A wise man once said “Nature abhors a Vacuum”.  An even wiser man drew a cartoon of the saying.  It is with this inspiration in mind I have coined a new phrase: Learning abhors a Next Button.  I doubt anyone will pen a cartoon in my honour, but you never know.

This week I’m back on track with thinking about my doctorate.  It, like the cartoon, is a bit foreboding, dark and sinister.  Fortunately I’ve been given the greatest gift of all – time.  My EngD allows 4 years to research a new approach, theorise it, make it and then defend my actions.  However, there actually is the option to get the work done in 3 years and I’m keen on that as it means I gain my doctorate before I turn 30, a personal goal of mine.  So less 12 months from my original 48.  But of course, my registration actually started on the 1st Feb, 2009. Minus another 6 months.  I’m told that most people do relatively little in their first 2 years, beside attend a couple of residential modules and read a lot of books.  So take off another 24 months.

So basically I’ve got 6 months to redefine an industry.

Greatest gift my arse, I would have settled for a decent pair of socks.

Over the weekend, with the above equation in mind, I set myself the task of actually producing something.  When I set out on the EngD path I had clear visions of what I wanted to achieve.  I immediately released an Aladdin’s Cave of information as soon as began scratching below the surface.  Who knew that so many people were interested in E-Learning?  Who knew that so many would be engaged in academic research projects, exactly like mine?  There’s even a bloody conference on E-Portfolio’s for God sake; I thought I was on my own there for sure.

A wise man once said “There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know”.  Then Donald Rumsfeld said it and totally fucked it up for the rest of us.  I’ve reached the second stage on the confusion chart; Known unknowns.  I know that I don’t know very much.

It’s a scary place to be, stage 2.  I went through the same process when I wrote my MBA dissertation.  I went in, full of confidence.  Did a little research, launched a questionnaire.  Then when I started analysing the results I realised I didn’t have the first clue about what I was doing.  This freaked me out somewhat.  I had 700 responses and I’m sure the data was telling me something, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what.  And then I eventually returned to sanity.  I wasn’t under pressure to make the data tell me something.  The data not telling me anything was actually a fantastic outcome.  It was eliminating the strand of enquiry I was making – a very useful addition to knowledge.  It was a truly small addition to knowledge, one that will probably never be unearthed.  But it served its purpose.

And so now I find myself back in stage 2 once more.  Again I’m overwhelmed by how little I know.  But, like the recovering alcoholic, I’m beginning to acknowledge my problem and as such, I can address it.  My first point of call has been to chunk down my problem into areas of investigation.  The EngD, unlike a PhD, typically consists of 3 case study papers, written at a rate of 1 per year, which then tie together in the final year with a bridging paper.  This brings everything together much like a thesis, but on a broader canvas of work.  And you actually need to Engineer something in the process of writing these papers.  My first paper is likely to centre on Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and web 2.0 tools.  I don’t think I’ll stretch too far in the e-portfolio ark of this topic, but I’ve some nice contacts in the CPD arena and we’re currently working on a CPD project for a great cause in the developing world.  My second paper is shaping up to be something completely different.  Not necessarily a problem, it just means my bridging paper will have to be a work of art.

It was this second paper that became my focus over the weekend and gave rise to the title of this blog.  Yes, the overly long prologue is now over, I am actually getting to the point.  One of the issues I’ve been tussling with recently is the role of informal learning in the future of E-Learning.  There are so many opportunities to learn from the web and from the information it holds.  All we do at the moment is take these ideas and write it out neatly.

With so much material in existence, be that inside or outside of organisations, it seems to me that the only thing that is stopping this “informal” content being used is the lack of order it possesses.  But linear learning is not necessarily the best teaching method; the “Next” button has become such a mainstay of the E-learning I see that it almost seems impossible to imagine courses without it.  This is the curse of the Next button and it is something we need to break out of if we are to move into exciting new areas for learning online.

This is the area I’m going into next.  I want to present a method of non-linear E-learning which embraces informal learning.  For me, putting information in its place is how I learn.  I like to piece it all together, to see what relates to what, to know the story and the relationships between knowledge.  Clicking next doesn’t do this for me – I’m just learning the order someone said it should be in.  I need to create my own journey, to be presented with the pieces of the jigsaw and put it back together again.

Then and only then can I see the bigger picture.