Scenario 2020: what will the virtual and real learning landscap look like?

In the run up to the Onderwijsdagen I was asked to think along in developing scenarios for the learning landscape in 2020. The resulting four scenarios were presented as a keynote at the Onderwijsdagen. Our group was asked to fill in the situation for an institution directed curriculum and a student owned VLE. It was a bit of a puzzle to match these two conditions but we came up with the following history:
Europe goes through an economic crisis in which Asia comes out as a winner. In the field of knowledge they truly are competetive with European education. This calls for drastic measures. The European education system is forced into a period of harsh competition. European governments rally and decide on a strong standardisation of curricula. A Bachelor degree in Psychology consists of the same modules in every country. To encourage competition and exchange students can choose to take each module wherever they please, they can attend a local university, take a module abroad or follow an online course. They receive coupons for their life of learning. (Naturally this also creates a trade in coupons). All courses are allowed, as long as they are certified. Institutions can employ coaches from a pool of teachers, which also have to be certified.
We took the exchange of standards much further, there will be more than just email and RSS protocols, many more exchange standards will have been agreed upon. There will be standards for the delivery of content, various communication tools and of course testing tools. This will allow students to 'plug' their course into their personal virtual living environment (PVLE) (facebook extended). As soon as they plug in their course the widgets required will be available for the student in their PVLE. In this age of fierce competition these PVLEs are being offered by commercial parties, Monroom is just an exmaple we came up with, but there are many more. Students are not interested in institution VLEs as they are constantly taking modules in different institutions, sometimes even simultaneously.

So this was our view, now all we need is 12 years of patience to see whether we got it right...

A number of students created a video to illustrate what 2020 would look like according to each of the four scenario's. Our video can be found here.
The overview of all scenario's (including the newspapers) can be found here.

One VLE: the preferences from Social Sciences

Here at Utrecht University we are in the process of deciding on one VLE for the university. I have been busy collecting opinions of teachers, students and supporting staff in the previous months. Our findings and some comments students made can be found here.
Some of the most surprising comments: they would rather have clear courses which are easy to navigate, teachers using the same headings for the same matters, don't mix personal with study related matters, the teacher is respected for his expertise: his/her contributions should be clearly distinguished from the contributions of fellow students...

Virtual Knowledge Centre, the new VLE for academics

Yesterday I had a very interesting presentation on the state of affairs regarding the PARTNER project which has been set up by Utrecht University Library. They showed me a very amusing video, but I can't find it on the web. I wrote about their start up session with Etienne Wenger years ago...

I was especially interested because it seems to offer a meaningful alternative to competence based learning for academics. In their approach students all are busy becoming members of the academic community. Society demands knowledge workers that can cope with large amounts of information critically. To achieve this goal students are offered a Virtual Knowledge Centre in which they collaborate on constructing knowledge and building products. Alumni remain members of the community and are requested to remain involved. Experts in the field are welcome to join and contribute to the the Knowledge Centre. In my opinion this can be a frail connection, so it will be important to offer them enough in return for their input into the community. The teachers, experts, alumni and fellow students review the products produced by the students.
The project group realises that critical review is an important skill which is required in the learning process and especially in assessment if you use this approach. The presented pedagogical model is intended to be added parallel to the existing curriculum and the existing assessment. This makes it a safe option, but also could be regarded as a non-assessed extra by the students, which could die a slow death just like the portfolio did.
All in all I find it a very interesting approach to a new type of learning which is specifically suitable for an academic education. The technical solution has been built in Sharepoint, which seems ideal because it offers the very important groupware facilities which are so important for creating a community.

Presentation Blackboard 9 - The next generation

Today Emmanuel Clemot, a Solutions Engineer from Blackboard came to Utrecht University to show off their plans for the Blackboard 9 - Next Generation product. We even got a prototype to look at, a short video will be available on the Blackboard website soon.
A few things that struck me:

Process
- First common APIs so both products can start using intermediate tools (community, content, portfolio and outcomes system).
- Then moving features into Blackboard 8 (is already out)
- And finally building a new shell to access either Vista, Learning system or one of the other tools mentioned above...
That really means as an institution you can choose to keep the old VLEs up and running and migrate gradually. I am not quite sure I would want to, but it is possible.

Look and Feel
Slightly more confusing than Blackboard, but not a lot. Teachers will be quite happy, they will recognise the system. The drag and drop looks good, the contextual menus are alright but they do hide options until teachers find them. Fortunately NO annoying Java Applets (they have learnt their lesson).
I had a big laugh about the WebCT view and the Blackboard classic view feature.

Features
What I like (some of its already in Bb 8) is social bookmarking (Scholar) continued, the facebook connection (though for Holland it is only a start), wikis and blog in the code, add a number of mashups, social learning space in community system, personisable pages, course homepage with more than only announcements (should Sakai or some other VLE sue them? ;-).
They claim Content System allows for student collaboration with versioning and comments. We do not use it at present and it made me rather curious.

All in all a good presentation and an interesting option for Utrecht University, certainly because it allows teachers a careful transition.

The first news regarding Bb next generation 9.0

On Willem van Valkenburg's blog I ran into the very first news regarding the long awaited next generation product presented by Blackboard. This was posted on a blog maintained by the Midland User group. Blackboard 9.0 is what was code named Omni and is the product that is supposed to satisfy Blackboard and WebCT customers. This is all very preliminary and I wonder if Blackboard aporves the fact that an institution has been leaking information, they can be rather secretive.
The release has been planned for January 2009. As far as features are concerned, this is what the Midland User Group lists on their blog:
[start quote]

New user interface - sections that can be dragged and ddropped around on the page, different pane for editing and viewing.

Engagement
* bought a communications company, so looking at provision of bulk SMS, email and voice messages through Bb
* page shown with wiki and chat in one area - very much the look of learning objects!
* iGoogle integration
* facebook integration
* RSS

Assessment
* instructor and student dashboard - shows you what is new, who is late, who has submitted work,
* assignment tool redesigned to match more clearly to learning outcomes, can deploy rubrics for marking
* portfolio - new system taking best of all three available systems, launch later than Bb 9.0

Openness
* APIs opened up
* enable multiple platforms to run together - moodle and sakai can be added seemlessly (single sign on) and with access to course documents across both
* iPhone interface, other mobile devices in planning

[end quote]
All in all quite interesting although it doesn't quite feel like a next generation VLE to me. It probably is a next generation product for the Blackboard company though. A few thoughts:
- I hope the drag and drop isn't relying on Java applets running on the client, we saw what issues that gave in WebCT Vista.
- iGoogle is nice, facebook is not all that interesting for the Dutch students, linking to Moodle and Sakai is surprising, mobile support was inevitable, otherwise not a lot of surprises.
One of the major things that does not make it a next generation VLE is the lack of the support of learning in a community through groupwork,sharing materials, openness to outsiders (becoming a member of a worldwide (scientific) community). There are a few items there but it will take a little more. On the other hand it will also take more to change the way teachers teach....

Implementing a new VLE as a motor for change???

On the new surfspace site I ran into an interesting article in the University of Twente magazine (sorry, it is in Dutch). In this article Pløn Verhagen and Petra Fisser contest the very frequently stated causal relationship: New VLE > Improved pedagogy.
I can't agree more: if you wish to change teaching, change the teaching and don't expect teaching to change simply by implementing a new tool. Of course if you do wish to change the teaching one aspect of the change process is making sure that the necessary tools are available and in working order. However, do not start with the tools and expect the rest to change automatically.

Research into a new VLE for the OU

Steven Verjans from the Open University in The Netherlands has been researching their demands for a VLE. Strangely enough this is taking place as they just have starting deploying Blackboard. They find that Blackboard is, however, strongely based on the classroom metafor and not suitable for their teaching. Students don't meet in a classroom in the OU setting and learn independently and self paced.
Quite understandably the OU is not thinking on a short term adoption, but rather thinking three years ahead.
They appear to have a preference for an open source framework approach allowing for webservices. I do get the slight impression at this point the preference is based on technological innovative solution, rather than students' basic demands.

Thoughts on the broad VLE, from VTE to open groupspace

Conference lunches are a great place to develop ideas. Here at Online Educa Berlin I had a lunch with Robert Jan Simons and Wilfred Rubens and we discussed the demands on a VLE at Utrecht University. My position is that we need a broad solution, as offered at Wageningen University. On the one end a classic VLE for teacher use (I suppose you could even describe it as a Virtual Teaching Environment, a VTE) which offers teachers the control they need to offer instruction. On the other end we need an open groupware environment which will offer students the room to learn, accumulate and share knowledge. Which of these extremes you wish to use depends on the pedaogical model in use in the course. In fact I know courses in which both models are used in the same course but at different points in time. Through api's (webparts building blocks, etc) the classic VTE/VLE and the groupware environment can be connected. Additional external web2.0 tools could also be integrated in this groupware environment which offer connections to the outside world. This is essential in creating an open environment for knowledge sharing.

Article on the Next Generation VLE now definite

It is now finally official: My article on 'The New Generation VLE' has now been made public. This article is based on the findings at the Educause conference in Dallas Texas, last October. The main message is that there are the first beginnings of a new generation of VLE's. They can be characterised by the fact that they are no longer a 'walled garden' dominated by the teacher, but rather a more open environment in which students and teachers can work together with persons, materials and other webservices outside of the classroom or even institution. And of course the VLE can be approached through various devices and allows for modern delivery of media.


Various vendors and institutions are working towards this solution, but none of them are there yet. There are promising developments in the field of Open Source and commercial parties (Blackboard especially) and the adoption of a Service Oriented Architecture could also be very helpful in working towards an integrated VLE with all these functionalities.

The article can be found on the WIKI at: http://82.192.89.182/~wiki/index.php/Hoofdstuk_Nieuwe_generatie_ELWO

I am sorry to say that the article is only available in Dutch at present. I am afraid that I will not find time to translate it in the near future. If anybody does require an English translation, please let me know.

A wiki elsewhere...

When thinking about a new generation VLE, it became clear that are different roads that can be travelled to attain this goal. Typical for early adopters is to go out on the web and find a tool that does it for you, and there are a lot of them around.
I was shown the wiki http://bbamusic.wikispaces.com which was set up by the Burr and Barton academy in the free wikispaces environment. Quite amusing to have a look around and to read their ear training assignments.
In fact I once, long ago, gave two honors students a space in wikispace to write a public essay. It can be found at http://fswhonours.wikispaces.com I must give it a read.

The great advantage of using external facilitues is you can choose just the one you want at no cost. The great disadvantage is that they are not imbedded in your technical and administrative infrastructure. Think about backups and account administration for example...

A pictorial representation of the Next generation VLE

So following up on my last post: what should the next generation VLE look like?

To give you a clue I have added a pictorial representation of the next generation VLE.

In my opinion it should offer engaging visual content and interaction on matters which interest the net-generation student (for example climate change). It should allow networks to be formed between students, teachers, but also outsiders e.g. professionals, experts and students from around the world. It should be open ended and allow interaction with all sorts of tools like blogs, image and video repositories, social bookmarking (hence the tagcloud) , blogs, (lifelong) portfolios and profile sites and many, many more. These tools can be incorporated using webservices (and RSS feeds are included as an example). All this should be delivered not only on a computer but on all sorts of mobile devices...

If you feel I have left anything out please let me know!

A pictorial representation of an old generation VLE

When writing my chapter on the next generation VLE I felt the need to collect all the information I had amassed into an image/schema. This is the first image I built:

It is a pictorial representation of the older generation VLE. This is a stereotype, in fact most VLE's are already much more modern than this representation would suggest.They are strongly text based. The teacher controls what happens in the VLE, interaction is mainly the teacher telling the students what to do, there is no room for interaction between students unless the teacher decides it might be necessary. The VLE is a closed environment and offers no real interaction with the outside world. Simply getting a guest lecturer into the system is quite a job...
And all this is built to be delivered on a computer, and nothing else....