LKL – 12 September 2007

Disruption, Debate, Discussion

Learner Generated Contexts

The Learner Generated Context Group

http://learnergeneratedcontexts.pbwiki.com/

A Definition

Learner Generated Context can be defined as a context created by people interacting together with a common, self-defined goal. Learners marshal the resources available to them to create an ecology that meets their needs.

In some senses all contexts can be described in this way: all are created from some combination of human enterprise in the world. The key aspect of Learner Generated Contexts is that they are created through the enterprise of those who would previously have been consumers in a context created for them.

Policy Perspective

Fred Garnett Nigel EcclesfieldBecta

Learner Generated Contexts

Our working definition of Learner Generated Contexts

Learning is a social process occurring across a continuum of contexts

Learning must be “Fit for Context”

Learner Generated Contexts are:

“A Coincidence of Motivations leading to Agile Configurations”

“A Learner Generated Context can be defined as a context created by people interacting together with a common, self-defined learning goal. The key aspect of Learner Generated Contexts is that they are generated through the enterprise of those who would previously have been consumers in a context created for them”

Learner Generated Contexts

What next?We propose a Research Agenda addressing 3 key aspects:

1. Developing context-based models as the organising principle for designing learning

2. Re-aligning the relationship between informal learning and institutionalised education

3. Challenging the relationship between consumption and creation in the formal learning process

And in so doing find ways to re-negotiate the issues concerning roles, expertise, knowledge, pedagogy, accreditation, power, technology, participation and democracy

Learner Generated Contexts

Policy Issues (Creative, Interactive Participative)

Some background1. E-learning & Public Value; Outcomes, Services, Transparency,

Trust, Networks AND “shared negotiated deliverables”

Participatory Organisational Forms in the Knowledge Democracy2. Stakeholder Public Value “Knowledgeable Professionals not

Functional Managers” EMFFE iterative definitions and developments

Key Policy Issues 1. Recognition of Policy 2.0 landscape2. Development of e-enabled PV Models3. Development of Participatory Organisational Forms 4. Development of Participatory Democratic Processes

How do we design a Public Architecture of Participation?

Some Background

Rose Luckin

Key questions

• How has technology changed over the last 15 years (or so) and what has this meant for people's activities?

• How have pedagogies changed during this time?

• How have people's social and educational mobility changed during this time?

A very simplistic and brief history• WWW brought opened up ability to publish• The internet brought networking and enabled people to communicate to

more people in more places: to collaborate, to co-author and to co-publish• The increased availability of digital devices such as cameras and sensors

enabled us to capture more about out physical environment and store it in digital formats

• The increased availability of mobile, ubiquitous and pervasive technologies brought us more choices about who we keep in touch with, and about where and when we keep in touch

• The increased sophistication of WWW took us from hypertext to multimedia

• The social capabilities supported by the Internet and WWW made explicit and more widely available through Web 2.0 and User Generated Content

Take 2 on those Key questions• How would we like technology to change over the next n years

(or so) and what should this mean for people's activities?

– If Web 2.0 could be described as the re-aggregation of media, do we now need World 2.0: the re-aggregation of life?What would that look like?

• How could/should pedagogies change?

– More emphasis on helping people set their own goals, on supporting metacognition, motivation and personal epistemic development?

• How could/should people's social and educational mobility change?

– Explore the administrative, organisational and curricular boundaries in learning contexts and consider how technologies might make them more permeable?

Ikea Flat Pack Metaphor

• In 1990 we could describe education as 'flat pack', by which I mean if Ikea offered education my flat pack would have contained some ready-made components, a few tools and some instructions.

• These could only be put together in a particular way in order to produce a pre-defined outcome. Now I don't need a flat pack, I have lots of tools, I can make my own components, I can decide that I want a different outcome, but when I look at the instructions they haven't really changed

In order to progress this agenda we need to

increase our understanding of how to

scaffold learners to effectively generate their

own learning contexts

Theory and Action

John Cookjohn.cook@londonmet.ac.uk London Metropolitan University

Drew Whitworthandrew.whitworth@manchester.ac.ukUniversity of Manchester

Drew’s take…

• The issue of learner- or user-generated contexts in education is linked to negotiated curricula…

• cf. Ira Shor’s book: When Students Have Power…

Negotiating the educational space

• Shor describes his experiences with a class of UGs in a community college in New York City

• Students on a course about democracy & utopia were able to negotiate the curriculum and assessment, and also to critically enquire into the way the course was being taught

Negotiating the technological space

• Can this principle apply to the technologies which comprise a learning environment?

• Not just choosing between technological solutions…

• … but critically enquiring into the role of technology in a given setting…

• … and using this enquiry to enact change?

Why does this matter?

• Learners and teachers alike are users of educational technology…

• …but this is too often a passive relationship

• UGC to me means the active co-construction of the technological parameters of our lives…

• We may actively gain an understanding of their role: and reclaim the setting

Contributory fields

• Liberatory education: Freire, Neill, Illich, etc.

• Critical pedagogy: Shor, Mezirow, Brookfield, etc.

• Appropriate technology: Schumacher, etc.

• Open source, free software: Raymond, Stallman, EFF, etc.

• Participatory Design

John’s take on Learner Generated Contexts

• By engaging in the appropriation and adoption of technology learners can give technology a new, possibly peculiar, spin that others may adopt later.

• The generation of context is therefore

characterised as an action on tools whereby a user actively selects, appropriates and implements learning solutions to meet their own needs (Bakardjieva, 2005)

• The user is an informed participant in the

generative process.

• Speakers do not take their words and expressions out of dictionaries…

• … but out of other people’s mouths (Bakhtin,1986)

• … called ‘technology-as-speech’ metaphor • … hence I am interested in user stories

Some thoughts

Current Work on UGC

Hybrid:

– Networks surrounding reusable learning objects (RLOs)

– User generated content & Web 2.0

– Mobile devices

Students

• Facebook

User Story

(1) A: We were holding many things at the event, like our bags, we had a carrier bag with all the leaflets and everything in so our phone was already out and we were taking pictures so we didn't have to look into our bags to find paper or the module booklet, so it was convenient in that sense.

(in file quote 4)

User Story

User story to me highlights the fact that there is something very personal about mobile phones:

“our phone was already out”

“it was convenient”

User Story

• Like a car, part of identity, fashion statement

• Unlike car you can take you mobile to bed and use it on the toilet!

• You can use your mobile on the train to announce personal details, even take it to the beach …

• UGC is personal …

Content and Contexts

Tom HamiltonUniversity of Sussex

What are the contexts in which content is generated and how can technologies

support innovative approaches to this process

for learnersand teachers?

Teaching & learning is changing

Range of drivers – theoretical/ political/ social

Need for learning to be more engaging, to build and support learner motivation

Shift ⇒ more experiential, student-led,collaborative approaches & development of ‘personalised’ learning

New approaches require new spaces

Our environment shapes our behaviour and influences our thinking.

We are constantly reading cues from our environment as to what is possible, permissible and desirable.

If we want to change behaviours, then we need to factor this in to the design of our learning spaces.

New teaching and learning requires new spaces

We can consider the ‘environment’ as comprising three levels:

• Physical environment• Socio-cultural environment• Cognitive environment

Technologies can be used both to shape both our physical and socio-cultural environments.

Recent trend toward more flexible spaces

• Flexible space use & ‘zoning’ – to support a range of activities

• Flexible, multi-use furniture

• Increased use and integration of AV technologies

• Hidden technologies & embedded processing

• Personalisable learning spaces

• Contemporary, ‘non-institutional’ aesthetics

‘Ownership’/ ‘personalisation’/ ‘customisation’/ ‘control’?

Although a great start, this doesn’t go far enough Flexibility is only part of the solution.

If we are serious about authentic ‘learnergenerated’ learning contexts then the learner needs to be in control of their environment, how it feels and works; of ‘ownership’ or ‘control’ over to the learner.

‘Ownership’/ ‘personalisation’/ ‘customisation’/ ‘control’?

2 principal forms of ownership:

• Ownership over the physical space

• Ownership over the technological resources

InQbate:

• Facilitation model

• ‘Ownership cascade’

http://www.inqbate.co.uk/

Questions

• Are we using the right terms? Is ownership the same as personalisation? Should we be calling this customisation? Or ‘control’?

• If ownership is the right term, then can you have real ownership if this is only temporary? Can you have partial ownership?

• Have we got the right to give them any ownership of the learning space? What is our own ownership of the space?

• Is ‘preferred’ learning context the same as ‘best’ learning context?

How can Developers explore new ways of

understanding their user base?

Jon Akass

Learner Generated Contexts

Examples from our practice

Learner Generated Contexts

References

Bakardjieva, M. (2005). Internet Society. The Internet in Everyday Life. London: Sage Publications.

Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. Vern W. McGee. In (Ed.) Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (p. 60-102). Austin: University of Texas Press Slavic Series 8.