Guided, Cooperative Learning and Individual Knowledge Acquisition. Technical Report No. 372.

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	Brown, A. L., & Palincsar, A. S. (1986). Guided, Cooperative Learning and Individual Knowledge Acquisition. Technical Report No. 372.. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED270738.pdf.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Good literature review on Piaget and Vygotsky (from 1986). Introduces Reciprocal Teaching for teaching active reading comprehension skills, using teacher as a fading scaffold.

Reciprocal teaching

Combines

expert scaffolding
guided practice in applying simple concrete strategies
cooperative learning discussions

Research question

How can cooperative learning influence individual knowledge acquisition
Does participation in a group problem-solving setting influence individual learning, and if so, in what way?
What are the essential functions of groups that encourage learning?
What role, if any, does an explicit instructional goal play in such a setting?

Literature review

Learning and knowledge acquisition

Stages

ability to regurgitate
- leads to inert knowledge, difficult to access without specific activation cue
- fails to become part of usable store of knowledge
- learner has not established ownership
ownership
- flexible access to knowledge
- ability to adapt, apply, update or modify knowledge at will
assimilation of knowledge
- part of workable knowledge base, can be applied widely
modification or adaptation of usable knowledge in face of new experiences
- generalizable body already exists, incompatible new experiences force restructuring
true theory change
- stage-like change in fundamental models of thinking restructures knowledge throughout system

Group settings for conceptual change

situations that

foster automatization, ritualization or routinization and speed	VS	situations that encourage reflection

Group learning is ideal for the latter (encouraging consideration of the reason why one acts).

Discovery methods associated with low information transfer rate, maybe less effective than lectures in content retention measures - belief is that there are general improvements in thinking skills

Conceptual understanding and adaptive change fostered in situations which encourage dissatisfaction with existing state of knowledge - change is unlikely when status quo is unquestioned. Environments which take knowledge as an object of thought, encourage questioning, evaluating, criticizing, worrying knowledge, fruitful breeding grounds for restructuring.

Dissatisfaction → mental experimentation, evaluation → uncertainty, insecurity → accentuated by questioning and criticism.

Explanation to others

Change more likely to occur when one is required to explain, elaborate or defend one's position to others. Burden of explanation can be push needed to make learner integrate and elaborate knowledge in new ways.

Vygotsky and Piaget, social or individual first?

social first	individual first
individual thought processes originate in social interactions	all meaningful conceptual change is self-directed, human beings intrinsically motivated to understand the world around us
Vygotsky	Piaget
learning is mostly other-directed, children continually observe and participate in group activities, conceptual change is process of internalizing cognitive activities originally experienced in the company of others	child as tireless explorer (Chukovsky), little scientist (Piaget)

Piaget and Vygotsky held responsible for two opposing views, but not entirely fair.

Piaget: groups are a great forum for helping transitional children take leap to higher level of understanding. Opposing positions causing children to reflect, decenter thinking from egocentric perspective. Social interaction is a necessary condition for developing logic. Process of group interaction internalized as part of child's emergent thinking repertoir, can in the future argue with ourselves because we've had social experience of arguing before.

Vygotsky: consider self-directed experimental play in treatment of tool use, but most emphasizing social nature of individual cognition. Individual thinking is essentially the reenactment by the individual of cognitive processes that were originally experienced in the company of others.

Guided learning and internalization

Vygotsky: Expert-led social interactions have central place in learning, provide major impetus to cognitive growth. Piaget and Dewey also place heavy emphasis on guided learning as impetus to developmental change.

what kinds of interactions are maximally effective at inducing cognitive growth?
to what extent do social collaborations lead to independent competence?
what are mechanisms underlying internalization?
can optimal interactions be orchestrated deliberately in instructional settings?

Cooperative learning

Most research focus on motivation and incentive, rarely looking at actual thinking processes or analyzing learning outcomes.

Scripts:

jigsaw
student team achievement division
teams-games-tournaments
group investigation
learning together model

Research shows that cooperative learning improves learning outcomes, but why? 3 theories:

giving explanations positively correlated with achievement (but maybe those who can explain already knew?)
receiving help somewhat correlated (but what kind)
receiving no answer to questions strongly related to poor outcomes

Role of groups

Groups provide cognitive support and social/motivational support.

Microethnographic studies of group constellations in classroom have examined the participant structures that modulate interaction.

In group problem-solving, thinking load distributed among members, with both cognitive and emotional consequences. Group sustains general emotive tension because it “shares out” effort of thinking, reduces anxiety produced by having to keep the argument going…

This seems to apply much more to synchronous collaboration where each person holds a piece of the map in their mind and is immediately available to be called upon - in asynchronous discussions, each individual must hold the whole map in his mind to be able to respond - granularity of collaboration?

In group argument, witness epistemic operations:

referring to context, past knowledge, data or general principles
defining the problem
isolating important contributing variables
evaluating progress etc

Even grade school children observe some basic rules of formal argument, requiring justifications, warrants and backings for a position

Group roles

Multiple group roles (spontaneously):

executive (designs plans for action and suggests solutions)
skeptic/critic (questions premises or plans)
didactic (educator, takes on burden of explanation and summarization for less involved group members)
record keeper (keeps track of what has passed)
conciliator (resolves conflict and strives to minimize interpersonal stress)

roles might appropriated by individual group members or might fluctuate over time. Sharing out these roles also reduce cognitive load.

Eventually individual will need to internalize all of these roles

Would it therefore be better if individuals were compelled to try out all of the different roles to get practice?

Similar to explicit meeting roles in consensus groups. Difference between function in one synchronous meeting, and in a longer-term community perspective

Can be legislated - successful adult dyadic pairs where one is the executor or didactic, and the other is critic etc. In young children, separating role of learning leader from learning listeners.

Shared expertise

Much more important in adults - as well as shared networks?

Aaronson's jigsaw method (1978): Children divided into groups of five or six, each group responsible for large body of material on which they will be tested. Material also divided into five-six parts.

Each group consists of children responsible for part 1, part 2 etc. They first meet in groups (all the part 1's), then return to their holistic group. Each group responsible for covering all the material.

Requirements for success

only when a child has a partial grasp of the concept in question will peer interactions be effective
social status of children is important - if someone is so strong that what they say becomes pseudoconsensus, learning goes down.
- because of this, Piaget thinks that adults are less effective catalysts of change than peers - too much authority!
child must be faced with a view which both contradicts her own, but also one she can take seriously, “valid centration”

Scaffolding

Expert scaffolding by teacher, master craftsman etc.

Procedural support - intermediate between pure external co-construction of problem solutions and pure intrapersonal thought, temporary assistance is given to child in the form of “assisted monologue”

Scardamalia: cue cards like “an even better idea is…”, gets stronger essays

Mental prosthetics device

Classic examples of deliberate, expert-led instruction:

discovery teaching (Davis 1966)
Socratic dialogues (Anderson and Faust 1974)

Analysis of instructional ploys used by Socratic teachers

(Collins and Stevens 1982)

Goals of teaching:

facts and concepts
rule or theory to account for concepts
how to derive rules or theories in general

Main ploys:

systematic variation of cases
counter examples and hypothetical cases
entrapment strategies
hypothesis identification strategies (force student to specify working strategy
hypothesis evaluation strategy (make them evaluate hypothesis critically

During discussions, teacher deliberately sequences goals and subgoals

errors before omissions
easy misconceptions before fundamentally wrong thinking
address students who have not recently participated first
select teaching examples
analogies grouped by principle

Structure knowledge in students' ZPD, assume continually updating “student model” in teacher's head

Reciprocal teaching

Designed to provide simple introduction to group discussion techniques aimed at understanding and remembering text content

Goal: to have procedure accessible to average teachers and less than average students. Applying simple concrete strategies to the task of text comprehension.

Procedure

Adult teacher and group of students take turns leading a discussion on contents of a section of text they are trying to understand. Discussion leader must ensure four strategic activities:

questioning
clarifying
summarizing
predicting

Flow:

Goal is joint construction of meaning
strategies provide concrete heuristics for getting procedure going
teacher modeling provides examples of expert performance
reciprocal nature of procedure forces student engagement

Strategies

Not random - good students routinely use them, and poor students don't use them. Improve comprehension and afford alert reader the opportunity for monitoring understanding.

Practiced in appropriate context, not as isolated separate skill exercises. If students could not summarize a section, that informs us that comprehension is not proceeding well, not a failure to perform a particular skill (summarization).

situated cognition??

Proleptic teaching

In anticipation of competence - mature task maintained even if each individual member of the group is not yet capable of full participation.

This is in contrast to classical progression of steadily more difficult tasks and “fading in” - problem is that easy versions of the task are really very different, don't properly prepare student for the hard tasks.

Scaffolding and group dynamics allow us to tackle authentic problems - little room for confusion about the point of the activity, metacognitivity, and transfer p. 48

Teacher models mature comprehension activities, making them overt, explicit and concrete. Instead of being told to be strategic and monitor your comprehension, the students see that the teacher does this by retelling content in her own words, asking what something means etc. Can be emulated.

Cognitive economy - enough discussion should take place to ensure a reasonable level of understanding, but no more.

Planned obsolesence - teacher as scaffold which fades away, responsibility for comprehension activities transferred to students as soon as they can take charge of their own learning.

Reciprocal teaching was consciously modelled after naturally occurring expert scaffolding (with fading).

Research design

Readings groups of 7th and 8th graders
Listening comprehension for 1st and 2nd graders

Students selected based on low scored on reading comprehension.

Intervention consisted of at least ten days of discussion over four weeks, progress measured by observable change in students' participation in discussions, daily independent tests of reading and retention of novel passages.

Findings

Independent raters could easily place transcripts into 1st, 2nd and 3rd part of intervention. Individual student scores on four strategies large and reliable improvement.

Students go from passive answerers, to adequate discussion leaders.

Discussion

Very slow pace of acquiring texts, because they don't proceed until everyone understands. It's OK, because main goal is not the content of the text, but the skills to understand any text.

Reading as a process of decoding text and understanding the meaning (skill) vs learning in the sense of acquiring a usable, flexible body of knowledge. Examine procedures such as reciprocal teaching, jigsaw method in situations where children are asked to learn principled bodies of knowledge over time.

If internalization is a prime mechanism of conceptual change, it is little understood.

Links here

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Defining openness: updating the concept of “open” for a connected world

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	McAndrew, P. (2010). Defining openness: updating the concept of “open” for a connected world. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2010(02).	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Looks back at history of Open University, initial scenario was for “lone lighthouse keeper” - no longer relevant. Then online learner, now networked learner

Informal learning

Definition: “any activity involving the pursuit of understanding, knowledge, or skill that occurs without the presence of externally imposed curricular criteria” (Livingstone, 2006)

Self-directed informal learning: “most simply understood as learning that is undertaken in the learner's or learners' own terms without either prescribed curricular requirements or a designated instructor” (Livingstone, 2006:p205).

Prevalence: 80% of the adult population will identify themselves as having carried out informal learning with an extent of around 500 hours per year (Tough, 2002)

OU history

Established in 1969
at that time 5% of adult population attended university
“Open as to people, places, methods and ideas”

Supported Open Learning

Material based learning (Rowntree, 1997)

A common material base printed text
accompanied by other materials broadcast through television, the radio or supplied on audio cassette
groups supported by tutor or associate lecture, providing tutorials, phone contact and feedback

Scenarios

Lighthouse Keeper

The lighthouse keeper of the 1960s was isolated from content resources such as bookshops, libraries, and educational establishments, and from other students. However they could communicate with the technology of the time (telephone, television and radio) and from time to time post or travel to meetings. In order that such a person could be supplied with what they needed the university had to adopt a philosophy that each course would be contained within a “closed box” that would supply the essential content needs of the lighthouse keeper backed up with support through marked work, telephone contact and occasional tutorials that were not compulsory.

Connected student

Online communications between students, interest in educational modeling and learning design.

Switch content → tasks

Open Learner

A patterns based approach that considers design for, use by the learner may have more impact and scale with resources playing a freer role (Dimitriadis et al., 2009)

Integrate with users' daily lives, informal learning, etc.

Check out

Literature on informal learning: Livingstone, D. W. and Tough, A.

Links here

Images

p. 5

Networked Connectivity and Adult Learning: Social Media, the Knowledgeable Other and Distance Education

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	Kop, R. (2010). Networked Connectivity and Adult Learning: Social Media, the Knowledgeable Other and Distance Education. Retrieved from http://www.f-a-c-e.org.uk/publications/2006book.pdf.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Huge literature review, not even close to finishing parsing it, also two studies, one in a traditional setting, and one in the edtech blogosphere

Educators as knowledgeable others now experts can be found online

Literature review

Adult ed

The shift in discourse from adult continuing education to lifelong learning (Edwards & Usher 1998)

Traditional role of educational "spaces"

The changed position of educational institutions such as universities due to the altered sense of space, place and identity in a virtual learning space has been lamented as a loss, as universities were seen as places where people came together, where minds met and where new ideas were conceived, criticised and tested and provisionally accepted if they were found to stand up sufficiently robustly under criticism.

Peters was reminded of rites with religious undertones, which link location, time and action: ‘Learning and teaching might be based on unconscious, but at the same time “deep-seated” patterns of behaviour, not only of students but also of the teachers. Their ritualisation lends solidity and permanence to the actions taking place in the teaching space’ (Peters, 1999, p. 1)

Perspectives on e-learning

Information and resources-based view

Leads to commodification of delivery of education

Intelligent tutoring

Communication-based view

Goes back to 1970's, with Turoff first conferencing system.

Institutionally controlled infrastructure vs informal

Gulati’s research in the learning experience of professional students on online and blended courses questioned the use of institutionally controlled VLEs and in particular their discussion boards. Students used informal strategies for communication and learning outside the formal environment to complement the formal structures because the discussion boards created difficulties in the communication process between learners, and between learners and their tutors. She recommended that ‘the new and existing strategies for online socialising needed to be studied for their effectiveness in enabling group and social identities in the formal educational contexts’ (Gulati, 2003, p. 50)

Epistemologies

Barab and Squire propose that ‘cognition is not a thing located within the individual thinker but is a process that is distributed across the knower, the environment in which knowledge occurs, and the activity in which the learner participates’ (Barab & Squire, 2004, p. 1)

In recent years the traditional view of knowledge in a rapidly changing world has been challenged (Lyotard, 1984; O’Hara, 2002; Lankshear et al, 2003; Lewis, 1999; Glaser, 1999)

Power on the Internet

Barabasi looked at the mathematics of the Internet and Web as networks and found that they do not perform as “random” networks, but as “scale-free” networks. The difference would be ruled by two characteristics: “growth” and “preferential attachment”, showing that this type of network grows “one node at a time” and that a node chooses to what other node it connects. The more connections a node already has, the more likely it is that other nodes will connect to it (Barabasi, 2003, P.86), thus creating “hubs”. This implies that there are power-relations on the network and Barabasi’s research shows that networks are not neutral. Bouchard (2010, in press) also questions the possibility of hierarchy-free peer to peer connections on the Web

The notion of 'supernode' predictably emerges when some contributors are recognized by a number of others as having particular relevance to, or knowledge of a problem. There seems to be a natural tendency within the 'perfectly' democratic network to organize itself, over time, in a hierarchical system composed of leaders and followers. We are then left with a social organization that resembles the 'outside' world of government and commerce, with the difference that the currency of exchange in the network is not money or power, but reputation and popularity. (Bouchard, 2010, p. 3)

The most intriguing result of our Web-mapping project was the complete absence of democracy, fairness, and egalitarian values on the Web. We learned that the topology of the Web prevents us from seeing anything but a mere handful of the billion documents out there. (Barabasi, 2003, p. 56)

Lack of deep thought / superficiality

Goldhaber (1997) posits that, by using new technologies, we might end up chatting, but not necessarily about anything of substance. The abundance of information and the poverty of attention could be the cause of changes in thinking processes.

Hagel explains that there are other problems with the information abundance and introduces the notion of the “attention economy”. In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate the attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. (Hagel, 2006, p. 1)

Need for a knowledgable other

Greenfield argues how in traditional education teachers and tutors compare and contrast narratives with one another and help people with the building of a conceptual framework in doing so (Greenfield, 2006, p. 1; Greenfield, 2004). p. 27

Greenfield is concerned however, that if people do not have access to a robust conceptual framework developed over time with the help of knowledgeable others, they might have problems constructing knowledge (Greenfield, 2004).

Answer

Bass, on the other hand, highlighted that there is a great deal of evidence to show that electronic environments encourage analytical and reflective practice. In addition, ‘there are clear indications that the electronic era will provide an unprecedented opportunity for immersion in archival and primary materials, and consequently the making of meaning in cultural and historical analysis for all kinds of learners, from novice to expert’ (Bass, 1999, p1.). p. 29

Challenging ourselves/being challenged

Bruce saw the information abundance as an advantage over earlier media in ‘the way it can open up our questions. We ask one thing, but the Web leads us to ask more questions and to become aware of how much we do not know’ (Bruce, 2000, p. 107). He would like us to use the Internet not to “pick and choose” what fits in with our own points of view, but also to take on board what discomfits, and to look for alternatives that make us think.

It should perhaps be questioned if people will do this of their own accord or that they will need the guidance of an educator. He saw the greatest challenge as a change of our search strategies from looking something up, to incorporating web-searching into thinking and reflection processes in order to enable a fruitful investigation. New emerging collaborative tools that facilitate networking and communication with others might aid in developing such a referencing strategy

Internet as a collaborative information project

Tim Berners-Lee saw the development of the Web as follows: The basic idea of the Web was that of an information space through which people can communicate, but communicate in a special way: communicate by sharing their knowledge in a pool. The idea was not just that it should be a big browsing medium. The idea was that everybody would be putting their ideas in, as well as taking them out. This [the Internet] is not supposed to be a glorified television channel. (Berners-Lee, 1999, p. 1)

Forms of communication

If this is compared with Dewey’s ideas of communication, it seems that the emphasis has changed from “communicating with others and both learning and changing through the interaction”, to a much “looser” form of communication. Wellman (2003) compared these differences forms of communication as the differences between “strong” and “weak” ties” between people. The intensity in the level of communication is different.

History of psychology

Subjective approach of Freud, introspective studies of Wundt

Watson: behaviorist appraoch

(Early 20th century)

emphasised the method of laboratory based animal experiments which avoided any reference to the conscious mind and focussed attention on the relationship between behaviour and the environment. Behaviourist methodology had much in common with philosophical positivism and dominated academic psychology until the second half of the twentieth century. This broadly biological approach to psychology has much in common with evolution as an explanation in psychology which has become important in recent decades. (Lyons, 2001)

Learning

Behaviourists posit that we learn by receiving stimuli from our environment that provokes a response. The teacher reinforces the approved responses while discouraging the ‘wrong’ responses.

An example would be training how to ride a bike or car, or indeed the acquisition of almost any skill.

Once acquired these skills are no longer subject to any conscious thought and this typifies the most important area of behaviourist method for this dissertation.

Behaviourist research has discovered a wealth of learning that requires no, or almost no, conscious thought. This makes the acquisition metaphor the only one applicable to this theory.

Of course, conditioning by reinforcing, encouraging, and discouraging, implies that the tutor is in charge in this interaction; he or she is allknowing and leads the process. This may be most appropriate for skills training but perhaps less appropriate for more complex learning and thinking.

Cognitive science

The rise of computer science, ideas about information processing, and developments in neuroscience led to the development of the broad field of cognitive science. (Lyons, 2001) Symbol processing / computational model

A recent influential trend in cognitive science, influenced by ecology, is the consideration of the importance of the environment in addition to the mind and body – situated cognition (Robbins & Aydede, 2008)

Learning

The subject material that the teacher-agent has chosen and that the learner seeks to master dominates the learning process. On the one end of the spectrum a form of computational learning takes place, but moving to the other side, more reflection and reasoning take place in learning.

Both behaviourist and cognitive theorists recognise that low-level and high-level learning takes place. Learning is hierarchical and advances as more and more learning takes place. Not all learners will achieve the highest level.

In this view knowledge can be thought of as a commodity, easily divided into ‘chunks’ which can be digested and internalized by learners. The acquisition metaphor applies. Once acquired, knowledge can be ‘banked’ as an abstract entity stored in the mind of the learner (Freire, 1972).

Constructivism developed from cognitivism and, in addition to the subject knowledge that tutors supply, formerly acquired knowledge and experience of students is acknowledged and students are encouraged to actively construct their ways of knowing, while building an understanding linking what they learn with their personal experience.

(also see Vygotsky Kop & Hill, 2008, CoP, Illich)

Learn across space and time

We learn across space as we take ideas and learning resources gained in one location and apply or develop them in another. We learn across time, by revisiting knowledge that was gained in an earlier, in a different context, and more broadly, through ideas and strategies gained in earlier years providing a framework for a lifetime of learning. We move from topic to topic, managing a range of personal learning projects, rather than following a single curriculum. (Sharples et al, 2005, p. 2)

Theories of mind

How important is the world “inside” our minds when we come to grips with the social processes and artefacts around us?
How important is context in the way we acquire knowledge?

Symbol-processing view

Bredo explored the symbol-processing view of mind and provided following definition: ‘The human brain is seen as an information processing system that receives encoded messages through its sensory and motor connections, which interact with information held in its memory, to make sense of them by creating a symbol representation of the problem and using heuristics to identify solutions.’ (Bredo, 1999, p. 28.)

3 dualisms:

separation of language and reality
- symbols mirror reality
- knowledge is store of representations
  - which can be translated into language
    - which can be used for reasoning
- only way to find out if they are correct is by checking them against the world
  - difficult
    - only contact with world is through these representations
separation of mind and body (computational view)
- all learning in terms of conceptual processes located in individual's head
- no physical interaction with the surroundings
separation of individual and society
- in symbol processing perspective
  - thinking
  - learning
  - development
- are processes taking place inside individual
- social influences come from the outside
- learner is acting on the environment
- rather than being immersed in it
- divide between knower and known

Bruner saw this view as involved with information processing: ‘how finite, coded, unambiguous information about the world is inscribed, sorted, collated, retrieved, and generally managed by a computational device.’ (Bruner, 1999, p. 148)

HOWEVER

the process of knowing is often messier, more fraught with ambiguity (situated view)
how the mind works depends on the tools available
computers might change how we us our minds
mind cannot exist without culture and human knowledge
meanings are in the mind, but find their origin and meaning in community where they were created
mind is both represented by, and realized in the use of human culture

Biological view

Galton (1869): intelligence largely a matter of genetic inheritance

Resnick: brain is plastic, change through intellectual activity.

Theories of knowledge

Traditional knowledge

Plato made the distinction between episteme, knowledge, which was valued highly as it was considered to be pure truth, and which was reached by means of intelligence and reason, exemplified in mathematics.

Doxa on the other hand was “opinion”, and included the visible physical realm, culture, that could never be “true knowledge”.

Knowledge was identified with justified true belief and has a reliability that belief does not have (O’Hara, 2002; Delanty, 2001).

This idea was developed by the classical thinkers of antiquity and the medieval scholars (Hadot, 2002) but even today there is an important sense in which Plato’s definition of knowledge is still considered to capture an important aspect of the concept of knowledge (Boghossian,2007; Gutting, 2009) .

Development of traditional knowledge

Enlightenment
mass print literacy
canons of scholarship
universities as authority of knowledge
sciences - objective, fact based

Useful knowledge

(late modernity)

Knowledge became commodified and its main value was to be its usefulness to society (Wheelahan, 2005; Delanty, 2001); the application of knowledge, which is problem-driven and characterised by the context of its application. It crosses boundaries of disciplines, is seen by some to be more creative and less hierarchical than traditional knowledge, and is shaped outside the university (Wheelahan, 2005).

‘Traditional knowledge is homogenous and relatively autonomous. Useful knowledge is heterogeneous and, it is claimed, more socially accountable and reflexive’ (Delanty, 2001, p. 110).

Who defines knowledge

the authority of particular people in developing knowledge influenced by circumstances of the period, power, privilege
in antiquity, scarcity of written material, highly controlled environment
dissemination slow, access restricted to elites
when universities and printing press - privilege disciplinary knowledge
“who gets to say what counts as knowledge”

Pedagogy for human beings

Barnett (2004) had his own interpretations of knowledge in relation to uncertainty and change. He would like to see curriculum and pedagogy to move away from knowledge and skills to be a “pedagogy for human beings”. He discussed a third form of knowledge which would involve learners thinking about and confronting themselves with the uncertainties and dilemmas in their lives and in their field of knowledge, in which the human being itself is implicated. This is similar to ideas by Beck (1986) and Jansen & van der Veen (1992) on learning in the Risk Society. Delanty broadened this from individual learners to society and institutions: ‘By knowledge I mean the capacity of a society for learning, a cognitive capacity that is related to the production of cultural models and institutional innovation’ (Delanty, 2001, p. 5).

Other forms of knowledge provide the scaffolding students can use to consider propositional knowledge – it is not to be learnt for its own sake or as dead knowledge, but as an intellectual tool to be used in practice. (Wheelahan, 2005, p. 639) p. 61

Distributed knowledge and critique

Connectivism

Paul Boghossian (2007) for instance rejects these forms of knowledge. He emphasises the need for knowledge to be objective. He particularly values ‘universality’ and ‘mind-independence’ of knowledge. In addition, he sees ‘justified true belief’ as the best definition of ‘knowledge’ and rejects knowledge as ‘socially constructed’.

He does not deny that knowledge could be produced collaboratively, or that people’s social and political values may influence the knowledge they produce; but he argues that ‘many facts about the world are independent of us, and hence independent of our social values and interests’ (Boghossian, 2007, p. 20).

He further claims that there should always be evidence to support that particular beliefs are independent from our social background to transform them into knowledge. He rejects the relativist view that constructivists, such as Rorty, hold that there are no facts independent from the world in which people live and that the justification of facts will never be independent from us and our social context.

Theories of learning

Didactic models (acquisition metaphor, Sfard 1998)
- linked to symbol-processing views of mind, such as behaviourism and cognitivism, where the tutor is thought to transmit knowledge and the student will acquire it
Models linked to situated views of mind (participation metaphore)
- such as social constructivism and community of practice, where the learner is thought to build on experience and formerly acquired knowledge by participating and interacting in a social context

(Rogers, 2002).

Study

Research aim

To investigate how people learn and teach while using social media, and the challenges and opportunities they face, in two different settings: the ABCD project in a formal education institution, and on three online networks.

Findings

A trusted “knowledgeable other” is still at the heart of a meaningful learning experience

Links here

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Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	Kop, R., & Hill, A. (2008). Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3), Article–9.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Overview of key features of connectivism, discussion of what is a learning theory, critique of connectivism as learning theory. Also the value of a “critical other” in learning, educator vs. facilitator

Use of theories

Two purposes of new theory (Kerr 2007d)

replaces older theories that have become inferior OR
builds on older theories without discarding them

Forster (2007): for connectivism to be a learning theory, limitations and full range of contexts in which learning can take place must be accounted for otherwise implementation might be misguided.

Connectivism

Learning

learning happens when learner connects to and feeds information into learning community
learning community is a node, always part of larger network
nodes varying size and strength (concentration of info and number of people)
learning transpires through use of cognitive and affective domains
learning process is cyclical
peripheries of knowledge fields porous, learners may traverse networks through multiple knowledge domains
act of recognizing patterns shaped by complex networks
- internal, as neural networks
- external, as networks in which we adapt to the world around us (Siemens 2006b)

Learner

important skills:
- seek out current info
- filter secondary/extraneous info
- see connections between fields, ideas, concepts

View of knowledge

information is constantly changing (validity and accuracy change over time)
knowledge is distributed across info network, stored in variety of digital formats
learning and knowledge “rest in diversity of opinions” (Siemens 2008)
knowledge is “subsymbolic” (Downes 1996)
a recognition of a pattern in a set of neural events [if we are introspecting] or behavioural events [if we are observing]
the experience of a mental state that is at best seen as an approximation of what it is that is being said in words or experienced in nature, an approximation that is framed and, indeed, comprehensible only from which the rich set of world views, previous experiences and frames in which it is embedded
denies that knowledge is propositional (different from all other epistemologies)
- other epistemologies are cognitivist - language and logic
- connectivism is connectionist
  - not essentially based in linguistic structures
  - constraints and properties of linguistic structures are not the constraints and properties of connectivism
‘understanding’ is a distribution of connections across a network.
* to ‘know that P’ is therefore equated with ‘a certain set of neural connections’ that entail being in a certain physical state” unique to the experiencer of that state.
‘deep thinking’ or ‘creating understanding’ are equivalent to the process of making connections, and that there are no mental models per se (i.e., no systematically constructed rule-based representational systems), and what there is (i.e., connectionist networks) is not built, like a model; but instead it is grown, like a plant

Consequences

If learning transpires via connections to nodes on the network, then it follows that the maximization of learning can best be achieved through identifying the properties of effective networks, which is precisely what Downes sets out to achieve in Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge

Epistemological frameworks

Driscoll:

objectivism
- reality external to the mind
- knowledge experientially acquired
pragmatism
- knowledge is negotiation between
  - reflection and experience
  - inquiry and action
interpretivism
- knowledge is internal construction
- informed through socialization and cultural clues
distributed knowledge (Downes, Siemens)

Alignment of epistemologies and learning theories:

Critiques

Verhagen: unsubstantiated philosophizing

Kerr: existing theories are enough, we've already got:

Vygotsky

Internal and external knowledge environments

Language and scaffolding

Self-talk in children, externalizing as a form of self-guidance and self-direction (this ability comes from interaction with others)

Instructional scaffolding

support for learning and problem solving using
- hints
- reviewing material
- encouragement
- complex problems → manageable chunks

(Woolfolk 1995)

Papert's constructivism

Learning occurs through engaging in creative experimentation and activity.

Learning vs. teaching, teaching secondary to creative process

Learning: interaction between individual and environment

Computer's role: enabling, means for children to use knowledge

Clark's embodied active cognition

Scaffolding provided by language and 'objects to think with' - mutual interaction between mind, brain and the environment.

Other

Communities of practice

Connectivism getting famous because of prevalence of networks

Lack of empiry

Lack of extensive body of empirical research literature to lend it support

Lack of critical "other"

Lack of critical engagement online (Norris 2001) because of temptation to connect with like-minded people, rather than more challenging transactions.

Freire and Macedo - essential that teachers have directive role.

Dialogue vs conversation, something is lost if educators are reduced to facilitators (Salmon, 2004)

Links here

Images

p. 5

Spontaneous learning strategies in the natural setting

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	Hrimech, M., & Bouchard, P. (1998). Spontaneous learning strategies in the natural setting. In H. Long & Associates (Eds.), (Tran.), Developing paradigms in self-directed learning (27–44). University Press.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Learning about the use of computers, strategies used by self-learners. Literature review on learning strategies

Learning strategies

Definitions

The study of learning strategies is primarily concerned about how people use their mind to learn something
Conscious actions that learners utilize in order to gain direction and control over their learning outcomes
The operations utilized by learners for the effective appropriation of knowledge or skills
They are deliberate, planned activities that induce or bring about learning
Focus is on the learners and their cognitive and metacognitive (i.e. “learning-how-to-learn”) competencies in achieving control over the learning process

Evolution

An individual's preferred strategies evolve over time → competencies that can be summoned unconsciously whenever the need arises. Then, the strategies have been integrated into the individual's learning style, and to his/her personality.

Strategies and success

Degree of control learners exercise over own learning through explicit learning strategies have the potential to greatly increase learning effectiveness.

Weak learners often do not use them, because:

low cognitive alertness
poor learning strategies that nevertheless produce some acceptable results
lack of basic knowledge
external attributional style
lack of or insufficient transfer of learning

(Gamer, 1990)

Cognitive psychology

This research builds on the cognitive paradigm. Cognitive psychology considers human beings as deliberate agents who actively process information throughout their lifetime.

The study of learning strategies has been strongly influenced by the cognitivist perspective, which is also aligned with the philosophical assumptions underlying the study of self-directed learning (Long, 1992).

Importance of studying learning strategies

Some authors in SDL have stressed the importance of studying the strategies SDL learners use, an area which is still hardly known (Olgren, 1992).

In her unifying framework for data-based research into adult self-directed learning, Danis (1992) makes the study of self-regulated learning strategies the core of his framework, pointing out the importance of relating the strategies to the learning content and the learning context.

Study design

Qualitative design that included a semistructured interview schedule.

Demographics

Twenty volunteers, twelve females and eight males, aged between 25 years and 48 years, were interviewed.

Questions

what methods they used when faced with new computer-related tasks
how they went about figuring out how to get them done
detail the strategies that they used when they encountered learning difficulties
estimate those strategies' effectiveness
strategies that were tried out and subsequently abandoned
about the reasons for their perceived lack of effectiveness

Findings

Affective or supportive strategies:

Positive self-talk
Play
- having fun, leaving task and exploring other aspects
Perseverance
- not really a category, but many cited this

Links here

Some simple learning strategies, such as repetition, are wide. spread and used by almost everyone, while other strategies, such as imagery or elaboration are more idiosyncratic and must be adapted by each individual to be congruent with their preferences, abilities, and context. Without this criterion of purposeful internalization, learning strategies become mere techniques, or study habits that can sometimes be inefficient or counter-productive. p. 8

Therefore, the degree of control that learners exerma cise over their own learning through the use of explicit learning fra strategies, becomes an important dimension of self-directed learnto ing (Long, 1989). p. 9

even though learning strategies have the potential to greatly increase learning effectiveness, some learners, especially underachievers or those who experience some kind of difficulties, often do not use them. Several reasons have been proposed to explain this (Gamer, 1990): low cognitive alertness; poor learning strategies that nevertheless produce some acceptable results; lack of basic knowledge; external attributional style;· and lack of or insufficient transfer of learning. p. 9

On the other hand, the competent use of learning strategies is commonplace among highly effective learners, and is well docune' mented (Hrimech, 1995). However, even sophisticated learners, when facing a highly informal and unstructured learning environment such as that in which most people learn to use computers, face serious difficulty. Furthermore, little is known about which strategies are more effective in that particular context. In the words of Gamer (1990, p.517), .when the learning context changes, “the nature of strategic activity often varies as well.” p. 9

This research builds on the cognitive paradigm. Cognitive psychology considers human beings as deliberate agents who actively process information throughout their lifetime. The study of learning strategies has been strongly influenced by the cognitivist perspective, which is also aligned with the philosophical assumptions underlying the study of self-directed learning (Long, 1992). In this p. 9

perspective, for successful learning to occur, appropriate learning strategies must be employed. p. 10

Some authors in SDL have stressed the importance of studying the strategies SDL learners use, an area which is still hardly known (Olgren, 1992). For example, in her unifying framework for data-based research into adult self-directed learning, Danis (1992) makes the study ofself-regulated learning strategies the core ofthis framework, pointing out to the importance of relating the strategies to the learning content and the learning context. This study proceeds in a similar direction. p. 10

Instead, we used a qualitative design that included a semistructured interview schedule. Twenty volunteers, twelve females and eight males, aged between 25 years and 48 years, were interviewed. They were asked what methods they used when faced with . new computer-related tasks, and how they went about figuring out how to get them done. In addition we asked the informants to detail the strategies that they used when they encountered learning difficulties, and to estimate those strategies' effectiveness. We also inquired about the strategies that were tried out and subsequently abandoned, and about the reasons for their perceived lack of effectiveness. p. 11

Affective Or Support Strategies p. 15

1. Positive self-talk. p. 15

Having fun with software can be entertaining, and it allows for better concentration on the learning task by reducing stress. In fact, playing could be seen as one of the most effective ways to explore new and creative solutions to difficulties. Sometimes, momentarily leaving the problem application and focusing on an entirely new environment enables the subconscious mind to look for a solution while the conscious mind is occupied at some other, less important task. Returning to the original problem, the learner may find that the solution is more readily available than anticipated. p. 15

2. Play. p. 15

3. Perseverance. p. 15

Images

p. 6

The Value of Learning Analytics to Networked Learning on a Personal Learning Environment

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	FournierHélène, Kop, R., & Sitlia, H. (2011). The Value of Learning Analytics to Networked Learning on a Personal Learning Environment. 1st International Conference on Learning analytics and Knowledge 2011, Banff, February 27-March 1st, 2011.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Case study of use of learning analytics in MOOC

Literature review

Need for analytics, and open computing

Social scientists have lagged behind researchers in other fields, for instance in fields such as biology and physics, it is unavoidable for analytics to become part of social science research.

Emphasise the urgency for a data-driven computational social science to develop „based in an open academic environment‟, rather than in the domain of private companies such as Google and Yahoo, and government agencies who are currently the main players in the analytics field. They answer the question: “What value might a computational social science – based in an open academic environment – offer society, by enhancing understanding of individuals and collectives?” (Lazer, et al.)

What is good and bad

Dawson et al: To improve student learning experience must not just do quantitative analysis, but value judgment of what usage counts as good or bad, and how to move from one to the other.

Computer-generated content analysis

De Laat: Complexity of researching networked learning:

human agency
dynamics of the network
power-relationships of network
amount of content generated

Needs:

multi-method approach
computer-aided analysis of content
social network analysis (who talks to whom)
interview with critical event recall

Study

PLENK2010

Between 40 and 60 were active producers, the other 1580 were not visibly active.

Unexpected to course organizers - saw creation and activity as critical to learning.

Methods

Tools used:

Social Networks Adapting Pedagogical Practice (SNAPP)
- who posted and replied to whom
- what major discussions were about
- how expansive they were
- generates diagrams
Pajek
NetDraw
Nvivo

Findings

Time to code and do analyses was prohibitive, but detailed information of one discussion. Computer-assisted analysis could help and should be explored.

Links here

Images

p. 7

p. 8

Researching the design and development of a Personal Learning Environment: Research on super-users

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	FournierHélène, & Kop, R. (2011). Researching the design and development of a Personal Learning Environment: Research on super-users. PLE Citylab Conference.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Study of PLE design, lit review of motivation and presence, some statistics from learners

Literature review

VLE vs PLE

Difference between Virtual Learning Environment and PLE - VLE is controlled by an institution.

Requirement of learners

have to be able to negotiate the Web (not a power-free environment) autonomously
find right information, access resources, critical assessment of credibility
active in learning by producing in a variety of formats
communicating and collaborating with others in new ways
creativity and innovative thinking
competent using ICT
flexible, adaptible
motivated to take on new challenges

Downes (2009): these skills and competencies will develop while engaging in online communication, or via challenging feedback or recommendations through PLE system

Motivation

Affective aspect (Picard, 2004, Kop, 2010, Zaharias & Poylymenakou, 2009; Jones & Issroff, 2004)

Presence

Dron & Anderson 2007 differentiate learning in

groups (motivation/presence highest)
networks (open informal network - motivation is lower)
collectives (even lower motivation - connections between people in the form of tags)

Characteristics

Illusion of non-mediation (ie. something that works like if it had been in real life).

Garrison, et al 2000: Deep meaningful learning from three forms of presence:

cognitive presence
- certain level of depth in educational process
social presence
teacher presence (in formal environment - could be replaced by “knowledgeable others” on the web?)

E-learning evaluation

Attwell, 2006 provides a variety of models

comparisons with traditional learning
benchmarking models
product evaluations
performance evaluations
program and policy evaluations
studies of metadata
more complex all encompassing design-based research models (Bannan-Ritland 2009)

Study

Surveying “super users” (people who use advanced Internet tools and technologies in an educational environment) on use of existing tools, applications, systems, preferences in learning

Phases

exploration of literature
usability testing of Plearn (feedback on mockups)
comparison of learning with and without Plearn in 3 case studies

Outreach

Announced on OLDaily, sent out to members of PLE mailing list etc. 204 surveys completed. Mainly highly educated, very comfortable with technology.

Findings

Mechanisms that help them understand and combine information:

when I can discuss it with others, screencasts and slidecasts
when I can organize it so it makes sense
when it is posed as a challenge
when I take notes and rework/process them
when someone tweets a useful link and someone else tweets a link to a related story
when I can combine and check information flexibly
when it's blogged or op-ed'd
when I can do something with it
when it is written simply without a lot of extra words and jargon
Cmap, visual approaches
solitude and reflection

Links here

when I can organize it so it makes sense

when it is posed as a challenge

when I take notes and rework/process them

when someone tweets a useful link and someone else tweets a link to a related story

when I can combine and check information flexibly

when it's blogged or op-ed'd

when I can do something with it

when it is written simply without a lot of extra words and jargon

Cmap, visual approaches

solitude and reflection p. 8

a majority of participants indicated a preference for sharing interesting information from someone with their social network (79%) and thinking about the information (78%). Sharing the information via email (71%) was also important, while commenting (61%) and writing (57%) of blog posts was also seen as a valuable activity related to received information. Under “other” comments, a high number of respondents indicated a preference for (social) bookmarking options to help them understand and combine information (e.g., share on Greader, diigo, tag it in delicious and retweet). A majority (83%) of participants indicated a preference for talking with other people to help them reflect on a either a topic or learning activity. Receiving feedback from others, knowledgeable persons in particular, was seen as important for 56% of respondents. Writing it down in their own words (74%), was also a well-liked strategy to facilitate reflection. Several found reading related material to be helpful (58%) as well as being on their own without distractions p. 8

Participants from the first survey were invited to participate in a second survey which examined the use of information aggregation tools and technologies, and to share issues and challenges based on their previous experience with collecting various forms of data and information from various sources. p. 11

68 participants completed the survey p. 11

References p. 13

Images

Using mLearning and MOOCs to understand chaos, emergence, and complexity in education

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	Waard, I. de, Abajian, S., Gallagher, M. S., Hogue, R., Keskin, N., Koutropoulos, A., & Rodriguez, O. C. (2011). Using mLearning and MOOCs to understand chaos, emergence, and complexity in education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(7), 94–115.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Study of MobiMOOC, some statistics, mostly theory. Complexity theory and self-organizing systems, collective scaffolding and ZPD

Literature review

Self-organization

Vital conditions:

fluid realm
openness to the information flow
turbulences and changes; freedom within flexible boundaries
richness of possibilities
interconnectedness of all parts of the system
collective emergence

(Laroche, Nicol, & Mayer-Smith, 2007, p. 74)

Self-organizing MOOC displaying emergent properties to interact with the environment in which it finds itself (Bertuglia, 2005).

Complexity/chaos theory

Reigeluth (2004) writes, Chaos theory and the sciences of complexity can help us to understand our present systems of education, including (a) when each is ready for transformation, and (b) the system dynamics that are likely to influence individual changes we try to make and the effects of those changes.

For a system to be open to its environment, must actively seek information from its surroundings and make this knowledge widely available.

For the system to adapt, it must be pushed out of balance first. The further the system is from equilibrium, the stronger the chance for self-organization. Fluid environments blur distinctions between schools, nature, society, informal and formal learning (Laroche et al 2009).

We are certain combining technologies that embrace the complexity of knowledge production with pedagogical formats that allow learners to build knowledge by filtering that complexity will encourage a new educational balance to emerge.

MOOC as a complex system, continuously interpreting events of the external world.

Conditions

Based on Davis and Sumara (2008).

Internal diversity

“One cannot specify in advance what sorts of variation will be necessary for appropriately intelligent action, hence the need to ensure and maintain diversity in the current system”

Enhancer for fruitful discussions and successful knowledge creation.

Internal redundancy

Among humans, vastly more redundancy than diversity - which enables interactions among agents.

Interesting to think about how different students should be in terms of interests, level of knowledge. Link to ZPD, "most books have 10% new material". Difference between new information and new concepts ("Cameroon has 5 million people living in cities" vs "Slon is a nematode in respesis")

Neighbor interactions

Must be able to affect one another's activities in order to activate internal dynamics of a collective learning system.

The neighbors that must interact with one another are ideas, hunches, queries, and other manners of representation”, in the hope that these interactions will trigger other insights. They also said “the critical point is that mechanisms be in place to ensure that ideas will stumble across one another”

Decentralized control

There was centralized coordinator, each week facilitated by different mLearning expert, but participants had control over part of the advancement of the course. Could propose discussion topics.

Smaller complex systems within them

“One of the properties of complex systems is that they allow emergence of smaller complex systems within them” (Laroche et al., 2009).

This happened as a result of decentralized authority and the fact that the participants were in control of their own learning. The dynamics of the MobiMOOC resulted in smaller complex subsystems that arose. This paper, for example, is a result of MobiMOOC participants who volunteered to join and engage in an emerging, unplanned action.

Collective scaffolding (Vygotsky)

Through a process of collective scaffolding (Donato, 1994) participants assisted others to expand their understanding of mLearning, also helped them implement their own mLearning projects. Constructive feedback to classmates - enabled participants to work within ZPD, expand capabilities.

Online communities

The successful development of online communities also requires

common goals or interests
repeated participation
discussions and feedback
multiplicity of possibilities
flexible thinking structures
interpersonal connectivity
collaboration
interactions
distributed leadership
assigned roles
shared outcomes

(Abel, 2005; Farrior, 2005; Kelland, 2006; Kim, 2001 as cited in Laroche et al., 2009).

Conversations at the center - learn from each other through dialogue.

Study

MobiMOOC, April-May 2011

556 participants joined Google group, 74 active contributing members

Data from final survey, 40 completed

Amplification

Links here

internal redundancy,

neighbor interactions,

decentralized control. p. 9

Internal Diversity Although diversity is an important factor, its impact cannot be foreseen. As Davis and Sumara (2008) wrote, “One cannot specify in advance what sorts of variation will be necessary for appropriately intelligent action, hence the need to ensure and maintain diversity in the current system” (p. 39). Davis and Sumara saw this diversity as an enhancer for fruitful discussions and successful knowledge creation, stating that an “intelligent response to the same circumstances might arise among the interactions of a network” (2008, p. 39). In p. 9

the case of our research, the diversity of the MobiMOOC resulted in new insights that we shared. p. 10

Davis and Sumara (2008) stated that “among humans, there is vastly more redundancy than diversity,” adding that “redundancy enables interactions among agents” (p. 39). Agents must be able to affect one another’s activities in order to activate the internal dynamics of a collective learning system, hence our look at neighbor interactions. p. 11

For example common language p. 11

Neighbor Interactions When Davis and Sumara (2008) mentioned neighbor interactions, they specified that “the neighbors that must interact with one another are ideas, hunches, queries, and other manners of representation” (p. 40), in the hope that these interactions will trigger other insights. They also said “the critical point is that mechanisms be in place to ensure that ideas will stumble across one another” (p. 41). MOOCs support free interaction among participants, establishing a critical point of idea interaction and a place for the creation of knowledge. p. 11

Even though knowledge can be seen as residing in both humans and non-human appliances, it is what we do with that knowledge, and how we construct new knowledge, that is important. This is where a Vygotskian perspective is quite useful. According to Vygotsky (in Nassaji & Swain, 2000), knowledge is social in nature and constructed through a process of collaboration, interaction, and communication among learners in social settings. We saw this happen in the MobiMOOC repeatedly. Through a process of collective scaffolding (Donato, 1994) some participants assisted others to expand their understanding of mLearning p. 11

and in some cases also helped them implement their own mLearning projects. In many cases, participants received constructive feedback from their classmates on projects that they were either implementing or designing. This collective scaffolding enabled participants to work within the zone of proximal development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978) and to expand their capabilities with the help of more knowledgeable peers. MobiMOOC ascribed to the Vygotsky principles of collaboration, interaction, and communication, revealed most clearly in the assistance participants offered to one another throughout the course. p. 12

Decentralized Control Although there was a centralized coordinator and each MobiMOOC week was facilitated by a different mLearning expert, the participants had control over part of the advancement of the course. The MobiMOOC participants could, for instance, put forward discussion topics that were then taken up by others. p. 12

“One of the properties of complex systems is that they allow emergence of smaller complex systems within them” (Laroche et al., 2009). This happened as a result of decentralized authority and the fact that the participants were in control of their own learning. The dynamics of the MobiMOOC resulted in smaller complex subsystems that arose. This paper, for example, is a result of MobiMOOC participants who volunteered to join and engage in an emerging, unplanned action. Such an act is related to what Jenkins et al. (as cited in Davis & Sumara, 2008) described as educational research based on complexity, for it p. 12

must be interpreted as participatory—meaning that there are opportunities for expression and engagement, there is support for creating and sharing creations, there is some type of teaching so the most experienced can mentor new members, members believe their contributions matter, and members feel social connection with one another. (p. 43) p. 12

Emerging Technologies “Transformation occurs through a process called ‘emergence,’ by which new processes and p. 12

structures emerge to replace old ones in a system” (Reigeluth, 2004). When looking at the read-write Web, we can see that knowledge creation happens in different ways now than it did during the Industrial Age. The possibility for individuals to create knowledge and share it online replaces the old classroom exchange where the teacher knows and transmits, and the learner in turn absorbs. Looking at phenomena emerging from technologies can point us in the direction of a renewed educational equilibrium. p. 13

The successful development of online communities also requires “common goals or interests, repeated participation, discussions and feedback, multiplicity of possibilities, flexible p. 15

thinking structures, interpersonal connectivity, collaboration, interactions, distributed leadership, assigned roles, and shared outcomes” (Abel, 2005; Farrior, 2005; Kelland, 2006; Kim, 2001 as cited in Laroche et al., 2009). If we analyze these requirements—discussions, feedback, collaborations, et cetera—it becomes clear that conversations between people are at the center of those online communities. This exchange of ideas that goes back and forth between members of a community is essential, because “more than any other way, people learn not from courses or Web sites but from each other . . . through dialogue” (Rosenberg, 2006, p. 158). Dialogue has always been integral to human communication and growth. p. 16

Figure 11 is a great example of "amplification" p. 17

Further research is needed to determine whether MOOCs are attracting a specific learner profile not linked to age, gender, or cultural background, but rather to intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. p. 19

Images

p. 5

p. 8

p. 17

A method and tool to support the analysis and enhance the understanding of peer-to-peer learning experiences

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	De Liddo, A., & Alevizou, P. (2010). A method and tool to support the analysis and enhance the understanding of peer-to-peer learning experiences. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Retrieved from http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/bitstream/10609/4941/6/De%20Liddo.pdf.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

Using Cohere to analyze peer-to-peer learning in P2PU course

Qualitative data analysis

Traditional qualitative analysis tools do not allow web data to be analyzed “in-situ”, but must be downloaded, normalized etc.

The analyst looses potentially useful hints that may help him to make sense of the content they analyze (i.e. page formatting, images and metadata visible just when the data is accessed online)
If new data are added to the data source Webpage they are not visible to the analyst. Therefore the results of the analysis are time-constrained and may become quickly obsolete. p. 4

Cohere let's us analyze data in-situ.

Cohere

Two main features for QDA:

coding (tagging)
memoing (annotation)

Study

Observing virtual users in P2PU course (Copyright for Educators, March-May 2010).

Look at discussion forums, particularly for “Ping group”

Analysis framework

Two interrelated dimensions, based on Burge’s (1994) peer behaviour models:

participation: how do participants give alternative perspectives attending to the experience of others: how do they share resources and reflections?
affective feedback: do participants use each others’ names, complimenting each other and offer supportive, remedial or critical interchanges

Process

Highlighted clips of text in each post, grouped into (evolving):

people
content
rhetorical moves

Two main memo connection codes:

posts
addressed to

Used Cohere for sorting and visualization - has network approach. Data, codes and memos can be listed or represented in graph like structure.

Combine network search and code search, for example code “complain” and posts addressed to the whole group, to see what participants have complained more, and what they are complaining about.

Findings

The most popular activities that seek to facilitate the meditation of a “learning space” follow similar pattern for engaging peer and collaborative learning:

read
think
reflect
share
peer comment

Course (Copyright for educators) has implicit pedagogical designs that evolve during the 6 weeks (also based on discussions with tutors).

3 core dimensions:

informative: identify copyright issues around education
practical: work with different IP jurisdictions and legal practicalities for open education design
social and deliberative: exchange ideas about open education beyond and within context of copyright

Links here

If new data are added to the data source Webpage they are not visible to the analyst. Therefore the results of the analysis are time-constrained and may become quickly obsolete. p. 4

Cohere provides two of the main features for QDA: Coding and Memoing. Coding and Memoing activities of qualitative Web data can be assimilated to the common users activities that in the Social Web ‘language’ are defined as tagging and annotation. By providing collaborative tagging and web annotations Cohere enables qualitative data analysis in a web environment. p. 4

Coding as Tagging and Memoing as Web Annotation p. 4

Use Case: Observing Virtual Users in a Peerto-Peer You University (P2PU) Course p. 5

Peer-to-Peer University (http://www.p2pu.org) has evolved into a public space that demonstrates the fostering of collaboration among activists within the open education movement, volunteer tutors and motivated learners in the design and facilitation of short courses. p. 5

The ‘Copyright for Educators’ course during its second cycle (March-May 2010, http://www.p2pu.org/copyright-educators-cycle-2-mar-2010) is the object of analysis for this paper. p. 6

The object of analysis are the discussion forums, where course students collaborate in order to complete group assignments or discuss given tasks. In particular we analyzed students’ posts in the “Pink Group” (http://p2pu.org/node/729/document/2692). p. 6

we focus coding on the following two interrelated dimensions, based on Burge’s (1994) peer bahaviour models: a) participation: how do participants give alternative perspectives attending to the experience of others: how do they share resources and reflections? b) Affective feedback: do participants use each others’ names, complimenting each other and offer supportive, remedial or critical interchanges? p. 6

Firstly we applied coding and memoing. We tagged clips of forum discussion’s text by keeping in mind the general question: What is relevant here for the phenomena I want to observe? We tried to identify, name, categorize and describe the phenomena found in the text. We looked at each post, highlighted clips of text, and tag them with codes, which quickly started grouping in three main categories:

People
content
Rhetorical moves p. 6

We identified two main memos connection codes:

Posts
Addressed to p. 6

Another key activity in QDA is sorting. p. 7

Cohere has a network approach to data sorting and visualization. Data, codes, and memos can either be listed (ordered by creation time or code type) or represented in a graph like structure. p. 7

Figure 4 for example, shows the representation of the activities of the Pink group as they have been observed and coded in the use case. By looking at the image we can recognize that 4 participants have been addressing the group attention on different aspect of the learning experience. Some of them, for instance, by asking questions to the entire group (see question icons in Figure 4). p. 7

Results in Fig.5 show that there are 6 cluster, that is to say 6 particiapnts in the discussion forum and it is equally evident who are the most active and what activities they have carried out. This visualization offers a useful way in for data exploration and reflection. It is easy for the analyst to familiarize with the data and make visual and conceptual complarison between the emerging codes and their relationships. p. 7

Finally network search can be coupled with code search in order to spot more specific relationship between data. By searching for the code “complain”, for example, and by focusing p. 7

on posts addressed to the all group we can see what participants have declared to be uncomfortable with the technology or unhappy with the course organization, and what participants have posted more complains (Fig. 6). p. 8

Even thought this particular P2PU case study is still in progress we can describe some lesson learned on the course we analyzed, in particular on course pedagogical design. Although there is no cohesive design across the courses, the most popular activities that seek to facilitate the mediation of what we would call a ‘learning space’ follow a similar pattern for engaging peer and collaborative learning: ‘read-think-reflect-share-peer comment’. Observations within the site (and metapages, including discussions with facilitators) suggest that ‘Copyright for Educators’ has implicit pedagogical designs that evolve during the 6 weeks that the course runs. p. 8

The figure below exemplifies pedagogical design implicitly evolving within this particular learning space. as a process. The intended outcomes and audience are explicitly stated in the course outline, and the pool of learning materials is structured in such a way to promote an inscribed pedagogy that addresses three core dimensions (see bottom left corner – part of tutors’ role in relation to defining learning outcomes): i. Informative: help indentifying copyright issues around education ii. Practical: work with different IP jurisdictions and the legal practicalities for open education design iii. Social and deliberative: exchange ideas about open education beyond and within the context of copyright The network of interactions mediated through the interface tools facilitated by the site (see roles, tasks and activities in the map), produces a set of novel resources that if visualized p. 8

appropriately, it presents structures of intended learning, and the ‘learning in use’. These can guide or inform the design process for future outlets within this particular open course, or other OER(s). p. 9

Bibliographic references p. 13

Anna De Liddo is Research Associate at Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University (Milton Keynes, UK), where she works in the Open Learning Network project (www.olnet.org) at the design and development of a Collective Intelligence socio-technical infrastructure to enhance collaborative learning in Open Education. She gained her PhD at Polytechnic of Bari, Italy, investigating ICT for Participatory Planning and Deliberation. After that, she held a PostDoc position at the Open University within the ESSENCE Project, investigating and evaluating human-centred computing tools to help tackling wicked problems such as Climate Change. p. 13

Panagiota Alevizou is a post-doctoral researcher at the Open University's Institute of Educational Technology working on the Open Learning Networks project (Olnet). As part of her research she has been engaging with numerous stakeholders and projects in the OER community to develop working framework on the nature of openess and collaboration that characterizes the mediation of open resources, while addressing the opportunities and challenges relating to participatory interfaces, web 2.0 pedagogies, adoption and (re)use. Her broader background is in media and communications and her interest in open source/ open content communities was sparked while working on her PhD and has informed her teaching and research at the universities of Sussex and London School of Economics and Political Science p. 14

Images

Detecting mathematics learning online

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Stian's PhD wiki

BibDesk		PDF
Citation	Corneli, J., & Ponti, M. (2012). Detecting mathematics learning online. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Networked Learning. Retrieved from http://metameso.org/~joe/docs/detecting-learning.pdf.	Sidewiki

Key ideas

“The Learning Model”: How would we detect learning in this space?

A naıve idea: model learning as vocabulary acquisition
- perhaps with “certification” through the evaluation process
More complete: model learning as a change in patterns of behavior
Sophisticated: model learning in terms of the use of new heuristic strategies

Behavior change

Here we would look for behavior like:

Working at the cutting edge (introducing new material?)
Progressive problem solving (working at increasing depth?)
Collaborative effort (asking or answering questions?)
User-Identified high points (bookmarked threads and articles?)
Processing level (eg browsing vs attempting to solve problems?)
Quality of self-explanation (knowing how activities relate to goals?)
Exploration (trying different resources?)

Links here

Examine the vocabulary (specialized terms) that people use in texts they submit to the site.

Assume that when this vocabulary is used in a solution that has been marked correct, then the vocabulary has also been used correctly. p. 4

The second layer is inspired by the analytical toolkit (ATK) used by Chan, Lee and van Aalst (2001) to examine knowledge-building inquiry and discourse among high school students using the Knowledge Forum. In addition to providing measures of activities in the Knowledge Forum, including notes written, notes read and keywords used, the toolkit assesses aspects of the development of collective knowledge, using an adaptation of principles designed by Scardamalia (2000). The toolkit aims to detect: p. 4

Working at the cutting edge: participants work to advance individual and collective knowledge, and not to reiterate what is already known.
Progressive problem solving: participants pursue problems at progressively deeper level, which means that when participant in the community understands a problem, s/he uses this learning to deepen the understanding of the problem and solve it.
Collaborative effort: participants need to share understanding and to advance collective knowledge.
Identifying high points in the discourse: participants note contributions that help them understand a problem better and advance collective knowledge. p. 4

Additional situational or relational features that can describe mathematical problem solving behaviour (Hosein, 2009) which fit at this layer include: p. 4

Processing level: deep or surface learning, e.g. as evidenced by attempting to work through problems versus merely browsing solutions.
Quality of self-explanation: the learner is able to explain why they are doing what they are doing.
Exploration: the learner makes use of available tools and content. p. 4

We will aim to build software that can identify in an automatic way these aspects of learning and knowledge building. For example, site-wide analysis of vocabulary usage would enable us to identify someone who uses a completely new term to be “working at the cutting edge”. We can also use the network of interlinked documents to understand how a given activity relates to another (“progressive problem solving”). We will extend our model of simplified “language acquisition” (Layer 1) and different measures of engagement (Layer 2), with a third layer, which deals with the substance of problem solving itself. Before describing this third layer, we make some remarks on how we plan to analyse the data we will be gathering. p. 4

Microgenetic analysis p. 4

Open online learning environments provide researchers with access to all of the same data that participants use to communicate with one another (Stahl, 2006). Researchers have access to a natural data set similar to that provided by “talk-aloud protocols”, which can provide detailed evidence of learning and development. This kind of data – and the informal, ad hoc interactions that generate it – matches well with some of the ideas and techniques of microgenetic analysis. The microgenetic approach studies learning as a process, rather than the outcome of a process (Lavelli, Pantoja, Hsu, Messinger & Fogel, 2002). The approach examines moment-bymoment changes observed in a short period of time, often for a high number of separate observations, but not necessarily subject to the same staged treatment patterns found in longitudinal studies. Observations tend to be analyzed intensively, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Microgenetic approaches have been used to take into account the social process of development, in which individuals learn concurrently in a distributed fashion (Fischer & Granott, 1995). This method seems particularly well suited to our informal peer-based learning context, where a pre-test/post-test method for assessing learning quality would generally be inappropriate or infeasible. Statistical analysis of this sort of data presents some unique challenges (Cheshire et al., 2007). A higher-level challenge appears when we try to take what we’ve learned and apply it to shape practice. We give an indication of how we plan to address this challenge in the following section. p. 4

Applied heuristics: a Minskian approach p. 4

The purpose of this section is to establish a third layer of analysis, which we would position above the use of specialised mathematical vocabulary and below social dynamics like “working at the cutting edge”. Namely, here we look for engagement with the methods of mathematical problem. This layer includes the traditional “grammar of proof” (e.g. proof by induction or reductio ad absurdum). However, importantly, it also includes heuristics, and this is what we focus on in the current section. The treatment here is not exhaustive, indeed, a key feature of this layer is that it can expand to include any new heuristics we discover. p. 5

In one of his memos for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, Marvin Minsky (2008-09) wrote: Children […] learn words for various objects and processes – such as addition, multiplication, fraction, quotient, divisor, rectangle, parallelogram, and cylinder, equation, variable, function, and graph. But they learn only a few such terms per year – which means that in the realm of mathematics, our children are mentally starved, by having to live in a “linguistic desert.” It is hard to think about something until one learns enough terms to express the important ideas in that area. His concern, however, is, not merely with increasing the rate of vocabulary acquisition, but with learning ways to think and problem solve. He quotes Allen Newell (1955): The essential point of efficient learning is that, after you have solved a problem, it is not enough just to remember the answer: you need to remember the strategies that you used to discover that answer. p. 5

Minsky then proposes several example heuristics (ways of thinking about problems) that might be taught, or detected when they are employed (Table 1). He also suggests some meta-level heuristics:

Select appropriate representations: Building an understanding of the problem or goal at levels ranging from deciding its domain, finding suitable parameters or making an intuitive sketch.
Find appropriate analogies: Some of the most useful results in mathematics combine ideas from disparate sub-fields (like geometry and algebra); further, some say that mathematics is the science of patterns, so knowing how to look for useful patterns is a vital skill.
Deploy negative expertise: Knowing what has failed to work in the past can be useful.
Construct more realistic self-models: As one gains experience, one can understand better how one thinks. p. 5

Learning strategies p. 5

In some sense, we could say that all “informal” mathematical speech represents use of heuristic reasoning. As with the four criteria from Chan, Lee and van Aalst (2001) mentioned earlier, we would like to be able to automatically detect patterns like “reasoning by analogy” or “deploying negative expertise”. Many of these could be identified from textual features drawn from the informal parts of mathematical speech (“by analogy” or even “it easily follows”), or else via explicit discourse markers, following the example of the “Dangerous Bend” sign employed by Bourbaki (Kranz, 2011) – one use for the icons supplied in Table 1. In analysing a given text, we can also draw on some of the literature about technical language, such as, for example, Trimble’s (1985) discussion of technical rhetoric. p. 5

If a problem seems familiar, try reasoning by analogy. If you solved a similar one in the past, and can adapt to the differences, you may be able to re-use that solution. If the problem still seems too hard, divide it into several parts. Every difference you recognize may suggest a separate subproblem to solve. p. 5

If it seems unfamiliar, change how you’re describing it. Find a different description that highlights more relevant information. p. 6

If you get too many ideas, then focus on a more specific example – but if you don’t get enough ideas, make the description more general. p. 6

If a problem is too complex, make a simpler version of it. Solving a simpler instance may suggest how to solve the original problem. p. 6

Asking what makes a problem seem hard, may suggest another approach – or a better way to spend your time. p. 6

When your ideas seem inadequate, remember someone more expert at this, and imagine what that person would do. p. 6

Whenever you find yourself totally stuck, stop whatever you’re doing now and let the rest of your mind find alternatives. p. 6

The best way to solve a problem is to already know how to solve it – if you can manage to retrieve that knowledge. p. 6

Very neat graphics mnemnonics p. 6

If none of these methods work, you can ask another person for help. p. 6

Table 1: Problem-solving heuristics suggested by Minsky, together with mnemonic diagrams p. 6

Although we are not in a position to ensure the availability of peer support, we suspect that, on average, learners will be able to use PlanetMath to avail themselves of “observation, coaching, and successive approximation” (Collins et al., 1989). If these efforts are successful, significant changes in the way mathematics education works may follow. In particular, as we mentioned above, we hope that PlanetMath’s “super-textbook” will help learners connect to mathematics in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them. Indeed, the idea that we could collect all textbook answers in one place does bring to mind a very interesting question, about why mathematics education in schools and universities has been focused on solving “textbook problems” that have already been solved many thousands of times before. Can improved use p. 6

of technology give us something better? While we believe the answer here should be a fervent “yes”, details will be determined in practice, not a priori. Still, we may at this time consider similar questions about other domains of knowledge. Can we develop similar “application layers”, similar to our “problem solving layer”, that re-use encyclopaedia content from Wikipedia or other knowledge resources in peer produced learning environments or interactive learning tools? p. 7

Turning this question around, what might general-purpose “social layers” for Open Educational Resources (such as p2pu.org or OpenStudy.com) glean from a subject-specific project like PlanetMath? It appears that the biggest strength of our proposed approach to detecting learning is its three layer framework: we can detect specialised vocabulary use, socio-technical features like “working at the cutting edge”, and manage a catch-all category of heuristics which can be used to detect and talk about different ways of thinking. While there is a somewhat domain-specific mathematical flavour to this approach, we feel it poses an interesting model for educators and educational scientists working in other fields to consider adapting to their purposes. Further work will need to be done to establish whether this analytical framework can effectively detect patterns of learning. p. 7

Interesting point about domain-specific environments/research vs "catch-all". Something I need to think about for my research. p. 7

References p. 7

Alevizou, P., Conole, G. Culver, J., & Galley, R. (2009). Ritual performances and collective intelligence: theoretical frameworks for analysing emerging activity patterns in Cloudworks. In L. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, p. 7

Chan, C. K. K., Lee. E., & van Aalst, J. (2001). Assessing and fostering knowledge building inquiry and discourse. Paper presented at the 9th Biennial Meeting of the European Association for Learning and Instruction (EARLI). August 28-September 1st, 2001. Fribourg, Switzerland. p. 7

Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1989). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing and mathematics. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 453-494). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. p. 7

Conole, G. (2008). The role of mediating artefacts in learning design. In Lockyer, L., Bennett, S., Agostinho, S., & Harper, B. (Eds.). Handbook of Research on Learning Design and Learning Objects: Issues, Applications and Technologies (pp. 187 207). Hershey, PA; Idea Group Inc (IGI). p. 7

Corneli, J. (2011). The PlanetMath Encyclopaedia. Invited talk at the ITP 2011 Workshop on Mathematical Wikis (MathWikis-2011), Nijmegen, Netherlands. Retrieved August 22, 2011, from http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/V ol-767/paper-03.pdf p. 7

Cheshire, A., Muldoon K., Francis B., Lewis C. N., & Ball L. J. (2007). Modelling change: New opportunities in the analysis of microgenetic data, Infant and Child Development, 16, 119-134. p. 7

Fischer, K. W., & Granott N. (1995). Beyond one-dimensional change: Parallel, concurrent, socially distributed processes in learning and development, Human Development, 38, 302-314. p. 7

Hosein, A. (2009). Students’ approaches to mathematical tasks using software as a black-box, glass-box or open-box. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, The Open University, UK. p. 7

Kirschner, P.A. (2002). Can we support CSCL? Educational, social and technological affordances for learning. In P. A. Kirschner (Ed.), Three Worlds of CSCL: Can we support CSCL? (pp. 7-47). Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands. p. 7

Krowne, A. (2003). Building a digital library the commons-based peer production way. D-Lib Magazine, 9. Retrieved September 18, 2011, from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october03/krowne/10krowne.html p. 7

Lavelli M., Pantoja A.P.F., Hsu H., Messinger D., & Fogel A. (2005). Using microgenetic designs to study change processes. In D. Teti (Ed.), Handbook of Research Methods in Developmental Science (pp. 40-65). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. p. 7

McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. W. (2007). Social software and participatory learning: Pedagogical choices with technology affordances in the web 2.0 era. Proceedings ASCILITE, Singapore. Retrieved August 23, 2011, from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/mcloughlin.pdf. p. 8

Miettinen, R., & Virkkunen, J. (2005). Epistemic objects, artefacts and organizational change. Organization, 12(3), 437-456. p. 8

Minsky, M. (2008-09) Memos for the One Laptop Per Child project, published serially online in five instalments. Retrieved August 23, 2011, from http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/OLPC-1.html – http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/OLPC-5.html. p. 8

Nardi, B., & O'Day, V. (1999). Information ecologies: Using technology with heart. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 8

Warger, T., & Dobbin, G. (2009). Learning environments: Where space, technology, and culture converge. ELI White Papers, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (10/29/2009). Retrieved August 12, 2011, from http://www.educause.edu/Resources/LearningEnvironmentsWhereSpace/188507 p. 8

Images

p. 2

(from talk slides)

(from talk slides and Marvin Minsky, 2008-09, Memos for the One Laptop Per Child project)