Mass customisation: lessons for education

[David Jennings]

Wow, thanks, Imogen, that’s quite a weekend’s work you’ve done there.

I really appreciate that you’ve got to grips with the possibilities of ‘enhancement’ at a deeper level than just cheaper, faster etc

I haven’t seen supply chain theories applied to this area in this rigorous way before, and it’s enlightening. I’m no expert in those theories but I want to push back a little bit — at the risk of being accused of ‘special pleading’ — by questioning whether learning can be analysed as a supply chain in the same way that cars, printers and baked beans can. To some extent, I’m sure it can, but I think many would argue that there’s something different in the way that learning (especially in higher education) depends on interaction and negotiation with the learner. Arguably it’s more a process than a product, and a process that is co-created rather than simply supplied from producer to consumer. But you may say that some supply chain theories take account of this? I’m no expert.

I’d also like to elaborate on the bit where you’ve drawn on my ALT newsletter article and equated my use of ‘agile learning’ with ‘lean’ philosophy and practice. I know there are special management theory uses (with their own mini-industries and literature) around terms like ‘agile’ and ‘lean’, but I prefer to use agile in the common, everyday sense. Hence I’m concerned that cutting down waste, in the lean approach you’ve identified, could actually reduce agility and flexibility in education. If you want learners to be able to change course or tailor their own learning experiences, then I think you need to accept that there is some inherent unpredictability on how they are going to do this. To cater for this unpredictability I think the system as a whole needs to have some redundancy and slack (a.k.a. waste) in it to enable it to adapt. Hence not so ‘lean’ if I’ve understood the use of that term correctly?

There’s lots more to your post than that, but those are the couple of issues that jumped out at me.

all the best, David

[imogenbertin]

David thanks for the response. LEAN is hard to figure out to start with, but in the end it IS about keeping what the customer/learner finds valuable and removing waste from what they don’t find valuable. So if we believe they want that agility and negotiation, then what you are doing is “leaning” out the boring bits they don’t want.

I understand your not wanting to use jargon that may seem counter to natural language. I entirely agree! I just had this jarring feeling about the use of the word agility in the context that you used it… because it can mean something different in a bean counting context.

In modern supply chains customers (or in our case learners) do negotiate their product, their price, their timescale, their outcome. And the supplier has to respond. There’s actually a whole branch of (mostly not very well written) supply chain literature about the bidirectional nature of the process in services such as health and education whether the customer is “transformed” by the service supplied. I do agree about transformative/transactional effect of the process of education – which definitely adds a layer of complexity.

Some educational courses are innovative products, and some functional. It depends on the teaching, the learner’s relationship with the institution and the degree of negotiability. The approach you are pushing back against is the standard supply chain management response where a functional product is involved.

I will précis my waffle above. I think the sort of courses we are starting to want to develop with TEL are innovative products rather than functional, and that they are probably unsustainable economically without changes that allow mass customisation. The main stumbling block is how you credential/formally assess such a course.

Damn. I should have titled this post “The appification of edification.” It would have got more views…

[Roger Harrison]

Hello – wow an amazing post and like David, an area that I had never considered before. But I can see how this approach could really help institutions develop strategic visions, not just for online learning, but learning and education in general. I agree that we need to develop a more flexible approach to course development and this is something that I think is largely hampered by existing structures – and the whole inflexible academic system in general.

One of the key drivers around all of this is going to be the view of employers – what is it that they will regard highly as evidence of skills, knowledge, ability etc, in relation to an expected post. Will they be willing to move beyond a degree certification?

Secondly – much of the flexible approach to learning relies on students having the skills to self-motivate and self-manage their learning. I think there will always be a market for clearly structured courses leading to a firm qualification. But of course within all of that, there is no reason why educators, cannot try and develop a flexibile approach in terms of course design and how it is delivered.

I also agree with David’s point – to build in more flexibility is going to need more investment, especially for learning technologists and training of tutors.

Just a few thoughts but certainly not as well informed as Imogen. But it does leave me pondering on doing the MOOC she mentions (though reminds me of economics which was never my strong point!) and should we be incorporating some of the ideas more firmly in courses such as this ocTEL MOOC.

thanks for the contribution

 

Roger

 

[imogenbertin]

Thanks for the comment Roger!

I think there is quite a lot of research on what employers are looking for and funnily enough what’s wanted generally ties in with what academics and students also want. The problem is how we are doing the assessment/credentialling aspect. (Example:  the teamwork/groupwork debate currently running on the HETL group on LinkedIn – we all want teamwork but the way education does it is through immensely unpopular groupwork activities that most students find scarring and unfair and that we could design better – http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&gid=2774663&item=246517602&type=member&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_pd-ttl-cn&ut=3uxRsLB4SnFlM1).

I haven’t had time to reach out to friends and colleagues working in the learning and development end of HR to find out what’s happening there at the moment…

Six Sigma – that IT Sligo course also covers the basics of LEAN too. I think revising the basic statistics involved is also great preparation for acquiring Learning Analytics skills – though I’ve failed to complete George Siemens’ LA MOOCs twice… they are  too cMOOC for me as I can’t find the basic knowledge element to sense-make…

[Roger Harrison]

Hi  Imogen and this is a really lively discussion area.I wasn’t aware of the work showing that what employers want is what academics and students want as well. Though I suppose it depends which academics you ask.  I tend to think that employers want far more generic and practical/interpersonal skills, and also an ability to use theory to then address a particular real problem. something I am trying to bring into my own online teaching, but it does raise challenges about how to try and do some of this.

Group work – this year I introduced a group wiki activity which students addressed very well and the standard of work, albeit not that difficult, was excellent. I would however like to find ways of developing a more interactice and challenging group activity and this needs to be asynchronous too. Any ideas or examples around this would be very helpful. Public Health, which I teach, always has competing issues/perspectives/stakeholders and it woudl be great to try and bring this in as a practical project for students.

I couldn’t access the Linkedin but am assuming it was for the group technology in teaching and learning and have requested to join.

As for cMOOCs – yes I find them challenging as I like structured formats and find that the ‘c’ element takes up so much more time, and often dead end routes to follow which can be frustrating. But, I do see their value in a wider sense of learning, and especially one outside of an assessed course format.

I will persuse the Sigma MOOC but haven’t tried George Siemens and never seemed to find the advert when starting. But as always not enough time and this day job somehow gets in the way!

regards

Roger

[MarcusBelben]

Great stuff Imogen and all.  It’s vital to keep the needs of our audience in mind.  I can see that some distance learning content should be easily accessible to a mass audience and requires little interactivity (LEAN), ‘discussion’ perhaps most effectively provides AGILITY needed to respond to students on a more personal need basis also required.

I’m interested in reviewing the role of ‘discussion’ in distance learning – please see and add to our debate leading to presentation at University of Birmingham in a couple of weeks:

http://storify.com/UOBETT/how-important-is-discussion-in-d-learning/edit

I’ve already referenced a couple of papers suggested in this forum.

Thanks again

[imogenbertin]

Hi Roger

A former colleague of mine, Dr Catherine O’Mahony, did some great work on “what’s wanted” ie graduate competences in Ireland back in 2009: http://www.nairtl.ie/documents/GradCompetencesReport.pdf

That HETL group on LInkedIn is great – lots of interesting ideas and discussions and a great international perspective due to the global membership.

I hope Martin Hawksey’s going to develop a “slightly more x-” MOOC on Learning Analyticsas his next ALT project… that would be fantastic!

Best, Imogen

[imogenbertin]

Hi Marcus

I got that URL to work by taking the /edit off the end…

I’ve never heard people using the term d-learning at all but I remember your linking that piece about the Lunar Society on this forum before!

To me discussion has two basic functions: to bring in other perspectives and paths, and to provide sufficient peer pressure to keep learners motivated to complete! Perhaps that is harsh but my experience of distance learning whether e or not is that I need the feeling of  other people being on the same path to keep me going too, even when the topics are of great interest to me, such as TEL.

Best wishes Imogen

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Imogen and thanks for the link, this is helpful. Similar work has been done in England I think, well I’ve heard of it and will search another time.

As for a xMOOC on learning analytics – yep, way to go! now we just need to encourage Martin Hawksley to run it! Though the major stumbling block I have is that we use Blackboard as our VLE and it is very difficult, and impossible in many areas to get any data out in a meaningful way. This is frustrating and I’ve already had some helpful support from Martin about trying to do some social network analysis – but sadly it can’t really be done as you can’t download the activity data.

I found the following course curriculum on social network analysis, which I apopreciate is different in some areas to learning analytics, but still interesting. The enrolled course is finished but all the materials etc are creative commons,

http://www.umasocialmedia.com/category/curriculum/

regards

Roger

[imogenbertin]

Bookmarked! Thanks Roger.

[Roger Harrison]

You’re welcome. This has turned out to be a very interesting series of postings. Let me know how you get on if you do any more work on this, and also if you do anything on the social network course. I had a look last night and the first few weeks can very quickly be breezed through.

 

regards

Roger

 

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