An ecosystem is a biological ecology of diverse interacting organisms and their physical environment, and the EduNomix™ Exclusive eLearning environment is no different. These diverse interacting organisms organise themselves in communities based on their specific niche roles as they become the stakeholders in their respective societies. The specific niche that is unique to the particular organisms is an expression of how they prefer to obtain and utilise the resources they extract from the networks available to them.
The styles of relationships that form allow these organisms to create sophisticated interdependent and asynchronous relationships, for example, commensalism, mutualism, and symbiosis. The ecology sustains itself by continuously surveying its environment constructing a comprehensive repertoire of available features and resources. The available features and resources ensure efficient utilisation of these assets for the maximum benefit to the eLearning biome. Furthermore, the ecology endures through the sensible application of its assets that ensures continuous and adequate provision and distribution of these resources back into the network. This endeavour then becomes the all-inclusive sufficient provision of the selected resources and, more importantly, the efficient application of these resources for the greater good of the entire network.
Similarly, the notion of a Virtual eLearning Ecology (VLE) operates on the combination of its exclusive features and resources that expands and supports the unique learning environment. The outcome of such an endeavour manifests as an authentic blueprint of an inclusive cooperative whole as a reflection of the sum of its parts.
eLearning as a Function of Design
eLearning as a Function of Design
The foundation of the EduNomix™ Exclusive eLearning blueprint involves various unique designs and exclusive learning considerations. Besides, the EduNomix™ Exclusive eLearning Institute incorporates the characteristics commonly attributed to ecosystems for the design of a synthesised eLearning instructional ecology.
The learning that occurs characterises novel interconnected practical alternatives and theoretical associations across its supply chain. The interconnectedness of these alternatives and associations reveal hierarchically distributed obscure patterns repeating themselves that traverse disciplinary boundaries as fractals. The hierarchical distribution of these selected fractals across the networked communities emerges from the web of multiple transmission interdependencies through the prevalence of cycles and cyclical dynamics becoming continually onward spiralling kinesis. The onward spiralling kinesis renders continuous change and the collective adaptation of the learning that occurs a product of change as a communal innovative response.
Designing from Nature
Designing from Nature
Eluding to the eLearning biome introduced a little earlier, the EduNomix™ Virtual eLearning Ecology is a large naturally occurring community occupying a major learning habitat, like a forest or a tundra. In addition to this, espalier becomes an additional element of the EduNomix™ Virtual eLearning Ecology design process, which is a product of reflective learning in itself.
The EduNomix™ Exclusive eLearning Institute aims to provide collaborative quality and cooperative curated eLearning. A common experience related to Cloud collaboration for the development of quality curated eLearning content is the recurring theme of learning how to learn as a skill. Although one may sense ‘unlearning’ as the first step in learning how to learn, it is actually the competence to discard previously formulated connections and replace them with new alternatives. Replacing previously formulated connections with new alternatives is the refreshing engagement and realisation of new possibilities as one encounters cooperative learning experiences arising from collaboration in the Cloud.
An aspect for the development of cooperative learning in the Cloud, therefore, involves learning how to collaborate, in the first instance. Secondly, cooperative learning is also the cultivation of the virtual learning environment that facilitates holistic learning, which is two of the cornerstones of the EduNomix™ Virtual eLearning Ecology.
Taking from nature then, the continued and sustainable development of learning through collaboration requires the cultivation of the accumulated assets and resultant cultivars. Nurturing the various cultivars comprises the selection, curation, and creation of new realities as we superimpose artificial ideas as an overlay onto what is natural, where knowing how to deal with continuous change becomes a sustainable skill.
Sustainable Ecology
Sustainable Ecology
Approached from an ecological sense, the platform on which the EduNomix™ VLE operates presents itself as a polyculture as it concerns itself with the simultaneous cultivation and exploitation of a range of eLearning offerings. Besides, the variety of primary eLearning offerings integrate with the continued cultivation and exploitation of numerous integrated eLearning support facilities, creating permaculture. EduNomix™ offers a bouquet of such supportive features metaphorically represented as permaculture, an eLearning ecosystem that is intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient and therefore grows into a ‘permanent learning culture’. The principles of a typical permaculturistic synthesis in a learning environment offer new possibilities in the way learners interact and associate with the ecosystem in which they operate, making them both socially responsible contributors and consumers. EduNomix™ uses the term prosumer learners to describe socially responsible contributors and consumers.
As indicated above, permacultures are the art and science of creating productive and sustainable natural environments. Formulating the principles of permaculture for eLearning then becomes key to understanding how we collaborate for eLearning and the transition toward cooperative sustainable modalities of eLearning. When applying these principles to systems of learning, the permaculture design thinking gravitates the synthesis of the learning ecology while establishing a sustainable culture of learning in the Cloud. Some of the principles of permaculture are as follows:
Changing Creatively
Changing Creatively
Responding to change in a meaningful way.
Small Changes are Profound
Small Changes are Profound
Implementing small incremental, and agile iterations of change while conscious of effects within the system.
Design Thinking
Design Thinking
Systems Thinking & holistic approaches to the practical development of solutions design through cognition and strategy in alignment with the ethos.
Focus on Integration
Focus on Integration
Cultivating alternative ways of applying eLearning solutions and integrating what is learnt.
Diversification
Diversification
Cultivating an inclusive multiperspectivism in terms of our expression of solutions and the collective development of methodologies for the application of conscious solutions.
The Harvesting of intangible assets & intelligence
The Harvesting of intangible assets & intelligence
Nomix™ provides the net effect of a cooperative interaction when applied within an ecological paradigm, and produces yield that exceeds the monetary worth of yield obtained.
Emergent self-regulation, literally self-governing and ultimately self-generating
Emergent self-regulation, literally self-governing and ultimately self-generating
Introducing the opportunity to cycle back learning outcomes as multiple derivative and alternative modalities and eLearning experiences. The proprietary Nomix™ matrix is the central ethos that governs interaction.
The Edge
The Edge
Working with alternatives, considering the least expected as viable perspective, novel experiences gathered from the open exchange and ongoing dialogue for the collective negotiation of meaning where domains intersect.
Cyclical Dynamics
Cyclical Dynamics
Resources obtained as yields may be repurposed as process inputs rather than mere outputs.
Relationship
Relationship
Employing Nomix™ methodology as a means to govern collaboration and cooperation.
The above principles of permaculture bear fruit in various domains and resultant learning paths. The main pathways being for one’s own developmental trajectory grafted onto the main branches of Psychoanalysis, Behavioural & Business Management domains. These domains include aspects such as whole-brain thinking perspectives in applied creativity, Media 2.0, and enhancing continuous change as a skill. As indicated above, permacultures are the art and science of creating productive and sustainable natural environments. Formulating the principles of permaculture for eLearning then becomes key to understanding how we collaborate for eLearning and the transition toward cooperative sustainable modalities of eLearning. When applying these principles to systems of learning, the permaculture design thinking gravitates the synthesis of the learning ecology while establishing a sustainable culture of learning in the Cloud. Some of the principles of permaculture are as follows:
An Analogy of an eLearning Permaculture
An Analogy of an eLearning Permaculture
The previously mentioned pathways lie await, like moss-encrusted circuitous footpaths leading into a dense forest where uncertainty looms but untold treasure awaits. By analogy, an autonomous learner may stray from a pathway at initial departure to become subsumed into dense fog. Then, opting to explore an ulterior route, the learner, guided by a newfound self-determined and private raison d’etre, embarks on a more personal journey into unchartered territory, ‘clipping the map’ as it were, cave diving hyper-reality, and alighting on a new map (when it was understood at the outset that the map is not the territory). Crossing the hidden threshold beyond a given domain (as an enclosed experience) the learner stumbles upon a clearing in the forest and, at the edge of dawn, awakens to a large cluster of perennial berries, an incredible medley of ruby and jasper and sapphire, glossy gems glistening amid the underbrush. Admiring the spectacle, she crouches beside the berries and feasts on the plump flesh, savouring one after another while relaxing in the dappled morning sunlight. Refreshed and sated, she lays down to rest. Falling into slumber the remains of the fruits are nestled in the humic soil where, in seasons to come, their seeds would sprout, run wild and proliferate. Sleeping quietly, and dreaming away, a garden is laid.
“Your Mind is a Garden, Your Thoughts are the Seeds. You can grow Flowers or weeds...”
― Osho
An Analogy of an eLearning Permaculture
An Analogy of an eLearning Permaculture
The prosumer learner methodology embedded in the EduNomix™ Virtual eLearning Ecology allows collaboration among learners in all phases of their developmental learning paths according to their self-determined needs for assimilation of knowledge. While co-creating new knowledge in their pursuit of knowledge prosumer learners engraves themselves as an integral part of the cooperative DNA of the learning ecology. The learning path may be regarded as developmental in that the prosumer learner engages, interacts, participates, and collaborates to develop learning modalities while learning how to learn and how to cooperate. Unlike ordinary consumers (e.g. herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores), prosumer learners are hyper-aware of their own style of resource utilisation according to their niches rooted in transdisciplinary domains.
To find out more about prosumer learners, return to our next blog, in which the intricacies of the prosumer learners are explained in further detail and analogies drawn in the context of the 5th Industrial Revolution.