An open alternative to Blackboard
I’ve written this post as an example of what you might produce for your assessments. The tone for an online blog piece is less formal than an academic paper and, in the case of the second assessment, includes personal reflections on your chosen area of exploration. In keeping with the theme of open knowledge, I have also taken some considerable pains to ensure that the references that I have used are openly available, rather than behind a pay wall. Following best practice for online work, these are directly linked to from the text.
The following is a reflection on an alternative learning environment to Blackboard. Working at a University where Blackboard is the virtual learning environment of choice and thinking about open scholarship has prompted me to consider if there is an alternative available to facilitate both teachers and students.
Blackboard is often used as a tool for broadcasting information and support to students on a defined course, typically on a one to many, profile. It is frequently used to share slides, lecture podcasts and link to Turnitin for assessment submission. Often there is little in the way of the students openly communicating with each other. Course units where I have taught have encouraged students to engage with each other within the discussion areas of Blackboard, but I have personally seen almost no engagement with that feature within the VLE itself. There is a sense of the environment within Blackboard being static and a barrier, not a conduit to collaboration with peers. Finally there is a degree of closedness to input beyond the course itself as teachers and students are usually only permitted to see the resources linked to the units that they are registered upon. The result of this is that there is a closed network of people receiving material with no online interaction with each other, others, or others ideas outside of this very narrow space.
But learning is social isn’t it? Vygotsky seemed to think so. The upshot of a social constructivist approach to learning is that with guidance from others individuals can develop. Don’t we learn better when we work collaboratively and with others? Learning from our peers in integral to our development in both formal and informal learning. The implications of Blackboard’s, and thus many modules, difficulties with the social part of learning, therefor, go beyond a “nice to have” to a “necessary”. To this end there are a wide number of social media platforms that are in a position to facilitate this learning, beyond what might work within the VLE.
In a challenge to Blackboard I am going to attempt to convince you that Twitter would be a good substitute. This may seem a stretch at first, but hear me out. For some time now Twitter has been encouraged for use alongside other social media tools and VLEs to encourage networking, share resources and promote research. On a course that I was teaching Twitter was embedded as a feed into the Blackboard space and encouraged students to use it to converse with each other. It was a slow and cautious process, but they did engage, although most of it was focused on surface engagement and casual conversations on topics from the course.
Twitter as a medium for an open education course would encourage conversations from the get go, both with peers that are undertaking the same course and beyond. Participants registered and intending to receive credit for the course would have the additional resource of a broader network. They would be able to reach out beyond their programme, their discipline, and their institution to have conversations, find resources, make valuable contacts and keep up to date. Students would engage in activity reminiscent of the free and open conversation found in some of the earliest communications around scientific endeavours. The community that would be created would encourage interdisciplinary conversations about theories practices and applications and, above all, encourage openness to the input, expertise and understanding available more broadly on any topic.
Twitter is freely available; it works across devices and operating systems and rarely has any downtime for maintenance. Twitter would support the kind of activity which would instigate individual knowledge seeking in a simple straightforward way. Using Twitter, participants would be a member of a community of learners working to a task and as individuals share their conversations around their task in a wider network where there is a common interest. This learning community would benefit all the individuals engaged and could have the potential to contribute to widely researched issues.
Teachers in higher education would be able to holistically manage their profile through Twitter, exhibiting their teaching alongside their research interests to a much wider audience. Twitter would allow teaching staff to begin to draw the different aspects of open scholarship together, open access, open educational resources, and an open transfer of knowledge. Networks would be created that stretch across education, professional organisations and industry that would bring benefits to all and not keep higher education in a silo of its own. Students would benefit from being a part of this network with their teachers sharing their knowledge, research and with easy access to their mavens.
Throughout the course of their studies all students and teachers would be able to build a personal learning network that would continue to expand into their professional environment beyond higher education. They would have a trustworthy network that they could continue to support and be supported by as they continue on their lifelong learning journey.
Open education should be supported by an open platform that is readily available and simple to use and Twitter could do that it just need someone brave enough to try.
