Confounding matters, most if not all discourse centers on ill-defined issues. When writers are sharing a wide spectrum of often conflicting opinions, summarizing becomes extremely difficult if not impossible especially if the goal is objectivity. When writers themselves aren’t clear about what they’re trying to say or aren’t taking the time to accurately represent their ideas, summary becomes a guessing game. Thus, one person’s summary of what writers A, B, and C intend may not be the same as another’s.

I’ve been a participant in a forum on headphones for years, and at one time I was quite active. Many of the discussions were lively, and the liveliest usually centered around opinions on a given set of cans (headphones). The action begins when someone starts a thread in the headphones forum, praising or condemning a specific model: “I bought headphone X, and I think it’s overpriced for it provides the best sound quality (SQ) in its price range.” This first message is called the OP or original post/poster. If the cans are popular, then both sides weigh in — defenders and attackers.

Defenders are usually the ones who’ve invested in the cans and swear by it. Attackers are usually those who bought or tested it and found it disappointing. In between are the legion who lean to one side or the other for any number of reasons. The moderator’s role is to keep the discussion from wandering off track topic (OT) or deteriorating into trolling (baiting) or a flame war.

Because the factors that impact SQ are complex, opinions are useless unless writers clarify their equipment lineup, sources, methodology (e.g., single-blind test), etc. And even when these are spelled out, there are is still an almost infinite number of other variables to consider. Thus, an active discussion on the merits and demerits of headphone X could heat up very quickly with participants misinterpreting, failing to take message context into account, or ignoring other often hidden key variables.

Perhaps the biggest problem is the latecomers who react to a single post without making the effort to review the OP and the thread. They either repeat what others have said or make OT comments. But it’s hard to blame them because the thread may have grown to 50-100 pages or hundreds of comments within a day or two.

In this environment, summaries are often inaccurate and are conscious or subconscious misinterpretations to advance a writer’s opinion. A few attempt to keep the discussion on track by summarizing relevant arguments, but these, too, tend to be inaccurate and increase rather than decrease the chaos.

This is a real-world discussion forum on headphones, but in many ways it’s similar to forums in academia, politics, and other fields. I bring it up because it raises some questions re the academic use of summaries in managing online discussions.

For me, the most important question is, Who is the summary activity for? If the answer is “for the teacher,” then I’m assuming it’s for the purpose of evaluating each student’s participation. If this is the case, then I believe it’s inefficient. There are far simpler and perhaps better ways to measure participation.

If it’s “for the student,” then my next question is, What is the learning goal? If the answer is to teach them how to summarize arguments on a controversial topic, then I feel there are simpler and perhaps better ways to do this.

If the answer is “to increase student engagement in discussions,” then my next question is, What is the purpose of the engagement? Or put another way, What are the desired outcomes of the engagement? If the answer is “the ability to engage in lively discussions” then I’d question whether the means have become ends, in essence hijacking the actual learning objective. In other words, a lively discussion, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily serve an objective unless the experience and content is reflected in a summative performance such as a paper, presentation, or exhibit.

Finally, if the answer is “to make it easier for students to participate in and learn from discussions,” then my next question is, “Who does this justification serve? And this question leads to even more questions: Are we empowering or enabling when we, as teachers, take on the responsibility of reading and comprehending for students? In a very real sense, reading and keeping up with long complex discussion threads is extremely hard work, but isn’t this part of the sweat that goes into learning? Even as we try to help, could we actually be harming students by robbing them of the opportunity to experience authentic learning in all its chaos and struggle? What is the difference between facilitating and enabling, and on which side does summarizing fall?

In my writing classes, I assume that the ability to detect OT comments as well as personal attacks and trolling are part of the critical thinking process that includes logic and evidence testing. In their papers, I also expect students to summarize, as accurately as possible, key pro and con arguments from online class discussions. I discourage direct quotes over a few lines and require summaries even when they’re included.

I’ve raised a lot of questions, and these aren’t rhetorical for me. They’re real.

In a classroom setting, the pool may include required and optional resources such as readings, videos, etc. In SBL, the learner:

• Is exposed to a specific situation (the scenario)
• Is presented with possible responses (choices)
• Applies relevant knowledge and skills to choose a course of action (decision)
• Receives some form of feedback on their selection (delayed, immediate, or consequential) (ibid.)

Some of the key operational critical thinking and learning skills are listed in the Experiential Learning Center’s “scope” phase:

• Observe and critique
• Act/react to events
• Investigate and decide
• Analyze and predict
• Analyze and repair
• Identify alternatives and advise
• Plan
• Design, implement and test (“Create a Scenario,” 1.21.09)

These terms provide a useful way to frame SLOs.

The ELC’s other key phases, with excerpts, provide instructional guidance:

• Design: Your students will learn best by working on a project that they might really encounter on the job. Divide the scenario up into discreet tasks that the students will have to complete.
• Develop: Provide enough information to students so that they will be able to work relatively independent of you.
  • Overview: Usually a memo from their supervisor explaining the task, and assigning the work.
  • Requirements.
  • Resources: Web pages, reference materials, etc., that aid the students in completing their task.
  • Debrief: Questions that will help you guide a discussion after the task, and help solidify learning – an opportunity for reflection!
• Assess: This … is “evidence-centered design.” Every step of the way, you are focused on ensuring you can make the most important aspects of student learning visible to everyone involved. [Includes] just-in-time feedback — or formative feedback. You can also engage students in the metacognitive practice of tracking their own learning by making all assessment rubrics available to them, and providing experiences for them to rate each other’s performances using those rubrics. (ibid.)

I like this inductive definition (from “Application of Case-Based Learning in Class“) of what students do in SBL:

Students work collaboratively in small groups to analyze the case. As they do this they consider what they already know and what they need to know. They generate hypotheses and develop a set of learning goals for each part of the case. Between class meetings, students look up information as they work to understand the case. The instructor’s learning objectives are revealed to the student toward the end of the case. These kinds of cases are highly student directed, so they are not usually accompanied by a set of questions to be answered.

Here’s a similar definition with an emphasis on process instead of outcomes:

Scenario based learning (SBL) exposes the learner to a given situation …. SBL asks the learner to apply knowledge relevant to that situation by making choices and attempting to follow a desirable path that demonstrates their[sic] ability to achieve a successful outcome. Instead of right and wrong answers there are success and failure paths. (“Lesson 13“)

In this definition, the focus is on authenticity:

A pedagogical approach where learning is based in an authentic scenario, reflecting real-life situations and enshrining all the complex elements needed to approach a certain issue where specific skills and knowledge will be covered. Through authentic scenarios participants learn by doing …, which is in accordance with the idea that knowledge is not independent of the context the learner is involved in. The best learning condition occurs when scenarios are close to the real-life, as they are likely to be enough complex[sic] to make participants develop all the skills and knowledge they need to acquire. (“Scenario-Based Learning,” 2.7.12)

The teacher-student roles in SBL/PBL are flipped:

The students assume increasing responsibility for their learning, giving them more motivation and more feelings of accomplishment, setting the pattern for them to become successful life-long learners. The faculty in turn become resources, tutors, and evaluators, guiding the students in their problem solving efforts. (Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction)

Put another way, “In e-learning, it is the description of a task or a job situation from the learner’s perspective” (“Scenario Based Learning,” 10.27.06), or, “In scenario-based learning, the student is in a role where the skill she’s learning will be used effectively in the real world” (ELC, 9.10.08).

SBL is often used to simulate corporate, legal, or medical contexts, but it can be applied in nearly all learning situations (Edward Errington, “As Close As It Gets,” 2011, p. 2). It “refers to any educational approach that involves the intentional use, or dependence upon scenarios to bring about desired learning intentions. Scenarios may comprise a given set of circumstances, a description of human behaviour, an outline of events, a partial story of human endeavour, an incident within a professional setting, or a human dilemma” (ibid.).

In all this procedural information, we may need to remind ourselves that the goal for SBL is the same as for all learning, and that is transferability, or skills and knowledge that students can use in the world beyond the classroom. Thus, authenticity or the use of “real-world problems to help learners relate to and transfer knowledge and skills to actual situations” (Andrea Stone and Bucky Dodd, “Using Scenarios to Enhance Online Learning and Instruction,” TALONtis 7.5.11) is critical.

We attributed his success to his informal and colloquial style — in contrast to the formal, academic style of the others. However, perhaps the more telling element was Gerry’s ability to connect with each student. He knew, from the voice and persona embedded in the student’s text, where the student was coming from and aimed his comments where s/he stood. Gerry’s aim was consistently true, and he drew out the authentic thinker within each student. Students responded with numerous in-depth, thoughtful messages, and Gerry responded to these, too, creating individual threads with each. In stark contrast, the other lecturers received only a few responses that didn’t develop into threads. These lecturers tended to focus on their own answers and ideas and gave little thought to the students as individuals with unique histories and perspectives.

These interactions occurred in email 17 years ago. Today, we tend to use public social networking forums. I sometimes wonder what the results would have been if the exchanges had taken place in a forum. My guess is that Gerry’s style would still be a winner. He was a genius at engaging students. He challenged them with ideas that forced them to reconsider their own positions in the light of alternatives. He used the Socratic method, but he also used basic critical and creative thinking methods to stimulate fluid and flexible thought. The methods, of course, were important, but knowing when and how to use the right ones was critical. In other words, the prescription had to fit the malady. Even though the basic interaction was a dialogue between teacher and student, I can imagine other students jumping in and turning dialogues into extended and expanded threads.

The point here, I think, is that creating and sustaining successful discussions is an extremely complex phenomenon. One of the key factors is the ability to read between the lines and really understand where each student is coming from. To do this, a teacher would have to be a very perceptive reader. (Remember those American and British Lit classes where you were asked to analyze and interpret poems, shortstories, essays, novels?) Next, s/he would have to be able to engage the student at the precise point where her need-to-know is highest. Too far back, and the student is bored; too far ahead, and she’s frustrated. A teacher would have to be a strong and versatile writer with the ability to adopt a voice or persona that will draw the student into discussion. (Remember your freshman comp teacher’s repeated admonitions to consider audience and to adjust your style accordingly?)

Finally, all the discussion in the world, regardless of how lively and engaging it is, is irrelevant if its impact on learning can’t be easily measured. Assuming that the purpose isn’t simply to have a lively discussion but to become better informed about the various arguments, pro and con, around an ill-defined issue, a summative activity might involve a paper in which the student is asked to decide on the “best” position. It could include a review of what she considers the most critical arguments made by classmates and writers as well as an analysis of the logic and evidence on each side. An emphasis would be placed on the ideas shared in the discussion.  In this way, students can see a clear relationship between the discussion and the learning.

As we rely increasingly on the latest technology to improve pedagogy, we need to continually remind ourselves that effective teaching is an extremely complex activity. Technology can facilitate it, but it can’t do it. There are no easy answers. In fact, as in most performing arts, the more we learn about teaching, the more we realize how little we actually know.

__________
* “Stimulating Learning with Electronic Guest Lecturing,” in Berge and Collins’ Computer-Mediated Communications and the Online Classroom (Hampton Press, 1995).

I bring this up to reassure everyone who may may be hesitating about participating that Greg, Rachael, Leanne, Brent and others on the staff as well as knowledgeable participants are very patient and that you aren’t alone when you find yourself without audio or mike. I’ll probably screw up again in our next session, too!

What’s worth the effort is not so much the sound of the presenters and moderators but their spirit, their enthusiasm. They’re working with technology and ideas that excite them, and it’s infectious.

The best part is that they’ve invited us to join them on the ground floor where the process itself is also “ill-defined,” or under construction with just the vaguest of blueprints drawn in pencil instead of ink. Thus, we see minds at work, addressing questions, exploring alternatives, experimenting, innovating — creating — trying to get an idea to actually work fly. This is  authentic online learning, and this is what we’re trying to learn to do with our students.

Their working plans for AOL are out there, in the open, for us to examine, question, copy, steal. What I like best about their approach is the amount of time and effort that’s devoted to the planning phase of projects. It’s obvious that all this time could be “saved” by simply prescribing a plan, but the time saved is bought in learning dollars. It’s the planning, the often messy and frustrating process of selecting an ill-defined problem and constructing innovative strategies to address it, that ensures authenticity, or buy-in from the student. In the end, what matters is that it’s the student’s plan and not someone else’s — and that makes all the difference.

What does this mean for teachers planning to apply AOL to their own courses? My guess is that we ought to begin by giving students meaningful parameters for problem selection and methodology. The parameters should probably be reduced to a rubric, but to be useful, it would have to be both simple and facilitative, something that they can easily carry in their heads and refer to during the sometimes tedious process of planning spread out over days and even weeks. For example, in a small group, design a public service project that can be planned and implemented  in a quarter (half a semester). The project must address an ill-defined problem in the community, i.e., one that seems to persist despite various state, city, and community efforts to solve it. The process must include input from key individuals or groups in the community and formative as well as summative evaluation activities. The process must be designed so that it can be replicated and improved upon by other groups, and the results should, ideally, match the goals. Finally, plans should include a means to share or showcase the process and results, e.g., in the form of a video, public presentation, published report or any combination of the three.

The possibilities are boundless. For example, a group of students might choose to clean up a section of a public beach that’s become a dumping ground for trash and old tires. It’s a choice based on their own love for the shoreline and the ocean. Part of the challenge for them is to get members of the community to join the effort. Thus begins a planning process that involves setting suitable goals and practical milestones and procedures. Another group might decide to take a study trip to Kahoolawe or to serve as crew on a Hawaiian voyaging canoe on a limited voyage. Other possible projects might include a study of the best conditions for growing taro organically in a place that’s not known for the crop, the publication of an electronic journal that’s devoted to interviews of elders in a given community to capture what the community was like 50 years ago.

Beyond these outcomes, though, I think teachers ought to also require a more personal report in which each student discusses the experience from her own perspective and how it’s impacted her. This might be facilitated by a tweeted journal or blog kept during the project, which includes comments from friends as well as others.

As Rachael said in today’s presentation, the projects are exciting for the teacher, too, because s/he is also learning — not simply raking over old ground. The teacher’s role is to help, to guide, to facilitate students in their own learning journeys. What excites them will excite her because it’s new to her, too, and excitement is infectious.

From Jan Herrington’s YouTube video “Authentic Learning: What Is It?” Uploaded 9.26.11. Red circle added. (Update added 3.21.12, 7:00am.)

In the authentic learning process, the selection of a suitable problem is critical. The first criterion is that it is relevant or “real,” i.e., it exists in the world outside the classroom (1). (The number in parentheses refers to the order in which the 10 items are listed.) This relevance, however, must extend to the students, too. That is, they must be able to “own” the problem. Equally important is that it must be “ill-defined” (2) or, put another way, “up in the air,” and this one requirement pretty much absorbs some of the others such as allowing for a wide spectrum of possible views (4, 10) and multi-disciplinary approaches (7). In other words, the issue matters to the students and the world at large, is controversial, isn’t fully understood, and isn’t anywhere close to being solved. In short, it’s wide open.

Examples of real and ill-defined problems abound: natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and flooding; social problems such as public schools, housing, drugs, crime, trash, healthcare, hate. The key, though, is to limit the subject so it is relevant and do-able for the student. This is where the teacher’s facilitation is critical. S/he must be able to guide students toward a segment or definition of the problem that they can address within the context of their own lives and the course. As a learning project, it must be scheduled over a substantial but manageable period of time (3), include collaborative opportunities (5), and produce a product, service, or idea that contributes to the ultimate solution of the prolem (9).

Finally, formative and summative evaluations (8) must be built into the process, making the learning recursive rather than linear. This means that students will, from the beginning of the project to the end, continually monitor the outcomes, analyze (6) them, and adjust their plan and procedures to achieve their goal.

Before leaving this subject, the idea of “collaboration” may be worth exploring further. In some cases, we should perhaps not limit it to classmates but include, wholly or in part, people in the community. Technology makes this community option a viable option, and the potential benefits are obvious.

Scott lists some specs for “a digital mentor”:  “At the outset, a digital mentor would need to 1) know what you are trying to do (or learn), 2) be able to filter world-wide information in order to draw connections between relevant information…  without our help, of course, and 3) present that information to us in a meaningful way.”

I think the specs are dead on. Despite all the innovation, the web is still relatively dumb. It can do what it’s programed or directed to do, but that’s it. But intelligence is inevitable. For now, all the smarts are on the “other” side — on the side of the megasites that want to sell us something or web media that serve the megasites by collecting our browsing profiles and matching them to products and services. It’s the intelligence that greases the wheel of profit.

In time, we’ll have e-ntelligence on our side, too. Our browsers will learn from us, individually, tapping into cloud-based supercomputing for the analytics engines with the capacity to do this.

In fact, some of our personal e-devices and apps are beginning to show some smarts. Our browsers, for instance, can facilitate our searches by storing a “history” of our browsing. Primitive, but it’s a form of learning.

In the not-so-distant-future, though, I can imagine computers that will constantly learn from us by (1) “sieving” or gathering everything we read, write, view, hear, and say, (2) “gisting” or getting a gist of what we’re interested in or where we might be headed even before we’re conscious of  it, (3) shifting and pointing in the general direction as data is being processed,  (4) following our lead as we pick, ignore, dig into sources and using this data to inform and refine the ongoing search, (5) multinavigating as we leave the thread of our search for other threads — and returning to earlier threads or completely different ones on our cue.

This e-ntelligent learning assistant, or ela, will work 24-7 so we can leave and return anytime and continue or move on to new ideas. She will learn our habits and styles and adapt. The longer we work with her, the better she gets to know us and becomes, in time, an extension of our selves online.

Her presence will be most evident when we write or speak. She’ll be literally reading our mind as it has been and is being continually reconstructed in her digital memory. As we begin to type the title for a source, she’ll complete it, based on our past e-actions, in reverse chronological order. And from the context, she’ll determine whether we want it hyperlinked or not. This also means that grammatical errors, spelling, word choice, documentation, organization, sentence patterns — all the elements of writing — will gradually come under her radar and individualized services.

When we’re developing an idea, she’ll be simultaneously scanning the latest epublications on the web for appropriate resources and sharing them with us. She’ll select only the ones that will serve our specific needs for a specific sentence. paragraph, or article. Furthermore, she’ll select relevant quotes or facts for us so we don’t have to read the article. If we want to include it, a barely noticeable nod will suffice. Yes, she can see us via the cam on our screens. In time, she’ll learn to interpret our gestures and facial expressions. After we’ve worked with her a while, we’ll simply pose a question or present an idea and ask her to write a draft for a particular purpose or audience. And she’ll know us well enough to write it in a style that’s appropriate for us.

The implications for learners will be immense. Ela will be a constant behind-the-scenes online companion, gauging where the student is, where she needs to go, and the size and direction of the incremental steps she’ll need to take, based on formative tests or quizzes or simply ela’s observations. The student’s performance, interests, and learning goals will drive ela. Ela will also be able to create on-demand reports on-the-fly for “teachers” and parents.

Who knows. In time we’ll ask ela to represent us at virtual meetings, and she’ll perform as we might have had we been there. In fact, we could ask her to teach our classes, too, while we go surfing. She’ll be an avatar, of course, appearing in students’ virtual learning environments. At some point, a meeting or class could be made up entirely of avatars — avatar teachers, colleagues, students.

OK, I’m getting carried away. It’s already past 1 pm and I’ve missed another live session. But this field trip into Scott’s blog is one I couldn’t resist.

In “Discussion Goodness,” Lisa Lane (Lisa’s (Online) Teaching Blog, 23 Sep. 2009 shares a tip on how to promote quality posts. In her “Take discussion from here, please” exercise, she selects and posts “the best theses from the previous week, mentions the evidence they’ve presented, and creates tasks for the last part of the week.” This is an effective way to recognize students’ exemplary work while providing their classmates with suitable models. A potential pitfall is that students might overlearn and confine their performance to the standards in the models instead of exploring different alternatives and standards. Also, if the same students continue to be singled out for praise, the others become discouraged.

In “Using Discussion Boards in Online Classes,” Virginia Commonwealth University suggests that teachers “should set expectations on participation, grade both participation and the quality of participation, and provide rubrics that give students the standards by which they will be judged.” The caveat is that the graded discussion activity should be clearly and significantly related to performance in the culminating project, which, in my case, is a paper. The analytics that result in scores should have some predictive value on performance. Otherwise, the activity is irrelevant. The point is that students should be able to see a direct relationship between their performance in the discussion and in their papers. For example, in my classes, I’ve identified several independent variables (quality of feedback provided in classmates’ drafts, scores in reading completion tests, and accuracy in following guidelines) that are positively associated with performance in final drafts. That is, students who provide strategic suggestions on how to improve their classmates’ drafts, who pass nearly all the reading completion tests, and who follow guidelines in composing and posting their drafts tend to do well in their final drafts. This is a lot of work for the teacher, but the payoff is a clearer understanding of how students can improve based on specific elements in the writing process. Furthermore, this knowledge can, in turn, be passed on to the student who gains a deeper understanding of the connection between formative learning activities and evaluative outcomes.

Chris Weaver, in “The Discussion Board Book,” repeats the common wisdom that grading performance in discussions will increase the “amount and depth of participation.” Again, as stated in my comments on the Virginia Commonwealth approach, learning activity and outcomes should be directly related. Weaver adds “comfort” to the equation, warning that teachers should “set the tone by providing a safe community where students feel free to state their views with out[sic] fear of being chastised.” One of the disconnects in the work we do as teachers is that we are, at once, advocate and judge. We have to be nothing short of a magician to pull this off. Still, there are ways, and one is, as Weaver suggests, to set up a clear rubric that becomes an objective standard, external to both student and teacher. In this context, the teacher is more like a coach than a judge. If the student fails, she sees that she has failed to meet a standard and that it’s not the teacher who is failing her. This is an important difference.

Larry Ragan, in his module “Best Practices in Online Teaching – During Teaching – Assess Messages in Online Discussions,” repeats the claim that there’s a positive correlation between grading discussions and active participation. However, he goes a step further and says that “levels of sense of community” are also higher when we grade. He, too, warns that “too much emphasis on solely quantitative analysis of postings/messages can only result in coerced participation, poor quality of learning and student contributions to the online discussion.” He also says that “good facilitation by a tutor or moderator is important to creating coherent online discussions.” He mentions three causes for poor discussions: “isolated mode of participation, the structural organization of messages, and the conflict between the written form and oral function of technology-mediated interpersonal communication.” I interpret these to mean that the following conditions

• the online student is not physically with her classmates when she is participating in a discussion
• the complex and often confusing way forums and threads are set up
• the act of writing instead of talking

conspire against online discussions. I agree — to an extent. Increasingly, however, students are becoming comfortable communicating with peers in distant locations and texting rather than speaking in discussions. With repeated practice, they also become comfortable navigating threaded discussions. In other words, it’s just a matter of time before these differences won’t matter, and the time gap is shrinking the deeper we get into the 21st century.

In this sea change, we, teachers, grapple with our changing role, trying to adjust by exploring, adapting, adopting, and inventing practices that will help students get the most out of the latest technology that extends and expands the ways we can learn. We realize that facilitator is the best fit for the times, but we still haven’t figured out what, exactly, it means.

At the heart of the issue is a problem that’s plagued us from the beginning of public schools over 150 years ago. In Blackall’s own words, “The problem [is that we need] self motivated learners to participate in a facilitated learning environment.” In placing our hopes on a “facilitated learning environment,” we realize we need “self motivated learners,” but it seems we skipped an important preliminary question: How do we facilitate self-motivation?

The paradox is that if we take on the responsibility of motivating students to learn, they are no closer to self-motivation than before our intervention. We, in essence, are sentencing them to lifelong dependence on an institutional learning support system. Pull the plug, and their learning stops.

So, how do we teach self-motivation? How do we teach students to become independent learners?

Perhaps one way to answer the question is to revise it and focus on the student instead of the teacher, at the end instead of the means, in a kind of pedagogical reverse engineering, if you will. What does a self-motivated learner do? How does she learn? When we form a clearer vision of this empowered learner, we can then explore ways to best nurture, shape, and facilitate her growth.

One fact is clear. She doesn’t wait around for someone else to motivate her. Here are some other traits that might describe her: She sets her own goals and develops her own learning procedures. An important part of the process is to search for resources and sources of information, including interactions with experts and fellow learners. Through this process, she constructs a personal learning environment (PLE) and a personal learning network (PLN). If we take a step back to view the big picture, we see that she has become a node that’s connected in countless ways to other equally countless nodes, and the entirety is the learning community. Interestingly, brick ‘n’ mortar places can be nodes, too, as long as they’re also connected to the open web.

But trying to answer the question I’m posing isn’t the purpose of this post. Even as I’m trying to close, other thoughts are crowding me: Self-motivated learning will be nonlinear, and projects that fit neatly into class and quarter or semester schedules aren’t going to cut it. Learning will be community- rather than school-based. The ultimate arbiter of success will be the real world, not a grade in a teacher’s roll book. Gotta go …

By contrast, I recall the resistance from some of my colleagues who felt the hardcopies were essential. Thus, in the end, it seems the paper documents were published more for the staff than the students. I’m not sure if hardcopy is still being used at KCC or anywhere else for that matter.

Perhaps the most startling sign of the times for me is the disappearance of money — those green bills and round coins. It seems the only time I need it is to feed parking meters. It’s only when I reach into my pockets for quarters that I realize I don’t have any — coins, that is. I then need to run around looking for a place where I can buy a cup of coffee to get some change.

Even the idea of parking my car is becoming a rare experience because all my classes are online and I live in urban Honolulu. I seldom have to drive anywhere — let alone park in a metered stall.

Speaking of coins — one of the reasons I carried them in the past was in case I had to make a phone call when I was out. There was a time, not too long ago, when the only way to do that was a payphone, and they were everywhere, often housed in plastic booths. Remember those?

In fact, we’re already at a point where we’re pointing to desktop computers and asking, “Remember those?” And it seems laptops are going that route, too.

Someday we’re going to point to classrooms and lecture halls and ask, “”Remember those?”

And someday we may even point to teachers and ask, “Remember them?”

Photo by Noah Bell

In “Seeing Rhizomatic Learning” (2012), Cormier defines “MOOCs as a structure – and rhizomatic learning as an approach.” A MOOC is “an ecosystem” and rhizomatic learning is “a way of navigating that ecosystem that empowers the student to make their own maps of knowledge …. It suggests that the interacting with a community in a given domain is learning. The community is the curriculum.” Rhizomatic learning depends on the learner’s motivation: “It doesn’t come with many guarantees. [It] is a complex way of learning, not the easiest way to learn to tie your shoes.”

In “Rhizomatic Learning” (2011), Cormier credits Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari for the concept. Cormier describes a rhizome as “a creeping rootstalk, … a stem of a plant that sends out roots and shoots as it spreads. It [describes] the way that ideas are multiple, interconnected and self-relicating[sic]. A rhizome has no beginning or end… like the learning process.”

Here are some excerpts from the article:

• The whole idea of rhizomatic learning is to acknowledge that learners come from different contexts, that they need different things, and that presuming you know what those things are is like believing in magic. It is a commitment to multiple paths. Organizing a conversation, a course, a meeting or anything else to be rhizomatic involves creating a context, maybe some boundaries, within which a conversation can grow.
• We should not be preparing people for factories. I teach to try and organize people’s learning journeys… to create a context for them to learn in.
• Most things that we value ‘knowing’ are not things that are easily pointed to. Knowing is a long process of becoming (think of it in the sense of ‘becoming an expert’) where you actually change the way you perceive the world based on new understandings. You change and grow as new learning becomes part of the things you know.
• The rhizome is …. a very messy, unpredictable network that isn’t bounded and grows and spreads in strange ways. As a model for knowledge, our computer idea of networks, all tidy dots connected to tidy lines, gives us a false sense of completeness.
• The nomads make decisions for themselves. They gather what they need for their own path…. Nomads have the ability to learn rhizomatically, to ‘self-reproduce’, to grow and change ideas as they explore new contexts. They are not looking for ‘the accepted way’, they are not looking to receive instructions, but rather to create.

In “Rhizomatic Education” (2008), Cormier broaches the idea of a new canon that’s modeled on the rhizome. That is, traditional methods (primarily academic publishing) of systematically extending the paradigm are out of sync with the exponentially rapid pace in which new knowledge is expanding. He says,

In a field like educational technology, traditional research methods combined with a standard funding and publication cycle might cause a knowledge delay of several years. In the meantime, learners are left without a canonical source of accepted knowledge, forcing a reliance on new avenues for knowledge creation.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

• What is needed is a model of knowledge acquisition that accounts for socially constructed, negotiated knowledge. In such a model, the community is not the path to understanding or accessing the curriculum; rather, the community is the curriculum.
• This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning in the same way that the rhizome responds to changing environmental conditions.
• This is the new reality…. Through involvement in multiple communities where new information is being assimilated and tested, educators can begin to apprehend the moving target that is knowledge in the modern learning environment.

Comment: A rhizome works as a metaphor for the connectivist models of learning that are not only made possible by but required by Web 2.0. Knowledge, teaching, and learning are community based, or social, and this community is made possible by social networking. Thus, as Cormier says, “the community is the curriculum,” or, put another and perhaps more familiar way, “the medium is the message.”