Interesting days of discussions ahead.

The integration of publishers, teaching content (i.e. video lectures, tests, not only textbooks), LMS, synchronous classrooms, and evaluation (see Knewton) is the most significant trend in education today. The financial crisis is assisting in a move in this direction. It’s a huge opportunity for some. A nightmare for others.

George describes this trend in terms similar to the emergence of other walled gardens in the online world:

Fairly soon, the system will require small colleges and universities to partner with the big content providers because they (colleges) simply cannot provide the technological infrastructure and content needed to attract students. Blackboard is developing end-to-end learning systems. As is Pearson.

Some questions arise: to what extent is a single distribution channel going to be central to higher education provision? – see the death of the VLE debates; or will a lock-in with the content providers secure the strength of the VLE? Alternatively, as with other content industries, will alternative sources of content undermine the business model being suggested here?

Work and learning have become one and the same. Networks rule. Nothing is certain. Simply doing things better no longer guarantees prosperity or even survival.

In my working life, I would say that a LMS has had at best (worse?) a small space in supporting my personal professional development. This reflects two factors: (a) much of my learning occurs through interactions that span the boundaries of, or occur outside, my employer; (b) I’m not expecting an employer to employ me for ever so why tie my learning (for how else to I keep myself attractive in the jobs market?) to *that* employer – doesn’t make sense. Similarly, being tied to a specific ‘product’ for my Personal Learning Environment/ Network is also unattractive. The flexibility of loosely coupling the best tools for the task at hand – be it doing, reflecting, collating experiences etc. – just seems to work in ways that I’ve never found replicated in a single ‘product’. My sense is that firms seeking a socialised LMS are looking to impose management 1.0 (command & control) on a world of working and learning 2.0 (apologies for the point zero tags but time is short

The U.K. Internet economy contributed £100 billion in 2009, representing 7.2 percent of U.K. GDP—more than construction, transport, or utilities.

and also predicts a 10% growth rate per annum up to 10% of GDP by 2015. So how well is the e-learning industry really doing?

A few other things to note on the report summary is the positioning of different facets of e-learning in relation to one another. In particular, that web 2.0/ e-learning 2.0 is placed (I think – but tell me if I’m wrong) on the broadcasting side of a continuum with learning at the other end while VLEs are placed more towards the learning end. This typology seems strange given the interactional nature at the heart of web 2.0 while VLEs, in my experience, tend to be used as course management systems, file repositories, etc. This highlights the difficulty of defining the e-learning industry. What software or SaaS should be included and, more importantly, excluded. Should Twitter or WordPress or Drupal be included on the basis that a lot of learning occurs through these tools that were not formally designed for learning purposes. While analysing the size of the formal e-learning sector as represented by VLEs, course management systems and formal learning content creators is a useful exercise, this is a very different proposition from mapping the economy of e-learning activities as a whole, eg, across the value chain. So it is possible, and possibly desirable, to see the “industry” as defined by formal providers declining while the scale and scope of e-learning activities continues to grow.

to create a new company today called NM Incite, which builds upon the industry-leading social media and online brand metrics, consumer insights and real-time market intelligence of Nielsen BuzzMetrics to transform business operations including product development, marketing, communications and customer service.

While obviously a sign of “maturing” of social media for business, there should be concern social media becomes part of the intelligence, market segments, metrics and management discourses that suggest procedure, process and control – rather than dialogues with and between different stakeholders that interact with and through an organisation. However, this will be interesting to follow for signs that such a venture is able to nurture the best of the Enterprise 2.0/ social business whereby the boundaries of organisation become blurred or disintegrate. These can be the boundaries between customers, suppliers, partners, distributers, advertisers or the internal boundaries, especially between silos of knowing. Or will we see the use of the “social” rhetoric as a veneer to traditional patterns of managerialism – lipstick on the face of the gorilla?

As could be expected, there has been little progress on my PhD work of late but this will have to change as I have a progress board approaching. I’m looking at stringing together an Actor Network Theory inspired approach involving a combination of CMC interaction analysis of twitter based learning events with “following the actors” [micro-texts and people] through other online presences – as the ‘actants’ shift to more private realms then the research should shift from pure online observation to direct interviews of key informants. Currently grappling with some of the ethical issues here – when does virtual ethnographic observation become some form of cyber stalking?

While its an ambitious methodological project I think its realisable (or am I a fool?)! Even if I’m being a fool, its still damn interesting at this stage.

It has been the start of term so I’ve mainly been heads down in work. The start of term has gone well with a good group of students who really engaged well in a series of preparatory activities. On reflection, we tried to do too much and will be looking to condense the experience in the future.

Have also been able to take forward some of the more interesting research and development work. The most exciting bits cannot be mentioned here yet. But a small team of us are close to developing a clear framework for the strategic development of our subject area in the university combining mode 1 and mode 2 research, continuing professional development delivery and a postgraduate programme predicated on socio-material approaches to learning and knowledge. To operationalise this framework appears to be becoming the major focus of my work for the next five years or so.

My PhD research has been pulled back on track – i really needed some help on that as i went through a definite year one wobble! More on this to follow soon.

A frustration has been, for want of a better expression, the institutional drag on doing the work. In particular, the limited capacity to deliver a plethora of small to larger scale changes, along with internal political posturing has been a difficulty. Universities really are strange places, fearful of change but very sensitive to personal opportunities for advancement or threats to status. Very different from my previous experiences in other sectors and something I’m still struggling to work out how i can avoid the negative fall out from such a culture while driving forward on the type of work I see as valuable.