What will eLearning look like in 2016?
22 02 2006Some time last year, I came up with an idea for the forthcoming Fibreculture issue on “New media, networks and new pedagogies” and it looked a little like this…
“The Open Course Manifesto: Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of Publication”
Published: December, 2016
This will be a (fictional-)historical reflection on ‘The Open Course Manifesto’ which appeared in an eLearning blog for the first time in 2006, the Movement it inspired. It is written from the perspective of the Manifesto’s author reflecting on (and recounting) ten years of the teaching & learning nexus (or, indeed, nexes) as it has been remediated and reconstructed as a socio-pedagogical phenomena stretching far beyond bounds of the ivory tower of academia. The piece highlights the originary media-forms which facilitated the Open Course Movement-namely blogs, wikis, podcasts, vlogcasts and metamedia-and the institutions which so energetically pushed the movement (especially the Creative Commons Organisation and OurMedia Foundation). Naturally, the controversial ‘CopyRighteous’ bankrupting of the Open Course Movement in 2009 after Warner Brothers sued the Movement after a ninety second excerpt from The Matrix: Reloaded was erroneously placed in under a Creative Commons licensed vlogcast lecture will be revisited, as will the now infamous resurrection of the Movement ‘housed’ as an Incorporated Informatic Form on a Singaporean serverfarm, beyond the legal reach of both US and Australian judiciary systems. Those dramas aside, the central tale is still how a collection of little-known universities open sourced their entire curriculum in an effort to broaden the semi-structured public coursebase to rekindle an adapted ‘clever country’ ethos in the Australian, UK and eventually US contexts. The Movement’s catch-cry, ‘The personal is the pedagogical’, still resonates powerfully today and this reflective piece will offer context to one of the core tales of public teaching and learning in the early years of the twenty-first century.
Now that I’ve actually gotten around to writing the article I need your help! Where do you see eLearning by 2016? Which trends to you see growing (either optimistically or realistically)? Does eLearning mean anything by 2016 … or is it just part of learning by then? I’d really appreciate people’s insights as part of the edublogosphere! Also, if you happen to know anyone who would be interested in leaving a comment, please do pass on the link to this post! (I’d like to cite everyone who offers suggestions in the paper, so if people could leave a full name when commenting, that’d be appreciated!) Thanks for your help and bring on the comments!
Hi Tama,
10 years from now, I don’t think things will be all that different I’m sorry to say. You’ve heard the old saying?.. “Go back in time almost 100 years, grab somebody, come back to today with them, ask them to look around and tell you what they recognise… likely they’d recognise prisons, churches, and wait for it, schools”. So as long as eLearning is the professional domain of teachers and educationalist, I don’t think it will move very far from the narrowly understood thing it is today.
eLearning - or the last remaining few who cling to the title, will remain something seperate from ‘normal’ learning, especially due to the name’s sake distinction. A relationship similar to that which distance learning has to ‘normal’ study today. An other, something offered to others.
Many things that eLearning R&D turn up may absorbed into mainstream - regrettably the LMS will still play a big role, but the current ideas of the more innovative and digitally literate learners and facilitators today will become more common in 10 years - blogs, wikis, and other socially networked software.
Hopefully the fear and loathing of technology will have past, as a great majority of the old school will have retired, and learners and facilitators will be encouraged to develop comprehensive online identities. As a result, in some cases, the line between formal and informal learning will blur, and the concept of “life long learning” will have began to take form.
The practice of teaching will continue to attract the more conservative members of society, and as a result true innovation will be painfully slow in being recognised, accepted and adopted. Policy and management will continue to stifle eLearning beyond virtual class rooms, and the perpetual vicious cycle that causes the 100 year freeze frame will continue.
On an international scale, those organisations that went Open Courseware in the early 2000’s, and offered some form of free eLearning opportunity to poorer nations, will have captured significant training markets around the world, seeing vast numbers of people obtaining more recognised qualifications than ever before.
And all that right before a major economic collapse in 2020. Ongoing oil wars and peak scares progressively distorted the capitalist markets into inevitable collapse, sending most of the western world into depression. Funding for eLearning vapourised with hardly anyone to bat an eyelid.
Hope that generates some discussion for you Tama.
Thanks for your perspectives Leigh!
(And to Burks Oakley, too, who responded by email.)
Hi Tama,
I love your blog!
E-Learning in 2016? I think it will be completely different in terms of delivery, and there will be more rigidly defined camps with respect to instructional design & ideal structure of course content.
DELIVERY.
What we now call smartphones will be highly evolved. Think of early calculators vs. today’s calculators… more power, lower price.
So, more individuals will be taking courses with mobile devices, and they will expect audio, video, and text.
COMPETING PHILOSOPHIES WITH RESPECT TO COURSE CONTENT
1. “New Traditionalists” == templated courses, all with same look & feel, clearly defined elements (outcomes, goals, assessment, course content, types of activities)
2. Multiplayer Serious Games and Sims == Simulations, serious games — a heavy emphasis on immersion-type learning that focuses on the application of knowledge to realistic situations; multi-player results in a focus on social learning. Drawback — because this is so highly culturally inflected, as well as dependent on fast connections & latest technologies, it will appeal to some learners more than others.
3. “Unlearning” == this is going to be HUGE in the future as a backlash forms in response to what is considered to be a rigidity of course content, delivery, and organization.
Okay — that’s all for now
Unlearing - yep, that’s a good area …