I like this idea a lot. I think learner-owned and maintained spaces are the next major advancement in teaching & learning technology. The question I still have is whether institutions should provide such tools or whether they should be provided by independent 3rd parties in the cloud . . . I lean toward the latter because I don't think learners should be dependent upon one particular institution for access to such spaces.

I like the idea that this tool flows seamlessly through your college / university experiecne, but why not go further than that. Why not make a tool that students can start tapping into during high school, store their ACT scores, compare colleges, check out different majors. Why not use the tool post graduate, allow employers to look at your "resume" section which would give them an overview of yourself which could include anything you wished to share... pier reviews, grades, honors, awards, teacher reviews, internships... all of which were housed in the tool as well.

In response to the idea that educators should use the same tools the students are already using (Facebook, e.g.):

At first glance this doesn't seem like a bad idea. When many of these initiatives are implemented, however, they often run into problems. Among other things is the phenomenon known as the "creepy treehouse."

Yes, communication, community, relationships, and more are very important to students' use of social media tools and websites. So it seems so natural to use them for education! But another important draw for many students is those sites are also places where the normal authorities aren't around. In other words, at least part of the draw of Facebook is kids can be themselves, and don't have to act the way their parents, teachers, or employers want them to act. Did your parent ever chaperone a high school dance, just so they could spend more time with you? This is the same idea. When professors use Facebook (or many other social media sites) for educational purposes, students feel more than only it's out of place. They feel it's . . . creepy.

For more on the "creepy treehouse" see:
http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/2008/04/09/defining-creepy-tree-house/

http://acrlog.org/2008/05/17/creepy-treehouse/

The nice thing about Facebook is that you can control who sees what. So if my professor invites me to be his friend, and invites me into his classroom area, I can do it but not allow him to see all of the crazy stuff I'm doing with my friends that gets posted to my profile.

And while I may blog and share my innermost thoughts with only those I've invited to my blog, the fact is that I know how to blog, and if I need to set up a separate one to communicate in a class, I can do so.

The idea is not to use these tools because they are 'hip and cool', and all the other kids are doing it. Rather, it is because students already know how to use them proficiently, and technical support for the tool is done by somebody else. It's a freebie for the university.

Tech support done by someone else? Awesome.

Students already know these tools proficiently? Let's not over-generalize.
This morning I was sent some research conducted with incoming college
freshmen in 2006 (2/3 of which were between the ages of 17 and 20). Only 1/3
of these students used social networking websites once a month or more or
more frequently. Only 1/3 read blogs once a month or more frequently. Less
than 20% wrote in their own blog once a month or more frequently.

For the full article please see:
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/kennedy.pdf

And yes, I'll be careful to not over-generalize myself. The research was
conducted in Australia, and so we have to question how similar U.S. students
are. But I think a safe conclusion is we can't assume we know our students,
based on demographic information alone. We can't assume our students are
like everyone else. We have to get to know our students, as individuals,
before we can safely recommend tools that will enhance their learning
experience.

This is true, but I'll wager there are more students coming into college that use Facebook, MySpace, IM, etc., than use Blackboard. And if even only 33 percent of the students use Facebook, at best that is 33 percent of the students who can help their peers, or worst, there is 20 percent of the students you don't need to 'train' on the new tool.

Doing a quick Google Search shows estimates around 50-90 percent of Freshman have Facebook Profiles.

http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/9/18/freshmenUseFacebookMoreThanEver
http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2008/05/12/facebook/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/30/BAGM7KRQFH1.DTL

That estimate might be high, but even if it's only 50-60 percent, I think that is significant. Especially since Facebook can do a great deal of what can be done in a Blackboard style tool. Discussion, chat, calendar, groups, surveys, quizzes, etc.

My original response questioned the idea that students would respond
positively to authority figures (like professors) showing up in their social
spaces. I guess I don't see the number of students using social networks as
counter-evidence to that claim. 100% of students could be using Facebook,
but they still might revolt in mass if a university tried to make Facebook
the new LMS.

As I've reflected further over the last couple of days I think I've decided
my thoughts go even one step further. 10+ years in instructional technology,
plus a PhD in the subject, has led me to a very functionalist perspective on
the topic. I can't count the number of times I've heard (or even asked)
questions like, "How can we get more professors to adopt Technology X?"
These questions are asked with an evangelical zeal, quietly assuming that if
professors only saw the light, true conversion would come and we would reach
educational Nirvana!

But educators use tons of technology. Most use word processing, because it
solves real and significant problems for them and their students. Most use
some form of research-support software, because it solves real and
significant problems for them and their students. If they aren't using our
favorite technology (whether it be Facebook or Blackboard), maybe it's
because that technology doesn't solve real and significant problems for them
and their students.

The history of education shows that the significant issues aren't technology
problems. They're people problems. And you can't solve people problems with
technology, no matter how hard you try. So if students aren't learning all
we think they should learn (and assuming we know what they should learn is
also a questionable assumption, but let's go with it for now) using a
technology we don't have to train them on is, at best, rearranging the deck
chairs on the Titanic.

Maybe we need to own up to the conclusion that if professors (or students)
resist a technology, then the technology just isn't useful to them. Maybe it
will be useful someday. And if it is, the technology will still be there to
support them. We don't need to be better marketers of instructional
technology. We need to be better listeners to what issues professors and
students are really struggling with, and help there first . I think we might
be surprised how little the Internet or computers would come up as a
solution if we really approached problems this way.

What about the fact that we already have a portal? A CMS/LMS or PLE or VLE (whatever we're calling it at the moment) becoming a portal within a portal... WHY so much complexity?

The challenge remains who controls (owns / operates / grants access to) the portal. If it's an open portal and students still have control over their space and their content, I think we're saying the same thing. But if it's an institutional portal and the institution is granting and revoking access to it, then it doesn't serve the long-term (i.e. lifelong) learning needs of students.

I like what you are thinking about here: that the purchasing process is part of the problem with the education market. Going through the process of finding customers, I can say that universities unintentionally go out of their way to make sure their students don't get any software they might like using. They do this by having a mindset that there needs to be campus-wide adoption of single applications, so the dialogs are entirely centered around the question "What are the consequences of forcing the entire campus to use this?" instead of "What are the opportunities in offering this to our community?" By offering a diversity of tools, learners could use something when it works for them, and use something else when that something else works better. That kind of competitive environment can only help software providers think "How do I get individual learners to be happy and engaged users?" instead of "How can I sell this to the committee of gatekeepers?"

RIGHT ON!!! This is soooo true. As a huge student fan of Blackboard I always thought of it as institution based because that is what it was. Now that you open that bag I can envision tons of possibilities.

I can't remember how many times favorite resources that were posted on Blackboard as part of a course are rendered unavailable to me when the course ends, yet as a university student you are gaining depth in a subject and resources from one class ought to flow seamlessly through your entire university experience and students ought to treat class information and resources as additive rather than fragmentary.

I like electronic documents and resources like class readings, I wish you could catalog ones you like and have used in the past so that they stay associated with your user account rather than merely with a course profile.

Study buddies would be good too. As you are part of class work-groups, the academic friendships that are forged are often quickly lost when you lose the ability to easily contact them through a course blackboard site, again the additive concept is important here. Afterall, our university education is supposed to be fundamentally additive not compartmentalized and fragmentary. The traditional CMS reinforces fragmentary and compartmentalized approaches to university course work and that is fundamentally at odds with the aims of university education.

It is interesting to me that a lot of the things we want students to do, they are already doing with tools of their own choosing. We want students to communicate with each other, which they do on Facebook. We want them to write about topics, which many of them do on their blogs. We want them to do research, which all of them do proficiently on Google. We ask them to create and do projects, which many of them do on youtube.

Everything that these LMS tools provide are merely (cheap) imitations of something that is already being used by students on the internet. And yet we ask students and faculty (and believe me, the faculty are as unhappy to use the CMS as the students are) to learn this new tool so that they can do these things in privacy. Though why we're forcing students and faculty to do learning behind closed doors is beyond me.

If I was teaching a class, I would have my syllabus online. I would set up a class area in Facebook, and discussion would take place in an open forum. Projects might take place on a wiki. Assignments would be submitted on blogs, and each student in the class would 'blogroll' each other. Any information that needed to be private (grades, personal maters, etc.), would take place via e-mail. Tests would be open book because it's more important that my students are thinking, than memorizing.

I personally feel that an institution doesn't even need an LMS any more. All of the technology is not only out there, but students already know how to use it, and are using it!

You're absolutely correct--there is an ample supply of tools that support a wide variety of teaching & learning activities. I'm still not convinced, though, that we should give up entirely on the institutional learning network. Privacy & security requirements will continue to compell institutions to protect student records (especially grades), class rosters, etc. And, for better or worse, instituitons continue to license proprietary content which they are only authorized to share with their own students. Online assessments might be another function best reserved to an institutional LMS or similar tool.

What are your thoughts?

Privacy is definitely an issue, but one that can be worked around quite easily. Grades, of course, would be done through e-mail and by default be private. By setting up a private area in Facebook (or anywhere else), you can keep the class roster private, but there are also benefits to keeping it open. If your classroom discussion is 'open', then others can read and comment which broadens the experience of the students. If there was an issue of privacy, where somebody didn't want for others to know they were taking the class, a pseudonym could be used (though of course the teacher would need to know who is who). I think this would be a rare case.

As far as the proprietary information, this can also be resolved by keeping an area that is open, and one that is behind a password. Something that can be done fairly easily in exisiting tools, I believe. So for example, I want to show my students part of a movie. Under the Teach Act I can digitize that and share it with my students, but only if I restrict it from the public at large. I could place these files in a restricted area, only allowing students to view it, and then the discussion of these files could take place out in the open.

And of course, I think faculty are realizing that with a little effort, in many cases they can use materials that are CC licensed, or in the public domain just as easy as those materials that are copyrighted. So with a bit of work, they wouldn't need to worry about this issue, or at least, not worry about it as much.

Online assessments are interesting and depend on how the tests are taken. A traditional test, where the student has 1 hour to answer questions in a closed book setting, will always need to be proctored. And a traditional LMS would work, but so would other survey and testing tools out there. You would just use whatever proctoring tools are already in place. But, if a faculty member is open to an alternative method of testing/assessment (and the value of using those methods is a whole separate topic! :), then it can become even easier. Tests could be given over e-mail, IM, or assessments might be project/group based, so students could turn in the assessment by mail, over YouTube, etc.

This kind of class was actually held at Utah State during the Spring. David Wiley held an 'open' class, and I think he ended up with over 100 people participating, and only 15 or so getting credit.

I can see a day when a faculty member gets an e-mail from the university that is nothing more than the list of student's e-mails who are in his/her class. S/he would then send an e-mail to each student inviting them to their facebook group, and they are off and running. No login issues, no trying to figure out how to do things in an LMS that nobody has used, and no worry about information going away three days after grades are in.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful questions and discussion.

Jon,

I've been thinking along these exact same lines for the last week. It's become painfully obvious to me as we've started pitching to schools, that the customer is NOT the consumer -- and, unlike the few forward-thinking oft-blogging decision makers, most school technology leaders are not very familiar with the LMS needs of their students and faculty.

Looking at it from the side of an LMS company, it's an interesting situation, in that you first have to educate your customers about the pain their students and faculty are experiencing before ever talking about how you want to solve that pain. I can definitely see how it would be easier to target your feature set at the buyers and influencers, no matter how detrimental that might be to your product.

Anyway, most of my other thoughts have already been hit in the comments. A student-oriented LMS would push the student's data wherever they wanted it to be. Whether that's posting to Blogger, notifying Facebook friends, pulling from Flickr or Picasa or YouTube... while I don't think EVERY facet of the LMS can be outsourced to other web services, I believe that the LMS (or its predecessor) will become more a connecting tool between different technologies.

I have seen "user" centered development vs "customer" centered development in various software projects. I assume that is what Jon Mott describes above. A couple of years ago, I saw a senior project in the Information Technology major in the School of Technology. The project was centered on the "user", the student, rather than any "customer". What they created from my view was far better than any other CMS I saw just by UI design decisions alone. Compared to other commercial products, their idea of how a CMS presents and operates provided a view into how a learner will keep up with their responsibilities to learn rather than just a publishing environment for content. I admit it may not fit exactly in the definition of a CMS, however it took on a whole new vision of what any online learning environment should be catering to.

The project, in my opinion, took a further benefit in the UI to show how students and faculty relate to each other in terms of how each party operates and thinks. I apologize that I can't clearly describe it further, but possibly I may take it on as a senior project myself.

Jon, this is a good spin on the topic. At our institution, we often use the phrase "student centered" in discussions around the college initiatives, department activities, projects, etc. that we work on.

Clearly, CMS's are marketed to institutions and to faculty members as primary customers to provide a way to do common tasks that already exist, but to do them online. As many CMS's enter into the K12 area, another customer is parents. Yet, we still, at the end of the day, are talking about the primary user being the student, aren't we?

It has been brought up before in some other blogs that we should be teaching and using tools that students will end up seeing in the private sector as they start working. Usually this argument is made for using SharePoint or other more "business" oriented tools rather than traditional CMS's. I'd prefer to view the use of a CMS in teaching and learning to not only take care of the "clerical" types of things related to teaching in a defined semester, course, etc. but perhaps more importantly to provide students with the skills they can use no matter what system they will end up using in the future. In this regard, teaching students how to leverage the use of technology in their learning should be an important factor here. How to better communicate, create, share, collect, embed, and tag their learning experiences so that they are building lifelong technology skills that will enable them to be productive citizens.

So I think your right, that there appears to be some need around tools that enable students to easily take notes (Bb Backpack?), tag resources for research (Bb Scholar?), more effectively communicate (Bb Connect?), more effectively manage what is new or due or past due (Bb NG Dashboards?), and collaborate and communicate with others outside of a course (Bb NG Community System?).

You'll notice in the above paragraph that I made an attempt to connect various Blackboard software to the capabilities that learners really need in the parenthesis. What is still not clear to me is, in fact, your central question in your post. Are these tools there for faculty and the institution? Or are they really there for students to use to manage their learning?

All in all, I see a need for students to be educated on HOW to use technology for learning. They appear to be clear with how to use it to connect with friends on Facebook, access YouTube, etc. But they don't appear to have a set of deliberate *personal* educational tools that help them achieve success in their learning... Perhaps the Web2.0 tools already exist, but there is a lack of motivation or understanding of how or why they would use these tools to manage their learning?

In part, the problem here is the "institution of education" itself. What I mean here is that education is broken down from K-12 and into higher education in time and location based semesters and classrooms. Learning is not viewed as a contiguous process. It's viewed more like a checklist on your way to a degree, rather than a lifelong endeavor. So in a way, we attempt to connect educational elearning tools under this paradigm.

I think we need tools to support this paradigm, for right now, but I'd like to see elearning tools that break away from the bonds of the typical closed, semester-based, educational framework from which we continue to operate from.

Eric

Jon,

I agree with you. I see this same phenomena in other arenas, such as health care, where the actual consumer is not the customer. For instance, you do not choose your insurance, you choose your job and they choose your insurance. This makes you the consumer, but not the customer.

However, using that same analogy, we must remember that institutions have the responsibility for providing a certain level of education, which is measured. What you describe is kind of a decentralized, privatized version of learning - which is fine - but also enters the arena of supply and demand. I for one, am a high demand learner - I demand a lot of information and seek it out. Most individuals are what I would call either survivalists or adapters. Survivalists do not excel or prosper within a learning environment. They do just enough/want just enough to survive within an environment. They do not seek to change, adapt. They simply do enough. Adapters are different because they will adapt/change in order to excel within a learning environment. However, they will soon adapt to new environments and will not continue to demand learning as they leave the learning environment. If you decentralize the learning center, who does it serve best? How does it fit within a structured environment like an educational institution?

One thing a survivalist needs, for instance, is a structure that provides for them at a low level (scraps) by enforcing some sort of rule of learning. Adapters need structures as well to provide pressure and boundaries so they know what they need to change.

I like your list of 4 items and would like to hear more. I think that if you could find the steps before those and practical ways to implement them, you have something quite powerful. Where do you see these being implemented - what level?

Where learner-centric tools get implemented is an interesting question. I'm increasingly inclined to think that the ideal location for such tools is in "the cloud" where users manage their own content & experiences. Students are (increasingly?) likely to take courses from multiple institutions and (particularly after graduation) likely to participate in a variety of learning and training activities which may or may not be supported by a course management system. Having a learner-owned and managed space where learning activities can be catalogued and archived seems like an important step in the right direction.

I have participated in over 20 online courses from 2 universities and 1 college. I have used blackboard with two of the schools. Generally speaking, If the content was managed by the learner it may not be as organized as it is when managed by a central authority (institution). Access to content and relationships can continue through a well managed and publicized alumni site. The transition can also be smooth when doing it this way. Western Governors University has done very well with the transition from student to alumni and continuous learner. http://alumni.wgu.edu. The alumni site offers more opportunities for learning. hope this helps.

Good point about the organization of content. I agree that teachers / instructors / professors are best qualified to organize content. Experts / professionals will always play the key, central role in the educational process. What I'm suggestign is that we supplement the technology that supports institutions and teachers with software that is more learner-centric that supports learner activities . . . the best of both worlds.

Very insightful. I like your 2nd and 3rd comments around collaborative environments. I think an e-room or gathering place for groups to create work, or work on projects in a shared environment where the use (leaner) grants access similar to the way outlook shares access in either with "author" or "editor" features.

I would also like to see integration with other existing tools such as Google docs and other web-based services that student already use to enhance their learning. The growing question among many students is why have anything at all besides free web-based services? A good personal learning environment should integrate with, not replace, what people are already using.

I agree that an ideal LMS should have the features that Jon mentioned. I also agree with Jeff that an ideal LMS would integrate well with existing web-based services. Some of the types of services that I think should be supported include:

* social bookmarking
* RSS aggregation
* citation management
* note-taking
* calendaring/scheduling/organization

I don't think a traditional CMS needs to duplicate these functions; most are are freely available elsewhere. However, students like "one-stop shopping". I believe that learning software should provide a convenient portal for students as they conduct research and other learning activities.

Kimberly,

Great additions. I like your notion of "one-stop shopping," particularly as you've expanded on the idea on your blog. I also love your collection of tools. Great stuff.

Jon