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Earning formal academic credit through a citizen’s viral and OER learning What are the implications for mobile, hybrid and online learning?

Ideas paper presented at:

eLmL 2013, The Fifth International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and Online Learning, February 24th to March

1st, 2013, Nice, France.

See http://www.slideshare.net/MerilynChilds/e-lml1 for the accompanying ppt. presentation.

Merilyn Childs

Flexible Learning Institute

Charles Sturt University

Albury, Australia

mchilds@csu.edu.au

Regine Wagner

Flexible Learning Institute

Charles Sturt University

Albury, Australia

rwagner@csu.edu.au

Abstract— The authors offer two simple propositions that

form the basis for a “speculative turn” concerning learning in Higher Education in a digital age. The current growth of mobile, hybrid and online learning spaces within Higher Education may provide access to new formal learning opportunities – but will fall short of their disruptive possibilities if substantial inroads are not made into the transformation of the relationship between a citizens’ learning; and an institution’s credentialing policies and practices.

Keywords- viral learning; user-generated content;

Recognition of Prior Learning; disruptive technologies;

assessment in Higher Education; mobile learning, OER practices

I. INTRODUCTION

“Viral learning”1 is the term given by the authors to

learning that has been achieved through student-directed learning in “viral learning spaces” (Childs & Wagner 2012). In our own work, we have thought about education at the nexus of work and learning, through the lens of RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) (Childs, Wagner & Ingham 2002) and workbased learning (Wagner, Childs & Houlbrook 2001, Wagner, Childs & Constable 2004, Wagner & Childs 2006). We now transcend this nexus by thinking about user-generated, viral learning more generally.

Viral learning2 is user-generated, and by adopting this

term we advocate a view of learning from a citizen’s perspective. Viral learning is partially hypertextual, is self-perpetuating, distributed and networked, and is learning encountered through life, work, formal studies and

1 “Viral learning” builds on Illich’s (1971) notion of “peer

matching networks” and “learning webs”. 2 “Viral learning” is not a substitute for “virtual learning” – the former is learning achieved by a citizen; the latter is a mode of learning. Viral learning occurs through a citizen’s agency across time and space, distributed learning spaces (Oblinger, 2006) and utilizing resources such as OERs.

participation. Some of this learning may occur within formal learning spaces, whether institutional or not. Sense making of viral learning is what takes place when recognition and credit processes are offered to citizens when they enter formal university studies.

In this ideas paper we use the term “citizen” instead of the word “student” to generate a changed view of the person doing the learning. Others have referred to such persons as “OER learners” (for example, the OEUu c2011). “Student” positions a citizen as an enrolled member of an institution, and we want to challenge this view. Our focus is on citizens’ embedded, lived experiences across time, place and space. There has long been discussion about “informal learning” in the adult education field. Increasingly, the quality and availability of free, online learning opportunities has exponentially improved, as has access to them. Such access is unrecognizable when compared to the very limited access previously enjoyed by workers during the early 20

th century

e.g. through the Workers Education Association (WEA) (see Dymock 2001).

Despite broad transformational changes to citizens’ learning opportunities, institutional change in Australia has been slow. Ways of seeing “the student” and “learning” remain resistant to change. Citizens entering university undergraduate studies are often seen to be pre-service, or as children leaving high school. The statistics don’t support this view. User-generated learning (“informal learning”, “experiential learning” or “personal learning”) has not yet gained a strong foothold in learning design, curriculum or assessment practices. The research consistently indicates that recognition of prior learning is poor (Pitman 2012). Open educational practices (Ehlers 2011) that value user-generated learning remain marginal and distant from the core business of learning, teaching and assessment. The idea that non-institutional learning is of less value than institutional learning is out-of-place in a digital age characterized by personal, hybrid and mobile learning.

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How can change be fostered? National policy has not been successful; therefore we offer two propositions to advance thinking. According to philosophers Bryant et al (2011, p.433), a “speculative turn” presents itself through “daring speculations about the nature of reality itself”. In this

ideas paper, we want to propose the idea that Higher Education is amidst a “speculative turn” in Higher Education via two propositions:

Proposition I- Quality learning can and will happen through the planned and accidental agency of citizens who may at some time become students.

Proposition II - The relationships that are possible between a citizen’s learning and universities can be substantially rethought as the basis for transformational change.

II. THE SPECULATIVE TURN

Is this speculative turn, as defined by the two propositions, new? At other moments in history the role and aims of universities have been questioned. For example, in Germany during the reform period post-1968 the introduction of project based and action learning curricula advocated a transformed university (Frey, 1989, Soukup and Koch 1988). The nature of the institution was question through the “Open Classroom” and “Schools Without Walls” movements in the 1970s (Cuban 2004) and in heated debates regarding the relationship between working class knowledge and education (see amongst many, Freire 1972, Bernstein 1996). However, these changes failed to generate sustained institutional reforms.

What makes the speculative turn different in the digital age? The digital age has lead to the exponential proliferation of high-quality open access learning opportunities on the one hand, and high-quality work-integrated formal and informal learning opportunities on the other. High-quality learning opportunities are no longer solely owned or promulgated by universities. Citizens (including OER learners) produce artifacts of depth and quality in distributed spaces, not just formal learning spaces.

III. IMPLICATIONS FOR MOBILE, HYBRID AND ONLINE

LEARNING

This speculative turn has important implications for posing questions about mobile, hybrid and online learning. These are often spoken of as enabling “learning anywhere, anytime” – but scratch below the surface and it often means providing a password protected Learning Management System (LMS) that a student can access, even when sitting in a café. Learning within the LMS may be unremarkable, and vary little from a traditional week-by-week, teacher-driven, content-based, essay-assessed program. If the end-game of a mobile learning opportunity routinely and predictably remains a 2,000 word essay; then something has gone wrong in the technological disruption.

The following questions are useful as a means of interrogating mobile, hybrid and online learning in the context of the speculative turn:

Do mobile, hybrid and online learning practices sustain, or rethink traditional university practices and relationships?

Do mobile, hybrid and online learning practices enable OER practices?

Do mobile, hybrid and online learning practices enable citizen’s to access formal credit for user-generated, viral learning?

From the point of view of our two propositions, mobile, hybrid and online learning are tools used by a citizen to create a nexus between their learning; and an institution’s learning outcomes, assessments and credentials. The recently established Open Education Resources University’s (OERu), commitment to “creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal academic credit” (c2011), provides an example of new institutional thinking that enables, through outreach, mobility, online learning and flexibility, recognition and assessment, a citizen’s complex life and learning journeys.

REFERENCES

[1] Bernstein, B. 1996. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. London, Taylor and Francis.

[2] Bryant, L., Srnicek N., and Harman, G. The Speculative Turn: Continetal Materialism and Realism, 2011, Re-Press: Victoria, http://www.re-press.org/book-files/OA_Version_Speculative_Turn_9780980668346.pdf

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[10] Frey, K. Die Projektmethode. 1989, Weinheim: Belz.

[11] Illich, I. 1971. Deschooling society, New York, Harper & Row.

[12] Oblinger, D.G. 2006. Space as a change agent. In D. G. Oblinger (Ed.), Learning Spaces. EDUCAUSE e-book. Retrieved October 12, 2009 http://www.educause.edu/learningspacesch1.

[13] Open Education Resources University, http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/Home

[14] Pitman T., & Vidonich, L. 2012. Recognition of prior learning (RPL_ policy in Australian higher education: the dynamics of

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[15] Soukup G and Koch R (Eds). Es kamen härtere Tage.1988 Weinheim:Belz

[16] Wagner, R., Childs M. and Constable J., 2004. “Oh lucky country, non-English speaking background migrants and

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[17] Wagner, R., Childs M. and M. Houlbrook, “Workbased learning as critical social pedagogy”, Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 2001, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 314-333.