Harnessing the Power of the 'Massive' - An Innovative Approach to Participation, Digital Citizenship and Open Learning Online
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Presentation for the Learning with MOOCs conference being held at Columbia University 2-3 Otober 2015
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Harnessing the Power of the 'Massive' - An Innovative Approach to Participation, Digital Citizenship and Open Learning Online
- 1. Harnessing the Power of the ‘Massive’ An Innovative Approach to Participation, Digital Citizenship and Open Learning Online Peter Bryant @peterbryantHE Head of Learning Technology and Innovation London School of Economics and Political Science, UK And my absent colleagues Chris Fryer and Darren Moon
- 4. What if Informal Community led Non-linear Democratic Problem solving Collaborative Chaotic Aspirational Emancipatory Open learning could be…
- 7. "Cuddling with multiple devices" by Jeremy Keith - Flickr: Cuddling with multiple devices. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cuddling_with_multiple_devices.jpg#/media/File:Cuddling_wit h_multiple_devices.jpg Learning digital citizenship or learning through being a digital citizen?
- 8. Introducing Crowdsourcing the UK Constitution • 3 stage project run by the Institute for Public Affairs • Not an ‘educational’ project for them • Very short time frame to ‘go live’ • Took participants through a hacking phase, a refining phase, a preparing phase and an event (hack) • Entry/exit to the project were flexible and open • We applied our on-line learning design thinking to how to deliver the outcome https://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/16477885072
- 9. Combination of learning approaches Integrating participatory practices Engaged individuals and groups No readings, no course No lecturer, no teacher, maybe a guru No sequence Learning was an expectation What we built https://www.flickr.com/photos/leolondon/451273331
- 10. Where we finished over 1500 users; over 725 idea submissions; over 125000 idea views; over 10000 comments; over 25000 votes cast; an 8500 word constitution; from more than 1m words written. https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/1470015134
- 11. What happened Our ‘crowd’ produced a written constitution that was agreed upon and refined from over a million words of debate online Our community grew over time, rather than declined. At the final voting stage over 55% of the community participated (over 2 months into the project) 80% of participants stated that they had ‘gained new knowledge’ and 70% stated that they ‘gained new skills’. 88% of participants were influenced by community discussions and 50% of participants stated that working with others directly contributed towards their learning experience. 50% of participants changed their mind about civic engagement through the participation in the community. Over 70% of participants believed that the project changed their perceptions of the LSE (in a positive way) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lseinpictures/13267403613
- 12. CHALLENGING SENSE • Defining Massive • Community of Learners • Contesting Open Redefining Massive Community of Learners Contesting Open
- 13. Defining Massive Massive was at the core of the design • Redefine what massive means • ...in number. • ...in representation. • ...in activity. • ...common experience How do you leverage the massive as more than a number? How do realise that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?
- 14. Community of Learners ...or a learning community Extending a community of practice to become a learning community Community formation, citizenship, sub-communities, membership and ownership Momentum and sustainability Variable learning trajectories, schema and pathways
- 15. Contesting Open No beginning or ending/opening the structure Opening knowledge and learning to the community Digital citizenship as open as the modes of engagement Opening the academy Embracing non-linearity Open/open not open/closed
- 16. What happens when you empower a community to learn and engage in social change? Does this build an informed digital citizenry? Can this be more than civic engagement? Problem solving, capacity development or change?
Editor's Notes
- Background The stars aligned: 800th Magna Carta, General Election, Scottish Referrendum and UK has no formal, written constitution Prof. Conor Gearty, renowned human rights lawyer and scholar; LSE Institute of Public Affairs World leading centre for public policy research Established history of innovative civic engagement initatives: Guerrilla Lectures, data visualisation et al. Constraints: Time (7wks from PID sign-off to project launch, incl. design, develop, recruitment) Out of comfort zone: not a course, no students, no certificates – completely different set of motivations; No library access, journal access, paywall access (FT, LexisNexis etc.)
- Unlike many other nations, the UK has no singleconstitutional document. This is sometimes expressed by stating that it has an uncodified or "unwritten"constitution. Much of the British constitution is embodied in written documents, within statutes, court judgments, works of authority and treaties. Magna Carta 800th anniversary
- A digital citizen refers to a person utilizing information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government participation. K. Mossberger, et al.[1] define digital citizens as "those who use the Internet regularly and effectively".[2][3] In qualifying as a digital citizen, a person generally must have extensive skills and knowledge in using the Internet through computers, mobile phones, and web-ready devices to interact with private and public organizations.
- LTI integrated our on-line learning design thinking into the project in order to leverage and magnify the power of the community and the ‘massive’, empower participants to engage in debate, identify solutions, learn and come to a common agreement about the need for and the content of a UK Constitution.
- Drew on approaches such as peer learning, incidental learning, digital pedagogies, crowd learning, and ideation. Integrated participatory practices such as hacktivism, making and digital citizenship to help form a community Learning became incidental, tacit and exploratory. There were no readings, there was no ‘course’, no lectures, no explicit theories, just a series of challenges, a semi-gamified process of engagement and a framework to create, motivate and empower the community. There was no teacher or lecturer, although we did have the intellectual clout and leadership of Professor Conor Gearty. There was no specific sequence of learning or activity, although because the ‘course’ was delivered through the LSE there were very real expectations by participants of learning at a higher level No pre-requisites, no certificates; Opportunity rich, demand-light; Task-based, collaborative model; Supported learning; Curatorial approach to content; Progressive, tiered approach; Planned, disruptive interventions;
- Lots of caveats and learning points: 1500 Users Conversion rate of 9.35% is impressive – 100/(15991*1497) Possibly higher, once taken into account single user + multiple devices Geography England ~89% Scotland ~ 7% Wales ~3% NI <1% Gender 70% Male 30% Female Age 18-24 – 8.6% 25-34 – 23.53% 35-44 – 15.01% 45-54 – 17.19% 55-64 – 13.02% +65 – 22.65% 700 Ideas - duplicate ideas, conflicting ideas, irrelevant ideas: Voting resulted in ~50% sift of ideas Engagement stats are good: 20% of total sessions >10mins 9% of total sessions >30mins 45% of sessions >5page views, 28% >10 20% >15 16% >20
- Our intention was to encourage participants to bring to the project (and not be bound or prejudiced by) a wide variety of schema, learning trajectories and experiences. Participants were involved in developing and structuring their own learning (or lack thereof). They chose when to engage and when to withdraw, and most interestingly, when to return. Participation was not a linear process within the platform. Participants chose to ‘dip in and out’ of the project at a variety of different stages, with some returning for voting or for refining to defend or promote their ideas and other orphaning their own ideas to engage with others. The project experienced a significant boost in participation when voting was introduced as a priority task in the final weeks. These humps of participation run counter to the statistical experiences of most MOOCs that have a large drop off between registration and commencement of the course, then a progressive decline in engagement as each week progresses (Kizilcec, Piech, & Schneider, 2013; Ross, Sinclair, Knox, Bayne, & Macleod, 2014). This project experienced the exact opposite with numbers progressively increasing over the course of the platform being open, including a huge bump in the last two weeks (over 30% of participants joined the project in this time). There was no penalty for joining late, although there was a task attached (the sheer volume of contributions and the breadth of the debates) which for some was simply too big (around 15% dropped out for this reason). The discontinuity allowed participants the opportunity to enter assuming that the answers or solutions had not already been found and if they had been already offered, they were presented with an opportunity to challenge, support or edit them.
- Learning elements of project not obvious, but visible to user & essential to success: 76% had expectations of learning elements 75-85% learned at least a little about topic areas, 51% some or a lot 88% were influenced by community discussion in their contributions / responses (22% often, 66% sometimes) 50% changed their mind on how citizens can engage in / collaboratively create change in politics 60-80% gained at least some skills, 40-60% somewhat or a lot strong association between being influenced by community responses and gaining skills → the model at work? further tests needed, but data points towards learning as crucial to engagement strategy & success of project Many MOOCs are massive only in terms of numbers How do you leverage skills and experience, along with collective intelligence and debate? Using the massive to engage in ‘Open Social Research’ and informed learning
- Learning elements of project not obvious, but visible to user & essential to success: 76% had expectations of learning elements 75-85% learned at least a little about topic areas, 51% some or a lot 88% were influenced by community discussion in their contributions / responses (22% often, 66% sometimes) 50% changed their mind on how citizens can engage in / collaboratively create change in politics 60-80% gained at least some skills, 40-60% somewhat or a lot strong association between being influenced by community responses and gaining skills → the model at work? further tests needed, but data points towards learning as crucial to engagement strategy & success of project
- Encouraging and supporting non-linear engagement Low barriers to entry and exit Scaffolding (ideas to refinement) but not privileging structure Learning elements of project not obvious, but visible to user & essential to success: 76% had expectations of learning elements 75-85% learned at least a little about topic areas, 51% some or a lot 88% were influenced by community discussion in their contributions / responses (22% often, 66% sometimes) 50% changed their mind on how citizens can engage in / collaboratively create change in politics 60-80% gained at least some skills, 40-60% somewhat or a lot strong association between being influenced by community responses and gaining skills → the model at work? further tests needed, but data points towards learning as crucial to engagement strategy & success of project
- What are the educational affordances that arise from empowering a community to engage in social change or betterment? Can an informed digital citizenry be developed from the interaction of individuals and communities coming together from a variety of backgrounds, skill levels, knowledge bases and expertise? Does this new form of digital civic engagement create an environment where participation is not simply encouraged but facilitated and where the crowd becomes the instrument by which society can be improved through the actions and the learning being undertaken by individuals? How do we enhance the effectiveness of the pedagogical design to harness the power of the massive, a large community of engaged participants working together in order to solve a problem, effect change or develop capacity?