Achieving a True Networked Learning Environment
- By Matthew Pittinsky
- 08/31/04
Pittinsky offers a re-vision of course management systems as access points
to a true networked learning environment. The goal is to enable students, teachers
and researchers to access any learning resource at anytime and from anyplace.
In my view, the best mission statements are those that are never quite achievable,
even as they define a clear objective against which progress can be measured.
As the p'et Robert Browning wrote: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp,
or what's a heaven for." [From Robert Browning's 1855 p'em Andrea del Sarto
available on the Web at: http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/p'em264.html.]
At Blackboard, I thought we coined just such a mission when we founded the
company in 1997 with the vision: "To transform the Internet into a powerful
environment for the education experience." This was a clear goal, and one
against which progress could be made. But with the capabilities of the Internet
always changing and the imagination of educators always expanding, it was a
mission sure to keep us busy for a while; maybe even a lifetime.
Recently, I found myself having to defend the position that our mission is
not accomplished; not outdated. Yes, it is remarkable what has been accomplished
in just a few years, and the Internet is a powerful tool for education today,
thanks to the work of millions of people with many different visions. However,
eLearning has largely focused on only one thing: putting courses online. Clearly
there is a bigger goal not yet within our grasp; achieving a true Networked
Learning Environment.
The Networked Learning Environment is about more than putting courses online;
it enables students, teachers and researchers to access any learning resource
anytime, anyplace. Whether that resource is a learning object, another educator
or student, or a scholarly database or application, it is about an infrastructure
and architecture that integrates courses, libraries, labs, other schools, the
Web and multiple other resources. Above all, it has the potential of creating
infinite educational possibilities for those who are connected. In many ways,
I consider the vision of a Networked Learning Environment to be Version Two
of Blackboard's raison d'etre; the new measuring stick of our mission.
Both in scope and nature, the Networked Learning Environment is a very big
idea. Not surprisingly, we will have to deal with many big challenges to make
it a reality-for example, how to leverage the steadily growing reservoirs of
content objects being created by institutions, individuals and publishers around
the world.
How we develop, discover and share content, metadata, and learning objects
is clearly in a state of flux, affected in particular by three sweeping trends
that will define the content landscape in the coming years and perhaps determine
the shape of the Networked Learning Environment: digitization, dis-aggregation
and disintermediation.
Digitization
More digital tools bring more digital learning materials, and educators are
demanding resources that are more flexible and interactive. Not only are instructors
developing these materials themselves, digital content has become a competitive
requirement for commercial publishers as well.
The publishing industry's initial response has been to use digital content
as supplemental material for the physical textbook. As they become more adept,
however, there is a longer term opportunity to add stand-alone digital resources
to their bundled text offerings.
Through our ChalkBox runtime technology, Blackboard is working with publishers
such as Pearson, Thomson, and Houghton Mifflin to make these kinds of Web-hosted,
interactive learning applications seamlessly accessible to instructors and students.
An early example is Pearson Education's MathXL (http://www.mathxl.com), which
tightly integrates interactive content to provide immediate feedback and has
been implemented in a ChalkBox pilot program at the University of Alabama. Instructors
import a "Chalk Title"-a content package with hooks to the Pearson-hosted
MathXL learning application-into their Blackboard course. When presented with
content supported by a MathXL exercise, students are authenticated into the
MathXL application from within Blackboard without requiring additional log-ins
or passwords. On the MathXL side, the learning application leverages the Blackboard
enrollment information to maintain up-to-date authentication during drop-add
periods. Additional possibilities include having the learning application report
results and grades back to the Blackboard gradebook.
Dis-aggregation and Re-aggregation
The old content model was based on monolithic packages such as books or journals.
Revised infrequently, their size and scheduling were a direct result of the
expense and complexity involved in getting them printed and distributed, and
a particular revenue model driven by the nature of the print marketplace.
Digital resources escape those limitations. Anyone can publish enormous amounts
of digital content and distribute it worldwide cheaply, quickly and easily.
Rather than monolithic, these objects can be highly granular, down to a single
equation, graph, p'em or photo.
They also can be re-usable. The real power of dis-aggregating content comes
when it can be re-aggregated in personalized forms. Supporting these possibilities
are independent collections and indexes of reusable learning objects (RLOs),
like those available at MERLOT (http://www.merlot.org),
and custom publishing opportunities, like the SafariX (http://www.safarix.com)
collaboration between O'Reilly and Pearson Education, which allows eBooks or
physical texts to be generated on demand from content repositories.
More and more course Web sites are combining commercial resources from multiple
publishers with free resources from RLO repositories. This is supported by new
tools such as the Learning Object Catalog in Release 2.0 of the Blackboard Content
System, which allows institutions to manage their library of RLOs.
Disintermediation
Digitization and dis-aggregation feed into the larger trend of disintermediation.
As Catherine Candee, Director of Scholarly Communication and Publishing Initiatives
at the California Digital Library, wrote in the May 2004 issue of Syllabus Magazine,
"The scholarly publishing system is broken.
At research universities everywhere,
scholarly work-in the form of articles, books, editing, reviewing of manuscripts-is
handed over to commercial publishers, only to be bought back by the libraries
at huge cost." Technologies for producing, distributing, aggregating, and
consuming digital content are becoming cheaper, easier to use and widely available.
Combined with emerging standards like SCORM and IMS, they accelerate the democratization
of publishing begun by the Internet.
As schools and libraries launch academic-to-academic open access models, like
the Open Archives Initiative (http://www.openarchives.org),
the role of commercial publishers and eEducation platform providers must evolve.
Blackboard is working with library system vendors, content providers, publishers
and our clients to assure that seamless discovery and inclusion of digital resources
takes place.
Increasingly, providers of commercial digital content fear "Napsterization"-widespread
copying and re-distribution of digital content, and, the industry recognizes
that publishers need an adequate, affordable digital rights management (DRM)
solution to maintain effective business models in the face of disintermediation.
However, any kind of DRM solution, particularly as applied to educational content,
must also be easy to use for both teachers and students and not create new barriers
to incorporating educational content into online teaching and learning. Perhaps
what we need is an Apple iTunes for digitized educational content-a consumer-friendly
approach that encourages access to a wide range of content for the end user,
but, through effective application of DRM, d'es so in a way that preserves a
business model for the commercial content providers.
A New Face for Content in the Networked Learning Environment
I believe there are multiple transformations taking place simultaneously around
learning content. On the technology side, the mechanisms for creation and distribution
of content are opening up the process to participants and to previously unimaginable
scales, both large (world-wide distribution) and small (granular RLOs). Concurrently,
the ways in which teachers, learners and researchers combine and use these resources
are transforming our approaches to instruction, research and evaluation. We
cannot separate these two revolutions, because each feeds the other.
The journey to transform the Internet into a powerful environment for learning
is far from over. While the education community may have successfully addressed
the initial goal of getting courses online, that's merely a first step, a foundation
that prepares us for grasping a grander goal ahead. While aggregating and re-purposing
the mix of commercial and noncommercial resources remains challenging, the technological
and pedagogical revolutions taking place around learning content move us closer
to the vision of a Networked Learning Environment, where any teacher, student
or researcher has the ability to access any resource any time from anywhere.