Learning to Learn in Open
Groups, Networks and
Collectives
Terry Anderson, PhD
Professor and Canada Research
Chair in Distance Education

Presentation Overview
Compelling case for use & re-use of open content

New models of connected learning

New roles for our educational Institutions


Athabasca University,
Alberta, Canada
Fastest growing university in
Canada
34,000 students, 700 courses
100% distance education
Graduate and
Undergraduate programs
All English, but many course
 Athabasca credit equivalencies with TÉLUQ
* Athabasca University
University
Master & Doctorate – Distance
Education
Only USA Regionally
Accredited University in
Canada

Values
 We can (and must) continuously improve the quality,
effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of learning.
 Learner control and freedom is integral to 21st Century
formal education and life-long learning.
 Education and lifelong learning for elites is not sufficient
for planetary survival
“Today’s learners want to be active participants in the
learning process – not mere listeners; they have a need to
control their environments, and they are used to easy
access to the staggering amount of content and
knowledge available at their fingertips”
EduCause Horizon Report 2009

The compelling Case for Openness
Imagine a world in which every single
person is given free access to the sum
of all human knowledge.
That's what we're doing. –
Terry Foote, Wikipedia

Open Education Resources (OERs)
Vision + Affordance
“At the heart of the open educational resources

movement is the simple and powerful idea that;
the world’s knowledge is a public good in general

the World Wide Web provides an extraordinary

opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse that
knowledge.”
Hewlett Foundation Smith, & Casserly. The promise of open
educational resources. Change 38(5): 8–17, 2006

OER Granularity
Diagrams, photos

Articles (Open access publications)

Games, simulations, activities

Units of learning (IMS LD)

Units and courses

Programs

Special Issue of IRRODL edited by
Dave Wiley fall 2009

OER’s are Open
Meaning you can:

Augment

Edit

Customize

Aggregate and Mashup

Reformat

Re-publish

But they need to be licensed –

not just put online

See Scott Leslie’s 10 minute video at
http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/opened.htm

A Tale of 3 books
Open Access
E-Learning for the 21st
Commercial publisher
Century 100,000 + downloads &
934 copies sold at Commercial Pub.
Individual chapters
$52.00 1200 sold @ $135.00
2,000 copies in Arabic 500 hardcopies sold @ $50
Buy at Amazon!!
Translation @ $8.
Free at aupress.org

Reading OERs
Ebooks – just around the corner?

Reading OERs
Espresso Book Machine
Binding: Perfect-bound

books, indistinguishable from
the bookstore copy.
Page-Count: 40 to 830

pages.
Speed: A 300-page book in

less than 4 minutes.
File Format: Standard PDF

for text and cover.
Books can be downloaded

from the web, or in person
from CDs, flash drives, etc.
Cost $.03 /page

Reading Green - “Each of the books printed and sold… will
save 5.8 kilograms in carbon emissions,”. Kanter 2008

Problems with OER
Little take up by conventional teachers

 Too little reward and recognition for authors
 Too few learners, by themselves, actually engage with
the content
 Trouble breaking away from dependence on text
books
 Undeveloped business case
 Too few teachers remix and repost content
 Too difficult to upload, tag and share
Solution?? Vibrant communities of Produsers??

“… issues of copyright, collective agreements and

intellectual property remain to be fully resolved before
content can be as widely shared as software is.”
LA TÉLÉ-UNIVERSITÉ (TÉLUQ) L’université à distance de L’université du Québec à

Montréal (UQÀM)
A CASE STUDY IN OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES PRODUCTION AND

USE IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN CANADA Stewart & Roberts, 2006

Our own Experiment:
Course development based on OER’s
4 Athabasca University courses:

Nursing,

Communications (Writing for the Theatre)

English for Business, &

Educ. Tech

Vastly different results

Critical variable was the attitude of the developer(s)

Christiansen, J., & Anderson, T. (2004)
Feasibility of course development based on learning objects: Research analysis of
three case studies. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance
Education,

What is missing?
Clear pedagogical goals

Culture of development, sharing

and remix
Network and social software

Solutions
Lack of Business models

Reducing dependence on text books?

How much does current production

cost?
Can we engage students to produce

high quality content?
Are ads more palatable than fees?


The Emerging Political Economy of Peer
Production: Michael Bauwens
a 'third mode of production' different from for-profit

or public production by state-owned enterprises.
Its product is not exchange value for a market, but

but use-value for a community of users
“produce use-value through the free cooperation of

producers who have access to distributed capital”
www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499

Prod-Users - From production to produsage
- Axel Bruns (2008)
Users become active participants in the production of

artifacts:
Examples:

 Open source movement
 Wikipedia
 Citizen journalism (blogs)
 Immersive worlds
 Distributed creativity - music, video, Flickr

Produsage Principles
produsage.org
Community-Based –the community as a whole can

contribute more than a closed team of producers.
 Fluid Heterarcy – produsers participate as is
appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and
knowledge, and may form loose sub-groups to focus on
specific issues, topics, or problems
 Unfinished Artifacts –projects are continually under
development, and therefore always unfinished;
 Common Property, Individual Rewards –
contributors permit (non-commercial) community use,
adaptation, and further development of their intellectual
property, and are rewarded by the status capital they
gain through this process

Open Educational Resources
Produser Model Produser/Consumer
Ex. WikiEducator Ex. MIT OCW
Open participation Restricted participation
Emergent governance Staff production
Unrestricted licensing Institutional governance
Mass growth potential Non commercial license
Mora, M. (2008)

OERs and Web 2.0 –
Disruptive Technologies
Christensen (1997, 2008) innovation and the impact of

disruptive technologies.
A disruptive technology “transforms a market whose

services are complicated and expensive into one where
simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability
characterize that industry” p. 11
Unless steered by very wise leaders organizations will

“shape every innovation into a sustaining innovation - one
that fits processes, values, and the economic model of the
organization - because organizations cannot naturally
disrupt themselves” p. 74

Short Case study: Open University UKʼs
Development of Open Learn
openlearn.open.ac.uk
Rationale Opportunity:

The risk of doing nothing when technology and globalization issues

need to be addressed.
A testbed for new technology and new ways of working

way to work with external funders who share similar aims and

ideals
A chance to learn how to draw on the world as a resource.

Brand Promotion

A route for outreach beyond current student body

Demonstration of the quality of Open University materials in new

regions.

Open Learn Example 490 units
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

Social Learn: to devise means to put
ourselves out of business - before our
competitors do!!
“For 3000 years education has made the learner adapt to

the system. SocialLearn [1] aims to reverse this and make
the education system adapt to the learner.”
Make the formal informal, and the informal

formal.
Web 2.0 tools, attitudes, learning designs

http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/sociallearn/
Martin Weller

Creative Literacies driving Web 2.0:
“The ability to experiment with
technology in order to create and
manipulate content that serves social
goals rather than merely retrieving and
absorbing information”
p. 107 Burgess, J. (2006) Learning to Blog. Uses of
Blogs Bruns &Jacobs

We are producing content - How
best to harness this creativity?
 65,000 videos uploaded to
YouTube every day
 Facebook 24 million photos
uploaded daily
 50 million blogs, 50% written by
under 19 year olds
Scientific America 229(3) 2008 &

FaceBook Home

OERs concluded
We have opportunity, tools, demand and capacity to

revolutionize the production and distribution of powerful
learning content.
But Education is more than content, how do we organize

ourselves for effective learning?

Steven Warburton, 2007

Social Learning Taxonomy of the Many
Network
Group
Collective
Dron and Anderson,
2007
29

Social Learning Taxonomy of the Many
LMS
Network
Group
Web 2.0
Tools
Collective
Semantic Web Tools

Social Learning
Each of us participates in Groups, Networks and Collectives.

Learning is enhanced by exploiting the affordances of all three

sources of social learning.
Issues, memes, opportunities and learning activities arise at all

three levels of granularity.
Tools are designed and often work best at particular levels, but

can always be appropriated
Formalize the formal

Informalize the formal (Martin Weller)


Choosing the right tool?
OR
http://www.go2web20.net 2806 logos as of Feb.16, 2009

1. Formal Education and
Groups:
 Classes, cohorts & collaboration
 Leads to increases:
 completion rates,
 achievement
 satisfaction as compared to individualized
learning
 Collaborative projects forge strong links
 Familiar logistic challenges similar to
institutional, campus-based learning
 Can operate ‘behind the garden wall” to allow
freedom for expression and development
 Refuge for scholarship

Formal Learning and Groups
Long history of research

and study
 Established sets of tools
Classrooms,

Learning Management

Systems
Synchronous (video &

net conferencing)
Email

Need to develop face to

face, mediated and
blended group learning
skills

Groups as Communities of Practice
Wengler’s ideas of Community of Practice

 mutual engagement – synchronous and notification tools
 joint enterprise – collaborative projects, “pass the course”
 a shared repertoire – common tools, LMS, IM and doc
sharing

Distributed Web 2.0 Group Tools

Problems with Groups
Restrictions in time, space, pace, &

relationship - NOT OPEN
Often overly confined by teacher

expectation and institutional
curriculum control
Usually Isolated from the authentic

world of practice
“low tolerance of internal difference,

sexist and ethicized regulation, high Relationships
demand for obedience to its norms
and exclusionary practices.” Cousin &
Deepwell 2005 Paulsen (1993)
Group think (Baron, 2005) Law of Cooperative Freedom

Poor preparation for Lifelong Learning

beyond the course

Challenges of using new social
software tools for group tasks
Control

Pacing and Deadlines

Support

Privacy

Assessment

Ownership and perseverance


Groups are necessary, but not sufficient for
quality learning.

2. Formal Learning with Networks
Networks create and sustain links between individuals

creating flexible communication and information spaces
Networks link diversity, span boundaries, enable

communication among disparate individuals
Each of us may belong to many networks

Networks can connect self-paced and independent

learners to cooperative study activities
Network:
An integrated system of resources and people
40

Networks
Provide resources from which students’ extract and

contribute information
 In school one should learn to build, contribute
to and manage one’s networks
 Transparency provides application and validation of
information and skills developed in formal learning
 Provides role models for new students
 Networks last beyond the course - basis for
ongoing support and advise from alumni and
professional communities
41

“People who live in the intersection of
social worlds are at higher risk of
having good ideas” Burt, 2005, p. 90

Communities of Practice
Distributed

Share common interest

Self organizing

Open

No expectation of meeting or even knowing all members

of the Network
Little expectation of reciprocity

Contribute for social capital, altruism and a sense of

improving the world/practice through contribution
(Brown and Duguid, 2001)

Communities of Practice
Networks
Distributed

Share common interest

Self organizing

Open

No expectation of meeting or even knowing all members

of the Network
Little expectation of reciprocity

Contribute for social capital, altruism and a sense of

improving the world/practice through contribution
(Brown and Duguid, 2001)

Groups are Managed -
Networks Emerge!
Networks cannot be controlled like a group - requires

new types of learning activity and leadership
Meritocracy nor autocracy

Need to both amplify and extinguish interactions

Facilitate quality knowledge and artifact construction

Stimulate emergent behaviours and adaptation

45

The New Yorker September 12, 2005

Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science

Building Networks of Practice in Education
Motivation – marks, rewards, self and net efficacy, net-

presence
Structural support

Exposure and training

Transparent systems

Wireless access, mobile computing

Cognitive skills – content + procedural, disclosure control

Social connections, reciprocity

Creating and sustaining a spiral of social capital building

Nahapiet & Ghoshal (1998)


Network Pedagogies
Connectivism

Learning is network formation: adding new nodes, creating new

paths between people and learning resources
“Learning can reside outside of ourselves (within an

organization or a database), is focused on connecting
specialized information sets, and the connections that enable
us to learn are more important than our current state of
knowing.” Siemens, G. (2007)
Complexity

Learning in environments in which activities and outcomes

emerge in response to authentic need creates powerful learning
opportunities
Learning at the edge of chaos

Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education

See the Networked Student by Wendy Drexler
49

Social Software works to facilitate and build
Networks
Focus is on the individual’s spaces and the way they share

and expose their space to others
Reflections (blog)

Tagged Resources (photos, links, tasks)

Accomplishments (portfolio, artifacts)

Sharing and growing interests and skills (utube

Finding friends, study buddies (profiles)

Scheduling, coordinating (calendars, shared workspaces)

Collaborative work spaces (wikis, doc sharing)

50

Network Tool Set (example)
Text
Text
51
Stepanyan, Mather & Payne, 2007

Access Controls in Elgg

Brainify.com Social tagging network for
students

Voicethread.com

Networks force Individual Ownership and
Construction
“Networks in contrast (to groups and communities) make

no claims about the type and character of the links
between nodes” Chris Jones, (2004)
This forces network participants to more actively engage

in their own network development, off loading the
responsibility from teachers and empowering learners to
build and manage their own networks

\"the network contains within it antagonistic clusterings,
divergent sub-topologies, rogue nodes\" Galloway and
 Thacker, 2007 p. 34
“There is crack in
everything, that's how
the light gets in”
Leonard Cohen
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeblet/423397690/

Researching Educational Networks of
Practice
How to sustain input beyond the course ?

What type of control is needed to support and grow

trust and provide sufficient privacy?
Control and evaluation ?

Appropriate tool sets ?


3. Collectives: Harvesting the Wisdom of
Crowds
58

3. Formal Education and
Collectives
“a kind of cyber-organism, formed from people linked
algorithmically…it grows through the aggregation of
Individual, Group and Networked activities” Dron &
Anderson, 2007
Collectives used to aggregate, then filter, compare, contrast and

recommend.
Personal and collaborative search and filter for learning

Smart retrieval from the universal library of resources – human and

learning objects
Allows discovery and validation of norms, values, opinion and “ways of

understanding”
59

Problem with very weak ties
Information, communication and interaction with those

we share very weak ties is likely of most value, because
they have access to resources and connections that we
do not. But they are also least likely to want to expend
energy sharing their data.
Collective applications work best when we contribute for

our individual gain, affording harvesting for collective gain
Ex. Social bookmarking


Collective Tools
61

Collective Examples: Determining our Effect
Analysis of blog postings using semantic and matching

techniques
Potential uses:
uncover suicidal ideation
mental health of the community
understand evolving communication genres
measure impact of popular memes
understanding and predicting early adopters
See Mishne, & de Rijke (2006)
Capturing Global Mood Levels using Blog Posts
62

Collective Example:
Terry’s Store at Amazon
Drachsler, H., Hummel, G., & Koper, R. (2009). Identifying the Goal, User model and Conditions
of Recommender Systems for Formal and Informal Learning. Journal of Digital Information, 10(2)

Explicit recommender systems:

Explicit
65

Collective filtering of stories and comments

Customizable by individuals to set quality of comments

displayed
Critical mass essential but demonstrates how informed

readers collectively filter for each other
“6,000 or 7,000 comments on a busy day that other

people write (and review) and just a dozen stories of just
a paragraph or two that we actually generate,” Rob Malda,
Founder Slashdot

Collective Examples for Educational
Application
Artifact Ranking systems: Google Search; CitULike;

 Tag Clouds: What do collectives find of interest?
 Recommendation Systems: People like me, like …..
 Wikis: Contributions from the crowd
 Folksonomies: Bottom up and emergent classification
systems
 Voting and auctions: Perfect market?
 Prediction Markets:
 Net based psychology and sociology

Hive mind? Borgs?
Group consciousness?
Collectively managing planet Earth

What does it mean to be aware of each other?

Collectives operate as mirrors to monitor and learn from
our collective selves (Spivack, 2006)
68

Are We what we click?
“If you want to understand

the new connected world and
how we choose to live in it,
Look no further than our
Internet behaviour; after all,
we are what we click\" p 203”
Tancer, (2008)
Behaviours (online searches,

paths etc.) viewed collectively
offer powerful insights into
human behaviour

Collectives, Privacy & Identity
Best way to protect personal integrity is by creating a

robust but realistic web presence.
Your actions are being mined, best to be a miner rather

than a lump of coal!
Active social net users are more socially active and

integrated than non users (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe,
2007)
Use of Blogs reduces feelings of alienation and isolation

among online learners (Dickey, 2004)
When perceived interest and benefits increase,

willingness to provide personal data increases (Dinev &
Hart, 2006)

Learning Content
Net
Blogs
E-portfolios
Calendar
Resources
Assignments
Course and social
Grades
Communities
Syllabus
Discussions?

Learning
Content
Collectives
Net
GROUPS
Blogs
E-portfolios
Calendar Resources
Assignments Course and social
NETWORKS
Grades Communities
syllabus

Web Tool Affordances
Content Presence Communi- Reflection Collabor-
Discovery cation ation
Blogs
Social Tagging
Twitter
Web
Conference
Web CT

 Schoolis not the primary learning
context. By using all the resources of
content, places, groups, networks and
collectives we prepare students for a life
and a love of learning.

Research
Content Connections

\"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes;
he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”
Chinese Proverb
Your comments and questions most
welcomed!
Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca
http://cde.athabascau.ca/faculty/terrya.php
Blog: terrya.edubogs.org