by Delia Stafford-Johnson Columnist EdNews.org
President &CEO
Haberman Educational Foundation

This is the second in a series of interviews with Edward L. "Ned" Davis, author of the acclaimed book on redesigning America's public education system, "Lessons For Tomorrow, Bringing America's Schools Back From The Brink." Davis was a recent recipient of the EdNews Upton Sinclair Awards, 2006 for being one of the ten most outstanding contributors and thought leaders in education. Many 'futurists' paint interesting, even inspiring pictures of where we are going in education. Davis does all of that, but most importantly, his vision is grounded in several major disciplines that are crucial to understanding the evolution of learning.

DS—I amintrigued by your reference to 'smart' education environments, and specifically to the notion of a learning management system. Can you set the stage for our discussion with a brief explanation of both?

ED—I'm delighted to have the opportunity as these are important notions in looking down the road at how learning will happen in the future.

We have all seen how facile young people are with cell phones, video games, I-pods and computers. While we older folks still tend to look at some of these things as gadgets, young learners see their utility first, and are looking ahead at the ease they provide in exploring and communicating in their environment. They are seduced by the sophistication and intelligence built into these tools, and yearn for a learning environment that integrates the technology around them into learning design. Consequently, we must learn to incorporate games, and media and sophisticated communication methods into a smart environment that challenges learners to explore and use technology to address issues, ideas and questions that are made relevant to them. It's all about design and design is all about context and relevance.

Students naturally seek independence when given well-constructed opportunities to learn on their own. The assembly line approach to schooling has essentially been undermined by modern entertainment media, especially the Internet and video games. Research indicates that students are frequently bored with nature and quality of their Internet assignments. This is because teachers have failed to provide an ongoing and obvious answer to the questions, "why am I learning this?", and "why is this important to me personally?".

DS—Some might argue that this wasn't done in the past? Are we coddling children by working so hard to make everything relevant for them?

ED—The obvious example to answer that question is Algebra. How many of us struggled through Algebra, and were made to feel stupid because we could never see why we were learning it—and then convinced ourselves we couldn't go into the sciences, or engineering because we were stupid at higher math? It's a lot more subtle, but the same is true of reading, and writing. Kids need to understand the history of communication, how the printing press changed the world, how a newspaper works, and how books connect you to the greatest thinkers in order to have a context for appreciating literacy and a hunger for attaining it.So technology integration, and providing a context for all learning—these are two key elements to a 'smart environment'.The main thing about an environment that is smart is that it allows young learners to use their initiative to explore on their own, to devise ways to explore that suit their own learning styles—an environment that gives them options so that they have the experience of engagement and using their own initiative.

DS—I wish we had time to delve into ways to make environments smart. I know you go into this in your book. But, let's focus on your idea of a learning management system. What is it, and why is it important?

ED—The term has been around for quite some time, and first, I want to make it clear that I am referring to something considerably more sophisticated than we now call an LMS. More importantly, I am referring to a set of tools oriented around the learner, not the provider of education, as it is now.

DS—So, as I understand it, an LMS, as you call it, is a software platform used to deliver curriculum to students online.

ED—Yes, that is mostly what it is used for now. It is also used to provide tests, accumulate performance data, add content to a course on-the-fly, monitor student participation, and provide some ability to interact with teachers and students through threaded discussions.

DS—That sounds pretty sophisticated as is. How does your view of things change what an LMS is?

ED—It can be sophisticated as is, but sophisticated, by itself, isn't good enough. Right now it is still an instrument of control. It was devised in the corporate world to bring more control to the process of learning.When we say "learning management", do we mean control, or do we want individualized empowerment?The idea of a learning management system is so potentially powerful and important, we need to step back and re-conceptualize its possibilities and design features. First, I believe we need to think of an LMS as a cradle-to-grave footprint of each learner's intellectual development, cognitive proclivities, learning challenges, developing interests and learning priorities. I refer to it in the book as the "decoded DNA" of our individual learning processes.

DS—Would this be consideredmore control—a great tool for big brother to separate the smart from the not-so-smart.

ED—This is true, which is why security and strictly controlled access will be very important factors in designing the LMS I describe. For instance, when applying for a job, you might very well want only certain portions of your records made available. The primary utility of the LMS will be ascribed to the owner/end-user, and they will have ongoing control, to a major extent, over who sees it, and what they can see.

DS—What kind of features will your learner-centered LMS have that distinguish it from what we've already described?

ED—It will have numerous capabilities that haven't yet been conceived of. It's purpose will be to increasingly enable learners to become the primary agents in their own learning process. It will be a kind of cybernetic system with feedback loops that continuously mediate between students, what they are learning about, how well they are learning about something, and defined objectives for mastery, or moving on to another level or objective. It will have such features as an integrated calendar, to keep one's own commitments, and also get access to teachers, learning facilitators and others who may be involved in a students learning process. It will have collaborative work software that allows a group of learners, experts and facilitators, perhaps scattered in time and space to work on learning assignments and projects. It may have the equivalent of a "My Space" for knowledge that allows learners to tie into specialized communities of interest and practice.

On a more formal level, it will have a knowledge browser that allows each learner to search knowledge repositories for "learning objects" that can be cobbled together to custom make a course—often in collaboration with a teacher. It will have an academic management system (AMS) that will keep learners apprised of unmet requirements, gaps in learning progress and specific steps to meeting required learning objectives. It may have a smart learning facilitator that gathers data about how each learner seems to best learn in a particular kind of project or assignment. It will identify patterns of efficiency in learning that lead to suggested methodologies for a particular kind of assignment or learning goal. It will have plenty of opportunities for a learner to assess her own competencies and obstacles to progress using instruments (tests) combined with various kinds of human intervention.

It may have a kind of key abilities index that identifies and tracks core skills as they are addressed in the learning process. For example, it could track cognitive skills that lead to competence in high-level thinking and independent learning. It could assist learners in identifying skills they will need for a particular career path and what they need to do to attain said skills. It could also include access to how (methods used) teachers, peers, other learning facilitators and tests are evaluating them.

The point here, as I have already said, is to provide learners with tools to teach themselves—not only subject matter, but to teach themselves how to think and learn better. As a learner gets more sophisticated, the LMS should become more sophisticated with her, introducing more effective ways to assist in defining, tracking and achieving her own goals as well as goals that have been defined for her. For instance, at some point, an LMS should reflect a "blended learning profile" that ongoingly presents a composite picture of the best course of action for a learner in beginning a new subject, field of study, project or generalized learning objective. If the blended learning profile has identified that an individual responds well to audio lectures, and game-based learning, it may have the capability of identifying particular products that satisfy a particular goal.

These are all generalized capabilities that are within our reach. We just have to decide which capabilities we want, conduct some action research and then build them into an open platform that results in a user interface, something like the windows environment on your computer now.

DS—It sounds like science fiction. How do we go about deciding and building these things? Who does it?

ED—This goes back to our last conversation about radical centralization to enable radical de-centralization (see 12/5 EdNews interview with Edward Davis attheednews.org). Wouldn't it be great if the federal government decided it would better serve the public by moving away from standardized testing, and began working on standards to enable learning? —standards in the form of the LMS concept I am describing. The private sector would certainly play a partnership role, and the finished product should have lots of variation to accommodate individual goals, learning styles and capabilities.

DS—In the absence of a redefined federal role, how do we get from here to there?

ED—Well that's the 64K question, isn't it? We should all be talking about that, and not just talking, but defining a set of commitments or initiatives that will move us into the future. As you recall, I defined one suggested initiative in our last talk. To your question, states can begin to form coalitions amongst themselves to tackle redesign from a macroeconomic perspective. There are a couple of coalitions in the Southeast moving in this direction. But it's going to be a long haul (getting states to collaborate) until they can deal with their own entrenched and politically protected bureaucracies.

DS—Amen to that. I won't even ask how that happens.

ED—Thank you.

DS—So, to use a word out of your book, it sounds like a possible national initiative to put together a team to design an 'architecture' for a learning management system that we can all use.

First article in this series: Manifesto Interview: With Ned Davis