In March 2011 the University of Wisconsin-Stout team won the national competition (for the second year in a row) with a machine that completed 135 steps to water a plant.  This year’s competition is to over-complicate inflating a balloon.

What is the value of creating a complicated, albeit creative, solution to a simple problem? For the students involved, they have fun and learn about engineering, physics, and the properties of various substances.  The events promote science, engineering, and the programs at the schools involved.  These activities are outstanding in every way except one: the outcome.  The products these machines create are irrelevant.

As we create instructional technologies and designs, how many of them are Rube Goldberg machines?  Designers create complex new technical schemes or media-rich products when much simpler and more elegant solutions will work.  Everyone involved in such design processes learns a lot and the contraption might be fun to watch but is the end product worth it?

The answer is, of course, it depends.  If the intended outcome is knowledge for the technologist, then such a design is a success.  Similarly, if the users of the product participate in its creation, then it is also worth it (but this is a rare instance in most instructional product designs).  If we want the output of the design to be the most important part of the process, then simple and elegant solutions yield better results.

Perhaps a Rube Goldberg instructional design competition would be a lot of fun: create the most complex instructional solution to teach someone a simple task…

the platform. The simple ability to “follow” fellow students and faculty even after a class semester ends opens many new learning opportunities. Pearson gave a few new details about the social elements during the design partner meeting, including taking steps to integrate with Google+.

Examples of how to build on social

Pearson developersshowed off some nifty innovations created during a previously held two-day internal hackathon. While these innovations may or may not make it into the formal OpenClass product roadmap, a few were notable and showed the potential of platform: 1) An integration of Google+ Hangouts to create video office hours from within OpenClass (very slick) 2) a collaborative multiple-choice test-taking tool that requires students to work in teams to answer questions 3) a badge system that gives rewards for a variety of activities (e.g. % of people you have interacted with in the class).

The Exchange

The other major feature is still in the works and is currently called the Exchange. An over-simplified view is to think of the Exchange as an app store for learning content. As design partners, we got to see some Exchange wireframe mockups. Creating a one-stop-shop for learning content is far more complex than creating an app store for a monolithic software platform. The vision is that it will provide a simple interface across open source and paid repositories of content. As faculty build their courses using content from the Exchange, they will see a running tally of what students would have to pay (if they select any paid resources). Students will have options on whether to pay for content when they login (e.g. I own the paper text and do not want the digital one in the course).

Pearson knows that gaining and maintaining trust in the Exchange means that they must be egalitarian and transparent in how content is listed. This is a tricky line to walk because, unlike Apple and iTunes, they also own a content business. Faculty ratings of content and open discussion forums will help build trust but attempts to highlight content (like most other digital stores do) will be difficult to navigate while avoiding the appearance of bias. Other design-related challenges include how much information to include for each offering (peer-review status, device compatibility info, evaluation data, etc.), what types of media to include (e.g. video file formats, proprietary players/readers, Flash), and rights management.

Beyond the technical and design questions, there are also potential institutional challenges.  The long-term vision of the Exchange includes the ability to accept content submissions from any individual. Similar to the Apple App Store, each person can determine whether he or she will charge for the materials on a per student basis. I suspect this will bring many long-simmering questions about digital course ownership to the fore – especially the first time a faculty member creates a 99¢ math video that a giant community college system decides is a part of their core curriculum.

I think OpenClass is a bold product. In an area where innovation has been very slow and incremental, it offers a chance to rethink the LMS. The challenges are immense and there are no guarantees they can all be overcome. In these two brief posts, I did not touch on the possibilities of global scale and analytics, the host of open APIs, and the deep integration with Google (and soon other providers) but the social features and Exchange lead me to believe that investing time in a robust pilot is worth it to see where this goes.

It was a remarkable couple of days. Putting more than 20 people from different types of institutions in the same room to have in-depth conversations about what next generation learning technology infrastructure should look like was worth the trip to Denver. Conversations ranged from high-level technical (what should the SIS API enable?) to more broad philosophical issues (should the system encourage a move away from rigid course structures?).

I was impressed with the candor from everyone about the potential and the challenges of building a globally-scalable learning technology platform. OpenClass is available but still in beta and has some kinks to be worked out. Everyone agreed that the basics needed to “just work” before a more substantial rollout could happen at their institutions. What constitutes the basics, however, was different depending on partner needs.

I believe Pearson is facing a classic “Innovators Dilemma” (Christensen) as they launch OpenClass into a mature market. Mature markets have developed expectations about how products should function. The power users of mature technologies expect products that offer rich features that have grown over time. As these products add more features, they also become more expensive and harder for novices to use. This is generally the case in the LMS/CMS market. A disruptive innovation often offers less or different functionality but can be significantly cheaper than the more mature products. In the case of OpenClass, the cost drops to zero (at least in terms of licensing and hosting).

OpenClass does not have the feature depth of more mature learning management systems (at least the features we have come to expect). For example, there are fewer quiz options, the forums are not as robust, and the ability to customize roles is limited. This is not to say that the OpenClass features are not capable but, if you are used to being able to configure each role in 100 different ways, OpenClass does not have that kind of flexibility out of the box. The key is to look at how OpenClass is different and where it is better than current LMSs. What does it offer that other LMSs do not? It uses a much more social approach to learning, has a fantastic interface, and the potential for content sharing on a global scale (I will talk a bit about the Exchange in Part 2).

The big question is whether Pearson can capture enough of the mature market while pushing into new directions. Given that 3000 institutions/organizations are at least kicking the tires, it seems like they have a good shot at getting a solid user base.

We are continuing to move forward with our pilot at UWEX and are challenging ourselves to think different about course design and structure to take advantages of the platform’s strengths.

I split this reflection into two parts and I will talk more specifically about the current and future capabilities that are reasons we are moving forward in Part 2.

I have been thinking about the ongoing conversation related to the $10K Bachelor’s degree that Myk Garn held at the SREB Technology Cooperative and Barry Dahl has continued on G+ over several posts. The higher ed value/cost proposition conversation is also going on in many other contexts.

One problem we have is the fixation on a bachelor’s degree. Universities are right to protect the meaning of a degree to include all of the associated experiences that people expect from college. I think this justified protectiveness is a part of the problem when we start talking about “cheap” degrees. Most everyone would agree that bachelor’s degree represents more than a simple assessment of skill level.

My question is this: we have a GED for high school. It does not imply that the person went through the whole high school experience but shows that they have certain, specific knowledge outcomes that might be expected of a high school graduate

What about a BDE? A BDE is a Bachelor’s Degree Equivalency assessment program that demonstrates an expected college knowledge competency level without implying the rest of the college experience. Such programs might open doors for adults, AND protect the significance of earning a bachelor’s degree.

Perhaps the BDE is combined with other micro-certifications or industry-specific credentials to help people show they have a baseline technical knowledge level and also have the general ability to write, think critically, etc. at a college level.

To be successful I think a BDE would have to be:
Valid and reliable (no small task)
Extremely inexpensive
Accessible
Delivered by reputable organizations/universities
Accepted by employers (this would take time to happen – just like the GED)
Transparent in every way it is designed (both to those taking the assessment and employers)

Are there states/institutions with similar programs today? Would this concept make a difference in the ongoing conversation? Interested in Friday out-of-the-box thought…

As I noted, my goal is not to predict the future but to describe some trends and changes that are occurring now.  The three key trends are cheap, massive, and real-time.

You can find out more about the Academic ADL Co-Lab at http://www.academiccolab.org

Sites:

• Institute for Innovation in Undergraduate Research and Learning (IIURL)
  You can also link to the student-generated algebra PRAXIS learning objects project.
• Mobile Media Learning – Social network for using mobile media in the classroom
• One Laptop per Child
• MIT Open Courseware
• Amazon S3 Web Services
• AcademicFest 2009 Conference Site
• Games, Learning, and Society Conference Site

Books:

• The World is Open (Release July 2009)
• The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google
• Orbis Pictus Google Books free online version (1810 reprint)

Videos:

Video embedded in Second Life with a live and virtual audience

Virtual Reality Goggles – Soldier Training

Inside a Google Data Center

The old version of the blog is still available.  If you are looking for some of my older posts, you can find them here.  Some links from archives back to the homepage of that site might be broken.