My curriculum models chapter proposal

I was asked to submit a chapter proposal into a coming book focused upon "Open Learning and Formal Credentialing in Higher Education: Curriculum Models and Institutional Policies." The writing of this chapter fits very well into my OnPhD work; in particular, my skills and knowledge development and my increased commitment to publishing my work.

Curriculum models that incorporate credentials for open and lifelong learning
My understanding of open is that anyone can gain entry; like an open door. Openness also means there is no barrier, other than identifying yourself. Even then, you may still enter a truly open space anonymously. This means that an open environment has no fee for entry and no security guard checking you on the way in. I believe open learning is no different, people should be able to learn wherever, whenever, with any and all resources (copyrighted or otherwise) they choose. Having a more knowledgeable and skilled population, makes open learning good for all communities, regions, countries, and the planet as a whole.
I believe life-long learning encourages people to acknowledge that they will learn for their whole lives. People need to commit to learning new things to assist and encourage them in being better friends, neighbors, community members, employees, bosses and more engaged in their own lives. Life-long learning encourages people to pursue life-long passions and interests.
Given this understanding of open and the belief in life-long learning, people should drive toward entering into their own learning with reckless abandon with a disregard for conventional restraints toward accessing the people, materials and resources available for their learning. Life-long learners should be bold and create their own personal curriculum and attach open credentials to their learning whenever milestones are achieved within their learning journey.
This book chapter will explore a model for mapping out a personalized curriculum, creating learning plans and attaching digital badges into this curriculum and learning plans. The topic of focus for this chapter will be "Curriculum models that incorporate credentials for open and lifelong learning". The curriculum development model it will follow is described in this blogs previous post titled "The self-determined learner".

A growing list of references for the writing of this book chapter are;

• http://openlearningandrecognition.wordpress.com/
• http://infed.org/mobi/curriculum-theory-and-practice/
• http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/01/personal-curriculum-mapping-pcm.html
• http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2011/06/personal-learning-ecology.html

The Self-Determined Learner

Most of what I do is toward deepening my abilities as a self-determined learner. I believe any adult learner can develop their own curriculum, attach accreditation to this curriculum and work towards the tasks and learning to fulfill the curriculum and earn the credentials. I believe we need to teach people to teach themselves, and these abilities should enter the education system at age fourteen (or grade 10). I believe these skills and knowledge can and do enter the education system earlier. The one big challenge is that teaching people to teach themselves is a big change from our current social order around education.

An example concept map: Learning to play the pipe and tabor.

My approach to self-determined learning has a number of basic steps

1. Identify and commit to learning a subject domain
   And all this can start with a single word or picture written in the middle of a page. And all you have to do is start reading, researching, playing with and discussing this concept and move into step 2.
2. Begin a creative project or concept map about the subject domain
   This where it becomes even fun, begin a creative project of some kind around the word or concept. As you learn more about your chosen subject domain through your research, reading, play and discussion, add to your creative project.
3. Research (in detail) items or themes within the subject domain
   Identify words, concepts and themes that can be researched. Choose the ones that excite you the most, research these in detail. Invest considerable time and effort in this research.
4. Add to your creative project or concept map as your understanding deepens
   Update your existing creative works, continue to build the concept maps and creative works. Write about your research (reflect upon all that you have done), create, publish, do your work in the open.
5. Seek out peers and experts within your subject domain, engage these people
   Engage your learning community. Invest time in seeking out the communities of learning (both online and off), consider building your own community if ones don't exist. Seek mentorship, become a mentor.
6. Build and utilize a personal learning ecology
   The personal learning ecology consists of the people and learning objects within reach. Connected learning works best when it is blended with learning and resources that can be found within close proximity (online , virtual and otherwise). Create and nurture your personal learning ecology.
7. Build a personal curriculum map of how the subject would best be learned
   The personal curriculum map provides the map and learning pathways for your personalized learning journey. It is taking your concept map or creative work and identifying learning pathways and fitting them all into a personalized curriculum. This development of a personalized curriculum is an amazing way to deepen your understanding of your chosen subject.
8. Reconcile and align your personal curriculum map with other existing curriculum
   To further deepen your understanding of your chosen subject domain try reconciling and aligning your personalized curriculum map with other related curriculum (institutional or otherwise). Other curriculum may not exactly match your personal curriculum map or your subject domain may not fall into a realm where curriculum has never been developed. This should keep you from trying an
9. Create learning plans for items within your identified personal curriculum
   Choose items from within your personal curriculum to build learning plans. Always choose the item or items that interest you the most. Items may come in clusters, or they may stand alone. Create learning plans which describe the details and scope of the learning, make it all up if you have to, confirm it with existing learning plans. Include a schedule for your learning, make a commitment, put all this in your learning plan. If you are wondering how to create a learning plan, there are many references on the internet to help. You may even find that creating your own learning approach and related learning plan works best for you. This is how you will develop skills and approaches for how you learn best. You may even consider developing your own learning methodology, one that works best for you.
10. Create badge systems that align with learning plans and the curriculum
    Once you have your first learning plan, be sure you have identified the learning objectives you are wanting to achieve with your learning. Be sure to describe identifiable criteria as on outcome of your learning. Publish your learning plans to the internet. Create an open badge for your learning and have the criteria linked to the badge. Invest some time in developing a badge system that is aligned with your personal curriculum.
    
    It may seem like a large investment of time and a lot of effort to create learning plans; The creation of these plans deepens your understanding of your chosen subject. This goes back to the idea; the best way to learn something is to have to teach it.
    
    
11. Continuously engage your learning network, ask for feedback
    Whenever you create new learning plans or make updates to your concept map or create work, contact your learning network. Ask for feedback frequently and continuously. Be sure you have others review your learning plans and how they tie to your personal curriculum. Get feedback on your badge or badge system.
12. Assist and provide feedback to others within the subject domain
    Practice reciprocity, engage your learning community by assisting others on their learning journeys. The more you help other who are learning similar subjects as yourself, the more you will learn about your own subject, the more you will get help.
13. Complete learning tasks from your learning plans, earn badges
    Focus your efforts, keep to your schedule, complete tasks within your learning plans. Be sure to publish all the evidence you have in completing tasks. This evidence may come as short videos, published papers, songs, photographs, etc. Just do all you can to provide evidence of what you have done. Create blog posts about your learning and the steps you took to complete a task. Once you have gather together all your evidence of a completed task, added information about your learning journey, and summarized it all with a blog post; award yourself the related badge, or have another in your learning community award you the badge. Complete learning tasks and earn badges.
14. Return to step 1. recommit to the subject domain, iterate. The completeness of your work will come through time and the learning will deepen and become more extensive with each iteration. Keep working on developing your learning, don't allow yourself to see this work as too much or have you stop because of effort. Small steps of progress and small iterations of learning are also very powerful through time. Life-long learning takes a life-time!

Note: an important part of this learning approach is to do it in the open. Being public and open helps others, increases the quality of your work, and deepens your own understanding.

Assignments, Assessment and Badges

I was asked to quickly put some video resources together to provide an overview of my work with assignments, assessment and open badges. There is a day-long conference happening at La Trobe University in Bundoora and given I enjoy putting together resources for the work I am doing toward open education I was happy to take the time.

Deep apology for the quality of these resources. The moving trucks come tomorrow and I'm down to working off my five year old netbook. All these resources are issued with a CC-BY so feel free to use them as you will; edit them, mash them up. I believe these three videos cover the why, what and how of assignments, peer assessment and open badges.

Open Badges and Peer Assessment
Quick discussion of open badges, their meta-data and how they can be utilised within courses where peer assessment is a part of overall assessment.

Flipped Assessment
Flipped assessment has people earlier in a learning journey assess the work of someone further down the learning journey. This creates an environment where people currently involved with a subject reach-out to assist others who are also involved. This encourages peer involvement and adds to assessment.

Flipped Assessment Implemented
So this is what we did to implement flipped assessment and how the assessment criteria was grounded in the rubric that the course was based upon.

Relevant References

• Flipped assessment explained
• Flipped assessment implemented
• Badge system design course
• Badge system design rubric
• Progressive video assessment
• Progressive video; platform and pedagogy

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Canada License.

Agile Learner Design

My focus on an Agile Learner Design methodology for creating and determining your own curriculum got a renewed focus over the past 18 months. It all started with my last post of 2011 where I revisited and summarized Agile Instructional Design. I have come to the conclusion that what I am doing isn't focused on instruction, but upon the self-directed learner. Therefore, what I am doing is developing an Agile Learner Design methodology, not an Agile Instructional Design methodology. An important distinction in the fundamental focus of the methodology. To build upon my last post of 2011 I kicked off the year by looking at some of the existing research and approaches to self-directed learning. And looked at some of the approaches that I would consider similar to ALD. I also considered some of the people and approaches within my inspired learner series of posts, because it is these inspired learners that drive me to further develop ALD. Listed below is a summary of Agile Learner Design implemented.

The Agile Learner Design (ALD) Methodology

• Envisioning your curriculum
• Planning the learning journey
• Apply the sprint approach

ALD Reference Materials

• New image for progressive inquiry
• Personal Curriculum Mapping
• Narcissism and Presentism
• Agile Instructional Design References

ALD Examples and Inspirations

• Mobile learning concept map
• Agile Instructional Design in Practice
• Social Artistry
• Learning in the Open
• Example implementations
• Mitch Resnick and Progressive Inquiry
• Inspired Learners

OnPhD: Skill and Knowledge Development

What areas do I want, and need, to deepen my skills and knowledge in relation to my identified areas of study? These areas fall into three domains; Heutagogy, Educational Technology, and Solution Architecture.  With each identified item I will include a brief description of how skills and knowledge will be developed. The completion of this activity is to fulfill the requirements of the related OnPhD candidacy task.

Heutagogy

• Deepen my involvement with the Heutagogy community
  This will involve my engaging the communities of practice in and around heutagogy and autodidactism.
• Read extensively about heutagogy and autodidactism (readings list)
• Write about my approaches to self-determined learning (publish in the open)

Educational Technology

• Continue development of School of Badges and focus my efforts on Badge System Design and the technical courses on integrating Open Badges with open source learning platforms (Drupal, Moodle, Wordpress, MediaWiki, etc)
• Deepen my technical understanding (from a solutions architecture perspective) of available open source learning platforms and approaches.
• Keep learning about Open Badges technology including alternative methods of assessment an accreditation.
• Investigate and develop mobile learning applications with particular focus on video.

Solution Architecture

• Complete PhP / MySql online coursework
• Continue to deepen understanding of node.js, Github, and OpenBadges API's
• Pursue TOGAF certification
• Deepen understanding of IASA

OnPhD: Research Methods Learning Plan

Within the OnPhD Candidacy challenge the candidate needs to identify there proved history as a researcher or define there approach to developing the required research skills. The candidates research skills need to be at the level where they will be able to complete the research required to a PhD level. This on an area where I need to focus. I have only taken two research methods courses in my life and I have never participated in or conducted any kind of research beyond reading for school, personal learning, or work. This is what I see as the tasks required to complete the learning I require to become a competent PhD level researcher. The following is how I will approach the three tasks identified in the OnPhD Candidacy Challenge task;

1. Learning plan to develop research skills;

1. Readings - read two books on research methods. One on educational research methods and the other on big data computational research methods. The two books could be;

1. Research Methods in Education
2. Research Methods in Software Engineering


2. OER - seek out an open educational resource focused on research methods. Review these two Open Courseware's from MIT;
   • Doctoral Seminar in Research Methods I
   • Doctoral Seminar in Research Methods II


3. Identify and Review - Identify a number of research projects similar to the one I am intending, and do an in-depth review of approaches, analysis methods, etc...


4. Volunteer - as a research assistant on a similar research project as my current thesis project.

2. Applicable research methodologies;

This will be completed as I finish the first task of developing my research skills.

3. Commitment to ethical boundaries within my research;

This will also be developed as I complete the first task in developing my research skills. And by working through all the modules found in the research ethics site created by elsevier; http://ethics.elsevier.com/index.asp

OnPhD Supervisory Team

Currently, I want to identify my research methods / approach for my OnPhD research project. Given I have identified a weakness around research methods I believe I need some input into identifying my learning regarding research approaches, and to have people well versed in research would assist greatly. I will reach out to the OnPhD google group and also begin my search for my OnPhD supervisory team. Given I intend my research to be in the intersection of Educational Technology, Heutagogy, and Solution Architecture I would like my supervisory team to fall with a collective expertise in these areas.

One thing important to me is to turn away from traditional academia. This is not due to my thinking there isn't great value available from people with an academic background, and I really hope to have people well versed in academia on my supervisory team. I have two main reasons for looking away from traditional academia and current education innovation, these two reasons are as follows;

1. I believe so many great open education projects end up looking toward traditional approaches for guidance and support, or end-up leaning toward corporate interests. And through time these initiatives become increasingly aligned with traditional academic approaches and profit (rather than public service) and lose their opportunity to work outside these traditional approaches. I see this as important because I believe global education innovation needs to look more closely towards those who have limited access to education (those who have access to education are already well served). Traditional approaches struggle to comprehensively meet the needs of the 75% who do not have access to continued and tertiary education. I believe the solution will be found with more grassroots and clinical approaches, where the educational needs are localized and focused upon community educational needs rather than global educational trends. Due to environmental and economic factors, I believe the future is localized.
2. Learning is an individual meta-cognitive effort, and the current educational technology innovation should focus more on individual approaches rather than massive ones. I honestly believe the future of education is about teaching people to teach themselves, everything else is content and tools to deepen, assess and recognize learning. All educational technologies are tools in the individual learners toolkit. There is no significant difference in any one of these technologies being better than another, it is a collective effort.



There are more people unserved by Higher-ed than those being served. This needs to change by increasing the self-directed approaches to the life-long learning mix.

 The people in my dream team of OnPhD supervisors would come from a variety of backgrounds and fall into one of these three categories. My preference would be to also have supervisors who can span two of my three knowledge domains.

1. Educational Technology
Seeking educational technologists with a broad view toward applying technology to education. They would be equally well versed in open source and propriety systems. Though my preference would be toward open systems. They would have strong experience with rich and mixed media, and will have deployed these media on a variety of open platforms. They have good experience with implementing geographically disbursed systems and would have worked in public education.

2. Heutagogy / Pedagogy / Autodidactic
Seeking accomplished life-long learners who have reconciled within themselves how to best learn what interests them and what they need to be successful. These learners have differing depths of understanding the theories and approaches of heutagogy, andragogy, pedagogy and autodidactism. What is most important is they are self-directed life-long learners and/or help others to be self-directed life-long learners.

3. Solution Architecture
Seeking solution or enterprise architects with an interest in continued professional development within all subject domains of computer and information systems architecture. In particular, people who are familiar with open and standards based approaches to architecture with focus on TOGAF and software architecture.

WANTED: OnPhD Mentorship

What would provide you incentive to mentor someone (me) through to a PhD level of knowing a subject domain?

The commitment would be small and I would guide the process. Every four months I would provide a 15 minute video update with a collection of readings and other media for you to evaluate if you had the time or inclination. The subjects would be focused on educational technology, self-directed learning, and solutions architecture. If you had an interested in any of these subject domains I would be happy to deepen my knowledge by researching a subject for you.

So, what incentive would you require to share your knowledge and provide me assistance?

What is an Open and Networked PhD (OnPhD)?
I consider an OnPhD to be a self-directed exploration into a domain of knowledge. The mastery of the knowledge domain would be to a PhD level of knowing. The learning journey would be done completely in the open (for free) and would utilize a persons social and learning network (both online and off).

A critical look at the OnPhD Candidacy badge system

As a heutagogue I currently have three main learning activities; Creating challenges into the P2Pu school of badges, learning all I can about open and digital badges, and in developing the Open and Networked PhD. These three currently come together in my building of both the P2Pu challenge on Badge System Design and in developing and completing the OnPhD candidacy challenge. I am using the badge system I have designed for the OnPhD candidacy as the badge system I am using as I work through the badge system design challenge. For a good description on the OnPhD candidacy badge system follow the embedded link. Below is my critical review of this badge system, with my assessment of where each criteria is against the badge system design rubrics performance levels;

• Purpose: working - The badge system represents a significant accomplishment. Given it is wanting to award an equivalent to the PhD Candidacy it is unproven and unrecognized within any community.
• Graphical Design: introductory - The mono-color badge design is very simplistic with little branding or curriculum recognition. The graphical themes are very simplistic and have no relation to the broader community within it exists.
• Organization: notable - The badge system is well organized and progress to completion is easily understood. The organization and progression is well supported by the graphics of each badge. The images of the whole badge system ease understandability and being awarded each badge demonstrates an individual accomplishment toward the final goal of OnPhD candidacy.
• Criteria: notable - the criteria of each badge allows is to be considered an accomplishment within itself. Each badge could also be used within a different badge or learning system with similar goals. The criteria of each badge is timeless and would apply equally well at a future time.
• Technical Integration: introductory - the badge system has been implemented within a 3rd party badge issuing system and only has integration within the related curriculum system through the final badge within the whole system. The big risk here is the 3rd party badge issuer may not exist into the future.
• System Integration: notable - The open and networked PhD badge system and related criteria aligns very well with the candidacy requirements found within the traditional PhD. The badging approach also integrates well the open and digital badging approaches. The choice to use both wikiversity and P2Pu was conscious due to their alignment with open and networked learning. The meta-badge issued for completing the challenge will be issued by P2Pu, further deepening the badge system integration with the learning platform.
• Assertion: introductory - the issued badge(s) resolve back to URLs that can be confirmed within the issuer and the evidence URL's are baked into the badge.
• Endorsement: working - the issued badges are endorsed by the OnPhD community. Both Wikiversity and P2Pu have implied endorsement of the OnPhD candidacy badge system. More official endorsement will be sought once one or two candidacies have been completed from this challenge.
• Validity: introductory - Validity of learning is determined in how the badge evidence aligns with each badges criteria. It is to early in the badge system design to determine depth of learning for the badge earners as there are too few people who have earned the badge(s). Once a number of people have completed the OnPhD candidacy challenge, validity will be determined.
• Development Team: working - team has two main developers, both with strong technological and pedagogical backgrounds. Development of badge criteria included input from other strong subject matter experts.

Badge System Design: Task 7

This is how I have approached completing task 7 of the P2Pu Badge System Design Course. I am using the Open and Networked PhD candidate challenge as the learning journey worthy of a small collection on badges. Task 7 of the P2Pu challenge requires completion of the following five activities;

1. Reflect upon a learning journey worthy of a few badges and envision a badge system to provide recognition for key learnings.
   
   The learning journey is creating and bringing together all the materials required to become an Open and Networked PhD candidate. The badge system will have seven micro badges, one for each task in the challenge. Once the learner has completed all tasks they will be awarded the OnPhD Candidacy badge.
   
   
2. Choose a performance level from the rubric and design the system to meet this level. Be sure to provide supporting discussion of how each performance criteria is being met.
   
   The badge system is meant to be a working badge system as described in the badge system design rubric.The criteria in the rubric are met as follows;
   
   • Purpose: the completion of the OnPhD candidacy challenge is a significant accomplishment with effort required to completed each of the seven tasks within the challenge. A person who earns all micro-badges and the OnPhD Candidacy Badge should consider themselves an OnPhD Candidate, equivalent to a traditional PhD Candidacy.
   • Graphical design: in this badge system uses a simplistic mono-color with a theme of images and good use of a banner. It doesn't provide any branding within the micro-badges and the banner names map directly to task names.
   • Organization: is a flat single level hierarchy consisting of seven micro-badges and one badge. The learning journey is easily understood and well organized. The badge system is only just been implemented but has been well received by the community.
   • Criteria: is succinctly described and allows for flexibility in different learning approaches. Each completed task adds to the overall objective. The earning of each micro-badge naturally leads to the next. Overall the badge system is easily understood.
   • Technical Integration: Badge(s) are easily available through the use of credly for awarding. This 3rd party badge issuing system allows for both criteria and evidence to be hosted at other locations. Badges can be moved to the Mozilla open backpack.
   • System Integration: The OnPhD Candidate badge system integrates well with existing and similar PhD candidacy requirements. The OnPhD Candidacy also integrates with well with heutagogical and autodidactical  approaches.
   • Assertion: the badge hosting organization (credly) is well established and will provide a hosting environment for the foreseeable future. 
   • Endorsement: The affiliations (endorsement) of the OnPhD with both Wikiversity and P2Pu bring added reputation. Once a number of candidates have successfully completed the OnPhD Candidacy challenge further endorsements will be sought.
   • Validity: is yet to be determined as no one has successfully completed all the tasks within the badge system. Validity will be determined once a small sample of candidates have completed the challenge.
   • Development Team: had one main developer with another providing subject matter expertise (SME). The curriculum development had input from three other SME which vetted the curriculum design.
   
   
3. Using pen and paper, drawing tool or some other way of image creation and draw the badge system. Diagram and describe the important graphical elements of each badge. Discuss the themes, and common elements of the badges. Publish the diagram and related discussion.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Provide a table describing and mapping criteria to each badge.
   
   The mapping of criteria to badges is well described in the "OnPhD Candidacy Badge System" blog post; http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-onphd-candidacy-badge-system.html
   
   
5. Publish all this work in a way available to the internet.
   
   A number of blog posts accompany this post in providing background and related information to completing this task.
   • http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-onphd-candidacy-badge-system.html
   • http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2013/04/leveling-of-onphd-badges.html
   • http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2013/04/badge-system-design-working.html

The OnPhD Candidacy Badge System

If you want to earn the OnPhD Candidacy Badge you need to be awarded the following seven micro-badges. Each of these micro-badges are awarded for completing a task within the OnPhD candidacy challenge. All of these badges, with the exception of the Candidate badge, are hosted at the credly site and can be issued by anyone who has already earned the badge. Provided below is a copy of the badge image and the title, description and link to the related tasks from the P2Pu site.

	1. Describe your learning history - This is a cumulative description of all the works (formal and informal) you have completed to be considered toward your candidacy for an ONPhD. https://p2pu.org/en/groups/onphd-candidacy/content/describe-your-academic-history/
	2. Identify your domain of study - View and Discuss The described domain of study should be both broad and focused. This is to allow others to get a sense of both the knowledge domain and your focus. https://p2pu.org/en/groups/onphd-candidacy/content/identify-your-domain-of-study/
	3. Detail your contribution - What of considerable significance are you going to contribute to your chosen subject domain of knowledge? https://p2pu.org/en/groups/onphd-candidacy/content/detail-your-contribution/
	4. Methodology - Completion of a PhD requires a significant reseach project or major contribution to your chosen knowledge domain. https://p2pu.org/en/groups/onphd-candidacy/content/research-methods/
	5. Skills and Knowledge Development - Completion of a PhD level of knowing also requires the development of other related skills and knowledge. https://p2pu.org/en/groups/onphd-candidacy/content/skills-and-knowledge-development/
	6. Engage the community - How are you going to engage the learning community and your learning network. https://p2pu.org/en/groups/onphd-candidacy/content/engage-the-community/
	7. Seek supervision and endorsements - Identify the people in your learning network who are going to assist on your learning journey and help you get to finished. https://p2pu.org/en/groups/onphd-candidacy/content/seek-endorsements/

Leveling of OnPhD badges

I have developed the OnPhD candidacy challenge on P2Pu. The purpose of this challenge is to guide people through the tasks of declaring their candidacy as an Open and Networked PhD.  A part of my work towards an OnPhD is to research alternative methods of assessment and accreditation for the self-directed life-long learner... I have the belief that digital and open badges will provide very well for the accreditation part. Therefore, I keep a concious eye toward the open badges movement and have been helping out in building the school of badges on P2Pu. I've taken on the creation of a couple of courses within this school, I am also doing some review of Leah MacVie's outstanding work within the school. One of the courses she has developed is 102 Quick Issuing, and I am working through the course to debug and give feedback. One of the tasks within the 102 Quick Issuing challenge is to describe a badge system you would be issuing badges. The badge system I am developing is to support the OnPhD. This badge system would recognize the accomplishments as a person meets or exceeds the milestones found within a traditional PhD while also allowing a person to be self-directed in defining their own OnPhD.

I have a deep appreciation of the colour themes within martial arts belt system to denote levels of accomplishment. I will use these within the development of the badge system for my OnPhD. Essentially, I will use the respective colours as part of the badge as I progress toward mastery in my chosen subject domain. Completing the OnPhD Candidacy challenge awards the earner a yellow candidate badge, and other tasks or accomplishments within this level would also be awarded a badge with a yellow colour. As the progression toward mastery progresses, so would the colour of the badge, closely matching the belt colours within the martial arts. Given the self-directed (or heutagogical) nature of the OnPhD much of the badge system design should be responsibility of the OnPhD candidate, allowing them to set their own learning directions(s). This would deepen learning and is strongly supported by current research around heutagogy.

Seven Billion Learners

Learning styles was a big part of my graduate studies. And since that time people increasingly shy away, from conversations about VAK (Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic) and other specific learning styles and how they should be applied. Mostly because the research has found that there is no significant difference in teaching to any particular learning style. Don't get me wrong, having a discussion with someone about how they learn and drawing upon previous research regarding learning styles is a great conversation to have. Any conversation that helps a person (or myself) understand how they learn is an important conversation for everyone.

 

Some background
I am currently involved in the Learn Creative Learning MOOC with MIT and P2Pu. We are into the fourth week and the theme of the readings is Big Powerful Ideas. The weekly readings are fantastic and really get into self-directed learning and how we learn as kids... etc., etc... please read for yourself;

• Alan Kay - http://www.campbells.org/Rant+Rave/r+r_PowerfulIdeas.html
• Seymour Papert - http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/Papert-Big-Idea.pdf
• Resnick & Silverman - http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/IDC-2005.pdf

The weekly reflection was to discuss a personal big idea. One that you could drive a life's work upon.

The powerful idea
My powerful idea has been building for years and is well articulated in the statement that there are seven billion learning styles. What I mean by this is that every person on the planet has their own personal learning style, and our learning and education systems need to be built around this. I come to this from a collection of personal understandings, supported by a whole bunch of research and proven theories;

• Learning builds upon itself where people build knowing through sequential learning (cognitivism).
• People construct knowledge (or learn) based on their previous knowledge. Sense is made by related current learning upon previous learning and experiences (constructivism).
• People learn best by making things "outside" of the learning environment. Constructing things is important to deepening learning (constructionism).
• The idea that people can learn things in many different ways, with many different approaches, with many different senses (learning styles).
• Humans are social animals and learning is a social activity. All knowledge is connected via the objects or nodes within our lives (the objects are also our friends and social network) (connectivism)
• People can be self-directed learners outside of the institution (Heutagogy or Autodidacticism)

The idea isn't that big or powerful?
Well if everyone has there own learning style then our education systems should focus on teaching people to identify and leverage their own personal learning style. People could be given the skills, knowledge and personalized approaches to learn whatever they want with an approach best suited to them. I believe we now have the knowledge, technology and openness to create learning environments that can be customized to each learner, and these learning environments will honour each persons learning style (all seven billion). I believe people have the ability to develop these skills and abilities, early in their lives, with focus toward their teen years for solidifying their personal approaches. So the big idea I continue to work toward is to inspire adult learners to recognize they can learn whatever they want (within reason) on their own with the support of the people and objects around them. And they don't have to go to school to do this. This doesn't mean school isn't a useful part of their personal learning environment.

How I am implementing the powerful idea?

1. Develop an approach to inspire people to teach themselves. I call this Agile Learner Design (ALD), but in the end it is kinda my own personalized learning methodology. I believe everyone could also develop their own learning methodology. I believe ALD can be reused by others...
2. Encourage people to map out their own learning journeys, and assist people in finding ways to travel on these journeys.
3. Open up accreditation, and assessment will follow... I have believed that Open Access Accreditation is as important as Open Educational Resources. Digital and Open Badges are some of the initiatives that opens up accreditation. I am an active contributor to the digital and open badges movement.
4. Be an example: I believe so much that people can teach themselves that I am wanting to serve as a documented example. I am involved with the Open and Networked PhD program, which endeavours to have people recognized (and accredited) in having a PhD level of knowing without having attended a traditional university to accomplish this goal. References to this journey, include;
• http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy
• https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!forum/open-and-networked-phds
• http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Peterrawsthorne/PhD
• https://p2pu.org/en/groups/onphd-candidacy/
5. Blog extensively about my belief, activities, and learning journey.

Target Technology Stack

To support my work in completing my Open and Networked PhD one of my major tasks will be developing software. My current thinking is I will be developing an internet portal to allow people to bring together their digital badges. I want to provide people a way to bring together all their validated learning accomplishments into one place for display and supporting analytics.

For software development I need to choose a technology stack, or the server software and programming language(s) I will use for development. This will be a LAMP stack for the following reasons;

1. I have already been developing on LAMP for a number of years. So any additional learning curve for this project will be shallow.
2. I see LAMP to be the technologies of;
   • Linux (or Ubuntu)
   • Apache (Web Server)
   • MongoDB (Database) - this replaces MySQL as it is now owned by Oracle and can no longer be considered non-proprietary.
   • PhP - used with HTML5 and CSS3 in an MVC pattern
3. I want to choose an open and popular platform currently used within the education technology space.This stack, with the exception of MongoDB, is used by WikiMedia, Moodle, Drupal, and Wordpress. Pretty much all the major players in the Open Education space.
4. I will host all this on rackspace... because I've used them for a number of years, for a number of clients, and they totally rock!!!
5. I seriously considered node.js and it may become a part of the project as I more deeply explore the openbadges infrastructure... this would add to my learning curve.
6. I will most likely use github for source code librarianship... but I wonder about the best approach and schedule to releasing my work into the open. Mostly, I think about working for free and releasing my work at the correct time.

OnPhD: Detail your contribution

This is the blog post describing completion of the third task of the OnPhD candidacy challenge. In this post I detail what I am going to do as my contribution to furthering human knowledge.

My contribution will fall within the intersection of education technology, systems architecture and heutagogy. My current thinking toward this area of focus will be to create a badge clustering portal that will allow people to gather and create badges from the different non-obi compliant badges systems. The benefit of this would be to support my thesis that we need a way of collecting together peoples learning to provide validation and recognition. My working thesis is;

The ability to validate and cluster all the events of life-long learning, regardless of their origin, will provide the required alternative to emancipate the self-directed learner from the limits of traditional accreditation. This shift will enable every learner, regardless of approach, to pursue learning with the same level of recognition as learners in traditional institutions.

1. Detail your ideas around a significant contribution. (remember this can be altered as your knowledge of the domain of study deepens, it is an iterative process)
   Build a web portal, with support for mobile devices, which allows a user to consolidate there badges from many non-obi compliant badge systems.
   • The technology platform will utilize a MVC approach using HTML5, CSS3, PhP and MondoDB. Rationalization of this technology stack will be in a follow-up blog post.
   • Solution architecture will be focused around open platforms and standards. A strong service orientation using RESTful type approaches for integration.
   • Features will always look toward assisting the self-directed learner in consolidating thier accreditations.
2. How are you going to publish?
   I will publish frequently on my blog with papers written for major project milestones and upon completion of significant design elements. I will publish in two primary locations; first, utilize online open journals and second, pubish on wikiversity.
3. Where will you engage your network of peers and mentors?
   Online! I will communicate regularly with my peers and mentors, both directly and via online communities. I will seek feedback with all my regular blog posts and provide more formal engagement processes with all major publishing events. If engagement requires discussion I will ask to publish the video or audio chat. I will be very transparent through all my engagements. Peers and mentors will be aware of this before they are asked to engage.
4. How is your work going to be peer reviewed?
   Peer review will come via my publishing in the open, my regular and frequent engagements, and through blind peer review via the journals I utilize to publish my major works.
5. How are your findings and data going to be published in the open?
   All documents and data will be published in the open. People can request complete data sets and open API's will be made available. Note: privacy policies will be put in place regarding participant data.
6. Describe how you know you are finished.
   When users badge clusters are successfully rendered and shared from their user page within the web portal.

OnPhD: Identify your domain of study

This is the blog post describing completion of the second task of the OnPhD candidacy challenge. In this post I describe my domain of study and provide a potential PhD thesis statement.

This sentence and slide stack (with audio) should answer questions 1 thru 6.
My domain of study is the union and intersection of the educational technologist, the solution architect and the self-directed adult learner (heutagogue). The intersection of these three topics encourages the study of personal learning ecologies, the technology stack and distributed computing that supports personal learning, and the devices and user experience that best suits the self-directed learner.

Domains of study from Peter Rawsthorne

These two sentences provide a potential PhD thesis statement.
The ability to validate and cluster all the events of life-long learning, regardless of their origin, will provide the required alternative to emancipate the self-directed learner from the limits of traditional accreditation. This shift will enable every learner, regardless of approach, to pursue learning with the same level of recognition as learners in traditional institutions.

To do: The completion of this task exposed a gap in my knowledge. I need to do a bunch of research on Heutagogy. From this reseach I will build another concept map, but this work will become a part of my OnPhD.

The Solution Architect

This concept map is a compliment to the previously posted "Educational Technologist" post. These two concept maps together provide the visuals for my identified domain of study as I work through the P2Pu challenge to declare my OnPhD candidacy. This concept map contains the two related concepts of Solution Architect and Information Technology (IT) Architect. Many of the skills and knowledge for the solution architect are a part of the overarching role of IT Architect. It is my intention to seek a research domain that occurs within the intersection of Education Technologist and Solution Architect. I believe bringing greater architectural discipline to the educational technologist role will assist greatly in growing this important role within the rapidly innovating educational space.

The Educational Technologist

Learning theories, frameworks, and approaches

So I'm building a concept map for my application of candidacy for the Open and Networked PhD program with Wikiversity and P2Pu. The related P2Pu challenge requests a creative work that describes your area of study. My areas of study are self-directed life-long learning approaches (Heutagogy) and software architecture. One of the concept maps I am creating attempts to answer the question "what is life-long learning?" I started to visualize the terms;  pedagogy, andragogy, heutagogy, behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and connectivism. I began to struggle with how these terms relate to each other within a concept map... so this micro learning journey began and inspired this blog post. How best do I visualize the connections and relationships among all these terms?

I read, I reflected, and I settled upon two main categories for the following reasons;

1. Approaches to teaching and learning
This set of terms describe ways of teaching and learning. And they describe how a person can learn and provides ways to plan and conduct learning.

1. Behaviorism - a large amount of repetition to achieve the desired action.
2. Cognitivism - sequenced learning. Learning is a determined journey, that with direction desired learning can be achieved.
3. Constructivism - a persons learning is built upon previous learnings and knowledge. New learning are put into place based on this previous knowledge.
4. Connectivism - knowledge is stored in your friends, the information appliances and the objects around you.
5. Others - there are many other approaches, but I see the above four as the most generalized set
6. Inquiry - I'd also include inquiry based approaches, cause they work really well... IMO.

2. How I perceive the learning theories
All of the theories are about how humans learn (or can be taught, depending on your perspective). I believe the biggest factor in applying learning theory is age. I do believe children learn differently than adults. I also believe adults can learn a lot from how children learn.

1. Pedagogy - how kids are educated [taught or learned (let's say K12... could overlap into higher education and before kindergarten)]
2. Andragogy - directed education strategies for adults
3. Heutagogy - self-directed learning by adults (strategies for the adult to learn without the direction of others)

So there you have it, three theories and six approaches... I do believe that all six approaches can be used within each of the three theories (with varying degrees of success). All this reading and reflection influenced the organization of my concept map to look as follows; more on this to come...

DRAFT Knowledge Domain for the Educational Technologist v0.2



Agile Learning and OpenBadges

I spend a lot of my personal time deepening my understanding of self-directed learning and its direct application. I'd rather walk-the-walk than talk-the-talk... and pedagogically you learn much more by walking-the-walk. Over the last eight months I have focused a lot of my learning on badge systems as a method for recognizing learning and achievement, and as an alternative method of accreditation. I have been exploring, what I consider, the four different approaches to badge systems and have utilized my Agile Learning Design (ALD) approach to direct my learning. Over the last eight months I have learned a considerable amount about this subject. And given there is yet to be a person or school that focuses on teaching about badges systems I really didn't have a choice but do it myself.

ENVISION
During the envisioning step of the ALD methodology you focus on a creative effort which defines what you know of a subject domain. Even if what you know starts with a single word or just the name of the subject you can still start exploring the subject and build a creative effort that defines your current knowing of the subject. With open badges I was able to read a few of the sites dedicated resources and was able to put together a concept map, and this really got me started and allowed me to set a direction for my learning.

My first concept map capturing my early understanding of open badges.

During the middle six months of 2012 I immersed myself in learning about digital badges and open badges. I wrote extensively and participated in many online events and created many online resources. All of this deepened my learning. The ALD approach helped focus my learning and assisted in identifying gaps in my knowledge. I followed an iterative learning approach and studied concepts as identified in my concept map and as they became apparent through my reading, investigation and peer feedback. My learning journey occurred as follows;

PLAN
The first few steps of my learning journey were planning my approach and setting the context and learner perspective. The importance of this is described in the planning step of ALD.

• Context and User Roles: This step was really important for setting the context and learner roles to define how I was looking at the learning I was about to embark upon. It really helped me understand who the learner was, and to what depth and direction I was to take my learning.
  
  • Learning plan
  • Learner roles
• Learning Themes: What did I want to get out of my learning and how would I anchor my learning.
  
  • Concept map
  • Learning themes
  • Anchor subject

BUILD
My next step in deepening my understanding was to build learning resources. These resources covered many of the topics I had identified in my concept map and during my planning. Each resource I created added depth to my understanding of open badges.

• Getting Started: What are the general concepts within open badges and what are the main technologies to be understood. What does it take to implement badges using these technologies.
  
  • Getting Started
  • Issuer vs. Displayer
  • Learning so far
  • Step-by-step guide
  • Making a badge
• Badge taxonomies: I began to realize that badge systems design was a big part of all this. And it seemed to me the first step of all this was in the taxonomies surrounding badge systems. So I explored further.
  
  • Badge taxonomies
  • Martial arts belt hierarchy
• Badge systems design: There came a point where I had deepened my knowledge of open badges where I wanted to create my own badge system. This seemed like the natural next step for me. This took me into understanding the criteria and evidence attributes of the badge and how the criteria would fit within a badge system.
  
  • Criteria and Evidence
  • Badges for Wikiversity
• Create learning resources: Wow! So after all of that learning I begin to build learning resources. This deepens my learning and creates artifacts that will hopefully assist others with their learning. Fortunately I was in the situation where Mozilla provided an incentive to build these resources.
  
  • Introduction
    suggested readings
    more suggested readings
    first look at the meta-data
    open badges on P2Pu
  • Claiming a badge
    claiming your first badge
  • Technical prerequisites
    JavaScript
    the technology stack
    server infrastructure
  • Issuer Technologies
    technical prerequisites
    a look at the json message
    the different servers
  • Wikiversity Case Study
    scenario and badge system design
    manually issuing the badge
    claiming the badge

STABALIZE
Once the first iteration build of my learning resources was complete I sought feedback by having others use the resources. In truth, I was continually asking for feedback. As soon as a resource was built I would publish it to the internet and seek input. All very iterative, all very lean. As you can see the above resources were all published at different times and as I published I would engage my learning community and ask for input. With some resources the feedback would initiate a change for others the resource remained the same, sometimes the change would come as how the new resource was hosted or the context around the learning was changed.

DEPLOY
The final step within this iteration of learning was to deploy the final versions of the learning resources. I chose to wrap the video resources in popcorn.js and to build a small portal to organize all the resources. This allowed further enhancement to the resources by focusing in on key learnings and also providing a listing of the embedded URL's as follow on learning resources. To view this portal visit the dedicated Bowen Institute of Technology website; http://badges.bit.bc.ca/

NEXT STEPS
I feel I learned a lot over the last nine months regarding digital badges and open badges. The next steps to deepen and continue my learning will be;

1. to assist others who are learning about digital badges, mostly through the following activities;
• facilitate online workshops whenever possible
• continue building out P2Pu School of Badges
• answer questions regardless of where they come from
• continue to engage the community as time permits
2. to loop around back to the start of the ALD where I revisit my learning themes and do another deep dive into my concept map.
3. to Plan, Build, Stabalize and Deploy another iteration of learning resources

The purpose of these activities is to celebrate all I have learned so far, expose the gaps in my knowledge regarding digital badges and open badges, create more resources for others to learn from, and refocus my learning. All good.