It's so good to be in the midst of such great minds in e-pedagogy, you are so inspiring.

• Nkululeko Fuyane

What became abstractly clear after watching the video by @William Cope and reading @Anne Fox's 'counter response' is that Scholar takes a socially constructivist approach whereas Moodle is content based which could be a cognitive orientation. However, I agree with Anne Fox that there is a lot of learning-centred activities on Noodle. That said, it becomes apparent that the teacher's pedagogical grounding is what counts when one is using an LMS.

• Nkululeko Fuyane

“the Moodle example you show here is not representative of what the best Moodle has to offer ”
Fair enough. But the space I work in (humanitarian work) this type of click-through course has become the norm. This is what people think about when you say e-learning.

“Moodle can be used to promote many different types of courses not just the worst point and click ”
Sure. That's my car-retrofitted-with-wings argument. But the basic structure it provides is with content at the center and a linear progression to ingest it.

“how Scholar can facilitate an individual learning path that will be recognised by others”
Each person displays their published works on their profile. So if you want to know or recognize a person's capabiliites, you go and look at their work and make your own judgement. That is better than silly badges that have been talked about for years but not delivered on their promise of micro-credentialing. (We still give out certificates, because in our space employers still want them… but we are working on these changes as well).

“what incentive is there for me as someone who 'did' the Humanitarian course 2 years ago to interact with someone who is doing it now”
Good question. We are exploring the role of Alumni in several courses. In one course, by the third iteration, the course was entirely run by learners who had completed the first two. Learners became teachers, as in Cope & Kalantzis's vision. This of course questions what our role is, then? http://redasadki.me/2018/03/19/why-learning-professionals-should-strive-to-be-leaders-not-just-service-providers/

“forum based. I am not entirely satisfied with this model since the only person to dialogue with is the tutor”
Forums in Moodle use the 1980s BBS metaphor: boxes within boxes. They are positioned tangentially to the course. So of course you can direct and facilitate learners to contribute to the forums. But that is not what they are designed to enable.

“35 participants who are desperately seeking structure”
Yeah. The Activity Stream is a challenge, especially with Scholar's firehose notifications (one e-mail for *anything* that happens). But filtering and anchoring are actually key 21st century digital competencies. We usually see 5% self-directed learners who can navigate the stream without any problems and 5% who have no idea that they can tame the activity and make sense of it. The rest do fine after Week 1.

“ 'How do I know that I have done everything that I need to do?'”
Yes, we see that too. We share listings that we call Honor roll (makes sense to people, we reuse familiar metaphors whenever we can). However, Scholar's new Learning analytics are mind-blowing – as ground-breaking IMHO as the peer review module was 7-8 ago when Bill first developed it. Immediate, formative feedback. All the time.

“It is not possible for Moodle (or any other LMS I would argue) to automate records of learning unless courses are based on the content and quiz example you demo-ed.”
A lot of drugery and manual labor, collation of data points, etc. is what you get when a system's learning architecture is not designed for what you are trying to do with it… We have seen people try to replicate the rubric-based peer review process using Moodle's forum. A lot of the meaning was lost due to lack of structure! And they achieved 1.5% completion instead of the 60-80% that we get when using Scholar to do it.

• Reda Sadki

Thank you Anne and Reda - I was wondering if you have any suggestions and thinking of applied music lessons that really are focused on a one:one teacher-student model; sometimes up to groups of 4-8 learners working on a project. What might be your suggestions for taking this type of learning into the digital domain?

• Gareth Williams

In brief, Moodle centres on courses and Scholar centres on learners.
The silos you mention above are presumably the Moodle courses to which access can be restricted (against payment or specific entry requirements or both). Otherwise the discussions can be as prominent as you like. You can have them on the front page before clicking on a specific course but most people/organisations choose not to because they are thinking primarily in terms of courses.

This is a bit of an Apples and Pears discussion though I do understand that Moodle is a great comparison to make mainly because it is so ubiquitous. But as I try to argue, Moodle can be used to promote many different types of courses not just the worst point and click and take a quiz variety that you highlight in your video.

Right now I am experimenting in a large cohort on Moodle with peer moderators. As tutor I have never been so hands off.

What I am interested in is how Scholar can facilitate an individual learning path that will be recognised by others. I love learning for the sake of learning but most of the people I work with require some sort of recognition for what they have done. I hope to learn more about how this is possible in Scholar in the coming months.

• Anne Fox

In Moodle, you see the syllabus and, separate from that, a discussion forum. Dialogue is hidden from view, organized into one or more silos.

Learners can submit work to the tutor or teacher, and then the assumption is that this teacher evaluates the work.

This model requires more tutors for more learners. It is expensive to scale, and not very practical.

Moodle replicates the classroom learning architecture.

I understand that in the early days this may have been important to reassure professors exploring the use of technology that they could reproduce their behavior and keep the same habits of teaching.

It is particularly ironic that, buried in Moodle’s documentation, you will find the claim that its design and development are guided by social constructionist pedagogy. That was a long time ago.

Source: http://redasadki.me/2016/07/19/towers-of-technology/

• Reda Sadki

Contribution posted on the YouTube page by Anne Fox in response to this video:

I think you can promote Scholar without making such a stark contrast with Moodle. I have taught in Moodle for over 15 years and my benchmark for quality there is a forum-based discussion course. I have never presented a 'course' that consists of 45 screens of content punctuated by a couple of quizzes. My students work with each other frequently (and with others in their local context that are not in Moodle) so they DO know who is in the community. There is a link called Participants on every Moodle course that students can click on to find out who else is on the course. And in every Moodle course that I run, the very first step is to promote a learning community by requiring participants to click on that Participants link and get in touch with one or two of their fellow students as a first step (amongst other things).

I have long argued that there are many different approaches possible in Moodle and what you present here in this video is only one Moodle option. I am very open to the possibility that Scholar could present a new and better way of doing things but in this video I think you have set up a false dichotomy. As I watch it I am wondering whether this is meant for the very specific case of on demand learning? Rather than cohort-based learning? What I am missing in this presentation of Scholar is the incentive to interact with other learners. What I see in the video is a 'teacher' looking up to check that someone has done a piece of work on systems in India for the purposes of documentation/credentialling. My basic question is what incentive is there for me as someone who 'did' the Humanitarian course 2 years ago to interact with someone who is doing it now? I have no relation to the people who are doing the course now and maybe I have moved on in the meantime to other interests. I also run self-directed learning courses in Moodle but even they do not include the 45 screen and quiz model you demo in this video. They are also forum based. I am not entirely satisfied with this model since the only person to dialogue with is the tutor often and that is expensive in time.

I also worry about the 'stream'. I am currently a main tutor on a course with 35 participants who are desperately seeking structure. They are not especially needy in that respect and I have had to explain the common structure of the units several times already. We are 4 weeks in to a 12 week course and I think everybody understands what they need to do now. I am wondering how they might have reacted had they had a stream of activities to respond to (or not) instead (these are practicing teachers from all over the world - so a diverse group). Even in Moodle I often have the question 'How do I know that I have done everything that I need to do?'' precisely because I run discussion.based courses for the most part.

You may find my comments too structure-oriented but I am trying to anticipate the reactions of my participants rather than putting forward my own reactions. It is not possible for Moodle (or any other LMS I would argue) to automate records of learning unless courses are based on the content and quiz example you demo-ed. So my forum-based courses have to be assessed by a human, usually Not yet Complete/Complete based on forum contributions, with Not Yet Complete being prompted to become Complete through a response to draw out further insights. I did the Learning Ecologies MOOC a couple of years ago. I am excited by the possibilities of Scholar but I really think that the Moodle example you show here is not representative of what the best Moodle has to offer.

Anne Fox
https://www.youtube.com/user/Foxdenuk

• Reda Sadki