The architecture of learning

One of the characteristics of Web 2.0, according to the man who coined the phrase, is to be found in its architecture. As far as Tim O'Reilly is concerned, Web 2.0 tools are configured in such a way that they 'get smarter the more people use them.' This facet was explained very clearly in Michael Wesch's excellent video Web 2.0 .. The Machine is Us/ing Us, which shows how web tools work better the more people use them. Social tagging for example, becomes increasingly stronger as people populate it with content and links. Blogs rely not only on content, but on users, and ultimately on the dialogue that ensues between all those who read the content. In his famous Wired article, Kevin Kelly predicted this by suggesting that Web 2.0 was about leveraging collective intelligence. Web 2.0 has marked a shift in emphasis from the personal computer to the web, and the services it conveys. Web 2.0 is qualitatively different to what preceded it. Essentially, where Web 1.0 was about pushed content, and a 'sticky internet' where users could change very little, the evolution of the web into Web 2.0 has been viewed as epitomising the power of participation, and arguably, it's also about the democratisation of the internet.

So how does Learning 2.0 fit into this landscape? In order to deconstruct Learning 2.0 - Stephen Downes was the first to coin the phrase eLearning 2.0 - we first need to decide what we mean by Learning 1.0. For me, Learning 1.0 (if there ever was such a thing and it can be equated to Web 1.0) represents a relatively passive individual learning mode where expert generated content is pushed at the learner. It represents a top-down, hierarchical delivery of content (and content really is king in this mode), which ideally demands specific (observable) behaviours from the learner that can be measured and assessed objectively.  Behaviourism and Cognitivism are theories that could comfortably be applied to describe the activities seen within a Learning 1.0 scenario. Bloom's taxonomy is also a framework that might be applied to underpin and explain the levels of activity that would ensue from Learning 1.0 type activities. It is reminiscent of the 1980s Computer Assisted Learning model, where learners sat at a computer, received linear sequences of content, responded to it by answering multiple choice questions, and were presented with remedial loops or 'relearning' when they failed to reach the required standard of understanding.

By contrast, Learning 2.0 is recognised by more active and participatory modes of learning, and they are rarely isolated learning activities. As Web 2.0 has evolved, we have seen an increasing amount of interactive content becoming available. This content is generated not only by the experts, but also increasingly by the learners themselves, and tends to be organised by the community rather than by the experts. It is not a hierarchy and it does not obey top down rules, but in more likely to be a heterarchy. The emergent properties of content organisation are folksonomies, and are the product of loose organisation that is bottom-up rather than top-down. One of the best theories to describe how learning is organised in Web 2.0 environments is social constructivism, because learners increasingly rely on social interaction, and appropriate tools to mediate dialogue. Collaborative, shared online learning spaces such as wikis and discussion forums are characteristic meeting places where content can be created and shared, and the community also organises and moderates this content using specialised services such as aggregation, curation and tagging tools.

When we talk about web versions, we inevitably travel down a road where significant step changes in the evolution of the web mark new ways of using it. If there really is a Web 1.0 and a Web 2.0, then we can expect eventually to see a Web 3.0, and can expect to see new forms of learning and social interaction advancing as a result. In my next blog post, I will try to describe what we can expect from Learning 3.0 using a similar explanatory framework.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


The architecture of learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Lost in translation

There has been a bit of discussion on Twitter, and at our recent ALT-C VLE symposium, on the importance of naming things. Web 2.0 is a case in point. A lot of people don't like the name 'Web 2.0', because of its connotations, and some have tried to rename it. Doing so of course, they fall into exactly the same trap, because the alternative names - such as 'social web' and 'read/write web' - only tend to create certain expectations around those tools which may be unrealistic, and can also limit our imagination too. This belief is based upon Linguistic Relativity theory (or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) which suggests that language and thought are intertwined, and that spoken or written classification of objects affects the way we behave toward them. But is it really so bad to give a 'name' to some new thing? And just how does a name come about? Is it by mass consensus, or is there some uber-guru up there such as Tim O'Reilly, giving names to new things and expecting all of us to adopt those new names?

At the VLE is Dead symposium, there was an issue over the term PLE (Personal Learning Environment). Some people objected to it being named as such, because they argue, the PLE is not a 'thing', but a concept or more accurately a counterpoint in the discourse of the VLE. James Clay summed up the problem quite well by saying that if we find a new species of animal, do we let the animal name itself, or do we try to describe it by giving it a name? The answer is obvious - we name it and the name enters our shared consciousness, our spoken and written culture, providing us with a visual and conceptual representation of that animal.

Let's take this idea a little farther. What if nothing was ever named? How would we know what thingamabob or wotsit others were talking about? Would we need to go completely overboard with an elaborate description so that everyone knew what was being talked about? Pidgin is a simplified language that arises when people need to communicate without sharing a common language. There are examples of over-description in Pidgin because no shared name exists for the object being discussed. Take 'corridor' - the Papua New Guinean Pidgin for this previously alien idea is: 'ples wokabaut insait long haus' (walking about inside a long house), or antiseptic: 'marasin bilong kilim jem' (medicine that is made for killing germs). There are numerous examples of this in the online Pidgin English dictionary. Simplification of language often leads to complexity of expression. And what about so-and-so over there ... you know .... 'thingy'. Does he have an opinion on this? He certainly doesn't appear to have a name...

No, if we name something, we tame it. We provide it with definition and enable it to become a shared concept. Whether it is a bad name or a good name is another debate really. If we try to rename something after it has already passed into common parlance, we run into a lot of trouble. Rebranding in companies is one thing. And the artist formerly known as Prince may have something to add. Trying to take something like Web 2.0, or the PLE and rename will be a little more difficult, I predict. But what other names could they possibly have that would be acceptable to all, and not just those who object to the first names that were given? I think we should be told...

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