Complexity leadership in open learning
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Version: draft for group discussion. Prepared for Assignment 2, EDDE 804 - Leadership & Project Management in Distance Education, Ed. D. in Distance Education, Athabasca University, Canada
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Complexity leadership in open learning
- 1. Complexity Leadership in Open Learning Su-Tuan Lulee Prepared for EDDE 804, Ed. D. Feb., 2011
- 3. Rising cost of education is a significant barrier to individuals & Institutions
- 12. Adopting CLT in Open Learning Environment
- 13. (Modified from Siemens, G., 2010)
Notas del editor
- According to Forbes magazine (Feb. 2011 by Louis E. Lataif), the cost of a four-year public college education has amounted from 18% to 25% of the annual income of middle-income families during the past ten years. A report (2008) from Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs also found that U.S. postsecondary education is growing imbalance: the Higher Education Price Index has an average change of 4.47 percent per year while the Consumer Price Index has only increased an average of 3.4 percent per year. An important conclusions of this report is that the four-year education opportunities for future generations of first-generation and low-income students is squeezing out.
- - Open Learning refers to the learning environment that uses open educational resources and open source software to provides openly accessible learning opportunities for everyone. Why open learning could be one solution to the rising cost in education? Because the cost for providing open learning is low. The educational resources and the learning software applications are free and available.
- Open educational resources are defined as technology-enabled educational resources that are openly available for consultation, use and adaptation by users for non-commercial purposes (UNESCO, 2002). There are a large number of digital open educational resources with open licenses that give users pre-defined rights to use and change the materials in various ways are available such as Open Learning Initiative from Carnegie Melon, Learning Space from The British Open University, Commonwealth of Learning from UN, MIT Open Courseware, Tufts Open courseware, MERLOT, Connexions, Sofia, and many others. These organizations have developed hundreds and thousands of learning materials, learning units and courses all available for free non-commercial uses.
- Open educational resources are defined as technology-enabled educational resources that are openly available for consultation, use and adaptation by users for non-commercial purposes (UNESCO, 2002). There are a large number of digital open educational resources with open licenses that give users pre-defined rights to use and change the materials in various ways are available such as Open Learning Initiative from Carnegie Melon, Learning Space from The British Open University, Commonwealth of Learning from UN, MIT Open Courseware, Tufts Open courseware, MERLOT, Connexions, Sofia, and many others. These organizations have developed hundreds and thousands of learning materials, learning units and courses all available for free non-commercial uses.
- Open source tools have been increasing rapidly during the past decade. They are free of use for everyone. The following tools are found especially useful in improving the effectiveness of open learning: Learning Management System such as Moodle and SAKAI Video conferencing tools such as WizIQ that has been emerged into Moodle. Concept mapping tools such as Cmap and VUE . Social learning tools such as Blog, wiki, bookmarking, eportfolio, web-presentation and others: Blogger, GoogleDocs, Diigo.Delicious, Mahara, SlideShare, Google Group, Netvibes , etc. Visual tools such as ManyEyes and OECD Factbook. Learning analytics tools for dynamic network analysis and modeling such as SNAPP , Singnal , and computational modeling tools for system dynamics modeling and data mining. And many more … With the rights for using OERs and the support of open source learning/analyzing tools, open learning can provide a low cost solution to solve the social problem of increasing education cost in higher education without sacrifice its quality. Signal Project: The premise behind Signals is fairly simple — utilize the data collected by instructional tools to determine in real time which students might be at risk, partially indicated by their effort within a course. Through analytics, the institution mines large data sets continually collected by these tools and applies statistical techniques to predict which students might be falling behind. The goal is to produce “actionable intelligence” —in this case, guiding students to appropriate help resources and explaining how to use them. The Signals system is based on a Purdue-developed student success algorithm (SSA) designed to provide students early warning — as early as the second week of the semester — of potential problems in a course by providing near real-time status updates of performance and effort in a course. Each update provides the student with detailed, positive steps to take in averting trouble. Today, more than 11,000 students have been impacted by the Signals project, and more than 50 instructors have used Signals in at least one of their courses.
- All these conditions generated a bit of chaos. George Siemens (2010) described it as a networked course that does not have a centre. Open learning is a emergent, interactive, dynamic, and complex system.
- Learning doesn't happen in the blind. The openness of open learning requires new methods for coping. If we treat educators in open learning as the leaders. Leadership is needed in open learning. We propose that the complexity leadership theory is the most appropriate leadership theory for describing and predicting the dynamic and interactive relationships in open learning networks. What is Complexity Leadership Theory? • CLT is a framework for leadership that enables the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems (CAS) in knowledge-producing organizations or organizational units. • CLT describes conditions in which adaptive dynamics emerge and generate creative and adaptive knowledge. • CLT sees leadership not only as position and authority but also as an emergent, interactive dynamic that produces new patterns of behavior or new modes of operating. • CLT focuses on identifying and exploring the strategies and behaviors that foster organizational sub-unit creativity, learning, and adaptability (Uhl-Bien & et al., 2007). • Leadership, as it in CLT, is the behavior and the resource elements of interacting individuals of the community come together in useful ways (Lichtenstein, Uhl-Bien, & Marion, 2006).
- After studying papers regarding CLT, we found that the papers we read have described the chaos, network the system from multi-angles explicitly; however they did not provide clear paths that tell people how to implement an effective leadership. For that reason, we synthesized our interpretation and propose the following four cyclic steps for applying complexity leadership in open learning environment. CLT assumes that Real-world complex adaptive systems do not lend themselves to controlled experimentation. Observation. CLT approach of leadership begins from observing the network of interaction between heterogeneous individuals and the rapidly changing environmental demands. Data collection. From the perspective of CLT, leadership events are not constructed by the actions of single individual (the leader). Leadership events emerge through the interactions between agents overtime. It is important to collect data from the context that shape ideas including networks of interaction, complex patterns of conflicting constrains, patterns of tension, interdependent relationships, rules of action, and direct/indirect feedback loops. Analyzing the mechanics for changing. CLT assumes that there are causal relationships in the complex system therefore leaders should capture these relationships/interactions as data in a systematic way and model these data in ways that highlight their longitudinal & relational qualities. The analyzing step examines the mechanisms that emerge include resonance (i.e., correlated action) and aggregation of ideas, catalytic behaviors (behaviors that speed or enable certain activities), generation of both dynamically stable and unstable behaviors, dissipation of built up tension as phase transitions, nonlinear change, information flow and pattern formation, and accreting nodes (ideas that rapidly expand in importance and which accrete related ideas) Enabling leadership. After understanding the context and the mechanics of an open learning system, leaders (the instructors or facilitators) can apply leadership by (1) creating general structure of complex networks that facilitate effective interaction for forming new knowledge and creative ideas; (2) providing conditions that catalyze effective network interaction for information flow and connections; (3) fostering interdependency with rules that apply pressure to coordinate when conflictions, problems or dilemmas arise (rule-enabled interdependency); (4) promoting tension by heterogeneity: building atmosphere (structuring work groups) in which diversity is respected and diverse ideas/perspectives on problems are tolerated. Instructors can use tension to foster productive discussions and interaction. Since there are so many data in a complex system, the instructors (leaders) need to leverage computer technologies. For example, visual tools and social network analysis applications can be used to collect data and present the data with easy-to-interpret diagrams. (Lichtensein et al., 2006 & Uhl-Bien et al., 2007)
- OpenLearn is one of the largest of such initiatives and is committed to the provision of open educational resources for all. It is being developed by The Open University and is primarily sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. It provides users with over 4 200 hours of higher educational material drawn from Open University courses. Other learning tools such as discussion forums, video conferencing, and knowledge mapping software are also available to the user.