Getting granular on the learning pathway: LabXchange
As online learning matures, the move is from locked-down course designs that offer the same to everyone, to more flexible and personalised resources, melded to individual needs. The LabXchange platform, a spin off from edX and Harvard University, is a step-change in this evolution, unlocking terabytes of learning assets and providing the tools for building customised learning pathways that can be adapted to the requirements of small groups of learners.
LabXchange, two years in the making, was launched in February this year. The key innovation – the platform’s conceptual foundation - is the “Blockstore”, a content storage system that works at the most granular level, like pixels in a digital image and allows learning assets to be stored in a far more versatile way than existing Learning Management Systems. Building on the huge store of existing content in the edX platform, the Blockstore will provide a massive catalogue of basic materials – a single video, a set of notes - from which unique sets of learning pathways can be built. Rob Lue, Faculty Director and PI for LabXchange:
it’s going to turn Open edX into a next-generation platform unlike anything else. And, because it’s Open edX, it’s completely open-source and free. What that means is when the re-engineering is done, the 35 million learners who use some version of the Open edX platform will, in principle, have access to this. What this will allow everyone to do is to remix content and to share it to the world.
LabXchange’s development partner has been Hubble Studios, based here in Cape Town (full disclosure: I advise Hubble Studios on aspects of their work). The analysis and design spec included shaping the first customised pathways that would be built on the Blockstore and used for the LabXchange launch; a new online version of Amgen Biotech Experience Program for schools as well as a learning pathway for Harvard undergraduate students.
What was needed was a user interface that allowed learners to set their own pace according to their individual needs. The solution has been to use interactive scrolling rather than instructional video as the primary means of moving through a learning pathway, putting the learner in control of delivery. For the Hubble Learning Designers, working on the scrollable content has been like building an animation, frame by frame. Each concept or piece of information had to be precisely written and then linked to specific pieces of visual information. This allowed the learner to move through the content in a highly controlled, linear fashion, slowing, pausing or repeating as required. This is a different, and parallel, user experience to learning from video, which provides for multidimensional, rich and contextual presentation of content. Taken together, videos and scrollable content are a powerful combination, making full allowance for accessibility, meeting learners’ individual needs.
This approach can be applied in widely different contexts. For example, the sequence of context-setting, prediction, experimentation and comparison with ideal outcomes could be used to simulate a challenge in engineering, or in urban planning. For teachers, this could allow for different levels of readiness in the same classroom, requiring a complex lesson plan that would normally require extensive and difficult preparation work, searching multiple sources for appropriate course content. LabXchange’s learning pathways solve this kind of problem, allowing teachers to design to high levels of complexity, drawing materials from the Blockstore as a single library. The benefit is transmitted directly to learners in the form of personalised learning.
The LabXchange platform is open and free for anyone to set up an account and to put together a personalised learning pathway.
A full account of the development of the LabXchange platform is available here.