Athabasca University | AU Student/Staff Login | Invited Guest Login
Learnium
Learnium is yet another attempt to overlay a cloud-based social medium on institutional learning, in the same family as systems like Edmodo, Wikispaces Classroom, Lore, GoingOn, etc, etc. I deliberately exclude from this list the far more excellent, theoretically grounded, and innovative Curatr, as well as dumb bandwagoners like - of all things - Blackboard (not deserving of a link but you could look up their atrocious social media management tools if you want to see how not to do this).
Learnium has a UK focus and it includes mobile apps as well as institutional integration tools. It looks slick, has a good range of tools, and seems to be gaining a little traction. This is trying to do something a little like what we tried to do with the Landing, but it should not be confused with the Landing in intent or design philosophy, notwithstanding some superficial similarities. Although the Landing is often used for teaching purposes, it deliberately avoids things like institutional roles, and deliberately blurs such distinctions when its users make use of them (eg. when they create course groups). It can be quite confusing for students expecting a guided space and top-down structure, and annoying if you are a teacher trying to control the learning space to behave that way, but that's simply not how it is designed to work. The Landing is a learning space, where everyone is a teacher, not an institutional teaching space where the role is reserved for a few.
Learnium has a far more institutionally managed, teacher/course-oriented perspective. From what I can tell, it's basically an LMS, cut down in some places, enhanced in its social aspects. It's closer to Canvas than Moodle in that regard. It might have some value for teachers that like the social media tools but that dislike the lack of teacher-control, lack of privacy, deeply problematic ethics, and ugly intrusions of things like Facebook, and who do not want the cost or hassle of managing their own environments. It is probably a more congenial environment for social pedagogies than most institutional LMSs, allowing learning to spread beyond class groups and supporting some kinds of social networking. There is a lot of scope and potential for vertical social networks like this that serve a particular kind of community in a tailored fashion. This is very much not Facebook, and that's a very good thing.
But Learnium is an answer to the question 'how can I use social media in my courses?' rather than 'how can social media help to change how people learn?' It is also an answer to the question of 'how can Learnium make money?' rather than 'how can Learnium help its users?' And, like any cloud-based service of this nature (sadly including Curatr), it is not a safe place to entrust your learning community: things like changes to terms of service, changes to tools, bankcruptcy ,and takeovers are an ever-present threat. With the exception of open systems that allow you to move everything, lock stock and barrel, to somewhere else with no significant loss of data or functionality, an institution (and its students) can never own a cloud-based system like this. It might be a small difference from an end user perspective, at least until it blows up, but it's all the difference in the world.
- Some meandering thoughts on 'good' and 'bad' learning
December 20, 2022 - 7:39pm
Jon Dron - Preprint - The human nature of generative AIs and the technological nature of humanity:...
October 9, 2023 - 12:09pm
Jon Dron - Stories that matter and stories that don't: some thoughts on appropriate teaching roles for...
January 4, 2024 - 12:55pm
Jon Dron - Cognitive prostheses and the future of the human race
August 18, 2023 - 6:47pm
Jon Dron
Jon Dron
Comments
Jon,
Your words echo my own experience with our version of the Landing, called Pace Commons.
I am hoping that the community feeling more comfortable (or at least more inclined to participate) in this learning space.
Optimizing on two or more variables simultaneously is an interesting feat: a 2D learning space, knowledge building centre, and open to all. Does any LMS/CMS really address modern Net app'd learners, or just a digital limbic response to the last millenium?
So @ Steve Swettenham - you're prompting several questions here. Which two dimensions are you referring to in your response? And another question - could Net app'd learners be completely free of the digital appurtenances of the last century?
@ Mary McNabb - 2D refers to the width and height screen interface that humans are currently using to view and navigate.
An Australian researcher believes that she can create a quantum computer, which may qualify as a new form of computing; mix that with AI and robotics, and you have a recipe for homo sapien redundancy. Hence, net app'd learners may be "freerer" of the digital accoutrements by developing actual survival skills (i.e., how to tell time, find your way, or understand weather patterns etc... when their Apple watch runs out of energy).
Being tethered to an energy supply to access the digital world is tenuous compared to the ancient technology of rock paintings, clay tablets, and hemp scrolls; but being tethered to an app cloud (clouds come and go), is not independance for the enduser (rather a dependance that is reminiscent of an addiction). As for your last question, would it not depend to some extent on the individual learners and societal interests? (i.e., a return to the Apple commercial of 1984).
2D like books and maps?
Of course, our intelligence is and has long been tethered to and totally dependent on not only others around us but also the embedded knowledge of our forebears in the tools, products, and processes they create. It's not an optional extra - it is the nature of our engagement with the world and an inextricable part of our very thinking. As we build more of that into the tools themselves there are huge potential gains - we get smarter and more powerful - and huge potential losses, including great risks of taking away our power to control the things that matter most to us. Power supplies and network dependence are very tangible frailties (and two that will hopefully be solved in the not too distant future), but we must inevitably become more and more dependent on others of our species too, sharing the cognitive load as well as the artefacts. That has been the essential thrust of the past few thousand years. I think part of the longer game is augmentation - at first, the clunky head-mounted or phone-based stuff but, later, a far more invisible and symbiotic relationship, in which we share in an enhanced and shared reality to which many contribute, and in which those 2D screens and separate information devices largely disappear from the physical space (though many will reappear virtually). Whether this turns us into the Borg (Mark Zuckerberg as the Borg Queen?) or whether we become a more connected, enlightened, caring species in the process hinges quite a bit on the decisions we make now. Interesting times!