It's Not You, It’s Me: Our Love/Hate Relationship with Learning Management Systems

I know LinkedIn has gotten its fair share of deserved criticism, but like so many other social networking tools, the experience is what you make it. In general, I’ve found some pretty insightful articles and webinars that others have posted, and with Lynda and the new Jobs feature, LinkedIn seems to be adapting and evolving to meet the needs of its members. So this week, after I joined our class group, I spent a few minutes checking out some of the recent posts. As is normally the case, I found something interesting: Josh Bersin's "The Disruption of Digital Learning."

Bersin’s article is thoughtful and detailed, but what grabbed my attention was his discussion of the rise and possible fall of the almighty LMS. Bersin is focused mainly on the use of LMSs in corporate environments, but some of his points could easily be understood in terms of education. In the past ten years, I have been involved with the changing of LMSs at every university with which I’ve ever been affiliated, from the perspective of a student, a faculty member, a trainer, and an administrator. From eCollege to Blackboard to LearningStudio (RIP) to D2L to Canvas and the countless others that I have so sadly forgotten – it seems like we’re all in search of something better, more engaging, and cheaper. With the insane amount of pressure that goes into rolling out a new LMS at a university-wide level, I sincerely believe that when those decisions are made, they are done so with the expectation that all the headaches will be worth it. But, as Bersin suggests, maybe LMSs are slowly become artifacts used more for their cataloging abilities than anything directly connected with learning.

A few weeks back, I was at a teaching conference and one of the speakers made the statement that learning in the 21^st Century is much more about being able to find the answers than it is about knowing the answers. From a theoretical perspective, I struggle with this a little. Isn’t part of knowledge knowing things? But as someone who is dedicated to understanding teaching and learning, I see the value and truth in this statement. After all, memorizing facts doesn’t equate to knowledge. It makes sense that I’m a bit torn because, as I learned this week, I’m part of a micro generation that falls snuggly between Gen Xers and Millennials known as Xennials - those of us with analogue childhoods and digital adulthoods. And all of this is relevant because it impacts the way I understand Bersin’s argument.

He makes the statement that learning is all about meeting learners where they are and that’s where LMSs fall short. And I tend to agree with him. So I started thinking about the way I’ve always, no matter what names they went by, used LMSs. I’d like to think that my courses were built as dynamic, interactive sites that allowed users to learn and engage with the materials and their classmates, but in reality, I’ve been using them mostly as storage. Ugh, that’s not Web 2.0 at all. But what about the cool, interactive things I’ve incorporated like wikis and adaptive learning technologies? Oh, no, I don’t think those count either. They are linked under the LMS, but they live outside under different platforms. Maybe Bersin’s right, maybe “today’s LMS is much more of a compliance management system, serving as a platform for record-keeping."

So where do we, in education, go from here? Bersin presents several options, but in the world of state budgets, accreditation, and FERPA, we’re not quite ready for those options yet – a discussion similar to the one we had in the data analytics class. 

His argument, though, is solid. Ongoing, continuous macro-learning isn’t really possible though the use of LMSs. Some of us place a great deal of value on Web 2. 0 for learning, and rightfully so, but the problems and complications we have with that mindset go far beyond the limitations of our LMS. We’re beginning to see the importance of meeting learners where they are, engaging in active learning, and applying interdisciplinary skills across students' academic experiences, but, in the simplest terms, that’s because that’s what we do. Those styles of teaching aren’t the norm yet, and sometimes I think we forget that. It's not a matter of changing LMSs, it's a matter of shifting the paradigm. 

Bersin is right, but for us, there’s a lot more on trial here than the features of our LMS. Our universities are at crossroads far beyond simple teaching styles and technologies. As institutions, we’ve learned so much about learning in the past 30 years that we haven’t been able to (or in some cases haven’t wanted to) keep up. Maybe that’s why as I read Bersin’s article I kept thinking, well, that wouldn’t work in education. But why wouldn’t it?

In the opening of this post I mentioned that social networking is what you make of it, but I don’t think we’re there yet in education. We still hold pretty closely to the idea that our jobs are to provide information and give answers. But maybe that’s where we could learn something from Web 2.0. Maybe we should place more value on the students and their abilities to find solutions (and our abilities to guide rather than give) and engage with their communities instead of limiting them to the confines of the physical walls of the classroom or, in this case, the password protected walls of the LMS. 

In reality, and with all education theory aside, if LMS providers are giving institutions what they want, then their abilities say a lot more about us than they do about them.

Put me in, Coach! – Gaming, e-Learning, and Web 2.0

Today, as I was looking for articles on game-based learning, I started thinking about our class discussions. The idea of Web 2.0, from what we’ve explored so far, seems like it lends itself to online education in a really brilliant way. User-generated content, discourse communities, networking - so many of the foundational elements of engaging online classrooms are at the heart of Web 2.0. 

But what about gaming strategies?

Although I work closely with instructional designers, I don’t have a background in e-learning games, and I’ll admit most of it is rather foreign to me. So far, I’ve relied pretty heavily on my training in curriculum and instruction to help faculty incorporate more competition-style learning into their online classes. I often talk about using badges, resource scavenger hunts, best/most discussions, synchronous Kahoot! quizzes – those types of activities that encourage participation and completing assignments on time. Since we have multimedia specialists, I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about using programs and apps to facilitate game-style learning, until today when I was asked some very specific questions in a meeting. 

So I did a little research. I felt like a lot of what I was finding would fall more into Web 3.0. There was a lot on adaptive and machine learning being used for educational gaming, which is really neat, but doesn’t seem to meet the criteria we use to classify Web 2.0. Most of it isn’t user-generated and it doesn’t involve authentically connecting with others. Again, though, this is not my area, so I’m curious about your experiences with the gamification of learning. 

Since we also talked about crowdsourcing this week, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to ask the audience. Do you have some examples of game-based learning that fit more into the collaborative environment of our beloved Web 2.0?

Space Oddity: Creating Identities in Physical Structures and Digital Realms

Last month, I officially made the move to work from home. I travel a decent amount with work, but the majority of the time, most of what I do is done in front of computer, with a pair of headphones and a mic on, multiple screens open – one usually to a live feed of a meeting, and my iPad propped up with 10 or 15 books open on various tabs. So when there was some shuffling of campuses, and because I had been working remotely for a few months, it was an easy transition to have me work from home. We locked in the VPN, got a soft line for my phone needs, and I was up and running in time for the 11:00 AM meeting. Barring a few Skype for Business calls dropping, it’s been smooth. I sometimes wonder if people can hear my pugs snoring when I’m on a call, but I just pretend that adds to the charm.

There’s only one thing that hasn’t been as smooth, and it, luckily, has nothing to do with work. It’s the room. I can’t seem to get the space the way I want it. My desk faces a huge window that catches the most beautiful morning light, but the other things in the room just aren’t working together. Something is off, and I can’t figure out how to fix it yet. Although it doesn’t impact my work, when I walk away, I’m constantly thinking about how to rearrange the bookshelf and the cabinet and everything else. I’m trying to create a space with a specific identity, but I don’t know exactly what kind of identity I need it to have yet.

*****

About a week ago a friend of mine posted a ridiculous, terribly written article that was nothing short of an attack on higher education. The article had an obvious political bias and blamed universities for being too sensitive to students, faulting educators for, well, pretty much everything. Somewhere in the title, and throughout the piece, the author criticized the phrase “safe spaces,” saying that this need for safe spaces is “what’s wrong with this country.”  I can listen to almost any argument and empathize, but there was no evidence and no logical support. I don’t know why I read it, but it continues to bother me. Probably because I’d argue that creating safe spaces for students to explore and make mistakes is exactly what college is about. Students, in a lot of ways, form parts of their identities when they are in college, so having a safe space is a key aspect of that growth.

In fact, just today I was working with a faculty member who teaches a class on multicultural social work, and she stated several times that she wants the students to feel safe enough to know they can say the wrong thing. She’s creating this wonderful introductory exercise that asks students to reflect on how cultures perceive disabilities, and without that “safe space,” she knows we'd be doing a great disservice to those students.

*****

Considering the physical space of my room and the created safe space for the students led me to think about our class and the way spaces and identities overlap in the physical world just as they do in the digital world. Over the past almost two weeks, we’ve all been exploring and creating digital spaces and each space, although unique, contains pieces of ourselves that transcend the various platforms. In the analytics class, one of the most powerful realizations came to me early on when we read about physical monitoring devices (like Fitbit) and how they are, essentially, our data doubles – these simulacrums of ourselves.* 

With that in mind, and considering this week’s discussion of PLNs and communities, I started thinking about how we all fit into digital spaces and how we craft identities that best conform to whatever role we hope to have. Even if we keep our actual identities anonymous, within just a few interactions, we can already see traits and characteristics forming with each tweet or blog. We don’t know each other, yet I could get pretty close to guessing who wrote which new blog based on voice, topic choice, tone… all the things that make up our identities.* And that is incredible to me.

In a way, all of these spaces are connected and revolve around this idea of creating identities. Whether we are trying to figure out why a bookcase seems out of place, why a friend posted an article, or why a student wouldn’t feel comfortable answering a question, there is something very personal and very deliberate about our spaces, and that doesn’t seem to change if they are for our eyes or the eyes of everyone in our network. 

Inspired by:

*Dennen, V. P. (2009). Constructing academic alter-egos: Identity issues in a blog-based community. Identity in the Information Society, 2 (1), 23-38. doi: 10.1007/s12394-009-0020-8 

*Ruckenstein, M. (2014). Visualized and interacted life: Personal analytics and engagements with data doubles. Societies, 4, 68-84. doi:10.3390/soc4010068

and

David Bowie’s "Space Oddity," which can be made loosely appropriate for most situations. 

Beyond the Confines of Space: Reflecting on Week 1

Week 1 is coming to a close and for those of us residing in U.S., we're gearing up for a few weekdays off for the 4th of July holiday. As I typed that sentence, I got a Google notification that my mom, who lives about six hours away from me, just +1'd my last blog post. (Thanks, Mom!) And I feel like that sums up this Week 1 experience. There can be so much positivity, and growth, and education surrounding Web 2.0 when the tools are used correctly.

Yes, I'm irritatingly optimistic most of the time, but seriously, what a week! In just a few days, I've thought about networking and learning in ways that I had never even considered. I've spent time in a Twitter Chat about learning, I've read an incredible book that I probably wouldn't have picked up before, and I've engaged with my classmates from all over the world. What is remarkable is that we have this opportunity to experience this together, and for the very first time, I see that online learning can be even more connected that f2f classes.

Although I spend a great deal of my time thinking about ways to improve online teaching, I, deep down, never believed that students could connect with each other in the online environment in the same way they could in a classroom. Now, I'll argue with the best of them that learning is just as valuable and effective, but I've always backed down a bit when it came to the ability to truly share classroom experiences in the online world.

But in just a week, this class has shown me that it can actually be better, more sincere. Maybe it's because not only are we going through this process together, but we have also been given the opportunity to explore options and find what is most appealing to us on a personal level. There's an instant connection that is formed when you realize a person you've never met shares your same interests and concerns.

It's been an insightful week in #eme6414, and I look forward to the next five!

"The new technologies allow people to meet each other beyond the confines of space and of their own culture, creating in this way an entirely new work of potential friendships."

Pope Benedict XVI, as cited in Networked: The New Social Operating System (p. 127)

Green Post-its and Red Pills

It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon here in Orlando, and I find myself out of Post-its. I’ve spent the last few days with a book and can’t seem to stop tabbing sentences that I know I’ll want to revisit. Within 24 hours, I’ve posted about it on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I text a friend who does a lot of work in the social sciences, and I sent a photo of a passage to my partner because I couldn’t wait for her to get home to read it. The authors bring up so many relevant points, and I want to share them with, appropriately enough, everyone in my network.

 

The book is Rainie and Wellman’s Networked: The New Social Operating System, and networking about Networked makes me feel like I’m in some sort of meta-reality. I’m about 100 pages in, and I’m overwhelmed with the thoughtful use of social commentary and research. There’s so much in the text that I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to talk about, so I let the final green Post-it decide: Chapter 4, “The Mobile Revolution,” it is. 

In this chapter, the authors discuss connected presence, absent presence, and present absence and the blurring of public and private spaces (pp. 101-105). A lot of points are made in these few pages, but the one that stood out to me was their reference to Keith Hampton’s sociological study that found that some people use their mobile devices as “visible barriers to interaction” while they are in public spaces. I’ve often thought about this because, well, I’m one of those people.

In general, I’m a smiley, warm person, so I tend to engage with a lot of people whenever I’m out in public. But like everyone else, there are times when I want to go to my favorite coffee shop, have my espresso and cupcake, and take in everything that’s going on around me, without actually having to talk to anyone. So I’ve started bringing my tablet with me, opening it to a PDF or spreadsheet, and positioning it in a way that it looks like it’s in my direct line of vision. Totally normal behavior, right?

The part that I find so fascinating about this quirk takes me back to that meta-reality I joked about earlier. It is as though we are aware of the absent presence and are using it to our advantage to avoid connected presence. I’m not actually absent. It’s quite the contrary; I’m very aware of the physical spaces and beings around me.  But because we are so accustomed to people sectioning themselves off with technology, like the people in the park (figure 4.5 on page 106), we observe these unstated rules (most of the time) and avoid invading those manufactured private spaces. With our now ever-present devices, we’ve created social constructs that are based on shared assumptions, but not necessarily reality. 

Hmm, I feel like I should quote Habermas here - or maybe The Matrix - red pill, anyone?

Who knew a chapter about mobile devices could spark so many thoughts? I think that’s why I’m so involved with this book right now. Technology is changing so much more than the way we work or connect – it’s changing the way we behave, and the authors are able to capture and present those behaviors in a powerfully eloquent way. I've put the book away for tonight, but I flipped ahead a few pages and can't wait to see where the next green Post-it will go.