I have been thinking about the continuum of learning environments: from the fortress of some corporate learning & development programs to the other extreme of completely free-range, or do it yourself (DIY) — and down the middle various flavors of learning communities. Woven throughout the continuum are human networks; whether operating underground within the most fortified fortress, or more in the open in the free-range. And, just as each of us are the central node in our own learning network, we also each have our own personal learning environment, whether we consciously think of it as such or not.
This post is the beginning of some integrative and summary writing across the above landscape that I plan to tackle in the coming week during a spring-break from my day-job.
Characteristics of the learning fortress at its worst include tightly defined curricula, sage on the stage instruction, one correct (instructor or company endorsed) answer, little peer-to-peer interaction and no outside perspective.
The other extreme, free-range or DIY learning, has received a lot of attention the past months within the learning blogosphere.
Jay Cross appears to have started the free-range metaphor with his Informal Learning book where in chapter two he said:
Today’s free-range learners are knowledge workers. They expect the freedom to connect the dots for themselves. Imagine the difference between a free-range (informal) learner and a (formal) high school student. The high school student is not allowed to take notes, books, or a cell phone into the room for the final exam. Happily for us all, life is unlike high school.
More recently the metaphor went to the animals; for example with Tom Haskin’s: Free range chickens, Feasibility of offering the free range and Back to the barnyard
(February and March 2007) and Jay’s Free the learners! (March 2007).
On 26 February both Elliott Masie and Harold Jarche wrote about DIY learning in TRENDS #432 and The future of learning is DIY respectively. In DIY vs. Formal Learning Cammy Bean then summarized some of the recent DIY posts and commented about the distinction between the large and small company context where the small company has been DIY by necessity.
The free-range or DIY learning value is in the diversity of people, content and delivery methods and in the flexibility of putting it (learning) together however you like. Alas, with this diversity and flexibility increasingly comes an overwhelming number of choices, complexity, and dependence on some level of technical savvy. For the average person (contrast to the ones likely reading this blog) just setting up a feedreader is a stretch. Learning communities have the potential for reducing some of this complexity by providing a pre-configured platform, some level of member qualification (even if only by social norms), and topical boundaries.
Learning communities come in many flavors. One classification is by the degree of openness. For example, to join the community is registration required (perhaps requiring only a valid email address); or is there a membership, tuition or conference fee; an application process; or, is the community strictly behind the company firewall? A second classification dimension is by degree of permanence. For example, the impermanence of a classroom learning community that forms for a particular course; versus a professional society that is decades old. All have boundaries of some kind, with people, content or topics that are clearly in-bounds or out-of-bounds…and so with this, I introduce the ‘gated community’ metaphor. If nothing else, we all hope to keep at the spammers on the other side of the gate.
Alas, overwhelming choice and complexity is also becoming a community characteristic, at least in the initial choice of which communities to join and invest in. As David Cormier said:
The problems lies in the very ease with which is can all be created. Any whoozit with a hundred bucks can install an elgg or a drupal or a moodle or a wiki and spam the bloggosphere saying that “this is the new community… supporting (insert obscure bit of cartilage on the long tail here)†We are increasingly collaborative, increasingly involved in collaboration…
We are members of our banking sites, our research sites our community sites our schools our communities of practice…With the mind numbing escalation of online communities available for people to participate in, and the second wavers starting to turn their minds to those communities, its becoming more and more important to allow for multi modal membership models…
Dave goes on to describe a graduated membership model. A fine model; however, spoken from the perspective of community leader that is faced with whom to let through the ‘gate’ and how far. I’m thinking more from the seat of a potential member of seemingly endless communities.
Given the above ease of community creation, which I don’t want to go away, how do we make it easier for prospective members to come in, provide and gain value, and potentially then even leave? Two areas of particular interest for me are profile and content portability. With the former, how many times do I want to upload the same picture, state my same interests, and provide a link to this same blog? Worse, when any of these pieces changes, the pain of updating each occurrence one site at a time. I’m hopeful widespread adoption of OpenID and FOAF or similar will rescue me from this overhead. Next, what about content portability and findability? If I write a reply in a community forum, can I then re-use that writing in a later blog? Can I even remember it or find it? With the more gated communities content is even hidden from internet search — and it doesn’t seem correct that I, as the author, from my own personal learning environment can’t easily find my way back to everything that I previously wrote regardless of location.
As usual, I’ve managed to go on too long for one post, so I best stop for now and save more on learning networks for a later post.
Thinking Credits: In addition those linked above, the conversation during the Masie Learning Consortium monthly call earlier this week on the topic of Social Networks helped me develop my thinking in this area.
Photo Credits: Saint-Ange (fortress), A Syed (free-range), Fons Reijsbergen (gate)
How do we make it so simple that anyone can get engaged in critical thinking without having to think? We don’t.
I know it sounds nasty, but thinking takes effort.
I never meant to imply a model that controlled entry… rather a model that would allow people to decide whom they wanted as an audience, so they could focus their design…
nice post.
dave.
Harold: You gave me a chuckle. Of course thinking will always be hard work. I’m just attempting to find ways to make it LESS hard, especially relative to the discovery and interaction with others that so feeds the thinking. For me, it feels like too much time is used now for the technology and not enough for the actual thinking, which technology can’t do for us.
Dave: Thanks for clarification and compliment. Would I be more correct to not say “whom to let through the ‘gate’” but rather something like “tailoring site to various levels of participation”?
You’re right, Ray, the technology should not be an impediment to thinking and learning.