Ken Carroll

Gary Harpst defines a business as a fit between a purpose and its execution. The purpose explains the organization’s existence. It informs strategies and objectives and is generally defined (or refined) by a sub-group within the organization over a relatively brief time period. Execution, then, is the difficult part because it involves everyone in the organization, 100% of the time.

If you tie purpose and execution together you can end up with a very effective organization. This is where the connectivism  comes into it: The  more that people are connected to the purpose, the better they perform.  

Unfortunately, a tight fit between the two is actually quite rare. This is true in small organizations as well as large ones if the leadership fails to articulate its purpose. It explains why individuals are so often abstracted from management decisions or unclear as to what is expected of them. Now, however, technology offers us a solution.

The network model helps here

Looking at purpose and execution as a network is beautifully simple. What’s more, we have the tools to exploit it and make information flow as it should. We also know that collaboration is not just a matter of simple data exchange. As Chris Yeh points out, with web 2.0, we can go way beyond that. For example, we have the ability to capture semi-structured data (the stuff that is in peoples heads) as conversations on blogs and wikis and share it as we wish. Add to that the emergence of mobile, cloud computing, etc, and a new basis for organizational behavior emerges that will radically change how we manage and collaborate. [See Venkatesh Rao and his  concept of the cloudworker.]

Like all change, this one creates its own problems, and information overload is the most obvious one.  The solution: a clear organizational purpose helps us identify  information that is meaningful/revevant. The rest should be ignored.

 Even org charts can be interesting

We see something similar at the level of the organizational chart. Omar Khan describes the org chart as a web of conversations that need to happen. With links, nodes, and stuff flowing through them it looks like a network again. From a conversational perspective, this makes sense, but it also poses a question: How do org charts as hierarchies fit into a flattened network?

I am not sure they ultimately do. Western management is grounded, to a large extent, in Frederick Taylor’s seminal The Principles of Scientific Management, published in, erm, 1911.  Our management philosophies do not fit very comfortably with full-on network principles and this is a problem.

Eductional philosophy is not the only thing in need of change. Western management is being challenged by the network. When hierarchies meet networks, hierarchies lose. Its time to revisit some of the fundamentals of our management practices.

PS, you can hear both Gary Harpst and Omar Khan talk on these subjects on Anna Farmery’s excellent The Engaging Brand podcast.

Ken Carroll

Some discussion this week on this George Siemens article. (See Graham Attwell, Stephen Downes.) He asks if the power structures in our education system are willing to fully embrace the network and the adoption of the PLE. He believes they will not, and I agree.

Most of what George writes is eminently sensible. To explain the causes for this phenomenon, however, he takes his cue from Evetts, Mieg, and Felt. They  conclude (for $66, btw) that industrial corporations are the source of the resistance:

Education - moving from the high ancient ideals of developing better people to the development of employees for corporations…

The idea that our educational systems are in thrall to the corporations and designed to serve them, strikes me as neo-Marxist fantasy. It is a specter that has nothing to do with the real world and cannot be examined in any real sense. Apply the map of ’power structures’ on anything and you can conjure up  gruesome power relations - sex, gender, football - and construe them whichever way you want. Evetts and company would need to provide some kind of concrete evidence of such a proposition, but it is almost certain that they can do it only at the level of ideology. 

And if corporations are controlling the whole thing then our educators are either witless or complicit. It looks like an easy abrogation of responsibility from educators to blame those sinister men in neck ties. Nor are ’control, accountability, manageability’ the invention  of corporations - those have a much longer history than that. (It pretty much describes 2,000 years of confucician imperial examinations, for example.)

I also think I would know if the subjugation of our educational system was on the corporate agenda. I am an active, conservative, pro-business, life-time student of the discipline who has worked with people from the corporate world for decades and never heard nor seen the slightest reference to it in that milieu. (And what % of the US population actually works for a corporation anyway? 15%?) How could it have developed such a powerful hold over education if no-one talks/writes about it or even mentions it?

The real causes of resistance 

The cause of institutional resistance to the PLE is simpler, and more direct, and lies much closer to home: the academic class itself. Even the most liberal educators will turn conservative if you threaten their status or their futures. They have plenty of reasons of their own to resist change. There is nothing sinister or conspiratorial about this. People do resist change.

But an even bigger cause, to my mind, is the issue of complexity. Our institutions are not configured to make deep, transformational change en masse. In terms of process, such a widescale change in education would involve a massive level of complexity that no-one really understands and is all but untenable in institutions that were designed to teach, not to change.

The historical roots of our educational systems are long and tell a hierarchical story. That’s just the way it was. I am as much a proponent of flattened organizations, autonomous learning, and a full embrace of the network as anyone, yet I am an unrepentent capitalist. I also believe that most educators would like to see change if it didn’t threaten them, if they unbderstood it, and if it were manageable. No conpiracies. Sometimes what you see is what you get.

The effect on e-learning

All of this explains the patchy state of e learning. On a recent visit to the US, I asked Curt Bonk about the state of e learning and he replied ‘What is the state of human development?’ Touche. Often, e learning is being used simply as a new way to automate old processes. This has sometimes relegated it to the level of a weak compromise between the old ways and the network’s true potential. (In other cases, it’s being done rather well.)  The new learning medium needs new messages. If we want to see the true benefit of the network we have to embrace it fully. This requires that we understand what it can and cannot do.  Probably no-one has done more in terms of advancing that understanding than George Siemens, through his work on connectivism. I guess I just don’t agree with him on what is causing the bottle necks.

Ken Carroll

Via Stephen Downes, Judy Breck believes, and I agree, that the economic crunch will speed the advent of network learning.

Getting a college education in the US is absurdly expensive, but like property, or the stock market, the education bubble too will burst - the financial institutions simply no longer have the money to fund the madness.

Change is on the way. Consider how the Open Courseware movement is giving way to the idea that, in essence, a university education could become available (including Open Accreditation) free of charge. This is not, of course, a done deal, but  economic necessity will force us to look more closely at these issues. And crucially, we can now consider such possibilities because of the network. The network doesn’t just change the way we learn from a pedagogical or behavioral perspective - it also changes the economics of the production, distribution, and consumption of educational products and services. The network has the potential to dis-intermediate the inefficiencies in the system and change it fundamentally. That is what will and should happen.

So, it is fair to ask about the value (in the economic sense) of a US university education.  Given their origins, it is unsurprising that university cost/benefit may be out of sync with the broader economic reality. Schools are hard to manage from a cost perspective. I’ve sat on the board of a privately held language school since 1996 and I’ve seen that, without the strictest approach to cost-control, for example, the customer can end up paying for the institution’s inefficiencies. In a state-funded university with a closed system and little financial accountability, I can only imagine what goes on.  (Even without seeing the books, we could probably guess, though.) And as we all know, there are many other reasons why our educational institutions can allow their fees to, er, bloat.

 What I am not saying

Let me be clear on something.  I am not proposing that  the educational system be turned over to free market forces (though there may actually be a case for it).  Nor am I saying that our universities suck and that educators are bad, etc. What I am saying is that the network is exposing the economics of the old system and it doesn’t look good in the context of the tough times ahead. It is the economics, too, that will determine the extent of the changes we are about to see to a far greater extent than will the ideas, the pedagogy, or even the technology.

The fact is that the network can replace large chunks of the old system at a fraction of the cost  but it is the economics that will determine how it configures. Judy mentions textbooks, scaling up good teachers, etc, but there are endless other ways. And Judy is exactly right when she suggests the power of mobile learning in this scenario. But there are, in fact, entirely new conceptions of what a university education should be that go way beyond this. This is not news, but that conversation is going to get louder.

 Our example

It was this economics of the network concept that brought Praxis together as a company. I spend my days trying to figure out the economic reality of schools, of networked learning, and of how to create more value for our learners-as-customers. I would argue that we are slowly but surely solving the puzzle - thanks, of course, to the network.  A Praxis Pass, for example, offers full access to 4 languages for about 80 cents per day. Meanwhile, the more we scale it up, the cheaper it can get, to the point where we could offer access to dozens of languages (or other subjects) for a few cents per day. Nor is there any reason why we could not do that (assuming we reach reasonable scale) make money, and even give the service away free to entire regions where people were too poor to pay for it - parts of Africa, India, or China, for example. We are a small organization (58 people) but it is entirely possible that we  could do those things. It may demonstrate the broader potential of the network in this context. We just have to think about this differently.

The point is that networked learning is in its infancy, and so are the economics of networked learning. There is an awesome power out there waiting to be unleashed if we are willing to reconfigure how we think about all of this. The coming economic collapse will provide the push. After that it will be time to be very open and very creative.  This isn’t edupunk -  this is real life. I doubt if any of us would have liked it this particular way, but hey, get ready for the era of networked learning.

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

 Although they come in an infinite variety, all networks are ultimately about nodes and connections with things (like data, for example) passing through them. (The flow can be two-way, such as on the internet, or a cell-phone network, or one-way, as with broadcast radio.)

Apart from information flow, networks exhibit other learning-friendly properties. We see these clearly on the internet. From random access data retrieval, to an endless array of presentation formats, the network allows us to learn in unique ways.

Networks have emergent qualities
Sometimes these properties are more than the sum of their parts, and emerge in ways you cannot predict. A thousand networked computers are not the same thing as a thousand computers without the connections. The connections mean that data can be shared and the learning can begin, which is good because human beings are pre-disposed to do just that if the environment supports it. I find it remarkable to see how people instinctively look for ways to collaborate (a powerful way to accelerate learning) in these contexts, so the trick is, obviously, to design for the possibility.

This chicken/egg relationship between the technology and the pedagogy (nature/nurture) has been a revelation to me. There is an element of simply starting out with an effective network and working from there. (The origional design must, obviously, know what its purpose is.) The academic team at ChinesePod know that the learning properties are sometimes invisible, but inherent to the network, so often it is a matter of uncovering them. What emerges, then, is not just the knowledge itself, but the knowledge also of how to go about learning it, and of the knowledge of how networks lead to learning in context. The learning is a product of the interaction, rather than something pre-packaged . 

Learning groups versus networks
Learners necessarily behave differently on a network than they would in a learning group. Stephen Downes recently pointed out how groups tend towards unity, coherence, segregation, and ‘focus of voice’. They require hierarchical organization, a central authority, and a pre-determined sequence of activities. They act in a synchronized way, as with a school, for example, because the knowledge to be imparted exists in advance (it is the teacher’s possession). The upshot is that a particular viewpoint is magnified by the perspective of the teacher, or external agency such as a textbook. 

By contrast, the ChinesePod or SpanishPod users are not  really  groups at all. Those networks are about diversity, autonomy, openness, and individual pursuit. Although there is constant and endless interaction in the communities, no two of the users follow exactly the same path. In this sense, the learning is not managed by some external agency, but by the individual, based on his own needs. This, to me, is important. I beleive the element of choice, personalization, and autonomy will inform  the standards of the next phase of online learning.

Ken Carroll