) not just seen as a distance between instructor and student but between students and students: this is correct because students are one another’s teachers too. Again, this helps to explain the increased value of modern social media in reducing transactional distance because dialogue becomes content in the process, in ways that it does not in discussion forums and email.

Address of the bookmark: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.12263/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+on+21st+March+from+10%3A30+GMT+%2806%3A30+EDT%29+for+up+to+six+hours+for+essential+maintenance.++Apologies+for+the+inconvenience.&userIsAuthenticated=false&deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=

Ivy League For Free: What One Man Learned By Crashing Elite Colleges For 4 Years

A thought-provoking article on a man who gate-crashed some top tier US university courses as well as here in Canada. This was both politically and personally motivated. The man not only attended lectures and seminars but also got access to networks, direct interaction with professors, and received many of the benefits of a traditional university education bar the accreditation and support.

Attendance at lectures is rarely monitored and it has long been touted as one of the best free entertainment options available, if you choose your lectures wisely. I think I first recall reading about it in Playpower, a book on alternative culture from the early 70s. As the article suggests, it is generally pretty well accepted in many institutions and, as long as it doesn’t harm paying students (in this case I’d guess it was actually beneficial), it is hard to see why anyone would object. It might be a little trickier to get away with attending small tutorials or workshops involving restricted resources (e.g needing logins to university computers), and it would not always be easy to get the accompanying documentation and schedules, but this seems eminently do-able for many courses. I don’t think it scales well – most universities would probably start to institute controls if a large number of non-paying students started to join in, especially if they used up rival resources like handouts or materials, or hog tutor time in ways that harmed others. In some subjects it would not work at all. But it is quite an interesting perspective on openness. Face-to-face can be open too – in fact, it might be the default.

Makes me wonder about closed online courses and open MOOCs. Are we really as open as we claim? I think not so much.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.fastcompany.com/3043053/my-creative-life/ivy-league-free-what-one-man-learned-by-crashing-elite-colleges-for-4-years

Four Reasons to Worry About "Personalized Learning" – Alfie Kohn

Alfie Kohn is one of my favourite writers and this is a good example of why. Kohn’s basic concern with personalized learning is that  “Each of us can do what he likes as long as he ends up fundamentally similar to everyone else” but he drills down a lot further. These are his fundamental worries with how personalized learning is being conceived and implemented:

1. The tasks have been personalized for kids, not created by them.

2. Education is about the transmission of bits of information, not the construction of meaning.

3. The main objective is just to raise test scores.

4. It’s all about the tech.

I share Kohn’s concerns – I am appalled by a lot of the adaptive hypermedia, learning analytics and intelligent tutoring systems that I have seen, dating back around three decades or more but apparently now reaching critical mass in the personalization movement. He is absolutely right to be afraid of how these things are being used and implemented not just for kids but for adults. The trend towards measurability, uniformity and control of students is a heinous crime against this and future generations, made much worse by the institutionalized power abuse that comes with the package.

On the other hand, I think that it doesn’t have to be that way. First of all, it is important to consider the granularity: adaptive systems can have a lot of value when they are available in small pieces that give learners the power to choose them as tools to support their personal learning (and, as Kohn points out, social learning). I am also not averse, on the whole, to tools that suggest and advise but that do not dictate. But mainly, like all things technological, from painting to bridge construction, it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it that matters. It’s a problem when the process of learning is hardened into a toolset that is dictated by a small hierarchy and not socially negotiated. It’s the higher levels of control that are the most worrisome technologies in this assembly: the tools just make it easier to exert that control. We should fight against the standardized tests, the teaching for grades, the manipulation of learners for political ends. But, when that toolset simply adds to what we already have, it can make the whole system more creative, flexible and controllable by learners. It’s the difference between what Franklin calls ‘holistic’ and ‘prescriptive’ technologies.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/four-reasons-worry-personalized-learning

Laws of the academic jungle

My former VC, Sir David Watson, who died yesterday after a short illness, was a gentle, wise and caring man from whom I learned much and who supported me, guided me and challenged me in myriad ways. He was a remarkable man: a great educator, a fine musician and a gifted leader. I believe that he knew not just the names of all his 2500+ staff, but also enough about each and every one of them to sustain a conversation about their interests, achievements and friends. He was modest enough to deny this but, in 15 years of working with him, I never saw him falter and nor did anyone I ever spoke with about it. It was a phenomenon.

I share his nine Laws of Academic Life (AKA Laws of the Academic Jungle) in fond remembrance…

  • Academics grow in confidence the farther away they are from their true fields of expertise (what you really know about is provisional and ambiguous, what other people do is clear-cut and usually wrong)
  • You should never go to a school or department for anything that is in its title (which university consults its architecture department on the estate, or – heaven forbid – its business school on the budget?)
  • The first thing a committee member says is the exact opposite of what she means (“I’d like to agree with everything the vice-chancellor has just said, but…”; or “with respect”…; or even “briefly”)
  • Courtesy is a one-way street (social-academic language is full of hyperbole, and one result is the confusion of rudeness – or even cruelty – with forthrightness; however, if a manager responds in kind, it’s a federal case)
  • On email, nobody ever has the last word
  • Somebody always does it better elsewhere (because they are better supported)
  • Feedback counts only if I agree with it
  • The temptation to say “I told you so” is irresistible
  • Finally, there is never enough money, but there used to be.
 
Sad to have lost one of the great educational leaders.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/laws-of-the-academic-jungle/408835.article

Datawind Aakash Android Tablets

The cheapest tablet in this range is CAD$43, for which you get a 7″ screen device with WiFi, Bluetooth and limited but extendible storage, capable of web browsing, email, Skype, word-processing and e-reading. Not well, for sure, nor with any kind of battery life to speak of, and with a low resolution screen with a viewing position rather than range of angles.

But it’s $43 (Canadian)!

That’s less than plenty of internet-capable radios, MP3 players, electronic picture frames, or even sophisticated alarm clocks, all of which it can comfortably replace and actually do a better job.  In fact, it’s less than a meal for two (with drinks) at my local pub. The others in the range don’t add much apart from a front-facing camera and very slow mobile data ($55), up to 3G phone and a slightly better screen for the top-of-the range UbiSlate3G7 for $90. Not too bad a price for an unlocked if totally enormous smartphone, though not the cheapest around.

The UbiSlates are Canadian, though the primary market for them is India, where they can be purchased for even less, and can come with $2/month mobile Internet (some US versions come with unlimited mobile web browsing for about US$100 a year). I think I might get one of these for the hell of it. 

 

Address of the bookmark: http://ubislate.ca/compare.php

Transactional Distance among Open University Students: How Does it Affect the Learning Process? : European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning

Interesting study looking into transactional distance between online learners at a Greek open university, with some great qualitative findings.

The findings are very revealing about the role and nature of dialogue in online learning at the authors’ university. As we noted in our book, Teaching Crowds, transactional distance becomes very complex once there are multiple ‘teachers’ (or teaching presences) involved, where peer and content interactions are multi-dimensional and so transactional distance shifts and varies all the time. The study reveals some quite nuanced and differentiated communication patterns that demonstrate this quite nicely.  A bit of fuzziness shows through, however, where what is reported is mainly levels of communication rather than perceived transactional distance. The two are very closely related, inasmuch as communication is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reducing transactional distance, but they are not the same thing. 

I find it hard to imagine, as suggested for future study in the conclusion, what ways one might measure transactional distance in learner-content or learner-interface interactions that would not make the distance extraordinarily high. This is almost true by definition, apart from in ‘creepy’ ways (e.g. if the learners felt psychological closeness and attachment with an AI) or, maybe stretching the definition a bit, through guided didactic conversation. I will be interested to see how the writers address this!

Address of the bookmark: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/eurodl.2014.17.issue-1/eurodl-2014-0002/eurodl-2014-0002.xml

GRC's | SQRL Secure Quick Reliable Login  

Steve Gibson, a venerable computer guru who has innovated for decades and never produced anything but brilliantly elegant code, as well as being a compelling and thought-provoking writer, presents SQRL. It’s truly ingenious, I think. It provides secure, password-free logins, with unique but anonymous IDs, to any site that implements this standard, in a manner that seems to be far more secure than any conventional username/password design. True, some other form of authentication is needed to set up the app in the first place – you’d not want someone else to get hold of that! Also, it’s not quite as good as two-factor systems for security. But it is much better than username/login combinations, it is much easier for the end user even than using a social media site to provide authentication, and it offers the potential for uniquely identifying an individual without intruding on that individual’s privacy. That’s pretty cool. Two-factor systems may be secure but all are very complex, irritating and prone to error, but there’s nothing to stop someone intent on assuring secure access from using this as part of a two-factor system. Brilliant.

Address of the bookmark: https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm

Challenge Propagation: Towards a theory of distributed intelligence and the global brain

Fascinating paper from the always thought-provoking and often inspirational Francis Heylighen, in which he draws together various models of distributed intelligence, distributed cognition, evolution and complex adaptive systems, incorporating stigmergic and networked perspectives on ways that self-organizing systems can exhibit intelligent behaviour. This is very relevant to anyone interested in connectivism, collectives, learning, intelligence, complex systems or social software.

Heylighen’s central thesis revolves around a definition of intelligence as not just problem solving but also opportunity seeking: it’s about both overcoming obstacles and seeking new possibilities. This combination is encompassed by the term ‘challenge’, which Heylighen defines as ‘a phenomenon that invites action from an agent’. Given competing positive (proactive) and negative (reactive) challenges, he sees challenge in evolutionary terms as ‘a promise of fitness gain for action relative to inaction’. All of this is framed in a context of bounded rationality and different approaches to challenge resolution, from simple look-ups to complex heuristics, and a range of factors that may motivate or demotivate different actions. This is all good stuff but it gets really interesting when he reaches the ‘challenge propagation’ referred to in the title. In essence, this applies the logic of memetics to challenges. As he puts it:

In contrast to the standard paradigm of individual problem solving, the challenge propagation paradigm investigates processes that involve a potentially unlimited number of agents. To deal with this, our initial focus must shift from the agent to the challenge itself: what interests us is how an individual challenge is processed by a collective of agents distributed across some abstract space or network. Instead of an agent traveling (searching) across a space of challenges (problem space), we will consider a challenge traveling (propagating) across a space of agents.”

This is a brilliant idea. I love the change in perspective that this brings. There are, I think, some very large and unresolved questions about what a ‘challenge’ means in the context of a collective. This follows from the fact that it is hard to understand what fitness in such a collective might consist of, save in its utility to the agents of which it is composed, though it might shed some light on our eusociality (evolution not for the benefit of selfish genes but for the benefit of a large social collective). I find it particularly hard to map his earlier discussion of how things are valued (with ‘valences’) by an individual agent and how things might be valued by a collective. A challenge does not exist in isolation – it must have a subject. It’s not entirely clear what that subject might be here. Such fuzziness aside, as a way of understanding an otherwise massively complex intelligent system like a brain, an ant colony or human culture, it has a lot going for it.

While the foundations are very strong, I have some reservations about some of the examples Heylighen uses and some conclusions that he draws. While I can readily accept that there are some stigmergic aspects to Wikipedia, I do not believe that the act of editing a page is in any meaningful way analogous to the way that stigmergy operates in (say) termite mound building or movements of currency markets. In the first place, unlike in a true stigmergic system, there is an infinite range of possible ‘algorithms’ that might influence agents making changes to a Wikipedia article. There are path dependencies, sure, but that doesn’t make it stigmergic. Apart from some stylistic patterns that tend to replicate, there is none of the emergent self-organized behaviour that is characteristic of all stigmergic systems. A Wikipedia page is largely just the sum of its parts, not an emergent artefact. In the second place, unlike in stigmergic systems, individual agents make deliberate contributions with a clear design purpose and end-goal in mind when building a Wikipedia page: their interactions are not local but planned and focused on the whole. It is no more stigmergic than a house to which someone decides to add an extension or remodel its rooms. It’s a good model for cooperative action, but not of collective intelligence.

I’m also not entirely happy with the notion of the Internet as being a gigantic collection of forums (generalized by Heylighen as ‘meeting grounds’) to exchange challenges, though the metaphor is appealing on many levels. The same could, of course, be said about any human artifacts or ways of ‘meeting’, from buildings to tools to doorknobs to forest footpaths to books to conversations to simply passing in a street. So far so good.  He describes the propagation of challenges as involving division of labour, workflow, and aggregation – this too makes sense. He then describes how such a system becomes self-organizing and uses as an example the growth of open source software. Here I have problems, for much the same reasons as I have problems seeing Wikipedia article development as stigmergic. In real life, many large open source developments are a million miles from self-organizing. The archetypal Linux, for instance, is extremely tightly controlled by a very small number of people using very rigid processes that are in many ways more traditionally organized from the top down than most proprietary systems. While the challenges are indeed solved by individual agents acting largely independently, albeit building on what others have already built, the workflow and aggregation are firmly in a traditional designed mould and tightly controlled by a clique. This is even true of more open approaches, such as those encouraged by Github although, in this case, workflow is managed by a ‘blind’ algorithmically driven system rather than by a clique. 

My concerns are minor and they are not with the basic ideas presented here, that I find very compelling. I think this is an important paper. While it certainly needs refinement, this feels like the beginnings of a new language for discussing and describing connectivist accounts of learning. It provides some much needed solid underpinning theory and a very useful perspective on some of connectivism’s major tenets: that knowledge exists in the network, including non-human artefacts; that connections are learning; the significance of decision-making; the ways that more is different; and the value of diversity. Great stuff.

Address of the bookmark: http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/papers/ChallengePropagation-Spanda.pdf