Final part of a three part interview with George Siemens (following from the  first and second parts), in which he describes some thoughts about the future and nature of educational systems, and in which he has some great stuff to say about motivation and assessment in particular. I like this:

“Make things relevant to students, but also give students an opportunity to write themselves into the curriculum. That is, to be able to see the outcome of the benefits, the way in which it can make them a better person, and the way it can make the world a better place. You can’t directly motivate someone, but you can set conditions under which people of different attributes will become motivated.”

Exactly so – it’s about creating conditions, not about telling or controlling. It’s about making and supporting a space (physical, virtual, social, conceptual, organizational, temporal, curricular, etc) that learners both belong to and own. 

Address of the bookmark: http://www.voicemagazine.org/articles/featuredisplay.php?ART=10462

Ingenious approach to extrinsic motivation – give something, then use the threat of taking it away to ‘motivate’ people to do what you want them to do. It’s an old idea, but one that has not seen as much use as you would expect in things like student grading or occupational performance assessments. Though tied up in language of the endowment effect, the essence of this method is punishment rather than reward, and we tend to be more punishment-averse than reward-seeking, so it works ‘better’. It’s still rampant behaviourism, presented in a cognitivist wrapper to make it look shinier. 

As with all forms of extrinsic motivation, this does two things, both inimical to learning. Firstly, it leads to a focus on avoiding the punishment, rather than on the pleasure of the learning activity itself. I don’t see this as a great leap forward from rewarding with grades in a learning context – it just makes it even more extrinsic and even more likely to destroy any intrinsic motivation a learner might have had in the first place so that, once punishment has been avoided, the value of the activity itself is diminished and, mostly, the things that make it useful are forgotten. Secondly, it is an even worse assertion of power than a reward. Again, I don’t see this as having any meaningful value in a learning context. It teaches greater compliance, not the topic at hand. That’s a bad lesson, unless you think that education is preparation for life in which you should be a compliant tool that reluctantly does the bidding of those in power through fear of punishment. A society organized that way is not the kind of society I want to live in. Surely we have grown out of this? If not, surely we should?

The notion that people need to be forced to comply in order to learn what we want to teach them is barbaric, distasteful and, ultimately, deeply counter-productive. Countless generations of learners have had their love of learning viciously attacked by such attitudes, and have learned with less efficiency, less depth, and less value to society as a result. It’s a systemic failure on an unbelievably massive scale, embedded so deeply in our educational systems we hardly even notice it any more. Done to one person it is bad enough but, done systematically at a worldwide scale, to ever younger generations of children, it hampers the intelligence and compassion of our species in ways that cut deep and leave us bleeding. Despite this, most of us still manage to come out of this without all of our innate love of learning completely destroyed. Our intrinsic motivation can be a powerful counter-force, just occasionally what we are taught aligns well enough with what we want and need to learn, we discover other ways and things to learn that are meaningful and not imposed upon us, and there are quite a lot of great teachers out there that manage to enthuse and inspire despite the odds stacked against them. Few if any of us survive unscathed, though most of us get something useful here and there despite the obstacles. But we could be so much more.

Address of the bookmark: http://readwrite.com/2015/05/07/reward-then-deduct-loss-aversion-brain-hack

This is the latest in a fascinating ongoing argument between George Siemens and Stephen Downes over the value, reliability and focus of Preparing for the Digital University, a report created by George, Dragan Gasevic, Shane Dawson and many others on the current state of research and practice in (mainly) online and distance learning. Because I am quoted in Stephen’s post, and in George’s post to which it is a response, as agreeing with Stephen, I’d like to clarify just what I agree with.

Where I disagree with Stephen is that I do think it is a good report that pulls together a lot of good research as well as other sources to provide a rich and informative picture of what universities have been doing in the field of online and distance learning, and how they got there. I think its audience is mainly not seasoned edtech researchers, though there is a lot of valuable synthesis and analysis in it that those of us in the field can and will certainly use. I see it as a strength that it does not just limit itself to ‘reliable’ research (whatever that may be – I’ve seldom found an unequivocal example of that elusive beast) and I am quite happy with the range and depth of the sources it uses. This is an expert summary and analysis by some of the top experts in the field who know whereof they speak. Of course it misses some things and over-emphasizes others, but that is the nature of the animal and I think it does a very good job of remaining broad, informative and clear.

I think Stephen and I are in rough agreement, though, in observing the boundary that the report does not try too hard to cross: the challenge that some of the research presents to the very notion of the university as we now know it and, to a lesser extent, the under-representation of ideas and research that relate to that. The latter point is a tricky systemic problem because, on the whole, the majority of work and writing in that space is under-represented in literature that, because it tends to come from universities, tends to focus on universities. As this report is about universities, it is quite reasonable that this is the body of literature it uses.

The relative lack of beyond-the-institution thinking is, I believe, a concern for Stephen but, for me, it’s just something that, if I were writing it, I would want to add more of. It seems to me that this report will have most value in providing information for policy makers, managers of institutions, and those who are beginning to discover the field. It will open some eyes, help people to avoid old mistakes, and open up some important discussions. But, thanks to the intentional focus on the university and how we got to now, the structures, processes and measures are mostly rooted in an assumption that the university as we know it can and should persist. The discussion that emerges will inevitably tend to focus on how digital technologies can be used to do what we already do in (from a birds-eye perspective) only slightly different ways. In doing so, it may blind participants to the very real threats to their whole way of life as well as opportunities that are worth grasping. This may not be the best idea but it is not a weakness in the report as such – it is, after all, doing exactly what it says on the box. In fact, it is to its credit that it does address some approaches and tools that are transformative. 

I agree with George (and with Stephen’s hopes) that universities are and will continue to be really important institutions that can and should offer great value to our societies for a long time to come. We would invent them very differently, or maybe not invent anything like them at all, if we started afresh, knowing what we now know. The reality is, however, that this is what we have and it has enormous momentum that is not going to stop any time soon so, if we are to make the best use of it, we should both understand and make improvements to it. This report is a solid foundation for that. There are some risks that it might, without further reflection, lead to ‘improvement’ of the wrong things – those that are counter-productive to the goals of increasing knowledge and learning in the world – and so further ensconce harmful practices. My pet hobby horses include courses, grades, and the unholy linking of learning and accreditation, for instance.  But there are other huge problems like the trend to systemic exclusion of disadvantaged people, the treatment of students as customers and the unnatural separation of disciplines and fields. Stephen mentions more. With that in mind, it would be useful to think a bit further about ways that the foundations of the university like teaching, accreditation, community, knowledge production, knowledge dissemination, being a knowledge repository, a source of expertise and so on are being not-too-subtly eroded by things that are enabled by the net, as well as to further critique the embedded patterns, limitations, biases, and blind-spots that make those foundations brittle and liable to crack or crumble.

The basis for that is all there in this report but, on reflection, I think the discussion of those issues is something for a further report as it demands a different level and kind of analysis. I am not at all sure that the Gates Foundation would want to fund such a thing, but it should. Actually, maybe that line of thinking is a bit too narrow. After all, the exchange between George and Stephen, as well as contributions by others (e.g. George Veletsianos) is already, and self-referentially, doing much the same job such a report might do, and maybe doing it better. The learning dialogue and knowledge creation that is occurring through this distributed conversation is as rich as the report itself and, in its own way, at least as valuable. If the report had not been written then that dialogue might not have occurred, so it is a good anchor, but it is part of a richer knowledge network. And that’s exactly the point: technologies like social media are deeply subversive because they enable us do some of the job that universities traditionally do without requiring a university as a necessary intermediary, with all the limitations and exclusions that implies. The patterns, technologies, economic models, checks and balances are not there yet to replace all of a university’s functions – we have much research to do and many inventions yet to invent, and I am very aware that it is only because of the university that I for one am able to participate in this – but the change is already happening, and it is quite profound.

Address of the bookmark: http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2015/05/the-study-and-other-stuff.html

Stephen Downes defends his attack on the recent report on the current state of online (etc) learning developed by George Siemens, Dragan Gasevic and Shane Dawson.

I have mixed feeling about this. As such reports go, I think it is a good one. It does knit together a fair sample of the literature, including bits from journalists and bloggers as well as more and less credible research, in a form that I think is digestible enough and sufficiently broad for corporate folk who need to get up to speed, including those running academies. Its methods are clear and its outputs are accessible. Though written by very well-informed researchers (not just George) and making use of copious amounts of research, I don’t think it is really aimed at researchers in the field. My impression is that it’s mainly for the under-informed policy makers that need to be better informed, not for those of use who already know this stuff, and it does that job well. It’s a lot more than journalism, but a little less than an academic paper. I can also see a useful role for it for those that need to know roughly where we are now in online learning (e.g. edtech developers), but that are not seeking to become researchers in the field. 

I think the more fundamental problem, and one that both George and Stephen seem to be fencing around, is in its title. The suggestion that it is about ‘preparing for the digital university’ is tricky on two counts. First of all, ‘preparing’ seems a funny word to use: it’s like saying we are ‘preparing’ for a storm when the waves are high around us and we are on the verge of capsize. Secondly, and more tellingly, ‘digital university’ implies an expected outcome that is rather at odds with a lot of both George and Stephen’s work. The assumption that a university is the answer to the problem (which is what the title implies) is tricky, to say the least, especially given quite a lot of the discussion surrounding incursions by commercial and alternative (especially bottom-up) forms of accreditation and learning that step far outside the realms of traditional academia and challenge its very foundations. That final chapter mentions quite a few tools and approaches that relegate the institution to a negligible role but there are hints of this scattered through much of the report, from commercial incursions to uses of reputation measures in Stack Overflow. If we are thinking of preparing for the future, the language and methods of formal education, courses, and mediaeval institutions might be a fair place to start but maybe not the place to aim for. There’s a tension throughout the report between the soft disruptive nature of digital technologies (not so much the tools but what people do with them) and the hard mechanization of arbitrarily evolved patterns. For instance, between social recommendation and automated marking. The latter reinforces the university as an institution even if it does upset some power structures and working practices a little. The former (potentially) disrupts the notion and societal role of the university itself. For the most part, this report is a review of the history and current state of online/distance/blended learning in formal education. This is in keeping with the title, but not with the ultimate thrust of at least a few of the findings. That does rather stifle the potential for really getting under the skin of the problem. It’s a view from the inside, not from above. Though it hints at transformation, it is ultimately in defence of the realm. Personally speaking, I would have liked to see a bit more critique of the realm itself. The last chapter, in particular, provides some evidence that could be used to make such a case, but does not really push it where it wants to go. But I’m not the one this report is aimed at.

Address of the bookmark: http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/2015/05/research-and-evidence.html