Mass personalisation - when every cafe looks the same

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Remember when you first used Amazon and they offered recommendations of other books you might like based on what you had bought or browsed on the platform? Often the recommendations were very much in line with your tastes and you discovered new books or music. Google searched for results that matched your browsing, giving you a personalised search service. We felt served, but today we feel used and manipulated by algorithm-driven recommendations that are now extremely commercialised. If you keep getting fed music or literature that you already like you'll never discover anything new. It's a bit like the radio stations that promise to play only hit music - that means you'll never hear anything new until after it has become a hit. The trap of personalisation becomes even more worrying when you show interest in more extreme political views and the algorithms offer you increasingly extreme material until you see very little else. Add to that the power of influencers on social media and our flock instinct and the result is a global streamlining. In the end everything looks or sounds roughly the same.

This streamlining is the subject of a fascinating podcast and article on The Verge, How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka. Kyle is the author of a book called Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, about how global trends are created on a viral scale, via social media and streaming services.

It’s a book about how digital platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify took over our modes of cultural distribution in the past decade. Algorithmic recommendations, like TikTok’s For You feed or Netflix’s homepage, control the majority of what we see and hear online. Though they promise personalization, the net result of so many algorithms is a homogenization of culture.

Mass personalisation leads in the end to a final common denominator, as in all the trendy cafes, restaurants and BnBs looking very similar no matter where they are in the world.

I was traveling around the world quite a bit and landing in all these different cities, and I would notice that every Airbnb I stayed in had the same kind of aesthetic signature, every coffee shop I went to in Reykjavík or Kyoto or LA or Berlin all had the same stuff in it, and I just started wondering or almost being anxious about why all the sameness was happening

Products, services, trends and influencers pay for ratings in the main platforms and if you press the right buttons you can go viral. Ratings and reviews matter and these can now also be manipulated with the help of AI bots. Some music, books, films etc get pushed more than others. Our personalised services are not as personal as they seem. Our tastes are moulded by the algorithms. The question is how to escape. According to Chayka you need to reconnect with yourself and ignore the recommendations, reviews and like-counts.

Being more thoughtful is a good start. I think what I came out of it with was you want to know that you like what you like because you like it, not just because it was recommended to you and exposed to you repeatedly in a feed. Thinking about your personal taste, having a real encounter with a song or a piece of art or a piece of clothing where you don’t think about how many people liked it, where you don’t think about the Instagram account, where you just sit with your own feelings and have an experience of culture that’s in front of you that’s changing your mind or your soul or whatever, that’s truly what I want people to have. I want you to sit and stare at a painting and be like, “What does this make me feel? I don’t care how many likes it has. I don’t care how many followers the artist has. How am I feeling right now?”

I try by using for example Duckduckgo for searching since it doesn't track me. I get a more diverse set of results than with Google but that is the point. Google frequently suggested my own blog posts or articles whereas I can hardly find them with Duckduckgo! I've stopped using TripAdvisor since since reviews can be written by bots or trolls. I don't use Amazon anymore and my use of Spotify is sinking to the point where I don't think I want to subscribe anymore. We don't need to go completely offline but treat the big tech platforms with extreme care and suspicion. There are alternatives out there.

Towards a different model for internationalisation

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In the wake of the current crisis, internationalisation in higher education would seem to have ground to a halt. With international travel virtually impossible and unlikely to recover any time soon, the numbers of students studying abroad or applying for exchange programmes look likely to evaporate, at least for the coming year. This in turn puts enormous financial pressure on institutions who are heavily dependent on fees from incoming international students. International student and staff exchange programmes like the European Erasmus+ will also be on hold as long as borders are closed and international flights are cancelled. At the same time, the present global crisis shows clearly that global problems require global solutions making it all the more important that all students get experience in international collaboration. If physical mobility is going to be increasingly limited, particularly due to its environmental impact, we need to rethink our approach to internationalisation with virtual exchange as the norm rather than the exception. Of course it's not the same as travelling and meeting people face-to-face but it's a much more inclusive practice and can be implemented across the board.

An article in University World News, Is the pandemic a watershed for internationalisation? takes a critical look at traditional practices and looks forward to a new and more inclusive approach to internationalisation. Physical mobility has always been an exclusive activity.

Clearly, international travel is elitist: it is only a possibility for a minority of students and in terms of outbound students from the Global North, these are often white, female and economically advantaged. ... In short, while mobility has enormous potential as a transformative educational experience, it is an exclusive activity and its impact on individuals is variable.

Traditional mobility will not disappear in the future but it will simply not be viable in the long term.  The last two months have shown us that most educational activities can be carried out digitally, in many cases as well or even better than in a physical space. More people will question the necessity of a physical meeting if the same can be achieved digitally. International conferences and projects can become truly global if they are online and potentially opening up to all those who could never afford to attend the physical equivalent. Digital collaboration with partner institutions is already increasing and will surely increase sharply after the crisis is over. The term global learning is presented as one way forward, meaning that the curriculum is global by default..

The term global learning, as defined by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, for example, provides universities with a way of conceptualising and developing a curriculum that engages all students in “the critical analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies … and their implications for people’s lives and the earth’s sustainability”.

Another aspect of the new internationalisation is widening engagement with the local community where in many countries there is a diverse and multi-cultural society, something the article describes as a pedagogy of encounter.

A pedagogy of encounter is a powerful concept because it does not rely on mobility. There are many opportunities to engage students in intercultural and global learning in class, on campus and in local communities. Thanks to large-scale global migration in recent decades, as well as the widening participation agenda, in many countries ‘local’ students are more diverse than they have ever been.

A globalised curriculum is certainly possible and there is technology to enable it. The big question is whether we have the will and the vision to move in this direction. I suspect after the current crisis there will be a massive demand for a return to business as usual. Physical mobility programmes are familiar territory, easily measured and very visible. A globalised curriculum involves developing a new mindset among teachers, students and management, is much more complex to implement and is harder to quantify and showcase. I love the vision, let's see if we can learn all this.

How dare you! What future do we offer our children?

This short speech by Greta Thunberg at the United Nations climate summit this week has shaken me. I've been increasingly depressed by how the world's leaders and decision makers continue to pay no more than lip service (at best) to the urgent demands from scientists and experts for concrete action to prevent the disastrous effects of massive climate change. But this short speech spells out the message better than any scientific report. We're in danger of triggering a disastrous and irreversible process and those who can actually do something about the situation continue with a message of business as usual, in some cases denying that the problem even exists. At the same time, the scientific facts were made even clearer as the IPCC published its Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, outlining the potentially disastrous effects of global warming to the marine environment with severe flooding, collapse of fishing and increase in severe weather phenomena. The message couldn't be clearer.

Greta points the finger not only at world leaders but also at all of us. We have all contributed to the mess and it's our responsibility to do everything we can to avert disaster. We talk so often about our children's future but now when the children are begging us to offer them a future the world seems suddenly paralysed. The solutions are there, the science and technology are available but the will to change is absent. Yes, there are millions protesting and many are trying to adjust our lifestyles, but the majority are simply continuing as normal, assuming that it will somehow work out well in the end. In all disaster movies, no-one listens to the lone scientist who warns of the impending danger. The mayor insists that the show must go on and scoffs at the idea of a giant shark/mutant piranhas/monsters/aliens coming to spoil the festivities. Sounds familiar today doesn't it? In the movies the lone scientist manages to save the day at the last minute, but I'm not sure this is a realistic scenario.

I have made some changes to my lifestyle in the last couple of years but admit that they are mostly cosmetic. Like most people, I'm still leading a comfortable lifestyle and following ingrained habits. I have often questioned whether not flying or eating less meat will make the slightest difference to the situation. The airports and planes are still packed, new massive shopping malls are opened every day, the annual consumer feeding frenzy of Christmas is already under way and the world's forests are disappearing rapidly. We seem to be consuming ourselves to extinction.

The role of education is absolutely vital to make people aware of climate issues and many educators are already making valuable contributions. But this is a global issue and needs international coordination. A major obstacle is the countries who actively discourage discussion of environmental issues even in schools or suppress any movement that may question or threaten the government's control. Even in the richest nations science and education are under threat since the solutions to the climate crisis threaten the profits and even existence of massive multinational corporations. The backlash we are seeing just now is savage and therefore it is essential that everyone in the education field is conspicuous and active in the public debate (where such action is allowed). Educators and scientists must react publicly to provide facts to debunk the conspiracy theorists and deniers. But we can't do this alone, we need political support. The saddest part of all this is that I see very few political leaders who are willing to step forward seriously and this is the core of Greta's message. She has power to influence but we need bold politicians who can do the real work. I can't see anyone willing to take the lead at the moment.

Multilingual webinars

English may be the language of international communication but it also gives native speakers an unfair advantage in conferences and meetings. Most educational conferences I have attended have been dominated by native English speakers, both in terms of keynote speakers as well as in discussions. Less confident English speakers tend to stay silent in fear of making mistakes or that they will not be understood. This is equally true in webinars where fluent English speakers dominate since it is easy for us to write quick comments and questions in the chat or take the microphone to make a point.

I was therefore very excited to read about a multilingual webinar solution called KUDO in a post on The webinar blog, Kudo Targets Professional Multilingual Webcasts. KUDO offers a web-conferencing tool and builds in simultaneous interpretation into a variety of languages through a network of professional interpreters working from home. This means that you can select which languages you want to offer and pay for the interpreters' work. Participants can simply select the language feed they want and all speech in the session will be interpreted. This also means that all participants can contribute to the discussion in their own language, thus allowing everyone to have their say and opening up the meeting to voices that would normally have remained silent or possibly not even attended. Of course this will come with a price tag but it opens up completely new opportunities for global cooperation when people can contribute in their own languages.

Is digital life without the big five possible?

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Over the last year I have made a few attempts to limit my exposure to some of the tech giants services and make it harder for them to track everything I do. I have stopped using Chrome as a browser, stopped searching with Google, deleted Google maps from my mobile, reviewed all the privacy settings in my mobile and deleted a lot of apps. However this all seems rather futile after reading and watching a fascinating series of reports by Kashmir Hill, Goodbye big five. She decided to try to live without the big five tech giants one week at a time: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. My attempts are simply superficial because between them these five companies control virtually everything on the internet. Services that we use every day and never even associate with the big five use their cloud hosting services, map functions and other tracking and ad-based services.

Hill took on one giant at a time and with the help of an expert colleague blocked all traffic from known IP addresses connected to Amazon, Google etc. Amazon alone controls over 23 million addresses which means that living without them is extremely difficult. So just stopping using the companies main site is not going to get them out of your life. Virtually everything we do online is dependent on five gigantic companies.

It’s not just logging off of Facebook; it’s logging off the countless websites that use Facebook to log in. It’s not just using DuckDuckGo instead of Google search; it’s abandoning my email, switching browsers, giving up a smartphone, and living life without mapping apps. It’s not just refusing to buy toilet paper on Amazon.com; it’s being blocked from reading giant swaths of the internet that are hosted on Amazon servers, giving up websites and apps that I didn’t previously know were connected to the biggest internet giant of them all.

The most interesting week of her experiment was when she blocked all five and tried to live with a non-connected digital camera, a no-frills Nokia mobile and a PC running open source OS Linux (watch the video about this week below). Suddenly she had almost nothing to listen to or watch since services like Spotify and Netflix are dependent on the big five. All streaming services were off limits as were most communication channels. Sending messages and files became extremely difficult because even if there are open alternatives they tend to be harder to use, less attractive in design and the people you need to communicate with are not on them. Hill calls the final stage of her detox as digital veganism and in the film below she interviews a tech expert who lives that way.

Basically we have allowed these companies to expand without any regulation and now when they control most of the internet it seems a bit late to try to fix things. Attempts are being made, most notably in the EU with, among other things, the recent GDPR legislation but there are few signs that the present US administration is considering any moves. The moral of the story from Kashmir Hill's experience is that we need to at least to become more aware of how dependent we are on the big five and try to limit that exposure to some extent. A certain amount of digital detox is recommended for all but at the moment it seems virtually impossible to escape completely.

Some final words from Hill's article series:

I went through the digital equivalent of a juice cleanse. I hope I’m better than most dieters at staying healthy afterward, but I don’t want to be a digital vegan. I want to embrace a lifestyle of “slow Internet,” to be more discriminating about the technology I let into my life and think about the motives of the companies behind it. The tech giants are reshaping the world in good and bad ways; we can take the good and reject the bad.

Paying for free

"Paywall" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by GioSaccone

A recurring theme this year is the redefinition of free. I keep returning to this but I believe we are in the midst of a radical change in the way we use the internet.  The internet of the nineties was free because it was mostly lightweight text-based pages and was run and written by enthusiastic pioneers. Once the content started getting more sophisticated and demanded much more work to produce, the people who produced the content needed to get paid for their work. But since free had become default the money had to be made somehow and so advertising became the solution. Now when everything is powered by extremely sophisticated advertising, lobbying and disinformation we suddenly realise that we have sold our every click, like, thought and integrity for the fleeting rewards of the "free" internet. Now the model seems to be in a process of change, except that we're not yet sure which way to go.

I can recommend an interesting angle on this in a TechCrunch article, Subscription Hell. It's about the increasing number of content providers, tools, platforms and storage services that are suddenly imposing sometimes rather hefty subscriptions for services that used to be free, or freemium services that radically reduce the scope of the free version in order to force users to go pro. The change may not seem so great from the perspective of the company but when you have become used to using a wide range of services and platforms the prospect of paying for them all can be daunting.

I’m frustrated with this hell. I’m frustrated that the web’s promise of instant and free access to the world’s information appears to be dying. I’m frustrated that subscription usually means just putting formerly free content behind a paywall. I’m frustrated that the price for subscriptions seems wildly high compared to the ad dollars that the fees substitute for. And I’m frustrated that subscription pricing rarely seems to account for other subscriptions I have, even when content libraries are similar.

News media in many countries are disappearing behind paywalls, often leaving behind as meager compensation a simplified free version where all content simply drowns in a sea of ads. I follow many news media from around the world and appreciate the opportunity to read about world news from different perspectives. If they all put up paywalls I'd have to choose which ones I am willing to subscribe to and my perspectives would be seriously narrowed. Similarly in education, I have been forced to abandon useful tools because I can't justify the new subscription cost. It's often not the individual subscription that's the problem, it's multiplying that figure by 10 or 30 or 50.

I understand that all these services cost money to produce and the people who do that work need to be paid. If the advertising and data harvesting model is flawed and must be regulated then we have to accept that a new model for financing the internet needs to be found. I pay for a few services and tools but I'm still dependent on the "free" ones. The article suggests bundles of similar services and discounts for subscribing to several. Many are also discussing the model of micro-payments based on volume of use rather than flat-rate subscriptions. With the growth of digital transactions and the increased security available this is more feasible than before. But if we want to move away from the exploitative model of today where you are the product then we have to find new ways to pay as we go. Are the days of free are drawing to a close?

Subscription hell is real, but that doesn’t mean the business model is flawed. Rather, we need to completely transform our thinking around these models, including the marketing behind them and the features that they offer. We also need to consider consumers and their wallets more holistically, since no one buys a subscription in a vacuum. For too long, paywall playbooks have just been copied rather than innovated upon. It’s time for product leaders to step up and build a better future.

Online learning - the road to credibility

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With the abundance of online education, including MOOCs, it is easy to assume that global online education is already established and recognised. However, an article by Christopher Ziguras in University World News, Will global online higher education ever take off?, suggests that online education is still struggling to gain credibility in many countries and that the numbers of students taking online courses in countries other than their own is actually rather small. Certainly there has been a massive growth in online education in recent years but it's not as international as we may think.

... when we look at cross-border education, the scale of fully online provision is still miniscule. There are around 150,000 students outside Australia enrolled in Australian qualifications: two-thirds in university programmes and the rest in vocational and upper secondary qualifications.

Virtually all of the school and vocational education students, and more than 90% of those in higher education, are studying on a branch campus or with a local partner institution. And yet for decades we have seen predictions that students who cannot travel abroad to study, either due to cost or commitments at home, would seek out foreign study options online.

Enrolling in an online degree at a foreign institution is often a complicated process since the enrollment procedure is aimed at students from that country and naturally the forms are in that country's official language(s). On top of that are the fees which in many cases are higher than studying at a local institution. Those who do enroll from abroad tend to be citizens of that country living elsewhere and who know the national education system. In the EU the Bologna agreement has to some extent opened up European higher education but applying to study online at a university in another country is still not simple. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this, such as virtual mobility programmes where students can attend online courses at partner universities as a for-credit part of their own studies (see for example the recent OUVM project). However, the numbers of transnational students in online courses are still more exception than norm.

Universities with a large international outreach have their own campuses in strategic locations around the world or run courses in partnership with local institutions. Here they can blend traditional campus teaching with online elements from the host institution and offer international degrees without students having to leave their own country.

The main sticking point for fully online education, according to the article, is credibility.

Many governments, including China, India and Vietnam, refuse point blank to recognise foreign degrees undertaken online, citing a range of concerns. They believe the quality of online study is inferior, legitimate providers are difficult to distinguish from online degree mills and they perceive online student fraud to be rife.

Despite international quality guidelines and labels for online education the whole area is tainted by the abundance of fraudulent practices, bogus universities and degree mills. Furthermore there are the recurring concerns about the risks of plagiarism and cheating in online courses. All these issues are being addressed and solutions are emerging but the road to credibility will take time. Above all we need wider adoption of internationally recognised quality labels for online courses to make it easy to distinguish between quality education and fraud. 

Tired tech narratives - disruption at a price

"Architecture of the Future" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by danielfoster437

There are a number of recurring narratives in this business that we all enjoy telling and hearing to the extent that repetition leads to belief; feel-good stories about how technology is changing education and society for the better. Although these stories have elements of truth they tend to accentuate the positive and in some cases become dangerous myths. Here are two such narratives that simply won't go away.

Firstly there is the old chestnut of digital natives and a naive belief that the kids/students will work everything out for themselves. Students are using all sorts of innovative digital tools to learn for themselves and this is pushing institutions to respond. Of course there are elements of truth here. There are numerous anecdotes of teenagers creating impressive tech start-ups and the often retold tales of toddlers trying to swipe a printed book and being amazed it doesn't work like an iPad. I don't doubt these but they are more exceptions rather than the rule. Yes, most children and teenagers are completely comfortable with technology but it doesn't mean that they can work out how to search, filter, collaborate, work, study and create without any assistance. I'm not sure either that students are driving educational change as we often hear at conferences. In my experience, students are good at adapting to the institution's teaching methods and even if some may well find the teaching uninspiring they simply find ways to cope since they need the qualification and have taken on a substantial loan in order to get it. Some are using technology to enhance their studies but many only use the tools offered by the institution. Education is changing as a result of digitalisation but the main drivers in my opinion are innovative teachers and insightful leaders, urged on by the ed tech industry; for better or for worse, but that is another story.

The second popular narrative is that of the future workplace. I've seen plenty inspiring accounts of innovative work spaces at high tech companies like Google or Apple where employees have project meetings on giant beanbags, play basketball or take a yoga break whenever they need inspiration. It looks very attractive and they are undoubtedly inspiring places to work. In the same narrative we hear about the growth of the gig economy where everyone works as a consultant moving seamlessly from project to project with breaks for competence development from time to time. Success is built on being flexible, constantly developing your skills, being able to reinvent yourself and always searching for new challenges. The word disruption occurs frequently in this narrative. Technology is disrupting traditional practices and a new flexible and ever-changing society is emerging offering opportunities and growth for those who are able to adapt.

However this narrative also has a dark side. The creative and innovative workplaces we see in these conference presentations are for a well-educated elite with the financial resources to tide them over between projects. For the vast majority, however, the modern workplace has a very different narrative with long hours, stressful schedules, low pay, few if any benefits and seldom knowing whether or not you'll be needed next week. The stars of the digital economy tend not to employ very many people and many of those who do work there are involved in the less glamorous side of operations; in the warehouses or working from home on low wages. The flip side of this gig economy are the people who scramble for zero hours contract jobs with no security and never knowing whether they will get paid next week at all. The digital revolution is not so attractive for those on the wrong side. See more on this in a BBC article, Why "cool" offices don't always make for a happier workforce.

So how about companies taking some social responsibility for all the job losses and problems their disruptive innovation causes? This issue is raised by András Baneth in a recent TEDx talk (see below). He takes examples like Uber, Airbnb and Facebook as companies that have come under hard criticism for the results of their operations and offers advice on how companies should take responsibility and enhance their reputation. This involves at a basic level at least admitting that your business has created some serious issues in society instead of simply denying any responsibility. Then the company can try to help tackle those issues, for example by finding ways to prevent the spread of hate and fake news or funding retraining initiatives for those whose businesses suffer due to their operations.



Disruption is generally viewed positively today and the narrative of bold innovative young entrepreneurs "taking on the establishment" and overturning the system nearly always goes down well at conferences. However disruption also has consequences. A deregulated market can make some people very rich but can also cast many more into unemployment, poverty or insecurity. Social media let everyone have their say but also make it easy to spread hate and prejudice. It may not be completely the fault of the messenger (such as Facebook) but they have certainly a major role and need to recognise this.

Towards virtual mobility

"Night Skyline Zoom Burst 1" (CC BY 2.0) by sagriffin305

Virtual mobility is a concept that enables internationalisation for all by using digital media to let students collaborate on projects, modules and even entire courses without the need to travel. It can also enable teachers from partner universities in different countries to make virtual study visits as well as collaborate on course design and offering joint courses. Since the technology has been available for many years you would imagine that virtual mobility would be mainstream by now but sadly this is not true. For most people the concept of mobility refers only to physical mobility.

For the past two years I've been involved in a project at my university, called Global Classroom, to raise awareness of virtual mobility and the opportunities it offers. The main aim is to create a framework and organisation to establish international networking and collaboration as a key element in all courses at undergraduate and masters level at Linnaeus University. The project does not have the resources to make major changes in the organisation so we have focused on helping degree programme leaders to identify the degree of internationalisation in their programme from three perspectives (faculty, teacher and student) during workshops where they work from a self-assessment grid. They then select criteria that can be realistically fulfilled within, say, a year and we then help them to plan the process and raise the internationalisation level. We aim to raise the bar and then cascade the lessons learned to other programmes rather than trying to impose radical change. Take a tour around our project website for more information.

One inspiration for the project was the OUVM (Opening universities for virtual mobility) project that concluded last year. Partner universities from five countries offered a selection of online courses of 3-6 credits and students could study one of these and get credits from their own university as well as recognition that they had gained international study experience. This is the online equivalent of an Erasmus exchange in which so many European students participate and points the way towards offering students much more scope for mobility and intercultural exchange in the future. Virtual mobility may not be as exciting as actually travelling but if that option is not available it can still offer many advantages, not least learning the skill of collaborating online.

There are many advantages of promoting virtual mobility, for the students, staff and for the university as a whole. The most important aspect is making internationalisation a natural part of all studies rather than a brief adventure for a select few. Experience of working in an international environment and collaborating in multi-cultural groups is today an extremely important element in every graduate's CV and although the best experience is to actually travel to another country that opportunity is not available for all. The inclusive element of virtual mobility is therefore extremely important but seems not to be promoted so actively at many universities. Working with virtual mobility is also an opportunity to expand our cooperation with international partner universities. Furthermore virtual mobility can complement and enhance physical mobility by facilitating deeper collaboration between students before and after the physical visit.

Of course there are many obstacles. The most obvious is that any new practice involves considerable effort and time, often in short supply for teachers and leaders already under pressure. New methods, tools and routines must be developed and tested as well as partnerships established. Digital skills are essential as well as awareness of multi-cultural communication. Virtual mobility must be integrated into the syllabus and must lead to tangible rewards, primarily in the form of credits, not as an optional extra. One avenue we are exploring is using badges to reward participation in virtual mobility activities as additional recognition. This means that badges must be established as recognised credentials at the university and that process takes time.

We realise that the process will be a slow one but the word is spreading and there are already several promising initiatives. The key factor is of course management support and providing the time and resources for teachers to experiment with and implement different forms of virtual mobility.

When worlds collide

"When Worlds Collide" (CC BY 2.0) by Pawns

We live in an age of paradoxes. We have almost instant access to vast amounts of knowledge and information, the ability to share our thoughts and reflections, create global communities of interest and practice and communicate with people anywhere on earth. This should be the most enlightened period in human history. At the same time, in what sometimes seems to be a parallel universe, there seem to be more superstitions, myths and conspiracy theories than ever before and an increasingly popular anti-factual culture that dismisses science, research and education and prefers to believe in sweeping generalisations, lies and half-truths as long as they fit into a convenient narrative.

The digital age has revolutionised the way we live and work and logically should have made us more global, more enlightened and more culturally aware. We generally assume that human history is a development (albeit rather erratic) towards greater democracy, technical and cultural advancement as well as better living standards. Digital technology should logically support this since we can now analyse vast amounts of data that enables us to combat disease, monitor environmental changes and see dangerous trends long before they become major problems. When we comment on conflicts and violence by saying that "xxx shouldn't happen in the 21st century" we assume that our century should be better than its predecessors. Maybe these things happen because we are in the 21st century and modernity should not be seen as synonymous with enlightenment?

I find the filter bubble analogy (Eli Pariser 2011) a recurring theme when discussing all aspects of today's society. Instead of widening our perspectives, the internet is wrapping us in tribal bubbles where we only meet people and information that confirm our own views. We have always formed tribal groupings but the net reinforces this and as a result it becomes almost impossible to discus with someone from another bubble/tribe/planet. The bubble I inhabit is one of global collaboration, democratic development, tolerance and a belief in the common good. We see digital media as a positive force to bring people together, empower them by giving them a voice and where the crowd is always wise. However in a parallel bubble there is a totally alien world where the wisdom of the crowd has become the fury of the mob and the net is an arena for self-promotion, intolerance, mistrust and fear-mongering. There are of course many other bubbles between these extremes but the more we retreat into these cocoons the harder it gets to engage in any kind of communication with representatives of another world whose truths are complete contradictions of those we believe in. The US presidential campaign is a prime example of this but there are similar clashes in almost all countries and the gap seems to be widening.

Another paradox is that all this is happening in an age when more people than ever before have access to free school education and access to higher education has been radically expanded. How do we deal with this bubble society in public education? How do we counter the climate of mistrust and suspicion that threatens the notion of a positive future? More than ever we need to discuss these issues at all educational levels and promote a culture of inclusion rather than exclusion. The alternative is unthinkable.

Netflix and education

  by reflexer

Can parallels be drawn between the development of television, from scheduled broadcasting to on-demand streaming, and the movement in education from traditional campus-based studies to unbundled online courses including MOOCs? Donald Clark raises this question in a post, What does ‘learning’ have to learn from Netflix?

Netflix is in 50 countries and will go into 200 within two years. We badly need some big, global education content delivery. Brilliant, scalable content that teachers and learners love. MOOCs are getting there, showing what can be done but still far too long and over-scheduled (semester-long courses were never the real demand, just a feature of the old, supply model). We need subscriptions in the tens then hundreds of millions (Netflix has 57 million but growing exponentially). Education needs a Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter or Netflix. I’m tired of the corner-shop mentality, the attitude that teaching and learning has nothing ‘essential’ that can’t be scaled.

"Television is dead, long live television" sums up the situation rather well. Many people today have almost abandoned scheduled broadcast TV for streaming services like Netflix where content is available on-demand and on any device. Netflix, like many other successful services, uses customer data to adapt delivery to suit individual preferences and offer an increasingly personalised product. The analogy is that the same algorithm-based technology could be successfully implemented to deliver personalised educational content, as promised by the field of learning analytics. Clark sees this as a wake-up call to higher education to start fully exploiting the opportunities offered by technology.

Some kind of educational Netflix is not completely new. Apples iTunes U could be seen as a prototype still in development, offering almost a million lectures from thousands of universities on demand and on most devices. Add learning analytics, which I suspect Apple are already working on, and you get just that kind of customised service that offers new bite-sized modules related to what you're studying. I'm sure that the delivery of educational content will move strongly in the direction described by Clark but it is still a broadcast model, no matter how personalised and on-demand it may seem to be. Who produces this content and what view of the world do they wish their content to reflect? Which content can we trust and how can we ensure that the material reflects global and multi-cultural perspectives. The risk is that this market is cornered by dominant western corporations.

Delivering content at scale and adapting it to personal preferences is the easy part really. It's what you do with that content that leads to learning. You can consume tons of content without necessarily becoming much wiser. You need to be able to put it all into context and draw conclusions and this generally needs guidance and a community to discuss with. You also need someone to break the personalisation bubble and force you to watch or read something that conflicts with your own views. The problem with personalised services like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook and Google is they want to keep you happy rather than challenging you. The adaptive Netflix model of content delivery is on its way I'm sure but even if it's an exciting development I'm not sure it really contributes to education. It's still completely top-down and controlled by a big corporation.

The danger for me is that this content is still locked down by copyright. It would be far more valuable to education if all this content is openly licensed and can then be adapted, translated and remixed by local educators to be more relevant to local learners. What we really need is a dynamic, global educational cloud where content is constantly being created, adapted and shared and is available anywhere and on any device.

Putting MOOCs into perspective

CC BY Some rights reserved by NJ..

MOOCs are still at the crest of the hype cycle and some of the headlines are getting rather tiresome. There's also a growing polarisation in the discussion between the overblown claims that MOOCs will replace the traditional university system and the counterclaims that they are irrelevant gimmicks with no academic quality. An article by Cathy N. Davidson in University World News, Stop polarising the MOOCs debate, tries to put the hype into perspective. 

Open courses provide new opportunities for study to people who are not able to enroll on a traditional university course. University education is still only for an elite few in a global perspective and the spread of MOOCs gives millions access to at least a taste of higher education. Even if there are now avenues for converting MOOC experience into credits, that path is hardly a threat to the established university system. Regular students are not dropping out of their full-time studies to go MOOC:

"There is no evidence that students are dropping out of brick-and-mortar universities in droves in order to enrol in online courses. On the contrary, the typical online course student is someone who would not otherwise have access to higher education."

The article sees no evidence that MOOCs are likely to drive down tuition fees either. It may be that the traditional system will continue unaffected by MOOCs and open education (remember that MOOCs are not as open as they may claim). Those who need the status and credentials of a recognised university degree will continue to pay for it but the difference is that all those who cannot afford that have now got access to an alternative. It may not have the same status but it may well develop into something that is good enough, especially if some kind of credentials are available such as Open Badges.

As Cathy Davidson concludes:

"Indeed, in many cases MOOCs will not solve the problem of the high cost of tuition fees at face-to-face institutions; but, in the end, they may help more people who have never conceived of attending a ‘real’ college participate in the higher education that, the numbers show, is coveted, prized, valued, sought after.And thus – for MOOC lovers and MOOCs haters alike – an important rhetorical point we should all be emphasising, in every conversation: in the complex, changing world in which we live, advanced learning is necessary. Not a luxury. It deserves the public support of other necessities. Advanced education is far too important to price out of the market for all but the global 1%."

Education, but not as we know it

The market place for free online higher education has become rather crowded during the last 9 months or so. Established actors like Peer2Peer University and University of the People have been joined by heavyweights like Coursera and EdX with the clout of some of the world's most prestigious universities behind them. Throw in other players like Udacity, Saylor Foundation, Course Hero and Faculty project and you have a vast range of online learning available for free. Then there are numerous  "free-range" MOOCs run by comitted professors on the principles of collaborative, student-driven learning. Each of these actors has their own approach to learning, their own interpretation of concepts like free, open and learner-centred and are run on varying business models.

So just when you think the room is pretty crowded, in comes another major initiative to stir things up even more. Enter World Education University! Known to friends as WEU (We-you) they have an interesting new angle on providing free education to the world. The basic concept is familiar with content being pulled in from open sources as well as custom-made content from teachers belonging to estblished universities. Students can do a self-test of learning preferences and content can be adapted to suit different styles. Mentors are available to provide support but, as always, students are expected to do a lot of self-study and peer review of each other's work.

However one interesting feature is that WEU aims to offer real qualifications by teaming up with or acquiring existing colleges. They also aim to offer tailor-made degree programmes in association with companies of professional bodies to ensure that students get the skills they need for careers in those organisations.

The twist in the tail, as always, is how all this is financed. Obviously the founders are investing heavily and they are also attracting sponsorship from large companies too. But if the courses are free where's the revenue coming from? As ever on the net the answer is advertising. According to an article in Campus Technology, New Global University To Be Both Free and For-Profit, there are plans to allow advertising on the course site that will be adapted to the students' interests. The advertisers will be subsidising the students' education in return for the opportunity to advertise direct to their target group. Another avenue is making students available for marketing research and surveys. Students can, say, win points for tests on their course or responding to marketing surveys and then qualify for discounts and free merchandise. A third potential revenue stream is to encourage course material authors whereby their e-books can be published, marketed and sold by WEU with a revenue share scheme as incentive.

It's education, but not as we know it. Academics may be very sceptical about the commercial aspects of WEU but for millions of people around the world without any prospect of raising the money needed to go to a regular university this will be an enormous opportunity. The presence of a few adverts is a minor irritation if you can study for credible qualifications without debt. It's already certain that no matter how many universities are founded in the next few years they can never keep pace with the exploding demand for higher education. New avenues are needed. Watch this space.

Telephones and e-mail - is the end at hand?

 Some rights reserved by kristiewells

The two most important means of communication for those of us over 30 are showing signs of serious fatigue. Most of us still rely on phone calls and e-mail for the vast majority of our business and personal communication but two new articles in the New York Times indicate that this domination is under threat.

Let's take e-mail first. According to an article by Nick Bilton called Disruptions: Life’s Too Short for So Much E-Mail, 107 trillion e-mails were sent last year from 3.1 billion active accounts. This boils down to the average business user getting an average of 105 e-mails every day. Most of this deluge is unnecessary and could be avoided if people learned a few simple rules like thinking several times before hitting the "reply all" button and not sending so many copies to people who probably don't need to know at all. However the constant flow is hard to regulate since even if you diligently reply quickly to every mail that action simply prompts just as many answers.

"Last year, I decided to try to reach In-box Zero, the Zen-like state of a consistently empty in-box. I spent countless hours one evening replying to neglected messages. I woke up the next morning to find that most of my replies had received replies, and so, once again, my in-box was brimming. It all felt like one big practical joke."

The fact that the vast majority of e-mail in the world is spam does not make the situation easier. Maybe e-mail is simply nearing the end of the line and is suffocating under its own weight. Many under the age of 25 use e-mail very sparingly, preferring to communicate by social media where you have greater control over who can reach you and where communication is usually short and to the point. Most over 25 belong to the e-mail generation and are trapped in it for the time being but we can see new communication models forming.

Good old telephony does seems to be on the retreat already. Again the younger generation clearly prefer texting to phoning and now companies are increasingly abandoning the phone for online communication with customers. Amy O'Leary writes in another NYT article, Tech Companies Leave Phone Calls Behind, about how many net-based companies are simply not on the phone at all.

"Voice calls have been falling out of fashion with teenagers and people in their 20s for some time (text only, please). But what is a matter of preference for the young is becoming a matter of policy for technology companies; phones cost money, phones do not scale."

Global companies like Google or Facebook would need large armies of call-center operators to even try to answer customer questions by telephone and it's easy to understand why they simply don't even try. It simply takes too long to talk to customers and costs too much. Many companies don't even advertise a single phone number and often make their e-mail address very difficult to find. In a global market there simply is no time to deal with the millions of phone enquiries that would stream in. Instead of trying to keep up with the deluge the big companies are switching off and referring customers to self-help sites and forums.

However as the giants become harder to talk to maybe smaller companies can use the old technology to their advantage by providing the exclusive service of voice communication. 

MOOCs get more massive

Remember the course in artificial intelligence that Stanford University offered as a MOOC (Massive open online course) last year? It attracted about 150,000 students from all over the world though the actual number who really participated varies from article to article. Now, according to an article in Wired Campus, Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up, the teacher from the AI course is heading a start-up aiming at spreading open education even further. Sebastian Thrun, professor of computer science at Stanford, has announced that he is leaving the university after discovering the potential of mass online learning.

Udacity is the name of the latest in a fairly long line of open education providers aiming to provide online lifelong learning to a global audience. This spring they're offering two courses: Building a search engine and Programming a robotic car. According to the article, Professor Thrun hopes to attract hundreds of thousands of participants and provide free education on a global scale. They've already assembled a team of teachers and technical experts and are recruiting more.

"We believe university-level education can be both high quality and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, we've connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students in almost every country on Earth. Know Labs was founded by three roboticists who believed much of the educational value of their university classes could be offered online for very low cost. A few weeks later, over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled in our first class, "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence." The class was twice profiled by the New York Times and also by other news media. Now we're a growing team of educators and engineers, on a mission to change the future of education."

Last week I noted the appearance of Next Generation University and now along comes Udacity. The MOOC concept is developing rapidly and more variations of the theme will follow.

Here's the preview video for the search engine course:

The Floating University

The concept of university is under review. Even if the term is strictly defined in most countries there are plenty of new educational arenas flying the university flag but not following the traditional definition. I've frequently discussed Peer 2 Peer University and University of the People in this blog and although they are not "real" universities, the name sets the tone and the level of the type of study they provide. Their courses are university level though they do not lead to recognized university credits (yet). Purists may protest and scoff but these are providing higher educational opportunities in interesting new ways to new groups of students and I would expect such alternative forms of higher education to increase in the near future.

  by  aimilino01 

A new variation on this theme is being tested this term. It's called simply The Floating University. The venture is described as:
"...a joint venture between The Jack Parker Corporation and Big Think, a knowledge forum where the world's top experts engage the thinking public to explore the big ideas and core skills defining the 21st century."

What they've done is to sign up a star-studded cast of academic elite and filmed a series of polished lectures where they give their overviews and thoughts on their various fields. The lectures are supplemented by notes, suggested reading, assignments and discussion forums and the result is a series of master class courses: a kind of academic All-star game. The first course is being launched right now and is called Great big ideas.

"Great Big Ideas delivers the key takeaways of an entire undergraduate education. It's a survey of twelve major fields delivered by their most important thinkers and practitioners. Each lecture explores the key questions in the field, lays out the methods for answering those inquiries and explains why the field matters. It is an effective introduction to thinking differently, and a primer in the diverse modes of problem solving essential for success in the 21st century."

Unlike the university alternatives mentioned earlier, the Floating University is not an example of open educational resources, nor is it free. Great big ideas costs $495 for the 12 lectures and study material. Individuals can enroll but the main idea is to provide ready-to-go courses for other universities to offer. I would imagine that those "real" universities can then provide their own teachers to guide students through the material but they would obviously not need to do any lecturing themselves.

The course is being offered as a regular campus option by three major universities: Harvard, Yale and Bard. One unique feature is having top harvard professors teaching a class at Yale and vice versa. I can imagine a future scenario where smaller universities around the world will offer Floating University courses where top academics provide the input but the local teachers provide the context and guide the students' discussions and reflection.

Is this a threat or opportunity or simply filling an innovative gap in the market? It's certainly a fascinating area to keep an eye on.

Have a look around the Floating University web site. There are plenty of films and sample lectures but since all are copyright I can't show them here.

Giving it all away

Open educational resources are widely used in schools and universities and increasing numbers of teachers are sharing lectures, lessons and other material. It's still far from mainstream but the movement is gaining momentum. I've written several times about how innovative educational initiatives such as Peer 2 Peer University and University of the People have started offering free peer learning courses using open educational resources. The problem there is that they have not so far been able to offer university credits for these courses, only the satisfaction of having partoicipated and learnt a lot (not a bad result either of course).

However, according to an article in Times Higher Education ("OER university" to cut cost of degree) a group of universities known as the OER Foundation (University of Southern Queensland in Australia, Athabasca University in Canada and Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand) are planning to offer courses using free online resources at up to 90% of the cost of a regular campus course. Students who complete the coursework will be assessed and awarded academic credits.

According to  Wayne Mackintosh, director of the Open Education Resource Foundation:

"Throughout most Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, the costs of education have been increasing in excess of the inflation index. What we're aiming to do is provide alternatives...the opportunity to get the same quality of education for significantly lower cost."

Why would a university that charges significant fees for its courses want to give them away for almost nothing? Firstly, those who already distribute their material for free, such as MIT and Open University, have enhanced their global reputation, improved the quality of their course material and undoubtedly recruited a considerable number of students (see Open Learn Research Report, Open University 2009). Secondly, it makes sense to let the public view the material that has been produced with, in most cases, public money. Thirdly the availability of free content is hardly a threat to a "regular" campus education since the value lies in the context not the content. Without the context provided by the teachers the content has little value.

Offering OER-based university education as proposed here offers an excellent complement to the traditional system. Not everyone has the time and resources to devote 3-4 years to full-time higher education. This method gives so many people who would never even have considered higher education the opportunity to study and gain qualifications. Two parallell university systems who benefit from each other and allow for the wider dissemination of research and academic activity can't be a bad thing.

The future ain't what it used to be

This week's OECD report about the state of education in 65 countries has sparked thousands of articles debating why South Korea, Finland and Singapore are top of the rankings and why everyone else isn't. It's time for the never-ending discussion about how to reinvent our school system to be more in tune with the challenges of the 21st century. I agree that there is a lot that can be done and there are plenty of examples of innovative approaches to be inspired by if the responsible authorities care to look. For an analysis of the practice of producing educational league tables see Tony Bates' article Interpreting international comparisons in academic achievement.

  by  Temari 09 

However, I got a fascinating link from a Twitter contact pointing me to an article that's nearly as old as I am, from 1960, Education for the community of 1985 by Leonard S Kenworthy. His vision of the school of the future is actually not so far from what many are expressing today and one quote in particular sounds very familiar:

"Scarcely any of our schools in the United States have wrestled realistically with the curriculum changes which such trends suggest ( ie greater international understanding, cross-cultural awareness, importance of science and technology). Most schools are still satisfied with their existing curricula, which were designed for an 18th or 19th century rather than a 20th or 21st century world."

The main focus of the article is internationalisation and the need to understand other cultures and viewpoints. To improve this the author suggests a greater focus on foreign language teaching in schools and colleges as well as encouraging study vists and exchange schemes with other countries. One particularly attractive idea is that foriegn students could be invited to local schools to talk about their homelands. Now that would still be a novel approach to internationalisation that very few schools have tried. The same goes for getting older people involved in schools. Think of the gold mine of memories the neighbourhood's elderly possess.

Even if the net allows us to communicate with pupils and students from just about any country in the world for free we're still discussing how to open up the classroom. Another of Kenworthy's visions is still unfulfilled:

"But I hope that in the next few years schools will begin to develop 'affiliations' with schools in other parts of the world so that every child will have had some continuing experience with pupils in at least three or four parts of the world."

It's a classic lesson in the principle that history repeats itself. In 1960the idea of opening up the classroom to the world was a challenge since contacts were mostly by post in the form of pen friends but today there simply is no excuse. The world is out there, just open the door.

"In conclusion, stress in the past has been upon the child-centered school and upon the community-centred school. Neither of these needs to be discarded. But our schools in the years ahead need to add a new dimension - the world-centered school."

Web video key to innovation

Having been reared on TV and film most of us find video an excellent medium for learing. We learn by watching and imitating and printed media are simply not very good at that. Video on the web has exploded in recent years and there are predictions that 90% of all web content will be video in a few years from now, The power of YouTube and suchlike is that someone with talent or an idea can communicate it with potentially millions of others and in turn inspire others to further develop the idea.

This is the theme of Chris Anderson's recent inspiring TED talk, How web video powers global innovation, embedded below. He shows examples of how ideas have spread thanks to the web and how innovative ideas from all over the world can be highlighted as never before.The implications of this movement for education are for me clear. Why then is the education system often so sceptical towards the role of technology? Fear of losing control?



Watch this in combination with Sugata Mitra's TED talk from a previous post and you get a new perspective on how technology can radically change education.

e-Taalim, web magazine for e-learning in Africa and Middle East

The second in my series of interviews with international experts in the field of open educational resources is with Nadhir Douma, founder of the e-magazine e-Taalim (click on the picture to start the film). E-Taalim is the first website that aims at giving an overview of e-learning in Africa and the Middle East.

The site was launched in November last year and they have worked hard at establishing it as a news channel for e-learning. E-Taalim is available in three languages, Arabic, French and English, and is also active on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They recognize that the different language groups have different interests and so around half of the material is common to all languages and the rest is more customised.

Net-based education is certainly established in Africa but the number of institutions offering courses is of course small compared with what's on offer in Europe and North America. Some noteable examples are the Virtual University of Tunis, the African Virtual University and the Arab Virtual University. One of the difficulties in the spread of OER is that only 1% of all content on the web is in Arabic so there is a massive need for development in this area. One interesting initiative is the Arab Grid for Learning that is building a portal and community for the development of open learning resources in the region.

The objectives of e-Taalim are as follows:

• Participate in bridging the digital divide and closing the content gap between the African/Arab  countries and the developed countries
• Participate in raising awareness about the use of ICT and Media for education within the African and Arab countries’ corporations and organizations including NGOs and CSOs
• Offer the latest information about corporate e-learning and blended learning for executives and professionals
• Establish an African/Arab e-learning community that will share and diffuse knowledge

See the video interview with Nadhir Douma.