Standards?

Some thoughts prompted by NG264's piece on standards in the blogosphere.

Doesn't this whole idea assume a homogeneity in the purposes & uses of blogs that doesn't, indeed maybe shouldn't, exist? Sure, it would be neat if everyone who wrote a software review (for instance) followed a certain format that would allow the reviews to be collated/indexed/rendered searchable. But where does that leave individuality, creativity, our right to be different? The joyful messiness of an organic form of self-expression?

If I feel moved to write about a particular piece of software, I just want to say what I have to say (which may be trivial, technical, practical, frivolous....) without shoe-horning my comments into some predetermined standard.

I may be misreading the SmartMobs entry, which is less coherent than I would expect from a student assignment:

"Datamining" ourselves "democratizies"[democratizes?] tools that were previously cost [costly? cost-effective? something else?] and prohibitive [huh? what did they prohibit?] for most people. They can also make it easier for many more people to contribute more effectively to a general "knowldge [knowledge?] commons". The idea of creating databases about different aspects of our [our what??] has actually been around for a while.

I'm automatically suspicious of the quality of argument, when the quality of expression is so low.

Software reviews may also be an unfortunate example. The main purpose of standards often seems to be to facilitate interoperability, in the interests of promoting manufacturing efficiency & profits, with user benefits an almost accidental side-effect. So standards applied to blogged software reviews would speed the process of sorting sheep from goats, help consumers choose between competing products.

Fine, but is it why we blog?

Structured blogging (again)

David Weinberger's provisional reactions to structured blogging are pretty non-committal ("interesting and could be important") but I think he captures one issue precisely, when he says:

the success of structured blogging depends on how easy it is for bloggers and how appealing the benefits are

I followed up a few links, to see whether my own negative reactions were shared by other commentators. Here's a sample of quotes I came up with.

Charlie Wood's Moonwatcher
Structured blogging in the enterprise

While having different forms for different kinds of content may sound complex to a TypePad or Blogger user, it's been the way users have interacted with enterprise content management systems like Stellent and Vignette for a decade.

Highly informative, as it told me more about how structured blogging is supposed to work - not an overall tagging system, but a set of forms you need only use if you're making a particular type of post & choose to have it, as it were, indexable. That certainly makes the idea sound less threatening, even if the hackles do rise again immediately on realising its "enterprise" origins & suspecting a major use may be for targetted advertising...

Frank Gilbane's Gilbane Report Blog
Structured Blogging - Enterprise Only?

winning the hearts of bloggers will not be easy. It will be far easier to do in the context of enterprise applications, but the difficulty should not be underestimated. I am a fan of structured blogging and authoring in general, but the concerns being raised are real.

Recognition that the main obstacle may be emotional rather than intellectual/rational... & again the acknowledgement that this may be an innovation that serves the needs of business first.

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
Structured Blogging Will Flop

Darn it all, techno utopians are so cute. Nevertheless, structured blogging, the over-ballyhooed idea that people will post to their blogs using different forms depending on what they're posting is going to be a flop.
Its the usual three reasons I trot out repeatedly to technologists with utopian visions who want to change the world on the back of altered user behavior:

1. People are lazy


2. People are lazy


3. People are lazy

There is simply not enough benefit to the average blogger to compensate for the added irritation of having to pull up a separate form for each type of content you post.

A differently slanted synicism, but one it's hard to refute.

Stowe Boyd's Corante
Structured Blogging versus Messy, Messy, Messy

My bet is that Structured Blogging will fail, not because people wouldn't like some of the consequences -- such as an easy way to compare blog posts about concrete things like record reviews, and so on -- but because of the inherent, and wonderful messiness of the world of blogging.
Because blog posts don't have to conform to any structural standards, they can be used to do anything: nothing is out of bounds, because we haven't created the boundaries. The messiness of the world we are living in is one of the reasons that it is such a rich and rewarding experience.

That's the criticism I was groping clumsily towards in my previous post.

I haven't completely changed my mind, but I'm starting to see that educational blogging (OK, all blogging is educational - I should probably say 'blogging as a deliberate educational tool') could benefit from the structuring initiatives. After all, there's a point when organic messiness has to give way to structured writing for assessment purposes (OK, we might deplore that, but l don't feel inclined to take on the entire western academic system this afternoon). So, if I can insist that my students conform to certain structuring conventions when they offer work for assessment, maybe the sky won't fall in if similar structuring conventions are offered (not imposed) in blogging.

Oh, & I'm not unaware of the irony involved in using w.bloggar to format this post, insert hyperlinks & so on!

Learning Objects & H806

Putting the pieces together: What working with learning objects means for the educator

This 2002 paper by Weller, Pegler & Mason outlines the thinking behind H806's use of learning objects, along with a largely positive evaluation of their implications for course designers & authors. It looks ahead to their anticipated benefits & drawbacks during the first (spring 2003) presentation of the course.

Of particular interest here:

• learning objects have their roots in a training rather than academic context


• they are generally designed for use in online rather than F2F learning situations - hence the definition of a learning object offered by Pegler et al:



"a digital piece of learning material that addresses a clearly identifiable topic or learning outcome and has the potential to be reused in different contexts"



• the loss of "narrative" implicit in a course built from learning objects may be beneficial, as students are required to make their own connections, rather than passively accepting the links put in place for them by course authors.

The paper concludes by noting that the learning objects agenda is currently "dominated by discussions between the various standards bodies and developers of e-learning platforms" & that the time is right for debate to "move into the practitioner's arena".

Learning Objects

I decided to look into learning objects, since H806 is, according to Weller, the first OU course to be developed purely in this form. Now, in 2001/2 I wrote some learning objects for the OU, admittedly for its corporate division (COROUS) & that's where I first encountered the term. So I wondered if the meaning was perhaps subtly different from the one I'd been carrying around with me.

Use and Abuse of Re-usable Learning Objects

This paper gives a useful overview of the confusion surrounding learning objects, arguing that it's inappropriate to define them so broadly that everything in the world becomes a learning object, yet equally unhelpful to narrow the definition down to a particular length or method of study, since this works against the principles of interoperability & re-usability.
The definition offered here:

A Learning Object is an independent and self-standing unit of learning content that is predisposed to reuse in multiple instructional contexts

seems a reasonable compromise between the general & the specific.

Learning Objects and Standards

This resource page from the e-Learning Centre offers a range of material on latest developments in the world of learning objects. I may need to spend some time on SCORM...