ShapingEDU Unconference 2020: Taking It All Online During the Coronavirus Pandemic (Pt. 2 of 2)

An innocuous little note at the bottom of the “living” online agenda for the 2020 Arizona State University ShapingEDU Unconference (for “dreamers, doers, and drivers shaping the future of learning in the digital age”) earlier this month proved, in retrospect, to be one of the most prescient and useful comments anyone could have injected into the planning process: “While the start and end tines each day will not change, all activity times are fluid/subject to change…because it’s an unconference.”

The two previous ShapingEDU unconferences (in 2018 and 2019) had been tremendous examples of what can happen when a blended (onsite-online) community of learning meets face to face on an annual basis with an understanding that the agenda—and the Unconference itself—is subject to change in any way that fosters positive conversation and action. (As I noted in the first of these two sets of Unconference reflections, the 2018 Unconference produced a framework—10 Actions to Shape the Future of Learning—for action and archived materials, including graphic facilitator Karina Branson’s visual representations of what occurred there; the 2019 Unconference produced an online 18-page communique of “actionable ideas and strategies that can humanize learning, promote greater access to and equity in learning experiences, better connect education to the future workforce and world, and nurture highly collaborative communities of practice” that continues to be shared globally.) The overall structure of both events—an clear, concise statement of purpose provided the framework for discussion, planning, and implementation; the flexibility of the living agenda allowed and encouraged participants to alter the agenda at any time during which it became apparent that changes would produce greater results than the previous version of the agenda nurtured—fostered the perfect response to the swift transformations that literally took place overnight during the event this year. It also suggests a framework for trainer-teacher-learners to emulate as we move forward in designing and facilitating the best possible learning opportunities for those we serve.

The key moment in the ShapingEDU community’s response to the spread of the coronavirus occurred at the end of the first full day of onsite-online activities. Unconference organizers, responding to the fear that airlines might soon be cancelling flights and leave onsite participants separated from their families, made what was for them a very difficult decision: cancelling the onsite portion of the Unconference and simultaneously moving the mostly-onsite event completely online.

More importantly, they used every avenue available to quickly disseminate news of the decision and provide clear instructions on how we would continue during the second day of the two-day event. There were face-to-face conversations in the lobby of the hotel where many of us were staying. There was an email message sent to all participants. There were posts in the ShapingEDU Unconference Slack channel. To say it as bluntly as possible: there was complete transparency about what was happening and there was a magnificent effort to convey the news in the most positive way possible.

It’s well worth sharing a slightly-edited version of the note that was drafted by Samantha Becker, who serves as a driving force and supportive colleague in virtually everything related to the community and the Unconference, and that went out to all of us:

“Dear Dreamers, Doers and Drivers:

“Thank you so much for your brilliant participation and rallying today to advance some awesome and actionable outputs to better education. You made it insightful and you made it fun. You have truly embraced the spirit of the unconference!

“We have made a decision to pivot to online-only activities tomorrow, beginning again in our Zoom room [the link was shared here to make it easy for attendees to continue participating] at 9am AZ time / 12pm Eastern US Time. This was a very difficult decision to make, and one that has been made to take every precaution for our community, given the updates unfolding around us in real-time. Those here in person that wish to take earlier flights can.

“That said, we except a robust online program tomorrow, kicking off at 9am with a special talk from Adobe’s Todd Taylor on digital and creative fluency. Our graphic facilitator Karina Branson will be online and making her graphics all digital! Watch us flex.

“The goal tomorrow online is take all the actionable ideas and products we came up with in our neighborhood working sessions, narrow them down and start firming up concrete plans for the ShapingEDU community to weigh in on. Even if you couldn’t make today or only part of today, you can jump in tomorrow and contribute in a major way.

“Zoom Room: [again, the link was provided]  (9am – 1pm AZ / 12pm – 4pm Eastern US)

“If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. The Slack workspace has been lively and we’ll pick our conversations back up there in the #unconference2020 channel.”

Reading that note can’t help but leave us with an appreciation for how quickly, effectively, and positively Samantha and other Unconference organizers (with input from available attendees) made and publicized the transformation. We can’t help but notice how effectively they used every resource available to them. And, above all, we have to acknowledge how well-prepared (through its consistent exploration and use of online communication tools) community members were for this massive shift in plans—the same sort of massive shift that is occurring in training-teaching-learning worldwide.

Visual Summary, by Karina Branson (ConverSketch), of Virtual Planning Session

The result was that when we reconvened (online) the following morning, most of us were present. Ready to work. And deeply appreciative for the creative, playful way with which the change was managed. One of the first spur-of-the-moment adaptations came from Laura Geringer, the community engagement, writing, and project leadership consultant who does much of the day-to-day work of reaching out to ShapingEDU community members to keep us informed and involved. Acknowledging that this was a group that thrived on collegiality and effective use of videoconferencing platforms like Zoom, she encouraged all of us to activate the webcams on our laptops so we could produce a global wave. And even for those of us who found our webcams choosing that moment to malfunction, the gesture was a success. We waved. We laughed. And then we got down to business, putting the technology in the background and bringing the interactions into the foreground to produce a set of proposals for projects the community will consider pursuing as a result of the time we spent together at ShapingEDU 2020.

ShapingEDU 2020 Virtual Wave

So, let’s hear it for flexible/adaptable communities of learning and all that their members do to make them successful through an approach of considering everyone a co-conspirator in the training-teaching-learning-doing process. A willingness to work with technology that sometimes produces spectacular results and sometimes leaves us frustrated by short-term failures. And living agendas that are created with an understanding that “all activity times are fluid/subject to change”…because that’s one of many approaches we can take to produce first-rate learning opportunities and the results they can produce.

N.B.: Trainer-teacher-learners worldwide are creating and sharing magnificent resources to help colleagues make the transition from onsite to online learning. Among those are Cindy Huggett’s “Virtual Presenter’s Guide to Using Zoom Meeting Tools” and the numerous suggestions posted in the Facebook  Pandemic Pedagogy group. If you want to share your own resources, please don’t hesitate to respond to this post via a comment.

ShapingEDU Unconference 2020: On Learning, Pandemics, and Rapid Adaptability (Pt. 1 of 2)

While trainer-teacher-learners globally are struggling to adapt to a rapidly-changing learning environment created as a result of the current coronavirus pandemic, examples of communities of learning adapting quickly through positive actions are abundant. It’s fascinating to watch—and participate in the growth of—global networks including the Facebook Pandemic Pedagogy group which, as of today, has more than 26,000 members online creating/sharing/absorbing information, resources, questions, and ideas regarding the large-scale, blink-of-an-eye movement from onsite instruction to online learning opportunities. It’s exciting to be part of smaller communities of learning, including Maurice Coleman’s T is for Training group centered around his biweekly podcast exploring training-teaching-learning-doing in libraries across the United States, as they create and facilitate informal online community discussions via Zoom and numerous other videoconferencing tools as a way of keeping up, staying socially connected in a time of social distancing, and doing what it they do best: promoting the best possible approaches to fostering positive learning experiences for those who rely on them for support.

In the midst of all this, the 2020 Arizona State University ShapingEDU Unconference (for “dreamers, doers, and drivers shaping the future of learning in the digital age”) earlier this month stands out as a stunningly successful example of how those of us comfortable with and experienced in working in blended (onsite/online) environments are well-positioned to pivot on a very small (digital) dime when necessary. More importantly, it may be useful example/case study for trainer-teacher-learner-doers globally not only during the current coronavirus pandemic but during any period during which our approach to the work we do has to change as fast as the world around us is changing.

The third annual Unconference was planned, over a months-long period of time, as an onsite gathering (in Tempe, Arizona) with the potential for some online interactions for those community members unable to attend onsite. It was scheduled to begin onsite with an opening reception on the evening of March 11 and conclude around noon on March 13. Registration—by invitation only—peaked at nearly 220 participants in the days before the event was scheduled to begin. But when coronavirus concerns increased in late February and early March, cancellations accelerated; by the time participants began arriving in Tempe, there had been more than 50 cancellations, and the opening night reception had fewer than 50 people in attendance.

What could have been a deal- (or Unconference-) breaker simply became a challenge in adaptability for those onsite as well as for those online. Onsite participants doubled down on our efforts to draw our online colleagues into the conversations via Twitter, via the Unconference live feed (via Zoom) that was already in place, and through quick adaptations in the way onsite sessions were managed.

It’s important to acknowledge that quite a bit goes into creating a community and an event as flexible/adaptable, focused, innovative, and productive as the ShapingEDU community and Unconference have proved to be during their first couple of years of operations. This is not something that we master and implement overnight. It starts with a shared vision: in this case, a commitment “to assemble a diverse collection of dreamers, doers, and drivers who believe that we can collectively shape a rich and impactful future for the application of emerging technologies to the design of learning and learners over the next chapter of the digital age” [the quote is from the invitation to attend the first Unconference, held in April 2018]. It grows through the work of first-rate planners and facilitators with a talent for including, at every possible opportunity, all interested community members in the actual planning process through numerous tools including a “living” online agenda. It is supported year-round through formal and informal online interactions, including webinars focused on specific elements of the overall ShapingEDU initiative and online publications that serve as resources for trainer-teacher-learner-doers worldwide. And, most importantly of all, it is grounded in a commitment to maintain a positive approach—particularly in times of adversity.

The community and its annual unconferences are seamlessly interwoven: the onsite interactions support the year-round online interactions, and the online interactions and projects fuel the onsite gatherings. ShapingEDU as an initiative and a community, furthermore, thrives through a combination of cherishing and promoting dreaming as well as doing—there is plenty of room within this community for those who love contemplating big ideas and those who want to get something done. In fact, one of the biggest strengths of the ShapingEDU community is that the dreamers are also drivers and doers who are not at all satisfied with coming up with ideas and then leaving the development and implementation to someone else. It’s a community that values and seeks and produces results. (The 2018 Unconference produced a framework—10 Actions to Shape the Future of Learning—for action and archived materials, including graphic facilitator Karina Branson’s visual representations of what occurred there; the 2019 Unconference produced an online 18-page communique of “actionable ideas and strategies that can humanize learning, promote greater access to and equity in learning experiences, better connect education to the future workforce and world, and nurture highly collaborative communities of practice” that has been shared globally.)  

Acknowledging everyone involved in the development of the community and the unconferences would invariably result in an unbearably long post here on Building Creative Bridges and inadvertently leaving someone out, but a few key players are well worth mentioning as resources to anyone interested in knowing more about how to replicate its early successes. There is Lev Gonick, Arizona State University chief information officer and a founding force behind ShapingEDU. There is Samantha Becker, a cherished long-time colleague and collaborator who, as community manager for ShapingEDU, serves as a driving force and supportive colleague in virtually everything related to the community and the Unconference. And there is Laura Geringer, the community engagement, writing, and project leadership consultant who does much of the day-to-day work of reaching out to ShapingEDU community members to keep us informed and involved. Working alongside them physically and virtually are the volunteers who take bite-sized pieces of the overall initiative and work toward transforming dreams into positive, meaningful, measurable results.

What Lev and Sam and Laura nurture was clearly visible onsite. Because we are used to blended onsite-online interactions, it wasn’t much of a stretch for us to integrate our online colleagues into our activities on the first full day the 2020 Unconference. And when it became clear that the much lower-than-expected number of online participants was going to radically curtail the effectiveness of the breakout sessions we had planned for each group pursuing a part of the overall ShapingEDU framework, we quickly merged some of the groups with overlapping areas of interest and expertise to create more dynamic conversations, then further improvised by fully integrating what had initially been envisioned as conversations divided between onsite and online groups—which meant, for example, that my colleague Kim Flintoff (working from Australia) and I quickly snagged a room with projection and audio/loudspeaker capabilities—so we could hook my laptop up to those systems; the result was that we co-facilitated a session that extended from our room in Tempe all the way to Kim’s home on the other side of the world—and also drew in a couple of other onsite facilitators and a few online participants into the same highly productive completely blended session. One of the most rewarding signs of success came when we stopped paying attention to the technology that was making the session possible and focused on the results we were hoping to produce.

Just when all of us at the Unconference thought we had pushed our ability to adapt to its limit, another unexpected twist occurred—at the end of our first full day together: the increasing fear of cancelled flights home because of the then not-yet-implemented shelter-in-place orders that started going into effect less than a week later in parts of the United States drove the unexpected decision to move everything online overnight. Which meant that almost everyone had to scramble to rebook flights. Cancel their overnight reservations at the conference hotel. Scramble to pack everything that had been brought to the conference. And take actions that would have us all back together the following morning for Day 2 of what was about to become a completely virtual conference—with just a handful of us continuing to work together (in the Unconference online environment) from the dining room of the Unconference hotel.

Next: Going Online to Continue Dreaming, Driving, and Doing

NMC Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 6 of 6): Educational Technology on the Four- to Five-Year Horizon

When we move into the four- to five-year horizon (time frame) of the latest Higher Education Edition of the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project reports, we are at the dreamiest expanses of this annual review of key trends, significant challenges, and developments in educational technology—which is just where trainer-teacher-learners need to be.

It’s a lovely area, where we find an intriguingly new kind of virtual assistants—ed-tech tools rather than the current human beings working from a distance to meet employers’ needs: “The latest tablets and smartphones now include virtual assistants…Apple’s Siri, Android’s Jelly Bean, and Google Now…Students are already using virtual assistants in their personal lives, yet most institutions have yet to explore this technology’s potential outside research settings” (p. 46).

Stepping beyond the virtual pages of the Horizon Report, we find a variety of resources already exploring where we may be going with virtual assistants: “7 Pros and Cons of Using Siri for Learning” from TeachThought; “Does Apple’s Siri Belong in the Classroom?” from Concordia University Online; and “How to turn Google Now into a powerful personal assistant” from CiteWorld.   

Moving into the other element explored in that Horizon Report four- to five-year horizon, we find people looking for the quantified self  based on data that their tech toys provide them: “…the phenomenon of consumers being able to closely track data that is relevant to their daily activities through the use of technology…these large data sets could reveal how environmental changes improve learning outcomes” (pp. 44-45 of the report). Most importantly, we see visions of where learning, creativity, and technology may be intersecting in significant ways in the not-too-distant future.

If we’re inclined to think the quantified self and these redefined virtual assistants are the latest pre-fad incarnations of technology that offers little to trainer-teacher-learners and those we serve, we need to look back only a few years to remember a period when tablets had not become a standard item in much of our learning environment. A time when massive open online courses (MOOCs) were barely a topic for discussion, and wearable technology was not on the cusp of mainstream adoption in learning via Google Glass. Then think about how quickly we have moved along adoption horizons.

Many of us have come to value our tablets as magnificent access points to information and learning resources—a form of mobile library in the palm of our hands—and can already imagine Google Glass and other forms of wearable technology becoming part of that learning environment. (Imagine John Butterill incorporating Google Glass into his virtual photo walks and you can already see the potential.) We are beginning, as Associate Instructional Design Librarian John Schank suggested during a panel discussion at the American Library Association Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia last month, to see MOOCs—particularly connectivist MOOCs—as a new form of textbook (a comment that, much to my surprise, seemed to receive little attention from anyone at the session but which strikes me as an incredibly perceptive and right-on-target observation as to one of the many roles MOOCs are assuming in training-teaching-learning). And we’re also seeing MOOCs as ways to inspire as well as evolve into long-term sustainable communities of learning providing ongoing experiential learning opportunities.

We really have never seen anything quite like this because we’ve never had the combination of technology tools and platforms (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ Hangouts) we now have to create extended in-the-moment flexible learning environments that can facilitate just-in-time learning and create another way to sustain communities of learning long after a course formally ends.

And now we’re looking at the possibility of quanitifed self technology that could provide important information, filtered through learning analytics tools, to make real-time course adjustments to enhance learning experiences. We’re looking at virtual assistants that might be programmed to anticipate and respond to learners’ information and learning needs to the benefit of everyone involved.

If we connect learners through their tools and through collaborations between learning organizations (K-12, higher education, museums, libraries, and workplace learning and performance), we see the potential to further create, foster, and sustain the sort of onsite/hybrid/online lifelong learning that the New Media Consortium inspires and supports through the Horizon Project and its other innovative offerings. It’s a great example of how a learning organization not only provokes thought, but also provokes us to take the actions necessary to create the world of our dreams.

NB: This is final set of reflections in a six-part series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report.

NMC Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 5 of 6): Educational Technology on the Mid-Range Horizon

With all the justifiable attention given over the past few years to 3D printing and gaming/gamification in learning, it’s not surprising to see these topics highlighted in the latest Higher Education Edition of the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project reports on key trends, significant challenges, and developments in educational technology.

If we take the additional step of looking at two additional technologies (wearable technology and the Internet of Things) that grabbed the attention of Horizon Report Advisory Board members but were not formally included in the section of the report listing important developments in educational technology expected to “have a significant impact on the practice of higher education around the globe” over the next two to three years (the report’s mid-range horizon), we find wonderfully interconnected resources that are clearly on our training-teaching-learning landscape but haven’t quite reached complete mainstream adoption yet.

The report is a road map for any trainer-teacher-learner who wants to keep up with what learners are currently exploring and experiencing. Report co-principal investigators Larry Johnson and Malcolm Brown, along with lead writer/researcher Samantha Adams Becker, help us by offering background on the two featured mid-horizon technologies and providing links to resources to support our own learning. There are, for example, connections to an article showing how the University of Delaware is incorporating 3D printing into learning and an article showing how learners use 3D printing to collaborate with members of a local artists collective. If we are curious and inspired enough to engage in our own self-directed learning, we easily find other wonderful online resources, including the “3D Printing in the Classroom” video from Marlo Steed at the University of Lethbridge; another video, featuring East Carolina University of Technology Professor of Instructional Technology Abbie Brown, on the topic of 3D printing in learning; the EDUCAUSE article “7 Things You Should Know About 3D Printing”; and “3D Printing in the Classroom: 5 Tips for Bringing New Dimensions to Your Students’ Experiences” from The Journal.  (“Admit you don’t know it all” and “Don’t grade the results” are two wonderful tips that could be applied in many learning situations.)

“3D printing is an especially appealing technology as applied to active and project-based learning in higher education,” the new Horizon Report reminds us—and that suggests that 3D printing in many other training-teaching-learning settings can’t be far behind.

The same can easily be said of the second mid-range horizon technology (gaming and gamification): “Gameplay…has found considerable traction in the military, business and industry, and increasingly, education as a useful training and motivation tool….the gamification of education is gaining support among educators who recognize that effectively designed games can stimulate large gains in productivity and creativity among learners” (p. 42).

Following a link from the Horizon Report to the EdTech article “The Awesome Power of Gaming in Higher Education” provides further context for our exploration of gamification. EdTech writer Tara Buck tells us about “a future in education where MOOCs [massive open online courses], live events and extraordinary gamification initiatives all blend into a new way of learning,” summarizes a presentation by “games designer, author and researcher Jane McGonigal,” and provides three examples of educational gamification discussed by McGonical.”

And that’s where we come full circle, finding the same sort of interweaving of key trends, challenges, and developments in educational technology that I’ve noted throughout this series of articles on the latest Horizon Report. We can’t really look at 3D printing or gaming and gamification in isolation if we want to fully grasp what is happening in our learning environment. Exploring 3D printing in learning connects us to the report key trend of “the shift from students as consumers to students as creators” as well as some of the other technologies tracked through the Horizon Project (e.g., makerspaces and collaborative environments). Exploring gaming and gamification in learning connects us at some level to the key trend of integration of online, hybrid, and collaborative learning, the challenge of keeping education relevant, and other technologies including flipped classrooms, social networks, and augmented reality.

Our greatest challenge, of course, is simply finding and making the time to explore and incorporate into our work all that the Horizon Report and our own insatiable curiosity provide.

NB: This is part of a series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report. Next: On the Four- to Five-Year Horizon—the Quantified Self and (Digital) Virtual Assistants.

NMC Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 4 of 6): Flipped Classrooms and Learning Analytics on the One-Year Horizon

With the confirmation of flipped classrooms and learning analytics as topics that are “very likely to drive technology planning and decision-making” in higher education this year, the latest Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium (NMC) once again provides anyone involved in training-teaching-learning with the sort of insights, inspiration, and resources we have come to expect from the Horizon Project. And if we look a little deeper into the expanded information provided in the latest report, we have the most comprehensive overview of key trends, significant challenges, and developments in educational technology ever produced by NMC.

Having been lucky enough to have served on Horizon Report advisory boards for four years now, I’ve been as fascinated by what does not overtly show up in each of the published reports as what does. NMC staff annually creates and maintains master lists of tracked technologies that remain accessible on the Horizon Report wiki, but those who rely solely on the reports rather than exploring the wiki have missed a lot—up to now.

Recognizing the gold mine of data available on the wiki, report co-principal investigators Larry Johnson and Malcolm Brown, along with lead writer/researcher Samantha Adams Becker, have given the current list (which includes consumer technologies, digital strategies, Internet technologies, learning technologies, social media technologies, visualization technologies, and enabling technologies) far more prominence by including it on p. 35 of the 2014 Higher Education Edition of the continuing series. And while the near-term (one-year) horizon, as usual, focuses on the two most prominent technologies driving our work, it also feels more comprehensive through the display of the entire table of topics. When we take one further interim leap and look at the results of the 2014 Advisory Board preliminary voting, we add Bring Your Own Device and massive open online courses (MOOCs) to the near-term (one-year) field of study and spot an overall theme: we’re continuing to look for creative ways to engage learners (e.g., through the flipped classroom model), to support them at their moment of need (through the effective use of learning analytics), to make it easier for them to learn (through the use of their own tech tools), and even finding ways to allow them to participate in setting their own learning goals (through connectivist MOOCs) within the broad framework we design and employ in some of our most interesting learning endeavors.

Johnson, Brown, and Becker, in fact, explicitly call our attention to this broad theme at the beginning of the “Flipped Classroom” section of the report (p. 36): “The flipped classroom model is part of a larger pedagogical movement that overlaps with blended learning, inquiry-based learning, and other instructional approaches and tools that are meant to be flexible, active, and more engaging for students.”

We are reminded that everyone in training-teaching-learning is affected by this this model in that it suggests a continuing transition in roles “from lecturer to coaches.” Furthermore, it provides a model many of us are using even without fully embracing the flipped classroom model—incorporating readily-available online videos and other online resources into our face-to-face and online learning endeavors. Among that ever-increasing array of readily available resources are Khan Academy and TED-Ed videos, the UK-based Jorum open educational resources—OER—site from the University of Manchester, and the Indian School of Business in Mumbai, and numerous others are just a Google search away, as I’ve repeatedly confirmed when creating links to learning resources for the adult learners I serve in online as well as onsite settings.

The 2014 Horizon Report > Higher Education Edition provides plenty of resources for any of us interested in learning more about the flipped classroom model. The “6 Expert Tips for Flipping the Classroom” article from Campus Technology is a great starting point; it includes the following recommendations: “use existing technology to ease faculty and students into a flipped mindset”; “be up front with your expectations”; “step aside and allow students to learn from each other”; “assess students’ understanding for pre-class assignments to make the best use of class time”; “set a specific target for the flip”; and “build assessments that complement the flipped model”—wonderful tips that can be adapted and should, at some level, be in every trainer-teacher-learners’ toolkit.

Equally useful for anyone involved in the learning process—not just those exploring flipped classrooms—is “A Review of Flipped Learning.” This report from the Flipped Learning Network (an online resource with a founding board that includes Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, two educators who are considered to be among pioneers in the flipped classroom model even though they openly acknowledge that the term comes from others) further immerses us in the topic in ways that provide plenty of inspiration for adopting (or adapting) flipped classroom practices to a variety of learning environments. Hardcore flipped-classroom fans will find additional information in Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, the book that Sams and Bergmann produced in 2012.

When we turn to the complementary theme of learning analytics—using increasingly sophisticated tech tools to determine where our learners are thriving and where they are struggling—we see another aspect of what is being fostered through flipped classrooms: engagement with learners in ways that benefit learners and make all of us better in our work as learning facilitators. Among the links from the report is one leading to a video by George Siemens (“The Role of Learning Analytics in Improving Teaching and Learning”) from a teaching and learning symposium held in March 2013. Jumping beyond the pages of the Horizon Report, we find a great summary of “The Growth of Learning Analytics” from Training magazine; a list of “6 Things You Should Know About Learning Analytics” from the Office of the Chief Information Officer at The Ohio State University; and a variety of articles through the EDUCAUSE Learning Analytics page online.

And when we return to the beginning of the Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Edition, we’re reminded why the topic of learning analytics is important to all of us: it’s another quickly-evolving educational application that leverages “student data to deliver personalized learning, enable[s[ adaptive pedagogies and practices, and [helps us] identify learning issues in time for them to be solved.”

NB: This is part of a series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report. Next: On the Mid-Range Horizon—3D Printing and Games/Gamification

NMC Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 3 of 6): Opportunities Among Solvable, Difficult, and Wicked Challenges in Learning and Technology

Any of us involved in training-teaching-learning might take comfort in the idea that we’re not alone in the challenges we face—something made abundantly clear in the latest Higher Education Edition of the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project reports on key trends, significant challenges, and developments in educational technology.

Although by definition focused on challenges in academic institutions, the report readily lends itself to serving as first-rate documentation of challenges—and potential solutions to them—far beyond the physical and virtual walls of its intended audience in higher education. Those “significant challenges,” arranged along three distinct time horizons, are grouped into solvable challenges (the low digital fluency of faculty members and the relative lack of rewards for teaching); difficult challenges (competition from new models of education and ways to scale innovations in teaching); and wicked challenges (expanding access to educational opportunities and keeping education relevant) that will take much longer to resolve.   

One consistent theme that connects several of the challenges is the need to help teachers (and, by extension, other learning facilitators) develop better teaching/training skills. It’s an obvious element of addressing the problems of low digital fluency among teacher-trainer-learners, lack of rewards for teaching/facilitating learning, addressing new models of education as well as workplace learning and performance (staff training), and keeping education (and training) relevant.

It’s not as if we’re lacking in options in dealing with some of these issues. The report contains links to a variety of articles documenting creative approaches, such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Davidson College collaboration to “create a comprehensive curicular model of digital studies to support the faculty’s development of digital skills.” With a bit of creativity, we might be able to apply, to other training-teaching-learning settings, what comes out of that collaboration.

Moving to an even deeper level of engagement, we might find ourselves inspired to seek productive and creative collaborations by the fact that “[e]mployers have reported disappointment in the lack of real world readiness they observe in recent graduates who are prospective or current employees” (p. 21)—something clearly not solely a problem for those in academia. Pasi Sahlberg has already, through his book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?, provided one potentially fruitful route of exploration for those seeking business-education collaborations. Sources cited within the Horizon Report, including the UK-based JISC, provide other collaborative models through which “schools, public libraries, and community learning bodies” partner to explore information and communications technology in learning (quoting from Wikipedia).

And our own experiences working in and with a variety of learning organizations places us in a great position to tackle a broad and particularly wicked problem: “It is difficult for institutions to stay ahead of workforce needs” (p. 21).

My own involvement in New Media Consortium projects, American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) activities, and a variety of training-teaching-learning endeavors through the American Library Association, has convinced me that collaborations among these three first-rate learning organizations could produce positive results that the organizations and their members cannot accomplish on their own—it’s really no different than the JISC approach to bringing schools, libraries, and community learning bodies together. And I suspect that trainer-teacher-learners with experiences and affiliations far different from my own can readily see equally strong prospective partners capable of addressing the challenge of finding ways to stay ahead of workforce needs.

The resources mentioned in passing in the “Significant Challenges” section of this new Horizon Report could (and probably should) keep us busy for several weeks or months. In addition to the references to JISC, we find brief, easy to overlook mentions of the 2013 Report to the European Commission on Improving the Quality of Teaching and Learning in Europe’s Higher Education Institutions; Harvard University’s WIDE World online resource for teachers, professors, teacher trainers, and administrators; and the European Commission’s Opening Up Education and Training initiative in addition to numerous links to shorter articles and videos. There are also abundant reminders that expanding access to learning opportunities relies as much on helping people learn to learn in online environments as it does on technology infrastructure. Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggars’ “Adaptability to Online Learning” report through the Community College Research Center at Colombia University is one significant resource that carries us far beyond what can be documented within the pages of the new Horizon Report and is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in helping learners thrive in online learning environments.

Learners themselves seem to understand that we need to be working more diligently to create a vibrant and responsive lifelong learning environment moving beyond traditional silos within our organizations (academic learning opportunities that don’t interact with staff training programs that don’t interact with learning opportunities provided by libraries). There is clearly recognition—at least among Millennials—that lifelong learning has become essential to lifelong success in the contemporary workplace, the 2010 Pew Research Center report Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next, documented. Expanded interactions among NMC, ASTD, and ALA members alone could produce positive responses to that perceived need and the challenges noted in the latest Higher Education Edition in the Horizon Report series.

What the report does, then, is highlight the challenges we face so we don’t lose sight of them. It reminds us that we are far from alone in trying to resolve those challenges. And it encourages us to draw upon available resources to better serve those who rely on us to provide effective learning experiences that address their—and our—short- and long-term needs.

NB: This is part of a series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report. Next: On the One-Year Horizon—Flipped Classrooms and Learning Analytics

NMC Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 2 of 6): Key Trends in Learning and Technology

We can easily see, in the newly released (2014) Higher Education Edition of the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Report, a cohesive narrative that helps us understand what we and our learners face not only in academic settings but also in many other training-teaching-learning settings where learning, technology, and creativity intersect.

The newly-expanded “Key Trends” section of this wonderful annual report on  trends, significant challenges, and innovations in educational technology, first and foremost, is itself an example of the spirit of innovation that drives NMC projects (e.g., reports, summits, and a wiki-thon): it provides more in-depth explorations of each trend than have been included in previous Horizon reports, and places each trend within a specific time frame (fast trends, which are driving changes in higher education over the next one to two years; mid-range trends, which are driving changes within a three- to five-year horizon; and long-range trends, which are driving changes in a horizon of five or more years from the date of publication of the report). Again, I suspect that what we’re seeing here has strong parallels in our extended lifelong learning playground.

Report co-principal investigators Larry Johnson and Malcolm Brown, working with lead writer/researcher Samantha Adams Becker, take us from those fast trends (the growing ubiquity of social media and the integration of online, hybrid, and collaborative learning), through the mid-range trends (the rise of data-driven learning and assessment, and the shift from students as consumers to students as creators), and then up to the virtual doorstep of the long-range trends (agile approaches to change and the evolution of online learning) in a way that leaves no doubt as to an overall consistent trend of engaging learners in the learning process through the use of tools that are as useful in learning settings as they are in many other parts of our lives. A key conclusion we might reach: barriers are falling; work and play are intersecting with increasing frequency; and undreamed of possibilities continue to come our way.

Anyone with any level of involvement in social media understands that the various and ever-growing set of tools available to us (everything from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to Pinterest, Scoop.it!, Delicious, and many others) provides collaborative learning opportunities not previously available to us. We see, in the 2014 report, the connection between those fast-trend elements of social media and online/hybrid/collaborative learning where social media tools are an integral part of learning. Being aware of data-driven learning and assessment as well as the shift from students as consumers to students as creators draws us further into blended onsite-onsite interactions with social media tools and other resources in ways that are reshaping—at last—how we approach the training-teaching-learning process. (While recently rereading decades-old literature on the state of learning, I was fascinated to see sources from the 1920s calling for a shift from lecture-based learning to learning that had students acquiring knowledge outside the classroom so that classroom time could be used for experiential/collaborative learning opportunities, so it’s wonderful to see relatively new technology supporting that concept through the flipped classroom model that receives attention elsewhere in the 2014 Higher Education Edition of the Horizon Report.)

When we move into the long-range trends, we see agile approaches and the continuing evolution of online learning (massive open online courses—MOOCs—being one of many relatively new innovations that are adding to our learning toolkits and expanding the way we think about and deliver learning opportunities).

The theme of collaboration that is an integral part of so many of these trends takes us down some interesting paths. Libraries, for example, are cited in the report as key partners in the trend toward shifting learners from being consumes to learners becoming creators. Makerspaces and other collaborative spaces are increasingly a part of libraries as learning spaces with support from a variety of sponsors, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services. We also, in the report, see examples of collaborations between learning organizations and business entrepreneurs—relationships where businesses serve as models for an agile approach to learning while connecting learning and learners to the development of critically-important business skills.

It all neatly wraps back into that final long-range trend—the evolution of online learning—in the sense that online learning itself is fostering a level of exploration that makes us question some of the most basic assumptions that have guided training-teaching-learning for centuries: the role of grades in learning, the tension that often exists between traditional instructor-centric teaching and learner-centric learning, and even the increasingly intriguing question of what it means to “complete” a course or other learning experience. (Is completion, for example, defined by a final exam or instructor-defined project, or can and do learners play a role in deciding when then have completed a learning experience, as sometimes happens in the more innovative connectivist MOOCs available to us?)

The report itself offers trainer-teacher-learners a variety of levels of engagement. We can simply read and absorb what is of interest to us; follow any of the numerous links to other articles and resources so we learn more about the trends that are most interesting to us; or start with the report summaries of the trends, follow a few of the links, and then carry those learning experiences into conversations with colleagues face to face and online—which means we’re not only fully engaged in integrating online, hybrid, and collaborative learning into our work and play, but are also helping define the evolution of online learning through our own online learning efforts.

NB: This is part of a series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report. Next: Key Challenges.

NMC Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 1 of 6): Tech, Trends, and Challenges in Learning

If we wanted to design a course on the current state of technology in learning, we could easily adopt, as our online textbook, the latest Higher Education Edition of the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project reports on key trends, significant challenges, and developments in educational technology.

The reports are consistently a magnificent learning resource not only for those involved in higher education, but also for anyone involved in workplace learning and performance (staff training) or any other part of lifelong learning endeavors. And the release of the 2014 edition earlier this week—in a revised format that provides much more extensive explorations of trends and challenges—suggests that what we have is a Horizon Report on steroids.

As I note each year while exploring the reports, even the highly-collaborative process of preparing the reports could (and should) be a topic for study and discussion among trainer-teacher-learners interested in understanding how a well-facilitated wiki can inspire learning and produce learning objects. Those of us who serve on the report advisory board become immersed in a combination of well-facilitated research and asynchronous exchanges via the report wiki before co-principal investigators Larry Johnson and Malcolm Brown work with lead writer/researcher Samantha Adams Becker to produce the document that does so much to shape conversations about learning worldwide. Previous reports have documented how the modified Delphi Method approach inspires fascinating exchanges and produces results that survey our learning environment and shape the conversations we have throughout the year; the latest report introduces us to yet another tool—the Creative Classroom Research Model developed through the Up-Scaling Creative Classrooms (CCR) project—that is well worth our attention.

But all of this, as important and stimulating as it is, is just a prelude to the real meat of the report. Glancing at the table of contents tells us where the rest of the document is going to take us.

Key trends this year receive significantly more attention and space; they also, for the first time, are placed within their own horizons: fast trends driving changes in higher education over the next one to two years (the growing ubiquity of social media and the integration of online, hybrid, and collaborative learning); mid-range trends driving changes within three to five years (the rise of data-driven learning and assessment, and the shift from students as consumers to students as creators—think makerspaces here and you’re on the right track); and long-range trends driving changes in five or more years (agile approaches to change and the evolution of online learning).

Significant challenges, arranged in the same type of horizons and with the same expanded attention and space, include solvable challenges (the low digital fluency of faculty members and the relative lack of rewards for teaching); difficult challenges (competition from new models of education and ways to scale innovations in teaching); and expanding access to educational opportunities and keeping education relevant).    

Then we arrive at what we have come to expect from Horizon reports: the list of important developments in educational technology, divided into a one-year horizon, a two- to three-year horizon, and a four- to five-year horizon. Flipped classrooms and learning analytics are what we can expect to see having the greatest impact in the next year, according to the report. 3D printing and games and gamification are on the two- to three-year horizon; and the quantified self and virtual assistants are placed in the four- to five-year horizon.

We’ll explore each of these areas in upcoming blog postings and see what they suggest for anyone engaged in lifelong learning. In the meantime, it’s well worth repeating that the beauty of this and other Horizon reports released throughout the year—others focus on K-12 education, museums, and specific regions—is that they are free, accessible, well-researched and well-written, and transparent. Anyone wanting to review and use the advisory board members’ discussions for their own learning purposes has access to them on the project wiki. And those interested in playing a more active role in the Horizon Report process are encouraged to complete the online application form.

NB: This is part of a series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report. Next: Key Trends.

Redefining Digital Literacy for Our Learners—and Ourselves

Taking day-long hikes into an exquisite national park like Desolation Wilderness, west of Lake Tahoe, provides a wonderful metaphor for learning: just when we think we’ve reached a destination we have established for ourselves—a summit, a pristine lake, or a meadow—we realize there are even more to pursue. Which is exactly how several of us are feeling in #etmooc, the Educational Technology and Media massive open online course (MOOC) that Alec Couros and others are currently offering through March 2013.

Nearing the end of a two-week exploration of digital literacy that was initiated by Doug Belshaw’s introductory session on the theme, our entire #etmooc learning experience is both extending all around us rhizomatically and circling back in upon itself.

When we think about some of the #etmooc themes—the idea that learners in this sort of (connectivist) MOOC set our own goals within the broad framework established, and that there is no pressure around keeping up or falling behind since we each approach the course with a desire and ability to set our own learning goals and learning pace—we gain a visceral appreciation for and understanding of what a well-run MOOC can offer. And we have to ask ourselves a simple question: how do those concepts play into the challenge of defining and nurturing digital literacy? When, for example, we find ourselves starting with what appears to be a basic course text—Belshaw’s What is ‘digital literacy’?—and then, through our own learning hikes, locating other texts that can be equally engaging, attractive, and important in helping us shape ideas of what digital literacy means to us, we come to the realization that we’re using digital literacy skills we may not have previously considered. This, of course, can’t help but shape our own attempts to define and nurture digital literacy.

Two of those digital learning texts came my way this week through digital connections. The first, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century (2009), caught my attention when a colleague (Cleveland Public Library learning strategist Buffy Hamilton) mentioned it in her Goodreads account. The second, the New Media Consortium’s online publication A Global Imperative: The Report of the 21^st Century Summit (2005), came my way directly from the first in that it was mentioned in Confronting the Challenges.

Henry Jenkins and his co-writers, in Confronting the Challenges, engage us in a book-length exploration regarding “core social skills and cultural competencies” for anyone interested in being “full, active, creative, and ethical participants in this emerging participatory culture.” The book (available free online as well as in a printed edition) is well worth reading for its concise descriptions of those skills; for the examples provided at the end of each section; and for the summary of those elements on pages 105-106: play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, and negotiation. More importantly, the writers conclude the book with a reminder of why digital literacy is important: to “ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, [creative,] and economic life…”

The same concern drives the New Media Consortium report. The first few pages remind us that 21^st-century literacy is “multimodal,…includes creative fluency as well as interpretive facility,…means learning a new grammar with its own rules of construction,…lends itself to interactive communication,…implies the ability to use media to evoke emotional responses,…[and] has the potential to transform the way we learn.” A call to action on page 19 of the report provides one possible road map that, through its proposals, helps us focus on the digital literacy skills we might want to foster.

A striking element of Confronting the Challenges and A Global Imperative is that both works focus on the need to promote digital literacy among our youngest learners. There’s no reason to limit our attention to that audience, however; it’s clear that older learners have as strong a need for digital literacy—however we define it—as those younger learners have. If we expand our thinking a bit and apply the same needs for digital literacy to learners of all ages, we stand a good chance of fostering the sort of digital citizenship that is going to be a topic of discussion during the final weeks of #etmooc. Which brings us back to the #etmooc challenge of defining, understanding, and, by extension, fostering digital literacy: if we want to understand the theme, we need to take a hike. And expect to keep going long beyond the destination we originally intended to reach.

N.B.: This is the thirteenth in a series of posts responding to the assignments and explorations fostered through #etmooc.

Technology, Learning, and More Wicked Problems

For anyone fascinated by the concept of wicked problems—those complex, ambiguous challenges that are not subject to easy or perfect solutions and that were a topic of discussion at the recent New Media Consortium (NMC) Future of Education summit in Austin, Texas—a book called Dancing with the Devil would seem to keep us in the right company.

Written by Richard Katz and several of his associates for EDUCAUSE and published by Jossey-Bass in 1999, Dancing with the Devil: Information Technology and the New Competition in Higher Education is fascinating not only for the way it addresses the wicked problem of effectively incorporating technology into learning, but for how contemporary it continues to be more than 12 years after publication in a field of study that feels as if it is evolving faster than we can document that evolutionary process. The book also offers plenty of inspiration for anyone involved in learning—not just those in higher education—and can, in many ways, be a valuable resource for those involved in workplace learning and performance (staff training) programs as well as with libraries, museums, and other organizations with clear and vital roles to play in lifelong learning.

Dancing even stands out as another example of how learning expands rhizomatically in ways that are increasingly familiar to those of us exploring #etmooc, the Educational Technology and Media massive open online course (MOOC) that Alec Couros and others are currently offering. The book’s various writers anticipated, through the six essays they published in 1999, the very forms and themes of learning that #etmooc in 2013 is encouraging learners to explore: online, learner-centric/learner-driven efforts that are encouraged through well-run MOOCs; learning opportunities that are available anywhere and anytime that learners can access them;  “the need for new thinking about property rights, risk sharing, royalties, residuals, and other cost-sharing and compensation strategies” (pp. 44-45); and reminders that online learning isn’t necessarily or even inherently less costly than face-to-face learning—a valuable response to those who mistakenly promote online learning primarily as a way to reduce expenses (pp. 90-91).

Each of these rhizomatic learning tendrils can and will keep us busy for quite a while and leave us free to put as little or as much time into them as our interests and available time allow—something that becomes obvious as we read Dancing with the Devil with an eye toward how timely it remains.

James Duderstadt’s opening chapter (“Can Colleges and Universities Survive in the Information Age?”), for example, offered the prediction that “The next decade will represent a period of significant transformation for colleges and universities as we respond to the challenges of serving a changing society and a profoundly changed world (p. 1).” All we have to do is look at the expansion of online learning and the best of the MOOCs that have been developed since MOOCs were first offered in 2008 to see how prescient he was. It only requires one small additional step for us to be able to acknowledge that similar transformations are occurring are occurring in any learning venue.

He also suggested that twenty-first century instructors would “find it necessary” to become “designers of learning experiences, processes, and environments”—something we see in settings as varied as #etmooc itself, library and museum learning offerings, and the best of workplace learning and performance (staff training) efforts. This is not to say that the transition is anywhere near complete or universally embraced—that’s why it remains part of the wicked problem we are exploring here and in gatherings including the NMC Future of Education summit last month. It’s still fairly easy to find articles asking why we rely so heavily on lectures and other long-established methods of learning facilitation in spite of evidence that many of these models are far less effective than experiential learning, flipped classrooms, and other models can be in the best of situations.

The virtual time travel that Dancing with the Devil offers is wonderfully obvious when we read the 1999 version of a few case studies Duderstadt (president emeritus and university professor of science and engineering at the University of Michigan) documents, and then revisit those studies via the websites that suggest where the University of Michigan projects are in 2013: the School of Information, the Media Union (now the James and Anne Duderstadt Center); and the Millennium Project. Further online searching leads us to yet another virtual program thriving in Michigan: Michigan Virtual University, started by the State of Michigan in 1998.

Duderstadt ends his chapter with a challenge that flows through the entire book: “Rather than an ‘age of knowledge,’ could we instead aspire to a ‘culture of learning,’ in which people are continually surrounded by, immersed in, and absorbed in learning experiences?” (p. 25)—and I suspect that efforts such as #etmooc show that we’re well on our way toward responding positively to that question and gaining a better understanding of the digital literacy skills necessary for us to function effectively and creatively in our onsite-online world.

N.B.: This is the twelfth in a series of posts responding to the assignments and explorations fostered through #etmooc.