Implementing Elgg in HE :: Blog :: A shared learning environment?

Personal Learning Environments are a compelling concept and one that makes huge sense whatever angle you look at it from. However, I can’t help feeling there’s something missing or simply something wrong with the terminology? We cannot escape the fact that, in order to learn, we need other people. Both formal and informal learning requires human interaction – whether that be the words of someone written down, media others have created or the acknowledgement from others of our grasp of concepts.  So, personal learning also requires others. Equally, and perhaps more importantly, the PLE concept focuses on the individual learner. All well and good, but the concept (or perhaps just the name) doesn’t give great emphasis to the fact that individuals contribute to the learning of others. Whilst PLEs clearly accept the importance of the networks learners establish in supporting their own learning, there’s also the significant fact that the very nature of the emerging technologies that support PLEs also play a huge role in allowing each learner to help others learn – the community nurturing learning and giving rise to an almost greater conciousness that helps support, develop and nourish learning amongst all the community participants.

Think of this as a series of layers. There’s the learner at the foundation. The learner has their tools that form their PLE. Learners/PLEs come together and interact in communities of common interest. Each learner may be a member of numerous communities. Across all these networks, information, experience and opinion is being shared. Each individual can bring together relevant materials to meet their own personal learning objectives but surely these communities add more to learning than just feeding individuals – surely they lay the foundations for new learners to learn, for experts to further develop ideas and concepts and for practitioners to use as resources in other contexts?

I think there are two key things missing from the PLE concept that add huge weight to the power of social technologies to support learning:

• A notion – that each individual contributes to the learning of others and consideration of how that may be recognised and what tools are needed to best foster this aspect of the system
• A set of protocols and supporting technologies that explicitly enable new participants to join communities and access that shared learning

So how does the user and/or the community of learners make sense of this? Is there a whole that’s greater than the sum of the parts? Is there something wider that helps learners see the wood from the trees?

Imagine entering the blog sphere for the first time, like walking into one enormous library with people talking everywhere. You have a task – to find something about a specific topic. You have no librarian to guide you. You may have a search tool that, at best, might guide you to the right shelf. But the books on that shelf aren’t books – they’re people chatting to each other (generally in mid-conversation), having social conversations AND academic debates. Do I butt in? Who should I ask for guidance? Who’s word should I trust? How do I use this library? Where are the tools? Do these people know everything and I know nothing? Am I making a fool of myself? Should I say something, if so, what about? I don’t understand the terminology? Where should I start? What relates to what? Why are those two shelves talking to each other? Where’s the floor plan? Do they have a library catalogue? How do I use it? Can I have a guide?.

Of course, someone’s bound to have thought of all this already and, if so, this is a perfect example of what I’m talking about – when faced with the information jungle it’s like the predator faced with the herd – mass confusion blurring the focus on the target. I need someone to hold my hand and clear sign posts to  get me started and keep me going in finding the information and using the system.

So, how do online communities help their participants and those considering participation? Join a community of any sort and what might you expect if you ask for help?

• Silence – no-one’s interested in newbies
• Silence – everyone is expecting everyone else to answer
• Silence – the community is no longer active
• Silence – “I think I know the answer but don’t want to say it out loud in case I show my ignorance”
• Someone gives you a great first starting point to get you up-to-speed
• You get loads of different answers
• You get sent links to loads of stuff in loads of other communities
• You get flamed for asking
• You get told to RTFM or read all the previous postings

Equally:

• Where are the signposts?
• Where are the info labels at the end of each shelf?
• How do I tell what ‘status’ other members of the community have (e.g. who are the other beginners, intermediates or of a similar standing to me)?
• Who will act as a guide?
• Are there any prerequisites for joining the community?
• How does this community relate to other communities?
• Is there a classification system for the information available (what’s a good starting point, basic definitions, shared glossary?

At this point I’m not completely sure whether I’m introducing a new concept here or simply posting a plea for help but it does strike me that there’s a wider entity beyond the PLE and VLE – the idea of sharing learning – helping others in a mutually supportive community to foster learning and encourage participation – to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts – a shared learning environment.

It just might be possible, with the right standards and protocols, to simply view the SLE as the logical extension of a PLE – the sum of all the communities and resources a learner is interested or participating in where the dotted lines of knowledge and expertise, tasks and evidence can be brought together into an organised oneness that both supports the learner to learn and enables them to contribute effectively to the learning of others. I guess what I’m really talking about here is more a set of agreed social interaction protocols and the technical creativity required to make them work?