Had a great presentation out at William and Mary the other day. Talked about NIXTY, social media strategy, and search engine optimization with their MBA graduates. Very creative group of students and faculty. Looking forward to working with them in the future!

Accreditation and competency are key issues that the open education movement has to satisfactorily address. There appear to be three categories of learners that have different needs, options and values when it comes to accreditation. The first group is comprised of students, primarily in the developed world, that take courses as part of an approved degree program at an accredited institution. The second group consists of learners that actively educate themselves, but do not necessarily need the courses to be accredited. The third group is comprised of learners that would like to take accredited courses, but simply do not have the means or ability to take courses from an accredited institution.

The first group of learners who have the means and the opportunity to take accredited courses will continue to do so. These individuals take courses to complete a degree, which in turn has the promise of gaining them entry into a profession of their choice. This traditional model works well and there is no reason that it cannot continue to work well. Universities, accrediting bodies, governments, and most professions are all wedded to this model.

The second set of learners are not as concerned about accreditation. They may already have a degree or a good job and are therefore not as concerned with accreditation. Or, they may not have a degree, but are simply not interested in engaging in a full degree program. The credibility of the source of their courses is important to them, but it does not necessarily have to be regulated by a regional accrediting body. Broadly, several groups of learners fall into this category: students taking extra courses, lifelong learners, test-prep students, continuing education students, and life skill learners. These individuals take courses for a variety of reasons: to learn a new skill, keep their brain young, gain CEUs etc.

The third group of learners consists of individuals who would like access to accredited courses, but simply do not have the means or ability to enroll in these institutions (Jarvis, 2007, Suarez-Orozco, 2007). Some of these individuals have financial struggles; others live in late-developing countries that do not have accrediting bodies or a robust educational infrastructure. The need and the desire is present, but the opportunity is lacking.

Accreditation is not an issue for individuals in the first group. Learners in the second group could benefit from some external source of regulation, but it does not have to be a formal accrediting body. The third group would like an accredited education, but simply have too many obstacles impeding them from reaching this goal. For the second and third groups, there has to be an alternative way of recognizing a person’s educational accomplishments outside of an accredited degree program. Sometimes independent (non-accredited) institutions offer a certificate. Another model might be drawn from skills based fields that do not require a formal degree. For example, many computer programmers, or hackers, do not have a degree in computer science. They are instead hired on a basis of their previous work (portfolio) and references from others. The same can be said for an artist or carpenter.

George Siemens (2008) addresses this issue head-on and suggests that the future of education and accreditation could be managed through a reputation system. The reputation system would function like eBay where other people would rate the individual. Recognized experts in an area would have more clout when rating others than people not recognized in that area. For instance, if a person was studying anthropology, then an expert in anthropology’s rating would have more power than another person who knows a lot about electrical engineering, but little about anthropology. These references and accomplishments would then be tracked in the person’s ePortfolio.

It is very unlikely that the traditional accreditation approach will ever be completely replaced. However, it is likely that a parallel, disruptive, reputation system could take root and provide a service where the current accreditation system cannot. Clay Christensen (1997) describes how a new disruptive product or service eventually unseats an old service or product by offering a simple and affordable alternative to the older established product. The disruptive service gains a foothold by providing a service to people that are currently overlooked or underserved by the primary competitor. Another way of saying this is that the disruptive service competes with non-competition.

Janet Clarey and Mike Caulfield recently posted on the dead shark problem. They reference Woody Allen’s Annie Hall:

“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”-Annie Hall, 1977

The gist is that online communities sometimes die. They don’t seem to grow at a fast enough clip or their users lose interest and they eventually become stagnant and then die. I think some online communities die as a natural part of their process. They serve a specific purpose and after that purpose has been met, they die.

Successful communities, on the other hand, thrive because people are intrinsically driven to keep them alive. There is some kind of value that people find in using the site, so they continue to use it. Facebook and MySpace have proven to be incredible value drivers. People spend an average of 16 minutes a day on these sites, uploading pics, poking people, commenting etc. I think a fair amount of the value here can fall under the construct of identity or impression management. People are doing these things to manage how other people see and experience them.

LinkedIn seems to be a bit different. This is more of a business social network. Sure, people definitely do impression management on LinkedIn, but it seems less so. There are specific questions you can ask your network. You can post jobs. You can find contacts to help you solve problems. LinkedIn seems to offer a different type of value and one that seems more functional and quantifiable. People seem to go on LinkedIn with a specific goal or action in mind, whereas facebook or MySpace seems to draw more of a meandering sort of engagement.

We at NIXTY believe that education is a huge and compelling value for institutions, educators, and learners. Institutions often keep learning communities alive because it is at the core of what they do (think of any academic institution[k-12, college, university]). I’m using learning community here broadly, so any sort of LMS/CMS would be considered a learning network or community. According to our research (mostly qualitative interviews), educators find value in networking with other teachers, sharing learning materials, and finding tips/hints from more experienced teachers. Educators, of course, also love to teach. Learners are compelled to learn for a variety of reasons. Some of the core reasons include: mastering a new skill, connecting with other students (homeschoolers), gaining CEUs, test-prep, and keeping brains active and young.

Our goal at NIXTY is to provide an educational platform so that institutions, educators, and learners can easily add value/content and also use the system to meet their intrinsic goals. We are in the midst of testing this out. If you share this interest, and/or are interested in using the NIXTY platform, then please sign up for our beta and help us reach this intrinsic goal.