FrenchPod is a PLS
FrenchPod went live last week. It represents a new version of the Praxis Language platform. It got off to a great start with some colorful lessons and and an active community.
We’ve called the new platform the Personalized Learning System, or PLS. The PLS has one obsessive objective: to allow the user in every way possible to fit the learning around her own needs (rather than forcing her to conform to some outside requirements). In this sense, the PLS is consistent with Personal Learning Environments, and of course, with our own philosophy of learning on your terms. The lifelong learner simply has to have ownership/control of the learning. Perhaps the PLS would fit as a language learning toolkit within a PLE to enable that control.
The autonomous learner
The old teacher/student hierarchies implode on the web. Good. Those were social structures, not learning structures anyway. Nonetheless, learning does involve (at least partly) a social exchange, so we need new social structures to give form to the new learning while preserving the all-important freedom to choose. I think the distributed community of practice that is now forming around FrenchPod is one example.
But drawing the line between autonomy and guidance is tricky. Doing too much for the learner robs him of ownership and control, while doing too little has obvious implications. In our experience, real life learners almost certainly want efficiency and convenience. They also expect a learning service to reduce the learning curve for them and provide guidance - learning how to learn is valuable. These basic requirements form the substance of what we call the PLS. (I would note that I mean users, not in a theoretical, abstract sense, but paying customers and almost 3 years of feedback.)
Focus on one subject
The PLS starts with a single discipline and solves a single problem - in this case, learning French. This singular focus means we have a shared social object, a necessary requirement for a social/collaborative CoP. It also means that we can integrate the elements and that users can dive in, immerse themselves in the resources, and develop a live culture of learning the language.
How did it start?
From the get-go (2005) our strategy was to apply web 2.0 tools to do new things for language learning (with the two-way medium, RSS syndication, etc). It was designed for the individual (rather than the institution) with a focus on accessibility. The value creation came through fitting the learning into the learner’s lifestyle (rather than the other way around) and allowing him to hit the ground running with a functioning system. Hank Horkoff’s first ChinesePod blog post explained this pretty well in September 2005.
The Elements
The fundamental concepts have not changed since 2005, but the platform has developed quite dramatically. Here are the key elements of the PLS as it now exists:
- The Learning Media - a large database of learning objects, plus a new release every day to stimulate interest and community focus. The lessons offer a trusted source of materials in a manageable format - short lessons with many consumption options, tagged according to topics, vocab, structures, etc. (ChinesePod now has almost 1,000 lessons to choose from.)
- The Open Community - a social/collaborative learning environment that functions as a community of practice. This offers the learner immediate access to others on the network with whom they can interact, converse, and learn from.
- The Personalization features - tools and content options for the individual, including mobile features and ways to free the learner from the computer.
Pedagogy
The philosophy behind the PLS is social constructivist with elements of connectivism, cognitivism (in particular, Krashen’s input theory) humanism, the social/situational model, and communities of practice.
Level of autonomy
Learning on your terms means having as much choice in the learning decisions as possible. As I wrote in a year ago:
The act of formulating your own goals, choosing your own inputs, etc, helps you focus and commit to your course of study. It allows you to align your behaviors with your objectives. In my experience, this motivates more effectively than someone telling you what to do, or making the decisions for you. (Methinks we all had enough of that in school.)
We hope the result is a ubiquitous, immersive, learning environment over which the learner has a great deal of control.
Both ChinesePod and SpanishPod have also been upgraded to PLS status.
Ken Carroll
May 29th, 2008 at 1:24 am
I think you have left out an important section in your post. May be you didn’t want it to seem like you were trying to sell the product but the variety Subscription plans is just as important to the whole “learn on your terms” philosophy.
Most learning sites have a limit amount of subscription options, usually either unpaid or paid, or in some cases they will have unpaid, basic and premium subscriptions. That is of course if they even have a free/unpaid option at all.
With the site upgrade to ChinesePOD (and with the addition of SpanishPOD, FrenchPOD and the other LanguagePODs set for release at a later time) the subscription plans have increased and allow more flexibility in learning commitments than before.
The current listing of subscription plans are:
Unpaid
Basic
Premium
Guided
Executive
As well as providing a subscription plan for those who want to study all of the Praxis languages available: the Praxis Pass. Other options for subscription include discounts for students and corporate study plans. And if all that wasn’t enough to guarantee satisfaction, there is the 30 day money back guarantee.
Having all of these options means that people from all walks of life; with all types of learning objectives can pick and choose how much they wish to invest (financially) in their learning of the language(s). With the ability to change plans at any time, with pro-rata adjustments, it means that members can even opt in to higher levels of commitment at any point in their endeavour.
I am really excited by the new Guided subscription plan as it falls squarely into my budget constraints and gives me exactly what I need on a month to month basis.
[NB: I am not a Praxis employee.. I just love ChinesePOD to death. :)]
May 29th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Wow Ken! Seems as if things are coming really together. The new version of the website goes a lot further than I would have thought possible.
I have been using ChinesePod for 2,5 years now and I will continue to use it. The cotent is rich and varied, the learning possibilities are endless, the team behind it is professional and very responsive to user’s needs. And this brings me to the point that I want to make.
ChinesePod is what it is today because right from the start you were prepared to listen to our needs, to our feedback. Blogging has been a great tool to achieve this, but other channels were also available: lesson comments, wiki, forum, e-mail, open threads (remember those), lesson suggestions, etc. If there was a good idea surfacing inside the community, it would bubble up and find its way into the website. From my own personal experience I know that this kind of responsiveness is what builds a community of loyal customers. I wish you and the rest of the team a great continuation on this path. May you have a lot of loyal and paying customers!
Marc in Belgium (aka marchey)
May 29th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Breaking out of the box (boîte, caja, xiá)…
The FrenchPod language-learning site has joined its siblings, ChinesePod and SpanishPod. ChinesePod co-founder Ken Carroll on his blog talks about FrenchPod as a personalized learning system.
Ken make an insightful point about the autonomous learner.
…
May 29th, 2008 at 4:54 am
Nice vision, but with FrenchPod, what we’re diving into at the moment feels pretty shallow - the site lacks the content to make it meaningful. Wake me when you have advanced lessons and enough material to chew on, something which I don’t expect to happen at the current pace for several months.
Found the glossary in FrenchPod, for example, perplexing since it lacks the simplest of terms but when the same tool appeared in ChinesePod earlier this week it made a lot of sense.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Sushan - remember, ChinesePod started with just a single lesson too…
May 29th, 2008 at 7:44 am
I don’t think I’d say “shallow” so much as “basic.” How many lessons are enough to start? That’s a question much like “how long is a rope?”
My hunch is that Praxis has some rules of thumb for development of lessons (and other features) — maybe even a rough ratio (say, ten basics, two intermediate, one advanced). Maybe there’s value in making the short-term plan explicit (”in the next month we’re be adding…”).
Years ago, I was part of the user’s group for a mainframe computer-based-training package. The vendor held an annual user’s conference, and each user organization got to vote its preferences for future development.
The vendor wasn’t going to let the clients set all the priorities, but was extremely interested in what we were doing, and wanted to do, with the software. It was an extremely positive, collegial relationship.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:54 am
It’s great to hear the enthusiasm from light487 and Marchey. This honestly does motivate us to keep doing it better. It also reminds us that we always have to start with the learner rather than the content or the tech (as Dave pointed out on his blog posted).
Anyone will benefot from reading Dave Ferguson’s blog (above). He has a great easy style with tons of insights.
Ken
May 29th, 2008 at 9:43 am
[…] this morning comes the idea of Personalised Learning Systems. The term is used in a blog post by Ken Carroll from Praxis Language based in Shanghai. I met Hank Horkoff, the CEO, last week and […]
May 29th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
[…] last week. But, if you think this is just a business expanding, you are wrong. As Ken described in his blog, the new FrenchPod represents a new version of the Praxis Language platform which named […]
May 29th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Hm.
The new version indeed brings a nice new look and the new comment function is really a much appreciated leap ahead.
But in how far does this justify the bold sentence “Both ChinesePod and SpanishPod have also been upgraded to PLS status”?
Don’t get me wrong. I really love the CPod approach. But changing the headline from “Home” to “Me” and a slight regrouping of functions do not make a qualitative difference for me which would be in need for a new category (PLS?).
May 29th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
To what extend the Personalized Learning System is consistent with the visions behind Personal Learning Environments or whether it is even “personalized” is debatable. But without any doubt the PLS is among the most impressive language learning environments I have seen. I wrote quite a long post about my impressions about the PLS and its potential, too long to post it as a comment:
http://bloggingullrich.blogspot.com/2008/05/praxis-languages-personalized-learning.html
May 29th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
@Henning,
We have started using the term PLS to make it clear where we want to take the platform - to become an open language learning toolkit for the student. We very much believe in giving the student freedom - ala a Personal Learning Environment - but also give them learning management tools and structure where appropriate.
The PLS platform is the first step along a new series of rollouts designed from the perspective of a student with multiple (probably too many to make sense of!) learning options & tools online. Look for 2 new tabs (’Groups’ and ‘Reviews’) in the Community section over the next month to further push this idea.
May 29th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Carsten Ullrich has a thoughtful response to Ken’s post here:
http://bloggingullrich.blogspot.com/2008/05/praxis-languages-personalized-learning.html
I would respond directly to his post, but China doesn’t like Blogger and Blogger doesn’t like anonymous commenting, so:
Carsten,
Appreciate the post. There are a number of good ideas here for our development going forward. I grant there is an aspirational element to the concept of the PLS, but the direction is clear - to provide open, best-of-breed tools for the language learner in an online environment of multiple, incompatible lesson objects and tools.
I do want to challenge one point. Your wrote:
Currently, PraxisLanguage PLS is similar to any other LMS: its functionality is restricted to whatever a central authority deems important.
I would respond that we are neither in the corporate, nor education spheres. We are a for-profit entity that only generates revenue by providing value to users. In our case, the paying student is the ultimate authority on what the nature of our learning toolkit looks like. We ignore that at our peril.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:45 am
Hank, that is a good answer. It is good to hear (and clearly visible from your product) that you want to generate revenue by taking your customers serious.
That’s not the norm, though, other industries (with established user bases) prefer to lock their customers in and make their life difficult.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
[…] up, though it’s clear that they could certainly benefit from these innovations. I think a PLS, for example, would provide a lot more value to a university student than the old, static language […]
July 20th, 2008 at 5:22 am
[…] of her own learning and moulding the system around her own needs. This is the idea behind the PLS and this is what infroms our notions of mobile learning going […]
August 21st, 2008 at 2:55 am
i think the French Pod is quite cool, cause some of the language is quite easy to learn. but as you go it get harder each time. but its very helpful.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Sorry, I’m not very impressed with it for the price. As a suplement to a real french program for a much lower price it would be great but it seems rather cheaply made, no use of video, and the grammar area is a joke. The emphasis is completely on a few short audio clips and limited vocab. The grammar is the most important part of any language and even the areas they’ve actually bothered to finish are so glossed over its not impressive — yes I know the present tense is about the present would you like to teach it to me? Guess not.
If you are just going to tailor your own program there are better ways and for the price it’s not woth it. This site will not really teach you French, only suplement a real course. It lacks any structure meaning its biggest sales pitch is its biggest weakness.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Dave,
It’s very simple - don’t buy it. Spend your money on grammar lessons and good luck to you.
Ken