Category Archives: teaching and learning

New media paradox: global use but cultural embeddedness

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More on the issue of cultures. I have had an interesting exchange of emails with Eileen Luebcke from the University of Bremen. Eileen talks of the paradox of New Media in terms of “the promise of worldwide global use but the cultural embeddedness of the technology.”

She is interested in the idea of comparing e-learning environments with regard to hidden cultural differences. In terms of evidence for such cultural differences she suggests:

  1. “There are cultures that heavily depend on oral traditions for learning (the whole Orient, first nation people all over the world). It is still unclear how to deal with this difference, but it seems that the Western idea of libraries are not efficient for this. There is an article from South Africa describing that a certain disadvantage for African people is manifested even in the digital divide due to a focus on written information within library and e-learning systems. It is still unclear how to adapt Western e-learning concepts to this.
  2. This adds to differences in hierarchy and differences in the concept of teachers. Discourse approaches like in Western class rooms often fail because expectations towards the role of teachers are different. There is also comparative research investigating the different online behaviour of Norwegian, American, and Korean students. Norwegian students tend to be more discourse oriented than American students. If discourse is a main educative goal I would assume that this is mirrored in the e-learning environments used or in how e-learning environments are used.
  3. An additional interesting aspect is the design. There are some studies which investigate the design of websites. Especially interesting is a study of the use of American and Chinese users of websites constructed by native and non-native programmers. It turned out that even with the same content Americans find the information faster on websites with American origin and vice versa. “

Such cultural factors may interact with pedagogic approaches to learning using technology. In an article in First Monday Lisa Lane suggests that different Content Management Systems “may not only influence, but control instructional approaches. She says that Blackboard “forces the instructor to think in terms of content types instead, breaking the natural structure of the semester, or of a list of topics.” Lane compares the design of Moodle to Blackboard, proposing that the ‘opt in’ structure of the Moodle CMS allows  the instructor to make “choices about context on a macro level, and choices about features and tools on a micro level. This makes it possible to explore pedagogical options more freely.”

I will meet Eileen Leubcke next week to discuss designing a research project around these issues. If you are interested and have ideas around this, please get in touch.

Vygotsky and Personal Learning Environments

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I have a 18 year old intern student, Jo Turner-Attwell, working for me. When I was in Vienna at the ECER conference, I left her the task of looking at Vygotky’s work in relation to Personal Learning Environments. This is part of the research we are undertaking in the Mature-ip project. And here is her summary. Pretty good start I think!

“Vygotsky died in 1934, almost a century ago, however his theories are becoming more relevant than they ever were during the course of his live. In particular the Zone of Proximal Development and the theories developed from this idea are more important than ever before. In addition to this his strong themes of the importance of social interaction and learning with assistance are being more closely looked at.

The zone of proximal development is the area between what an individual can achieve on their own and what they can achieve with assistance. Vigotsky’s definition is ‘the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers’. It is easy to understand through the idea of school text books. Those that are not too hard and not too easy, so challenging whilst not being beyond a students capabilities, are the optimal level of difficulty and right in the zone of proximal development. Vygotsky believed that learning shouldn’t follow development, but rather should lead it. A student should constantly be reaching slightly beyond their capabilities rather than working within them.

The method of scaffolding has been developed from Vgotsky’s theories. This is the concept that teachers or trainers, should simply assist their student until they are ready to act alone. A good example of this is a bike, moving from stabilisers, to someone running behind, to riding alone. This overlaps with the concept of a zone of proximal development, where some forms of scaffolding work for some people and not for others. Zones of proximal development vary and often different types of scaffolding are needed to reach the same goal. Vygotsky’s theories suggest students should lead their learning and teachers simply assist and rather than judging students on what they know in standardised tests, learning should be done through looking closely at their zone of proximal development. This allows learning to be developed around the needs of the learner, rather than learners trying to fit their needs into current standardised curriculums. This is particularly important as the current examination system can fail to support students who struggle in examination conditions, or excel in the practical side of learning.

This links in well with the concept of Personal Learning Environments or PLEs. The idea that the student themselves creates a virtual space to manage their own learning, whilst allowing room for social networking as a support system. This could combine the informal areas of learning with a more academic e-portfolio type system. This in theory is a fantastic idea, particularly in the way of social networking, which I do think it is important teachers begin to recognise more as a good teaching support method. However I do believe that this would have to be specific to formal learning. Types of informal learning would continue on separate social networking sites where students could interact privately among themselves. During my A Level studies it was not uncommon for teachers to assist their students through current informal online social networking systems as teachers began to take on a more friend-like role. However for my 14 year old sister this sort of student teacher relationship would be unthinkable. Not because I feel it would be inappropriate but more because I know that she would see it as an invasion of her privacy. This need for privacy in addition to support I believe would also exist within employer and employee relationships. This can clearly be seen from current issues of employers judging people’s employability on their facebook sites. I know I personally present myself differently upon my facebook site to the way I like to be seen in my work environment, but still feel I benefit from areas where I can communicate with my employer online, currently I use skype. Therefore I believe there is the need to keep formal learning environments and informal learning environments apart. Limiting the room for PLEs to grow.

A more significant problem I had was how one standardised PLE system could be used to support different types of students, particularly those who were better with practical studies. If the idea of a Personal Learning Environment was that an individual invented it, then how could teachers assist with the development of this?  How could it be standardised? Also surely teaching this would turn it into formal education and would students still see it as their own space, and could teachers cope with only having access to certain areas? How could student that need more help receive that help through a similar model to a student that needed less?

However this is only one area where I feel that Vgotsky’s theories are relevant. I believe that judging students on their zone of proximal development and their potential for learning could allow students that struggle under exam pressure and to work within time limits to receive the grades they deserve. I know many students far smarter than myself who when put in an exam situation struggled and received lower grades than me. My mind being better suited to the remembering of large amounts of data, rather than me necessarily understanding the work better. When first asked the question of how we could measure this I drew a blank. But in fact part of Vygotsky’s theories is less capable students being shown things by more capable students, therefore why couldn’t students understanding be measured on their ability to convey the information they have learnt, maybe even after being shown how by a more able other. Allowing a student to reach the top of their Zone Of Proximal development. In my own admission this also has its flaws in that some of the most intelligent people struggle with teaching and I’m no educational expert so do not have the answers to these flaws. However this did lead me towards ideas of widening the way people are assessed, meaning ongoing assessment of a students progress and a students ability teach could simply make up parts of achieving a grade along with traditional examinations and coursework. If informal learning is as important as formal learning varying the way students are assessed can only work in their favour. However this does again lead into difficulties, as with anything, in that students may receive closer grades, and it may be difficult to differentiate from students who previously would have been placed in very different catorgories.

Also at the root of many of the differentiation of students who may excel in informal learning but not in formal is the subjects that are classified as worth studying. What is worth learning? I found this question upon one of the sites on which Vygotsky’s work was studied and it made me think. School curriculums are so very narrow in comparison with the potential in university courses where the opportunities of what to study are endless. Technology in particular I feel is under represented. When I first came to Pontydysgu I had no idea what a learning platform or PLE were and couldn’t work many of the standard systems on a Mac. These technological systems seen at the forefront of education are barely heard about within education systems. In a technological age I cannot help but wonder why this sort of important knowledge is not being taught, why students aren’t studying the more complex area of technology. We use technology everyday, probably know more than many of our teachers, yet it is not part of any standardised curriculums, it is all informal. I had to quickly learn how to edit audio and video, work a spreadsheet, funnily enough mainly through scaffolding techniques. Audio and video in particular is the kind of technology that only my peers who learnt informally would be able to do. This is most likely because of the lack of knowledge of teachers, not as a criticism of them but rather an emphasis on the fact that the technology we use so often today has mostly come about since many of them finished learning. This to me suggests the need for some sort of lifelong learning system, which again the PLE can support. Although the problems of standardising appear again, there is clearly a need for the general population to have a way to keep up to date with fast changing technologies as technology is moving on before it has the opportunity to be properly implemented. Even in my sixthform a student himself bought in a wireless rooter due to the lack of one, so that students could use their laptops and access the school network. Although moving a long way from Vgotsky the roots in his theories can still be seen in that social interaction is needed for this sort of technology to be fully accessible to everyone. Different people will need different methods to help them grasp these sort of technological systems, particularly as I believe teachers would struggle as much as, if not more, than students.”

Are we still getting e-learning wrong – how can we get it ‘right’?

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I have written many posts about what I consider wrong with approaches to e-learning based on attempts to ‘manage’ learning through Learning Management Systems and Virtual Learning Environments. I have also written about the promise of alternative approaches based on Web 2.0, social software and Personal Learning Environments.

But are we still getting e-learning wrong? Not the technology but what we are trying to use ot for and with whom.

As with most technological innovation, first attempts at implementation tend to mimic previous social paradigms. This the idea of the virtual classroom and the on-line university. Teaching and learning  through technology have changed with the idea of blended learning and the increasing integration of technologies within curricular and pedagogic  approaches. But the main thrust of use of technology for learning remains the delivery of ‘traditional; curricula or bodies of knowledge to translational students groups – albeit extended through distance learning to a wider student cohort.

I have long thought that the transformative potential of Technology Enhanced Learning is the ability to support explorative (I am desperately trying to avoid that vague ‘constructivist’ word?) learning for anyone, anywhere. And, in a developmental perspective, the most interesting work may be the use of technology for supporting work based learning and informal learning outside traditional courses. In this respect, it is interested to see the increasing interest of projects funded under the European Commission Research programme and Education and Training programme in competence based approaches to education and training.

However, this approach remains problematic. attempts to develop standardised  taxonomies of competence tend to ignore the importance of context, especially or work based learning and Continuing Professional Development. Recently, I have been involved in a number fo projects looking at how we can use internet based technologies ot support learning, knowledge development and knowledge maturing for Careers Advice, Information and Guidance practitioners in the UK. Of course, ‘training’ is important for such a group of knowledge workers. But even more important is the ability to learn, everyday from the work they carry out, both individually and collectively. Within the Mature-IP project we have developed an approach to knowledge maturing aiming at the development and implementation of tools for Personal Learning and for Organisational learning. In reality it has proved difficult to separate out the two. Individual learning rests of more collective learning processes, within a community of practice, and equally organisational learning is largely dependent on the individual learning of the practitioners. it is possible to look at the roles and tasks carried out by Careers professionals and then to develop tools to assist in carrying out such tasks. such an approach has the merit of supporting everyday work, thus meaning that potentially learning is integrated within the work process. However, there is no guarantee that merely using technologies for task management results in significant learning and knowledge development at either individual or organisational level.

One answer appears to be to integrate more social software functionality into platforms and tools designed to support learning. this autumn, we will launch two platforms: one for policy makers within the careers field based on a mash up of WordPress and the excellent Open University Cloudworks software, and the other a professional development site for careers practitioners based on Buddypress. with both we are attempting to encourage and facilitate peer group learning based on social interaction.

Whether or not these approaches will be successful remains to be seen. But, overall, I am convinced that such projects are key to developing a more transformational direction to the use of technology for learning. In undertaking this work we are lucky to have the support of the Mature-IP project which allows a more focused examination of teh relation between theories and practice in learning and the development of Technology Enhanced Learning tools and platforms. One issue that has become apparent is that research into Technology Enhanced Learning is truly inter-disciplinary – needing at a very least a bringing together of expertise in pedagogy, education, organisational learning, work sciences, design and psychology as well as computer science. Such interdisciplinary research provides a challenge in terms of methodologies.

Projects like Mature-IP and the JISC funded Emerge project offer the basis for rethinking what we are doing with e-learning – and perhaps even for getting it ‘right’ this time round.

Tensions in PLE development

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It is heartening to see the increasing interest in Personal Learning Environments. Indeed, in terms of research into Technology Enhanced Learning, it is probably not going too far to say that PLEs have now mainstreamed.

However, with increasing research, and especially as developers and practitioners move towards implementing PLEs – or rather implementing an approach to learning based on Personal Learning Networks and PLEs, tensions are emerging.

One particular point of tension became very apparent at last weeks ROLE project expert workshop between an approach to personalisation based on a (corporate or institutional) VLE or Learning Management System providing more space for self supported learning and those wishing to empower learners in developing their own learning environment based on social software.

A related tension is between seeing learners essentially using PLEs to follow programmes of learning – be they courses or online learning – and those seeing PLEs as primarily a space to reflect on informal learning.

And yet a further tension is in the extent to which recommender systems can assist learners in developing their own learner systems. Or is the prime function of a PLE to enable individuals to develop their own networks for peer assisted learning?

All these approaches have their strengths and are not mutually incompatible. However with growing numbers of projects aiming to develop, test or implement PLEs, it is becoming important that project partners gain a shared understanding of both the meaning of a PLE and the particular objectives of any project development.

Appropriating technologies for contextual knowledge: Mobile Personal Learning Environment

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Along with John Cook and Andrew Ravenscroft from London Metropoliatn University, I have submitted a paper to the 2nd World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WSKS 2009) to be held in Crete in September. Our paper, entitled ‘Appropriating technologies for contextual knowledge: Mobile Personal Learning Environments’, looks at the potential of what we call a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (WOMBLE). The abstract goes like this:

“The development of Technology Enhanced Learning has been dominated by the education paradigm. However social software and new forms of knowledge development and collaborative meaning making are challenging such domination. Technology is increasingly being used to mediate the development of work process knowledge and these processes are leading to the evolution of rhizomatic forms of community based knowledge development. Technologies can support different forms of contextual knowledge development through Personal Learning Environments. The appropriation or shaping of technologies to develop Personal Learning Environments may be seen as an outcome of learning in itself. Mobile devices have the potential to support situated and context based learning, as exemplified in projects undertaken at London Metropolitan University. This work provides the basis for the development of a Work Orientated MoBile Learning Environment (WOMBLE).”

Below is the key section of the paper explaining about the environment. And I am also attaching a word file if you wish to download the full paper. As always I would be very interested in any feedback.

“Educational technology has been developed within the paradigm of educational systems and institutions and is primarily based on acquiring formal academic and expert sanctioned knowledge.
However business applications and social software have been widely appropriated outside the education systems for informal learning and for knowledge development, through social learning in communities of practice.
Is it possible to reconcile these two different worlds and to develop or facilitate the mediation of technologies for investigative and learning and developing developmental competence and the ability to reflect and act on the environment?
Based on the ideas of collaborative learning and social networks within communities of practice, the notion of Personal Learning Environments is being put forward as a new approach to the development of e-learning tools [25,26]. In contrast to Virtual Learning environments, PLEs are made-up of a collection of loosely coupled tools, including Web 2.0 technologies, used for working, learning, reflection and collaboration with others. PLEs can be seen as the spaces in which people interact and communicate and whose ultimate result is learning and the development of collective know-how. A PLE can use social software for informal learning which is learner driven, problem-based and motivated by interest – not as a process triggered by a single learning provider, but as a continuing activity. The ‘Learning in Process’ project [27] and the APOSDLE project [28] have attempted to develop embedded, or work-integrated, learning support where learning opportunities (learning objects, documents, checklists and also colleagues) are recommended based on a virtual understanding of the learner’s context. While these development activities acknowledge the importance of collaboration, community engagement and of embedding learning into working and living processes, they have not so far addressed the linkage of individual learning processes and the further development of both individual and collective understanding as the knowledge and learning processes mature [29]. In order to achieve that transition (to what we term a ‘community of innovation’), processes of reflection and formative assessment have a critical role to play.
John Cook [30] has suggested that Work Orientated MoBile Learning Environments (Womble) could play a key role in such a process. He points out “around 4 billion users around the world are already appropriating mobile devices in their every day lives, sometimes with increasingly sophisticated practices, spawned through their own agency and personal/collective interests.”
However, in line with Jenkins at al [31] it is not just the material and functional character of the technologies which is important but the potential of the use of mobile devices to contribute to a new “participatory culture.” They define such a culture as one “with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices… Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways.”
The specific skills that Jenkins and his coauthors describe as arising through involvement of “average consumers” in this “participatory culture” include ludic forms of problem solving, identity construction, multitasking, “distributed cognition,” and “transmedial navigation.”
Importantly modern mobile devices can easily be user customized, including the appearance, operation and applications. Wild, Mödritscher and Sigurdarson [32] suggest that “establishing a learning environment, i.e. a network of people, artefacts, and tools (consciously or unconsciously) involved in learning activities, is part of the learning outcomes, not an instructional condition.” They go on to say: “Considering the learning environment not only a condition for but also an outcome of learning, moves the learning environment further away from being a monolithic platform which is personalisable or customisable by learners (‘easy to use’) and heading towards providing an open set of learning tools, an unrestricted number of actors, and an open corpus of artefacts, either pre-existing or created by the learning process – freely combinable and utilisable by learners within their learning activities (‘easy to develop’). ”
Critically, mobile devices can facilitate the recognition of context as a key factor in work related and social learning processes.  Cook [33] proposes that new digital media can be regarded as cultural resources for learning and can enable the bringing together of the informal learning contexts in the world outside the institution with those processes and contexts that are valued inside the intuitions.
He suggests that informal learning in social networks is not enabling the “critical, creative and reflective learning that we value in formal education.”
Instead he argues for the scaffolding of learning in a new context for learning through learning activities that take place outside formal institutions and on platforms that are selected by learners.
Cook [30] describes two experimental learning activities for mobile devices developed through projects at London Metropolitan University. In the first, targeted at trainee teachers an urban area close to London Metropolitan University, from 1850 to the present day, is being used to explore how schools are signifiers of both urban change and continuity of educational policy and practice.
The aim of this project is to provide a contextualised, social and historical account of urban education, focusing on systems and beliefs that contribute to the construction of the surrounding discourses. A second aim is to scaffold the trainee teachers’ understanding of what is possible with mobile learning in terms of field trips. In an evaluation of the project, 91% of participants thought the mobile device enhanced the learning experience. Furthermore, they considered the information easy to assimilate allowing more time to concentrate on tasks and said the application allowed instant reflection in situ and promoted “active learning” through triggering their own thoughts and encouraging them to think more about the area
In the second project, archaeology students were provided with a tour of context aware objects triggered by different artifacts in the remains of a Cistercian abbey in Yorkshire. The objects allowed learners to expire not only the physical entity of the reconstructed abbey through the virtual representation, but also to examine different aspects including social and cultural history and the construction methods deployed. According to Cook [30] “the gap between physical world (what is left of Cistercian), virtual world on mobile is inhabited by the shared cognition of the students for deep learning.”
The use of the mobile technology allowed the development and exploration of boundary objects transcending the physical and virtual worlds. Boundary objects have been defined as “objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individual-site use. They may be abstract or concrete. They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is key in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds.” [33].  The creation and management of boundary objects which can be explored through mobile devices can allow the interlinking of formal and academic knowledge to practical and work process knowledge.
Practically, if we consider models for personalized and highly communicative learning interaction in concert with mobile devices, whilst employing context aware techniques, startling possibilities can arise. For example, we can combine the immediacy of mobile interaction with an emergent need for a collaborative problem solving dialogue, in vivo, during everyday working practices, where the contextual dimensions can constrain and structure (through semantic operations) the choices about a suitable problem solving partner or the type of contextualised knowledge that will support the problem solving. In brief, combining dialogue design, social software techniques, mobility and context sensitivity means we have greater opportunities for learning rich dialogues in situations where they are needed – to address concrete and emergent problems or opportunities at work.
Such approaches to work oriented mobile learning also supports Levi Strauss’s idea of bricolage [34]. The concept of bricolage refers to the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signifying objects to produce new meanings in fresh contexts. Bricolage involves a process of resignification by which cultural signs with established meanings are re-organised into new codes of meaning. In such a pedagogic approach the task of educators is to help co-shape the learning environment.
Of course, such approaches are possible using social software on desktop and lap top computers. The key to the mobile environment is in facilitating the use of context. This is particularly important as traditional elearning, focused on academic learning, has failed to support the context based learning inherent in informal and work based environments.
Whilst the use of context is limited in the experiments undertaken by London Metropolitan University, being mainly based on location specific and temporal factors, it is not difficult to imagine that applications could be developed which seek to build on wider contextual factors. These might include tasks being undertaken, the nature of any given social network, competences being deployed, individual learner preferences and identities and of course the semantic relations involved.”

You can download the full paper here