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An Open (Institutional) Learning Network

April 9th, 2009 jonmott Leave a comment Go to comments

I’ve been noodling on the architecture of an open learning network for some time now. I’m making a presentation to my boss today on the subject and I think I have something worth sharing. (Nothing like a high-profile presentation to force some clarity of thought.)

I wrote a post last year exploring the spider-starfish tension between Personal Learning Environments and institutionally run CMSs. This is a fundamental challenge that institutions of higher learning need to resolve. On the one hand, we should promote open, flexible, learner-centric activities and tools that support them. On the other hand, legal, ethical and business constraints prevent us from opening up student information systems, online assessment tools, and online gradebooks. These tools have to be secure and, at least from a data management and integration perspective, proprietary.

So what would an open learning network look like if facilitated and orchestrated by an institution? Is it possible to create a hybrid spider-starfish learning environment for faculty and students?

The diagram below is my effort to conceptualize an “open (institutional) learning network.”

Open Learning Network 2.0

There are components of an open learning network that can and should live in the cloud:

  • Personal publishing tools (blogs, personal websites, wikis)
  • Social networking apps
  • Open content
  • Student generated content

Some tools might straddle the boundary between the institution and the cloud, e.g. portfolios, collaboration tools and websites with course & learning activity content.

Other tools and data belong squarely within the university network:

  • Student Information Systems
  • Secure assessment tools (e.g., online quiz & test applications)
  • Institutional gradebook (for secure communication about scores, grades & feedback)
  • Licensed and or proprietary institutional content

An additional piece I’ve added to the framework within the university network is a “student identity repository.” Virtually every institution has a database of students with contact information, class standing, major, grades, etc. To facilitate the relationships between students and teachers, students and students, and students and content, universities need to provide students the ability to input additional information about themselves into the institutional repository, such as:

  • URLs & RSS feeds for anything and everything the student wants to share with the learning community
  • Social networking usernames (probably on an opt-in basis)
  • Portfolio URLs (particularly to simplify program assessment activities)
  • Assignment & artifact links (provided and used most frequently via the gradebook interface)

Integrating these technologies assumes:

  • Web services compatibility to exchange data between systems and easily redisplay content as is or mashed-up via alternate interfaces
  • RSS everywhere to aggregate content in a variety of places

As noted in previous posts, we’re in the process of building a stand-alone gradebook app that is consistent with this framework. We’re in the process of deciding which tools come next and whether we build them or leverage cloud apps. After a related and thought-provoking conversation with Andy Gibbons today, I’m also contemplating the “learning conversation” layer of the OLN and how it should be achitected, orchestrated and presented to teachers and learners . . .

While there’s still a lot of work to do, this feels like we’re getting closer to something real and doable. Thoughts?

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  • My first observation in looking at this diagram was how most of the learning activities are outside the institution, while schooling/administration functions are within. I think it's a good example of opening up learning within the constraints of the existing system. While it may be better to have community-based assessment, as Nils suggests, the current reality is that institutions own the accreditation process. The sweet spot between open and controlled is constantly moving as technology, the economy and society change.

    Great post!
  • staffing1
    Great stuff, nice and interesting post .useful to the students thanks for you.
    www.staffingpower.com
  • Karen
    Love this amalgamation, diagram and conversation, Jon, thanks. Wondering if you are including the organizational/departmental conversations and productions in the shared 'cloud' segment.. I see not just personal blogs, social networking sites and portfolios there, but the 'newsworthy productions, features of students interning, traveling abroad, winning l'Oreal Brand competitions, 'in' activity, departmental projects student or teacher led, etc' more visible and landing there as well... The audience, once we have the shared materials in the cloud, becomes the world, and there is so much material already captured in audio-visual and on latent departmental pages about what's happening among "LDS" students and faculty that the world doesn't see..shared only among ourselves. Will that all be represented in this diagram and in the evolution of the shared material and open course developments? So I guess I'm asking if the personal publishing tools is inclusive enough or if there needs to be a "university publishing tools" gear also--BYU NewsNet, BYU TV, departmental audio-visual stories and news on individual BYU sites"--all of which also could be extremely beneficial in the cloud. Much is online, but online in BYU-centric circles that need to be broadened to the world-wide Net.
  • I really like this old piece by Downes http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/06/open-source-assessment.html that I think challenges your notion of putting the assessment tools in the institutional section of the diagram. I'd opt for more robust and public assessments and move away from the need for test security (privacy of the individual test results is a different matter).

    However, I think you can move away from tests, and toward more community-based assessments. We are exploring that with the Harvesting Gradebook, which you can test drive here http://wsuctlt.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/test-drive-the-harvesting-gradebook/

    My other suggestion would be to move the portfolio (at least for the student) out of the institution and into the cloud. When the institution runs the portfolio it seems to be a creepy treehouse. If the student can work where their learning community has gathered the portfolio seems more authentic.
  • Nils--

    Great feedback. As you can tell, this is a work in progress, so I very much appreciate your insights. I've been following your work with the Harvesting Gradebook, so I'm glad to make a connection with you here.

    A couple of thoughts . . .

    First, I agree that more of the assessment we do should be more open and public. But I'd argue that there's still an important place for traditional quizzes and exams (especially low-stakes, formative quizzes). I'm ecumenical when it comes to assessment--I'm in favor of a broad range of assessment types in the context of a course or program. There are some courses (or elements thereof) for which tests are appropriate. Regardless of my assessment preferences, there are many faculty members at my institution who administer high-stakes exams in their courses. Additionally, we have new legal requirements for our distance programs to ensure that students who complete assessments are who they say they are. Accordingly, we need to provide a secure assessment environment. That's the piece that I think remains inside the institutional network.

    Second, I agree that student portfolios should live outside the university network. I placed it on the boundary in the diagram because we still need a way for faculty members to evaluate portfolios and record confidential information about them (akin to evaluating student work in a gradebook). Some programs also keep archived versions of portfolios or artifacts for long-term program evaluation and improvement purposes. These institutional components of the portfolio process are what I think belong within the university network.
  • Ryan Lanham
    Jon,

    I found it realistic and useful. Would be curious about your views on the future evolution of the model.
  • Dave
    You wouldn't need to worry about the integrity of the data if the data actually belonged to the student and not the institution. Now that would be forwarding thinking!
  • Jon, you've captured much of what we've been working on at www.nixty.com. Your diagram is spot on. We've got a few other tricks up our sleeve, which should amplify the network effects that you can imagine would arise from this type of architecture.

    Our goal is to launch late summer. If you are interested, then please sign up for our beta at nixty.com.
  • Hmmm. . . looks great to me. So does this mean we can expect a blog post soon on the "learning conversation" layer? :)
  • Jon, I have a lot of thoughts on this. Too many to put into a comment. I will say, however, that you are right in line with my thinking. The core of this is getting a simple framework together that will let people start building on it so that we can start seeing these ideas take off.
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