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Social Learning when it works – a convenient means of critical evaluation and discrimination of these ideas.
From Chapter 1. Educational Implications
Gagne (1970 pp29-30) suggests that instruction in an organized group discussion develops the use and generalization of knowledge – or knowledge transfer. Oxbridge tutors contend that the ‘Oxbridge Tutorial’ – a weekly, structured micro-meeting of two or three people, achieves this. One student reads out a short essay that the tutor and students discuss.
‘When properly led’, Gagne continues, ‘such discussions, where the knowledge itself has been initially mastered’, not only stimulates the production of new extensions of knowledge by students but also provides a convenient means of critical evaluation and discrimination of these ideas. Gagne (ibid).
Forty years on from when Gagne wrote this there are what are meant to be or hoped to be learning contexts where this kind of knowledge transfer through group discussion can still work – or may fail to work – either because the degree of subject mastery between students is too broad or there are too many students, or the wrong mix of students. For example, in the Open University’s Masters of Open and Distance Education (MAODE) between 12 and 16 postgraduate students meet online in a series of structured online tutor forums – some of these work, some do not. As these meetings are largely not compulsory and as they are asynchronous and online, it is rare to have people in them together – the discussions are threaded. What is more, in any tutor group there will typically be a mixture of students who are on their first, their second, third, fourth or even fifth module of the Master’s – some of whom, given the parameters offered by flexible and distance learning, may have spread these modules over five years. Then there is the task and how it is set, whether the participants are meant to work alone or collaboratively – the simplest and most frequent model online is an expectation to read resources and share notes and thoughts. However, personal experience over five such modules suggests that the committed engagement of say six people, working collaboratively on a clear set of tasks and activities with a time limit and climactic conclusion of delivering a joint project, works best. Too many of these online tutorials drift, or fizzle out: too few posts, posts that are two long, fragmented posts linking to pages elsewhere, the indifference of participants, the lack of, or nature of the tutor involvement, excessive and misplaced social chat, or discussing subjects that are off topic … It depends very much on the mix, inclinations, availability and level of ‘knowledge mastery’ as to how such online tutorials work out. As well as the eclectic combination of students the role, availability, online and other teaching skills, even the personality of the tutor and of course THEIR knowledge experience and mastery matters.
Just reflect on how such workshops or seminars may work or fail face–to–face – the hunger for knowledge on the topic under discussion, the mix of personalities and the degree to which their experience or level of understanding is the same, at slight or considerable variance, let alone any differences of culture, background, gender or in a business setting – position and the department they have come from.
Ideally the workshop convener, or what the French call an ‘animateur’ should, assemble or construct such groups with great care, like a director casting actors to perform a piece of improvisation. Different contexts offer different opportunities. As a graduate trainee in an advertising agency six of us were repeatedly assembled, the various departmental specialists and directors playing roles at specific times – bit players in these scenarios. On reflection, stage management by a team in the HR department had been vital. It is therefore ‘stage management’ that I consider of significant importance when trying to construct such collective learning experiences online in a corporate setting.
CONCLUSION
Know your players, cast with care, give direction, record what goes on and step in to nudge, re–kindle, stop or start conversations or activities.
REFERENCE
Gagne, R (1970) The Conditions of Learning
ADDITIONAL LINKS
The Nine Events – from Kevin the Librarian
Various Models of learning – Illustrated
Who generates the content online? Who takes part and who stands back? Who are the beneficiaries?
Fig. 1. Stats from Jakob Nielsen (2006), graphic and annotations by Jonathan Vernon (2010)
Jakob Neilsen wrote ‘Web Usability‘ in 1999 – my addition is from 2001.
Online his thinking is still valid both on how to keep the message clear and stats on who does what. How does this impact on learning?
In a physical space I see an amphitheatre here, indeed, it strongly resembles one of the first university lectures I sat through: 90 in the hall, a man (possibly in his 90s giving a talk) with a few in the front row in ear shot so able to take part if they so wished.
I attend another two of these and gave up – not the course. I just looked at who was giving a lecture, found their latest book and read that instead.
Today students can go online for lecture notes, a video of the lecture (probably), as well as the lecturer’s published papers and books. The lecture, if streamed can be viewed at a distance, with participation in the back row through messaging. But does this lecturer now reach 900 students?
Could be 9 million through a TED lecture.
Here’s a way to explore the world of social learning – this should be your first read
Find it here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/204432
There can be no better recommendation to read a book than when its author spots you as a like mind and invites you to read. I am halfway through Julian Stodd’s ‘Exploring the World of Social Learning’ and am keen to spread the word now so that a community of us have something to discuss and share.
Dare I say ‘I wish I’d written this book?’
I not only find myself nodding in agreement but better still in Web 2.0 terms I find I keep wanting to pause to explore a thought or theme further, the subject matter embracing learning, social learning and e-learning – while drawing on a professional corporate learning and development background, which makes a valuable change from an academic perspective on social learning in tertiary education.
I should add a grab here of the couple of dozen books I have read in, on and around ‘social learning’ as I put ‘Exploring the World of Social Learning’ alongside Martin Weller’s ‘The Digital Scholar’, ‘A New Culture of Learning’ Douglas Thomson and John Seely Brown, ‘From Teams to Knots’ Yrjö Engeström and ‘The Now Revolution’ Jay Baer and Amber Naslund via a solid grounding in educational theory that you’d get from Vygotsky’s ‘Educational Psycology’. An intelligent, engaging and practical read that though linear in format – it’s a book afterall – has built into it moments to reflect, explore or do.
I should draw a Venn Diagram made up of three fields: Corporate L&D, Contemporary Theories of Learning and Web 2.0 Social Spaces as ‘Exploring the World of Social Learning’ touched on all three. There is more, which makes it so readable, there are stories that draw you in that intrigue – while you get a sense of who the author is too, just as you get when reading Bill Bryson.
Better than a set of academic papers, that by definition are several years out of date and sometimes a heavy read encumberred by references – and better than the inevitable Dummies Guide to Social Learning, which is certain to appear momentarily because ‘Exploring the World of Social Learning’ has a narrative flow – it is readable, the Dummy guides are not.
Mobile devices, mobile learners and Web 2.0
Fig 1. At World of Learning, 2012 – Video Arts offer video vignettes for mobile learning in the Tech Area
From materials and commentary prepared by John Pettit (2008)
Of course it is learning if it is on a mobile phone or any other device. Do we mean informal or formal learning? Vicarious learning or didactic? Stumbling across knowledge, or reading formerly to pass an exam? Does it matter? These devices blur the distinction between a means of educating that may eventually look dated and specific to an era.
Do we need campus based universities?
Kids can have their kicks in Ibiza then study online while holding down their first job.
Give the campus over to the retired and unemployed.
Do we need schools?
And if so, instead of being at the centre of a child’s education, perhaps they become as tangential as a visit to the leisure centre of supermarket because you are better linkedin to the educators and the content when you’re away from the place and all its distractions.
When do you ever not learn even if you don’t know it?
It depends entirely on what the device is being used for. Apps have shown how versatile we are at throwing activities and qualities at these devices. People want this stuff.
Is a laptop mobile? What about the old Apple Classic? I used to take it out into the garden on an extension cable and view it inside a cardboard box while sunbathing. Was that mobile? I can read in the bath on a Kindle and click through RSS feeds on the iPad while the Kettle boils. Might it simply feel as if all these people are following me around?
There are degress of mobility. Working in TV we carried around with us monitors to watch content back during a shoot. The thing was no more portable than a hod stacked with bricks.
When I read formal and informal learning I wonder if this equates to whether the learning is hard or easy. I have acquired knowledge in a formal setting and had a laugh, equally in an informal context without the self-motivation and will I have found informal learning very hard to do.
It is sometimes claimed that handheld digital devices allow students to learn at anytime, anywhere. A more nuanced position argues that the devices have the potential for ‘any time anywhere’ learning but that many other factors come into play.
For example, some devices may be easy to handle but have small screens that don’t allow easy reading.
Far from being hard to read the small screen is better suited to the narrow field of close vision that we have. So what if it is like looking through a letter box. If you want to concentrate why look at more?
A device can become too small. Too portable. As a video producer I have seen kit shrink so much that a device the size of a child’s shoe will generate a HD image and for $75 a day you could hire a camera that delivers 35mm quality. Making a film though with a device so small creates instability, you need some weight on your shoulder if you want to keep the image steady.
The portability and size of screen is less relevant than the affordances of the device, the fact that an iPad doesn’t support Flash, or Android is having problems with Google Apps, that is, if you are using learning materials that require specific functionality that isn’t working.
As for screen size, people may watch a blockbuster movie on a giant screen at the Odeon Leicester Square or on a Smartphone or palm-sized gaming device that is no bigger than a spectacle case; here what matters as with any movie, is the quality of the narrative, not the size of the screen.
Where a device’s portability comes into its own, as the person who recently made a phone call from the top of Everest, is the portability. Another extreme might be a cave diver with a device the plots the route for a cave system, or a glaciologists relaying pictures of a feature in a Greenland ice-sheet to colleagues thousands of miles away that informs the research.
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28)
Is an apt way to express a new term being used in the Open University Business School to describe applied or practice-based learning that gets away from the ‘distance’ tag, that is to call it ‘nearness’ learning. (Fleck, 2011). I also like the idea of ‘intense but provisional,’ people’s attitudes are brand specific, with the Mac vs. PC split of computing now a split between Windows, Mac and Android (and others).
People chose brands to simplify the choices that have to be made between a plethora of devices, between Sony, Nokia, Goole and Windows, as well as between network suppliers, be that O2, Vodafone or others.
There is another way of looking at it though, if you come to see that all these devices offer the same sets of services and tools, from QWERTY keyboards, to a camera, from messaging to phone calls, to the hundreds of thousands of Apps, and in the case of the latest Windows phone … Windows software from Outlook to Docs, PPT to Excel.
Is size such an issue?
People have managed needlepoint for centuries and once painted miniatures. There is an appeal for the tiny sometimes, just as there is for the massive. In this respect the device becomes a reflection of the person’s personality, as well as the depth of their pockets, the availability of others services, from a signal to 3G (or not), even to the power to charge batteries.
Personal choice, celebration of variety, offering a smorgasbord rather than the continental breakfast.
‘That well-known random-access device consisting of ink on bound sheets of paper may still have plenty of life in it yet!’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28) expressed in 2007 is how in 2011 writers in the e-magazine Reconstruction 6.4 describe the ‘long-tail’ of the blog, that definitions have become meaningless, suggesting that the varieties of ways to do or have what we have continued to call a ‘blog’ is as varied as the ways we have over many centuries come to use paper.
Drawing on a paper written in 2007 on research presumably undertaken a couple of years previously, it strikes me that ‘the world has moved on’, to say the least – though not enough. This exercise is looking at the extraordinary capabilities and uses for a device that in 2011 can offer somewhat more than was possible four years ago. This doesn’t mean to say we have the things.
From my own perspective I came into the MAODE (this time round) with an eight year old iBook that had trouble with some software, things as simple as PDFs and the latest versions of Flash as I was unable to upgrade the operating system. Working from a smallish screen I found myself printing off too. For the second module I had access to a better laptop and plugged it into a good-sized screen that allowed me to see a page of A4 at a time or to swivel the screen and have two windows open side by side. During the course of my third module (this one) I found myself without a particular device, but with access to a desktop, a laptop, even an iPad (and have used a Kindle to read some 16 books). Here I found myself putting everything online, into a blog and e-portfolio so I could access whatever I wanted wherever I was (or whichever device was available), as well as having the cataloguing, aggregating, sharing affordances that this has given. Any device, however mobile, and whatever size, can tap into this content.
The problem now, isn’t simply, for me at least, is the overwhelming volume of content I have put online, which despite adopting various approaches to keep track of it, has split into a number of blogs (OU, Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr), a number of cloud galleries/warehouses in the sky (Flick, Dropbox, Kodak and Picasa Galleries, My Stuff, Pebblepad).
It is apt that I blog under the name ‘my mind bursts’, because it has, and is.
Like having a thought, or recalling some event or fact seemingly on a whim, I find I stumble across these ‘mind bursts’ quite by accident, forgetting the number of blogs, for example, that I for a period started only to abandon so that ‘serendipity’ has a role to play through the myriad of links I’ve also made. None of this has helped by finding myself with three Facebook accounts and unsure how to delete the ‘right’ one.
The attitude can only be to ride this like the web surfer of a decade ago – to run with it, rather than try and control it. You meet friends coming off a training a Liverpool Station, you do not need to know who else is on the concourse, the timetables for every train that day, week or year. To cope with the overwhelming quantity of stuff tools to filter out what matters to you at that moment is coming to matter most.
Currently I find myself repeatedly drawn to the activities of Hugo Dixon, a former Economist and FT journalist, who set up a business he called ‘Breaking Views’ to counter what he already by then perceived as a deluge of online information and the old print-based expression ‘Breaking News’; we would come to need as some pundits predicted fifteen years ago, ‘information managers’ or ‘information management systems’.
I wish I could reference the expression properly but ‘Freedom is lack of choice’ is one of my favourites; sometimes filters and parameters have their place. I enjoy using a Kindle as much for its limitations; it is something I can take to bed knowing that it’ll send me to sleep, while an iPad keeps me up all night.
REFERENCES
Fleck, J (2011) Association of MBAs Conference Video 2011
Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
Where does your student sit?
The student does not need to be disabled for the exact same spectrum to apply – some will be on campus, IT literate and confident with the tools including any moderfications or alternatives to give them access. Others will be at a distance and loat, even before they need to accommodate a disability. Wherein lies the issue – disabled students are more individual than the mainstream.
My role – e-learning, accessibility an a postgraduate module with the Open University
H810 Activity 1.3
My role and context in education.
Without knowing it or going into teaching I have always found myself inclined to teach – an inclination towards being an educator. (I enjoy being a lifelong learner, always a student of something whether sport, writing, history, drawing and even performance. An interest in video production took me into corporate training, carrying kit around Windscale in my teens, shooting video at university, and learning from a BBC producer and members of the trade association the IVCA until I established myself as a professional director and writer. I have worked on every kind of training video production: health and safety in the nuclear power industry, legal training, driving a 4×4, induction in the Crown Prosecution Service, Asthma Awareness for patients and GPs, IT security and ‘Green’ driving for the Post Office, careers and education choices for 14 year olds, management training and so on. These were usually facilitated and often supported with workbooks. In due course they became interactive and eventually (a backwards step for a decade) migrated to the Web. However, I had no formal understanding of the theory of education, of learning design or of interactive and online learning in particular until starting with the OU.
How these relate to accessibility and online learning.
In many cases creating accessible content is a requirement which in the past meant either the inclusion of subtitles or a signer in vision for those with a hearing impairment or disability. For computer based learning, which in its broadest sense takes in desktops, laptops, tablet and smartphones, with increasing sophistication are we at times restricting access to some if not many disabled people?
What would I like to achieve from the module (H810).
Concluding module to gain the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) with graduation in 2013.
- Practical understanding of the issues.
- To help plan how the e–learning we produce meets the requirements of the DDA especially where this is a client request.
- Helping to ensure that consideration is given to accessibility at the briefing and design stages and that such efforts are costed then applied as scripts are written and learning designs developed.
- Provide support to colleagues when making accessibility a point in e–learning proposal documents.
- Informed discussions with disabled people I know (colleagues, friends and swimmers) and what they make of accessibility online provision.
- The ‘Montessori’ effect – by thinking how to improve access and communicate more clearly all learners will benefit – the confident e–learning designer may be the one who leaves out the bells and whistles.
Synchronous or asynchronous communication and learning?
We hear today, at a distance, in real time, broadcast on Radio, that TXT has overtaken the spoken word on the phone. I email by preference, though will TXT rather than speak usually because I feel I have time to compose my thoughts, can sometimes duplicate the message or a variation of it to several members of the family and then take stock of the responses as they come through – I don’t have time for chat. I avoid chat unless it suits me to chew over a topic, go round in circles and indulge the other speaker and me.
So how does this apply to learning? What is best face–to–face or at a distance, synchronous or asynchronous? The answer I understand is all of these, that interaction by whatever means available helps the learning process compared to working alone. You can think it through with a.n.other; you can share doubts and admit that yiu don’t ‘get’ the most trivial things and have it explained or expressed by somoene that at last makes sense.
‘Get it from Nellie’ is the expression I got from an 85 year old at the weekend, a long retired senior partrner from PriceWaterhouse. He believes in trainees, in the apprentice, the articled clerk, the junior picking it up from the senior. So simple, so obvious, yet where does this occur in education? I’ve only come across it between partners where one is a couple of years ahead of the other on an MBA programme and can give all kinds of guidance. We don’t see A level students helping those at GCSE, or one year group helping another as undergraduates. The system of a qualified PhD as lecturer or supervisor follows this model though. I found it worked a bit a primary school too with 10 and 11 year olds helping out with the youngest. Is there something of the extended family in this? Is there something of a more traditional, manageable community too of elders and others?
Social learning is about sharing, passing on and explaining. It should be less about indoctrination though, to what degree they can in Germany prevent by law any kind of religious upbringing until the young person has a say or thought on the matter is another things – you bring them up as agnostics or atheaists and that is what they’ll be.
There’s the need therefore to ‘get it out’ to express your ideas, to state where you are at, to be corrected or believed, vindicated or shot down. Knowledge doesn’t simply aggregate like coral, rather it feeds on the vibrancy of responses from others.
What’s your ‘personal learning environment’ or PLE? Is it like Facebook? Will it change with fashion?
Fig 1. MY PLE
First Half 2012 (earlier PLEs in the blog here)
The blogs, Picasa, increasingly eBooks from Kindle on a Kindle and the iPad. Tweeted. This locates like-minds but also provides my notes in my Twitter feed. Google as ubiquitous as QWERTY. Facebook for social/family; Linkedin for work related groups, interests and contacts (e-learning, corporate communications)
My OU Blog in the student environment and its mirror my external blog in WordPress IS a blog, learning journal, e-portfolio, forum and deposit. It can be a link to ‘like-minds’ too (and job opportunities)
I want an article I cut and paste the reference in Google.
If I can’t have it I repeat this in the OU Library resource fist by title, then by author. I find I can, almost without exception, read whatever takes my interest. Brilliance for the curious and ever-hungry mind.
Increasingly I photo and screen grab everything, manipulate in Picasa then load online where I can file, further manipulate and share. A better e-portfolio and an e-portfolio as it is image based. My e-learning folder tops 350+ images.
When busy on an OU Module the ‘OU Learning Environment expands to fill 1/3rd of the screen: the learning journey, resources, activities and student forums are my world for 6-9 months’.
In truth I need to video my activity and then do a time in motion audit. Tricky as I don’t have a laptop or desktop anymore. All is done (most) on the move on an iPad or iPhone. I ‘borrow’ my son’s desktop when he’s at school or early mornings on my wife’s laptop. Which explains why EVERYTHING is online, I could go to the library or an Internet cafe and work just as well.
‘A university in my pocket’?
Or ‘a university in the clouds’, literally as envisaged in the 1960s by Michael Young et al and featured on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The New Elizabethans’ (in association with the Open University of course)
- A pivotal role in the creation of the welfare state
- Groundbreaking work as a social scientist in the East End
- His creation of the Open University
P.S. Which reminds me: the Open University was devised for those with a fraction of the opportunities I have had so I need to treat it with huge respect.
Fig 2. My PLE July 2011
A year on my choice of blogs has greatly reduced. I still access Diaryland as it has 1,700+ entries to draw upon from 1999 to 2006. StumbleUpon I still use and need to add to the current PLE. I don’t go near Xing. I haven’t indicated the digital tools, the hardware I use to access this (these) online resources.
But what’s more important, the phone or the conversation?
Yes, I dip into Wikipedia but frequently I scroll down for alternative equally valid answers from the long established sources that have finally got themselves online. TED lectures I’ve missed out too. I must watch several a month.
I haven’t add family and friends because where they are part of my world, increasingly online through Facebook, they are not directly part of my PLE.
However, it would be foolish to ignore the vital role family and the context of family, community and school play in learning.
FURTHER LINKS TO MY OPEN UNIVERSITY STUDENT BLOG ON PLEs
Virtual Learning Environments vs. Personal Learning Environments
Virtual Learning Environments or Personal Learning Environments
Technology Mediated Learning Spaces
The reality check. Must PLEs be technology enables to qualify as PLE?
The Challenge Facing Course Design 1997 vs. 2012
What’s wrong with educational social networking?
My Personal Learning Environment (2011)
Digital Housekeeping. Recording everything.
Technology Enhanced Learning End of Module Images / Visualisation
Technology Enhanced Learning End of Module Assignment Course Specifics
What’s wrong with Educational Social Networking? (EDU)
H800: Technology Enhanced Learning. An online module from the Open University
Mind Bursts 