Granularity of learning

I was watching this very interesting presentation by Martin Weller, called Bridging the gap between web 2.0 and higher education

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Something that caught my particular attention was Martins remarks about how technology challenges presuppositions on granularity, and what the consequences for the granularity of learning might be. I find the idea of more granular learning compelling, in particular in combination with personal learning (although Martin also rightfully points out that this is not just about what you want to learn, but also how you want to learn it!). On the other hand I also cannot help being concerned with what we loose from the holistic approach if we insist on atomizing everything. The whole is after all often more then the sum of its parts.

Perhaps the solution lies in a differentiation between atomized accreditations on the one side, the majority of which will probably be APEL, and separate aggregating accreditations that require you to integrate and join up what you've learned, and reflect on it on the appropriate level. These qualifications woudl focus more on (meta cognitive) skills and trans-disciplinary thinking.

As I've said before, our future is not in content, it is in guidance and accreditation!

Capetown OER Declaration

I finally found some time to read the Cape Town OER Declaration, and a selection from the deluge of comments that have piled up in my RSS reader the past weeks. Given the critical tone of most of these, I was expecting something very fundamentally flawed.

The declaration is an initiative of the Shuttleworth Foundation (yes, that's the same Shuttleworth as the one in Ubuntu). The purpose of the declaration is to accelerate the international effort to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education. Unfortunately many advocates of open learning have not really welcomed the declaration with open arms.

A noteworthy example of this can be found in the blog Half an Hour: Criticizing the Cape Town Declaration by Stephen Downes. While I normally find Stephens post very eloquent, I cannot support many of the arguments he makes. It leaves me with the impression that his main point (and that of many others) is that they are a bit miffed of they weren't consulted. To me the whole 'let's decide everything in a big all encompassing committee' culture is exactly the reason that hardly anything ever gets done, or done properly in education. Open source communities understand that democracies don't work. A benevolent dictator, or a meritocracy (or both) is what you need. I'm sure Mark Shuttleworth understood exactly that when he limited participation in drafting this initial declaration.

I for one support the initiative. I'm going to sign up for it now, and I would invite you to consider the same.

... Which reminds me, I still need to formally license the stuff on here with a creative commons license...






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Proceedings from Work-based Learning Futures

I blogged in April about my excellent experience attending and presenting to the work-based Learning Futures conference in Buxton. I announced then that the proceedings would most likely be published as a special UVAC publication, and it now has. You can read op on the contribution from the e-APEL project-team that I am involved in by following this link. I thoroughly recommend having a look at the entire publication, as I think us learning technologists would benefit from realizing that innovation does not always mean technology.