Scarcities 2: Online Learning Platforms

My first forays into online learning were projects undertaken to address the “scarcities” of the face-to-face classroom. These were embellishments on the classroom that I discussed at the time in terms of collaboration, purchase diffusion, diagnosis and asynchrony. The “flipped classroom” stands too as a widespread attempt to address the scarcities of the brick-and-mortar learning space. This is why I find myself approaching online learning with an attitude different to some of my colleagues. Where some view the online platforms as threatening to “take away” goods associated with the face-to-face classroom, sickness I had first turned to the online platforms seeking relief from the traditional classroom’s scarcities. In a previous post, I wrote about the face-to-face classroom and its scarcities (particularly time, space, permeability, and malleability). This week, I describe two kinds of online learning space and their own scarcities.

An online learning platform might be (almost) fully closed or (almost) fully open…or you might try for a mixed platform, open in some ways while closed in others. Both forms of online learning platforms address at least some of the scarcities encountered in the face-to-face classroom. “Time” becomes unbound, as activities can be performed throughout the week and not only during classtime. “Space,” too, is endlessly available simply by adding more architecture (breakout rooms, discussion forums, and so on).

(Almost) Fully Closed:

One can design a closed online learning platform using an “LMS” (learning management system) like Blackboard or Moodle. In this case, by “closed,” I mean that “what happens in the LMS, stays in the LMS.” While the course might include such external resources as, say, text books, most of the resources and activities manifest themselves in the LMS. Learners consume resources in the form of scanned readings, Web links, or recorded lectures. They also perform activities like uploading papers, discussing topics in asynchronous discussion forums or in synchronous Chats, or co-producing glossaries and wikis. Only users with a registered user name and password have access to the course site. “Permeability,” then, is greater than in a face-to-face classroom, but remains relatively scarce, or at least rather unidirectional (to paraphrase another marketing slogan, “Information checks in; but it doesn’t check out!”). This limit on permeability reveals a scarcity of Persistance: When the course is complete, marked papers may be returned, but other artifacts of the course–discussions, debates, glossaries, or wikis–become permanently unavailable to learners. “Malleability” is greater than in the brick-and-mortar space, but limited by the design of any given LMS (or by the affordability of add-on modules like a synchronous virtual classroom, a TurnItIn account, the possibility of e-portfolios, and so on). These relative limits on permeability, permanence, and malleability do imply a high degree of institutional control comforting to instructors and administrators.

(Almost) Fully Open:

Instructors unhappy with the scarcities of the closed LMS may choose to build their course on a decentralized, “distributed” model, using the tools of the open Web. Examples include the Open Online Experience, ETMOOC, and MOOCMOOC. In this model, learners perform their course work and interactions using public web platforms, often of their own making (blogs, Twitter accounts, Google Docs, etc). The program of activities sits on a central open Web site, where too the students’ performances are aggregated back to pages using RSS. A fairly typical model might look like this (click image for full size):

This wide-open model is wonderfully malleable. Want collaborative writing? Add a Google Doc or an Etherpad. You’d like students to be able to submit work in A/V form? Help them use YouTube. And the structure is inherently permeable: the whole course takes the form of an open constellation of nodes connected to one another through blog comments, Twitter exchanges, and RSS feeds. Also resolved is the scarcity of “Persistance”: Not only does the learner retain her work, since she has generated it on platforms of her own making, but she retains the platforms themselves (blog, Twitter account, social bookmarking account, etc) and even more, the “Personal Learning Network” she formed during the course. A “scarcity” of this model–though not one that its instructors will tend to mourn–is control, especially of assessments. The only pre-determined learning outcomes easily controlled are 1) that the learners grow in their digital literacy/citizenship, and 2) that learners are guided to determine for themselves the “learning outcomes” and artifacts that would make the course worth while to them…as described by Dave Cormier in his short video, Success in a MOOC. To the extent that such a course relieves the facilitators of the need to grade the projects produced, scarcities related to Scale are also ameliorated (though not eliminated: someone has to be guiding, encouraging, assisting these many learners, even in their ability to do these things for one another).

Blended Learning and Scarcities:

Instructors and administrators new to online learning sometimes gravitate reflexively toward “blended” or “hybrid” learning, with an implicit assumption that the face-to-face component in such a model will naturally and automatically “correct” for the (presumed) scarcities of the online learning environment. The problem is with the unexamined presupposition that face-to-face learning will have no scarcities of its own, and will automatically supply that “magic” or “authentic” element presumed missing in the online platforms. In my experience, this can prompt a defensive mode in which the online instructor insists on the limitless possibilities of the online platforms while sweeping their own scarcities under the rug. An ideal approach to blended course design will explore (through theory and practice) the scarcities experienced in different platforms and how they can be combined to capitalize on their respective abundances.

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