MOOCs and WEEDs

The significant contribution of the MOOC to the educational landscape is in adding more diversity. But diversity isn’t everything in ecological terms. One particular species might initially appear to increase diversity, but then proceeds to destroy everything else in its path. For those who fear MOOCs, there is lurking somewhere the thought that the MOOC is like this: that somehow through its sheer ubiquity (despite limited educational success) and commercial hype, the MOOC offering becomes the only offering to the majority, squeezing out alternatives, and leaving exclusive one-to-one education for the privileged few. Some people have decided that MOOCs are weeds!

There are more complex problems when we look at the motivation of those who fear MOOCs and think they should be exterminated. Behind that position lurks a similar unspoken (and sometimes poorly thought-through) vision of how education ought to be. Education ministers are particularly good at this: Michael Gove is a classic case. These people are also people you wouldn’t want "growing" in your garden. What we have there is another kind of weed, but whose ultimate end is the same.

Thinking about MOOCs and WEEDs (I'll capitalise it - there must be a cool acronym somewhere!) is interesting because the only way we can know a weed is by looking at what it does. Battling it becomes the focus of human intervention in the garden because failure to deal with it repeatedly leads to the destruction of everything else. Weeds have destructive tendencies. This metaphor however precedes the innovation of MOOCs. No serious embedded practice of looking at what a MOOC does has been engaged in (yet). So there is no comparable way of determining whether the innovation of the MOOC is dangerous or not. This is often the case with technology, because our society is being transformed at such a rate that there is little chance for finding out what things do at a deep level. Instead, technology appears to be a fault line at which deeper prejudices are revealed. Technology has this in common with religion. 

Where is the methodologically stable way of looking at the socio-technical garden, or even thinking about what we want? Do we want degrees just like we used to get from the traditional universities?  Do we want new technologies? Do we want democracy and freedom? Do we want economic growth? Do we want innovation? Eternal life? Beauty? Emancipation?

I think the questions of education are best framed in the context of a social ecology. Education gives us strange and often dangerous obsessions: pursuit knowledge, learning, certificates, degrees, publications, growth, innovation, etc. are all signs of the pathologies which can kill competing ideas and destroy the social ecology. Each of them create conflict, difference, misery. But equally, knowledge, learning, degrees and so on form part of the diversity that we are each of us trying to manage.

Each of us knows what it’s like when the social ecology is harmonious. It is the feeling of emancipation, of love and joy when life is ‘right’ – when we are amongst friends, when we are not scared, when we can express ourselves for who we are. Equally each of us  knows when the ecology goes wrong: we are  oppressed, we are fearful, etc. And each of us also knows that there is a dialectical balance between what might appear bad ecologies and good ecologies. The balance may also be ecological. The controlling force, the drive for freedom and emancipation keeps things on track. 

The central issue in the ecology of the online world is its inter-connectedness with the physical world. At the root of this interconnectedness are the artefacts we make (including the computers and the software that they run) and the information which informs the decisions we take. Both artefacts and information appear as constraints on agency: they are the runs and trellises over which we are shaped in our growth. The study of those constraints is the study of the meaningfulness information and artefacts bear for individuals. 

There is a possibility of a naturalistic inquiry into meaningfulness, information, decision and artefacts. There is already much literature on sociomateriality, Actor Network Theory, etc. There is emerging good work on the ontology of information. There remain important deficiencies, but there have also been significant advances. The key to understanding social ecology, and in turn the ecology of online education, is a workable ontology of information. 

My personal view is that this is really an ontology of absence.

My name is Bond, University Bond!

The announcement yesterday of Manchester University's Bond issue (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=10342) follows on the heals of Cambridge and De Montfort. No doubt others will follow. Even my own University may follow.

The selling of bonds is one way of raising finance for Universities. What is sold is a debt security where the issuer promises to pay interest on the amount purchased and the principal sum at the time of maturity of the bond. The Manchester bonds mature in 40 years time. Since Universities are long-established institutions (only established religions and nation states are older), the bond option appears a sensible move.

What does this mean in terms of the changes to public funding of education? Why haven't UK universities done this before?

As state-funded institutions, Universities received money from the government, which itself has issued bonds to raise money since the 17th century. In times of high interest rates, the sale of bonds is a typical response to financial crisis. In the current crisis, with low interest rates, the reverse process has been going on: the purchasing of gilts (a form of bond) and other securities has formed an important part of the Bank of England's monetary policy as a way of increasing the liquidity of banks and other financial institutions in the hope this might stimulate lending. Behind the need for all this, however, is the need to cut public expenditure - and part of that is the cut to university funding.

So the sale of sovereign debts that might have paid for Universities by central government has now become the sale of University debt with guarantees of the security of Universities as long-existing institutions.

The security is obviously crucial. Riskier enterprises like companies would instead offer shares in the company. These give the purchaser a stake in ownership, with a say in how the company is run. University Bond purchasers have no vote in the governance of Universities. They are reliant on established methods of governance within those institutions: the senate, the governors, etc.

But the march of Universities in becoming more like corporations, and VCs becoming more like CEOs, raises a question as to the nature of the university, and particularly the idea of the university as corporation as a secure and stable social entity. It really depends on the quality and effectiveness of institutional governance. If governance within a university is tampered with (VC-friendly governors, bureaucratic senate with no teeth, etc) and if there is no means of holding the management to account, then there would be some concern about the long-term stability of the institution.

On the other hand, if Universities sold shares rather than bonds, then purchasers would have voting rights, and this itself would fundamentally change the governance of the institutions. VCs really would be CEOs, answerable to shareholders. The University would pursue policies which were driven by delivering shareholder value.

However, even with bondholders, one measure of accountability is inescapable: the credit-rating agencies. These organisations, which have caused so much havoc during the financial crisis, have become the arbiters of confidence in investments. Rutgers University in New Jersey recently had its bond issue downgraded by Standard and Poor (http://www.northjersey.com/news/Standard__Poors_downgrades_ratings_for_Rutgers_University_bonds.html): a fate whose effects on confidence not just in the value of bonds, but in the worthiness of the institution are as yet unknown.

As with any move in the financial system, what is produced are new risks: risks to purchasers, risks to sellers. One of the risks to the sellers is the increased power they hand over to credit rating agencies. In the corporate world, for at least 30 years now, the pursuance of shareholder value has been the driving force behind corporate activity. With bond issues in institutions like universities, the pursuance of credit rating agency values could have a transformative effect of governance in the university: particularly in the absence of any other controls of accountability within institutions.

The deep problem is that the University's role is to be critical. It is to stand above the world and ask questions. Universities are social regulators. Their role is complementary to government, not subservient to it.  Being subservient to the money markets is clearly dangerous. In a world where Universities will worry about the credit worthiness of the bonds they have sold to keep themselves going, which questions become unaskable?

Disappearances

Summer is a time when academics tend to disappear. But in many universities currently undergoing drastic reorganisation disappearances have been a bit more permanent. It's not just the endless offers of voluntary severance (which always attract the wrong people!). Occasionally, things happen very suddenly and somewhat brutally:

"Have you seen so-and-so recently?"
"er.. no.. funny you should mention it..."
"I texted them yesterday - no response - pretty unusual"
"yes, I agree. I wonder what's happened?"
"God, I hope they haven't upset anyone powerful..."
"hmmm. Easy to do at the moment..."

"Upsetting someone powerful" is always a hazard in any employment. But there are times when it becomes quite easy to upset powerful people because they are simply "easily upset". Usually this is because they themselves feeling threatened or out-of-control. That feeds the dictatorial measures which in turn leads to people "falling out" - and then disappearing.

The social dynamics of institutions are complex, and the fallings-out at a high level have repercussions  throughout the enterprise. Just as with economic systems, whilst the powerful believe they can control the system by sheer will and force, they are quickly reminded that underlying it all are more fundamental human concerns of trust and confidence. Managerial fear might cause a rash reflex action that slays a close colleague, but that's really only a sign of the trouble to come. Everyone else asks:

"Blimey -  how could they do that? That guy worked his butt off!"
"You can't trust anything they do now"
"Better get those job applications going then!"
"I haven't been sleeping that well recently.. something's wrong"
"it's like that nursery rhythm..."
"what, 10 green bottles?"
"yeah, that's the one.."
"we're down to about 5 now I reckon.."

That these kind of situations can arise in Universities is deeply unfortunate. Intellectual life, like all facets of healthy social ecologies, depends on trust and confidence. Fearful thinkers think fearful thoughts. Fearful teachers teach badly, on the whole.

Intellectual life is not a solitary occupation. It depends on communities - teachers and students - being able to sit down with each other, to share their thoughts, to feed back to one another - in confidence and trust. Someone wisely pointed out the other day that the etymology of the word "assessment" is "assidere" - to sit beside: conviviality, not individuality, is at its heart. The industrial model of education has presented the image of the academic as functionary: the individual producer of papers, the deliverer of 'education', the seeker of funding, and the driver of innovation. But the belief is groundless: deep down, it rests on indefensible metaphysical assertions about human nature which have got confused with the (equally fallacious) metaphor of industrial production. Education ministers have become adept at dressing up metaphysical assertions as science - with horrible consequences. Where's the science?

The situation is comparable to the abstractions of human creative endeavour that I encountered as I tried to learn to be a composer as an undergraduate. The clever analysts abstracted what they believed to be the essence of the creative craft of a Bach or Beethoven. They created schemas which they then asserted "must have been in the mind" of the artist. It's taken me a long time to realise that this was nonsense. But we have done something very similar to education. It is this fallacious thinking which has produced the managerial fetish and the individualised model of the functional academic that we now have.

We must be careful to think how on earth we managed to get here. Our challenge is to rediscover the nature of healthy social ecology within our institutions.

What Price Personal Learning Environments?

What exactly is a Personal Learning Environment? Most of what has been written about them has been shallow and rather naive - as I have argued before (see http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/illich-revisited-was-personal-learning.html). In the light of the revelations about the darker side of 'big data' and social software, I am beginning to think that the discussion around the PLE needs to situate itself with the understanding of personal risk.

In the beginning much was written about the 'locus of control' (some of it by me) - about big bad institutions controlling technology that would be better coordinated by learners themselves. What apparently presented itself as 'personal control' of tools and data has gradually emerged as anything but: the user-friendly enticements to freely submit data that can  be 'invested' by giant global concerns and turned into huge profits through analytic services. Free storage is cheap incentive to having your data harvested. But why do I use Blogger to host this blog??

Why indeed do I use Blogger... I got used to it; it works well, is well organised, easily searchable, etc. My career has clearly benefited from this unholy alliance (a number of opportunities have emerged through the blog). But am I in control of it? Do I know what others will do with it? Do I really know how the big data harvesting reveals about me to the corporate suits and (heaven knows) government spooks?

All I can think is that at some point I will have to get my stuff off Blogger (and YouTube). An archive on my own disk will have to be created. But increasingly, that is a big job - and I don't have time. With the current round of redundancies at work, maybe I'll get the opportunity!!

But the value to Blogger of my blog is not just what it tells Google about me, but what it tells Google about others who access my stuff. The network intelligence is a bit scary.

So, given that I am giving so much to forces that I can't control, what price is a Personal Learning Environment?

We can't really talk of a 'trade-off' because we don't know what is being traded. The only reason why online engagement has become professionally important is because the internet corporations have made it that way. "All academics should have blogs" I read the other day... Well, I used to think it was important too. But why? Because we don't trust publishers? But are publishers more evil than Blogger? (Blogger isn't self-publishing - it's just ordinary publishing with no editorial controls).

Equality is what is at stake. And it is the distribution of risk which is the issue. The means of production of risks are determined by:

• the power of legal teams behind a corporation
• the access a corporation has to the means to harvest huge amounts of data meaning it can assess risks accurately
• the userbase and tools which the corporation can (at will) change overnight

How can individuals challenge this hegemony? 

Personal Learning and Personal Learning Environments are not about individualised learning journeys, digital storytelling, personalised inquiry, etc. They are about the fight for autonomy. 

It may be that the fight for autonomy from "big bad institutions" (by comparison to Google, how big or bad are they?) was just the first phase. The real battle will be for autonomy from the internet giants. Taking that as the mission, the PLE starts to look interesting again.

Maybe we need a "whole web catalog"!

Prism: The Human right to Anticipation

The Prism scandal has been portrayed as being about information. Yet it is quite clear that the menace is not 'information' itself (whatever that is!), but the unequal capacity of corporations and governments to anticipate what each of us is likely to do next. When institutions and corporations know our next move before we do then we have a fundamental problem with democracy and freedom. The right to self-expression and free will is a right to be different, to be transformative, to do our part to shape the world we live in - and to usurp power which overstretches its mandate.

Information is now much like banking. The banks invest our money organising it ways which are not available to any individual, extracting profits which are unrealisable by any individual, but only giving the customer back a tiny fraction of the rewards they have reaped: just enough to encourage the customer to keep placing their money in the bank. Google or Twitter receive a tiny piece of information from each of us. To us, that information may simply be an inconsequential message. But Google and the rest have ways of organising it which are not available to any of us, and extract from their organisation powerful properties of anticipation  which they can then sell to those organisations willing to buy their services. Information is transformed into money by way of anticipation.

Any individual is at the mercy of this. Whilst some might eschew online engagement for fear of these forces (rightly), increasingly online engagement through the internet corporations has become as essential for professional development and advancement as education. Indeed, if the bleatings of the Web2.0 mafia are to be believed, it is more important than education (but they are a naive mafia!). The more we commit ourselves to the services of internet corporations, the more the world changes to enforce engagement. Just as the car has become a machine for covering the planet in tarmac, so the internet is a machine for turning us all into 'information workers'.

But we have no concept of the freedom of information workers. We don't have a concept of information. But we can now see the asymmetry of anticipation between the giant internet corporations, governments and the people who are meant to be the ones who vote for governments. The fact that we don't vote for internet corporations must now be a massive concern.

Part of the problem is that few understand the power that can be harvested from Google accounts, Facebook, etc. The pattern matching algorithms are so sophisticated previously unknown commonalities in our psychology and biology can be revealed. Ironically, these algorithms emerged through the massive data challenge of genetic sequencing. But when we 'sequence' ourselves, we need to understand what is being exposed, and the power of revealing it.

I think the asymmetry will need to be addressed. Eventually the political scandal will be apparent to everyone. But also there is no way back. The technologies are there now. But maybe the next wave of social and technical transformation will not be about individuals submitting information, but individuals having their own means of technologically-enhanced anticipation. But in that situation, the locus of meaning, of being human and of freedom will become ever more important.

The Institution of the Science of Education

To pursue education as a science requires a particular attitude of criticality. Yet educational institutions can be remarkably uncritical of their own practices. To pursue education as a science is to attempt to change this.

The barriers to a scientific approach are very significant. Yet in a "knowledge economy" (yes, I don't know what it means either), it would at least seem that teaching and learning are of fundamental importance to healthy social ecologies of businesses, institutions, nations and the world.

To pursue education as science is to critically examine the nature of "healthy social ecologies"

These are structures existing amongst human beings which have both synchronic and diachronic dimensions. Within those dimensions are the elements which feed the continual reproduction and tranformation of those forms. It seems very likely to me that effective ways of thinking about emergent structures and processes within healthy social ecologies are fractal. Or at least, fractal thinking may be the closest we can get to an effective way of thinking in order to maintain healthy ecologies.

To understand education as science is to understand the relationship between the way we think about education and what actually happens in it. More deeply, it is to critique what we mean by thinking itself.

Much educational thought over the last 100 years (pretty much since the beginning of state-supported compulsory education) has been grounded in psychology, which itself was in its infancy. The dominant models put  forward by psychology to support education have been either essentially mentalist or behaviourist in character. These models reflect particular ways of thinking about a person and their experience which present opportunities for empirical defence of the respective models. In other words, the models have followed established methodologies. The methodologies are rarely challenged.

At issue is the relationship between cause and effect in education. Hume's regularity theory of causation is unlikely to be right, even in it's characterisation of practice in the physical sciences. But the contrived regularities of education produced through statistical analysis have meant that the deficiencies of the method have rarely been exposed, or worse, that a post-modern attitude of "the impossibility of naturalism in education" has equally been able to take root.

The question of causality goes right to the heart of the nature of education. When we think that the cause of engineers is engineering courses, the cause of physicists is courses in physics, and so on, we miss something fundamental about the real practice and experience of physicists and engineers. What are the causes of a physicist? or a doctor? or a lawyer?

That is the scientific question.

To establish an institution which addresses this question is perhaps where education should go next...

Stories and Psychopaths

We tell stories all the time. It would seem that our lived experience is carried through some kind of ongoing story (Rom Harre calls this a "story line"). We may well know that the stories are not real, but the fact that we inhabit them for a while helps us to deal with what is real. Stories are the vehicle of  the imagination. And the imagination is politically fundamental: freedom, hope, oppression and tyranny all exist in the imagination. Any explanation of how stories help us might need to account both for the wonderful things that the human imagination can do, as well as the ways in which fearfulness can lead us into crisis, evil, despondency and depression.

What is most important to understand is the relationship between stories and decisions. Good and bad decisions have stories behind them. The need to communicate, the need to rationalise, the need to defend actions all drive the need to create stories. But we should ask how it is that such desires are satisfied by the story-making activity, and indeed why it is that these desires exist in the first place.

I think stories are ways of 'playing with absence'. Art, music and drama are also ways of playing with absence. Their artificial structures reveal something natural about the nature of the relationship between what's there and what is not. The desire to play with absence comes from the fact that we tie ourselves in knots in daily life. Complexity reaches a point where there needs to be some 'pruning' of our experience, or some reorganisation of our experience in order that we can carry on functioning. Such reorganisation entails the determination of some new absence: the determination of part of the force which causes things to take the structure that they do.

Absences are difficult to pin down - particularly from the context of a present reality. Any present reality is necessarily blind to the absences which bear upon it. But a new story is a new context. It has it's own internal structure, but it also has which bear upon that structure which can be identified through 'playing' with the story.

The most effective identification of an absence in a story takes the form of a recursive principle. Through the recursive principle, the story takes shape. But it is this recursive principle, discovered through playing with the story, that serves as the key to the determination of the absences of real life. Play nourishes reality with the creation of new recursive principles.

The fantasy of thinking and planning and imagining the reaction of other people is a classic example. Through this activity, we imaging a different world related to our own, and inspired by the challenges of the real world.  Through the fantasy, we find a pattern - some principle which lies at the heart of the generation of the structure of the story. Through that, we resolve to act in particular ways in reality.

After doing something bad, we also engage in fantasy. A story is concocted to justify, defend, deny or explain away ones actions. The trauma of guilt from the reality creates complexities which are too great to bear. Fantasy is the only way out, through which anticipations of others may be considered and the causal factors behind the shape of events identified. Once again, the recursive causal principle is identified. Once again, this transforms the traumatic situation - or at least makes it a little more manageable.

It is ironic that bad actions - which demand so much of fantasy for their defence or denial - usually arise from  a lack of creativity in the first place. Bad actions result from the imprisonment of fear. But the bad person begins a pathological relationship to fantasy. Where fantasy for the good person nourishes their decision-making and psychological health in everyday life, for the bad person, fantasy is demanded as a way of defending what is really indefensible. Because it is indefensible, the recursiveness of the story only works so far; ultimately more and more stories are required. And then it is easy to lose sight of the distinction between the story and the reality. There begins the psychopath.

Authentic being is not a luxury.