1. Getting started Getting started on a PhD is pretty much like starting on a journey. You probably know where you want to arrive at, you have a fair idea of how you hope to get there, and you have a rough idea of how long this journey will take. You also have only a very vague idea of the other things that will happen on this journey - the potential obstacles, the opportunities, or the people that you will meet along the way - or how you will cope with these new experiences. Like many big journeys, you will will start out with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Unlike most geographical journeys, however, the experience of undertaking a PhD provides the student traveller with an expert support-team to guide and advise on each step of the way. This support-team is called a supervisory panel. Usually there will be a Director of Studies, who is the main supervisor, and a Second Supervisor, who will bring supplementary or complementary experience to the advisory process. There are a lot of diverse factors that will help to determine the quality of the final PhD submission, but essentially it is the nature of the interplay between the student, the subject matter, and the (usually two) supervisors that is at the core of the whole experience. We will deal later with each of these components in turn, but for now let’s just focus on getting started. Usually the student embarking on a PhD has already performed well in a relevant undergraduate degree and wants to get more deeply engrossed in the subject area. This is a good start, but it is not enough. There is a key responsibility at a very early stage for the lead supervisor to help articulate quite clearly the shape of the tasks ahead. By this I mean, not just to help to define the wording of the research question (or the hypothesis) important though this stage is, but also to give very clear and gentle guidance on the level of what is expected, the standards to aspire to, and to inspire confidence that this complex task can be simply broken-down into manageable, well-paced sub-tasks, which the student is perfectly capable of undertaking. It is also crucial not to hype-up the PhD study process so that the student is intimidated and deflated before they even make a start. There are many aspects of self-directed research that are daunting, challenging, and frustrating, but the role of the supervisor is to work with the student to put these challenges into perspective and to seek a way through to the next level. It is therefore important that a balance between realism and optimism is struck during these early stages. The supervisor should not minimise the likely challenges ahead - breaking new ground is part of the attraction for all researchers, young and more elderly - but neither should a responsible supervisor seek to "scare" a student into action by emphasising the scale of the obstacles. I have often told students that a PhD is only 70% intelligence and 30% stamina (we can argue about the exact figures later!) and this point of this is that lots of clever people embark on research for a doctorate but never complete it. This is not because they are stupid people, they have already demonstrated that they are not by their ability to get accepted for a PhD registration. Rather it is because the long slog of research at this level - the scoping, preparation, leg-work, desk-work, frustrations and imponderables that have been discovered - is simply more than they are prepared to endure for the rewards on offer.

The highly flexible nature of the internet means that websites appear and disappear every day. Thanks to Donald MacLean for reminding me that another currently popular university-managed site containing useful resources for prospective PhD students is http://cloudworks.ac.uk/ This is a freely-available, open-access site, although you will need to register to obtain access. Once you have entered the site, search for "PhD" to find a link to "research skills required by PhD students". The supporting text has short articles on a wide range of issues such as what is meant by ‘critical thinking’, how to select and justify your research methods, and tips on how to organise and present your work so that other people can appreciate your work. Like all of these sites, this one will not answer all of your questions, but it does contain different perspectives and useful information from people who have a lot of experience. When you are just starting out on your PhD research, not all of this advice will seem equally relevant. It makes good sense, however, to familiarise yourself with the variety of information on the site, and bookmark the URL, because you might want to return to these topics later in your studies as these issues take on a new relevance. This advice also applies to the supervisor, because you might wish to direct your student to read the advice which will reinforce (or give a different perspective to) guidance that you give to students in tutorial sessions.

One of the very first things that I say to a new PhD student is that they need to have fun! This is not quite as counter-intuitive as it might at first seem. Usually I say first that actually stamina is at least as importance as intelligence in completing a doctorate by research. I have known several very clever people who, for one reason or another, could not manage to finish the PhD that they started. This is not as surprising as it might appear, because a PhD is, almost by definition, a hard thing to complete. If you do not have the staying power when the going gets tough, the temptation to thrown-in the towel and go off to do something more interesting with your life, becomes very enticing. This is why the student (and the supervisor!) needs to really enjoy the subject that they are studying in such depth. When data and competing concepts get confusing and complicated (as they inevitably will) it is worth a lot to be able to enjoy the difficulties of the subject, even to relish them. If the topic surrounding your research question does not make you want to really absorb yourself in the fun of finding out more, then you are probably doing the wrong job. A regular "safety-valve" is helpful, whether this is a change of task - (such as spell of fieldwork) or a routine that allows a healthy balance between reading, writing, sport, family, and socialising with friends - the contented student should be able to take a short break and return to the academic battle the next day with just as much (or more) enthusiasm as when they first started. At sporadic intervals I often send my research students a link to a funny story, or a cartoon, such as can be found at www.phdcomics.com to poke fun at some aspect of the PhD research process. This website has hundreds of cartoons on almost every aspect of the PhD experience, and some of them ring so true that they are almost painfully funny. It certainly helps if we can laugh at ourselves and see things in perspective, but by far the best solution is to spend a lot of initial thinking-time considering exactly what is the best wording of the research question (and sub-questions) so that at the end of the studies both student and supervisor can honestly say that, whatever else, they had a lot of fun in the process!

Although the main research supervisor normally has the most contact with a research student, the role of the Second Supervisor also provides a useful balance. Normally the second (and perhaps third) supervisor has a limited contact with the student, perhaps as little as three or four discussions per year, but the input they provide is also valuable. It might be because the two supervisors cover different aspects of the same research problem and so can give different suggestions to cope with problems, or they may favour slightly different research methods and emphasis in the investigation. Even when the advice is similar from both supervisors, it can provide a reassurance that the student is on the right (or the wrong!) track. Research has indicated that the way that we supervise research students is often heavily influenced by the manner in which we were supervised ourselves. Some supervisors prefer a distant role, only making contact through formal meetings to check that the research is progressing well. They expect their research students to independent-minded and self-motivated and see a supervisor’s role as a combination of safety-net (for consultation in times of trouble) and manager (ensuring that all the key stages of development and reporting are taken care of). At the other end of the spectrum there are supervisors who seek to micro-manage the PhD project. Resist this temptation! Although the supervisor has a strong self-interest in ensuring that the student’s research project is successfully completed, the work needs to be done by the student, including making the mistakes, false starts, and the hours of working out the best way forward. The relatively light touch provided by the second supervisor can easily be provided via Skype or other such distance-shrinking audio-visual technology. If it is done on a regular basis, perhaps with some periodic face-to-face meetings, this can also be an option for the main supervisor. A benefit of this is that the supervisory team can be brought together on the basis of the skills and enthusiasm that they provide, not simply because they happen to be co-located in the same building or campus. Gone are the days when a PhD student needs to be based just along the corridor for their main supervisor - and anyway, many research students who were residentially based near their supervisor’s office will tell you that their supervisor was so busy globe-trotting to conferences and fieldwork that they hardly saw them for months at a time. Although the UK universities insist upon an external PhD examiner from a different university to ensure the equivalence of the level of the degree, it’s a pity that there is so much emphasis attached to individual institutions as this would seem to be a great opportunity to bring together cross-institutional expertise at the supervision stage, as well as at the final viva voce.

One of the very first things that I say to a new PhD student, and I repeat this on several future occasions just to make sure that the point is well made, is that this research study is their project, not mine. This might seem obvious, but there are good reasons for reinforcing this realisation early in the research student-supervisor partnership. It is to be expected that any supervisor has a vested interest in getting their student(s) successfully through the PhD process. By definition, the research topic that the student becomes immersed in is of common interest to the supervisor(s), who may already have spent many years of their lives researching into similar or allied topics. In addition, supervising successfully a number of research students to gain their doctorates is looked upon as a merit-worthy academic enterprise, and success will reflect well on the career aspirations of the supervisor. Finally, although there may be other benefits, the new ideas, new ways of thinking and the "original contribution towards knowledge" of the research topic which, by definition is the mark of the PhD, should also stimulate, inspire, and breathe fresh life into the academic thinking of the supervisor(s). So, all round, there are lots of justifiable reasons why it is in the supervisor’s best interests that the research student (whom the supervisor presumably had a say in appointing) is bright, vibrant, innovative, and successful in the completion of their PhD. There are limits, however. Although the supervisor wants the research student to write well, s/he will not write the dissertation for the student. Although the supervisor can recommend, guide, discourage one activity and encourage another, when the student walks into the final viva to defend their thesis, the student must be able argue their own case and justify their own decisions and conclusions. Some supervisors may get too close to the research topic of the student, resulting in a wish to influence it, or steer it very firmly in a different direction, and to a point this is natural. One associate of mine eventually parted company with his supervisor because the new research evidence of the student was indicating that it was beginning to undermine the views held by the supervisor over a long career. Rather than embracing the change, the supervisor sought to influence a different interpretation; the research student resisted, and was awarded his PhD in due course. My job as a supervisor, with every student, is to listen to the thoughts of the student on the research topic, make suggestions, discuss the latest academic reading, bounce ideas off, encourage experimentation and exploratory thinking, encourage them to write down their ideas and their results, and to work together as a team to analyse what these results actually mean. I give feedback verbally, and in a written form, and while I expect the student to listen to what I have to say, I do not expect her/him to necessarily agree with everything. The final decision on what to include and what to omit from the dissertation, on how many samples or how many interviews are needed, must be the decision of the research student. They are the ones who will need to defend their decisions to the academy, not me. The path of study for a PhD is much more about learning the process of research, and hoping at the conclusion there will be some good results which might make a difference. Above all the role of a supervisor is to help the research student learn the rules and tools of the trade, and to be supportive in the process - even if that support requires some rather blunt advice which the student does not initially welcome and means that more hard work is required!

Over the past few years my colleagues and I have been experimenting with the use of videoconferencing for conducting tutorial discussions with PhD students. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, in a geographically distributed institution like the University of the Highlands and Islands, we are not all conveniently located in the same building, or even the same part of the country. Both staff and students who are participating in the tutorial might be at widely dispersed locations and may rarely meet face-to-face. It used to be the presumption in most universities that the research student would be based in a room just along the corridor, or somewhere convenient within the department, convenient that is for the main supervisor. With the increasing number of part-time research students and the benefits of communications technology, I would argue that this is no longer necessary, and possibly no longer even desirable. The advantages of using videoconferencing are several, whether it is the high-definition system which the UHI is available at the UHI, or the quick-and-easy Jabber connections for less formal meetings. The use of Skype and Facetime is also common, and can be extended into non-work activities. Firstly, although it is not always imperative to see the person to whom you are talking, the ability to see facial cues does give an extra quality that is not available in simple telephone conversations. In the same way that co-location in the same room allows speakers to see the body-language of their audience, the video presence enables participants to see their colleagues smile, nod their head in agreement, or simply watch their eyes glaze over! I have found this very useful to observe when people actually realise when I am joking and when I am not! Secondly, probably the most convenient advantage of vc is the ability to connect people from almost anywhere. A regular meeting between the main supervisor and the research student at a distant location can be joined by another supervisor at a third location. This provides the best opportunities for networked support, regardless of where the expertise is based. Meetings can be a highly structured discussion with a formal agenda, or a quick, ten-minute focus on a specific point of deliberation. The participants can join from home, or work, or even from the field, and the media is sufficiently simple and easy-to-use that even short, ad hoc, meetings to discuss the wording of a single paragraph, can be arranged at the drop of a hat. Thirdly, most video communications services have the ability to record the meeting. This is probably not going to be very useful on every occasion, but for key presentations, or for intense sessions of very complex discussions, the participants have the advantage of being able to replay the meeting, analyse the dialogue, and take notes at their convenience. In many institutions, whatever the official rhetoric, the contact time between the research students and the main supervisors can be precious little, not to say sporadic. The ability to video-link with the supervision team at prearranged times, wherever they are in the world, is a great tool to give meaningful and networked support to the research student, and to provide quality time when it is most needed.

Most PhD students start out with at least a superficial knowledge of the key issues in their chosen research topic. They will already have completed a relevant undergraduate degree to a high standard (usually a first-class or a 2:1) and may also have done a Master’s degree in a related area. The working title of the student’s research topic, and probably the primary research question, will also have been discussed. So where does the student actually start working? Quite frequently, the student exhibits one of two contrasting behavioural states. Either s/he is a bit stunned to find themselves actually doing a PhD and a bit overwhelmed by the task ahead, so they do not really engage with anything very constructive; or else s/he is so enthusiastic with the idea of research that they want to go out immediately start collecting samples, or interviewing, or running an experiment! As is so often the case in life, the reality needs to be somewhere in between these two extremes. As it is unlikely (possible, but unlikely) that your research student will invent a whole new epistemological discipline, a whole new branch of science or humanities, the supervisor needs to direct the student to obtain a good knowledge about what is already known about their research topic area. There are several ways of doing this, which I will come to later, but the guiding principle is firstly, to read widely and deeply. Starting with a few of the most important papers which have been published in the academic literature, the student needs explore the subject, follow leads (some of which will be a blind alley) and take notes of the salient points. The temptation is to read a few papers then rush out to gather new data, but this would be a mistake. Many research students are surprised (some are delighted) when I tell them to spend the first three or four months (at least) doing nothing but reading and taking notes of what they have read. Slowly, with a systematic approach, a picture will begin to build up. The student will develop a deeper understanding of the subject area, probably discovering whole new areas of subtle variations to consider, and by elimination discovering the important areas of the subject that are less well-known. This reading is not just for pleasure, and while it should start to tail off as the student becomes familiar with the academic landscape, keeping up-to-date with the literature is essential right up until submission of the dissertation. The first six months are the most crucial, as the seminal papers are identified, read, and critically summarised. This information forms the backbone of the literature review, which in turn is the foundation of the introduction to the research topic. Some subject areas like to start the dissertation with a short background chapter and then the literature review, but for others the literature review is the introduction to the topic, so it needs to be well-considered, well-structured, and reasonably comprehensive. Getting research students to begin their studies by immersing themselves in the literature for months at a time is actually no soft option; systematically done, it’s a lot of hard but essential work.

I was discussing this topic with a couple of students at the UHI Post-graduate research students’ conference this week. It sounds like a trick question, but in the same way that a long walk, or a marathon, begins with the first step, so does the literature review begin with the first academic paper that the student reads. Normally, when starting out, the supervisor will direct the research student to three or four good papers which are especially relevant to the research topic under consideration. The student will read these, take notes, and then turn to the reference list at the end. As a guiding rule, the researcher should follow-up any and all of the references cited in the text of the paper which are in any way interesting, challenging, or crucial to the argument being made. From these first few papers, the research student will possibly discover half-a-dozen or more references in each paper which need to be read. At this level of study there is an expectation that if the researcher is going to quote anything, or even make a reference to previous academic work in context, they really need to have read the original article. It is not enough to say, "As was noted (Bloggs in Somebodyelse, 2015) it is clear that…" because it may be that the way that Somebodyelse used the idea(s) of Bloggs was wrong, or not how Bloggs intended that data to be used. There is always the danger of misinterpretation. The student needs to reach their own understanding. So, over a period of time, the student will read a lot of academic articles, track down the evidence which is cited in these articles, then read these follow-up articles too. And so on. From an initial 3 or 4 papers, the lines of follow-up investigation spread out like the roots of a tree. One of the signs that will tell the student when they are coming to the end of their required reading, is when they start to see the same papers starting to crop up again and again. There will undoubtedly be some blind alleys, when the reading slips off in one particular direction or another which is not really useful to the current research project. It might be because the papers referred to are old and the knowledge has been surpassed in later years (this will vary between subject areas, such as fast-moving subjects in science, computing, or e-learning). In some subjects it will be necessary to reference much older publications, either because they set a marker in the development of the subject, or because you want to contrast them with contemporary methods and disciplinary thinking). Another good idea is to visit the college library collection of previous PhD dissertations for a similar or related subject area. My preference is to search the online index of theses to which my university subscribes. This gives me access to every PhD abstract that has been produced in the UK, and an opportunity to order a copy if I find a particularly interesting match. The object of seeking out a similar PhD is not simply to read about the subject area (which you will extend and surpass anyway) but also to get a feel for the structure of the PhD dissertation, and to get a fast-track on the references that have been used to provide the evidence for this thesis. In the old days, people used to talk about students "reading for a degree in X" rather than studying it, and it is certainly true that the more effort that is initially spent on reading the background and the latest information on the subject, the better placed the student will be to make informed decisions when they begin to gather research data.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that multiple-choice and true-false tests are among the worst ways to measure whether learning is successful; in the best of circumstances, they tend to measure only the lowest levels of learning achieved, and in the worst of situations they leave respondents without any acceptable responses from which to choose. Yet we seem to remain tone deaf to concerns and criticisms voiced by educators for decades and continue to rely on them. From Skley’s Flickr photostream at http://tinyurl.com/machqej The multiple-choice/true-false approach is pervasive in much of what we encounter day to day within and outside of the world of learning. Surveys often incorporate these methods to make tabulation of the results easy—after all, it can easily be argued, we can’t afford to engage in more personalized labor-intensive methods of collecting data (e.g., reading short- or essay-length responses)—although there are signs that mechanizing the testing and grading process in ever-more sophisticated ways is increasingly becoming possible. But relying on mechanical methods so obviously produces mechanical results that I believe we need to question our own assumptions, be honest about what those assumptions are producing, and seek better solutions than we so far have managed to produce. A couple of recent experiences helped me understand the frustrations and weaknesses of multiple-choice/true-false testing at a visceral level: taking two very good and very different massive open online courses (MOOCs), and responding to a survey that relied solely on multiple-choice responses which, because they were poorly written, didn’t provide any appropriate responses for some of us who would have been very willing to participate in the project to which the survey was connected. Let’s look at the MOOCs first: #etmooc (the Educational Technology & Media MOOC developed and facilitated by Alec Couros and his wonderful gang of "conspirators" earlier this year) and R. David Lankes’s "New Librarianship Master Class" (a MOOC developed and delivered under the auspices of the University of Syracuse School of Information Studies). #etmooc, as a connectivist MOOC (where learning, production of learning objects including blog posts and videos demonstrating the skills that learners were acquiring, and online connections between learners were among the central elements and testing was nonexistent) nurtured development of a community of learning that continues to exist among some of the participants months after the course formally ended. The New Librarianship Master Class, grounded in the more traditional academic model of documenting specific learning goals, relied more on standardized testing to document learning results and offered less evidence that learners were using what they were learning. The frustrations that some of us mentioned after struggling with standardized questions that didn’t really reflect what we had learned and what we would be capable of doing with that newly-gained knowledge resurfaced for me last night as I was trying to complete in an online research survey. Facing a series of multiple-choice questions, I quickly realized that whoever prepared the options available as responses to the survey questions had underestimated the range of experiences the survey audience had—was, in fact, tone deaf to the nuances of the situation. Opting for results that could be scored mechanically rather than requiring any sort of human engagement in the tabulation process, the writer(s) forgot to include an option for "other" to catch any of us whose experiences didn’t fit any of the options described among the possible multiple-choice responses—which, of course, meant that at least a few of us who might otherwise have been willing to provide useful information abandoned the opportunity and turned to more rewarding endeavors. (And no, there wasn’t an opportunity to simply skip those questions-without-possible-answers so we could stay involved.) Abandoning a potentially intriguing survey had few repercussions other than the momentary annoyance of being excluded from an interesting project. Being forced to respond to standardized tests that don’t accurately document a learner’s level of mastery of a subject is obviously more significant in that it can affect academic or workplace advancement—and it’s something that is going to have to be addressed in those MOOCs that don’t take the connectivist approach—which raises a broader question that need not be answered within the confines of pre-specified options on a multiple-choice test: why are we not advocating for more effective ways and resources to encourage and document learning successes in both onsite and online settings? Expediency need not be an excuse for producing second-rate results.

The sight of flashing numbers on digital timepieces throughout our house yesterday afternoon was obvious evidence of a power outage while I had been away earlier in the day. But it wasn’t particularly distressing. I knew that PG&E, our local utility company, had been doing major work a block away from where I live, so I assumed the outage was over, reset the clocks, then went into our backyard to do a little gardening before joining the Week 2 live online session that would connect me to the training-teaching-learning colleagues I’m meeting through the five-week Exploring Personal Learning Networks (#xplrpln) MOOC (massive open online course) that Jeff Merrell and Kimberly Scott are currently facilitating under the auspices of the Northwestern University Master’s in Learning & Organizational Change Program. Approximately 15 minutes before the session was scheduled to begin, I was about to step back into the house to log into the Adobe Captivate space where #xplrpln colleagues were to meet, but noticed something strange: the water in our fountain had stopped flowing. Wondering whether it had become clogged, I turned off the pump, turned it back on, then recognized the problem: the power had gone out again. In an extended in-the-moment response that unexpectedly continues up to the time when I am writing—and you are reading—this piece, I begin considering options to fully participate in that live online session—and think about the importance of back-up plans. My desktop is clearly not an option since it’s reliant on a flow of electricity that is no longer available. My laptop, running on its fully-charged battery? Also not an option: it relies on a wireless router that is no longer functioning because of the power outage. Then it hits me: my Samsung Galaxy tablet has a fully-charged battery. And 3G connectivity. So I fire it up, follow the link from my email account to the Exploring Personal Learning Networks session, and discover another barrier: I don’t have the free Adobe Connect app on my tablet. Following a link to the Google Play Store—all the time thinking "This isn’t play. This is serious!"—I tap the "install" button in the hope that the download will be quick and that I won’t face a high learning curve to be able to use it. With moments to spare, the download is completed. I plug in a set of headphones as the PowerPoint slides for the session appear legibly on the seven-inch screen, and am hearing a stream so clear that it feels as if I’m in the same room that session facilitators Jeff Merrell and Kimberly Scott are occupying—which, in an appropriately visceral and virtual way, I am. Curious as to whether the full range of interactions available via a desktop or laptop computer exist on the tablet, I struggle with the on-screen keyboard to enter a chat comment letting colleagues know that I may not be fully participating in the session because of the tech challenges. And it goes through, making it visible to them and to me. They respond audibly and via the chat to say how impressed they are. I respond by telling them how relieved I am that it’s actually working. And we all walk away with another example of the power and increasing ubiquity of m-learning (using mobile devices to augment our learning opportunities and experiences), personal learning networks, and the levels of creativity that adversity inspires. P.S. - Using a fountain pen to write the first draft of this piece the morning after the session ends, I face another tech challenge: the fountain pen runs out of ink. The fact that I have a back-up fountain pen with me moves me past this final tech challenge, and further confirms the importance of having effective back-up plans in place whenever we step into the wonderful intersection of technology, learning, and collaboration in our well-connected communities of learning. N.B.: This is the fourth in a series of posts inspired by Connected Educator Month and participation in #xplrpln (the Exploring Personal Learning Networks massive open online course).

When we move into the four- to five-year horizon (time frame) of the latest Higher Education Edition of the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project reports, we are at the dreamiest expanses of this annual review of key trends, significant challenges, and developments in educational technology—which is just where trainer-teacher-learners need to be. It’s a lovely area, where we find an intriguingly new kind of virtual assistants—ed-tech tools rather than the current human beings working from a distance to meet employers’ needs: "The latest tablets and smartphones now include virtual assistants…Apple’s Siri, Android’s Jelly Bean, and Google Now…Students are already using virtual assistants in their personal lives, yet most institutions have yet to explore this technology’s potential outside research settings" (p. 46). Stepping beyond the virtual pages of the Horizon Report, we find a variety of resources already exploring where we may be going with virtual assistants: "7 Pros and Cons of Using Siri for Learning" from TeachThought; "Does Apple’s Siri Belong in the Classroom?" from Concordia University Online; and "How to turn Google Now into a powerful personal assistant" from CiteWorld.    Moving into the other element explored in that Horizon Report four- to five-year horizon, we find people looking for the quantified self  based on data that their tech toys provide them: "…the phenomenon of consumers being able to closely track data that is relevant to their daily activities through the use of technology…these large data sets could reveal how environmental changes improve learning outcomes" (pp. 44-45 of the report). Most importantly, we see visions of where learning, creativity, and technology may be intersecting in significant ways in the not-too-distant future. If we’re inclined to think the quantified self and these redefined virtual assistants are the latest pre-fad incarnations of technology that offers little to trainer-teacher-learners and those we serve, we need to look back only a few years to remember a period when tablets had not become a standard item in much of our learning environment. A time when massive open online courses (MOOCs) were barely a topic for discussion, and wearable technology was not on the cusp of mainstream adoption in learning via Google Glass. Then think about how quickly we have moved along adoption horizons. Many of us have come to value our tablets as magnificent access points to information and learning resources—a form of mobile library in the palm of our hands—and can already imagine Google Glass and other forms of wearable technology becoming part of that learning environment. (Imagine John Butterill incorporating Google Glass into his virtual photo walks and you can already see the potential.) We are beginning, as Associate Instructional Design Librarian John Schank suggested during a panel discussion at the American Library Association Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia last month, to see MOOCs—particularly connectivist MOOCs—as a new form of textbook (a comment that, much to my surprise, seemed to receive little attention from anyone at the session but which strikes me as an incredibly perceptive and right-on-target observation as to one of the many roles MOOCs are assuming in training-teaching-learning). And we’re also seeing MOOCs as ways to inspire as well as evolve into long-term sustainable communities of learning providing ongoing experiential learning opportunities. We really have never seen anything quite like this because we’ve never had the combination of technology tools and platforms (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ Hangouts) we now have to create extended in-the-moment flexible learning environments that can facilitate just-in-time learning and create another way to sustain communities of learning long after a course formally ends. And now we’re looking at the possibility of quanitifed self technology that could provide important information, filtered through learning analytics tools, to make real-time course adjustments to enhance learning experiences. We’re looking at virtual assistants that might be programmed to anticipate and respond to learners’ information and learning needs to the benefit of everyone involved. If we connect learners through their tools and through collaborations between learning organizations (K-12, higher education, museums, libraries, and workplace learning and performance), we see the potential to further create, foster, and sustain the sort of onsite/hybrid/online lifelong learning that the New Media Consortium inspires and supports through the Horizon Project and its other innovative offerings. It’s a great example of how a learning organization not only provokes thought, but also provokes us to take the actions necessary to create the world of our dreams. NB: This is final set of reflections in a six-part series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report.

The potentially fruitful intersection of massive open online courses (MOOCs), Open Educational Resources (OERs), and libraries is nicely explored in a newly released environmental scan and assessment released under the auspices of the Association of College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. Written by Carmen Kazakoff-Lane, a librarian at Brandon University (Manitoba), the report should be useful to trainer-teacher-learners within as well as outside of libraries as we all continue exploring the ways that MOOCs, Open Educational Resources, and libraries contribute to our lifelong learning environments. "Libraries can and should support open education…." Kazakoff-Lane suggests in the opening paragraphs of Environmental Scan and Assessment of OERs, MOOCs and Libraries: What Effectiveness and Sustainability Means for Libraries’ Impact on Open Education, "[b]ut before libraries do so, it is useful to understand the open education movement as a whole, including some of the key challenges facing both OERs and MOOCs…"—a suggestion I believe applies equally to many outside of libraries, for the more we  viscerally understand MOOC and OERs through first-hand experience, the more likely we are to find creative ways to address the training-teaching-learning challenges we face. OERs, she maintains, "are a natural outcome of several social trends" including open-content movements, "the evolution of a society where individuals actively share information and where many people collaboratively develop and improve knowledge," Web 2.0 technology that supports the tradition of sharing ideas among colleagues, and increasingly "global access to education via the Internet." MOOCs, in a similar vein, are "an evolutionary outgrowth of two major trends," she maintains: online learning and other innovations including flipped classrooms, and the Open Educational Resources movement itself.   Among her suggestions to her library colleagues are to address the need "to engage with the OER movement" and explore ways that they can support learners and learning facilitators interesting in using MOOCs as part of their learning landscape. Again, those of us who also work outside of libraries have plenty to gain through similar explorations as well as through explorations of where we might create partnerships with our library colleagues—particularly those who, by working in academic libraries, are clearly in the middle of well-established learning environments. Our library colleagues, she notes, are in a great position to "provide important intellectual property services and advice" about copyright issues related to OERs and MOOCs; facilitate use of restricted materials; and help learners make successful transitions from being information consumers to being "a community of information sharers." While there is much to admire in the report, there are also points where caveat emptor is an appropriate warning. Her assertion that MOOCs "are a largely experimental undertaking that has yet to demonstrate its effectiveness as an educational tool" suggests that she has not yet had the positive experience of participating in an effective connectivist MOOC such as #etmooc (the Educational & Technology MOOC that produced tangible learning successes and produced an ongoing community of learning) or #xplrpln (the Exploring Personal Learning Networks MOOC that helped participants expand their PLNs while studying the topic).   Her presentation overall, however, is well balanced and reminds us that in spite of criticisms about low-completion rates among those registering for MOOCs, those facilitating learning through large-scale MOOCs, are "able to educate more students in one class than he or she otherwise would in an entire career." As she brings the report to a close, she leaves us with a recommendation well worth considering: "Libraries can and should play a central role in either [MOOCs or Open Educational Resources], and in so doing ensure that their institutions and users are best served by a sober look at the pros and cons of different models of openness for learners, educators, institutions, and governments, not just in the immediate future, but in the long term as well." It’s great advice for those working with and served by libraries, and it’s great advice for anyone involved in any aspect of our continually evolving concepts of lifelong learning.

One of those catch-phrases that sticks with anyone familiar with Star Trek is "resistance is futile," and I’m among those who jokingly mutter the phrase when facing seemingly insurmountable challenges. But a conversation this morning with a wonderful colleague who is facing numerous difficult challenges made both of us propose a complementary thesis—"Resistance is necessary." Because it hints that many of our best and most productive endeavors will be accompanied by tremendous resistance. Because an alternative to resistance is resignation. And because refusing to succumb to despair when we are facing our most daunting professional and personal challenges ultimately carries us through our darkest times. It’s a fact of life that we all face those dark nights that San Juan de la Cruz captured so beautifully, so poignantly, and so poetically in the sixteenth century—and that if we are willing to work our way completely through that darkness toward whatever light awaits us rather than turning back and remaining without hope, we emerge transformed in ways we could not have previously imagined. We can’t, however, do that alone—which is why the conversation my friend and I had his morning meant so much to both of us. She’s one of an ever-growing group of people I know who are currently facing extremely challenging and discouraging situations. They are very talented. Very creative. Very well respected by colleagues in their tremendously different industries. They were hired for their commitment to and reputation for inspiring positive changes meant to benefit the people and organizations they serve. They willingly accepted the challenges they face because they believed they would receive the support required to reach the goals they agreed to pursue. And they have found themselves, at various times, pushed to the point of despair—wondering what they "did wrong" rather than asking why some who should be supporting them are, in essence, betraying them and those who might ultimately benefit from the energy, heart, and soul they put into their endeavors. It’s hard for them to avoid depression and resignation. And it’s hard for those of us who admire them to see what they are experiencing. But just as each of them has reached bleak moments in their darkest nights, they have found or are finding glimmers of light from kind words and expressions of support from family, friends, and colleagues. They hear from the beneficiaries of the efforts they have been making. They are finding hope because members of their communities are reaching out to support them in their individual moments of need, writing to them, and writing about them. This provides us with an important reminder after we have passed through our own dark nights: the smallest act of kindness or well-timed expression of understanding verbally or in writing, the willingness to simply listen to a friend or colleague in need, can make a world of difference for that person. And for everyone else that person touches directly or indirectly. Resistance makes us reexamine what we are attempting to accomplish. It helps us to be sure we are following the best possible path. It helps us eliminate the weakest aspects of our approach. It forces us to ask a very important question: Is what we are doing worth doing? And, ultimately, resistance leads us to better understand, appreciate, and react effectively to the opposition our efforts are creating so all of us can find the common ground that produces positive change.

Visitors to the Hidden Garden Steps Walking up and down the ceramic-tiled Hidden Garden Steps and adjacent garden in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset District on a daily basis brings at least three words to mind: opportunity, imagination, and joy. There is that daily reminder of the opportunity provided by a volunteer-driven community-based coalition that was strongly supported by colleagues in the Street Parks Program, a wonderfully supportive collaboration between the San Francisco Department of Public Works and the San Francisco Parks Alliance. There is the tremendous manifestation of imagination displayed by project artists Aileen Barr and Colette Crutcher through the mosaic they created for the site. And there is the sheer joy of seeing a long-ignored space brought back to life not only through the work of Hidden Garden Steps organizing committee members, but also by the numerous volunteers and donors who supported—and continue to support—the project, and the presence of people who increasingly are arriving from places all over the world to visit and enjoy the serenity as well as the camaraderie that comes when people meet, talk, dream, and share a space they treasure. It isn’t all that much different than what I find in the best communities of learning to which I’m drawn. We are united by a common (learning) goal and benefit from each other’s company over long periods of time. So when I read the sentence "Cities should provide and people should have access to opportunity, imagination, and joy" in Allan Jacobs’ The Good City: Reflections and Imaginations recently, I felt as if the world of city planning, park (particularly street-park and parklet) development, and learning had all come together on the pages of an inspiring and engaging book. Jacobs, former director of the San Francisco Planning Department and a University of California, Berkeley professor emeritus, covers a lot of ground in a book comprised of essays and short stories. Beginning with a description of two years he spent in India as an urban planner working under the auspices of the Ford Foundation, he leads us through a series of vignettes that ultimately are connected through the theme of how community and collaboration does or does not develop in a variety of settings including Cleveland, Curitiba, Pudong, Rome, Tokyo, Toronto, Vancouver, and, in the final sections of the book, San Francisco. His work is firmly rooted in what many of us fascinated by cities and community development have found in books by Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities), Christopher Alexander (A Pattern Language: Towns - Buildings - Construction; The Timeless Way of Building; and just about everything he has written since then), William Whyte (City: Rediscovering the Center), Peter Harnik (Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities), and many others who have written thoughtfully and in depth on what makes our cities work. When he turns his attention to San Francisco, he obviously delights in exploring the themes of opportunity, imagination, and joy. There are his recollections of how he and his City Planning colleagues engaged community at a grass-roots level: "we called well-advertised meetings, often by delivering notices to all individual mail-boxes, to get people together for an effort or to confront an issue" (p. 143) just as Hidden Garden Steps volunteers began the project with face-to-face, door-to-door conversations with neighbors close to the proposed project site, and followed those efforts up with numerous postings of flyers in neighborhood businesses and bulletin boards in addition to online contact using social media platforms. Jacobs acknowledges seeing "our role as the professional staff as partners of people more than as facilitators" (p. 145)—something that increasing numbers of training-teaching-learning colleagues are embracing in the work we do, and something that is at the heart of all the positive experiences Hidden Garden Steps volunteers had (and continue to have) with our San Francisco Parks Alliance, Department of Public Works, and other City/County colleagues. As I’ve noted many times, our successful partnerships never descended into us-and-them disputes; we were unified by a common goal and that’s what held and holds us together. Jacobs notes the dramatic results achieved through various partnerships: "The most positive, dramatic change to San Francisco over the last 30-plus years is the northern and northeastern waterfront, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the kids’ mini-baseball diamond-park at McCovey Cove, a distance of about seven miles. Crissy Field, a gem of a restoration area, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, has rightfully become a huge draw for walkers, cyclists, skaters, picnickers, fishermen, beachgoers, naturalists, people of all ages, and dogs…." (p. 160). He could have just as easily been talking about the smaller-scale Tactical Urbanism efforts that fuel San Francisco’s Street Parks projects when he discusses the changes that make our—and any—city great. He weaves the various and varied themes together as he nears the end of The Good City when he describes what that city would include: "there would be opportunities to learn and to work, to earn one’s livelihood; and places to get to with ease, places for social interaction or just to see other people, or places to be alone; and opportunities to participate in local decisions; and places for fun" (p. 176)…"People should feel that some part of the urban environment belongs to them, individually and collectively, some part for which they care and are responsible, irrespective of whether they own it. The city environment should be one that encourages participation….The public environment, by definition, should be open to all members of the community. It is where people of different kinds meet. No one should be excluded unless they threaten the balance of that life" (p. 178)—all of which, to me, just as accurately describes what is foundational to great communities of learning. Perhaps this is why so many of us are drawn to learning; to great cities; to parks and open spaces; and to libraries, museums, and so many other community resources: they share an all-important link—the magic that happens when opportunity, imagination, and joy bring us together to form, interact in, and sustain great communities that bring rewards far beyond any others we can imagine. They connect us to our past, through our present, and into a future we may not be around to see, but know will be much better for the contributions that we make to it. N.B.: Previous articles about the Hidden Garden Steps remain available on this blog.

You won’t hear any of the "MOOCs are dead" lamentations here at the 2014 New Media Consortium (NMC) Summer [ed-tech] Conference in Portland, Oregon. In fact, many of us attending New Mexico State University Assistant Professor of Curriculum & Instruction Julia Parra’s pre-conference workshop this morning walked away understanding that the world of MOOCs (massive open online courses)  is still very much evolving. As is the approach to designing and delivering them. As is the vocabulary that attempts to describe them. Parra took an appropriately playful approach to the topic as she suggested that incorporating concepts of gamification into the evolving world of MOOCs might produce more engaging and rewarding learning experiences for all involved. If we apply the playfulness of gamification to MOOCs, she suggested, we begin trying to cultivate "fans" rather than designing coursework for "students." Those "students" then become "adventurers" in learning "adventures" rather than completing uninspiring assignments in weekly "modules," and they engage in connected learning by working in small "guilds" comprised of less than 10 people per guild so they can more effectively become learners as creators rather than learners solely as consumers—something I’ve experienced and documented through participation in #etmooc—the Educational Technology and Media MOOC—and other connectivist MOOCs. Even the terminology applied to these online courses can reflect the variety of options available, Parra noted: MOOCs, in a variation she is exploring through an "Adventures in Learning Design, Technology, and Innovation" course she is developing, become MOLOs—Massive Open Learning Opportunities. Other variations she noted in passing include LOOCs (little open online courses), SPOCs (small private online classes), and LeMOOCs (limited enrollment MOOCs). The way we and our learners approach MOOCs and define completion and success is equally open to variations. One of her own practices is to engage in what she calls "scavenging"—diving into a MOOC long enough to find something of value to her or to achieve a particular learning (adventure) goal rather than feeling that she has to finish every assignment designed by those creating and facilitating the adventures she is pursuing. It’s the same approach many of us are taking in our lifelong-learning endeavors: we maintain that we have "completed" this sort of learning adventure when we have met our own learning goals rather than standard one-size-fits-all definitions of the term "course completion." The bottom line, of course, is that we help create and foster a culture of lifelong learning that provides the opportunity for learning facilitators to learn alongside their learners. Parra further helped us explore our ever-evolving learning environment by reminding us that some of our familiar approaches to learning (e.g., pedagogy and andragogy) are complemented through increasing attention we give to other "gogies," including heutagogy (the study of self-directed learning) and hybrid pedagogy. The push to explore, synthesize, and build upon the myriad approaches and influences trainer-teacher-learners encounter every time we step back from our work enough to see all that goes into it helped clarify the exciting range of possibilities that come our way each time we convene at a conference as inspiring and as eye-opening as the NMC Summer Conference is. Leaving the session—and looking forward to all that is before us for the next few days—left at least  few of us appreciating the elements of a framework for learning that Parra outlined: clarification; community and collaboration; creation; crystallization; and contemplation—a framework that should serve us well as we continue learning from our colleagues here in Portland and within the much larger communities of learning to which we belong through all that we attempt and accomplish.

Conference attendance, whether onsite or online, can be transformative. The planned and unplanned encounters with colleagues, the vendors with whom we work, the authors we adore (or are going to adore after encountering them and the work they produce), touch and change us in ways that sometimes are immediately evident and at other times require the passage of time to geminate and bear fruit. We seek, come across, and learn from people whose work we have avidly followed in print or online, and sometimes are stunned to find that they just as avidly following and learning from ours. We have unexpected, intensively personal conversations in spaces like the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference Networking Uncommons and, in the process, deepen relationships with people we might otherwise not have come to know. We learn how much more challenging and rewarding the conference-as-learning-experience can be when we learn how to blend our onsite and online participation via the conference backchannel. Relishing the collaborations that produce significant results through our volunteer service on committees or through participation in efforts like ALA Membership Development’s Ambassador program is just another part of mining conference opportunities for all they are worth; they help us understand how welcoming and supportive the ALA community can be—and is. And even though the size and scope of the ALA Annual Conference has us sharing space with more than 20,000 colleagues, it’s amazingly easy to find the individual members of our community we want to find—and equally stunning to realize how much the absence of even one cherished colleague can affect us. I had known that Ernie DiMattia, the chair of the ALA Publishing Committee, would not be with us here in Las Vegas this morning for our semiannual onsite meeting. All of us on the committee had been notified earlier this week that he was dealing with "ongoing health issues." But I had had no idea, before arriving at the meeting, that he had been in the final stages of a long-time battle with cancer and that he had passed away last night. There was a moment of silence as we all, in our own individual ways, struggled to absorb the news that this gentle, literate, vibrant light in the ALA community had been extinguished. And while I can’t speak to what others were thinking, I found myself reliving the moment, a couple of years ago, when Ernie approached me during an orientation session we were both attending, asked me how I was doing, was insightful enough to ask a thought-provoking question that significantly changed my perceptions about what all of us were learning to do in that session, and, as a result, sent me down a very productive year-long path as chair of an ALA advisory committee that completely changed the way it did its work. Ernie’s simple question at the moment I was about to become a committee chair: "Who will you be serving as a committee chair?" And the obvious answer—ALA 2012-2013 President Maureen Sullivan while working with (rather than for) ALA staff—inspired a series of interconnected partnerships that was rewarding for all of us and the larger ALA community we served. When my year-long term came to an end and I was lucky enough to be accepted onto the Publishing Committee with Ernie as chair, I continued to learn from the inclusive, collaborative approach he took to our work. I appreciated the fact that he went out of his way to stop and chat whenever our paths crossed in those wonderfully expansive conference hallways. I admired the way he fostered productive partnerships with our ALA staff colleagues to help craft a forward-looking strategic plan that will continue to make ALA Publishing an essential part of the ALA community’s operations. I wish I could say that I knew Ernie better. I wish I could say we had numerous lovely and inspiring conversations, but they were far too few. And as I walked those Ernie-less halls today, I knew they would never again feel quite so vital as they were through Ernie’s presence. But I also sensed that they would remain important, comforting, and essential to all I do as long as I continue acting upon and sharing all I learned from Ernie’s unofficial and very informal mentoring.

The more we explore connected learning through connectivist massive open online courses, the more room we see to push beyond our own perceptions of how far we can carry the connected-learning experience, I learned again last week. As I neared the end of my second full week of complete immersion in the Connected Courses MOOC (#ccourses) as a learner and in the Open and Connected Learning MOOC (#oclmooc) as a "co-conspirator," I had what I believed was an opportunity to step away from that connected online learning and return to onsite learning for a day with colleagues at the ATD (Association for Talent Development) Sacramento Chapter’s 4th Annual Training and Development Conference. I quickly cast aside the onsite-online dichotomy, however, by connecting to the onsite wireless network before the first session began, and spent significant parts of the day carrying the onsite experience online by using Twitter in two ways: to capture learning moments I could return to later as a way of reviewing what I had heard, and to share what I saw as the learning highlights with colleagues who were not present—including my learning partners in #ccourses and #oclmooc. Attending Mike Ryan’s extremely well-organized and engaging session on m-learning (mobile learning) that afternoon pushed me beyond anything I had expected to pursue in terms of connecting various communities of learning through a completely blended learning opportunity with synchronous and asynchronous elements. It was clear to me immediately that Ryan was providing a tweeter’s dream: a presentation where key points were provided sequentially and concisely enough to provide a narrative flow via a stream of tweets. It was also equally clear to me that combining those tweets into one document would produce a learning object that could be shared with colleagues in a variety of settings—which made me realize I had the perfect impetus to learn how to use Storify, since that free online tool is designed to do exactly what I wanted to do: put the tweets in sequence and add commentary that transformed them into a basic asynchronous lesson online that could be adapted for a variety of situations. I came full circle when I realized I could interweave the Storify narrative with this blog post to help colleagues review some m-learning basics while also learning how to use Storify itself. The m-learning tips and narrative are all available online within that Storify narrative. What is worth noting here is that Storify is fairly easy to learn and use once we establish our account on the Storify site and move past a few easy-to-overcome challenges with the assistance of a concise, well-written "Creating your first story" document online. It wasn’t, for example, initially obvious to me from the Storify edit screen that I needed to click on the Twitter icon and log into my account to access the tweets I wanted to incorporate into the story; the online document quickly moved me past that challenge. The document also made it obvious that once I had completed a search for tweets that were unified by the hashtag I had used (#ATDsac), I could either move all the tweets into the Storify edit screen or move them one by one to manually put them in sequence. (Tweets appear in reverse chronological order in feeds, so we see the last tweet first; Storify gives us the option of manually carrying them over into the edit screen in correct chronological order to literally tell the story sequentially, and also allows us to click on an edit button that reverses the order of tweets within the screen to create the correct start-to-finish narrative flow if they are in their initial latest-to-earliest sequence.) This exercise in connected learning became most interesting for me when I realized that the tweets, by themselves, adequately conveyed the basics, but that adding narrative would produce an interesting hybrid between a record of tweets and a more thoughtful lesson-in-a-blog format that could then be interwoven with a formal blog post—the article you’re reading now. The result is a "package" that includes the stand-alone Storify story and this stand-alone blog post that also work well in tandem—as long as links within each learning object easily lead reader-learners from one to the other. And the added benefit to me as a trainer-teacher-learner is that I’m building upon what I’ve seen colleagues do, extending the onsite learning within that ATD community of learning into my online communities of learning, and providing yet another example for anyone interested in exploring innovative uses of open tools in ways that transform them into ed-tech tools that serve our partners in learning. Let the ed-tech connected learning continue. N.B.: This is the sixth in a series of posts documenting learning through #ccourses and #oclmooc.

Given all we read and hear every day, we could easily (and mistakenly) assume that being overwhelmed by information and a rapid technology-driven rate of change is a new phenomenon—but it’s also relatively easy to discover what a consistently-important challenge the flow of information and the pace of change has been, if we delve into Sandra Hirsh’s newly-released anthology Information Services Today: An Introduction. While the entire book is—among other things—a richly rewarding exploration of the changing nature of librarianship/the work of information professionals, one important moment of change- and information-management revelation comes in Christine Pawley’s contribution (Chapter 2, "Libraries and Information Organizations: Two Centuries of Experience") as she writes about how "new technologies lead to information overload": "…William S. Learned noted a ‘phenomenal improvement in speed and accuracy of communication’ and complained that even the trained student finds the time required thoroughly to examine a topic in an unfamiliar field almost prohibitive"—not today, but in 1924 (Information Services Today, pp. 13-14). If we pursue this theme by revisiting Sarah Houghton’s "Being Wired or Being Tired: Ten Ways to Cope With Information Overload" (originally published online July 30, 2008 in Ariadne), we find the reminder that "As far back as the sixteenth century people were complaining about the wide range of information they had to consume in order to contribute to society." Any of us involved in training-teaching-learning within libraries and other learning organizations viscerally know and understand the feeling of being overwhelmed by information and change. We recognize that an important component of our learning-facilitation efforts is to help learners come to terms with the changes they face within any learning opportunity. We also are struggling to find words evocative enough to describe what we do so we recognize the ever-expanding breadth and scope of our work and offer terminology that helps others understand how much what we offer has changed. And we do understand that the goal of "keeping up" with educational technology and even with the basics of how to learn in a world where the way we learn is continuing to evolve (e.g., through the flipped classroom model, through massive open online courses—MOOCs—and through innovative blended-learning opportunities) is about as easy to reach as the pot of gold at the base of a rainbow. At a certain level, it’s somewhat comforting to read those words that Learned wrote in 1924 and that Houghton wrote in 2008: we realize that others have faced and survived the challenges we continue to face. It’s also comforting and inspiring to read those words within the context of Information Services Today’s book-length exploration of our changing learning and information landscape: we see that the nature of library collections is changing—but that has always been true. We see that the nature of libraries is changing—but that, too, has been true for many decades. We see that library users’ expectations are changing—another consistent element within the library and information services world. We see that the tech tools that information professionals use continue to evolve and that the need to continually upgrade our skills is essential—but the best of our current and former colleagues have always recognized that their work required and continues to require a commitment to lifelong learning. And I suspect many of my best training-teaching-learning colleagues in a variety of learning environments would have little argument that continual learning and a responsiveness to change are among the requirements and the pleasures of the work we do. The theme of change is particularly apparent in Lisa Gregory and Amy Rudersdorf Information Services Today chapter on "Digital Resources." As they discuss a digital librarian’s roles (cataloger, collector, educator, legal expert, manager, negotiator, researcher, and technologist), we see some terms that would be familiar to most librarians/information professionals as well as to many trainer-teacher-learners, and we see some terms that reflect how quickly our professions are evolving. Nowhere is the need for adaptability among all of us more apparent than in the section about technologists: "The technology skill sets needed by digital librarians are as varied as the technologies that surround us. However, most digital librarians should—at the minimum—have a basic understanding of content management systems, databases, some metadata standards, and web technologies (p. 102)"—advice that can easily guide our training-teaching-learning colleagues to greater opportunities for success. All of this would seem to be the fodder for nightmares among those who despair of ever keeping up with the flow of information and the rate of change within our lives. But some of what we gain through contemporary learning experiences themselves is an understanding that keeping up has long required an ability to sift through what comes our way. Filtering out what is less important. Applying what we can apply. Relying on our colleagues and other members of our personal learning networks to help us fill the gaps we face. And developing what might be coined as yet another form of literacy: "information-overload literacy"—the skill and the ability to know when it’s time to step away from the flood of information and rapid pace of change long enough to relish what we have absorbed. N.B.: This is the second in a series of reflections inspired by Information Services Today: An Introduction, which includes Paul’s chapter on "Infinite [Lifelong] Learning."

We used to have wonderful, clearly-defined words like "library," "librarian," "classroom," and "teacher." And some of you may still have crystal-clear visions of what those words mean. But reading two very thoughtful pieces today makes me wonder, once again, whether our nomenclature is failing to reflect the evolving world of educational technology and learning resources in which we work, play, and live—the world so well-explored and documented by New Media Consortium Horizon Project reports. YOUmedia Center, Chicago Public Library Reading—and equally importantly, looking at the great set of photographs included in—Buffy Hamilton’s "A Visit to Discovery High School: Rethinking Learning Spaces and Learner Experiences" on her "Unquiet Librarian" blog this evening initially made me think about many of the fabulously creative learning spaces I’ve been lucky enough to visit, photograph, and describe in presentations this year. I see them in libraries. I see them in academic settings. I see them in corporate buildings and "training centers" where management, staff, and learners are committed to (as the Association for Talent Development so aptly puts it) creating "a world that works better." And seeing them so explicitly displayed in Buffy’s article makes me see how similar those spaces are becoming—and have become. Which raises a question I posted in response to Buffy’s thoughts: When does a library become interchangeable with other learning spaces rather than being unique? The knee-jerk reaction to that question, for many of us, is "when it no longer has books." But that ignores the changing—and very-much changed—nature of libraries and, in particular, library collections, as Rick Anderson writes in "The Death of the Collection and the Necessity of Library-Publisher Collaboration: Young Librarians on the Future of Libraries," which he posted earlier today on the "Scholarly Kitchen" blog. Among the many very thoughtful points he makes is that a review of a group of young librarians’ work strongly suggests that "…the library collection, as traditionally understood, is dead. "It’s worth noting," he continues, "that these writers weren’t saying the print collection is dead, but rather that the very concept of a librarian-built, prediction-based collection, in whatever format, is moribund. Furthermore, none of them seemed to be particularly upset about this; on the contrary, they generally mentioned it more or less in passing and as if it were a self-evident reality and nothing to get worked up about." Library Media Lab, University of Texas at Austin Let’s be clear about one thing at this point: neither writer is suggesting that libraries are dead or in danger of extinction. Their writing is very much grounded in documenting the positive, exciting evolution of libraries, librarianship, and learning. Buffy implicitly sees what so many of us are seeing: physical changes within libraries that reflect the increasingly strong roles libraries are playing in lifelong learning (including providing onsite and online formal and informal learning opportunities for the increasingly extended communities they serve). Rick’s article focuses more on how the mindset of the young librarians he is discussing affects the organizations in which they work—a mindset that means the change has already occurred in some libraries and will continue to expand as these young librarians replace more and more of their predecessors who had different visions of what the words "library" and "librarianship" implied. And to carry this more explicitly to my question about when a library becomes interchangeable with other learning spaces, let’s acknowledge something I’ve maintained for several years now: librarians increasingly are trainer-teacher-learners (or, to use more common terminology, "learning facilitators"). But not all trainer-teacher-learners are librarians—a distinction that, up to now, has provided us with a way to clearly differentiate between the two groups. But as more libraries evolve to include those wide-open spaces that Buffy so wonderfully documents through the photographs in her article, and as more libraries take an entirely different approach to what a collection is, and as more first-rate trainer-teacher-learners become better at information management and the sort of educational technology that is increasingly common to libraries and other learning spaces, will we see library spaces (onsite as well as online) remain easily differentiated from other learning spaces, or are we beginning to see a merging of learning and librarianship that will bring us all closer together and provide exciting new opportunities for everyone willing to collaborate in this potential endeavor? Very much an admirer of R. David Lankes’ work (including Expect More and The Atlas of New Librarianship), I have always been intrigued by his suggestion that "a room full of books is simply a closet but that an empty room with a librarian in it is a library" (Atlas, p. 16); he also has some wonderfully nuanced thoughts on the nature of collections within libraries. His ideas help us, at least in part, to define libraries by the presence of librarians; by extension, they also help us recognize how much we define classrooms by the presence of teachers/instructors/trainers. But the equation frays a little at the edges when we see increasing numbers of great librarians doing what other great trainer-teacher-learners do, in ways that don’t clearly differentiate them from those other trainer-teacher-learners. It frays much further when we see the library spaces in which they weave their magic becoming increasingly similar to non-library learning spaces (and vice versa) , as some of those spaces documented via Buffy’s photographs confirm. These are learning spaces with lots of open space as opposed to spaces dominated by print collections. These are learning spaces that are learner-centric—spaces featuring moveable furniture and moveable (including bring-your-own-device) technology that can quickly be reset to meet varying learning needs that can come up even within a single learning session. These are spaces where short-term as well as lifelong learning is supported. And, increasingly, these are spaces that look the same in a variety of settings—Buffy includes photographs of a corporate learning center—something we clearly have not yet addressed with the language we use to describe our libraries and other learning spaces, and something that, as we address it, may lead us to even more exciting learning possibilities and collaborations than we’ve have ever seen or imagined.

Gamification is not a new topic within learning and development but it is one that seems to be particularly pertinent at the moment. Having heard a few case studies about companies adopting gamification in their learning strategies at Learning Technologies back in January, I decided to learn a bit more.

Our vision is to maximise the impact of learning. It is important for both learners and managers alike to know how our training can make a tangible and long-term impact to individual and team performance. We think the best way to do this is through online tests which are taken either side of the training. By offering pre- and post-training assessment we can reliably the measure impact of our training. 

Headspace, the meditation and mindfulness startup, raised $34m funding last month from a range of venture capitalists, business bigwigs and even hollywood celebrities. The app now has 3 million users in over 150 countries and is symptomatic of a rise in the popularity of activities intended to bring some calm to the data-laden modern mind.

If you attended Learning Live this week, I hope that you had a productive time and enjoyed it as much as I did.

Today I'd like to share my views on the never-ending scepticism that surrounds online learning. And please don't get me wrong, sceptics are good for our industry. Actually any industry. Especially when they're knowledgeable and help stir a debate.