Week 24 A8 – How practitioners use learning design models.

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There are many implications of TEL of how crossing the boundaries of course experience, social and work experiences of learners for practitioners.

For example, Conole suggests that using new technologies requires a co-ordinated approach to design and that practice should be represented to better scaffold the sharing of good practice. This has involved developing tools for visualising and guiding design (see weeks 8/9).

These tools seek to “make explicit the pedagogical approaches and models that are implicit in practice.”

de Freitas el al (2007) “The Practitioner perspective on the modelling of pedagogy and practice” took 3 different groups of teachers and asked them to use the BECTA tool called MEEL to depict their practice; they also looked at how Wenger’s Communities of Practice concepts were relevant in the adoption/use of the tool.

The authors say that these attempts to model practice, is done to improve practice – which will lead to either 1. an idealised practice (Laurillard, 2001) or 2. it can be used by a teacher to represent their own ideas for sharing, negotiation and revision (Conole and Oliver, 2002).

In a review of frameworks and models and theoretical accounts they could be classified into 3 perspectives: Associative, Cognitive and Situative which suggest different pedagogical priorities.

Different types of tools: Frameworks – define concepts; Models – relate to concepts, process based or analytic; Tool kits – structured process for designers; Software Wizards.

Sharpe (2004) identified 5 factors as influencing the success of these interventions on improving practice:

1. Usability- known about, accessible and understandable
2. Contextualisation – customizing or adapting resources for intended audience
3. Professional learning qualities – a change in practice requires learning, involving changes in the conceptions of T&L.
4. Community – working with existing communities rather than trying to create new social structures.
5. Learning design – helping practitioners to based their practice on an understanding of student learning, designing to support this.

Research shows that however good a model is, just handing it over to practitioners will not lead to understanding, engagement or impact.  [this is what happened in Weeks 8/9). Practitioners need to be supported with engaging with the tool i order to understand it’s relationship to their own practice.

A nice little phrase about learning activities: Collaboration, Creativity and Enjoyment.

The authors found that the models were welcomed by practitioners but that there was a variation in how they were engaged with due to the “complexities of REIFICATION” – something that a community produces through its shared practice – an outcome of practice (eg a lesson plan) or a reflection of the process taken in practice (guidelines on how to...).  The models given to practitioners are reifications of the processes the people who made the model went through and the adaptations of the model produced by the 3 groups were representative of their own practice and highlight the situated nature of their work – ie situated within their contexts.

Reifications emerge from practice, they do not define it.

The artefacts which are the reifications enable BOUNDARY CROSSING – they can be given to others – members of the new community must work on it to make it meaningful to them by constructing a link between the reification and their own practice.

Communities may use reifications to influence the practice of others – to ALIGN their practice.

The models were adapted and enabled the new groups into reify their practices.  I would be concerned about how practitioners are introduced to different models as if they are the answer/only way. The key is in how you engage practitioner groups with the reification in order to use it as a catalyst to adapt their own processes.

Week 24 A6. Wenger’s Presentation

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Drawing Informal Learning into  Education

The process of recognising the skills and experience learners possess in their social and work lives will benefit their performance in formal education. Teachers’ experiences in their own schools can be shared with their CoP to learn, Online interaction supports knowledge sharing and development of practice based learning.

We watched a presentation given by Etienne Wenger (see right) to the OU in 2007. Here are so key quotes I enjoyed:

• “if a university is going to engage in professional development or practice-based learning it’s going to have to fundamentally take these two premises as a point of departure: that knowledge is the property of communities and that meaningfulness, meaningful engagement in a communal enterprise of service has got to be the foundation of professional identity.”

• Online communities – “how can you call this a community? These people have never met. These people will never meet, probably. They are a community because they recognise each other as learning partners and co-practitioners. I can see it in what you say, and because I can recognise the practitioner in you, I can trust that what you’re saying is going to be meaningful to me in my own learning, in my own trajectory. So that connection of practitioner to practitioner that creates a learning partnership is actually very important even with a simple technology like a list serve. “

• F”or them it was like, you know, the first thing you do in the morning is go check the computer. What is my community doing and saying today? So, we should not even assume that in a community, if someone is not extremely active in posting a whole lot, that there is not a very meaningful connection to the process of learning that is directly talking to one’s identity as a practitioner.”

• “traditionally, at least, in many people’s minds, I think, distance learning is kind of second cousin to on-campus learning. But, if you start thinking about learning as engagement in a system of practices, then distance learning could be viewed as actually closer.”

Week 24 Activity 4 – Design for Learning

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Read: the introduction from the Beetham and Sharpe (2007) book Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age.

(a) How do Beetham and Sharpe view the relationship between learning and teaching?
The terms teaching and learning are in conflict with each other since Learning is seen now as active, participative and adopting the theories of constructivism, social constructivism, experiential learning, networking learning and connectedness. Regarding teaching as coming first, is seen as a barrier to active/individual learning (and closely linked to the acquisition metaphor).   Learners are no longer passive recipients of knowledge, but active participants in the learning process.  There is a revolution where academics are referring to Learning before the Teaching.
I understand what these extremist views are saying, but isn’t teaching about good learning and learning about good teaching? This leads us back to Saljo’s conceptions of learning and conceptions of teaching doesn’t it?

•   Write down your own view of whether pedagogy is a useful term in the way suggested in the reading and post this in the forum for your tutor group.
This is a key quote that I think summarises how they use the term “pedagogy, then, involves ways of knowing as well as ways of doing. …It is centrally concerned with how we understand practice, … and how we apply that theoretical understanding in practice once again.” I think they have usefully taken it forward from it’s original definition.  Pedagogy needs to be rethought in the digital age because those people who are motivated to use them are seen to be letting technology lead pedagogy, this is certainly true where work. There are a few individuals who are adopting technologies to solve problems in their teaching; they are seen as mavericks and against the norm and people are fearful of them – it’s the change issue.

(b) Why do Beetham and Sharpe use the term ‘design for learning’ rather than learning design?
Design for learning refers to the whole process of thinking about and creating a learning outcome. It involves investigation, application, representation and iteration.  Learning design is just the end result – the design of the learning activities/curricula not the process of coming to that outcome.

• Post your views on the relationship between design and learning in your tutor group forum.
I’m now clear about how context and individual approaches to learning/teaching will impact on the design for learning, and agree with the debate that says that you can design for learning, but you cannot design the learning.

Edit [30/7/09] In his blog, Kev Hickey draws a different explanation that makes a lot fo sense “The[y] see the term learning design as an existing term which focuses on the design of learning activities and contents. They argue that the responcibility to learning is in the hands of the learner, and no one else can design their learning, instead they can design an environment suitable for learning.”

Notes from reading the chapter below

Week 24 A3 Learning Architectures

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Wenger (1998) – conceptual architecture – the purpose of learning architecture is to lay down the general elements of design, stating what needs to be in place.

It helps you determine the questions, choices and trade offs to address and gives a general shape of what is to be achieved.

Wenger says there are 3 infrastructures to learning – Engagement, imagination and alignment that the design needs to facilitate.  There 3 factors work best in combination although the may conflict.  The aim is to combine all 3 without letting the needs for 1 to be fulfilled at the expense of the other 2.

Wenger suggests 4 dimensions of design which enables you to support these 3 infrastructures. These dimensions are not poles, but tensions. It’s how you combine them that is important.

1. Participation and Reification – practice and identity. Design is distributed between P&R, but must fit together. Challenge is what to reify in terms of participation.

2. Designed and Emergent – practice is not a result of design but a response. Challenge is how to include the emergent in the designed, to make it an opportunity

3. Local and Global – no community can fully design the learning of another; no community can fully design its own learning

4. Identification and negotiation

These 4 dimensions reflect the confrontation of design with issues of meaning, time, space and power.  Each dimension has trade offs, opportunities and obstacles.

To support engagement the design needs to support: Mutuality (interactional facilities, joint tasks); competence (applying skills, accountability, tools that support collaboration); continuity.

To facilitate imagination – which is needed to deal with broader contexts need – orientation (to space, time, meaning, power), reflection, exploration.

To facilitate alignment – connecting learning to practices need: convergence (common focus, allegiance), coordination (standards and methods, communication, boundary facilities, feedback), and jurisdiction (policies, mediation, authority)

Week 24 Technology mediated learning contexts

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Here are some notes from the study guide

• The uses of all kinds of technology suggest an increasing need for systematic design.
• Digital and networked technologies require more explicit representations of the tasks that learners and tutors are expected to undertake. The take up, however, and use of technology cannot be guaranteed by design.
• Learning cannot be directly designed, only designed for. Learning itself is only indirectly related to what practitioners design.
• The problems are
  • Space and Time – the different ways spaces are and can be used (physical online) by teachers and learners
  • Organisational and Community – communities are emergent, cannot be designed. Rely on co-construction of communication between students.
  • Task and Activity – students construct their own learning contexts from the learning setting – each learners activity will differ from the task that initiated it.
• Designers set tasks, the activity is what students actually do.

Activity 2 – reading Jones and Asensio (2001)

Even though the assessment task is well specified the students interpret it differently and these are based on contextual issues beyond the control of the teacher. Most students conceived the process to be more important than the context.

Phenomenography – a qualitative research approach – an approach for understanding the different ways people experience the world/phenomena.

Students interviewed interpreted the aims of the assessment differently from the aims of the writers.

Students were influenced by factors external to the assessment criteria.

Students’ interpretations of their common task varied unpredictably within a single group

Week 24 – Contexts

Week 24  looks at how contexts and learning interactions influence each other.

• Context is emergent and reflects the actions learners take, as well as the settings and relationships available to them for engagement.
• Context shapes the learning experience – personal context; physical settings; and social roles
• When technology is used to recreate/ “remediate” a f2f learning context it can be unhelpful in being able to see other context for TEL.
• TEL may enable learners and practitioners to construct for themselves learning contexts that are unique, or at least radically different from anything experience f2f.

A1 – reading Thorpe  2008

In brief, this article explains that context effects learning experience and however a practitioner sequences an activity, the individuals’ context offline, online and personal approaches will effect their outcome and so everyone will have different outcomes. Technology enhanced learning (TEL) does enhance the opportunities for expansive learning (activity theory) and the creation of connections giving people more peers to interact with, easier to make contact with each other.

Implications for Practitioners

Need for expertise in the design of activity that delivers the learning potential of particular technologies

Need for practitioners to draw on resources and energies learners can bring from their participation in informal learning across a diversity of settings and crossing boundaries between different learning contexts.

1.    In relation to the student task on the course, ‘The Environmental Web’, in what ways does the online activity differ from anything students might have experienced face to face in a campus context?

• Freedom to set own schedule and processes
• Easier to argue online than in person
• Clear, concise instructions
• Processes reflected on in assessment
• Evidence of participation visible and motivates quality participation.
  

2.    In relation to the second case study, based on the National College for School Leadership:
(a) Why is the talk2learn online ‘community’ referred to as a hybrid?

A mix of communities – on and offline, sharing practice contexts to develop practice identity.

Notes from article follow: