Systematization of Education: Room for PLEs?
We’ve been discussing personal learning environments (PLEs) in an online course I’m currently teaching with Dave Cormier – Introduction to Emerging Technologies for Learning. Newer tools and concepts have a way of consuming enormous amounts of time on definitional tasks: what is a PLE? Is it a set of tools or a concept? How does it differ from a learning management system (LMS) like Moodle? Can a PLE include people? What about books? My office is a physical space with a particular configuration of books, articles, and resources. It sure feels like a PLE to me. But I guess that depends how one answers the first question: What is a PLE?I’m not going to bother with a definition – there are plenty of readings available in this regard: Graham Atwell’s 2006 paper, Scott Leslie’s collection of diagrams, or the history of PLEs.
Instead, I would like to talk briefly about differences between the spirit of PLEs and the design of educational institutions, and why PLEs will have almost no traction (beyond a few early adopters) in the current education system.
A bit about PLEs
PLEs owe their existence to the development of technologies that focus on social interaction and collaboration. These technologies generally fall into the category of the read/write web (or terms that end in 2.0 such as web 2.0, elearning 2.0, learning 2.0). The read/write web facilitates a control shift. Instead of passively consuming content online, everyone can potentially contribute. In the process, we have been blessed with Wikipedia, blogs, podcasting, iReporter, and Ze Frank.
Since early 2000, these tools have continued to develop, spawning interactive virtual worlds like Second Life, integrated suites like Facebook, and hyper-fragmented conversational tools like Twitter. As the read/write web and social technologies developed, friction became apparent between advocates of new technologies and those who advocated more traditional views of publishing and authority. This fissure gave us Andrew Keen, Michael Gorman, and Robert “I embrace every new tool and call it revolutionary because I have an overly developed excitatory gland” Scoble.
Actually, it gave us more. Much more. The read/write web is a line in the sand between traditional views of expertise and the potential creative activity of the masses. Can a group of amateurs produce what experts do? With wikipedia, the answer is a partial yes. With news and media, the answer is also a partial yes (consider where many established news channels are now getting some of their video and news stories – youtube, blogs, amateur recorded video of disasters, accidents, etc). The power shift that questions the value of expertise also appears in education: can a network of learners provide quality learning experiences similar to an expert educator?With this very short overview, the development of PLEs seems somewhat natural. Why not apply user-control to education? Why should I, as a learner, have all of my educational content locked in an LMS? Why can’t I develop my own learning network and store my content, conversations, and ideas in a space/network/environment that I control? Ah, such lofty idealistic questions!
PLEs are great. They’re just completely incompatible with the existing education system.
This thing called education
To understand why PLEs are antithetical to the current education system, it’s important to consider how education has developed and why it has taken the particular shape it currently has. In Professionalization, Scientific Expertise, and Elitism: A Sociological Perspective, Evetts, Mieg, and Felt suggest that expertise has as a significant sociological component. Power, authority, and validity all play a role. Focus on accountability, audits, and performance targets are now heavily intertwined with professionalism (p. 112). Structures of control – such as education – are not solely about knowledge and the interaction of learners with academics. Education is a system based in a sociological context. Or, more bluntly, there is “no fundamental difference between the pursuit of knowledge and that of power” (p. 116).
A PLE, in contrast, is a tool/process/concept that addresses the needs of learners. It is not, to date, integrated with the power structures of society. It is only – and perhaps even honorably – about knowledge. It’s entirely possible that an integrated power structure can be built at a grassroots level, thereby developing the capacity of PLEs to replace existing LMS tools (which again, find their strength in existing power structures of control and data organization under the umbrella of the institution). This transition will not, however, occur without a corresponding power shift that emphasizes networks as an alternative to hierarchical curricular control structures that begin with industry and government setting research agendas and often influencing standards and curricular needs.
A second component, based partly in the discussion of power highlighted above, stems from the role of educational institutions in society. In Educators and Expertise, Amirault and Branson offer a quick overview of the development of education:
- Ancient period: expertise as the attainment of traits/virtues fostered by high levels of discourse with others
- Universities: intellectual development based on a systematized curriculum of seven liberal arts. Faculty and learners were involved in high levels of discourse around key subject areas. Expertise and reputation were related to both the institution where one studied and the faculty members providing instruction. Only a very small portion of the population attained doctorates.
- Craft Guilds: these existed as an alternative to the more academic focus of universities, providing training in trades.
- The modernization of education: during the industrial revolution, education transitioned from a personal relationship between faculty member and learner to a systematized model of large instructional classes and numerous teachers (p. 75).
As society became increasingly complex, education became more structured. Polymaths were replaced by specialists. New views of learning – based on behaviourism – resulted in the development of systems of curriculum creation (programmed instruction and the development of instructional design). Technology grew in prominence, with early uses supporting the move to increased control and standardization. Political developments on “accountability” in education has added to the systematization of education over the last several decades.
Education – moving from the high ancient ideals of developing better people to the development of employees for corporations – has experienced continual pressure to produce products that can be measured.The systematization of education is driven by the sociological and power discussions of the last century. Education has ceased to be about the individual learner (the early university model) to being about the existing power allocation of society (today’s model as a by product of industrial techniques applied to education).
As a result, it makes perfect sense that LMS are popular. LMS’ speak the language of the current power structure in education: control, accountability, manageability.
PLEs, in contrast, are concerned with individuals and personal learning – at least a partial return to ancient education models. Most discussions of PLEs address the individual learning opportunities they afford…but fail to move into a discussion of the reasons why they are still fringe tools. And will continue to be so until power relationships change.
A most thought-provoking post. I think I agree with all of it, except:
“PLEs are great. They’re just completely incompatible with the existing education system.”
To me ‘the education system’ is much broader than the narrow confines of the institution. While the LMS traditionally stays inside, the PLE belongs outside, so widening perspective and reach (and increasing the power) of learning.
Sure, the institution-based LMS is a strategic device used to attempt to maintain ‘control’ of the process while providing content in an educator-controlled context. The PLE, on the other hand, is tactical, under the control of the learner-user and beyond institutional boundaries.
I believe both LMSs and PLEs can happily complement each other – as long as the learner is granted the autonomy to create and use their PLE in their own way. The challenge is for institutions to show enough guts to actually let learners construct their own learning – and their PLEs – instead of mouthing rhetoric about the importance of contructivism, constructionism and connectivism.
In other words, the P stands for personal. Let’s show learners the tools and then step back to allow them to do their own constructing.
Comment by Vyt (@borborigmus) — December 8, 2008 @ 12:04 am
Fantastic post. I believe a PLE can be both a set of tools and a concept. You mention Moodle LMS. This piece of learning management system software, for example, empowers users with an array of teaching and learning tools, but on the same token, provides a personal AND collaborative learning environment.
I agree with you to the greater extent, that PLEs are the anti-thesis of our current education system(s). But it does take innovators like us, and by your own admission, early adopters to shift systemic boundaries.
Comment by Chad Outten — December 8, 2008 @ 7:12 am
I kind of agree, but I also think this creates too immoveable an object to shift. I think if we picked apart the specific facilities, affordances or characteristics of PLEs/network learning, we might start to see ways in which the Institution (and its processes) could be changed to allow this approach to flourish more. For example (and almost none of these are mine, just things I’ve picked up from smart innovators in conversation over the last few years):
- an access model that instead asked for $xxx up front for a 3 credit course that occured over a defined 3 month period, moving to a ’subscription’ model, say $99/month, where if you mastered materials quickly you end up paying less, but if you take longer you may end up paying a bit more. Still, it starts to address the ‘pace’ issue
- taken a step further, I’ve heard people (I think it was Rovy Branon who I first heard mention it) talk about the “World of Warcraft” model of education, which not only changes the financial model lbut also starts to bring in peer assessment into the picture
- coop models, and models of partnering with employers and businesses so that learning starts to straddle both the worlds of work and school, starts to look more continuous and life long
I understand; these still mostly buy into the existing epistemological view of knowledge and knowing, and maybe Friere’s loving revolution is the only thing that will bring about change you/we seek. Still, I have been impressed by people I meet out there trying these new approaches and more within existing institutions and making room for what some of us would recognize as network learning to grow, if not flourish. It may well turn out that, like many other industries, ours gets disrupted both by innovative competitors and by turns of events, the changes you seek may happen sooner than we think. I don’t know; I think we are on the same page, looking for ways to move this forward, both within and without educational institutions.
Comment by Scott Leslie — December 9, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
[...] Siemens has written an important post called ‘Systematization of education: Room for PLEs?’ Why do I think it is important? Because George tries to look at the relationship between [...]
Pingback by Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning » Blog Archive » If PLEs are incompatible with the system then how do we change the system? — December 10, 2008 @ 8:56 am
Just how popular are LMS’s? Isn’t the main mode of university production pre-capitalist: the lone lecturer at the lectern? LMS teaching requires a Fordist production line: differentiated managed labour. Only open universities have embraced this model with production lines and production teams thus gaining the economies of scale but at high capital costs.
As the current crisis in capital continues there will be more examination of the contradictions that clearly exist in state-funded university systems. The shrinkage in capital will hit public spending in big ways that will require some process re-engineering to generate the kinds of savings needed to keep institutions viable. I have no doubt an easy route (true or not) for most institutions will be on “efficiencies that can be delivered by technology”.
At this point I think the client (who have been empowerd by other force) will start to ask questions. Now that students in the Uk are paying their own fees, students (as in history students in Bristol U) are asking why are they paying 3000GBP per annum for a course that delivers 8 lectures a semester?
A university’s sole USP is its ability to award degrees. Everything else is available elsewhere.
Comment by Martin Owen — December 10, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
As I read this, I get the impression that many of your conclusions are based on an implicit definition of a PLE even as you say (and I agree) that there’s no widely agreed-upon definition. I like your early example — your office as a PLE. I’ll call that a PLE, and claim that it clearly is compatible with current sociological models of education. So at least some models of a PLE are compatible with the current state of education. Imagine a Zotero folder for a research project that includes references for scholarly books and articles, blog posts by both experts and hobbyists, maybe with a note on the books indicating where they are shelved in your physical workspace. That’d be a component in a PLE that ties the traditional and 2.0-y modes of knowledge and knowing.
I suppose I’m treating your post as a prompt toward yet another definition of PLE: “A personalized collection of tools, organizational techniques, and personal associations that a learner has developed to facilitate his or her education.”
Here, with the emphasis on tools, techniques, and associations, I’m not sure the incompatibility is there. Indeed, there’s nothing necessarily 2.0-y about it, and doesn’t necessarily conflict with the traditional status of knowledge from experts you address. This idea of a PLE is about the personal tools and techniques, not the sources of knowledge. The one addition, I think, is that we need to train students in how to develop their PLEs as part of their professional development — helping them reflect on their own learning and what components of a PLE can best augment that.
Comment by Patrick Murray-John — December 10, 2008 @ 3:41 pm
[...] discussion this week on this George Siemens article. (See Graham Attwell, Stephen Downes.) He asks if the power structures in [...]
Pingback by Ken Carroll » Blog Archive » Power structures — December 13, 2008 @ 4:36 am
[...] flexiblen Anforderungen der globalisierten Welt persönlich etwas entgegen setzen zu können. Das Problem ist nur, dass die geforderten Personal Learning Environments inkompatibel sind zum bestehenden [...]
Pingback by Vernetztes Lernen | eduFutureBlog — December 13, 2008 @ 5:01 am
[...] in Uncategorized | Tags: CCK08, connectivism, PLEs I read a series of contributions by Stephen, George, Pontydysgu, Attwell, and reviewed PLE diagrams and Wiki entries. George makes the point that PLEs [...]
Pingback by PLEs - antithetical to the current education system? « CCK08 - Viplav Baxi — December 13, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
[...] Room for PLEs?As many of you will know, I’m particularly interested in the concept of Personal Learning Environments, particularly how to help people grow theirs and how the PLE does/doesn’t/can/can’t fit into the processes of institutional education. In this article, George Siemens takes a look at whether there is room in educational institutions for the PLE, particularly w/r/t the LMS. I’m going to ride the fence on this one. Given that the way institutions operate as a whole will always have perpetuation of their existence and relevance as their most important objective, and given that this leads to an oversized attachment to business as usual and an endemic resistance to change, then the idealized form of the PLE doesn’t really fit… inside the tent, at least. But in real practice I witness too many productive uses of PLEs, in partnership with institutional LMS systems or not, to maintain that they can’t work in tandem with existing educational structures. The Platonic form of the eternal PLE may be inimical to older models of teaching, and it certainly can engender some resentment of– and resistance to– those approaches by faculty. Perhaps it can only come to be with a drastically revolutionary reconception of the mechanisms of teaching and learning… but I’m not holding my breath. [...]
Pingback by While I’m Out : Ruminate — December 18, 2008 @ 6:53 pm
[...] Systematization of Education: Room for PLEs? (tags: ple connectivism elpc3) [...]
Pingback by links for 2008-12-23 | — December 23, 2008 @ 4:19 am
[...] Learning Technologies Centre Research Blog » Systematization of Education: Room for PLEs? LMS’ speak the language of the current power structure in education: control, accountability, manageability. PLEs, in contrast, are concerned with individuals and personal learning – at least a partial return to ancient education models. Most discussions of PLEs address the individual learning opportunities they afford…but fail to move into a discussion of the reasons why they are still fringe tools. And will continue to be so until power relationships change. (tags: education learning elearning ple lms web2.0) [...]
Pingback by links for 2009-01-02 « Sean’s Emerging… — January 2, 2009 @ 9:22 am
[...] with existing learning structures in schools and universities (see my earlier commentary on thesystematization of education). LMS’ are used in corporations and schools because they support the existing structure. By [...]
Pingback by Virtual Learning Reports of the demise of the VLE/LMS are greatly exaggerated – elearnspace — September 9, 2009 @ 2:11 pm