Meta-Design of a Virtual Meta-Campus

"In a world that is not predictable, improvisation, evolution, and innovation are more than a luxury: they are a necessity. The challenge of design is not a matter of getting rid of the emergent, but rather of including it and making it an opportunity for more creative and more adequate solutions to problems." (Fischer & Giaccardi, 2006)

Designing a virtual meta-campus is a complex systems wicked problem. There isn't one solution, technologies are changing, goals are shifting, unexpected possibilites emerge and the results are unpredictable. Traditional elearning design principles may not be the most productive in this type of dynamic challenge where 'perpetual-beta' is often the norm.

Fischer & Giaccardi present a conceptual framework for 'Meta-Design' that addresses design-for-change issues and recommend 'co-adaptive' processes that can be used to develop an agile system that evolves with its designers, developers and users.

Meta-design uses social and technical infrastructure that isn't designed completely before use, is flexible and evolves in the hands of users. At the same time users adapt to system functionality and a dialogue is developed in which the user helps design the design process.

The Meta-Design Framework has several elements:

• Design for change - user participation and empowerment
• Underdesign - create flexible environments rather than solutions
• Open systems approaches - that can be modified by users and evolve during use
• Seeding - working components that can be evolved through small contributions of large numbers of people
• Unselfconcsious design culture - slow adaption and error reduction

According to Fischer & Giaccardi Meta-Design approaches need to consider:

• Interactive Art - focus on collaboration and co-creation, often exploring feelings and emotions
• Collaborative synchnocity - allowing 'power' users to interact with the community, the project and ongoing collaborative processes
• Social creativity - building a shared user understanding and user voice leading to new insights, new ideas, new artifacts
• Balancing standardisation and improvisation - avoiding the disfunctional extremes of both
• Consumers and Designers - Some users (not all, not at all times, not in all contexts) want to be designers: "engage the talent pool"
• Ease-of-Use Revisited - Over-specialised easy-to-use systems may not be that interesting. Users will learn to operate a system if it has personal value - and is empowering, engaging and fun.
• Motivation and Rewards - Users will persist in tasks if the 'design culture' includes simple motivational activities - particularly those that build 'social capital'.

The Meta-Design Framework includes three integrated 'Design Spaces':

1. Designing Design - higher-order design that allows for change and even transformation
2. Designing Together - facilitating participatory design processes
3. Designing the 'In-Between' - supporting and creating social networks and their interaction with technology and systems. Relational, reciprocal and recursive interactions that trigger co-creation.

Participatory design requires new paradigms and cultures. Can we create the design spaces and facilitate the deign processes needed to build the virtual campus? Indeed how can we embed these in an evolving virtual campus?

Virtual Campus Framework

Regional meetings have recently been held to progress the Virtual Campus Project discussed in previous posts on this blog: Imagining the Polyverse, Building a Sustainable Polyverse.

While the Polytechnic has an 'official' LMS and public website there are a plethora of other online services, resources and environments independently developed by innovative individuals and teams to meet the needs of learners. So much so that it's valid to ask if we already have a 'virtual campus' in the sense of a rich and diverse online capacity that provides required functionality for remote and local students to engage in learning and training.

What is clearly absent however is any sense from a student perspective of a coherent and connected Polytechnic online service/space. Most online students are isolated from each other and from other classes, campuses and learning communities. There is little sense of a 'virtual campus' and navigation between online spaces is almost non-existent.

Rather than launch into planning and building a 'virtual campus' after hearing (for the first time for many present) about the numerous online services beyond the official LMS all meetings recommended:

1. Defining the notion of a 'virtual campus' for discussion
2. Listing some guiding principles that might form a conceptual framework within which further online innovation might take place
3. Develop a model or models to provide systemic views of virtual campus infrastructure, navigation, standards, data flow...

Several people expressed the desire to ensure that any processes put in place to build a coherent and connected virtual campus continued to support innovation within and outside the project, as well as being agile enough to cope with changing technologies, diverse pedagogies and genuine student choices in learning.

At some meetings there was discussion about the use of designs/technologies to connect existing online spaces such as

• tagging and meta-tagging
• visual ecologies such as 360 panorama
• immersive 3D environments
• gamification and levels

How does one navigate a complex and rapidly growing virtual campus where anything is possible?

What should we call the virtual campus? The staff intranet is called Phoenix. Any suggestions for the name of an inspiring online meta-campus that blends the physical, the virtual and the possible?

Mix'n'Match Learning Environments

Teachers are joining the re-mix culture - in a bold way and at their own pace.

While some are thinking about which LMS the organisation should use from 2012 an increasing number of teachers are customising their own learning environments to suit their personal eLearning journey, learner needs and course requirements.

These teachers no longer feel bound to one system and are exploring different combinations of environments - often challenging themselves to take another step on their journey at a measured pace. In this way they are taking control of their own professional learning and having more say in the provision of ICT services for their learners.

In a surprising number of classes teachers are further customising their mix'n'match learning environments with components or services suggested by their students.

Some mix'n'match examples this year are:

• Moodle + Mahara
• Moodle + Mahara + Voicethread + YouTube
• Moodle + Facebook + Blogger/Wordpress
• Wikispaces + Mahara
• Wikispaces + Facebook + Kitely
• Wikispaces + YouTube + Voicethread
• WebCT/Blackboard + Facebook

Generally teachers have a learning 'base camp' which is often in a Moodle or Wiki with links from their directly to groups, channels or 'secret urls' in other services. Students are required to manage the different usernames/passwords but this has provided an opportunity to discuss password management systems and Open IDs - something many students are happy to learn about.

More tech-savvy teachers are integrating a range of services back to Moodle - usually through one of the many outside hosting services available which have become easier to use and cheaper.

Many of the above DIY learning environments are used for 'blended learning' and take advantage of student access to mobile computing and home broadband. In fact some components of the mix'n'match combinations are not accessible on campus due to bandwidth or firewall issues. This has not been a significant problem because either these components are optional or students access them through wired, wirelesss or USB broadband at home.

Teachers are also setting up student ICT support models - usually somewhere within the mix'n'match learning environment. For some it's a forum in Mahara, for others discussion pages on a Wiki or a closed group in Facebook. While visiting a class last week I over-heard students designing their own 'help network' independently of the teacher.

One interesting change I've noticed in classes where mix'n'match environments are used is in student attitude and ownership. Students are asking questions about the learning environment and the following discussion is often about learning and learning processes. Students have referred to "our" page/site/group and often come up with suggestions to customise it to make it easier to use.

There is also a new respect for the teacher who is clearly making an effort to construct a useful online learning environment and can be seen at times to be stretching themselves beyond their comfort zones - by choice.

iPad Knows What You Did Last Summer

I've recently enabled MobileMe on a number of iPads purchased for staff and students - because I can. But should I?

MobileMe has enabled me to pinpoint the current location of the iPads to within a few meters. I can also create friendly reminders to return the device that popup on the screen. A very useful service - depending on your point of view perhaps...

One of the iPads has just gone on summer holidays interstate with a teacher while they learn how to use it. It's possible for me to map the holiday travels of the iPad with dates and times.

As we move towards an Internet of Things I wonder about privacy and ethical implications of being able to monitor and track devices, objects, any-thing, anyone.

The MobileMe Find My iPad service gives the option to play a sound for two minutes, lock the device and even delete files. One can imagine that once iPads and iPhones have screen-side cameras the iPad will be able to take some holiday snapshots of it's users and surroundings. I believe this service is already available for laptops with webcams.

I'll arrange a discussion with the teachers once they have returned from the summer holidays. It will be interesting to see if they decide to use the iPad location service. I've decided to use it for my iPhone and iPad - just in case I lose them while on holiday :-)

Knowmadic Existence

2011 will be the first year in 15 that I haven't had an office on campus. I'll have a desk in a shared space at the Campbell St Campus. With much disciplined sorting my previous office has been reduced to 4 garbage bins, 2 recycle bins and 4 boxes that now sit at home. This move has firmly established what has been developing for some time - my 'knowmadic existence' as described in 2008 by John Moravec.

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This mobility has been made possible through the advent of powerful handheld computing and fast 3G wireless broadband. It has also been supported through flexible workplace policies that recognise the demise of the 9-5 (8-4) five-day working week and the potential for increased productivity and lifestyle choices that this can bring.

My physical location is now determined by project work, classes, meetings and the need to use specialist resources or spaces - and usually changes every few hours. My 'office' (defined as the place you are likely to find me) has become my online presence.

For my 'knowmadic work' to be effective and efficient I have to net-work across many locations - both physical and online. My physical workplaces include staff rooms, campus libraries, meeting rooms, cafes, home and even the car when travelling around the state.

When I go to a workplace I usually pick one of several bags depending on anticipated tasks:

• light bag with current papers, iPhone and netbook or tablet computer (eeePC or iPad), and various USB memory sticks with portable apps
• laptop bag with current papers, HD camera, various USB broadband devices with router/switch (to set up a local internet enabled networks for up to 6 mobile devices)
• AV bag with various digital recorders and cables
  

My online work environment includes a Polytechnic staff intranet and global professional learning network (PLN); educational resources, environments and applications; working and archived documents. I was recently able to throw away most of my papers because everything is safely archived online.

An excellent ICT infrastructure across all campuses gives me consistent firewalled access to institutional communications, applications and documents. Much of this is accessible off-campus through a web browser.

An equally excellent :-) home wired and wireless network gives me firewalled access to range of shared resources including several Tbytes of storage. These resources are complemented by a growing range of cloud computing services providing communications, servers, applications and storage - shared and private.

Ubiquitous access to files, resources, people and systems is provided through a range of services that work across devices (iPhone, iPad, EeePC, laptop, desktop) such as:

• DropBox
• Google Docs, WikiSpaces
• Evernote, Delicious, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, AuthorStream, and several more...
• LogMeIn, LastPass
• Skype, Google Talk
• GMail, work email
  

Informal chat now happens just as much online as face-to-face through:

• Twitter, Office Communicator (and hopefully iDialog one day), Facebook
• Google Reader, Blogger
• Online events in virtual spaces including Second Life/OpenSim

Online communication connects me across learning areas, campuses, educational sectors, state and international boundaries... I'm just as likely to chat and even collaborate with someone from another institution or country as I am with a local colleague.

It also disconnects me from those who are not comfortably online unless I make time for walking and talking. On the other hand I'm finding formal face-to-face meetings with both staff and students tend to be more focused and purposeful.

I wouldn't go as far as to describe myself as a nomad but perhaps it's another role to add to Stephen Downes list of educator roles :-)

Narrow views of broadband possibilities

Why would you need high-speed broadband in education? That's the question I've been asked a few times over the last couple of months.

At first I had no ready response - I thought it was obvious - clearly it isn't.


The context is the NBN rollout in Australia by 2015 to provide infrastructure that will deliver the bandwidths needed by 2030 and beyond. Tasmania is one of the early 'regions' where work has already begun and the first few towns are now connected. But many are still questioning the expense to the Nation and the need for 100Mbps - particularly for education.


Why do we need high-speed broadband in education?



Current bandwidth (and cost) is so inadequate that schools:

• restrict bandwidth (shaping) and volume (quotas) for users
• block rich media sites (for part or all of the day)
• can't effectively use video (a 2 minute video can take 5 minutes to play)
• can't use participative media due to tiny upload limits (asymmetric service)
• have established practices to keep file sizes and internet traffic as small as possible - creating a culture of limitation
• are limited in the online services they can provide to students off campus
  

Further discussion with some of those who question the need for high-speed internet connections to schools and homes for learning begins to reveal some deeper implicit assumptions:

• ICT is an add-on and not required for effective learning
• the Internet for learning is about email and occasional searching for information
• most 'content' on the Internet is irrelevant and even harmful for students
• most students won't use much ICT for further learning or in the workplace - and if they do they will be trained when required

There are many effective ways to use high-speed broadband for learning.

One way to illustrate how current bandwidths stifle learning is to consider video. Video is useful for demonstrations, tutorials, evidence for assessment, communication and story telling. At the moment however any online use of video has to be:

• short
• small window size
• low frame rate
• low resolution

The use of video becomes counter-productive when you can't clearly see what has been filmed - assuming the video plays without so many pauses that users give up in frustration.

When students produce videos that can be viewed online their work reaches an audience outside classroom walls. This makes the work authentic and meaningful. It raises the students' own expectations for quality and effectiveness. It provides avenues for feedback from and participation with local and global communities.

Video production provides engaging opportunities for learning a wide range of digital media skills. Video production for an external audience makes real for students many other complex issues such as copyright, ethical practice and terms of service. Video production that addresses community challenges such as cyber-bullying or de-forestation help to empower students to be active local and global citizens.

And that's just video. And just the video we know now. 3D video has already arrived in some homes. What bandwidths will we need by 2015 nevermind 2030?

How can we not have high-speed broadband?

What do we do in education until 2015?

Portfolio of Questions

Reflecting on day 1 of the thought provoking #AEC2010 - Australian ePortfolio Conference...

Several speakers noted that ePortfolios are another 'disruptive technology' challenging and sometimes transforming existing learning, teaching and assessment.

I also wonder how they are challenging ICT service provision and support.
Learners and teachers can now find ICT services beyond institution walls and with the increasing availability of 3G wireless access and broadband at home they are choosing from a wide range of ePortfolio options.

In addition ePortfolio systems themselves are evolving as learners and educators look for new features that support user control and customisation. Some learners are also opting for solutions used by professionals in their chosen career area - particularly when seeking feedback from external audiences or establishing a professional online identity.

These rapidly changing technology and educational landscapes (including ePortfolios) are leading some institutions to a 'perpetual beta' culture - particularly in ICT service provision. This can be very positive if it promotes agility leading to increased responsiveness to educational needs. But it is also very challenging and sometimes disruptive to established ways of delivering ICT services within educational institutions.

A few speakers noted the successful use of - or need for - ICT sandpits for innovation. We need to think about sustainable frameworks and processes to deal with the emergent perpetual beta culture.

Because I'm preparing for a presentation ('Wicked' NBN Services for Education) for a Broadband in Society Summit I'm also wondering what the ePortfolio space might look like after the NBN & VEN has rolled out in Tasmania, and then nationally. Perhaps ePortfolio provision is another wicked problem?

What will be the impact on ePortfolios of ubiquitous high-speed connectivity? Will it mean

• less concern about storage?
• higher resolutions for photos, audio, video?
• easier upload of any video format?
• much greater use of video streaming from on and off campus?
• video journals and comments - speech converted to text and searchable?
• integration with immersive environments - 3D virtual worlds?
• learners set up virtual world galleries, workplaces, offices, simulations?
• intelligent agents take visitors on tours of ePortfolios 24/7?
  

I think perpetual beta is here to stay - no use putting our heads in the sandpit :-)