Online, distance, blended, mobile, campus, hybrid - it's all about learning

"Red & Green Flowing Paint" (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by markchadwickart

We love to put labels on everything but the problem is that the object or concept that we label refuses to obediently stand still and remain true to the label we placed on it. Many concepts have changed significantly but remain trapped under an outdated label, charged with often inaccurate preconceptions and prejudices. This is very true in education, especially when discussing the use of technology, and has resulted in a host of terms to describe education that involves some element of technology to allow participation that is not strictly tied to a physical classroom.

I'm very uncomfortable with all the terms used to describe this field: online, distance, blended, mobile, hybrid, technology-enhanced, web-based etc. As soon as you add one of these epithets you put it in a box, apart from the mainstream term learning, thereby encouraging a polarisation between traditional (standard) and "alternative" forms. Being asked to read a printed book at home and write an essay on it is considered standard whereas doing the same thing on a screen is suddenly alternative and different.

Tony Bates has written an interesting post about a major survey of online and distance learning in Canada that he is involved in, What is online learning? Seeking definition. An essential part of such a survey is being able to define what types of education to include and not surprisingly there is a plethora of terms and definitions with considerable variation in interpretation between universities and colleges. The distinctions that existed 20 years ago have now become blurred and it is questionable whether some terms should be maintained at all.

Although from about the late 1990s until quite recently, most online learning was asynchronous, and based primarily on the use of text-based learning management systems, that context appears to be rapidly shifting, with more synchronous approaches either replacing or being combined with asynchronous learning (another definition of ‘blended’), and the increasing use of streamed audio and video. What is already clear from the piloting is that we are trying to describe a very dynamic and fast changing phenomenon, and the terminology often struggles to keep up with the reality of what is happening.

For me all learning today is blended in some way or another: instruction and collaboration, online and on-site, synchronous and asynchronous. Labeling creates an illusion of order but in truth most education today involves some element of technology and it is becoming impossible to maintain clear definitions. Let's move on to using a mix of modern and traditional tools and methods to design courses that offer flexibility and inclusion allowing learners to participate and interact in a variety of ways and not be restricted to only one space, method or tool. It's about learning, using the media, tools and methods that are available today in the most appropriate way to support the learning outcomes. Labels confuse more than they enlighten.

It's a MOOC, Jim, but not as we know it ...

CC BY-NC-SA by jeveaux

Every week I think maybe I can avoid writing about MOOCs but it seems impossible since the phenomenon totally dominates all discussion of online learning. Sometimes you get the impression that online education has only just been invented and that the only way to do it is by aiming at a mass market. There's plenty of good online learning that isn't MOOC-shaped and some of it is far more pedagogically innovative and collaborative. The definition of a MOOC that is embedded in the name is getting increasingly blurred and it's getting very hard to see where the border goes between a MOOC and a regular university course.

This week's announcement of a whole degree program, an accredited Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMS CS), to be offered by The Georgia Institute of Technology, Udacity and AT&T certainly blurs the definitions considerably.

"All OMS CS course content will be delivered via the massive open online course (MOOC) format, with enhanced support services for students enrolled in the degree program. Those students also will pay a fraction of the cost of traditional on-campus master’s programs; total tuition for the program is initially expected to be below $7,000. A pilot program, partly supported by a generous gift from AT&T, will begin in the next academic year. Initial enrollment will be limited to a few hundred students recruited from AT&T and Georgia Tech corporate affiliates. Enrollment is expected to expand gradually over the next three years."

They aim to offer different participation levels with different price tags so that some students will be studying online for credits and paying for it whereas others will be participating in only the courses they choose and paying a small fee for a certificate but no credits. This is a far cry from the original idea of a MOOC as an experimental educational arena where learning takes place in networks and students define their own learning objectives, creating content that is then processed and adapted within the network. OMS CS looks very much like a regular online degree but at a much lower fee. The difference is that much of the university teachers' workload is transferred to mentors at Udacity and students will probably have to be much more self-reliant than their more expensive campus colleagues. Some fear that this is the academic equivalent of low-price air travel and are concerned at how academic standards can be maintained.

The big news for some is that suddenly a MOOC has a price tag but I'm surprised it took this long. The freemium model is coming to a MOOC near you very soon. Access to the material may be free but if you want tuition, guidance, validation, examination and quality assurance you will have to pay, one way of another. However the sense of revolution and innovation that the original MOOCs created is rapidly disappearing as the new interpretations of the concept develop business models. It's all beginning to look very similar to the system it was supposed to be challenging and considering that the main drivers are the leading universities in the world that should not be any surprise either. Read more about this in an article on Inside Higher Ed, Massive (But Not Open).

Many fear that MOOC consortia will soon reveal their true colours once they've captured the mass student base and are fearful of the way we are being won over by the lure of "free". Bob Meister (University of California) has just written an open letter to Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera entitled Can Venture Capital Deliver on the Promise of the Public University? voicing concerns that the free education offered today is a way of gaining a customer base and a volume of data that can then be turned into for-profit services. The vast amount of investment being made into the MOOC market will be looking for some solid returns in the not too distant future and even if some of it remains free for the student it is worth remembering the adage that if you are not paying for it then you are the product.

I think we will see a development where the division between the different MOOC models will become even more pronounced. The academic innovators and researchers will continue to offer free, challenging connectivist MOOCs based on collaboration, creation and sharing whilst the institutions and consortia will find hard business models for more traditional online courses with a variety of fee options aimed at mass audiences. And the term MOOC will disappear into the buzzword junkyard.

How open is open?

  by  cheesy42

I wrote a post at the start of the year called 2012 - the year of the MOOC? and it has certainly proved to be just that. A number of high profile initiatives such as Coursera and EdX have been launched offering free online higher education to a great deal of mainstream media buzz. The acronym MOOC is frequently used but has grown to include models that differ significantly from the original versions launched by people like George Siemens and Stephen Downes several years ago. The original model is highly collaborative with students aggregating and creating content, discussing and sharing new ideas in a dynamic but sometimes chaotic environment. The notion of the traditional linear course with predefined objectives becomes more fluid with each student participating on their own terms and with individual objectives.

Most of the headline-making MOOCs like EdX are highly traditional in format; online lectures, lesson plans, tests and reading with some kind of certificate of completion at the end (though never "real" university credits). The gap between these two models is so large that we may need to redefine the MOOC or bring in some new acronyms.

David Wiley questions the use of the term Massive Open Online Course on the grounds that most MOOCs fail to comply with at least one of the words in the acronym (The MOOC misnomer). Indeed there are many that are not as open as we might imagine, many are not so massive and some are not really courses in the traditional sense of the word. Wiley is worried that free might become more important than open:

The MOOCs which are “massive but not open” pose a special threat to the future of OER, but no one seems to be paying attention… Before long the general public will feel that “free” is good / innovative enough, and no one will care about “open,” permissions, or licensing. The good has once again become the enemy of the best. And how to you wage a PR war against “the good?”

Debbie Morrison writes a good summary of some of these issues in a post called MOOC Mythbuster – What MOOCs are and what they aren’t that includes an overview chart comparing and contrasting different forms of course delivery.

Are all MOOCs really MOOCs? It's certainly a term that just now accommodates a wide range of models and maybe by the end of this year the MOOC as a concept will have morphed into new terminology. This is hardly surprising since it is all about experimentation and development of new educational models. Defining a moving target is never easy.

What is e-learning?

 Some rights reserved by chrisinplymouth

One of the main difficulties about explaining what I work with is the terminology. Over the years we have created a confusing profusion of terms to describe learning with the help of information technology: e-learning, distance learning, net-based learning, computer-assisted learning, flexible learning, blended learning, technology enhanced learning - the list goes on. None of these terms has been properly defined and the same term can mean different things to different people. We who work in the field can have lengthy discussions around these concepts and I've seen many texts that are highly inconsistent in terminology (I'm no doubt responsible for a few!). So if we have problems adequately defining our own terminology, just imagine how confusing it all is for those colleagues we wish to influence.

Therefore I was pleased to find an article attempting to reach a definitive definition of the term e-learning. It is entitled Building an Inclusive Definition of E-Learning: An Approach to the Conceptual Framework (International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 13 no 2, 2012) and has been written by Albert Sangrà, Dimitrios Vlachopoulos, and Nati Cabrera (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain). They have carried out a multi-stage Delphi survey of 33 leading experts in the field from 16 countries to try and reach a consensus on a definition for the term. They identified first four definition perspectives:

• Technology-based definitions that focused on tools and applications
• Delivery-based definitions that see e-learning as a means of delivering content
• Communication-based definitions stressing interactivity and collaboration
• Education-based definitions that emphasize how the use of technology enhances teaching and learning 

Each of these is a valid perspective, depending on the user's viewpoint and the trick is to find a definition that somehow encapsulates all four. At the end of the survey the following definition was reached:

"E-learning is an approach to teaching and learning, representing all or part of the educational model applied, that is based on the use of electronic media and devices as tools for improving access to training, communication and interaction and that facilitates the adoption of new ways of understanding and developing learning."

The respondents still had a number of minor reservations about this definition so it cannot be seen as final but it certainly goes a long way to capturing the wide scope of the term. The main conclusion of the article is that the difficulties of agreeing on an official definition of e-learning (and the profusion of alternative or related terms) is because the field is still developing so rapidly that a fixed definition is thereby unrealistic.

"After the analysis of the contributions of the participating experts, the research arrived at the general conclusion that e-learning is part of the new dynamic that characterises educational systems at the start of the 21st century, resulting from the merge of different disciplines, such as computer science, communication technology, and pedagogy, since all the collected definitions contained characteristics of more than one discipline. Consequently, the concept of e-learning can be expected to continue to evolve for a long time. In today’s world, learning needs change very quickly and the concept and functions of e-learning must continuously be adapted to these needs."

We'll just have to keep discussing and fine-tuning our definitions for a few more years though I hope that someday we can throw away the e's and discuss learning (with the e part completely integrated).