This document discusses how learners in personal learning environments use various online tools and services to aggregate and share content, which can foster serendipitous and emergent learning. It presents findings from a study on the tools and services used by participants in open online courses to collect and share knowledge. The open and connected nature of these environments may lead to unexpected discoveries and realizations of hidden connections through interacting and connecting with diverse information.
1. Content Aggregation and
Knowledge Sharing in a
Personal Learning Environment:
Serendipitous and Emergent Learning in
Open Online Networks
Mohsen Saadatmand, Kristiina Kumpulainen
University of Helsinki
Finland
2. First of all!
I like …
www.blog.schoox.com
Don’t you? www.govloop.com
5. Characteristicsabundance and the(Conole 2012)
The of disruptive technologies learner’s choice!
No central ownership
Ecology of abundance
Personalized digital learning environment
Pedagogy of Abundance
(Weller 2011)
www.disruptive-tech.com
8. Personal Learning
Environment (PLE)
A combination of social media-enabled systems,
applications and services which help learner to
take control of their learning by using them for
aggregating, manipulating, creating digital
contents and learning artifacts and sharing them
with others.
9. The Study
• Tools and services used by participants in open online courses for aggregating
contents and sharing knowledge as part of their PLEs
• Likelihood of serendipitous learning and emergent learning in the process of
seeking, aggregating and sharing contents using various web 2.0 tools and
services?
Online Ethnography
Auto-ethnography
10. Participants
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)
Data
• Online survey
• Online semi-structured interviewing
• Online public data (blogs, FB groups)
• Participant observation
12. Semantic principles of learning in networks:
•Openness
•Connectedness
•Diversity
Unexpected discoveries, by accident and sagacity
(Kop, 2012)
13. The unanticipated benefits
of content aggregation
http://www.bethkanter.org/nten-curation/
• searching for knowledge may happen by chance, or as a by-product of the main
task
• surprising information and unexpected social relationships can lead to meaningful
learning
• unexpected realization of hidden, seemingly unrelated connections or analogies for
learning and research
(Buchem, 2010)
14. Emergence and unexpected
connections
Emergent learning (Williams et al. 2011)
• Self-organizing agents interact freely and openly
• Unpredictable and unprecedented
• Open and distributed
• Interactivity and connectivity
www.ideonexus.com
15. Conclusions
• Unanticipated benefits of content aggregation and
curation
• Openness and connectedness are important
• Abundance and disruptiveness may foster
serendipitous learning
• Serendipity as a great source for learning
• Need for more research to explore the value of
serendipty for learning
Examples of openeducationalpractices inhighereducation …..
With the advancement of Web 2.0 and yet other generations of Web (Semantic Web, Web 3.0 or Web X) [35] and their applications into learning, students can create and form different forms of learning spaces for themselves which are more learner-centered and gives more flexibility and autonomy for them to control their learning.we no longer in highereducationsomuchdepend on classroom and teachers as the majorsources of knowledge . Wearenotsomuchdepending, as itused to be , on libraries in phisicalform to goratherdigitaldatabasesembarking from institutionalized learning systems to more student-centered learning environments which is known as personal learning environments (PLE).
a term used quite often in TEL: Technically, the PLE represents the integration of a number of "Web 2.0" technologies like blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, etc.— around the independent learner. PLE is a metaphor that embraces the potential of these emerging tech to promote learner-centered approaches to learning. It is not a single application but rather a collection of interoperating applications (Downes) In e-learning PLE is contrasted to LMS , learner centered- content centered, personal driven, institutional driven , open , closed A PLE is more of a concept than a particular toolset and a new approach to learning which is defined as distributed, personal, open, learner autonomous. The metaphor of PLE which is conceptualized based on web 2.0 tools and networked technologies, and refers to the one’s own knowledge management tools, services, resources and connections which shapes the individual’s educational platform to direct learning, is promising such learning ecologies which tend to be more open, personalized and networked. ---------------------PLEs represent pedagogic approaches of constructivist and connectivist learning that put learner at the center and gives more autonomy and control over the learning experiences. PLE is an evolving environment to fit the needs of learner and evolve as long as technology evolves.
Chatti 2010, “ A PLE is not only a personal space , which belongs to and is controlled by the learner, but is also a social landscape that offers means to connect with other personal spaces in order to leverage knowledge within open and emergent knowledge ecologies. (…)The distributed PLEs can be loosely connected to build a knowledge ecology (which) is open, distributed, diverse, emergent, self-organized, and learner-controlled
The word ‘serendipity’ was entered into the lexicon by Horace Walpole derived it from the Persian fairy tale 'The Three Princes of Serendip', (now Sri Lanka) whose heroes were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of [10]. An important component of this would be 'sagacity': the ability to connect unconnected facts to come to a valuable conclusion [9].Openness >how a person is willing to give and receive information, knowledge, opinions and ideas; connectedness and interactivity that how a person use different technologies to facilitate connectivity; and diversity in which how various people, groups and tools is person engaged with [32]. When individuals engage in a diverse load of resources and materials available for them online through different repositories, when they are connected to many networks and groups, and when they are open to share their thoughts freely and openly with others, the whole of these processes promote the possibility of unexplored incidents and unpredictable coincidences which we describe as serendipity and emergent learning. Knowledge in MOOCs is emergent and MOOC is a catalyst for creating an unpredictable knowledge base for what people is going to learning and which they are going to engage [27]. Downes [19] states that learning in networks entails some semantic principles including: diversity, autonomy, openness, interactivity or connectedness. These are the issues that make a PLE a dynamic entity for fostering serendipity.
. “For example, a search for information may launch the user off on a tangent that ends up being more productive than the original search query. In such instances, Bowles argues, serendipitous learning has taken place.” Buchem[8] discusses that surprising information and unexpected social relationships can lead to meaningful learning and enhance exploratory behavior. “The term «serendipitous learning» has been used to refer to learning through gaining new insights, discovering interesting aspects and recognizing new relations, which occurs by chance or as by-product of other activities. Serendipitous learning emphasizes the role of unexpected realization of hidden, seemingly unrelated connections or analogies for learning and research.” (P.2). This type of learning can occur by chance and as a by-product of other activities like information browsing through social status updates in micro-blogs [8].
In open networked contexts, serendipitous learning and emergent learning are connected to each other. Emergent learningis likely to occur when many self-organizing agents interact frequently and openly, with considerable degrees of freedom, but within specific constraints; no individual can see the whole picture; agents and systems co-evolve [23]. So emergent learning seems to have something with a mass of agents involved in a process or context for instance in networks and communities but, serendipitous learning can happen just with individuals themselves seeking and browsing information on the internet even without being involved in any networks or communities. Nevertheless, serendipity is also more likely to occur in networks and communities while an individual is diversely involved.