Re: Coherence at BBC and Non-Linear Uncourses

Ok folks, I need help here understanding some things. I don’t know enough about something [learning theories? the semantic web? or what?] to fully absorb the article that Tom Scott and Michael Smethurst wrote for Nodalities Magazine.

The article is called Buiding coherence at bbc.co.uk, and it is ripe with crossover lessons for learning. Scott and Smethurst frame the problem in this way:

For the past 86 years the BBC has plied its trade as a storytelling organisation. In the world of linear broadcasting we’ve even gotten very good at it. … But storytelling in a linear world is different from storytelling in the non-linear, hypertext world of the web…. Unlike linear broadcast storylines the web doesn’t provide people with a predicted and controlled linear journey.

I see the link (no pun intended) to personalized learning environments and other learner-centric notions of non-linear learning.

Tony Hirst has written a wonderful post called Non-Linear Uncourses – Time for Linked Ed? that references the piece by Scott and Smethurst. Hirst suggests that “building context and support through links to other content is one way of reusing that content (or at least, pulling it into a new context and making it (re)usable in that new context).”

Ok, I understand things up to that point, but then the analogy to learning that’s pregnant in Scott and Smethurst’s article begins to dim for me. Maybe someone can help teach this old white-haired coot (that’s what my dog Jorge calls me).

I’m a database, query tool, analysis, research, and policy geek. I design and develop that stack from database to policy in order to do something useful with data-cum-information. Up until I retired, it was always something useful for institutions of higher education. Now I’m hoping to do something more fundamental for people everywhere by helping to make learning available free via the web.

So here’s where I get stuck in the Scott and Smethurst article:

Using well targeted content specific links we could not only escape the dead end content silos that characterised bbc.co.uk but point users back to programmes that would hopefully inform, educate and of course entertain.

How does this differ from the straw man the authors create and then dismiss:

So how do you tell stories on a web scale? We could stick with the easy option and try to control ‘user journeys’ across the site. Provide links to where we think the user should go next. But that’s little better than those flip a dice, go to page 30 dungeons and dragons books we all had as kids.

I get the idea that well targeted links offer escape routes from domain silos. And that seems a step forward. But is it sufficient for learner-centric learning? Doesn’t creativity, learning, and innovation happen when someone sees links that do not now exist between nodes?

If that is true, then don’t our databases need to permit these quantum leaps?

It’s all too much for me at the present.

Thanks for any suggestions.