Blogging in a time of AI

I am renewing my frequency in blog posting. This will come after an almost 5 year break from blogging. I am returning because I am back to working on open-source software, educational projects, and the digitization of oceans. And I know I have a learning and success journey to share. 

Some Background

I started blogging twenty years back. Yes, 20 years. I was an early adopter and I was involved with technology startups and how the internet was influencing education. At this time I was a big believer that blogging was about content creation. Adding to the collective of the internet by adding meaningful and descriptive content rather than only being a consumer of content. To date, I have published over 500 posts to my assorted blogs. Most of this work was in the first 10 years of my blogging. I essentially posted once a month for the first 10 years. I did have a year where I posted over 100 times. As a summary this is how I posted over the last 20 years.

2004 to 2014 - I published 420 blog posts with good readership. I had a year where I posted more than 100 times. I set this as a goal / experiment to see if I could post twice a week. I did this while holding full-time work, which meant many early mornings and late evenings writing. I learned a whole bunch and my writing skills improved. 

The themes for these first ten years was mostly; 

• technology leadership for startups, 
• hard-core technology and approaches, 
• innovative and emerging education, 
• and the intersection of these three.

2015 to 2024 - I published only 41 blog posts during this 10 years, and nothing in the past three years. Honestly, I was distracted by raising my family of three and doing a whole bunch of life living. Not so focused on work and career advancement. 

The themes for the last ten years have mostly been; 

• integrating with technology community in St. John's NL (I moved), 
• continue my work on digital badges and micro-credentials,
• development of an ocean data startup (still a work in progress),
• and working the idea of a reference architecture for the digitization of oceans.

Most exciting of all this is more than 1/2 million views during the 20 years and at some points having over 2500 weekly views. What have I learned from all this blogging? Mostly, that having to write and publish openly to the internet helps the overall community knowledge and it helps me learn more deeply in these chosen subjects.

Next Steps

Again, I will use blogging as my cognitive gymnasium. My subjects themes haven't changed and I will focus upon two main subject areas and continue with updates to this critical technology blog;

1. Education technology, Heutagogy, and the self-directed learner.
• The Happy Heutagogue - https://heutagogue.blogspot.com/
2. Many things related to, and in support of, the authoring a reference architecture for the digitization of oceans.
• The Ocean Set CTO - https://oceanset.blogspot.com/
3. And my continued musings about technology through my gen X view of the world.
• Critical Technology - https://criticaltechnology.blogspot.com/

With all my work and R&D efforts I will learn a bunch of stuff and apply this to the real world through the successful projects I am a part of. I will reflect upon these successes and all that I have learned I will create content that can provide further learning for those around me. And hopefully they will also be entertaining reads.

Collaborating with your AI partner

Blogging has changed for me. There has been a lot of technical and social change since I did most of my blog posting over a decade ago. I had a few focused subjects I was very passionate about, and I wrote about them often. I wrote unincumbered for I would consider myself an early adopter and there was less people publishing to the internet in my chosen subjects. Today there is much more content covering these subjects. And all this content comes in photos, videos, audio, and written articles. Artificial Intelligence is doing a great job of creating and summarizing the content which addresses the complex audience needs and their questions and prompts. Content creation has changed. For a human content creator I believe our work needs to be more intelligent, critical, and creative. Content creators in a time of AI need to do what the AI cannot; daydream, reflect on unrelated subjects, see unlikely connections, be critical, add meaning, create new content that falls between the generated content, fact check and confirm, and add more human intelligence.

How will my blog writing process change? Um, it already has...

I must reflect and draw upon my mastery and do my best to add the new content that AI cannot... AI needs our creativity because it has already parsed the published body of human knowledge. For more insight on my approach, use your favorite large language model chatbot (ChatGPT, Gemini) with the prompt 'limitations of generative AI' followed by the prompt 'How would you suggest a human writer overcome these AI limitations'.

Step by Step my blogging will partner with AI and follow this basic approach;

1. Capture ideas for new posts, be verbose, be imaginative, think about context
2. Put these ideas to incomplete blog posts, work ideas for days, for weeks...
3. Read extensively, add to the understanding of any specific idea
4. Keep references, cut and paste to the bottom of the related incomplete posts
5. Prompt AI with phrases from the idea generation
6. Take blocks of text from written ideas and push them into generative AI, be critical, harvest what you can.
7. Take the written blog post and ask AI for a rewrite. Change your audience. be critical, harvest what you can.
8. Try and see, try and write, what AI cannot... add to the body of human knowledge.
9. Add story telling to improve the overall post
10. Find pictures to support the writing, format for engagement. Use AI to generate images from passages of text taken from the blog post.
11. Format, edit, improve, repeat. Be bold... Publish.
12. Use AI to improve the quality of the writing... Publish again.
13. Rest, reflect, improve... Publish again.
14. Yes, I am an advocate to publish before writing is perfect. Publish and then make improvements over the days and weeks that follow. Once the post is considered finished finished... promote it on social media.
15. Identify what is most important about the post and rewrite for the LinkedIn business audience. Publish to LinkedIn.
16. Repeat...

Suggested reading: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/02/ai-can-catalyze-and-inhibit-your-creativity-here-is-how/

Course Design Sprint

Outstanding!!! Early last year I wrote a post playing with the idea of a course design sprint. The main idea being the development of a full online course in a reduced amount of time. less than five days, or some low number of days like that. In my post I dreamt of having the time to execute on the idea to see if it would work.

Agile Instructional Design Sprint

Well it turns out my friend Billy Meinke ran a course sprint this past weekend.  The course was developed as a launch course for the School of Open during Open Education Week (Mar 11-15). I really don't want to take the wind out of their sails... so you can read about all there great work yourself. I'm just so flipped out they proved this idea out! Kudos to everyone involved, particularly Billy!

• http://billymeinke.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/open-science-course-sprint-an-education-hackathon-for-open-data-day/
• http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/36600
• http://blogs.plos.org/scied/2013/02/21/guest-post-open-data-day-sprint-courses-and-hackathons/
• http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/a-course-design-sprint-my-experience-in-an-education-hackathon/

Mozilla, Agile Learning Design, and Everything else

It was an active year for my reading, research and writing (106 blog posts in 2012). I feel I learned a whole lot. I particularly like that I had an opportunity to deep dive into open and digital badges. I believe my year of learning can be broken into three main themes; First, my work with Mozilla Open Badges and Badge systems in general; Second, my further proving out an Agile Learner Design methodology; and Third, everything else I thought about.

Mozilla Foundation

Its difficult to express the gratitude I have for the time I spent on contract with the Mozilla Foundation. In the six months I spent with Mozilla I did a whole lot, and I learned a whole lot;

• Created a lot of learning resources for on-boarding the newbie open badges user / implementer
• Completely updated the Open Badges FAQs by reading through the related google group end-to-end
• Went deep into Webmaking with my kids and some of the youth on Bowen Island
• Engaged in a number of discussions on curriculum design and building communities of practice
• Dug into some emerging open technologies like WebGL, WebRTC... and how they fit within an virtually unlimited bandwidth network
• Played with popcorn.js and wrapped learning resources to highlight formative and summative learning events
• Deepened my understanding in using distributed technologies to facilitate meetings and collaborative efforts. With a good understanding of the nature of the engagement the appropriate technologies and approaches can facilitate a very collaborative effort and keep a comprehensive record of the event. These records can be indexed (and therefore searchable) and used for later reference or as resources for subsequent events. All done with open and free technologies and approaches. Mozilla is very good at all this!

Agile Learner Design

My focus on an Agile Learner Design methodology for creating and determining your own curriculum got a renewed focus this year. 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.

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  

Everything else
Outside of these two main themes for last years postings came everything else. And if there were any themes they would have been either community building or mobile web development.So here is a list of the other learnings / explorations I had from last year.

Online learning communities

• Creating online learning communities
• Inquire, Paraphrase, Acknowledge, Advocate

School of Badges 

• School of Open Badges

Learning Approaches

• Emersive and transformative learning
• OER Assessment

Screencasting

• Lighting for video capture
• Screencasting Guildelines

Mobile Web Development

• Mobile First
• Mobile web pages in HTML5 part 1
• Mobile web pages in HTML5 part 2
• Explaining CSS as a skin
• Tighten up lists for the mobile web
• Book Review: HTML5, Mark Pilgrim

Polling for posts

• Half finished blog posts
• Let my readers decide
• My readers have chosen

So there you have it. My 2012 in review. What I'm looking forward too in 2013;

• Further developing learning materials for digital badges at the P2PU School of Badges
• Officially starting my OnPhD by achieving Wikiversity / P2Pu OnPhD candidacy
• Start coding the aggregation for disparate badge systems to create and display badge clusters

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.

Learning in the Open

Learning in the open; Koh Lanta, Thailand.

People who follow this blog know I am a strong believer in open education, self-directed life-long learning, and the creation of open educational resources. I also believe this can be successfully done outside of traditional learning approaches and institutions. I also believe a familiarity and understanding of your metacognitive abilities combined with agility and pragmatism you can successfully learn all you need out in the open with only attending an online course or traditional institution when it best suits your learning needs. I believe this so much that I dedicate this blog to the subject of self-directed life-long learning. I am also in the process of writing a book on Agile Learner Design, a book about understanding your metacognitive abilities and how to create your own personalized curriculum and courses. All in support of your own learning.

One area of learning and OER development I am currently involved is with the Mozilla Ignite Challenge. With this project I leverage my 25 years in technology and software architecture, combined it with my teaching, instructional design, and open education experience and create some OER to assist Mozilla Ignite candidates learn about some of the technologies available in (and supported by) this challenge.

What is Learning in the Open?
Learning in the open is based on four principles and one model;

Progressive Inquiry

1. the principle of open learning - the learner is self-directed, independent, and self-guided.
2. the principle of metacognition - the learner is aware of their own learning style, and how to best develop their own skills and knowledge.
3. the principle of open - where everything they do while learning is done in the open, with transparency, reflection and frequent publishing of their knowledge gathering.
4. the principle of collaboration - engage your peers and learning cohort with frequency and without hesitancy.
5. progressive inquiry - provides the discipline and model to follow when working towards discovery and understanding.

How does this apply to the Mozilla Ignite Challenge?
By learning in the open, engaging others in my learning and publishing the artifacts of my leaning, I create a road-map for others to follow who want to learn the same. Over the next five weeks I will gather information in a variety of ways, publish frequently and coalesce the information into a single rich media artifact for peoples learning consumption. I will start with WebGL and finish with WebRTC. Feel free to follow along;

• http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/search/label/ignite
• http://delicious.com/prawstho/ignite

Open Education Conference 2012

Part of my learning journey in developing Agile Learner Design (ALD) is to engage others in my personal learning network. What a better way than to present at the Open Education Conference. I'd be flattered if I ended up being selected... but the attempt will only deepen my understanding and development of this much needed pedagogical approach.

Here are the details of my call for papers application:

Session Title:
Agile Learner Design

Short Abstract:
A pedagogical approach for the self-directed life-long learner to envision, plan, build and deploy their own curriculum.

Medium Length Description:
The people who build Open Educational Resources are also the people who create, and further develop, an expertise in the OERs subject domain. Agile Learner Design (ALD) leverages the idea that the instructional designers are often the ones who learn most from developing curriculum, not the students who consume it. At a time when self-directed life-long learning is becoming a recognized approach to personal learning and growth we require pedagogical approaches that develop the learners meta-cognitive abilities and provide a roadmap for these self-directed learners to develop and execute upon their own curriculum. ALD provides the pedagogical approaches to support self-directed life-long learners achieve their personal learning goals outside of (and within) the traditional institutions. This presentation will explore the breadth and depth of ALD as it has developed over the last seven years.

Conference Theme:
Open Educational Resources

Session Type: 
45 minute presentation

Agile Instructional Design: PLAN

A while back I wrote a post that elaborated on the flowchart I had embedded in a paper on how I envisioned Agile Instructional Design (AID). As I wrote the post I realized there was to much information for a single post. I provided a high level description of the AID flow within the first post with the promise to provide detailed descriptions of each step in later posts. This post describes in detail the activities performed and outcomes desired from the PLAN step of Agile Instructional Design.

PLAN - this is the process of taking the learning vision from the previous step of the AID methodology (ENVISION) and planning the learning journey. As was previously discussed the methodology is an iterative process that can begin as soon as the first words of the knowledge domain have been identified. As planning begins it is a good idea to review the learning themes and the learner roles. It is the time while capturing and documenting the vision that planning would begin. Often within these design processes (whether individual or group) that the main planning items are easily identified early in the process. Often these are not immediately articulated; yet, this is where peoples intuition becomes apparent. As you work through the planning step items that seem most appropriate from the envisioning step bubble up and become the items of focus. These items should be recorded for the next iteration of envisioning. The steps of planning are as follows, and some of these items may change from iteration to iteration.

1. Identify anchor subject - the anchor subject grounds the learning into a theme meaningful to the learner. A well chosen anchor will bring authenticity to learning and more deeply engage the learner through "role play" and bringing "fun" into learning. Finding an anchor that can span different course subjects (ie. science, language, history, maths, etc.) also allows the learner to explore the anchor from different perspectives which can deepen learning.
   
   Outcomes: a written description, rich-media artifact or some other method of capturing a description of the anchor subject. The anchor subject should provide a collection of user stories to help clarify and increase understand-ability.





Caribbean Pirate Map

2. Identify interdisciplinary opportunities and requirements - how can the anchor subject and knowledge domain as a whole span more than a single discipline? Can the learning methods, approaches and lessons be utilized so learning can occur in many different areas? If the anchor subject was "pirates" it could be discussed in all courses. Economics would talk about the financial realities of being a pirate and the greater economics of the time. Language Arts could speak to the languages of the Caribbean or the South Asian Sea. Geography could explore the different regions of the world who have struggled with piracy. History could look at piracy through time. Technology classes could look at piracy as it applies to the modern age. With a well chosen anchor subject the interdisciplinary opportunities are numerous and will deepen learning.
   
   Outcomes: a written list, concept map or other approach to identifying the interdisciplinary opportunities with descriptions of how they would be tied to a lesson or module.


3. Examine timeline, instructional strategies and research - There are many attributes toward determining the instructional strategies for any module, course or curriculum being built. The following are some of the attributes to be considered;
• Timeline and Schedule - how long is the course? the time of day? number of hours available?
• Geography - where are learners located? is this a classroom course, exclusively online, or blended? What resources are available given the geography?
• Access - what bandwidth is available? what technology resources are available given geographical restraints?
• Cohort - Who is the cohort of learners? how tech savvy are they? is discussion more appropriate?
• Pedagogical approaches - given the above restraints what will be the most effective learning environments. Should the approach be inquiry based, a MOOC, use constructivist theories or connectivist practices?
• Previous experience - Determine if there is research available for similar learning situations. What worked? How could things be improved? 
• Research Opportunities - Are you capturing information from this learning development project to add to the research? Are you contributing back? Are you being transparent?

Outcomes: a table, mind-map, story or other approach that answers all the above questions formatted in a way to deepen understand-ability.


4. Identify learning objectives and modules - once items 1 through 3 above are completed it comes time to review all the artifacts created and gathered from this step and the previous ENVISION step to identify learning objectives and learning modules. Keep in mind being agile, so the task of identifying objectives and modules can start at any time. Having stickies or a way of recording these for later review is a part of agility. Identifying objectives and modules should be fairly straight forward if the previous tasks and steps had depth. Surprisingly, the objectives and modules fall out of the information created and gathered.
   
   Outcomes: a written list of learning objectives and identified learning modules. This should be published and made available for feedback and collaborative efforts.

Remember, with Agile Instructional Design it is about the designers learning and being iterative. As soon as enough information is gathered to create and start building learning modules, these modules should be built. Agile Instructional Design is iterative and shipping learning modules often is a key measure of success.

Agile Learner Design and Social Artistry

Agile techniques are increasingly finding there way into instructional design, business, management, etc. I have believed for a while that this is a good trend and that instructional design, communities of practice and social artistry can benefit greatly from agile techniques. I believe many people already use agile techniques within their practices. Within this topic of the café I would us like to explore how we use agility, nimbleness and leanness within our social artisty practices. And if these practices could be applied within the groups we work with to create deeper learning experiences.

Background:
Agile was born out of the challenges within software development. A group of seasoned software developer were seeking a better way, and they collectively created the agile manifesto; http://agilemanifesto.org/. It has been over 10 years since the agile manifesto was written and many other similar approaches have come from this... and now not only has agile become entrenched within software development practices it is also finding its way into many other practices. Some other techniques originating from agile are as follows;

• Extreme Programming
• Scum
• Test Driven Development
• Lean Startup
• Others

Current Works:
There is a growing amount of writing with the application of agile to learning and instructional design. I believe the first reference to "Agile Instructional Design" came from a 2005 paper I wrote during my graduate studies. I consider this a poorly written paper, but the message is in the right place; http://www.rawsthorne.org/bit/docs/RawsthorneAIDFinal.pdf

What is Agile? (Day 1 - 4):
What I would like people to think, reflect and share is how agility, nimbleness and leanness apply to their social artistry practice. How do agile practices apply to Learners, CoP and Social Artistry? I'd like this done not from the agile manifesto perspective, rather the definition of words perspective. Please consider the following words and how they can be applied within Learning, Communities of Practice and Social Artistry?

• Agile - Characterized by quickness, lightness, and ease of movement; nimble.
• Nimble - Quick, clever, and acute in devising or understanding
• Lean - The core idea is to maximize value while minimizing waste.

Designing our learning (Day 4 - 7):
A main theme of Social Artistry is learning, both personal and group learning. I particularly like the discussion found in this post from Michele Martin; http://www.michelemmartin.com/thebambooprojectblog/2011/11/learning-careers-and-social-artistry.html. How do we design this learning? Do Agile practices and Agile Learner Design provide a nimble way of designing learning experiences that would focus and fit well within social complexity? Could we design learning experiences to quickly build human capacity?

An Agile Instructional Design Sprint (Day 7 - 12):
Could a small group of subject matter experts, instructional designers, rich media experts and coders build a complete learning experience in five days? Could Agile Instructional Design Sprint be a great way for the social artist to bring alignment and shared understanding to a group while also producing a learning experience that would assist other to understand the work completed by the group?

Summary (Day 12 - 14):
What are the take aways for this topic? What are the strengths and weeknesses of applying agile techniques to instructional design within social artistry? Should we try a AID Sprint to build a course for the Social Artistry patterns?

Agile Instructional Design references

Agile Instructional Design in Practice (2012) - Peter Rawsthorne
http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/03/agile-instructional-design-in-practice.html

An Agile Instructional Design Sprint (2012) - Peter Rawsthorne
http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/03/agile-instructional-design-sprint.html

Agile Instructional Design: A concept map (2012) - Peter Rawsthorne
http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/02/agile-instructional-design-concept-map.html

Agile Instructional Design: ENVISION (2012) - Peter Rawsthorne
http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/01/agile-instructional-design-envision.html

The Agile Learning Train is Leaving the Station (2012) - Jay Cross
http://www.jaycross.com/wp/2012/01/the-agile-learning-train-is-leaving-the-station/

The implementation of Agile Instructional Design (2012) - Peter Rawsthorne
http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2012/01/implementation-of-aid.html

Agile Instructional Design (2011) - Peter Rawsthorne
http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2011/11/agile-instructional-design.html

The Agile Model comes to Management, Learning, and Human Resources (2011) - Josh Bersin
http://www.bersin.com/blog/post/2011/09/The-Agile-Model-comes-to-Management2c-Learning2c-and-Human-Resources.aspx

Agility and Autonomy (2010) - Harold Jarche
http://www.jarche.com/2010/04/agility-and-autonomy/

The Agile Elearning Design Manual: Problems with existing approaches (2009) - Sumeet Moghe
http://www.learninggeneralist.com/2009/06/blog-post.html

Agile instructional design (2009) - Jay Cross
http://www.jaycross.com/wp/2009/02/agile-instructional-design/

Agile Instructional Design Team Structures (2009) - Manish Mohan
http://manishmo.blogspot.ca/2009/03/learn-and-lead.html

Instructional Design Needs More Agility (2007) - Harold Jarche
http://www.jarche.com/2007/10/instructional-design-needs-more-agility/

Agile Learner Design (2006) - Peter Rawsthorne
http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2006/01/agile-learner-design.html

Agile Instructional Design (2005) - Peter Rawsthorne
http://www.rawsthorne.org/bit/docs/RawsthorneAIDFinal.pdf

Agile Instructional Design in Practice

A few weeks back I was engaged in an email conversation about Agile Instructional Design and where it fits with the institutional learner and the individual learner. I believe this was a very important conversation about my views on Agile Instructional Design. here is the Transcript;

Peter: Great to connect with you. I followed you on twitter and here is an email. Please reply to confirm receipt. Be Well...

Other: Thanks, Peter! I started looking for rapid or agile instructional development (ID), because we've got a lot of programs here that need to go online, and I'd like to find a methodology to assist with the development process. I'd also like to find a model of agile or rapid ID that would support leadership in understanding their sponsorship role. I've done these ID projects for over a decade, but usually have had the luxury of more resources. Times have changed and we've got limited resources and departments are likely to increasingly do things on their own, or even hiring 3rd party companies because they think we don't have the internal resources. It looks like you're focus is more toward exploring the personal side of ID. Is that what you're focusing on now with progressive video?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/helico/404640681/

Peter: It all sounds so familiar to me. A while back I was inspired by Rapid... but it still fell into the waterfall of ADDIE as far as I was concerned, so I started applying Agile techniques and so far they seem to be working on a number of projects. I have every intention of keeping my AID exploration as a methodology for larger institutions, medium sized communities of practice and the individual learner. I have a couple of sites (traditional institutions) where I am gathering further information of how they are applying Agile techniques to ID. I keep focused on the individual for it is where I believe all ID needs to come from. I honestly believe the best instructional designer is the learner themselves. And if we can build the learning into the actual course development this is optimal, saves money and deepens learning. Each round of the course just builds more content. One of the troubles I see when people go outside of the "institutions" Instructional Design Office is there are so many lost opportunities for reuse and the money spent when things aren't a shared service from a platform perspective... Anyhow, I hope I answered your question about my focus. I focus on the individual (myself being the example) for it is where all learning has to begin... but each individual becomes a part of the learning collective and should collaborate in building understanding by iteratively building and sharing learning resources with the guidance of teachers and instructional designers... That is kind of where I am going with AID.
Love to continue this discussion... I think I may turn this email into a blog post. It was a very important question. Thank-you! Be Well...

Other: What if your designing new programs. And it's only the exceptional learner who understands their own learning, right? It's rare to have students who've been taught about metacognition? For many students, control of their own learning is completely foreign and they've spent a lifetime having it stripped away from them.

Peter: Exactly!!!! that is why my blog has the theme, "Setting out to inspire adult learners. Pedagogy, technology and life-long learning from outside the institutions." and why I have the inspired learner series of posts;

• http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.com/2011/03/inspired-learners-series.html
• http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.com/search/label/inspired

I believe inspiring learners to claim back their own learning is one of the issues of our time... and the dialogue has only just begun.

What to do when the individual doesn't yet exist... set out to engage them during the first lesson or online module. Murder Madness and Mayhem is an excellent example. AID at its best! I spoke of it in this post; http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.com/2012/01/implementation-of-aid.html Look at what they did here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Murder_Madness_and_Mayhem In a way this is the easiest time for the ID or teacher for they just begin with the theme or outcomes of the course. It gets harder when there already is a body of content created by previous running's of the course. Introduce the topic, engage the learners, build the approach, a couple of rubrics, create some tension, inspire... what teachers should be doing anyway ;) This is an awesome conversation! Thank-you!

An Agile Instructional Design Sprint

Scrum Sprint

Could a small group of subject matter experts, instructional designers, rich media experts and coders build a complete course in five days? This approach is gaining experience for the writing of books, why not courses. The approach would fit very well with the Agile Instructional Design approach and would take the best from the unconference, the book sprint and the scrum sprint. This is how I would envision the AID Sprint; I believe a sprint will occur within 5 to 10 working days.

1. INVITE participants (be specific about subject domain)
Finding the right group is about composing the right invitation. Be sure to be as specific as you can about the subject of the AID sprint. But leave it loose enough to encourage participation. The real focus will come out of the envision step. All the participants need to agree to meet in the same space for the duration of the sprint.


2. ENVISION the curriculum
Use brainstorming techniques, such as how stickies are used in an unconference. The point is to quickly create a shared vision of the module, course or curriculum - whichever fits best within the time available for the sprint.


3. PLAN the modules
Plan the modules, create storyboards, identify different opportunities for rich media, determine assessment techniques. Being thorough here is important for this is where you will identify the tasks and the content items that need to be built. Out of this smaller focused and nimble groups (one to three people) may form to develop different content items (ie. short videos, assessment instruments, diagrams, text, etc...)


4. BUILD the content
Start building the content. By this time the smaller focused groups would have formed to create individual items of content. It may be a good idea to have groups form around content types so they can focus and create all the identified pieces. The idea being, have one group focus on video resources, another on graphics, another on the text and organization, another on assessment. Once content starts to come together the sprint team should start to coalesce what they can. The iteration here will assist greatly in team energy and identifying what needs to be built and improved upon.





Agile Instructional Design Sprint

5. STABILIZE the technology
This is where everything has to come together and the user testing begins. The unified build brings together all the individual content pieces and the course flow comes together with the assessment approaches. The stabilization also includes the technology stabilization and the first round of deployment to the production environment.


6. DEPLOY the course or module
Pushing work out to the web should occur as soon as a module is ready. Iteratively, pushing working modules out to your production internet environment creates success and attracts learners / testers / users. This is the only place you get real feedback, when you are live and on the internet. This feedback puts you on the road to continuous improvement.


7. ITERATE
Go back to the envision and planning steps, iterate and build more modules. Learn from the build, stabilize and deploy steps just completed and add further learning modules. Work towards completion of complete curriculum.

Next Steps: 
The next steps in proving the AID Sprint are twofold;

1. To build a learning module focused on Agile Instructional Design with me occupying all roles. This will allow me to work out the bugs in the sprint methodology and to learn the technology for implementation. 
2. Send out an invite toward one of the curriculum areas I have identified in legal education for the adult public.

Agile Instructional Design: A concept map

I am in the midst of writing a series of posts on Agile Instructional Design (AID). And as I draw on my previous experiences and writings to deepen this current work I am also 'eating my own dog food' so to speak. I have a need to deepen my understanding of HTML5 and mobile device software development within a three-tier architecture. I am not a beginner programmer or beginner solutions architect. I am coming at this with 25 years experience, that includes professional experience in all sides of this technology architecture. It is the HTML5 with focus on a mobile first strategy that where the learning is. This offers me the opportunity to have a real life situation to practice. And I believe that most life long learners could follow this approach to designing their own learning and provide a curriculum map and a way to know they are finished.

A couple months back I resurrected my writings on Agile Instructional Design with the purpose of revisiting it, updating it and providing more depth as a working approach to personal curriculum mapping and designing your own learning. After this first post on the approach as a whole I settled into a few required research tasks so I could write the follow-up on post describing how to ENVISION the curriculum within AID. Three posts came from this work, with the final post describing how the ENVISION step works within AID.

1. Narcissism and Presentism
2. Personal Curriculum Mapping (PCM)
3. Agile Instructional Design - ENVISION

One of the outcomes of the ENVISION step is an artefact that captures a persons thoughts and current understanding of the knowledge domain so they can start identifying areas of learning. Keep in mind that AID can also work for groups, as it will also work well with more ambitious and larger learning projects. Once a person (or group) has this first draft describing some of the attributes of a knowledge domain the learning can begin. This is the FIRST concept map for my learning about building Mobile Web Applications. I stress the word FIRST for there will be iterations of this concept map as I iterate through my learning to the point where I believe I am finished and have acquired the skills and knowledge I require for building HTML5 mobile applications within a three-tier architecture.

Agile Instructional Design: ENVISION

A while back I wrote a post that elaborated on the flowchart I had embedded in a paper on how I envisioned Agile Instructional Design (AID). As I wrote the post I realized there was way to much information for a single post. I provided a high level description of the AID flow within this first post with the promise to provide detailed descriptions of each step in later posts. This post describes in detail the activities performed and outcomes desired from the ENVISION step of Agile Instructional Design.

ENVISION - this is the process of envisioning the curriculum of the lessons, the courses or the whole program. Envisioning is more big picture, though it does require rigor in understanding the content, context and outcomes for the learning. It is important to build a comprehensive understanding of the knowledge domain, its current innovations and how it fits with related and connected knowledge domains. The struggle with this first step is there is no waiting until it is finished before people can start learning. People should start learning as soon as the general direction is known. Envisioning iterates with the other steps and what is learned from subsequent steps adds to the envision step.

1. High level Curriculum Planning should be done by those not overly tied to the learning outcomes or (from and individual learner perspective) without knowledge of any particular learning outcomes. This is due to those indoctrinated into the subject area may have difficulty seeing the breadth of the subject area. An outsider with broad understanding can see how curriculum plans relate to other subject areas. And from the individual learner perspective they begin to relate the knowledge domain to their personal knowledge. So the high-level curriculum planning should be done as follows;
• From an individual learner perspective this should be done by the learner with input / feedback from their learning network.
• Form a community of practice or peer learning group it should be done through discussion, collaboration and engagement.
• From the institutional perspective this should be done by a librarian and the subject area experts should fulfill the SME role. 
• Outcomes: Mind Map / Concept Map, Drawing or creative works, listing of keywords for knowledge domain. What the group or individual responsible for curriculum planning believes is the best way to capture the information.





AID Themes as Concept Map

2. Identifying Learning Themes is about creating a hierarchy of outcomes where the high level outcomes are the learning themes. This can be well done within a Concept Map where the group (or individual) tasked with identifying the learning themes would build the Concept Map. The hierarchy doesn't need to be a single headed hierarchy. If you were setting out to learn about AID the main themes would be the five steps within the AID methodology (Envision, Plan, Build, Stabilize and Deploy). Learning themes also are about finding the stories and anchors to ground the learning into problem based and real world situations so all learners can stay connected to the content.
   Outcomes: Elaborate on the document / drawing / artefact created during the high level curriculum planning. Learning themes may be documented as additional stories or highlights.


3. Identify Learner Roles is about audience and context. Identifying the audience for learning is very important, for they will dictate the literacy levels, the breadth of knowing, the audience determines the appropriate stories and anchors. It is also important to identify the roles from all sides of the learning engagement; learner, facilitator, teacher, peer, subject mater expert, etc. And giving the roles human names, descriptions, and avatars will help learners to connect to the roles and the stories they participate. Context also has a big influence over stories and anchors. Is it professional development or graduate level academics? Is it in an urban surrounding or rural? Is the learning building on previous learning?
   Outcomes: User role descriptions. These could be cards or full pages describing each role with details of breadth of knowledge, background, role within the learning experience.

To a certain extent ENVISIONING is the brainstorming step of Agile Instructional Design. It may be worth considering alternative approaches when envisioning a new curriculum. Many new approaches exist for getting people together to discuss things that matter. Curriculum development matters, particularly when put into the context of global or community change. One particularly effective approach is the World Cafe. I suggest exploring this approach to discovering a shared curriculum.

New Image for Progressive Inquiry

I like this new image from Tarmo Toikkanen describing Progressive Inquiry. The image is actually from 2008, but its new to me. I stumbled across it on flickr.

I like the additional detail and how they have learning themes determined by everyone working together. The addition of the icons denoting the participants is useful to know who does what and when. And having the critical evaluation with different next steps makes a lot of sense.

Personal Curriculum Mapping (PCM)

Personal Curriculum mapping can begin with a Concept Map.

I believe one of the missing pieces of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is Personal Curriculum Mapping (PCM). I've thought this for a while and have discussed it with friends during my conversations around an OpenPhD. This was greatly reinforced by watching Dr. William Pinars conference speaking video regarding his recent paper "Allegories of the Present: Curriculum Development in a Culture of Narcissism and Presentism." I took many things from this video and what stood out from a curriculum development perspective is it needs to be individualized and have the engagement of the learner. This will provide the learner greater attachment to the materials, content and context for learning and force a reflection of the subjects history, present and possible futures. This reflection will provide them a deeper connection to their chosen subjects curriculum and to humanity as a whole.

William Pinar "Allegories of the Present: Curriculum Development in a Culture of Narcissism and Presentism" from Tallinna Ülikool on Vimeo.

I was also inspired by this 2011 Wilma Kurvink webcast from the ASCD conference. It provides some wisdom about how to map curriculum within a learner focused approach. It talks of how curriculum development, at a high level, is better done by others outside of the subject matter area who have insight into how the subject relates to other subjects and where learning content could be missing when looking at the whole of curriculum. Librarians are a good example for they can be unbiased regarding a subject area; therefore, not a stakeholder in curriculum mapping. You may want to consider finding a few librarians to be a part of you personal learning network.

If you want more reference to Wilma Kurvink's work on this subject follow these two links;

1. accompanying ppt slides from the presentation.
2. website that provides a hyperlinked description of the approach.

This is a follow your bliss kind of thing; but you really do need to get to know how you learn and what you are motivated to spend your time learning. This is step 0 of creating your own personal curriculum map.

This is how I alter Wilma's 5 step process to become more personal (Note: it is not not a linear process and therefore fits well within Agile Learner Design)

1. audit the unit - get to know the subject matter landscape, review all the resources you can (academic and otherwise) to get an understanding of the subject area and what you know of it. What skills are needed for success? Where would you start your focus? Where does context fit?
2. use student perspective - how do you personally relate to the subject area? Are you excited to emerse yourself in the subject? Where would you share your learning and excitement? How does all this relate to what you already know.
3. confirm revised skills/content/focus to matching tools -  from the audit you may have identified new skills required, you need to develop learning plans to acquire the required skills. Look to new web2.0 tools to also assist here. Identifying the important skills is the best place to start. This is where it gets fun, for you need to devise / identify ways to assess your mastery of the skill. Be sure to communicate and engage you social network here. How does this iteration of learning relate to previous skills/content/focus iteration? What is new? What has changed?
4. ensure tools align with key focus of unit - once all is done has your learning and work aligned well with the focus of the current iteration. Has your assessment approach worked. Would building your own rubric to assist here? Your personal learning network should be engaged here!
5. evolution of student perspective - this is where you need to assess the current iterations learning against the skills and knowledge you set out to develop. This then feeds back into step 1. the audit of the unit. Iterate! And remember, keep blogging!

Creating a Personal Curriculum Map is a very important first step while envisioning and planning your Agile Learning. Having to develop your own curriculum is important to building your understanding of the knowledge domain being pursued in your learning. The process of creating the PCM is also iterative, so the map doesn't need to be complete to begin your learning. Once a skill or two has been identified within the subject (or curriculum) domain the learning can begin. And during the iteration a better understanding of the curriculum will develop. The curriculum map is also very personal for it connects you with the skills and knowledge from the past and the present. It will also provide insight into the future. As Dr. Pinar believes the understanding of the past and present of a subject domain connects you with all of humanity. And what makes this even easier is that creating a curriculum map that is personal could be one of the most important things you do. In the timeless words of Bruce Lee, "(Hu)man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system".

Getting Started with PCM
To get started with creating a personal curriculum map simply phrase the learning as a question and begin to build a concept map. In the above example I state that I want to learn to play the pipe and tabor and I begin to hang other nodes around the question. Put all you already know about the subject as nodes around the question. This should be enough to identify a few skills to begin your learning. For the time being, however you imagine the concept map is correct. The most important thing is to begin capturing the idea and what you already know. This concept mapping will be described in more detail in a future post. Stay tuned...

The implementation of AID

I have many examples of using Agile Instructional Design (AID) over the last five years. Approaching my learning design using agile techniques is just what I do. This approach was developed by combining my 10 years experience using Agile software development techniques, my years of being an adult educator (both on-line and off) and my graduate studies in education and information technology. Whenever I take on instructional design / learning systems architecture projects I use agile techniques. Below is a list of project that I believe provide excellent examples of AID or have benefited from Agile techniques to get to completion.

Examples of Agile Instructional Design 

Personal examples
I am always looking for opportunities to learn. These become learning projects both big and small. My focus is in three main areas; (though I wont turn away from an opportunity that emerges).

1. Folk music and dance
2. Adult learning approaches and practices
3. Learning Systems Architecture / Software Architecture

I follow through on all steps within AID with these personal learning projects. I envision the journey, I plan my approach, I build content and context, I test and review my materials, I assess my depth of learning, I stabilize the end result and I deploy and engage all materials I create during my learning. I iterate often when I am on a learning journey.

All of this activity can been seen across my blogs, wikis, social media, discussion engagements, etc. The best way to follow along or review what I have done is by reading my blog or drilling down on the links found within many of my projects.

WikiEducator
WikiEducator is an exemplar for using AID when building a community of practice. There was no official ID methodology when WikiEducator was founded or as the learning content continues to be built. The people who learn most from working within WikiEducator are the learner participants who are using, reusing and building content (this supports the AID idea that learners are the Instructional Designers). When considering the AID steps they have been applied very well within WIkiEducator. This was not by design, but by what worked best for this dynamic learning community working toward building free learning content for the commonwealth countries. WikiEducator was envisioned and continues to be evangelized by Wayne Macintosh who, working with the Commonwealth of Learning, founded WikiEducator. The building of WikiEducator has been very iterative and has, not by design, followed the Agile Instructional Design (AID) approach. This is how I see WikiEducator has followed AID;

• Its approach to envisioning curriculum (or learner) development has been twofold; first it had a handful of knowledgable educators and technologists, lead by Wayne Macintosh, to create learning content and modules within the collaborative environment of a wiki. As soon as the domain names were registered and the on-line resources (mediawiki platform) were available, content began to be developed. Essentially this small goup of founders became the stewards of the WikiEducator community of practice. Second, it allowed small groups of learners / instructional designers to create their own micro-wikis hosted within the WikiEducator platform. The success of the envisioning is due to being aware of the activities within the wiki to adjust and support the areas of greatest growth and success. WikiEducator envisioning supported the strength of self-organization.
• The planning of wikiEducator oscillates between the exemplary benevolent dictatorship of Wayne Macintosh and the self-organization of its board members and micro-wiki groups. The planning process was very good at adjusting to areas of need and forming partnerships with domain experts. The planning process did amazing work in supporting all the micro-wiki curriculum / content developers. WikiEducator allows the planning process to influence its envisioning.
• The build of content, curriculum and programs was most often put into the hands of self-organizing groups who worked together to create what they felt would best meet the needs of the learner. In some situations, existing content was utilized and improved upon. The content licensing scheme was. and is, seen as an important attribute of build success. The build process of learning modules also was allowed to influence the technical platform decisions of WikiEducator as a whole, this allowed the overall platform to improve and assisted greatly in setting technical direction. Learners were also engaged early in the build process to become creators, user and re-users of content.
• Given the wiki environment the stabilization and deployment becomes a part of the build process. All content is immediately available to the learner community as soon as it is saved to the wiki. This creates amazing opportunities for learner engagement and self-organization. And allows the learner content to be improved and adjusted to suit a changing knowledge domain.

Even though there was no formal Instructional Design methodology utilized by WikiEducator, many of the content development practices within WikiEducator are great examples of an Agile approach. Reduce the rituals and empower the community.

Murder, Madness and Mayhem

In 2008, a University of British Columbia course (SPAN312) took it upon itself to integrate the coursework with Wikipedia and the UBC course curriculum. The course set out to create content (wiki pages) focused on Latin American Literature, with the goal of getting a page promoted to be a wikipedia featured article. The course far exceeded this goal. More than three wiki pages were featured (which is a huge accomplishment) and over eight pages were identified as good articles.

I consider this project as a good example of Agile Instructional Design for it exemplifies success when a vision is created and quickly engaging the learners to become the content creators / instructional designers. The plan was loose with well articulated success criteria and assessment approach. The learners were left responsible to build the content. To stabilize the materials and deploy them to the live environment. Similar to WikiEducator using the wiki to publish blurs the process of build, stabilization and deployment.


Continuing Legal Education of British Columbia
There were two particular projects build during my time with CLEBC that took an Agile approach and both had considerable success. There two projects were; CLETV and Search.

The CLETV project was tasked with creating an on-line live streamed episodic legal education "talk show". Each episode would include discussion with legal experts on a particular legal issue. The process of creating and deploying this video learning environment included a number of technical and pedagogical iterations. The technical iterations were to resolve issues around the capture and broadcast of video in a format well suited for the internet. The pedagogical iterations were to find a format and screen layout to encourage learner engagement and to ensure the time spent engaging with the video learning could be used toward required professional development credits. The elements of AID that were present within this project were;

1. quickly getting a product to the learner so we could assess success, and improve the technologies chosen
2. choose the minimum screen elements (software widgets) to allow quick deployment and begin to get live learner feedback regarding engagement
3. test early and often within the development process to reduce stabilization time
4. build upon successes and use open formats to enable re-use of saved video elements
5. continually improve the product through learner and stakeholder engagement

The Search project was tasked with upgrading the existing CLEBC search to improve search times, include additional information sources and implemented a federated and faceted search. Search is an important tool for inquery based learning approaches as is provides access to information through both direct querying and focused browsing of information. This search project took a more traditional approach with additional elements of Agile. It was more traditional in that the internal project team spent time requirements gathering, investigating technologies and approaches and sourcing out vendors to implement the solution. It was also traditional from an instructional design perspective as it wasn't looking to innovate greatly, but stayed with proven approaches to inquiry. The agility came in via a pragmatism; traditional approaches can become very ritualized, they will often take the "correct" path rather than an immediate simpler solution. The project sought out ways to quickly learn what it required to make sound business decisions and committed to a vendor with proven search technology and approaches. Agility came into this project through;

1. seeking the minimum solution which would provide success
2. engaging end-users and stakeholders when making user experience design decisions.
3. problem solving around the design of facets and in reconciling the taxonomy within search results

This post has been dedicated to providing implemented examples of what I consider Agile Instructional Design (AID). All of the projects (with the exception of Murder, Madness and Mayhem" the 2008 edition of SPAN312 facilitated by UBC) I have been directly involved. The common thread through-out all of these projects is the implementation of learning through the use of current and emerging on-line technologies. I strongly believe that using Agile / Lean techniques when designing learning and implementing the on-line technology to support this learning is how all instructional (or learner) design will occur in the future. Learner needs and knowledge domains change too quickly for traditional instructional design techniques to keep up and to keep the learning content current. Technology and social media changes to quickly for Agile and Lean software development techniques not to be adopted for technology based instructional design projects.