MET:E-Learning 2.0

This page is created by Ping Zhang, 2013

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Evolving with the Internet and Web 2.0, e-Learning is changing to a degree significant enough to warrant a new name: e-Learning 2.0. As defined by Schlenker(2008), “e-Learning 2.0 is the idea of learning through digital connections and peer collaboration, users / learners are empowered to search, create, and collaborate, in order to fulfill intrinsic needs to learn new information.” From an e-Learning 2.0 perspective, conventional e-learning systems were merely online versions of school learning, which were based on instructional packets, delivered to students at predetermined paces in specified curriculums led by teachers. In contrast, e-Learning 2.0 assumes that knowledge is socially constructed. Learning takes place through conversations about content and interactions about authentic problems. Social networks have been used to foster online learning communities. By e-Learning 2.0, learners go through a “New to Guru” process, creating content becomes a major part of their learning process, and becomes the content for others who travel the same path(Downes, 2005) . In this process learners are consuming content, creating content, and collaborating with others. These are the three most talked about activities in a Web 2.0 world, and also are the foundational elements of e-Learning 2.0.

Tags cloud of e-Learning 2.0

Conception

• Human elements in the core

An important point is easy to miss: Web 2.0 is not about technology, and neither is e-Learning 2.0 (Schlenker, 2008) . The human element is what makes the new Web work. Without user-generated content, the new Web would be an empty shell of fancy technologies. These human elements are being facilitated by technology in an engaging and productive way. When average computer users begin feeling comfortable doing these types of activities online, then we know we’ve reached a tipping point. This is the point at which we all stop using the Web to simply “Google” for information, and start consuming, creating, and collaborating online. E-Learning 2.0 acknowledges these activities as powerful, educational, and learning tools accessible to every computer user, and to the mainstream population at large.

• More than Web2.0

E-Learning 2.0 is not just about implementing blogging, wikis, and social networking systems. E-Learning 2.0 is where Web 2.0 technologies meet informal learning (Schlenker, 2008). E-learning 1.0 did an excellent job of automating our traditional educational model, but heavily supported the administrative tasks involved. The new technologies driving the user-generated content culture of Web 2.0 are about the learners, and providing them with more power over the learning process. It is the combined technology and human element that brings us to the point of completely re-thinking instructional theories and methods. At its best e-Learning 2.0 combines the structured elements of formal learning, the self-directed nature of informal learning, and the powerful new technologies of the Internet to support every person’s unique needs on their personal learning journey.

• Elements of e-Learning 2.0 (Schlenker, 2008)

- Web 2.0 technologies support and facilitate informal learning
- Users must be free to publish (Rip, Mix, Feed).
- Enterprise Systems must enable content via the five “-ables” (searchable, editable, linkable, feedable, taggable)
- Organizational cultures must change

• Authentic and relevant learning

E-Learning 2.0 recognizes that motivation increases when learning is connected to real-world experiences and the learner’s particular context. Learning with authentic problems or real dilemmas will make learner believe in so that they can be motivated to do the findings and construction.

• Tinkering

Like Web 2.0, E-Learning 2.0 never has an “under construction” sign, instead it “seems to assume a perpetual state of tinkering”. The content is read-write, and ever-adapting. E-Learning 2.0 environments allow students flexibility for time on assignments, balance recreation and learning outcomes. Resources have to be performed, what you get from depends on how you perform them.

• Systems learning

E-Learning 2.0 includes learning both for technical systems and for content. The value at the core is that of shared wisdom of the group, regardless of the qualifications of individual group members.

• Microcontent

E-Learning 2.0 inherits microcontent characteristic from Web2.0. Blogs are about posts, not pages; wikis, are streams of conversation, revision, amendment, and truncation; podcasts are shuttled between Web sites, RSS feeds, and diverse players. These content blocks are bricks of E-Learning 2.0. They are created, saved, quoted, summarized, addressed and reused by learners into collective or individual new structures.

• Collective intelligence

E-Learning 2.0 environments are more project based with a group of learners focused on creating something new more than solving a current problem. It enables self-organized communities to participate in creating, updating, enhancing, tagging, rating and distributing content. As of now, most of the changes that have taken place in the web 2.0 biosphere have been grassroots movements of change motivated by the users. E-Learning 2.0 is motivated by learners.

• Community evolves, grows and reproduces

Learners participating in a collaborative e-Learning 2.0 space become connected to a larger community and broader audience. These communities have the requisite ability to evolve, grow and reproduce as new members join and collaborate with their more knowledgeable peers. Learners got skills and identities simultaneously in and across communities.

PLE

This graph is quoted from http://www.edtechpost.ca/ple_diagrams/var/albums/swl_ple2.gif?m=1355793306

History

This is a brief history of how e-Learning 2.0 was developed :

• Computer-based delivery (CBT) system

In 1978, Pathlore (as part of Legent Corp.) started developing CBT solutions. CBT delivered Learning objects, i.e. little bits of content that could be put together or organized. Specifications were developed on how to sequence and organize learning content into courses and package them for delivery as though they were books or training manuals.

• Online courses

In 1984, the first online course was offered by NYIT to accommodate students who could not take classes on campus. Since then, online courses had become basic offering units of e-learning in colleges and universities everywhere.

• Learning management system (LMS)

In 1987, NKI Distance Education in Norway provided its online courses through EKKO, NKI's self-developed Learning Management System(LMS). LMS organizes courses in a standard way, as a course divided into modules and lessons, supported with quizzes, tests and discussions, integrated into the college or university's student information system. Examples: WebCT, Blackboard, and Desire2Learn.

• Learner-centered design

The changing demographics of the “Digital native” students and the more consumer/client-centered culture in today's society have provided a climate where the use of student-centered learning is thriving (O’Neill and McMahon, 2005). Learning is characterized not only by greater autonomy for the learner, but also a greater emphasis on active learning, with creation, communication and participation playing key roles, and on changing roles for the teacher, even a collapse of the distinction between teacher and student altogether.

• Community of practice

Originally promoted in 1990s and then expanded in 1998 in the book of “Community of Practice”, Etienne Wenger defined that a community of practice is characterized by a shared domain of interest where "members interact and learn together" and "develop a shared repertoire of resources." The notion of a community creates the social fabric for that learning. A strong community fosters interactions and encourages a willingness to share ideas.

• Microcontent

Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into "microcontent" units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. Content was created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along.

• Open courseware

In September 2002, MIT OpenCourseWare opened to the public. The category expanded to free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses for content, and open access to scholarly and other works. Sharing content is no longer considered unethical, instead, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial.

• Social medias in the classroom

Social media like blogs, podcasts, vodcasts entered classrooms with Web 2.0. Instead of discussing pre-assigned topics with their classmates, tudents find themselves can discuss a wide range of topics with peers worldwide, or MKOs out of educational area.

• Content-authoring tool

In the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in schools and enterprises as collaborative software. In content, it is used more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors. In structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual. Online learning software ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is "delivered," and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where learning is created.

• Personal learning environment (PLE or e-Portfolio)

In 2004, the Elgg personal learning system was developed as a personal 'learning landscape'. E-Learning application becomes a personal learning center. Content is reused and remixed according to the student's own needs and interests. It becomes, indeed, not a single application, but a collection of interoperating applications---an environment rather than a system.

• E-Framework for Education and Research

e-Framework provides service-oriented approaches to facilitate technical interoperability of core infrastructure as well as effective use. There is an increasing recognition that learning is becoming a creative activity and the appropriate venue is a platform rather than an application.

• Mobile learning

Mobile learning defines new relationships and behaviors among learners, information, personal computing devices, and the world at large (Wagner, 2005). In late 2000s, The European Commission began to fund the major multi-national MOBIlearn and M-Learning projects. And since 2010, mobile learning was boosted as a large number of smart mobile devices came onto the market.

• Workflow learning

Based on ubiquitous computing , workflow learning makes learning available no matter what you are doing. As Stephen Downes mentioned that “Learning and living, it could be said, will eventually merge. The challenge will not be in how to learn, but in how to use learning to create something more, to communicate.”

Why e-Learning 2.0?

"Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach."

--- Marc Prensky (2001)

Digital native

Changed Learners

Hart J. (2008) in her article "Understanding Today's Learner" identified following features of the new breed of learner:

• They prefer hyperlinked information coming from many sources.
• They are skilled multi-taskers, and they parallel process. They are used to simultaneously working with different content, and interacting with others.
• They are highly visual learners, preferring to process pictures, sounds, and video rather than text.
• They are experiential learners who learn by discovery rather than being “told.” They like to interact with content to explore and draw their own conclusions. Simulations, games, and role playing allow them to learn by “being there,” and also to enjoy themselves and have fun.
• They have short attention spans, so prefer bite-sited chunks of content (either on a PC or iPod).
• They are very social, and love to share with others. They enjoy working in teams. Interaction with others is key to their learning, and they want to be part of a community, collaborating, sharing, and exchanging ideas.
• They are happy to take on different roles in their learning, either as a student, or even as instructor or facilitator or supporter of others, and switch between them.
• They prefer to learn "just in time," that is, have access to relevant information they can apply immediately.
• They need immediate feedback, responsiveness, and ideas from others, as they are used to instant gratification.
• They are very independent learners, and are able to teach themselves with guidance; they don’t need sets of instructions like their predecessors — just like they found out how to use their iPods or Google.
• They prefer to construct their own learning – assembling information and tools from different sources.

This new breed of learnes, also called as the "Digital Native" by Prensky (2001), have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. The single biggest problem facing education today is that "Digital Immigrant" instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. Although some organizations are struggling to implement these new tools and approaches, it seems that the most successful e-Learning 2.0 implementations are being promoted by passionate professionals who are highly engaged with Web 2.0 tools and who themselves are one of this new breed of learners.

Changed Theories

From Psychological to Anthropological

The development of learning theories sees a great shift from the “acquisition” metaphor to the “participation” metaphor. In the former category there are cognitive theories that emphasize individual thinkers and their isolated minds, and social-constructivism theories that stress the social nature of cognition and meaning. In the latter category, there are situative theories that emphasize the reciprocal character of the interaction, in which individuals, cognition and meaning are socially and culturally constructed. They are further developed into the psychological perspective, and followed by the latest anthropological perspective, featured as followed:

Theories	Emphasis	Theoretical position
Psychological perspective of participation metaphor	Situatedness of meaning or content; emphasize unit of analysis for the individual's context	The central tenets of this perspective regarding how one conceives of knowledge or knowing about are: a) knowing about refers to an activity—not a thing; b) knowing about is always contextualized—not abstract; c) knowing about is reciprocally constructed within the individual-environment interaction—not objectively defined or subjectively created; and d) knowing about is a functional stance on the interaction - not a truth (Barab & Duffy, 1998)
Anthropological perspective of participation metaphor	Developing an identity as a member of a community and becoming knowledgeably skillful	The interaction constitutes and is constituted by all of the components- individual, content, and context. There are no clear boundaries between the development of knowledgeable skills and the development of identities;

From Practice Field to Community of Practice

	Practice Field	Community of Practice
Pedagogy	Based on the psychological perspective	Based on the anthropological perspective
Features	There is a clearly separation in time, setting, and activity from the life for which the activity is preparation	A common cultural and historical heritage, including shared goals, negotiated meanings, and practices. Individuals becoming a part of something larger (“taking part” and “being a part”). The ability to reproduce as new members work alongside more competent others. A community of practice and the individuals that constitute the community reproduce and define themselves.
Example	Problem based learning (PBL): The goal is to capture a real problem and the context for that problem from the real world. Anchored instruction: The learners are invited to engage in a fictitious (ill-structured) problem in afictitious contexts. Cognitive apprenticeship: Experts are present to coach and model the cognitive activity.	Jigsaw method: Students working collaboratively and developing expertise on one component of a larger task. Community of discourse: Meaning is negotiated and renegotiated, the group comes to construct new understandings, developing a common mind and common voice. Teleapprenticeships: Involve students in real world projects and link them to experts and other students around the world in scientific or social research.
design principles	1) Engagement in domain-related practices 2) Ownership of the inquiry 3) Coaching and modeling of thinking skills 4) Opportunity for reflection 5) The learning context is motivating	1) students can explore real engaging problems 2) students do the work and engage in the discourse 3) the work is done collaboratively using telecommunications 4) students have contact with experts who help to interpret student collected data and to present findings to the community.

From Constructivism to Connectivism

Construction

Social learning psychologists believe that learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: From observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action. E-Learning 2.0 facilitates that social learning process in ways most social-constructivists probably never imagined possible.

Martin & Parker (2008) said "Because we are essentially social creatures, social media tends to enhance learner motivation and engagement, providing workers with more meaningful ways to interact with each other and with information. Use of social media also creates a more fertile environment for the development of communities of practice, identification of experts, sharing of ideas, and the spread of innovation. This translates into a compelling story for e-Learning 2.0, and places us at a potentially historic inflection point for the way we create, deliver, and iterate learning.

Community

Taking this approach even further is George Siemens's Connectivism. He pointed out that "We derive our competence from forming connections... Chaos is a new reality for knowledge workers... Unlike constructivism, which states that learners attempt to foster understanding by meaning-making tasks, chaos states that the meaning exists... the learner's challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden. Meaning-making and forming connections between specialized communities are important activities."

Paradigm

Compare e-Learning <1.0> and <2.0>

	E-Learning 1.0	E-Learning 1.3	E-Learning 2.0
Main Components	- Courseware - LMSs - Authoring tools	- Reference hybrids - LCMSs - Rapid authoring tools	- Wikis - Social networking and bookmarking tools - Blogs - Add-ins - Mash-ups
Ownership	Top-down, one-way	Top-down, collaborative	Bottom-up, learner-driven, peer learning
Development Time	Long	Rapid	None
Content Size	60 minutes	15 minutes	1 minutes
Access Time	Prior to work	In between work	During work
Virtual Meetings	Class	Intro, Office hours	Peers, Experts
Delivery	At one time	In many pieces	When you need it
Content Access	LMS	Email, Intranet	Search, RSS feed
Driver	ID	Learner	Worker
Content creator	ID	SME	User

This table is quoted from http://www.astd.org/Publications/Newsletters/Learning-Circuits/Learning-Circuits-Archives/2007/07/Understanding-E-Learning-20

Certificates

Before the so called "Learning 1.0" in school contexts, students learnt form their private tutors and only got educational certificates from imperial examinations. Then after printing technology made textbooks widely available, and education became a national duty, there was “Learn 1.0”. The invention of classrooms and school contexts made one teacher could tutor dozens of students at the same time. Certificates became distributed, but all under a national bureau’s control. In Learning 2.0 paradigm, students need much more knowledge than teachers or schools can convey. They’re learning from each other, from masses! I found a “significantly difference” on the paradigm level, that’s the certificate. In community learning, school certificates will no longer work, we’ll need a more “micro” form of certificates, as Barab and Duffy (2000) said “(in anthropological perspective) there are no clear boundaries between the development of knowledgeable skills and the development of identities”. Communities issue identities (or badges) in learning values, and these identities will be merged or mapped into educational certificates by professionals (like the teacher’s community). In this paradigm, commercial social communities like Wikipedia, Fackbook, SecondLife etc. can all become parts of the learning environment. Students learn in social contexts and get educational certificates corresponding to their performance during the collective intelligent construction.

Certificate paradigms

Upsides and Downsides

There are some obvious upsides to a 2.0 approach to learning when we think about it in relation to some current global trends.

• Coheres with currently popular social values like inclusion, participation, collaboration, p2p sharing etc. that have a strong presence in leisure and non-formal settings
• It is compatible with "deep learning"
• It coheres with a lot of "smart work" and, indeed, with many buzz principles of "the new work order" beyond school.
• It is in tune with current concepts and experiences of "time" and "place"
• It is "ecological" - it maximizes leverage and "value adding"
• It coheres well with our "primary learning Discourse" -- with how people learn "organically"
• It can potentially enhance quality education for all
• It emphasizes interests and affinities; presumes and builds upon engagement and energies

Learning 2.0 Tetrad

On the other hand, there are "downsides" of a learning 2.0 approach which contravene the operating logic of the consumer society (Illich 1971) , and also contravene many other deep values that serve powerful interests well. It is out of kilter with the social will to:

• atomize
• control/manage
• individualize
• privatize
• discriminate and differentiate (to feed the "meritocratic"ideology
• to label people/individuals
• to shape expectations and match them to "what is socially available"
• to adjust people to industrial time
• to emphasize exchange values
• to reify expertise and legitimate elites
• to imprint authority relations
• to equate competence with "official credentials"

Design for e-Learning 2.0

Methodology

Social Learning

Educational designers need to pay attention to these established trends in workplace and organizational learning, and use tools to nurture "collective intelligence" of e-Learning 2.0:

• diversity as asset (rather than liability),
• proliferation of communication channels and related literacy,
• climate of rapid change and flexibility,
• teamwork and increased importance of collaborative work skills,
• multiskilled workers,
• constant on-the-job learning,
• hybrid forms of communication with a renewed attention to post-literate forms

For collective intelligence	Focus of design	Embedded values
Participation	tagging, adding or editing content, commenting, ranking content, linking etc.	participatory designs contribute to the democratization of knowledge production on the Web; mass amateurization; shifts the venerated experts and the power of publishing conglomerates
Serious play	microcontent (content generated by participants); "change a single word, not an entire entry"	consumers are also creators; more egalitarian mode of interaction; meaningful participation to occur before an expert, or polished level of absolute competence is realized
A perpetual state of tinkering	constantly alterable content	representation of knowledge as "open source"; set a relationship to knowledge as "persistently beta"
Microcontent authoring and improvement by community	flow of content unlimited by a silo architecture; don't move around like traditional museum; you CAN touch anything; you can put something of your own on display; and interactivity more than button clicking	endlessly editable; openness is part of the design for learning, and for participation itself
Social networking that is linked with content authoring	linking feature; tagging and folksonomies; rich multimedia content directly to specific map locations, including text, images, URL's etc;	merge and blur binary distinctions between public and private, owned and shared, open and closed; linking feature mediates the construction of communities of practice
Content authoring that has mobility across sites and tools	tags (user-generated attributes) to categorize content; folksonomy ("people" + "classification")	attribute coding of its numerous participants; bottom-up, collaborative process for classification of content

Technology

Bates and Poole (2003) developed the SECTIONS model as a framework for selecting and applying technology in educational settings:

• S - Students: What is known about the students, or potential students, and the appropriateness of the technology for this particular group or range of students. Aspects include: a) student demographics, b) access, c) differences in how students learn.

• E - Ease of use and reliability: How easy is it for both teachers and students to use? How reliable and well tested is the technology? Aspects include: a) Computer and Information Literacy, b) Orientation, c) Interface Design and d) Reliability.

• C - Costs: Cost structure and the unit cost per learner. Aspects include: a) Items of Expenditure, b) Drivers of Costs ( production of materials, the delivery of materials and the number of students).

• T - Teaching and learning: Instructional approaches to meet needs. Aspects include: a) Epistemology, b) Content and skills and c) Students assessment strategies.

• I - Interactivity and user-friendliness: Interaction enabled and how easy to use. Aspects include: a) Interaction between learners and learning materials, b) Learning as a social activity, c) The quality of Interaction.

• O - Organizational issues: Changes in organization need to be made

• N - Novelty: How new is the technology?

• S - Speed: How quickly can course be mounted, materials be changed?

Media Type	Example	Platform	Application in e-Learning 2.0
Picture	Instagram		Storytelling, Grammer in World Contexts, Photojournalism, Metaphor, Photoblog, Art Sharing, Ethnographic Study, etc.
Voice	Skype Education	Skype	Chatting, Conference, Talk to experts, File exchange
LiveCasting	Qik		Live Instruction, Online Classroom
Crowdsource Content	Reddit Education	Reddit	News, Discussion
Comments	Disqus		Voting, Discussion
Social Bookmarks	Diigo		Social bookmarking, web annotation, tagging, and group-based collaboration
Blog	Edublogs	WordPress	Blogging, Class site, ePortfolios
Wiki	Wikispaces Education	Wikispace	Co-authoring, Share idea/works/picture/video/media, Discussion, Log changes
Presentation	Prezi		Presentation, Video, Forum, Library
Podcast	ESLpod		Podcast
Video	TeacherTube		Video, Audio, Photo, Doc, Classroom, Inbox
Social Networks	Facebook		Project, Assignment, News, Classroom, Discussion, Group, etc.
Micromedia	Twitter		Backchannel, Brainstorm, News, Group
Virtual World	SecondLife Learning	SecondLife	Project, Virtual Classroom, Blog, Forum, Events
Nitch networks	Classroom2.0	Ning	Blog, Forum, Photo, Video, Email, Group, Chatting, Privacy Control, Social Network

Assessment

To support the learners in learning and performance, Wexler and Thalheimer(2007) summarized the value of learning measurement as:

• to encourage learners to study
• to give learners feedback on their learning progress.
• to help learners better understand the concepts being taught, by giving them tests of understanding and follow-up feedback.
• to provide learners with additional retrieval practice (to support long-term retrieval).
• to give successful assessment-takers a sense of accomplishment, a sense of being special, and/or a feeling of being in a privileged group.
• to increase the likelihood that the learning is implemented later.
  
• to assign learners with grades, or give them a passing score.
• to enable learners to earn credentials.
• to document legal or regulatory compliance.
• to provide instructors with feedback on learning.
• to provide instructional designers/developers with feedback.
• to diagnose future learning needs.
• to provide learners and teachers with feedback and information.
• to provide other organizational stakeholders with information.
• to examine the organizational impacts of learning.
• to compare one learning intervention to an alternative one.
• to calculate return-on-investment of the learning program.
• to collect data to sell or market the learning program.

In the report of Thalheimer (2008) "Evaluating E-Learning 2.0: Getting Our Heads Around the Complexity", he offered the following recommendations:

1. Because e-Learning 2.0 is already on the fad upswing, we ought to be especially careful about assuming its benefits. In other words, we ought to measure it early and often, at least at first until our implementations prove to be beneficial investments.
2. Because there are two sets of employees involved in e-Learning 2.0, those who learn from the content ("learners") and those who create the content ("creators"), we need to evaluate the effects of e-Learning 2.0 on both groups of people.
3. We have to determine if the created content is valid. Your content may not need to be 100% perfect, but you do need to know if the content is valid enough for its intended purposes.
4. Measuring only the most obvious “learning content” may miss important aspects of the information that e-Learning 2.0 messages communicate.
5. For situations in which e-Learning 1.0 is better positioned to provide necessary learning supports than e-Learning 2.0 (e.g., when long-term remembering is required), it might not be fair to compare our e-Learning 2.0 interventions to well-designed e-Learning 1.0 interventions. On the other hand, if we are using e-Learning 2.0 technologies to replace e-Learning 1.0 technologies, comparing results seems desirable.
6. When we blend e-Learning 2.0 to support an e-Learning 1.0 intervention, we must focus first on whether the e-Learning 2.0 methodology supports the e-Learning 1.0 intended outcomes. We must also look at whether the e-Learning 2.0 methodology creates separate benefits or damage.
7. Because e-Learning 2.0 can create harm, part of our measurement mission ought to be to determine whether people are developing inadequate knowledge or skills and/or wasting time as learners and creators.
8. Asking people for their reactions to learning can provide some valuable knowledge, but is often fraught with bias. Therefore, we cannot consider asking for reactions to our e-Learning 2.0 interventions a sufficient measurement design.
9. In thinking about measuring our e-Learning 2.0 interventions, we first have to decide what we designed our intervention to support: (a) Understanding, (b) Long-term Retrieval, (c) Future On-the-job Learning, (d) On-the-job Performance, (e) Organizational Results. Then we ought to devise a measurement regime to measure the outcomes we hope for — as well as the factors on the causal pathway to those outcomes.

Making it simple, while the in-depth thinking represented in this article may be helpful in providing you with rich mental models of how to think about measuring e-Learning 2.0 (and that was my intent), some of you will probably just want a simple heuristic about what to do. In lieu of a detailed conversation, here goes:
Don't:

1. Don't just ask users for their feedback or rely on usage data.
2. Don't look only at benefits — consider potential harm too.
3. Don't look only at the learners — consider the creators too.

Do:

1. Pilot test your e-Learning 2.0 intervention in a small way before full deployment. This will enable you to actually be able to invest in gathering the requisite data.
2. Measure your users compared to those who are not using the e-Learning 2.0 intervention (after having used random assignment to groups), or compare results over time, or both.
3. Use multiple measurement methods to gather corroborating evidence.

Criticism

Privacy

• Security & Privacy

According to a survey made by Martin & Parker (2008), 52% respondents were concerned about the legal, regulatory, or confidentiality issues of e-Learning 2.0. It mostly revolves around the fear of sharing information online; the fear that they might get "hacked" and have someone try to steal their credit card details, bank account info, personal identity, or even "smear campaigns" across social media sites. Technology is moving faster than the law and enforcement. Participants have to sign a waiver, acknowledging that the session may be recorded and they have to keep comments as general as possible. While the open online collaboration fostered by 2.0 design can be very beneficial to learning, most of school administrators remain somewhat guarded about its use for fear of maintaining student privacy; therefore learning 2.0 environments remain 'a walled garden' on the internet, which impacts its effectiveness and ability to function as a true community of practice.

• Ethics

Life in 2.0

Many parents and educators are worried about the ethics and values that may be lost in collaborative "virtual" spaces.The lines become blurred between learning and recreation, also between formal education and social activities. Educators see kids sitting on far ends of the playground staring at their iPods rather than engaging with one another. Students are messaging one another under their desks, or "not running around" during recess and lunch, instead watching YouTube videos on their devices. There is risk of losing the intimacy of the local community. The sharing aspect of 2.0 encourage mutual respect, but the anonymity of online learning can also support a culture of trolling and abuse. Some people even ascribe the epidemics of disconnection, depression or suicides of young people to their indulgence of online living style.

• Copyright

Another issue of e-Learning 2.0 is copyright. On the one hand, conventional copyright infringements and ingrained ideas of proprietary information clash with the Web 2.0 ideals of shared information and reciprocity. On the other hand, participants of collective constructions find their contribution during the learning process difficult to identified and evaluated. Some people accuse of the plagiarism of community enterprises as for “robbing learners creativity and innovation” and make profit form the collectively owned intelligent property.

• Effectiveness

Parents are still in doubt for how effective e-Learning 2.0 may work from a waste of time. They wonder if children are actually learning something or just “googling” the answers then forget them. Few of them oppose learning in playing, but how much the portion of learning can happen, and when to happen is all not clear to them. Online resources are not always reliable. Superfluous and erroneous content complicates many of the Web2.0 solutions. Though tagging and ranking do well to alleviate this issue, the problem still persists. Teachers also worry about the loss of control over the specifics of what was being taught and learned. According to Martin & Parker (2008) , 43% of respondents aren't convinced that e-Learning 2.0 works and 81% are concerned that we don't know how to measure its effectiveness.

Usability

• Accessibility to learners

The shifting of learning from the physical world to cyber space throws those poor-connected population in a more disadvantaged position. It’s difficult to encourage and foster cooperation over old and unreliable infrastructure. There are blocked sites, filtered content, censorship and authenticity of information in many regions for political or economical reasons. Some educators are complaining that they have to spend the majority of the time looking for solutions to work around blocked sites like Youtube or GoogleDrive.

• Usability to educators

Most e-Learning 2.0 tools available are not easy-to-use from the educator’s view. The 2.0 class of software on the Web differs significantly from enterprise-class software that educators are used to dealing with. Being digital immigrants they often find uncertain or difficult to utilize new technologies. Many instructors are expected to create their own activities and lessons using web 2.0 tools, without a sound background of the tools’ operation. Persistence Archiving the collective construction of e-Learning 2.0 is a big challenge in many learning communities. It’s easy to get lost in the overload of information and projects/websites. Learners find difficult to access old projects or content. There is no standard among either to present or to guide the interactivities across learning communities. A learner’s knowledge is still distributed, fragmented and difficult to orchestrate after an e-Learning 2.0 project closes.

• Conventional impediment

The last but not the least constraint for e-Learning 2.0 comes from the conventional educational system. The government-mandated curriculum and a teacher-centered environment can be a challenge to successfully create e-learning 2.0 environments in or out of the school. The existing infrastructure and budgets available for upgrades are a major impediment to implementing 2.0 practices. Some feel that schools have not caught up with the social networking trends. Few traditional educators promote social networking unless they are communicating with their own colleagues.[33] Until we can break the bonds of “traditional classrooms” we will not be able to truly create communities of practice where e-learning 2.0 would happen.

External links

• Web 2.0
• School 2.0
• Classroom 2.0
• Minds On Fire.pdf
• Social Media Education
• Learning Solutions Magzine
• Stephen Downes's Blog
• Collective Intelligence
• 100 inspirational ways to incorporate social media in the classroom
• 25 excellent social media sites for teachers
• Scratch (programming)