Educational Prosumerism

We were discussing the challenge of creating content that meets the needs of a variety of learners. Beyond the issues of resources and money, it is nearly impossible to meet everyone's needs because you have to make tradeoffs. In short, the learning designer carries a heavy burden and responsibility.

Yuck. This is not the future of learning.

I want a broader vision of learning. I believe the future of learning is one in which people repurpose learning content in formats that are relevant to their needs.


Discussion Background
In class we discussed several design challenges. For example some people learn better tactically than visually. Some people learn slower and we need to create material paced for different learners. The designer today must
analyze all of these needs and pick which ones to ignore. It's a zero-sum game -- some win, some lose. Professor Decker says in the end format doesn't really matter as much as how well the instruction was designed in the first place. His advice would be for us to create good instructional content.

A broader vision
Good is defined in the eyes of the beholder. Therefore, my argument is that the beholders should shape the content. The concerns that piped up in the room were: How can the learners teach themselves? Do we still need professional educators? How do we ensure good content?

Learners teach themselves
First a couple examples. MIT has face to face classroom instruction. Currently 70% of their content is online and available for people to study. In Africa and China students are taking MIT courses right now. In the next 3 years 100% of MIT content will be online. And in fact one guy has hopes to convert MIT courseware into Second Life virtual classes. So now the content can be streamed into a 3-D virtual environment. Finally podcasting has taken off for people who want to access learning audially. So here are three examples of how original content is being repurposed for different learning styles. If you prefer text, instructor led, 3D virtual classroom, or audio. These options are available and being made available by motivated individuals to reach more people.

My vision is that people become producers of their own learning. Dah wun's comments in class were right on. An expert from that community who already knows the content could repurpose the learning into a form suitable for his group. For example Doug Whately of IT Conversations, recognizes that mobile people learn by downloading information to their ipods and listening to it when they are on the go.

Professional vs Amatuer - The rise of Educational prosumerism
The need for professional educators doesn't go away, it is enhanced. Professional educators have an additional goal to incubate design thinking into more people. Their new goal is to make people learners of learning so that they can better repurpose content for themselves. The professional educator becomes a sought-after guru rather than a monopolist.

Beware the amateurs. The rise in amateur movies, fiction, journalism and even education is here. In the next 10 years we are going to see a stunning increase in technology access and power. The average person will have double the computing power he has today. As such, there will be no scarcity of information as people respond to the need to manufacture education materials to keep pace with the rate of change. Professional educators will not be able to keep up with the demand for learning. They can't be the sole producers of the learning. The age of educational consumerism is fading. We now have prosumers who can consume and reproduce information according to their needs.

Ensuring Quality
Finally, many comment on the fact that amateur content might be bad or that the majority of it is bad. True there is bad content out there. But the new learner, never reads just one viewpoint. She critically evaluates content for validity by comparing the author's argument to other information available. Wikipedia is a great example of amateur authoring. The information available there is judged constantly by a group of people with the same ability to critique content. The result is a faster, richer learning experience becuase these designers are not held to "waterfall" instructional design methods or must perform detailed ethnographies.

Conclusion
In the LDT program we should be leaders in visionary educational thinking. Our task is not to reproduce methods of the past but to springboard off of them to create innovative learning. We 19 have a special privelage of studying great educational thinkers, but our responsibility doesn't stop there. To be truly useful and competitive we must also understand how the market for learning is changing and respond with solutions.

Some followup questions: What are the challenges of educational prosumerism? How can design theory help mature this wave and even accelerate it? How do you influence the culture of "old-school' educators to accept and participate this wave?