Monday, August 20, 2012

Connected Learning as a Service

This is food for thought and discourse.  In the motion picture movie “The Matrix”, there were several scenes of online learning I think about every time I ponder the past, present and future of learning technologies and the impact on the mankind, society in general and institutions.  The first example is when Carrie-Anne Moss playing the role of Trinity called Tank played by Marcus Chong and asked him to download all she needed to know to fly a specific helicopter.  Within seconds, Trinity consumed the training material and put it to use without the overhead of enrollment, registration, checking pre-requisites, making sure she paid her bill and ensuring her authentication.  The second example was when Neo played by Keanu Reeves asked Tank to download Martial Arts training and the screen showed Ju Jitsu, Savate, Kempo, Tae Kwon Do, and, of course, Kung Fu and Drunken Master styles.  After the download, Neo begin practicing what he consumed with Morpheus played by Laurence Fishburne.

The Matrix is not the first movie I recall with a scene demonstrating the potential of a more direct human and computer interface to facilitate knowledge/memory transfer.  Total Recall, Star Trek and Brainstorm are other movies that come to my mind. Is the vision of connecting to a machine or computer some day in the distant future far fetched?  When was the last time you visited a hospital wing filled with stroke patients undergoing therapy, monitoring and rehab?  The computer connections are all over the body monitoring blood flow, brain waves and body movements.

Imagine the benefits, cost savings and life changing implications we could achieve for a greater percentage of the population if we could pipe knowledge and emulated experiences into someone's brain the way Trinity mastered flying a helicopter?  Sounds a bit draconian I know.  Trinity did not have to lift a book or spend a thousand hours in a simulator or listen to an instructor for days and hours in a classroom.  It's like a subject video offered by Khan Academy that helps one solve algebraic equations very directly.  Sure, the idea raises many fears like brainwashing or question the source of knowledge accumulated conveyed and absorbed - similar to how we evaluate Internet content today or a textbook abstracting historical events, motivations and outcomes. Just because it is on a website or textbook does not mean the information is true or correct.  We infer the level of trust based upon the source and author.  With less than 1% of the world's population having access to higher education (beyond secondary), would it not benefit mankind greater if we consider new forms of delivery that could radically change the way we learn, accumulate knowledge and experiences?

Does the goal of syndicating or spreading knowledge (not just information) justify more radical means of interchange and transmission?  Or, are we (the education industry) disseminating knowledge, validating  learning and achievement - which translates into rating how hard someone works learning subjects as a 
surrogate - comparable or not?  Would the goal of learning and preparing people for their life's challenges (accumulating knowledge through 1st, 2nd or third person interactions) - and leveraging our brain's capacity override our current inefficient learning methods?  What is your initial impression of direct downloading of content from a third party source?  Is it different than accessing knowledge bases today on the web or open courseware subjects published by leading universities?  Is it cheating to skip the seat time and jump to the conclusion?  What is and what is not teaching, learning and achievement?  Is it not cheating to listen to an audio book instead of picking up the book the old fashion way and reading it?  Is reading the book on the Kindle the same even though I never turn a page physically?  Part of how and why we assess learning and the effort foils us.  Learning outcomes and addressing source of learning are details measuring the subjective value, no?

Imagine if our educational methods were not bound by the user interface, time limits and friction introduced by teaching and learning methodologies, communication styles, ego, intellect?  Imagine if we could learn on our own terms - with choices and methods not restricted by those who control information through syndication, digital rights and laws (copyright).  We have taken baby steps - with online self paced learning tools.  They evolved as with all new mediums - starting with crib notes and audio books available on a smartphone or tablet. They are not as radical as the Matrix download, but the objective of new mediums like pod casting is just a small step in the same direction.

Take a deeper dive down this hole with me for a second.  What if we collapsed the amount of time it would take to earn a four year degree into one 8 hour day - and overcome the different learning styles, intelligence or motivation that complicates teaching and learning objectives?  A four year degree is a metered timeline linked to traditional forms of teaching and learning.  It's like a gestation period we have assumed.  The challenge comparing and compensating for the teaching and learning differences - of where and how we learn will continue - as consumers, producers and providers continue to evolve alternatives.

The connected learning experience could be enmeshed with positive reinforcement.  It could manage assessment and constructive feedback.  It could reinforce repetitive exposure.  It could provide a trusted framework.  And, become economically affordable to mankind - instead of placing a premium on delivery and syndication.  That would be totally disruptive - far greater than how photographic film was obsoleted by digital cameras or how Internet has changed the social connections and experiences sharing pictures.  Learning as a service should scale - and not be limited by source, seats or personnel.

Connecting learning as a Service (CaaS) will continue to evolve as consumers accept new mediums and methods - like games on the XBox, PlayStation or Wii - while resistance, denial of acceptability or comparability from those less comfortable will continue.  That could explain why technology has an adoption curve that could span generations and decades - and not just the here and now.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Digital Utilities Sequel

It seems like ions ago that I was working with thirty higher education institutions in the Philadelphia region developing and setting up academic and administrative applications such as scoring assessment tests to billing promissory notes.  This was well before minicomputers, microcomputers, personal computer, and local area networking took center stage following Moore’s Law(1).

Because of costs, complexity, lack of resources, and risks -  higher education institutions in Philadelphia including University of Pennsylvania, Community College of Philadelphia, Temple University and Drexel University banded together and setup a non-profit called UNICOL to share an IBM 360 mainframe and all the resources to operate the environment.  Users of UNICOL signed up for accounts, and paid for CPU and Disk usage monthly much like I pay for water and gas used at my house on-demand today.

My first company(2) called Phaedra, became a user of UNICOL developing batch based services. In those early days of time sharing we did not call it on-demand, cloud or virtualization.  Phaedra was able to prosper selling IT services to organizations that had high volume, repetitive processes who desired automation.  Many organizations could not afford to buy mainframes or allocate the physical space,specialized cooling and raised floors to hide all the cabling.  Phaedra was able to offer affordable batch computer services– like scoring a final exam for class of 50 students for less than $25.  No one could beat that pricing – the test scoring service saved faculty hours of effort and reduced the probability of institutions developing their own test scoring application because it was so inexpensive and provided a nice value.

High education was ripe for re-engineering and computing back in the 70's.  Functions were scattered across departments. Many applications included paper based forms.  Segregation of duties and control required extra steps.  High volume during peak periods complicated staffing.  At the same time, custom software was very expensive to setup and sustain. Corporations, universities, government agencies, and hospitals employed hundreds of programmers each to develop and maintain custom software applications like payroll, billing, accounts receivable, registration, accounts payables and so many other functional areas.  Time sharing alternatives offering CPU time, disk space, and applications like Payroll popped up all over the region.  As computing power became more affordable, more and more organizations established on-premise IT shops, acquired hardware and enterprise software.  The pendulum swing justified localized investment rooted in differentiation and control.

Fast forward almost four decades.  Virtualization, Cloud computing – and web services is changing the way we acquire and utilize computing power - or at least supplement what we have.  Apple, Microsoft, HP, Dell, Yahoo, Google and so many other companies are integrating Cloud computing in their product lines and business models.  They are the new digital utilities.  Cloud computing examples can be found are all over the web.  Open any browser or smartphone and tap the power of applications from Maps to finding an open table for dinner or ball game. We are drawn to the services by convenience and utility.

Virtualizing on-premise servers in the Cloud has gained adoption across many industry sectors.  Companies like Amazon, offering an online retail marketplace worldwide - also provides Cloud based virtualized services for IT shops looking for alternatives to on-premise computing.  Microsoft, Dell, IBM, HP and others offer private Clouds or online environments segregated by virtual boundaries.

The big gap in Cloud computing is still the lack of shared services starting with identity management. There are so many credentials created by Cloud applications because there is little emphasis on a shared model.  Thus, services require the duplication of characteristics and ID proofing - while trying to maintain privacy and consumer control.  How many online ID's do you have?

Bridging applications in the Cloud is still a challenge.  You can find a large array of Cloud based applications like scheduling a meeting, sharing photos, hosting a conference call, publishing a market survey to collecting data using web forms - yet they are all independent lacking a shared security or data exchange model.  These online services represent a new breed of solutions following the utility model, offering consumer’s incremental value based pricing.

In summary, today's digital utilities offers automated services – packaged as transactions, economically justified by volume and sustained by adoption. Digital utilities are an alternative to the on-premise or self managed IT environments duplicating and embedding applications managed by local policies, rules and resources. The trend to outsource and leverage external IT resources will continue to power administrative and academic computing.These are not new concepts in my view. History repeats itself – as do the lessons learned.  I hope the sequel is better the second time around.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
[2] Phaedra, Inc.1976, Pennsylvania Corporation