The second part of an interview with Terry Anderson (with a link to the first part) talking about his approach to teaching, a bit about his research, a bit about some of his many contributions to AU, and a fair bit about the Landing and its value. Great stuff!

Terry voices his impatience with the slow uptake of the Landing, which is understandable. It is a bit frustrating to know that it can (and, for some, already does) radically improve the learning and working experience for staff and students alike, providing social presence, control, and a massive range of learning opportunities and activities that go far beyond anything possible in closed course containers or generic tools like mailing lists and project sites, but that we only see a ‘mere’ 7000+ users, 400+ groups, dozens of courses, as well as scores of posts and thousands of external visitors every day!  I have always taken the view that critical passion trumps critical mass every time. That is what keeps the Landing going and that is what will sustain it for the long haul. It’s a slow but steady burner that keeps getting better and more useful with every single post and comment, and the word is spreading: deeper, more sophisticated use is notably rising, diversity is increasing, and people are visiting longer and more frequently. For a system developed on a shoe-string, with very little central funding or support, it has done pretty well for itself for well over 5 years and I hope and expect it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And it does continue to evolve – you can expect to see ongoing improvements, not just tweaks but major gains in functionality, over the coming months, and we are working on a major upgrade to the underlying software framework at the same time that should enable even more improvements. With any luck we might even eventually get a bit more support from central pockets that might really let it fly but, even without much of that, the site grows in importance and value all the time.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.voicemagazine.org/articles/featuredisplay.php?ART=10321

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=

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

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…

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

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

I think this speaks for itself. 

It would be sad if it weren’t so funny.

Address of the bookmark: http://gawker.com/more-than-60-dartmouth-students-charged-with-cheating-i-1678731026