JISC CETIS Conference 2007

This week I went to the JISC CETIS Conference in Aston as a panelist in the Semantic Structures for e-Learning session. After my bleak interaction with the e-learning community back in ICALT, I was pleasantly surprised to find a really progressive mood.

In particular Mark Stiles gave a characteristically candid closing keynote that was uncannily like my own talk on Web Literacy a few weeks ago. Mark came at the problem from a policy angle (rather than a technology one), and asked the question of whether VLEs were the new orthodoxy, constraining and limiting student learning rather than promoting it. He lamented the control and manage culture in HE, and pointed out that students were breaking free of controlled institutional e-learning systems and beginning to use public applications and sites (to which they occasionally invite a lecturer - but only if they like them!).

There is definitely something in the air...

The Semantic Structures panel was a similar pleasant surprise. I came prepared with what I thought was a fairly outlandish position - that the Semantic Web was already happening in the real world, and that we needed to stop speculating about applications in a far semantic future and start worrying about how semantic applications might have an impact now.

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For me this raises a number of key questions about how we articulate the advantages of RDF and OWL over XML and XSD for Web 2.0 style mashups - after all they both enable encourage well-formed metadata and interoperability, so why use RDF?

I was therefore surprised to find myself emerging as the hardest Semantic Web person on the panel (at Southampton this is rarely a position I find myself in!), so perhaps my main point was lost somewhat. I invoked the characters from the Wizard of Oz as examples of people who get so wrapped up in the journey they don't realise what they already have - my point was that in some ways the Semantic Web community is like that, so concerned with the technological upper levels of the layer cake that they miss the significance of the emerging data web that is already out there.

The other panelists gave very interesting position statements which introduced me to a number of new things, including Cohere, GRDDL and RDFa. The audience also raised some interesting questions, but mostly they boiled down to the same one that I had raised. Why use RDF when XML gives you so much for so little effort? Alistair Miles described this as a variant of the Tragedy of the Commons - in that RDF only shows real advantage when there are already many people publishing it, and the conclusion of the session was that to push this work forward in our world we should all becoming semantic extroverts - hoping to achieve some sort of viral effect.

I had the chance to run this past Wendy Hall yesterday. Wendy was head of group when I was studying for a PhD in Hypertext, and is now a co-founder with Tim Berners-Lee of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) based at MIT and Southampton. Wendy was pretty robust in her defence of the Semantic Web as a means to interoperability, and pointed out the semantic standard's advantages over POX (that RDF/OWL is more shareable, more flexible, and encourages general rather than bespoke solutions). I think that the advantages at the top end of the Semantic Stack (i.e. the ability to automatically exchange ontologies and the functionality that this unlocks) is rather secondary to Wendy - a bonus if you like - and that the main goal is still to create a machine readable web using the best language that we can (and in most terms that is RDF/OWL).

Her approach is 'Build It and They Will Come' - which takes us back to Mark Stile's keynote. Mark mentioned this as one of many strategies to encourage students to use e-learning systems. Actually he followed this with a 'But Of Course They Wont' based on some of his past experiences. Mark encouraged us to think about how we can engage with students without trying to control what they are doing, and I wonder if that's not the best message for the semantic web as well: to engage with Web users, find the best ways in which to help them express and exchange their data, and introduce the Semantic Web quietly, as and when the real needs arise.

Why the Semantic Web hasn't failed, and how we shouldn't fix it

(a position statement for the JISC CETIS conference, Aston, UK, held Nov 2007)

I've been invited to present a position statement at this years JISC CETIS conference on the topic of Semantic Structures for Teaching and Learning. The session aims to explore the potential of Semantic Web technologies in e-learning, and also raises the question of why Semantic technologies haven't been more successful in the e-learning domain, especially given the amount of academic interest in them.

We have become used to seeing the Semantic Web through the Semantic Stack (the infamous layer cake), a layered model of protocols that builds from the syntactic, through the semantic and logic, to higher level concepts such as trust.

This is a useful technical view, and helps to place the Semantic Web standards (RDF, RDFS, OWL, SWRL, etc) in context. However, it does not communicate the original vision of the Semantic Web. In his Scientific American article, Tim-Berners Lee (and co-authors Jim Hendler and Ora Lassila) say that the Semantic Web will:

"...open up the knowledge and workings of humankind to meaningful analysis by software agents, providing a new class of tools by which we can live, work and learn together."

This goal - of a machine processable web of information - lies behind the set of Semantic Web technologies. The vision is clear, that we take the Web's open approach and apply it to machine-readable information, providing a global platform for knowledge systems.

The Semantic Web family of standards helps us toward this goal in three ways, in that they:

• Promote Well-Formed Meta-Data - using the Semantic Web stack we are forced to build properly considered ontologies to describe a given domain. This makes it more likely we would produce a well designed schema, even if it doesn't guarantee it.
• Encourage Interoperability - because ontologies in the Semantic Web are explicitly named we can remove ambiguity about terms, even in documents that mix statements from different ontologies. This doesn't guarantee interoperability (because we might be using different ontologies) but it does guarantee that at run-time our systems can identify when they do and do not mean the same thing.
• Enable Reasoning - because we can define reasoning rules (for example simple transitivity, or other deductive logic) that can simplify the creation of software that processes the data (because we can move some of the burden from the software itself to a reasoning engine).

In e-learning we might see see benefits in well-formed metadata from an increased inter-relatedness of e-learning standards (for example, relating Learning Object Metadata to Learning Design Schemas); benefits from interoperability in the form of exchangeable records (for example, between Student Information Systems, Portfolios and Item Banks); and benefits from reasoning in the shape of aligned teaching or supporting independent learners (e.g. linking syllabus to teaching materials to assessment).

In the Learning Societies Lab we have been particularly interested in the potential of reasoning to create aligned teaching. A few years ago we created a simple demonstrator that reasoned about which questions might be appropriate for a given syllabus by examining a SKOS model of the subject domain.

While it is technically interesting to explore these issues there is a real problem in getting the information into the right forms to apply the reasoning techniques. In the aligned teaching case it would mean having an institutionally agreed ontology for each topic, and having all syllabus and all questions annotated using it.

In fact while the upper layers of the Semantic Web Stack have attracted a lot of academic interest, it is the bottom layers that have seen the most success: the core naming scheme of URIs and the Syntax of XML. In the last few years XML has had a massive impact on the way in which people use the Web, and has enabled cornerstone features of Web 2.0 such as RSS feeds and Mashups based on XML APIs. To a certain extend XML on its own takes us a long way towards well-formed meta-data and interoperability, and the data-integration that it enables has already had a significant impact on our approaches to e-learning.

In my last post I talked about the rise of a New Web Literacy, a preparedness amongst the new generation of students to share, trust and co-operate online, and to take ownership of their digital identity and environment. This is all enabled through loosely coupled systems, often connected together using RSS or XML APIs. There is a growing feeling amongst e-learning technologists that we should shift away from institutionally owned Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) towards Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) that are more respectful of this Web Literacy.

So URIs and XML have already taken us a long way into a new world of data integration that has already radically changed the way in which we think about e-learning. But the Semantic Web is much more than just data integration.

The ability to describe ontologies means that ontologies themselves can be exchanged as data, opening up the possibility of a system automatically mapping two ontologies (using a mapping service that is aware of both) and thus learning new ontological terms.

The ability to articulate rules means that behaviour that is currently implicit in programs could be pushed into the data cloud, not only simplifying development (because you could reuse reasoning engines rather than writing bespoke code), but also potentially allowing systems to share behaviour and automatically extend their functionality (by discovering new rules).

This is a much more powerful and open approach than current Web 2.0 style mashup mechanisms, but it has a significantly higher overhead, and the end result depends on the network effects of many other systems taking the same approach.

If the Semantic Web is to become a reality then I believe that it is necessary to build it from the bottom up. We already have an emerging Data Web, so the challenge is to find ways to naturally progress up the Semantic Stack until we have an emerging Semantic Web.

In this view the Semantic Web hasn't failed, it just hasn't succeeded enough. There are a number of ways this incremental change could potentially happen. One possibility is through the promotion of a number of simple but key ontologies (Dublin Core, FOAF and SKOS come to mind), another is to explore RDF as a basis for REST services rather than POX. The difficulty is that there must be a clear and immediate advantage for this to happen (perhaps the ontology resolution services mentioned above, that could reconcile RDF statements from multiple sources into the particular ontology that a given system understands).

This view also means that we shouldn't try and fix the current situation - but instead should focus on building on it. There are simple ways in which e-learning system builders might contribute:

• Use real REST services rather than XML-RPC as your externally facing interface. As a RESTful approach (using the HTTP header commands to control a set of resources rather than encoding functions in the URI) naturally builds a web of data.
  
• Leverage existing key ontologies in order to help build a suitable mass of RDF content based on core schema.
  
• A little goes a long way - so we should all be semantic extroverts and publish everything that we can (within the constraints of privacy).

One particularly interesting question is whether we can apply the light touch of Web 2.0 to ontology building. This idea is appealing because people are already evolving dynamic vocabularies (in the form of tags) that are not to far from being folksonomies (simple ontologies built by the people). Other systems, such as Semantic Wikis, go further and help people design ontologies with an instance-first approach based on semantics-on-demand (you define a type or relation as you need it). Folksonomies might also be a driver for the evolution of the Semantic Web as the mid-levels of the Semantic Stack would allow these folksonomies to be articulated and thus exchanged and shared.

E-learning systems are changing. In order to address the new Web Literacy they need to be decentralised, loosely coupled, and flexible.

My view is that the Semantic Web could form a key part in this change, with RDF and its associated languages forming the basis of data exchange (and enabling more powerful mashups). To get there we need to figure out how to incorporate semantics into our existing systems and practices, and to demonstrate real advantages without real sacrifices (and in particular to respect the informality of users). Only in this way will we build up the momentum, acceptance and motivation that will make the Semantic Web a reality.

The New Web Literacy

I've just given a seminar to my research group (The Learning Societies Lab) on the notion of the New Web Literacy, how e-learning systems should change to support it, and what we should be doing as e-learning researchers to enact and understand that change.

I have wanted to present something on this topic ever since I went to ICALT earlier this year. There seemed to be two groups of people present at the conference: practitioners that had discovered Web 2.0 applications and were having great fun experimenting with them, and more traditional e-learning researchers still exploring the cornerstones of traditional e-learning thinking (Virtual Learning Environments, SCORM, Learning Design, Learning Objects and the like).

My thought was that the excited practitioners are like the Nouveau Riche of eighteenth century London. Back then new money was flooding into the Capital from the colonies and into the hands of people who weren't used to having it. For the first time the Old Money, established families in the Gentry and Aristocracy, were faced with people with a different mindset who were experimenting with their wealth, exploring new forms of literature and music, and engaging with architecture and fashion with no regard for the established rules or structures. At ICALT I thought I saw an analogy in the form of the Nouveau Technorati (New Technical People) - who didn't respect the old rules of the e-learning world and instead were eagerly experimenting with the new generation of Web 2.0 technologies.

I began to wonder what the underlying cause of this was - what is it about blogs, wikis, social software, resource sharing and tagging that strikes such a chord? I'm not the only one left wondering:

The quote is from Time Magazine, when they broke with convention and voted "You" person of the year, 2006. I think they perfectly captured the zeitgeist, and cut straight to the key issue about these technologies - which is that they are about empowering their users, and giving the ownership of technology back to You.

But who is "You"? Surely the claim isn't totally Universal? Diana Oblinger starts to tease this apart in her work on understanding the new students. She talks in generational terms about the attitudes of students.

We've got used to the Baby Boomers (people in the demographic upsurge that followed the World Wars, and who had their teenage years in the sixties and seventies) teaching Generation X (the disaffected young people who rebelled against the dominance of the boomers, and who had their teenage years in the eighties and nineties). An important distinction between these generations is Computer Literacy, which Boomers need to learn, but which Gen-Xers grew up with. Diana Oblinger makes a case for the emergence of a new generation that she calls the Millenials (but who have also been called the iPod Generation, or Generation Y), who have their teenage years in the 2000s.

Millenials have not just grown up with computers, they have grown up with the Web, and are used to being connected and having information at their fingertips. They also have a radically different approach to participation and privacy that sets them apart from the Gen-Xers, I think that a good term for this attitude and openness is Web Literacy.

As far back as 2000, people were noticing a different mindset emerging in students. Jason Frand listed a number of characteristics:

• Computers aren't technology - just part of the furniture
• Reality is no longer real - or perhaps Unreality is no longer Unreal - students view activities in the virtual space as being as real as things that happen in their physical lives
• Multitasking is a way of life - they have become used to multiple information channels
• Internet is better than TV - they are the first generation to watch less TV than their parents
• Nintendo over logic - they prefer to try something out than have it explained to them
• Staying connected - they are used, through mobile phones and broadband, to being connected to each other and the information world at all times

Marc Prensky has a great way to talk about the differences between Millenials (who have this mindset) and Boomers and Gen-Xers (who don't), he talks about Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants.

It is interesting to focus on the different attitudes to education held by Digital Natives and Immigrants. The argument is that Immigrants are much more passive that Natives, and prefer their learning experience to be structured, focused and based on individual experience, while Natives prefer a multi-tasking, random-access approach to information which is much more interactive and collaborative. They also see learning as a natural part of their world, rather than an unnatural adjunct.

If we take these characterisations of our students we can then look at how our current e-learning technologies match up with them to find out if we are providing the sort of support that our Web Literate students actually need.

E-learning at the moment is dominated by the notion of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), these are monolithic systems that provide a single port of call for students and where they can get access to resources, receive notifications about course events and interact with their teachers and peers. It seems obvious that this kind of structured experience, owned wholly by institutions and teachers, does not fit the kind of flexible, random-access mindset of the new Web Literate students.

(above image is from a generator at http://generator.kitt.net/)

Actually VLEs have fulfilled an important need. For a number of years the potential of technology has exceeded practitioners ability to use the technology (making course notes available online for example), this technology deficit decade (from around 1995-2005) was well served by VLEs, but their time is probably over.

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) are an alternative vision that have emerged in the last few years. PLEs explode the functionality of a VLE, the idea is that a PLE is a learning management system used by a student to draw together data and functionality from a wide range of other applications and services. For example, to gather resources from online repositories such as Flickr, news feeds from sites like Technorati, and more specific information from portfolio servers and institutional Student Information Systems.

Examples of PLE software include the early Colloquia system (a kind of desktop learning organiser), PLEX (an organiser that is integrated with a variety of online services), and more recently Elgg (an open source social networking system).

But you could go further. Flock is a new Web browser that understands the APIs of a number of key websites, this allows some very powerful data integration (such as dragging photos from Flickr into Facebook to share them with friends), and NetVibes offers a sophisticated way in which to build and customise a homepage that uses a wide range of widgets to draw information together. This effectively means that one can imagine an extreme PLE made up solely of publicly available Internet applications and services. For example, NetVibes can display calendars constructed of shared iCal files (so imagine if institutions published timetables, coursework deadlines and exam schedules in this format), displays RSS (what if courses had an RSS feed?) and has widgets for key social sites like Facebook (perfect for organising group work).

We can thus see an e-learning spectrum, from VLEs where the institution has almost total ownership, through PLEs, to entirely Web-based systems, where it is the students who have the ownership of their learning experience.

The problem is that we could take this argument a lot further. If we say that students can build their own learning experiences using open online applications, then surely they can do the same thing with content, drawing on online tutorials, help files and examples, creating ad-hoc learning groups using goal-sharing systems like 43-things, and building an independent portfolio of work. In this world, all learning is informal, and the institutions role is purely as an acreditor.

I accept that there is a place for this kind of learning (after all, we don't stand intellectually still after our University days are over), but I think that just as student ownership matters, so does institutional ownership. Institutions have values that they pass on to their students, and provide a service that guides and supports students to achieve a high quality of learning in a relatively short space of time. It is this spirit - and the access to the professional staff that embody it - that constitutes the added value of an institution, and which students are willing to pay for.

So the question is how could we support student ownership of the experience, without throwing away the institutional ownership of the provision?

I think that the answer is to keep the system in the cloud, in other words institutions provide a number of loosely coupled tools that can be appropriated by students or staff as needed. To make this work the tools have to be functionally focused and have open applicability so that they are easy to incorporate into peoples working spaces, and can be used flexibly in as many different ways as possible. To be successful I also think that it's necessary for these tools to exist as a public service, but also to be available as open source solutions so that Institutions can run them locally and thus guarantee a certain level of service to their students and staff (in a similar way to the email systems they run today).

I'm currently trying to create a Learning Societies Toolkit, which packages of number of applications with these characteristics that have been developed in the Learning Societies Lab here at Southampton, and am also intending to create public versions of them so that teachers and students at institutions without the capability (or inclination) to move forward in this way have a way in which to access them.

Before I finish its worth drawing attention to a marvelous piece of work undertaken by the Digital Ethnography department at Kansas State University, under the supervision of Prof. Michael Wesch. The following video presents the result of 200 students surveying themselves using a collaborative web authoring tool (Google Docs):

Its a very evocative video, but I don't entirely agree with the conclusions (that a solution to personalised learning is to return to chalk and talk teaching methods). I think that instead we could concentrate on building e-learning systems that don't try and enclose students in a safe but suffocating environment, and instead look at building systems that empower both teachers and students, helping them to interact and support one another in an open, flexible way.

It's time to reclaim the virtual learning environment.

The VLE is dead, long live the VLE!