{"id":370,"date":"2011-05-20T11:40:08","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T11:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsletter2.alt.ac.uk\/?p=370"},"modified":"2011-05-20T11:40:08","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T11:40:08","slug":"agile-learning-how-making-do-can-evolve-into-making-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2011\/05\/agile-learning-how-making-do-can-evolve-into-making-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Agile learning: How \u2018making do\u2019 can evolve into \u2018making good\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Jennings<\/strong><\/p>\n

Behaviour changes in a colder climate. We are forced to become more resourceful, to find new ways to do things. Older patterns do not always reassert themselves automatically when things get warmer again.<\/span><\/h3>\n

Bucking the trend, open resources and tools are continuing to grow even in colder climes, and already we are seeing some cash-strapped pioneers using these to hack together their own education outside institutional boundaries. The means to do that were not available ten years ago \u2014OpenCourseWare and Wikipedia were just starting, there were no Google Apps\u2014 but in another decade the alternatives they offer for resourceful learners could make a truly viable alternative.<\/p>\n

With that premise, those coming ten years will be a period rife with creative and destructive potential. So how do we maximize the creative possibilities, to enable more independent, personalised, agile learning without losing the richness and flexibility embedded in current institutions?<\/p>\n

Over the last year, I have interviewed a sample of people who I thought might give me some useful pointers: from a home educator to a university professor; and from a social software entrepreneur to a photographer who is committed to helping people learn yet refuses to see this as teaching. These interviews are recorded on my blog, and collated in abridged form in a self-published newspaper (goo.gl\/PIKpw<\/a>). I was trying to do two things: First, to get a sense of what might be common across these different contexts; and second, to get a sense of the longer sweep of change, beyond the horizon of recent funding cuts.<\/p>\n

Changes bred of necessity and opportunity<\/h3>\n

This article is an exploratory outline of what I am calling \u2018agile learning\u2019, and draws on some of the themes that emerged from these interviews. Hopefully this term is fairly self-explanatory: agility involves letting learners manage, direct and adapt their learning with minimum constraint. It is not intended as another packaged solution, with proprietary paraphernalia of trademarks and methodologies; rather it is an umbrella term that alludes to the particular kinds of invention that are bred of necessity in a challenging climate.<\/p>\n

Learning activities that were once marginal and supplementary are gradually moving into the mainstream as institutions lose their historical monopoly on the ability to process and share resources. We are already seeing what self-organising groups can accomplish with powerful tools but without formal lines of command.<\/p>\n

But what happens if and when the resources in \u2018the commons\u2019 outstrip those controlled by gatekeepers as a matter of course? If Google and Wikipedia are seen in some quarters as irritants \u2014their use to be moderated and policed\u2014 imagine how learning might feel if the open wiki model were to pass a tipping point, and classroom lectures came to be seen as rare and peripheral events.<\/p>\n

Some might say that we are close to that tipping point now, or have already passed it, while others will argue that it is never coming. And institutional interests will downplay self-organised learning experiences as inferior. It is clearly going to be a rough, uneven and sometimes ill-tempered period of transition. The recent hoo-ha over the term Edupunk \u2014whether it is about reinventing or gutting universities (Groom, 2011)\u2014 is just a small portent of things to come.<\/p>\n

Is self-organised learning just for people with degrees?<\/h3>\n

From the other side of the fence, new entrants in the learning field are challenging the status quo. As they do so, certain theoretical and institutional chickens are coming home to roost. Wikipedia and open source developments demonstrate the kind of creative accomplishments that are possible with little or no top-down control. As Sugata Mitra outlined in his keynote at the ALT-C 2010 conference<\/a>, the Hole-in-the-Wall model gives us a glimpse of how robust learning can be an emergent property of small groups, with no teacher input. It also challenges the idea that\u00a0 learning-to-learn skills and a grounding in metacognition are a pre-requisite for organising your own learning.<\/p>\n

Consider another orthodoxy: you need much more than content to enable a fulfilling learning experience.\"Bumble<\/a> So how do we explain the spectacular popularity of the Khan Academy<\/a>.This grew from a foundation of over 2,000 short YouTube videos, which have garnered more than 40 million views. Does this just automate the old lecture model? It is not even interactive, and the production values are distinctly handmade. It is like a bumble bee that the (old) laws of aerodynamics said should not be able to fly. But it does.<\/p>\n

So far, we lack the comprehensive research to tell us the range of contexts in which people are using Khan Academy videos. Learners are probably using them alongside other learning paths, whether self-directed or teacher-led. But the attention that these resources attract evidences a strong demand for learning content that learners can use flexibly to help them develop their understanding. What makes Khan Academy agile<\/em> is the wide range of learning scenarios in which the videos can fit, and the variety of learning experiences they can enrich.<\/p>\n

University of the People (UoPeople<\/a>) is a US start-up that adds some structure to the Khan Academy model so that it can make a case for Higher Education (HE) accreditation. Partnering with the OpenCourseWare consortium<\/a>, UoPeople makes a feature of being \u2018tuition-free\u2019: using peer-to-peer learning to add a dialogue layer to Open Educational Resources (OERs). Currently its mission is to increase access to HE in the developing world, especially in crisis-stricken areas like Haiti. But you do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to imagine the implications if the outcomes from this model are seen to be credible. Another US-based initiative, the Saylor Foundation<\/a> aims to provide a \u201czero-cost alternative to those that lack the resources to attend traditional brick-and-mortar institutions\u201d. (For more details of these and other new models like WikiEducator<\/a> please see the list I have curated at http:\/\/agilelearning.amplify.com\/tag\/new-models\/<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The high-water mark of structured formal education<\/h3>\n

So, looking ahead to the 2020s, how do we understand the different kinds of challenge and change we are facing? The Innovation Grid for Education, developed by Leadbeater and Wong (2010), provides a useful framework (Table 1).<\/p>\n

[table id=4 \/]<\/p>\n

Table 1: Innovation Grid for Education, Leadbeater and Wong (2010)<\/em><\/p>\n

To understand what could be at stake in this spectrum of innovation, consider the example ofOERs: broadly defined to include any resource that is \u2018open\u2019 and could be used educationally. These resources could be used simply to improve<\/em> delivery of formal learning, through efficiencies of scale and the quality improvements that come with extensive peer review and contributions. Or they could reinvent<\/em> it, maintaining the formal structure of tuition and accreditation, but gutting the institutions that deliver it, using efficiencies as a pretext for radical cuts in teaching staff, say.<\/p>\n

Using Khan Academy resources as a means of reviewing or augmenting other learning courses would be an example of supplementing <\/em>those existing routes, as in the top right of the Innovation Grid.<\/p>\n

The transformational<\/em> cell of the grid is where the change gets seriously structural – and seriously agile. Within the developing world, generations have grown up with the idea that extending formal education \u2014in terms of access\/reach and age\u2014 is key to building capacity. Learning technology could soon throw that long-term trend into reverse.<\/p>\n

Conceptually such a shift might involve:<\/p>\n