ICL 2012 Conference

 

From 26 to 28 September, I attended 15th int. conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning  (#ICL2012) in Villach, Austria. I presented a paper about content aggregation in a PLE and serendipity in online networks. Here are my presentation slides on Slideshare: 

ICL 2012 from Mohsen Saadatmand

I enjoyed Steve Wheeler’s keynote and here are the slides:

Learning 3.0 and the Smart eXtended Web from Steve Wheeler

The conference program is available here and the proceedings will be available in IEEE Explore 

NLC2012 "Networked Learning Conference" 2-4 April in Maastricht

Last week 2-4 April, I attended the Networked Learning Conference (NLC2012) in Maastricht Netherlands. I presented my PhD research in Doctoral Consortium in the first day of the conference.  Doctoral consortium was organized in two groups of 7-10 doctoral students presenting their research and four mentors in each group followed by one-to-one personal mentoring session. The mentors were Terry Anderson, Peter Goodyear, Grainne Conole, Maarten de Laat, Chris Jones, Jon Dron, Peter Sloep, Riina Vuorikari and Judi Marshall.
Grainne Conole has summarized some of the students’ research in her blog. 

In main conference, I also presented a paper about the learning ecology in open and networked environments which was the results of a preliminary analysis of my PhD dissertation research.

Networked Learning Conference 2012

View more PowerPoint from Mohsen Saadatmand

The conference was well organized and I enjoyed informal interactions and social gatherings.I met and talked with many people in the area of learning technologies, technology enhanced learning and networked learning, some of them whose work I am following.  

Terry Anderson and Jon Dron presented a really interesting keynote in a funny way:

The final panel discussion was facilitated by David McConnell with Etienne Wenger, Terry Anderson, John Dron, Peter Goodyear, Tara Fenwick, Judi Marshall.

Here is the conference abstracts. 

The conference Twitter hashtag: #NLC2012. 

Prior to the NLC 2012 there was a series of online ‘Hot-Seat discussions’ hosted by some of the leading thinkers in the field. Here is the link to the Ning Page for the hot seats.

How to attend a conference!

Stephen Downes recently published a post in his blog about: How to Get the Most out of a Conference.
Based on his experiences and reflections from many conferences, he is providing some general technical and practical guidelines from finding a good conferences, preparing a submission, traveling, presenting and networking in conferences, preparing your talk and following the activities after the conference.  It’s really a good source to take a look at and get something out of it.
He has also referred to Clayton R. Wright‘s list of educational technology conferences which is normally updated every six months or every year.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

Since few years ago, the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies @C4LPT conducts a survey on tools and apps for learning and ranks them according to the votes. On 13 November 2011 it published 5th annual survey of learning tools. 

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

View more presentations from Jane Hart

As for the past two years, Twitter is number one, then YouTube, Google Docs, Blogging tools, sharing tools and social bookmarking tools. This is quite what I was expecting according to my experience. Especially, Twitter has got its popularity as a connecting and networking tool used very widely in scientific events like conferences and also in online communities to keep following the activities more easily.

The future of learning...

The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), as part of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), has just published a report about: The Future of Learning: Preparing for Change.

It is a great resource that envisages the future of learning and the fundamental transformation of education and learning which will need new skills and competencies. It illustrates a vision that personalization, collaboration and informalization (informal learning) will be at the core of learning in the future. It emphasizes the potential of technology very crucial in this process.  It is then presenting the persona of the future learners. I found it very interesting and worth reading.

Open Access, Open Content, OER: Towards the future of scholarship and research

This week is the 'Open Access' week, a movement which has started few years ago to raise the importance of openness and free sharing of information and content. This is to highlight the significance and the potential of open/free educational resources in academia in different disciplines from science to humanities and for the global society on the whole. Open/free access promises for more democratic opportunities to “the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – and has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted” (OC page; http://www.openaccessweek.org/).

There are various activities and events this week to promote open access in a global level. Some of them are listed in the page above which is a network dedicated to enhance this movement. Of which there are some webinars by the Athabasca University in Canada that I am following:  October 24, 2011: Fun and Fear in Open Spaces, October 25, 2011: Post Secondary Leadership and the OER Movement , October 26, 2011: Making Sense of Complexity in Open Information Environments , October 27, 2011: Panel on Moving to Open Educational Resources at Athabasca University , October 28, 2011: OER's and Sustainable Innovation: Low Cost, Low Risk but High Impact.

David Wiley , an open educator who has been contributing a lot to the promotion of open content and openness in education had also lately a discussion week on this topic in the #change11 MOOC.

This week of #change11 MOOC is about OER facilitated by Rory McGreal , UNESCO/COL Chair in Open Educational Resources at the Athabasca University.

I found an interesting article of Wiley here in EDUCAUSE Review 2010: Openness as Catalyst for an Educational Reformation  which is worth reading.  It is part of the EDUCAUSE Review V. 45, N.4 on "openness".

Here is David Wiley's talk in TED2010 about open education and the future.

Discussion on Networked Learning: #NLC2012 online 'hot-seats'

This week I have been following and somehow contributing a little bit to the online discussion on networked learning  organized by  #NLC2012 ( networked learning conference 2012). There is a series of online discussions prior to the conference facilitated by some researchers and thinkers in the area of networked learning in this Ning group.

Various topics related to networked learning will be covered in theses hotseats by some key persons in networked learning and distance education like Peter Goodyear, David McConnell, Terry Anderson and Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld.

There will be seven weeks total, each week on a topic hosted and facilitated by some people, started already on Oct.10th continued until March 2012 before the conference on April 2-4. The schedule, topics and the hosts are available in the group page. It is all free and everybody interested can join the discussion and all contents will be free and available in the Ning page.

This week the hotseat was with Peter Goodyear , one of first contributors and developers of networked learning, about the definition of the term, some key foundations, examples of leaning networks and researching the architecture of productive learning networks.  There was a good discussion on these topics and so far there were about 140 threads in the discussion. The main topic of the discussion perhaps was about the definition of the term  and what is meant by 'networked learning', also what are the main components of networked learning? How can we research on networked learning and what are the examples of networked learning practices.
Goodyear put some key variations of the definition of the term as follow:

• learning in which C&IT is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources
• learning that involves people collaborating with the help of networked technologies in a shared enterprise of knowledge creation
• learning and teaching carried out largely via the Internet/Web which emphasizes collaborative and cooperative learning, learning through dialogue and group work together with interaction with online materials, and collaborative knowledge production
• learning and teaching carried out largely via the Internet/Web which emphasizes dialogical learning, collaborative and cooperative learning, group work, interaction with on-line materials, and knowledge production
• the use of Internet-based information and communication technologies to promote collaborative and co-operative connections: between one learner and other learners; between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources, so that participants can extend and develop their understanding and capabilities in ways that are important to them, and over which they have significant control

For me it has a been a question that could we define networked learning without relating it to technology as it was also discussed there, and  is networked learning equal just to learning in networks 'learning networks'? Or the other way around that learning networks are part of the networked learning? I think the latter! In my opinion, creating and developing connections is the main feature of networked learning which is connection between learner and other people, learner and resources and of course learner and communities and networks.

In one discussion thread McConnell introduced this book to come: Exploring the Theory, Pedagogy and Practice of Networked Learning, Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Lone; Hodgson, Vivien; McConnell , 2011, Springer

Open, Digital, Networked: The scholarship in the 21st century!

Image: http://tinyurl.com/338dja

#Change11 MOOC ( open online course) keeps going well with good discussions and facilitators each week but for me it’s an unfortunate, due to being very busy with my research, that I cannot participate in the activities and in many live sessions. However, I am trying to follow the weekly activities at least on Twitter, Facebook Group and live session as much as I can.

The week three of the course was with Martin Weller from the Open University UK about “Digital Scholarship”.  (Here is the recording of the session).

He has been researching and talking on this topic for years and recently he has published a book on it entitles: The Digital Scholar: how technology is transforming scholarly practices  

The argument is that how new emerging digital technologies have enabled us to form a kind of scholarship (learning, teaching, collaborating, creating contents, sharing …) which is open, digital and networked. I really like these three words: open, digital, networked. In my research I am also investigating open, digital and networked learning. That’s the reason this kind of learning and scholarship is my personal and professional convictions!  

Although, there is a debate on this that how these technologies have changed or could transform our academic practices and traditional teaching-studying-learning processes? How their impact on our today’s scholarship is really feasible? It was also debate on digital and traditional scholarship between Weller and Antonio Dias de Figueiredo in Ed-Media 2012 conference in Lisbon.  

Here in his blog Weller talks about how digital scholarship can also change the way we do research or at least has the potential to alter the way we conduct research and to add some new tools to the toolbox.

Starting the academic year with two open courses!

I have been busy with some work on my research and data analysis in the summer and I haven't written something since July. However, I am not regularly blogging but I try to keep writing from time to time!

I am starting this fall with the open online courses (MOOCs) I am interested in following if not actively participating. I have been participating in some Moocs already and I don't think I have time in this very busy moments of my research to spend in MOOCs in spite of my willingness though.

Following the previous open courses by George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier, they have been planning after #CCK11 to offer a new course as an inclusive of all #MOOCs to discuss various issues relating to open and digital scholarship, networked learning, open education, PLE, and all stuff that has been covered in other courses. So, they came up with  #change11 MOOC; Change: Education, Learning and Technology to discuss all those important issues and to answer some crucial questions also about the future of education  as posed in the course page:
"- How does learning change when formal boundaries are reduced? 
- What is the future of learning? 
- What role with educators play in this future? 
- What types of institutions does society need to respond to hyper-growth of knowledge and rapid dissemination of information? 
- How do the roles of learners and educators change when knowledge is ubiquitous?" 

This is a 36-week course starting this week and lasts until May 2012. Each week with an innovative educator, researcher or scholar from different countries to discuss all of the above issues of present and future learning and create a global understanding and learning experience.  Here is the course schedule with the list of the topics and speakers.


Another open course is EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education , #eci831, offered by Alec Couros from the University of Regina, Canada starting this week and lasts until December. I have attended last year this course and I liked the whole learning experience and interaction,s and I am going to take part again as much as my time allows . Especially because Alec is an inspiring open educator and creates such motivating learning environments in his courses.

The structure of these MOOCs are almost the same, distributed across the web, using various tools and platforms by the participants to collaborate, communicate and create learning reflections and artifacts in different forms on blogs, wikis, FB, twitter etc. augmented by a number of live weekly sessions which bring together people to discuss their ideas and negotiate different topics of interest which all make such a ubiquitous, rich, self-directed learning.

The PLE Conference 2011 in Southampton

The second conference on Personal Learning Environments (PLE), The PLE Confrence 2011, was held from 11-13  July 2011 at the University of Southampton, UK. The first PLE conference was last year in Barcelona.
For this year's conference I had an accepted abstract which unfortunately I couldn't make it to attend and I missed this opportunity.  Nevertheless, I followed it online both from Live-casting of the keynotes and sessions, and from twitter stream: #PLE_SOU.
 Paulo Simoes has aggregated all resources and presentations again here as he did in Ed-Media11. Here is the link: http://www.scoop.it/t/the-ple/

Ed-Media Conference 2011 in Lisbon!

From June 28th to July 1st I attended ED-Media Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. It was a great event to meet people working in the area of my research especially keynotes: Alec Couros, George Siemens, Erik Duval, Martin Weller and some other scholars talking about the impact of emerging and networking technologies on our today’s teaching and learning practices and how open and networked learning is important in the current era of openness and connectedness.   

Alec Couros’ keynote was about " Why Networked Learning Matters". I haven’t met him personally but, I’ve been in one of his open courses already last year which was inspiring and I liked it. From that and some other (massive) open online courses by George Siemens and Stephen Downes I became more interested in this area and shifted my research focus more into open and networked learning. We met shortly in Ed-Media11 but we couldn’t manage to have a conversation though. Maybe some other time….

Academic Learning & Collaboration & Learning

View more presentations from Alec Couros

Erik Duval was presenting about “The Importance of Being Open”. I met him also in the TEL Summer School in June in Crete where he also presented something about learning analytics and the importance of ‘attention’.

On the importance of being open

View more presentations from Erik Duval

There was a keynote debate about the importance of digital scholarship and how emerging technologies will transform our education and scholarship in the near future? The debtors were Martin Weller (for): "This house believes that in the next decade, digital scholarship (in open journals, blogs, and social media) will achieve the same status in academic settings as traditional scholarship" and Antonio Dias de Figueiredo (against), and George Siemens ( moderator). 

Digital scholarship debate

View another webinar from Martin Weller

Digital Scholarship Debate (ED-MEDIA 2011)

View more presentations from Antonio Dias de Figueiredo

The last day keynote was by Andrew Law from the Open University ( UK) about "Bringing Social Into Learning By Open Media".   

Bringing the Social into Learning with Open Media

View more presentations from SocialLearn, Open U

I also enjoyed the “Graduate Student Program” which included different sessions and presentations covering various topics from theoretical perspectives in research to methodological choices, practical issues to be successful in research and how to publish.
The whole conference and especially the keynotes were useful for me to develop my dissertation research and to get networking with more people in this area.  

There were quite many social and sharing activities online by participants in different platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare etc.  But, tweeting was number one favorable online interaction (as in many academic events).  According to the social media team of the conference there were about 3745 tweets by Hashtag #edmedia11. Here is the statistic of the tweets.
  
Here are all resources and URLs related to Ed-Media 11 collected by Paulo Simoes in Scoop.it. http://www.scoop.it/t/edmedia-2011  

Participants of the "Graduate Student Program"

TEL Summer School 2011

Last week (May 29-June 4) I attended JTELSS11; the 7th Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning in Crete island, Greece. It was supported by PROLEARN Academy , EATEL, TELeurope and STELLARNET. It was such a great event for doctoral students and researchers in TEL to come together to exchange their ideas and build also a TELeurope doctoral community of practice. There were about 42 doctoral students from 22 EU countries (with different nationalities). 

The summer school program included verities of activities such as plenary sessions, workshops, group-working on different topics of interest e.g. web 2.0 in research and learning, PLE, augmented reality, adaptive learning systems and other areas of TEL research. The main part of the program was everyday group-working and interactive discussions between PhD students   to discuss and share their research issues such as methodologies, theories and other topics and techniques in PhD research. It was a unique opportunity to meet people in TEL research, fellow researchers to exchange our thoughts and develop our professional networking. 

In addition to a good scientific program, there were also some leisure activities. The location of the summer school was a great beach resort which provided participants with possibility of doing various activities such as swimming, beach volleyball, and other sports activities. The day before the summer school we had an excursion to south-western of Crete from a very glorious mountainous road. Then in the last day we also had another excursion to some villages in eastern part of Crete and a good-looking lake where we somehow got relaxed after a one-week intensive working.

On the whole, it was such a wonderful experience to benefit both from the excellent program of the summer school and to visit attractive Crete.  

Here is a video of the JTELSS11:

MOOCS! (Massive Open Online Courses)

-- PLEK12 (an open online course on personal learning environments) by Christopher Davis Sessums and Wendy Drexler  from the University of Florida ended last week. I was able to be lurking in this course and couldn’t be able to participate in all activities.  I couldn’t attend live sessions either because they were running at 2am (my time). Fortunately, all archive of Elluminate recordings are available for further access. 

-- CCK11 also just finished this week. The wrap up session of this 12-weeks course was held on Friday by the facilitators (George Siemens and Stephen Downes).  The discussion was mainly about the current situation and the future of connectivism and MOOCs.  Here is the recording of the session. Siemens created a Google Group to discuss how to plan, deliver, and research open online courses: " MetaMOOC" .

-- Another MOOC started this week about mobile learning: MobiMOOC. It will run from 2 April - 14 May 2011.

 

My pondering on connectivism!

 Since I have been engaged in research on open learning, social networked learning, open online learning environments, PLE and all those issues related to the influence of emerging technologies on our current learning ecologies, I have been also thinking and reflecting on connectivism and its merits as a learning theory and its applications in our education and learning practices in the current digital and networked. Although, it seems that connectivism is not yet widely accepted as a robust learning theory and there are some criticisms around it but, there are some links between the nature of our learning and knowledge construction in the complexities of digital and networked technologies and connectivism as a theoretical framework which still can help us understand these complexities. 

For me as a researcher in this area, there is still some sort of uncertainty to apply connectivism in my research with regards to the critical arguments around it. Nonetheless, my research on open and networked learning and personal learning environments (PLE) has some theoretical grounds in connectivism.  My reflections on connectivism as a learning theory brought me to some issues which I’d like to argue here to provide a base for further discussion and thinking:

-  With regards to the fact that some critics still argue about the potential of connectivism as a learning theory, one question is that what it offers that not existed in the other learning theories and how it explain learning processes differently from other learning theories? What are the core elements of a learning theory which qualify it as a learning theory and connectivism lacks in this respect?

-While it is not a serious learning theory (or let say a well-established learning theory), does it mean that it shouldn’t be used in our research on learning processes in technological-mediated learning environments? Most of the time I am talking about connectivism as a theoretical base for my research and the way it can explain our learning and knowledge construction in today’s networked world, there are some criticisms by some research fellows and even from supervisors that they are skeptical of that as a learning theory then, using it might endanger a research in its theoretical underpinnings.

-While there are many research and development being done on connectivism and at least it is something that could explain the nature of learning phenomena in a digital and networked world with regards to openness and connectivity, it indicates that it has good grounds as a growing phenomenon if not as a theory. So, a learning theory probably doesn’t become a theory unless being researched and practiced in different contexts and being developed over time by examining its potential. Since, connectivism is relatively a new born term and needs to grow over time, we all as educators and researchers can help nurture it by our contributions.

IRRODL Special Issue on Connectivism Published

I have been looking forward to seeing this special issue of IRRODL about connectivism since last year in September when I started participating in PLENK2010. So, it was published last week.

 The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) is a refereed free e-journal that aims to advance research, theory and best practices of open and distance education.

Below is it the content of this issue however, I am not sure if I can post them here but since it's a free and open access journal there shouldn't be any problem I guess!

IRRODL Vol 12, No 3 (2011): Special Issue - Connectivism: Design and Delivery of Social Networked Learning

Editorial: George Siemens, Grainne Conole
Articles:

Interconnecting networks of practice for professional learning
Julie Mackey, Terry Evans

The challenges to connectivist learning on open online networks: Learning experiences during a massive open online course
Rita Kop

Emergent learning and learning ecologies in Web 2.0
Roy Williams, Regina Karousou, Jenny Mackness

EduCamp Colombia: Social networked learning for teacher training
Diego Ernesto Leal Fonseca

Three generations of distance education pedagogy
Terry Anderson, Jon Dron

Connectivism: Its place in theory-informed research and innovation in technology-enabled learning
Frances Bell

Frameworks for understanding the nature of interactions, networking, and community in a social networking site for academic practice
Grainne Conole, Rebecca Galley, Juliette Culver

Dialogue and connectivism: A new approach to understanding and promoting dialogue-rich networked learning
Andrew Ravenscroft

Proposing an integrated research framework for connectivism: Utilising theoretical synergies
Bopelo Boitshwarelo