W2.3. What is important about context for learning design?
Joshua Underwood
Cristina suggested that the little back spots, stand for friends, family members, teachers, etc., i.e. personal relationships and later added Tv shows, movies, books we read, newspapers, cultural events or others, etc. So, this is a start into an inquiry into learners (and their collaborators context). With time we will try to ground such statements about the entities that might make up learners' context with research into context (through observation, interview, participatory research, autoethnography, or whatever other methods seem appropriate).
Interacting with these resources (including helpful teachers and others) may initiate learning in one setting but how this is sustained and applied beyond this initial episode and in other settings is a concern voiced by others. What models of context may help us design for this? Perhaps, looking at the narrative structure of learning trajectories is useful?
Anyway, enough from me.
As you think about context, come up with questions - such as "What is the difference between situated learning and the ecology of resources?", find useful models and design frameworks and build your own mind maps and models please add them as replies to this thread...
Joshua Underwood
Here I summarise my thoughts about context for learning design, drawing on this resource - http://e4innovation.com/?p=489
My research mostly focuses on metaphors and so was particularly interested in this resource, which applies metaphors to understanding socio-cultural human dynamics through technologies. Firstly, I reflect that old language (e.g. lecture theatre, seminars, etc.) does not do justice to our new experience of virtual presence, which is complex, distributed and fragmented (perhaps metaphor use breaks down here, simply because we have no known analogies for this new phenomenon - the nearest I can get to is 'the brain' - but then brains are connected - which takes us back to the internet - we can only describe it, not metaphorise it). Beyond the lecture and seminar room analogies, things have changed with online learning - particularly when it is massive and online - namely, the size of the network, the scale, and the speed of interaction possible. Furthermore, there is the new viral nature of communication (the spreading of a virus is a useful metaphor here).
Even closer to my current research is the application of metaphors derived from ecology, e.g. 'evolution' of networks, digital 'landscapes', 'colonised', 'survival of the fittest' technologies that meet particular needs and of users who co-evolve by adapting their practice to those technologies.
I particularly like the use of metaphors for learning: campfires as a place for teaching through storytelling; and the watering hole as a gathering place for sharing information (the English pub is known as a watering hole). I can think of other useful metaphors, such as the forest clearing (referred to by Heidegger), as a place to be and to gather with previously scattered others; and the ant colony as a site for massive interaction. We have even transferred human metaphors to the natural world, e.g. the school (in which humans learn) is applied to the gathering of a school of fish.
Joe Nicholls
What is important about context in which learning is to occur?
I think THE most important aspect of the context in which learning takes place is the knowledge domain the learner is interested in studying. In my experience if you manage to kindle sufficient interest and curiosity to motivate someone to learn about a subject, it doesn't matter what kind of challenging learning opportunities people are presented with they have the necessary predisposition to tackle them and learn. Some forms of learning will be harder than others depending on the extent to which a problem/task is new. You have to be highly motivated in order to tackle very difficult problems and tasks, but this is precisely the condition necessary for deep forms of learning to occur. There is a key role for the educator, who is subject matter expert, to stimulate interest and curiosity in their subject. Assumptions are often made that students already have this in buckets.
What is important about context for the practice of learning design?
Anyone is at liberty to design a learning activity, but how best is learning design practiced in an educational organisation? Better learning designs will result from marshaling complimentary knowledge and expertise from within and outside an organisation, and a design process can make that explicit. Potential participants in the design activity will most likely have to negotiate organisational challenges to do so. For example, having line managers that value quality educational practice would be an excellent conducive factor. And then there are all the various environmental, political, economic and social issues to address to be able to realise a learning activity design and put it into practice.
Joe
pmi...@liv.ac.uk
Joshua Underwood
Joe Nicholls
Thanks for that Josh - the quote got me thinking - When seeking to identify and understand the factors shaping context for a learner, I suppose what's really of interest from the educator's point-of-view are those that are dynamic and susceptible to being manipulated and controlled. And the aim of the educator is either to seek to optimise these themselves for the learning activity or enable the learner to do so. And for those factors which are more stable, enduring and beyond control, the educator needs to understand how they may impact on the learning experience, and the purpose of design is to enhance whatever is a positive and mitigate the negative influences. I guess this is the very thing we're seeking to visualise using Force Maps?
Jane Nkosi
Joe Nicholls
Joshua Underwood
Joshua Underwood
Ida Brandão
I suppose that all learner-centred theories highlight the importance of context. Freinet would promote «la classe promenade» because he worked with children in a rural environment and to learn about nature, makes no sense to do it in a room with four walls, tables and chairs and a blackboard. The natural and authentic real life context was in contact with nature. Even in a big capital we can find more appropriate outdoors contexts to learn about botanics (botanical gardens, parks, etc) or to learn about the quality of the air, using electronic sensors,than inside a room...In fact we have today access to powerful tools that put us in contact with virtual worlds but we don't breed the air of the sea and we don't touch the plants.
Joe Nicholls
The importance of authenticity, meaningfuless and the situatedness to learning are fundamental principles educators should strive to achieve.
However, I must admit, I'm struggling to establish how to apply them in my particular situation.
My aim is to develop the learning literacies of Professional Services staff. However, they all work and learn in different situations and circumstances and for different purposes.
In any educational institution there will be hundreds if not thousands of non-academic staff who play an enabling and supportive role to academic staff and students. But their specialist knowledge and areas of practice vary considerably. Collectively, they play a critical role in providing a wide range of essential services for learning, teaching and research.
The challenge is to engineer a scalable and sustainable approach to developing the learning literacies of Professional Staff so that they are better able to perform their work, and so that they themselves become better placed to develop the learning literacies of academic staff and students.
Because there is such a diversity of roles and contexts, how is it possible to design learning opportunities that are authentic and meaningful for all? My feeling at the moment is that learners need to be enabled to bring as of their own context to a learning activity as possible - this parallels the challenge with running a MOOC which seeks to cater for anyone who chooses to participate. How do we design learning activities that enable learners to do this well? The requirement is that they must be enabled to make the learning opportunity meaningful for themselves. And there's a different kind of responsibility placed on the educator, which is to find ways of helping learners identify what it is they have to bring to the learning activity and why. Not sure I'm explaining this well. I think it's closely tied up with the reasons and motivation a learner has for doing something.
With more conventional forms of education, the knowledge and practice domain associated with a subject/discipline (and sometimes that associated a target profession/vocation) can be drawn upon to help inform the design of authentic and situated learning activities. That is not the case in the Professional Services context.
I struggle to see how it would be possible to build a community of interest/practice that would work for all Professional Services staff. On a micro level, within organisational sections/units this might be achievable, but it would still be difficult to provide staff development opportunities that cater for such diversity.
Still, I believe Lave and Wenger's principles something educators should strive to achieve in their learning designs.
Joe.
Bob Ridge-Stearn
With more conventional forms of education, the knowledge and practice domain associated with a subject/discipline (and sometimes that associated a target profession/vocation) can be drawn upon to help inform the design of authentic and situated learning activities. That is not the case in the Professional Services context.
I struggle to see how it would be possible to build a community of interest/practice that would work for all Professional Services staff.
Joshua Underwood
Joe Nicholls
Still working this through, so appreciate your questions.
Take for example, in the context of undergraduate education, the lecturer is both subject/discipline expert and educationist. They are uniquely placed to draw upon their understanding of the subject knowledge domain and associated practices being studied, and also their understanding of pedagogy to design learning opportunities that bring both together and make it meaningful and authentic - and potentially situated e.g., lab, fieldwork and placements.
In a Professional Services context, what is the equivalent of the subject knowledge domain? It's determined by each person's job role and responsibilities.
Other than designing learning activities that cater for each individual's particular area of concern, how can we go about designing learning opportunities that will cater for many staff.
The challenges I'm describing relate to setting up an approach to providing staff development that would work for all Professional Services staff. It's about scalability and sustainability.
I could potentially spend the rest of my working life on a perpetual roadshow giving presentations, running workshops and away days for every section/unit/group. A recent example, of this is the phenomenal interest in and demand for using Prezi. Everyone seems to want 'training' to use Prezi - I've lost count of the number of sessions I've run and it annoys the pants off me.
Aside from Prezi being one of the most intuitive applications I've come across, what I believe people should want to learn is how to do more effective presentations and in this context find out what Prezi offers that something like PowerPoint, Flickr Slideshow or Mindmaps don't. And that necessitates getting them to think more carefully about what they want to say and how they want to say it. In my experience teaching staff have been reluctant to do this. They come expecting training on the nuts and bolts of Prezi and don't expect to be prompted to step back and think about what panning and zooming offers in terms of telling their story.
I describe that scenarios because I'd like to design an approach that enables any staff (or student) for that matter to learn about what's involved in doing a presentation, and in this context introduce a variety of tools that would enable them to present in different ways and to chose what's most appropriate depending on their problem/task.
How do I go about designing something that allows people to bring their own work goals and purpose to the activity? In undergraduate education the lecturer shapes the problem/task for a student. I don't believe it's possible or desirable to do this in a Professional Services context.
Come back to me again Bob if that's not any clearer. I know I need to develop my explanation.
With regards to developing communities of practice/interest. I was trying to make the point that it would NOT be possible, but it is something desirable from a staff developer's perspective. Back to scalability and sustainability. Life would be easier if it was matter of working with one community. The reality is there are already numerous (too many!) existing groups/teams. It's just not practically possible to engage with them all. Hence, me wanting to explore whether it is possible to design something for ALL staff that would enable them to engage in a way where they bring their work problem/task - where the onus is on them to establish a context that is meaningful and not the facilitator.
Hope that enlightens a little more.
Joe.
Catherine El-Bez
Maybe I've missed something ....
Sorry but I would like to ask a naive question? Before contextualising a project, what are the elements of the scenario needed to start the contextualisation ? (Do we need to have more or less an idea of the scenario and all the learning outcomes of the project ?)
I've really appreciated to contextualise my project, and I've seen the value of this exercice: it was like 'a feasibility exercice', but while I was writting I've realised that my scenario wasn't very well defined, so it has been difficult to write the narration...
Catherine
Joe Nicholls
In the context of the scenario I'm working through - developing learning literacies to practice meetings more effectively - I think it's going to be critical that learning is also facilitated in the context of a real 'significant' meeting.
I have experienced frustration running workshops with staff where they step out of their workplace to participate and observed subsequently little transfers into practice. And that has occurred when I've gone to great lengths to design the learning activity to simulate the format, structure and process, i.e., much of the context, of real work practices - see here: https://vimeo.com/50752223
I feel that a lot can be learnt away from where it's ultimately intended to be applied, but it's not possible to replicate all that needs to be take into account in order to test out and put into practice what has been learnt. Situated learning is important - like the difference between conducting invivo and in vitro experiments, there are some variables that can't be predicted or controlled.
I'll take a look at the course in sustainability and give it some thought. It's clear that change in practice is everything here, knowledge is not enough.
Joe.
Joshua Underwood
Joshua Underwood
Catherine El-Bez
Thank you for your answer.
Here is the link of my project, you will see I've been very ambitious ;-) Indeed I need to define it better.
http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/7075
Thank you for your help !
Catherine
Kelly Edmonds
Last, add some templates or 'how to' guides (from simple to complex) for those that want to apply their learning to their situation within the requirements of the organization.
Does any of that work?
Kelly Edmonds
My blog post: http://edmusings.wordpress.com/
ps. Josh, how do I share my blog in Cloudworks or in this MOOC? Do I create a cloud first?
Joshua Underwood
Joe Nicholls
It's a lot of work but I think you're right. I'm sure it would help greatly to provide case studies, illustrative scenarios, stories, vignettes - whatever would help people recognise and relate example practices to their own situation.
And the 'how to' guides - which are effectively workflows, alternative ways of doing - would make the steps in the process explicit.
What I'm wondering is to what extent it would be possible to represent the things people might make use of and map them to the template 'how to' instructions - For example, provide a high-level, simplified, how-to describing the steps (sub-tasks) involved in doing a presentation from the tools, resources and people that could be used to help do it.
The reason you might want to do this is because technologies that can be used to design, develop, deliver, disseminate a presentation will come and go, but the fundamental practices associated with doing a presentation will remain stable. We all know how to go about doing a presentation, but what we really want to know is how to do so more effectively for a given context and that could involve using a different tool, e.g., Prezi instead of PowerPoint.
If we have an explicit model of practice (i.e. the how-to) we can use it to link to many different potentially relevant tools - as well as other kinds of things such as resources (information) and people (expertise) - to allow learners to explore how they could do presentations in different ways.
I think, in this way, lareg numbers of people could be exposed to and learn new digital literacies.
I like your approach! :-)
Thanks, Joe
Suzanne Aurilio
Ida Brandão
Sexta-feira, 18 de Janeiro de 2013 8:24:38 UTC, Joshua Underwood escreveu:
Kelly Edmonds
Kelly Edmonds
And it might help if your audience can share their work. This might provide more samples (considering that you would need to moderate/select these). This way, they are motivated to create and share, and you have an expanding source of examples that apply to a range of topics/disciplines/departments.
Catherine El-Bez
Joshua Underwood
Ebba Ossiannilsson
juliana
Sharples, Taylor & Valvoula (2007:231):
“[…] learning not only occurs in a context, it also creates context through continual interaction. The context can be temporarily solidified, by deploying or modifying objects to create supportive work space, or forming an ad hoc social network out of people with shared interests, or arriving at a shared understanding of a problem […].”
This is convergent with the concept of "Learning Cultures" by Goodfellow and Lamy (2009). In their book (here's a review from IRRODL), they suggest viewing culture as inseparable from educational, linguistic, and technologies. To them, culture is something that is not outside a human group, but it is the thing they create; this is particularly applicable to a group of collaborative, interconnected learners. Can we equate culture to context?
I did my try, working with teens in sort of eTwinning, coming from very different cultural contexts. I called that "enlarged cultural context", in the sense that I saw how this kids, using metaphors, images, idols, invented words and intertextuality, created a new in-between culture. The own context on the net.
I wrote this in other place, but I like and I share with you. Another metaphor to explain my idea:
It is worth remembering, at this point, the classical concept of agorá. The Greek word agorá comes from the verb ageirein meaning "to gather" and, initially, it designated the assembly of the whole people, as opposed to the council of chiefs (boulé). Subsequently, it came to designate the location of that assembly and what occurred there, hence its later meaning of "market-place". In Greek society the agorá became an important place which represented mainly democracy. Moreover, it was the place which offered the possibility of communicating, learning, and exchanging not only goods but also ideas. In fact, in Aristotle’s ideal city, the agorá represents the life of the city as it is separated into two domains: the vulgar, for business and commerce, and the free agorá for more serious political, intellectual and religious activities (Politics, 13331a31). Thus, it seems clear that the agorá is what people build through intense participation, rather than, a simple localized, architectonic place.
I could conclude that meeting people from several cultural backgrounds and experiences on the Net is possible through the re-contextualization of interaction in the symbolic place provided by virtual learning environments and networks.
On Friday, 18 January 2013 16:56:46 UTC+1, pmi...@liv.ac.uk wrote:
The frequent use of spatial metaphors is something which resonates quite naturally with those who teach using virtual worlds and, indeed, frequently invoke some of those settings in a literal if virtual sense. That said, this approach certainly doesn't work for everybody (as per my chat elsewhere about alternatives to mindmaps).
On Friday, January 18, 2013 1:07:11 PM UTC, Joshua Underwood wrote:Some thoughts from Jeff Waistell on useful metaphors for thinking about learning and context here and pasted below.Here I summarise my thoughts about context for learning design, drawing on this resource - http://e4innovation.com/?p=489
My research mostly focuses on metaphors and so was particularly interested in this resource, which applies metaphors to understanding socio-cultural human dynamics through technologies. Firstly, I reflect that old language (e.g. lecture theatre, seminars, etc.) does not do justice to our new experience of virtual presence, which is complex, distributed and fragmented (perhaps metaphor use breaks down here, simply because we have no known analogies for this new phenomenon - the nearest I can get to is 'the brain' - but then brains are connected - which takes us back to the internet - we can only describe it, not metaphorise it). Beyond the lecture and seminar room analogies, things have changed with online learning - particularly when it is massive and online - namely, the size of the network, the scale, and the speed of interaction possible. Furthermore, there is the new viral nature of communication (the spreading of a virus is a useful metaphor here).
Even closer to my current research is the application of metaphors derived from ecology, e.g. 'evolution' of networks, digital 'landscapes', 'colonised', 'survival of the fittest' technologies that meet particular needs and of users who co-evolve by adapting their practice to those technologies.
I particularly like the use of metaphors for learning: campfires as a place for teaching through storytelling; and the watering hole as a gathering place for sharing information (the English pub is known as a watering hole). I can think of other useful metaphors, such as the forest clearing (referred to by Heidegger), as a place to be and to gather with previously scattered others; and the ant colony as a site for massive interaction. We have even transferred human metaphors to the natural world, e.g. the school (in which humans learn) is applied to the gathering of a school of fish.
Jonathan Vernon
Bob Ridge-Stearn
Hi Joe,
You say that in a Professional Services context the equivalent of the academic’s subject knowledge domain is determined by each person's job role and responsibilities. However, this may also apply in the world of academia. The context for the lecturer in Theology is not exactly similar to that of the Mechanical Engineer. You could argue that their common understanding of pedagogy provides them with a common context but in many institutions I imagine they do not share a common understanding in this area. With more and more institutions requiring academics to engage with HEA Fellowships this may be changing, but where academic research or professional experience is valued more than an understanding of learning and teaching this may not always be the case. Possibly?
Perhaps we need to design learning activities in which the learners themselves define their own particular ‘area of concern’ as you put it. That’s maybe what the designers of this OLDS MOOC are doing. They don’t know our context but throw at us resources and activities which we pick up and adapt according to our context. It may not be as targeted and thus efficient as another approach but it is a practical one.
I empathise with your experiences of trying to teach presentation skills when people really want Prezi training. And I like your idea of designing an approach that enables any member of staff or student to learn about what's involved in doing a presentation, and to present a variety of tools from which they would choose the most appropriate for their context.
I don’t really see the problem you do when you ask “How do I go about designing something that allows people to bring their own work goals and purpose to the activity? In undergraduate education the lecturer shapes the problem/task for a student. I don't believe it's possible or desirable to do this in a Professional Services context.” We have many undergraduate courses that involve project and portfolio work that is individualised, personalised and designed y the student to fit their own context. I can’t see why those students, many of whom have full time jobs in different fields are different from staff in the Professional Services content. (By the way, Professional Services in UK universities – I guess we’re talking about staff in Quality Office, Marketing, IT, Admissions, Finance etc?)
Best wishes,
Bob
Ida Brandão
Sexta-feira, 18 de Janeiro de 2013 8:24:38 UTC, Joshua Underwood escreveu:
Ida Brandão
Bronwyn Hegarty
I am following your work on the scenario you have written, and it looks really good. It sounds like you are working through some ideas to make the learning literacy development of staff realistic and situated in their context. In the scenarios, are you considering getting them to engage in role plays to practise the skills that they are learning, and reflect on them. They could record the role play session, e.g., video or audio using tools to hand such as e or ipad, smart phone, digital camera and upload the output to a media sharing site. With some prompting questions you could get them to reflect not only on their own performance but also on that of their peers.
If you wanted to venture into a virtual world, the scenarios you propose could be practised by the participants' avatars inworld. Just a few ideas. Your scenario description has given me some ideas for supporting staff to develop their understanding about learning design and assessment. What are your thoughts about role plays?
regards Bronwyn
