Here Comes Everybody

 Note: This post is one of several in this month’s Work/Learning Blog Carnival over at Manish Mohan’s blog. 

Mixing sociology with education was not something language teachers did in the past. Nor was it something that hard-headed managers did in the work environment. Recently, however, we have all been forced to look at learning in social networks and online communities. The web is creating new social structures that pertain to learning, but we understand very little about their dynamics. Sociology is providing some insights.

In this vein, I am reading the excellent,’ Communities of Practice,  Creating Learning Environments for Educators’.  The book edited by two British academics, Chris Kimble and Paul Hildreth.  Professor Kimble describes his work as  ’socio-technical in the sense that I am interested in how best to ‘manage’ the fit between technology and the social world’ and he has written on the subject of learning networks in the past.

The (2 volume) book is highly informative and thought provoking. The first volume deals with colocated (offline) CoPs, while volume 2 looks at distributed or virtual environments.

For a newcomer (like myself) there is sometimes the feeling that sociological observation tends towards stating the obvious. (This is an issue I also had with Clay Shirky’s recent book until I got into the mindset). The very concept of a CoP has left several of my management and academic colleagues non-plussed. (’If they have always existed then what’s the big deal?’) There is something slightly elusive about these concepts on  first blush.

Finding the value, however, comes down to what you’re looking for. This book hammers home the fact that social/group formats radically influence the way we learn. In a virtual environment, this is precisely what I have been looking for, so the insights are particularly welcome. Interestingly, however, many of  the observations apply equally well to colocated groups and especially for teacher training. I’m not sure why we language tachers have so studiously ignored this line of thinking for decades, but generally speaking, we have.  

 Applying it in the workplace

But there are other applications, and the work environment is one. Let me give you an example of a simple concept that I was able to cull from the book and apply in a concrete way in my own work. Volume 1 has a chapter called The Reflective Mentor Model, by Robbin Nicole Chapman. The author takes Papert’s (1980) notion of Constructionism to show that ‘people learn best when actively engaged in designing and building construcing artifacts to share with and critique by others’.

As it happens, I recently found the perfect context in which to apply this constructionist approach and it has worked very well. At the moment, we’re in the process of inducting (training?) some new hosts for the podcast lessons - we’ll be launching FrenchPod and ItalianPod. Instead of simply telling them how to do that we’ve focused them on producing ‘artifacts’, that is samples of the lessons they eventually aspire to. We encourage participatns to produce a much as possible - a lesson per day, for example. After that, we get together with them as well as practitioners of differing levels/experience, to reflect, discuss, and offer feedback.

The focus on doing has been literally very productive. Discussion are focused and concrete, the process of learning, visible. We blog as we go along, and we link to samples of the artifacts as we do so. We’ve also started recording the feedback sessions themselves and linking to those, too.  

This approach has been very beneficial on many levels. For one thing, we are now developing an archived history of the learning that can be used in the future, including learner comments and all the rest. Most of all, the new hosts are learning the skills in an efficient and productive way. They are learing by doing, in collaboration with people who have a level of expertize in the field.  

This particular initiative is no more than a few weeks old, but I can see how some of the concepts that underlie group dynamics  could be very powerful in teacher training - powerful enough to unsettle how the whole thing has been done for so long. I hope too, that I’ve shown how one simple idea was applied to a real work situation effectively.

I’ve taken many new insights from this book, but I’ve only had time to go into one of them. One thing is sure, though, there’s mileage in this socoiology stuff after all.

Ken Carroll

 There are lots of blogs on the subject of learning 2.0. They tend to focus on what is theoretically or pedagogically desirable in the New Learning, as well as the new understandings that emerge from our experience of learning on the network. This discussion remains theoretical because mainstream business and education  have been slow to embrace the New Learning. Examples of these theories in an integrated format, in practice  are not common.

Except, I would argue, with a couple of exceptions. I believe  ChinesePod and SpanishPod are actually rather good case studies of putting these concepts to work.

 An integrated learning 2.0 scenario

There is a general agreement about the need for learning environments, learnscapes, or learning eco-systems, that enable participation, collaboration, and user-input, etc. The central organizing principle should, of course, be the network, with all the attendant network qualities and the right social software. The key thing about a network is that everything is connected to everything else. Connecting the people and all the bits enables the sharing, the discussion, the dissemination of good learning practices, as well as the self-expression, the debate, and all the other things that make human learning possible. 

In this scenario, the learners are necessarily in control because networks  break down hierarchies. The role of the instructor (or practitioner) is that of modelling and demonstrating, rather than as arbiters or controllers.  

Learners are then free to select content on a self-service basis, and at the times that they, themselves choose, preferably from an input-rich environment, with a variety of ways to consume it. (Learning is multi-dimensional.) It also needs to be self-directed and happen through direct experience and personal decisions, rather than through instruction and vicarious decisions.

Within this adaptive, de-centralized, recursive, and exploratory learning environment, content needs to be cognitive, and engaging. An inductive approach that allows learners to participate, to discover meaning, to reflect, and identify patterns, takes precedence over lectures because learning is individualistic, and subjective. All the while, members of the community can communicate on various issues, and threads to pursue their own goals with practitioners and other learners.

 Sounds familiar

In fact, the scenario I’ve just described is pretty much how ChinesePod and SpanishPod actually work. Almost every feature I mentioned exists there. The approach we took has certainly been organic. Lesson topics and other resources (and therefore the curriculum) are generally informed by learner request and not complete without their comments. The environment is dynamic, evolving in collaboration with the needs and behaviors of the learners. Ultimately it functions as an online community of practice.

 Other features include the use of modular learning objects (check) that can be tagged (check) and delivered as an RSS flow (check) when needed (check). This means that the learning is just in time (check) rather than just in case. Meanwhile, the future apparently will be learner-centered (check) immersive (check) mobile (check) democratic (check)  designed for the medium (check) and the environment in which it will be consumed (check). All these elements exist on ChinesePod.

I guess I’ve made my point.

 Was all of this planned in advance? No, it was not. It emerged as we went along  - which is consistent with what network learning theories, such as connectivism, might suggest. 

 ChinesePod and social networks

I believe ChinesePod points to a distinctive type of social network, and one that will become more prevalent once it becomes more widely recognized for what it is. I would distinguish (for the sake of argument) three types of social network. First, you have Facebook, Linked In, etc, where the social object is to connect with people and serve some social purpose (finding a job, making new friends, etc).  

The second type of social network is what we might call the content communities. The social object here involves sharing information, photos, music, or something else - examples, Delicious, Flckr,  Youtube, etc. As with the first type of social network, you register, get your own page, and get on with it.

I believe we may define a third category -  the social network as an online Community of Practice that exploits the learning-friendly qualities of the network. (This can extend beyond the internet itself, for example, into the mobile context.)  The social object is learning a language, a process that requires very high levels of participation.  

The Big Bang of 2005  yielded Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and so on. In terms of learning, the results were more patchy.  The ’small pieces loosely joined’ approach has led to new ideas about personal learning environments in the manner that Stephen Downes has described. That has more to do with managing for the individual. I would argue, however, that we are the clearest example of an integrated approach to what the participative web has to offer in learning in specific subject area. I beleive the community of practice is a powerful way to do that.

Our goal now is to set the standards for the online language learning industry. This is just the beginning, but I hope we’ve taken the first steps.  

 Ken Carroll

 All advances in human communication tend to create larger effects. When, for example, our early ancestors developed the whites in their eyes, it greatly enhanced non-verbal communication. This resulted in new and more complex types of social collaboration and drove human development forward. We have never looked back, as it were.

 These days, advances in communication come from technology, rather than biological  progress. Technology, however, develops thousands of times faster than biology, so its effects can be both widespread and very dramatic. 

We see this with the phenomenal rise of social networks. We’ve suddenly realized that we can now combine unlimited access to information with unlimited access to people. A billion of us are free to connect, create, share, or re-mix content, at little cost, across a two-way global network, according to our interests. It has become incredibly easy to from online groups - way, way easier than offline - groups that can easily function as tiny cells or as enormous groups. The participative web is here.

Communities of Practice

This ease of participation and group formation is defining how we will learn online.  Look, for example, at how Wikipedia, Linux, and the open source movement all tend to function as communities of practice.

As a matter of fact, CoPs are everywhere. One reason is because the CoP offers the people plus content combination again. A second reason is that the CoP suits the medium. Learning in a CoP is not a matter of tranference from an active teacher to a passive consumer. (A traditional student/teacher relationship would work neither socially nor pedagogically on the web.) Instead, the relationships in a CoP are egalitarian and require social capital rather than authority. It simply has to be this way with loosely affiliated groups who collaborate, not on the basis of some institutional regulations, but on the basis of a shared learning objective. 

I guess I know this from first-hand experience. ChinesePod is very much a CoP. Jenny, John, and I see ourselves more as resources and less as as the instigators or controllers of the learning. Learning there is not the result of teaching, but rather  as the result of the individual’s engagement with the resources. Our role as practitioners is therefore to demonstrate the models and propagate good learning practices -  it’s not the content alone that makes the learning happen but the society that froms around it. All of this is true to the CoP spirit. Here’s an example of how learners react (see the first paragraph).

Edublogger Steve Hargadon is rightly excited about these possibilities. In this excellent summary from last week, he identifies ten web 2.0 developments that will drive learning forward. He takes, as a starting point, the recent work of John Seely Brown (from whom I’ve also borrowed freely!) and he certainly does not underestimate the importance of collaboration.  It’s a must read. My own conclusion from it all (just to be consistent) is that it is not the knowledge or the learning per se that will bring about change, so much as the collaboration that inevitably follows. 

There will be collaboration and it will change everything.

Ken Carroll