A Light Framework for the Rapid Development of eLearning Materials

In the beginning was tagging along with your uncles and aunts and picking up skills, ideas and attitudes. Then there was the industrial age classroom where we all sat in rows while someone the government paid told us stuff and quizzed us on it. Then the classroom started to get some electronic aids, and that's where this story begins.

Ben Shneiderman at University of Maryland was noticing a change in the traditional lecture from a "unidirectional information flow to a more collaborative activity" (Shneiderman, 1998). Shneiderman realised that having computers was not in itself enough, there would need to be new processes too. He devised a four-phase genex, a framework for generating excellence.

At much the same time Seymour Papert at MIT Media Lab was berating politicians for thinking that putting "a computer, or even four computers, in every classroom" (Papert, 1999) was moving forward into the new age. Papert too was looking for new methodologies, and had already become established as the father of constructionism (Papert & Harel, 1991).

Fast forward another decade to the red brick universities of the Midlands. Oleg Liber, then Director of E-learning at University of Wolverhampton, used the phrase, "moving the locus of control" (Liber, 2005). Liber too was looking for new methods, manifested in Colloquia: "a software system that supports group working and group learning. It allows any user to set up a working or learning group around a particular topic (a context), add people to it, add resources (web pages, documents etc) to it, set up group tasks, and then engage in group and personal "conversations" about the topic." This methodology was encapsulated in the simple phrase, "people doing activities using resources" (Liber, 2005).

The three people I have identified in the preceding paragraphs are well known to us, and there are websites where one can easily find their publications. Many more lesser-known teachers were also pursuing social, technical and educational experiments during the decade 1990 - 2000 in search of workable new methodologies, methods and frameworks.

"What do you get when you cross a computer with a plane [camera | alarm clock]? A computer!" (Cooper, 1999). What do you get when you cross a computer with education? A computer! The rise of the Learning Management System has seen constraints put on learning quite as square and airless as any industrial-era classroom. The overhead of the software has stifled the creativity of teachers (as they wrestle to embed interactive media into their lecture notes) and students (as they try to find which 'room' they should be in).

We should make use of the lightest and the most adaptable virtual environments, and where possible should avoid the behemoth CMS and LMS, the eToys of faculty. However, largely, teachers are not given the choice. Decisions are made behind closed doors and teachers are advised in a memo the system they will now be working into. The blog that was proving such a valuable conduit to the students' minds may no longer be approved. How can something that cost nothing be of any value when faculty have just spent tens of thousands?

Teachers need something of their own that they can recognise wherever they are. Something that cannot be taken away by the constraints and validators of a system. Something that will work in an email, on a blog, in JoomlaLMS, LAMS, Moodle, or SharePointLMS. Oh, and it works on a plain old whiteboard too. Teachers need to not lose sight of some underlying pedagogy amongst all the dialogue boxes and option settings of the LMS.

This is a work-in-progress, and probably always will be, but I have drawn on the teaching of Shneiderman, and Papert, and Liber to devise a light framework or scaffolding. This framework is meant to allow me to work safely in my own way despite the orchestrated chaos of whatever system faculty is using today. The framework is light: I can erect it quickly and start working into it in minutes; I can rely on it without having to think about it; I can be productive shortly after opening my computer thereby meeting the production targets expected of me.

I have tried all sorts of other methodologies, but they have either been too complicated for me to understand (LD), or to amorphous for me to know my starting point or draw a road map (Connectivism).

My solution (as it stands) looks like this:

To work in the framework write it down as an outline:

Now all you have to do is flesh it out: set up forums, form nascent study groups, broker exchanges between groups, blog; devise activities, or create micro-frameworks inside which students devise their own activities; provide resources, or provide tools for the students to fetch and gather their own resources (according to the level of study).

In the four phases of the genex the students engage in many and varied ways, according to the area of study, the level of study, and the availability of human, academic and physical resources.

In the Collect phase collect ideas, knowledge, and skills through reading, interviewing, practicing and sharing.

In the Relate phase relate by exchanging ideas, comparing knowledge, and contextualising skills through reading, interviewing and observing.

In the Create phase create documents, objects, installations, videos, solutions, or applications using whatever is available.

In the Donate phase the students donate their work to future students as exemplars to be case studied, adapted, learned from, and improved upon.