Even though, in all truth, universities now are mostly wedded to systemic, whole-of-institution approaches, the most likely source of innovation and development remains with locally organised initiatives, either individual or small groups within departments. There has, over the years, been much talk of the need for e-learning to rein in to the early adopters and the lone innovators and come up with approaches which are consistent and standard. This approach is not knowledge networking; this approach flies in the face of the lived experience of the Internet. Certainly, institutions need to become more systematic and plan carefully how they implement e-learning. But the vanguard of innovation remains teachers, with real problems, that they want to solve to improve the engagement of students and their learning outcomes. Knowledge networking practically addresses the potential of this vanguard by empowering individuals, with the right tools, to implement rapidly novel ideas. That is the lesson of the social adoption of the Internet: it is always about the power of the user, decentralisation of development, disintermediation of traditional institutions, and the ‘permanent beta’ which say: do it, it’s not going to break.
The practical development of learning in knowledge networks by individual academics is never going to be a programmatic, standardised process of development. Rather, it is about the highly specific needs of the particular teaching environment within which academics find themselves. Teaching 200 first-year students fully online in a BA (Internet Communications) unit is not the same as teaching 20 final-year physiotherapy students on campus; teaching 3000 marketing students on campus is not the same as teaching 3000 marketing students online. Teaching kinaesthetic disciplines, like sports science, is not the same as teaching design, which is not the same as teaching mathematics. This context, the frame within which an individual teacher seeks to develop their response to the possibilities of knowledge networking matters more than overall plans, general demands to ‘go online’ and the standardised solutions of learning management systems. As I explore in this section, there is a creative interchange between the general and the specific, between Web 2.0 and the LMS, but one is never the same as the other and without the former, the latter is increasingly relegated to simplistic or formal educational transactions rather than co-constructive learning.
So, setting aside concepts and theories about networks and pedagogy, the principle challenge in moving to a knowledge-networking paradigm for learning is “how do I do it?” in a very practical way.
This section of the LINK website will help, not by offering prescriptive advice or check lists, nor by talking generally about online learning, but by canvassing some of the key issues which were raised by people who participated in the workshops and lecture series for the LINK project. There is a 10 tips guide, however, if you want to cut to the core of the issues.
