W2.4 Other approaches to context and learning design..

[Joshua Underwood]

A thread for discussing and sharing attempts to apply other approaches to context & learning design.

 

Find out about, and apply other contextual approaches and display the results on your portfolio.

(Done your own thing?)

[Will Pollard]

I am looking at Scenarios and Personas and a sort of Force Field, without arrows or plus or minus at the moment. I will also have a look at the other suggested approach. But this seems like the place to write about Deming, Soft Systems Methodology, and also Action Learning again. Not at length obviously but I will put some links in. Also try to involve some other groups from LinkedIn.

My dream is about social video production. Change depends on some shared vision and culture, but also hard skills possibly enhanced by instructional design and also different management attitudes enhanced by structure and process. So I may be using the word "learning" in a more casual sense than in education theory. Somethning happens, maybe we don't know what it is.

There is already a cloud on Plan - Do - Check / Study - Act , which Deming called the Shewart Cycle. It can relate to Dewey and American pragmatism.
http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2455

The Force Field diagram reminds me of a systems model. Checkland is more upfront about learning with each book, see linked reference.
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Learning_for_action.html?id=4pUoAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

I did not come across much in week one about
Reposted to blog - will789gb on Posterous and LinkedIn groups for #mosocoop (Deming group at CQI) and #mtw3 (online conference continues Management Theory at Work) and International Foundation for Action Learning.

[Hugues Chicoine]

I don't mind being with the few that do their own thing. 

I have compared traditional teaching-learning with learning environements (none typical, really) and attempted to redefine distance | open learning from a learner's viewpoint (my week2 cloud here - http://goo.gl/OlcMS). The viewpont is that of learning, i.e., cognitive (not the computational metaphor of cognitivism and not rooted in Technology except for word processing conceived as the most complex and far reaching system of writing, used for text and command line). In a nutshell, learners who do not attend campus activities do not come under the care or responsibility of the establishment. Their status shares nothing with the standard student status, i.e., that of a person 'with a future' as compared with the institutional status of professors and professionals governed by their respective employment workplans. Distance learners work from the private sphere and their attending open | distance universities changes little to their relationship with society until they are eventually granted diplomas. Meanwhile, hardly anything is changed in their personal contexts and it is somewhat deceitful to burden educational design with unverifiable, uncontrolled assumptions unless we simply wish (i) to gloss over institutional prescriptions, educational practices or approaches for the sake of nurturing enduring misconceptions (they would, on the contrary, benefit from the exposure) or (ii) to protect distance education establishments against threats to their credibility or livelihood (Daniel 2010). I hope that some of the other topics in olds-mooc will offer opportunities to develop student workplan as I conceive it while trying to follow the signposts...  

DANIEL, J. 2010. Distance Education under Threat: an Opportunity? Commonwaelth of Learning (COL). (http://goo.gl/2rHyD) 

[Joshua Underwood]

It is great to see some people doing their own thing and not worried about it. I am interested in your argument about what aspects of context we should attend to for learning design/curriculum design and trying to understand this better and have looked at your clouds with interest. I may be misunderstanding you but I think I agree that there are differences in trying to design the technological aspects of environments for learning, the curriculum and other aspects of learning design and that different models of context may be more or less to appropriate for each of these kinds of design.

I agree that we need to focus on aspects of context that are most significant for our design situation and also to attend to the constraints of that situation, which I think is what you are saying here? "This reflection is not intended to wipe out context but (i) to limit 'context' to the socio-institutional environment in which designers work and (ii) to replace the all encompassing technologically-centered design with a more appropriate representation of EDUCATIONAL (cognitive, academic) DESIGN. i.e., curriculum design".

But I'm not so sure we, as designers, should not attempt to attend to aspects of context that are out of our control, which I think is what you mean by "somewhat deceitful to burden educational design with unverifiable, uncontrolled assumptions"? What do others think?

I find your graphic useful for this discussion so I have embed it here

[Katerina Avramides]

Thanks for your contribution - I found your writings interesting. One thing in particular, though I may have misunderstood: you separate cognition from motivation, affect, and context. My starting point in learning design would be that learning is critically dependent on motivation, and a learners' 'external' context (though I'm not sure I would make such a distinction between external and internal context), in terms of tools, etc, is linked with their metacognitive processes.

I'd be interested to read your thoughts on whether and if so how we might support metacognition in online learning?

[LesC]

Yes indeed Katerina, I too found it very stimulating reading. I also enjoyed reading Sir John Daniel's transcript on the wider issues of ODL which Hughes referenced in his journal. I too am unsure about the motivation aspect here - I haven't yet had time to fully assimilate all that Hughes has written.

Much food for thought.

Cheers

[Hugues Chicoine]

Thank you for the comment and for testing this, Katerina. Hi Les.

I do separate cognition from motivation, affect, and context because, in a design perspective (and not field work in the classroom or online environment when design is done), the contexts (design context: our institution, establishment) (teaching context: classroom or online learning environment) (learning context: private, personal, at home or office) are not connected but will be eventually, although loosely and disconnectedly. If the design environment itself is institutional then in the design perspective, student|learner context is remote. Conversely, where learners are actively engaged with processing|learning new knowledge, the institutional context is external. No 'internal' context needs to be construed, Katerina; there is no 'internal' (uncommunicable|uncommunicated) context unless bordering on philosophy of mind (not going there except for the private, intimate metacognitive). In this respect I like to remind myself of Wenger's approach whereby "models of communicable knowledge" need only be considered, that is, "a representation of knowledge very broadly, as a mapping of knowledge into a physical medium" (Wenger 1987:312). 

As well, when preparing|designing a course or module, the concern is with curriculum, knowledge, and we make room for communicate - collaborate, but we don't know yet what will be conveyed and this is not reason enough to presume of any entity's 'internal' context. In design tasks, I must therefore leave out the learner's private sphere because there are basic institutional requirements or prescriptions addressing that: own or access a computer with online connection, operate word processor and other software programs, navigate online, etc. In addition, from the moment learners are admitted and enrolled, I must presume that they are 'cognitively' able (although there are surprises or cultural challenges in the feedback). Likewise, I must presume that the learner has engaged into the admission and enrollment process, and paid tuition, and is therefore in an appropriate state of mind and mature enough (speaking of higher education). Further, where 'pedagogical' or 'post-pedagogical' characteristics are imparted to the design, it is usually a matter of institutional orientation or, as I have seen, the individual professor's overriding curricular decision (in touch with her discipline; for example environmental or health and safety normative knowledge). 

How to support metacognitive efforts in online learning? Provide and underline a few dynamic and engaging paragraphs --or more-- on that very subject in the study guide and in the course presentation pages; learners might recognise themselves. I like to add a few references --even quotes-- on the sentiment of self-efficacy (well, I guess the latter is motivational but it is not an 'intervention' in the tradition of pedagogy). 

/HCh

WENGER, E. 1987. Artificial intelligence and tutoring systems: computational and cognitive approaches to the communication of knowledge. Los Altos: Morgan Kaufmann.

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2013/1/20 Katerina Avramides <katerina....@gmail.com>

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