CCK08 – SCORM 2.0 and Connectivism

SCORM 2.0 Colleagues,

I recently enrolled in an online course “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCKO8)
taught by George Siemens and Stephen Downes with 1,900+ other folks from around the world. What drew me to the course, besides Downes and the learning theory, Connectivism – was that the theorist is also “eating their own dog food”. The course uses those Web 1.0/2.0 tools (the LMS is Moodle, a wiki, blog, podcast, online conferencing video/audio, online collaboration tools, CMAP etc). The curriculum is rather straight forward in that it has readings, lecture, discussion and reflection.
The real differences from the traditional “brick and mortar” are the tools which have the common denominator of being Web Enabled. So far nothing really out of the ordinary from what we are thinking about for SCORM 2.0, or are there?

I know we are all probably sick of hearing the word Web 2.0, but I think it’s significance is really about the journey most of have been on for the last 20 plus years. That day began when we got our “first Mac” or Toshiba laptop, or when we “discovered the internet using Gopher”, or wrote our first program, or built/taught your first online course or attended your first standards meeting.

We have seen and will continue to see technologies that “have substantively reduced barriers to content creation” and increased “opportunities for continuous communication” and we have seen “amazing opportunities to experience a reality beyond what we would physically experience regularly” (George Siemens to eFest in New Zealand on The Unique Idea of Connectivism – available here at eluminate
George’s take, and I agree, is that “Web 2.0 is only just the current instantiation and we should not build education just on wikis and blogs that will fade”. Does anyone doubt that there will be a Web 3.0?
Something like a 3D-Web as an example which is waiting in the wings?

Now for the so what for me from George’s pitch that applies to SCORM 2.0
— Do we need an LMS? “LMS’s are a technology that forces a methodology or an approach to a view of learning on learners. We need an approach that gives the learner optimal control.” This thought runs through quite a few of the SCORM 2.0 papers, and deserves additional thought, discussion and consideration.

I am not advocating that we throw out SCORM 1.0; for the current installed base it works (minus sequencing), let’s just leave it alone and move on.

SCORM 2.0, as a principle will need to look at a loosely-coupled set of web services, so as fads fade (both technologies and learning theories), the enduring ideas will persist and we are not forced to throw the baby out with the bath water, re-architect or reengineer. We need a solution which is flexible enough to be able to ebb-and-flow with the ever-increasing speed of technology innovations (tools) and can adjust as learning theories and learning methods adapt.

Thanks Frank