Atul Sabnis :: Blog

This is becoming really interesting.Here is a representation of what I wrote hastily in the post below.

(Funny, that I was building this graphic, while Michele wrote her post, asking for one! Sue was also looking for a graphic, a tool actually, to draw her idea out). While this may help bring a larger conversation in context, I believe it also lends itself to create a body of knowledge (BoK).

Before that, a few notes about this intelligent RSS and about the graphic:We all subscribe to blogs, so we sure know how to to do that. We can also mark individual posts to track comments on them. (I know this happens in a few RSS readers - RSSBandit, for example, and I am missing it sorely since I shifted to a Mac).Here is how I think this "Intelligent RSS" thing might work. (Apart from what RSSbandit is able to do, all the stuff hereafter is imaginary).

1. In our RSS reader, we set up something called an "Intelligent Topic Feed", or ITF. We pick a topic, Michele's topic called "How Can We Facilitate Conversations BETWEEN Commenters on Our Blogs?" for example, and add it to the ITF called, let's say, "Facilitating Conversations".
2. We set the ITF 'depth' to Level 1 (more about this level thing, in a minute).
3. What the ITF now does is tracks all comments on Post 1 (see image). So all comments on Michele's post are delivered to the RSS reader. Skelliewag's idea still holds true and let's assume that commentators are conversing with each other on the post.
4. Then, Michele's post gets a pingback (trackback).
5. The ITF automatically adds the posts from the new blogs (e.g. the post on Kenfinity and Designing for Civil Society, viz, Post 2 and Post 3 in the image).
6. The ITF now begins to track the comments on Post 2 and Post 3.
7. As you would expect, there will be further pingbacks on Post 2 and Post 3. This is where setting the 'depth' of level comes in. For example, if I would have set the depth level to 2, the ITF would automatically add all the posts that link to Post 2 and Post 3. This has the potential to become unwieldy, therefore, the option to set the depth.
8. (While we are imagining things) I could then be asked by the ITF if I would like to add further posts (manual setting) to the topic and I could then track a larger conversation. I could choose the posts that I want to track and leave the others for the "dumb" RSS to pull.

Potentially confusing, but I hope, it isn't too confusing.What has fascinated me about this idea is the potential about the thoughts that this ITF can contain. It has a chance of becoming a significant body on a particular topic and can be used as a learning aid.If the RSS Reader becomes even smarter and is able to create a document about this topic ...

RSS

Michele Martin of the Bamboo Project has asked in interesting question about “How Can We Facilitate Conversations BETWEEN Commenters on Our Blogs?” The post has some interesting responses...er...including mine. In some form or the other, most commentators do ‘converse’ with other commentators on a post -- however it is all informal and unstructured. It is usually like, “I don’t agree with what X is saying though Y has an important argument about what Z wrote above, and my take is....” X, Y, and Z all being commentators on a post, i.e. Christy Tucker makes an interesting point about the nature of blogs in that:

Part of it boils down to the fact that blogs really are designed more for the conversations around one person's ideas than around each other's ideas. Conversations that are really in-depth are often more suited to become actual posts, either on the original blog or on the commenter blogs. And blogs in general are more for parallel dialog than direct dialog;…

And I am in agreement -- after all a blog is an individual’s take on topics -- if there is a conversation that is to occur between many people then there is always the discussion forum. Sue, on the same post, notes an observation about what happens when a “thread” is implemented in place of comments.

RSS to the rescue?

WordPress has an interesting feature (now Blogger has it too, thought most ‘Bloggers’ haven't implemented it), where it is possible to subscribe to a feed of the comments on a post (or the entire blog). If we go by Christy’s thought -- which I completely agree with -- and in-depth responses to posts are presented as posts on the commentators blog, then we have a small problem of tracking the entire conversation. What we have is a multiple posts as responses -- and someone who is tracking the topic, now needs to go many places to see what people are responding.

Is it possible for RSS to become slightly more intelligent such that it tracks (a) the comments on Michele's post, (b) the response posts to Michele's post, and (c) the comments/responses to the response posts on Michele's post?

As I write this, I am already imagining the load on my RSS reader -- yet, am sure I don’t mind a bit of manual intervention to teach my reader where to stop.

What I am visualising is a very rich body of knowledge on that one topic/subject/thought which can be a relevant educational aid.

Guess we will have to wait for RSS 2.0

In his post, Facebook for eLearning evaluations - testing, Brent Schlenker wonders if the TV Trivia Quiz application on Facebook can be made available for subjects like Astronomy and Geography.

Basically what we have is multiple choice testing with feedback. The other cool thing is that the community gets to make up the questions. Now how cool is that? You can also ask a friend...I like that feature. I wonder if we could ask the developers to make it opensource so that any content/topic could be used? Astromony? Geography?

What's more interesting is the sub-title to his post - One step closer to the Facebook LMS. Which does bring up yet another interesting question - what stops LMS-kind of products (especially the open-source kinds) to build social networks a la Facebook? The answer is but obvious - why would the 'student community' move from Facebook and leave all its cool apps like superlatives, poke apps, likenesses, and such. And assuming Facebook did evolve into the LMS that we all think is a possibility, what stand would the educational institutes take - given the privacy issues with Facebook?

Clark has written an quick note about the work he is doing in the area of mobile learning. He says:

It’s been fun, as I’ve had to expand my thinking on how to ‘think different‘ to accommodate mobile learning. And you really do need to think differently, as traditional instructional design won’t likely lead you to the opportunities. Yes, you might get job aids, and even distributed applications (capturing data from the field), but the whole ‘learning adjunct’ thing might well be skipped, for example.

Sticking to the traditional form of instructional design will be limiting, not only to mobile learning, but to most Web 2.0 applications. There is definitely a significant opportunity to exploit from the coming-of-age of social software. However, if these are to be used beyond keeping in touch with your friends, it has got implications on the instructional designer's role, like I said earlier:

The instructional designer’s role will have to cover a bit more than Bloom’s and ARCS and the lot, in this very pervasive, collaborative and socially hyperactive way of learning.

I see an interesting debate (an on-going debate, more like) about the use of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook being considered as practical eLearning tools - even as eLearning platforms. A few educational institutes have begun using these tools (the article I quote from below, is more about ELGG, however)

Some schools ban social networks for wasting classroom time or to protect students from weirdos. But, as part of a wider trend toward less top-down teaching, other institutions are putting tools like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook on the curriculum -- and teachers are saying: "Thanks for the add."

ELGG is in a different league altogether - its popularity is suspect - because students may not necessarily choose to use ELGG as well as their MySpace or Facebook. But I digress. Even if these tools (MySpace or Facebook) are being used for the purpose of learning - the instructional paradigm for their use will be very different from the learning delivered via conventional Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).

As instructional design for computer-based learning found its unique adaptation through different media and delivery platforms (even the move from CD-ROMS to the Web was significant transition - the web made online learning more interactive, it affected design paradigms, it allowed content to be more dynamic and data exchange more real-time), so will it have to find it's way to pervade 2.0 technologies.

There is more interaction than before and we have multiple methods to manage and leverage that interaction. That - and the changing attitudes of the new learners is the new instructional designer's new problem.

Raju Rishi makes an interesting comment about how the student community is "Always Connected, But Hard to Reach". The article is a good read if you are interested in the administrative side of eLearning (management of the eLearning process?). What caught my attention is:

And that last bastion of institutional communication—the .edu portal—has arguably given way to social sites like MySpace, Facebook, or Daily Jolt. College and university administrators no longer own the communication channels central to student life. They can, however, learn to become vital participants in the communication methods that students prefer.

This is very interesting (if the college and university administrators do wake up to it) given that Facebook is now open to third-party developers and will become a more vibrant and dynamic place to be. What would be even more interesting is if Facebook allows custom implementations like what the ELGG is doing. In-house implementations linking to the facebook portal. You would think that the Facebook Platform does this, however, it talks more of developing applications on Facebook. That will change the face of the .edu Portal.

PS: Come to think of it - this is an opportunity for ELGG!

As Web 2.0 lends itself to eLearning 2.0, there is a significant social angle to learning. This means that, as learning happens lesser in isolation, i.e. just the ‘online course’ and becomes more collaborative and participative, it just helps having heuristics to evaluate web-based communities.

If you read this not-very-long article and notice the five heuristics of interactive creativity; selection hierarchy; identity construction; rewards and costs; and, artistic forms, you will notice they almost lend themselves to some key learning theories. In eLearning 2.0 it will have impact on how online learning is designed.

The instructional designer’s role will have to cover a bit more than Bloom’s and ARCS and the lot, in this very pervasive, collaborative and socially hyperactive way of learning.

I guess, the Instructional Designer 2.0 has to come of age before eLearning 2.0 can. eLearning can now, possibly bloom beyond Bloom.

It is potentially Gagne’s theory on mental models and a good paper is here (PDF) but what got me interested (being an avid Ayn Rand reader) that this article uses the concept of hierarchy of knowledge in a rather simplistic way.

If you are parent, or a soon to be parent - this is required reading. If you are an instructional designer, it is even more pertinent - because it may help you establish relationships as you teach concepts - and use the ‘basic’ concepts to build more complicated concepts:

 

Imagine what would happen if a first-grade teacher, instead of teaching her students addition and subtraction, attempted first to teach them algebra—or, even worse, in the name of intellectual rigor and in an effort to offer a program of exceptional quality—decided to dive right into calculus. Obviously, the students would learn nothing. Being unable to grasp the basic operations of mathematics with specific numbers, they would be completely unable to grasp the idea of a variable that abstracts away from any particular number—let alone advanced equations involving complex algebraic calculations.

 

There is definitely an order of knowledge and I am definitely looking forward to the next three parts of this article.

If you have interest in eLearning in some form, instructional design, or learning processes, I would guess this would be equally relevant to you. Luckily - they have an RSS feed, and no - you don’t have to be a <em>capitalist</em> to read this magazine. Read it, just because it may help build your concepts further.

Are you certain? Are you confident? Are you both? Or, are you either confident or certain? I checked up the meanings of these two words a while ago - and it seemed to me that there was a ‘certain’ overlap in meaning. Why then, is Confidence-based Marking (CBM) now often referred to as Certainty-based Marking? According to the LAPT (London Agreed Protocol for Teaching) page at UCL:

The word "certainty" seems to carry much less baggage then "confidence". The term "Confidence-based marking" has sometimes suggested to people that confident personalities are being rewarded. This is not so. Those who are rewarded are those who can distinguish between reliable and unreliable answers. In the context of "How certain are you that this is right?" or "How confident are you that this is right?” they are equivalent. But "Certainty-Based Marking" is perhaps less open to misinterpretation.

While the use of a word is more of an interpretation issue, the system is very rewarding as it makes a learner ensure that they are clearly stating their premise of their choice of an answer. It may not eliminate guesswork altogether (and I don’t think that is CBM’s purpose either), I’d guess it allows the learner to pay just that little more attention to a ‘guessed answer’ before going to the next question. The basic ‘poster’ from UCL is the simplest, if you would like to understand CBM (PDF File) If your interest gains momentum, visit the LAPT page at UCL for more technical papers and links.