In Mohamed Amine Chatti's ongoing research on Technology Enhanced Learning he sets up Learning Management Systems and Personal Learning Environments in opposition to one another--the first as restricted, top-down system of learning, and the latter as a fluid and rich learner-centered environment.
He declares LMS to be "a one-size-fits-all approach to learning by offering a static system with predefined tools to a set of many learners around a course. A PLE, by contrast, is responsive and provides a personalized experience of learning. It considers the needs and preferences of the learner and places her at the center by providing her with a plethora of different tools and handing over control to her to select and use the tools the way she deems fit."
He goes on to say that in a LMS, learning stops at the end of the course. That all knowledge is consumed as a result of a "push"-- a kind of forced feeding, if you will, of knowledge nuggets. Whereas a PLE is a veritable vortex of acquisitiveness- a ravening ditch-pig of curiosity that can only be satisified by the bottomless largesse of the web.
I don't see the two environments as dichotomized as he describes them. Over the summer, I took an on-line Meteorology Course, top-down input in a primarily "LMS," format. It was intense and technical and involved the ability to read meteorologist's charts, the interpretation of data and the drawing of isotherms and isobars in Photoshop, calculating lapse rates and dew points and relative humidity. I knew nothing about the subject, and would not have known how to construct my own PLE around the subject even if I had one second of time outside the demands of the course to do so. When the course was over, I then went on to pursue the subject by reading a book on my Kindle, The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History and Culture of Clouds by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, to enhance my knowledge and to view it through a more poetic lens.
Did learning stop at the end of the course? Every time the wind blows and I envision it as air moving from an area of high pressure to low pressure, I experience a deepening of the knowledge. Did I wish that I could control the pace and content of the information more? Yes. But I don't know if I would have worked as hard without the structure. I think it depends on the nature of the content being learned which kind of environment works best. I require a baseline of knowledge about a subject before I can formulate the questions that I want answered. Then, I want to be left alone. Until I need more input. I see it more as a balance--a spiraling of wanting input and seeking knowledge. In my classroom I try to provide that same balance: some listening, some talking, some game playing, some choice in independent work. As students grow older, their ability to rebalance the proportions of those elements will change.
I want the content of an unfamiliar subject circumscribed for me--I don't like filtering through materials about which I don't yet have the discriminatory faculties to decide which is superior. But, I do want to control the pace. Some concepts I absorb very quickly, and others I need to marinate in for a while. I want my questions answered when I ask them. That is one thing I love about search engines. As my understanding deepens, I may read and reread until I develop mastery.
It's great how you point out that although some look at LMS negatively since "learning stops at the end of a course," this is not the case for all students. Lessons come back to students when they least expect it; events in life trigger them. I don't believe using LMS would cause students to not care about the lessons they learned from class as soon as class ends. Maybe they will stop thinking about the lesson for a little while but that does not mean it's lost forever.
ReplyDeleteI think people look at PLEs as a way to control students' interests in the subject. Perhaps some teachers believe since learning can be continuous using PLEs that students will not lose interest as fast as they do with LMS. It's hard to decide which is best to use without having the trial and error of both first in the classroom. Personally, I believe there are more opportunities available in PLEs though.
Conversely, one could drop one's PLE at the end of a course if the interest isn't there. I think there are a lot of factors that come into play. I know I would enjoy PLE's in any subject once I knew enough about it to formulate relevant questions. But I'm an adult and a self-directed learner. For this to work in elementary school, that way of functioning would have to built in at a very young age. I have eight-year-olds who tell me they have "no questions" on a topic. That flabbergasts me! I'm old and I'm still full of wonder.
ReplyDeleteI think you are onto something: it needs to be about balance. The LMS provides teacher created structure. The PLE encourages learner generated structure. Why wouldn't a blending of the two work? The trick, I believe, is creating a PLE environment that can transcend school.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't care if the student uses a PLE to track the latest World of Warcraft hacks, as long as the student was honing research skills. You completely hit the nail on the head. Being a self directed learner is about ownership of learning. Learning is a skill - I think student PLEs need to be about ownership, with occasional crossovers into the academic. Whereas the LMS is all about the academic.