Idea for a Symposium at the NLC

There is much discussion these days of the idea that personal learning environments (PLEs) and Open Learning Networks (OLN) (Mott & Wiley, 2009) could help institutions, teachers, and learners break off with a transmissionist approach to learning, and embrace a more social approach (see e.g., Mott, 2010; Weller, 2010; Fiedler & Pata, 2009; Mott & Wiley, 2009; Downes, 2005). 

These technologies are said to move away from the metaphor of the classroom model embodied in Course Management Systems (CMS) and built on central areas of expertise, such as subject-matter authorities represented by teachers; enacted by way of filtering of knowledge through recognized outlets; and reproduced via institutionalized assessment procedures (Weinberger, 2007).  Strong claims emerge from the debate, such as: the need to move from “content distribution” to “educational content as a campfire around which learners gather” (Mott &Wiley, 2009), with the aim of making learners  "knowledge-able" rather than "knowledgeable" (Wesch, 2009).  CMS are supposed to use and integrate with many of the Web 2.0 tools that students already use freely on the Internet and that they expect to find in this kind of system, and move towards decentralized PLEs (Agee and Yang, 2009);  the Internet and a growing host of Open Educational Resources (OER) are declaring “openness” the necessary default and challenging centralized and closed-access CMS (Batson, Paharia, & Kumar, 2008). Manifestations of openness include teachers becoming facilitators in multivocal and multicentered learning spaces, instead of playing the role of knowledge filter; publishing being freed of many traditional gate-keepers; abundance of formal and informal educational resources, and educational design principles trying to be open to multiple possible users and uses (Batson, Paharia, & Kumar, 2008). 

In this symposium, we invite scholars and practitioners to analyze the contents of this discussion, with the aim to question the main claims made about centralization and decentralization of online learning environments -- and to analyze the nature of the debate itself.  As organizers of this symposium, we contend that the debate is not yet empirically and theoretically informed, and we suggest that a more critical approach is needed to investigate the push towards decentralized and open learning environments and their implications for learners.

There are nevertheless a number of practical experiments from which topics could be drawn:


We encourage submissions that critically evaluate claims about the abundance of accessible resources, participation in content production, and social connections built upon shared interests, in terms of "movement"-level outcomes as well as learning outcomes.

A sense of impending crisis of the centralized and closed-access CMS predominant in Higher Education pervades this debate. However, the actual situation is far from clear. 
 
References

Agee, A.S., Yang, C. and the 2009 EDUCAUSE Current Issues Committee (2009). Top-ten IT issues, 2009. EDUCAUSE Review, 44(4), 44–59.

Batson, T., Paharia, N., & Kumar Vijay, M.S. (2008). A harvest too large? A framework for educational abundance. In Iiyoshi, T., & Kumar Vijay, M.S. (Eds.), Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge (pp. 89-103). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Downes, S. (2005). E-Learning 2.0. eLearn Magazine. Retrieved from  http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=29-1

Fiedler, S., & Pata, K. (2009). Distributed learning environments and social software: In search for  a framework of design. In S. Hatzipanagos & S. Warburton (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies (pp. 145-158). Hershey, PA, USA: IGI Global.

Mott, J. (2010). Envisioning the post-LMS era: The open learning network. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 33(1). Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/EnvisioningthePostLMSEraTheOpe/199389.

Mott, J., & Wiley, D. (2009). Open for learning: The CMS and the open learning network.  In Education, 15(2). Retrieved from http://ineducation.ca/article/open-learning-cms-and-open-learning-network

Weinberger, D. (2007). Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder. New York: Henry Holt & Company.

Weller, M. (2009). Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change. On the Horizon, 17(3), 181-189.

Wesch, M. (2009). From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments. Retrieved October 1, 2009 from http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/knowledgable-knowledge-able

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drafting the text for disseminating the call for papers

Call for Papers to the symposium: The Challenge of Open and Decentered Learning and Knowledge Creation in Higher Education. The symposium will be held in conjunction with the Networked Learning Conference 2012
**Submission deadline**

Important Dates:

§  Submission deadline for symposium papers: September 1, 2011 (?)

§  Acceptance notification of symposium proposals: 

§  Submission deadline for symposium proposals: October 3, 2011

§  Acceptance notification of symposium proposals: 16th December, 2011. 
 
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The 8th International Conference on Networked Learning will be held on 2-3-4 April, 2012 in Maastricht, The Netherlands (http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/).
We invite you to submit full papers (max 8 pages in lenghth) about experiences of decentralization of online learning environments. We particularly encourage empirical papers and welcome "first look" papers that might elsewhere be considered preliminary but contain potentially high impact research. The papers submitted are expected to be work in progress, not submitted for publication elsewhere. The number of papers that will be accepted for presentation is limited to four.

*The Challenge of Open and Decentered Learning and Knowledge Creation in Higher Education: Call for Symposium Papers*

THEMES OF INTERESTS
-          Learning in decentralized learning environments (e.g., personalized learning environments, social media).
-          Meeting the challenges of filtering information and validating knowledge in decentralized learning environments.
-          Boundaries of  expertise in decentralized learning environments.
-      Historical thread

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