Reporting back from the Networked Learning Seminar at Cardiff 6th May 2015

On Wednesday 6th May 2015, two friends from Bristol University traveled to Cardiff to head up our networked learning seminar: Dr Sue Timmis and Dr Jane Williams. At just after 1pm, around 30 of us were welcomed by Patricia Price (Pro Vice Chancellor Pro Vice-Chancellor, Student Experience & Academic Standards) who was on hand to open the seminar, kindly sponsored by the recently formed College of Biomedical & Life Sciences. I was personally very thankful to Emma Humphries from the College. Her fulsome help with the administration of the seminar was superb - it was so reassuring all through the surprisingly long run-up to the seminar.

Sue Timmis expertly traced out the tensions in Higher Education that keep the learning and teaching theory-practice gap wide open. For example, that theories of learning are far more contested than those within many disciplines. However, Sue challenged us to seek and engage students in participatory learning activities.  PowerPoint MP3




Jane Williams discussed her work with medical students who elect to develop e-learning materials for their optional module. Unlike the more programmatic materials developed by the department, the students target courseware that directly addresses content areas which they found challenging, thus increasing its value for ensuing cohorts. This was a perfect example of ‘participatory’ collaborative and cooperative learning that Sue had offered as a means of enriching and deepening learning. MP3


After a brief comfort-break, it was the turn of the Cardiff three... 
Karl Luke outlined a small-scale study in which he explored Nina Dohn's critique of the assumptions made in education when Web 2.0 tools (especially wikis) are deployed in hopes that they will succeed unproblematically. He went on to offer practical solutions to Dohn’s points. PowerPoint MP3

  Joe Nicholls used his slot to present long-standing work around 'learning literacies'. He argued that only a fully integrated approach to deploying these literacies could be effective and that, even then, context was key for securing worthwhile outcomes. PowerPoint MP3

Sadly, a few things, not just my relaxed approach to time-keeping, made us run out of time, leaving me with just a few minutes before the close. But even in a very short presentation there were practical and theoretical lessons gleaned from a mini-project carried out last year into aspects of informal learning by staff using an innovative application of blogs for shared academic supervision record-keeping. PowerPoint MP3

I was personally very pleased with the way that the seminar gave a real flavor of the conference. Networked learning does not do 'snake oil' and that can be confusing in learning technology circles... much the same as when my landline rings these days, I expect a sales pitch in broken English. The source of networked learning's 'non-splashy' power is in the humanistic values, transparent evidence and scholarly insight, and that should be good enough for anyone. Concluding comments MP3

On 'educationally driven' interventions

I have an idea for doing something within a module about educational media in terms of learning about the sphere of 'mobile'. Of course the activity has to clearly give the message that starting with the tech is 'bad' for lots of sound reasons. For example, since we have no chance of researching an innovation before it's out of date, the only way to hold on to some sense of purpose is to ground the project in a deliberate philosophy of education and work forward from there. There are any number of solutions out there needing a problem and the only rational angle of attack is to ask, 'what would you like to do'? There is a view that this is the only pure approach to doing learning technology.
For example, "design has to be generated from the learning objectives and aspirations of the course, rather than from the capability of the technology" (Laurillard, 2002, p 145) However, Peter Goodyear (2006) maintains that there is "no great harm in this, it is part of a vibrant process that explores and advances frontiers of application. Solutions should look for problems." (emphasis in the original)
However, if we consider the methods and philosophy behind participatory and/or spiral design approaches and principles, there has to be an ongoing 'conversation' between the problem and the solution, between the designer and those being designed for. One has to inform the other - posh word for this would be a 'dialectic'.

Our knowledge and understanding of and in the world can shape our thoughts and actions without our realising it. An idea may be sparked by noticing something a technology can do differently, but the sparking of the idea will have happened because of the knowledge and understanding of the relationships between the technology and the field it is being applied to. So which way around was that then? Technology first or context/practice/theory first? I'm not talking about some blind determinism that shuts my mind to ignoring and/or conflating all sorts of unintended consequences and factors, or gives way too much agency to the technology. But in what world does any idea begin from a really pure educationally driver, and stay that way for very long? I'm arguing that we should recognise the inconsistencies in ourselves and the world around us and embrace the dialectic, including the distinct possibility that a really good educational technology idea may have come about empirically and it's only afterwards that we can trace the strands of 'good' theory which contributed to the idea. This is not the 'wrong way around', it may be an attempt to side-step the sometimes crushing burden of proof required by the same educationalists, who, in other settings, would be seen fervently espousing the need for ideation and innovation in education.
So, dialectics FTW!

Goodyear, P. (2006). Technology and the articulation of vocational and academic interests: reflections on time, space and e-learning. Studies in Continuing Education, 28(2), 83–98. doi:10.1080/01580370600750973
Lurillard, D. (2002). Rethinking Teaching for the Knowledge Society. EDUCAUSE Review, 37(1), 16–25.Available from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffpiu017.pdf