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** Learning and identity: What does it mean to be a half-elf? - Gee 2003 **
Notions:
identity, game, context
A MUST
Gee's tripartite play of identities defines (in the game setting but Gee shows that the same applies to learning) something similar to Lave and Wenger's peripheral legitimate participation:
- real-world identity: the *player* as character
- virtual identity: the player as *character*
- projective identity: the player *as* character
The projective identity represents the active engagement and investment by the player (or learner) in the development trajectory of the game (or learning) context
Many examples explaning projective identities are given.
For instance, our projective identity can fail when we (real-world identity - i.e. player) make our virtual identity (character) do something that the character we want our virtual identity to be would not or should not do (e.g. score an ugly goal in PES with Arsenal - I want my Arsenal team in PES to win by playing slick passing football). When this happens, users often restart the game.
Good instruction must accomplish three goals:
- entice the learner to try (create bridges to their real-world identities and create a psychosocial moratorium)
- entice them to put in lots of efforts (make the virtual world and virtual identity at stake in the learning compelling to the learner in their own terms - they need to be sucked in)
- this effort must generate an appropriate level of success and the learner needs to be aware there will be yet greater success for greater effort. Design amplification of input into the process and ideally, the virtual world needs to be built so that learners discover new powers and feel the dawning of new valued identities
Learning principles that video-games teach us (MUCH MORE INSIGHTS ARE AVAILABLE IN THE ARTICLE):
6. "Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle
7. Commited learning Principle
8. Identity Principle
9. Self-Knowledge Principle
10. Amplification of Input Principle
11. Achievement Principle
12. Practice Principle
13. Ongoing Learning Principle
14. "Regime of Competence" Principle
Eat your vegetables and do your homework: a design-based investigation of enjoyment and meaning in learning - Barab et al 2005
Notions:
motivation, game, learning, design-based, social, participation, collaboration, context, brand
Division playing-learning in elementary school
List of principles of design-based research
1. Quest Atlantis as an example of design-based research
3D virtual world where children perform educational activities (Quests) through their avatar (powerful motivator contributing to their sense of self)
Though connected to academic standards, Quests are rooted in our social commitments and framed by children's interests
2. The design evolves
The importance of the backstory in relation to the defined practices of community members and the attributes that create a product identity and culture
In addition to mandatory acitivites, students voluntarily completed additionoal ones.
Thanks to the game, students began to have an appreciation for the subject areas relation to their own lives (unlike before the game). Participation in the game increased their academic efficacy.
3. Learning Engagement Theory
The 3 dimensions of Learning Engagement Theory: learning, playing and helping (motivation is at their intersection)
QA shows evidence that academic learning was occuring alongside or in the process of playing and helping.
Hard work should and can occur in the context of an activity to which the student is already engaged.
Joy and meaning: integral elements of the framing of curricular activities
4. Motivation as a complex process
Consensus regarding the belief that extrinsic incentives (rewards) undermine intrinsic motivation
Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation steadily decline over grades 3 through 9
By over-valuing product and under-valuing the rich processes of learning, the joy, fun, challenge and meaning have in part been stripped out of educational activity
Motivational elements: game challenge, stimulating curiosity, sense of control, fantasy of the game, identity presentation, social relations, playing, learning, achievement, helping, reward, immersion, uniqueness and creativity
Importance of context
** Learning orientations and study contracts - Beaty et al 2005 **
Notions:
learning, orientation, approach, conception, study contract, effort, motivation
The paper is based on students' quotes
Differences in students' orientation to learning strongly influence their experience of learning
It is possible to gain very many different kinds of things from the same course
In describing the learner's orientation to education, we must take account of both institutional and personal contexts of study
Conflict between "getting the grade" and "really learning something"
learning orientations: aims, attitudes, purposes which form the personal context for the individual student's learning
4 study orientations are very useful analytic categories. For the first 3, we can divide between intrinsic and extrinsic orientations (whether or not the students were interested in the content of the course).
** See table and article **
1. academic
intrinsic interest: intellectual interest (choosing stimulating lectures)
extrinsic: education progression (grades and academic progress)
2. vocational
intrinsic: training (relevance of course to future career)
extrinsic: qualification (recognition of qualification's worth)
3. personal
intrinsic: broadening or self-improvement (challenging, interesting material)
extrinsic: compensation of proof of capability (feedback and passing the course)
4. social:
(extrinsic:) having a good time (facilities for sport and social activities)
Study "contract" (internally negotitated by the students with themselves): relationship between students' orientations and their approaches (how and where to spend the most efforts, etc.) to studying.
Long term planning and internal negotiation. The effectiveness of this contract depends of good information
Many lecturers seem unaware of the very different orientations held by their students
Student study in a strategic way to maximise their achievement but within their own definition of what achievement mean
Learners still learn from experience when online - Alexander and Boud 2001
Notions:
online learning, approach, conception, experience, interactivity, computer conferencing, simulation, game, social, reflection
The environment makes some activities possible and constrains others but it doesn't change the fundamental processes of human learning.
Given the nature of online learning, it is particularly productive to view it as examples of students' learning from experience.
Much of the early use of internet in teaching has been to reproduce existing practices (and often ineffective practices)
It is critical for learning designers to provide activities to facilitate students' engaging with and making sense of (reflection, active construction and social construction) the content delivered.
Earlier study identified 5 propositions about learning from experience:
- experience is the foundation of and the stimulus for learning
- learners actively construct their own experience
- learning is a holistic process
- learning is socially and culturally constructed
- learning is influenced by the socio-emotional context in which it occurs
Potential of interactivity and communications.
Affordances: analogue of what skilled and experienced teachers do to engage learners in those aspects of the curriculum that will have the most impact on their learning.
Crucial role of the moderator in designing and facilitating learning activities that assist learners to learn from experience. Key features include:
- establishment of a climate for learning that values the learner
- active engagement with problems and challenges
- interactivity and responsiveness
- simulation of rich environments
- peer discussion
Examples of online debate and role-play/simulation.
List of the ideas included by the design features of an online debate, role-plays and simulations to afford learning from experience
Need to test what is regarded as affordances to see if it works.
Learning doesn't occur in isolation and isn't a purely intellectual enterprise: a function of the emotional and personal support we gain from others.
** The information-age mindset: Changes in students and implications for Higher Education - Frand 2000 **
Notions:
technology, distributed knowledge, situated learning, information-age, lifelong learning, information overload, communities, approach
Attributes reflecting the information-age mindset:
1. Computers aren't technology (if technology is anything that isn't around when you you're born")
2. Internet better than TV
Opportunities to engage with ideas. Finding quality information we seek is not easy.
3. Reality no longer real
Data-manipulation means that photography can no longer be trusted. Nor can interlocutors identities and communications' content.
4. Doing rather than knowing
More diverse students who constantly need to update their skills.
5. Nintendo over logic
Trial and errors which used to be expensive are now the norm. This raises questions. Balance needed between didactic and discovery approaches
6. Multitasking way of life
Information overload
7. Typing rather than handwriting
Some children can't even write. Extension of memories. The power behind typing is important.
8. Staying connected
Value network increases as the number of users grow. Where one works/studies will be determined by many different factors.
9. Zero tolerance for delay
With emails has come the feeling that we need to respond. But we can also store and retrieves messages until we're ready to do it.
10. Consumer/creator blurring
"Rather than rewrite what I've found on a website, can I just put in the link and you can read the original?". Open-source movement also blurs the relationship.
Until the nature of the educational relationships change, we won't realize the full value of the communication, and information technology investments that we are making today
A challenge is to introduce new approaches that prepare students to integrate their personal aspirations, career goals, and educational experiences over their lifetimes
The individual will have opportunities to grow through and benefit from extensive alumni and professional networks.
Distributed education will become natural
Instructor: a more Socratic role
Peer-feedback
** Skill in learning and organising knowledge - Svensson 2005 **
Notions:
skill, organisation, referential meaning, whole, mental models, facts, connections, understanding, learning to learn, previous knowledge, experience, holistic, atomistic, completeness, approach, stress (emotion), context
Skill: the nature or quality of an interaction
Organisation: the aspect of the treatment of the learning material most closely linking the qualities of knowledge and outcome of learning and the approaches to learning.
1. Learning facts
Referential meaning is a basic characteristic of a stated fact. Organisation is fundamental in the learning of facts as it is bound up with referential meaning
Differences in understandings of a text is the consequence of 1) a fact and 2) the rest of the text and the previous knowledge of the learner
To learn to use previous knowledge, to organise and to extend meaning are important aspects of skill in understanding and learning. To develop these qualities is to learn how to learn
2. Learning for understanding (more complex learning)
The learning of the organised whole, through a grasp of the interrelation between the parts which make up that whole
Completeness: the degree of complexity and fidelity of an understanding (improving it means an improved analytical and interpretative skills)
The difference between a holistic and an atomistic approach is the most crucial difference between interactions with complex learning materials. The other being completeness.
There are also variations within both approaches
What may also be learned, in addition to a new understanding, is the skill of learning
To be skilled in learning, means to be deep, holistic and complete in approach and understanding. The most important aspect of this is the open exploration and use of the possibilities inherent in the material, allied to a consideration of relevant previous knowledge
3. Skill in studying
Relationship between skill in learning and skill in studying
It is in the interests of students to be selective and to focus their studying in accordance with the examination
Foundations of knowledge and learning - Changing minds computers, learning and literacy - DiSessa 2000
Notions:
knowledge, learning, intuition, interest, patterns, competence, activities, commited learning, generativity, regime of competence
Knowledge and learning are almost always viewed in forms associated with current literacies.
Part 1: intuitive knowledge
It's what schools ought to supply but schooling is based on current literacies and on current popular prejudices about the forms of knowledge that are valuable.
Hidden knowledge, such as knowledge in forms we aren't used to recognise, is frequently assigned to the category of "intelligence"
Part 2: the structure of activities and "committed learning"
Theory of the structure and evolution of activites.
Interest (which is always contingent) is an important component of understanding the structure of activities.
Interest falls into patterns (groups inter-related activities that all belong to a broader family).
Interests evolve and give birth to new interests: generativity (as opposed to the stability in teaching/learning that occurs in schools)
Competence is the other component of understanding the structure of knowledge.
Competence (the motor to climb hills) and interest (speed gained going down the far side of the hill) work together something like a roller coaster.
Importance of the territory in which you find yourself.
Scientists are people who know how to manage a perpetual roller-coaster game.
Activities in which we engage to learn are at least as important as setting a knowledge-oriented specification of our curriculum.
A primary focus of "committed learning" is the "fabric of activities in which one learns".
Committed relationship entails a feeling of ownership, personal connections and competence such that engagement in activity is seen as an extension of ourselves.
Committed learning almost always happens in a "regime of competence" (unlike what mostly happens in schools).
We need to learn effective principles of committed learning and the design of learning environments to foster it.
Computers provide tremendous possibilities to engage
Teaching as mediating learning - Laurillard 1993
Notions:
teaching, élitism, situated learning, context, natural environment
References about constructivist theorists, experiential learning
There is no professional training requirement for university academics in terms of their teaching competence, as there is for school teaching
Constructivists have had effect in schools but in universities, the classical tradition of "imparting knowledge" dominates
1. Critique of academic learning as imparted
Learning must be situated in the domain of its objective: we can't separate knowledge to be learned from the situations in which it is used
If formal education provided more naturally embedded activities, students could do their own sense-making
Academic learning should occupy the middle position of an activity that develops abstraction from multiple contexts
2. Critique of academic learning as situated
Knowledge, grounded in experience and practice then has to be abstracted formally to become generalisable, hence more generally useful
Teaching example of activities set out to help learners towards abstraction in the context of real world problems and stories created about them.
For this to be an adequate account of academic learning, it should have shown us how those learners were to engage, not just with their own experience, but with knowledge derived from someone else’s experience.
3. Author's view
Learning percepts (everyday natural knowledge) isn't the same as learning precepts (academic knowledge from unnatural environments constructed for learning) because our means of access to precepts are limited
Teaching may use the analogy of situated learning but must adapt it to the learning of descriptions of the world: "mediated learning"
Teaching is essentially a rhetorical activity, seeking to persuade students to change the way they experience the world through an understanding of the insights of others. It has to create the environment that enables students to embrace the twin poles of experiential and formal knowledge.
List of implications of the design
Introduction: A social theory of learning - Wenger 1998
Notions:
social theory, learning, social participation, identity, communities of practice, community, meaning
NOT WELL UNDERSTOOD
The author proposes social theory as a new learning theory based on a few assumptions:
- we are social beings
- knowledge is a matter of competence with respects to valued enterprises
- knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises (active engagement in the world)
- meaning is what learning is to produce
The focus of this theory is on learning as social participation (active participants in practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to them)
Components integrated in such theory: meaning, practice, community, identiy
Communities of practice are everywhere (formal, informal, ...): this concept is a thinking tool.
Placing the focus on participation has broad implications for what it takes to understand and support learning
Learning happens all the time, as part of our participation through communities of practice.
The concepts we use to make sense of the world direct both our perceptions and our actions
Modern societies have come to see learning as a topic of concern: we want to do something about it
A key implication of our attempts to organise learning is that we must become reflective with regards to our own discourses of learning and to their effects on the way we design for learning
A perspective is a guide about what to pay attention to, what difficulties to expect and how to approach problems
Ex: if we believe that knowing involves primarily participation in social communities, then the traditional format of learning (lectures) doesn't look productive
The design of our institutions dont't fit our social theory of learning.
A social theory is also relevant to our daily actions, ... and the educational systems we design
Legitimate peripheral participation - Lave and Wenger 1991
Notions:
situated learning, context, identity, legitimate peripheral participation
Learning viewed as situated has as its central defining characteristic a process that we call "legitimate peripheral participation"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimate_peripheral_participation
1. From apprenticeship to situated learning
The concept of situated activity they were developing took on the proportions of a general theoretical perspective.
That perspective meant that there is no activity that is not situated: what is called general knowledge, can only be gained in specific circumstances and must be brought into play in specific circumstances
2. From situated learning to legitimate peripheral participation
(situated learning appearing as a transitory concept)
In their view, learning is not merely situtated in practice. Learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in-world
Legitimate peripheral participation is proposed as a descriptor of engagement in social practice that entails learning as an integral constituent
(discussion of the terms used in the expression "legitimate peripheral participation")
3. An analytic perspective on learning
4. With legitimate peripheral participation
Several reasons led the authors to stay clear of the problem of school
LPT isn't itself a pedagogical form, much less a pedagogical strategy or a teaching practice. It's an analytical viewpoint on learning, a way of understanding learning
Indeed, this viewpoint makes a fundamental distinction between learning and intentional instruction
Undoubtedly, the analytical perspective of LPT could inform educational endeavours by shedding a new light on learning processes, and by drawing attention to key aspects of learning experience that may be overlooked
** Learning to Learn: more than a skill set - Rawson 2000 **
Notions:
emotions, mental models, self-reflection, context, identity, peer assessment, negotiation, collaboration
"learning to learn" involves a far deeper and more personal self-reflexive process
Questionning of givens and perceptions and the mutual influence of the one on the other are essential
1. Development, engagement and exploration of the whole person
2. Assessment offers the potential leverage on learning to learn but is also inextricably linked with it
HE carries the belief that participants can develop the rational power necessary for mastery of a given discipline, but the assessment process seems not to admit this rationality
An authoritarian and summative approach to assessment reinforces the power differences between staff and students, measures a limited range of abilities and encourages surface approches to learning
Assessment is central to the development of autonomy
Shift from traditional mode of control of educator to a more facilitative role
How can the process of knowledge acquisition and assessment achieve the transfer of knowledge and not stifle creativity? Reconciling "public" and personal knowledge
The acquisition of personal knowledge is for the individual at one level an attempt at meaning making, and at the level of learning, to learn an attempt at understanding that process of meaning making
The "accuracy" of collaborative, peer, and self-assessment (underrepresented in HE) provides the possibility of greater formative value, for students and educators
There are reservations to both ends of Heron’s continuum (unilateral <-> self assessment strategies): more collaboration but institutions still have a role to play
The pitfalls of non-involvement of the learner are much more serious than those of involvement
The curriculum needs to be negociated between learner and educator
The learning process is more fundamental than its results
** List of a number of principles of assessment practices **
We may need to turn the process of learning to learn upon ourselves
Identity as an analytic lens for research in education - Gee 2001
Notions:
identity, kind, "combination", Discourse, recognition
A specific perspective on identity built around 4 perspectives on what it means to be recognised as a "certain kind of person":
1. Nature-identity: a state developed from forces in nature
2. Institution-identity: a position authorized by authorities within institutions
3. Discourse-identity: an individual trait recognized in the discourse/dialogue of/with "rational" individuals
4. Affinity-identity: experiences shared in the practice of "affinity groups"
Different societies and historical periods have tended to foreground one or the other perspectives (eg. Wester society)
The're not separate from each other but are ways to focus our attention on different aspects of how identities are formed and sustained
Many examples given
One can't have an identity without an interpretive system: almost any identity trait can be understood in terms of any of these interpretative systems
Any combination (word, ways of interacting, values, beliefs, ...) that can get one recognised as a certain "kind of person" is part of a Discourse.
Discourses are ways of being "certain kinds of people".
Some insitutions or groups must work accross time and space to underwrite the ways in which certain combinations get recognised in certain ways and not others.
(Some historical and theoretical ramifications of identity discussed)
** A school scenario further illustrates identity as built around the 4 previous perspectives **
Interesting considerations about educational research and how it can be viewed in terms of our 4 perspectives:
A few words about the work of Emily Martin:
- how people who are open to be categorised as, say, AHDH come, through work of social interactions, institutions and affiliations to be reorganised and proactively create more positive identities for themselves and others
- behaviours that have typically been seen as negative may be reevaluated more positively due to the changes of the new capitalism
How far is distance learning from education - Dreyfus 2001
Notions:
distance learning, context, emotion, embodiment, presence, culture, experiential cognition, apprenticeship
Stages of learning:
1. Novice: the instructor decomposes the task environment into context-free features that the beginner can recognise. He/she is given rules for determining actions on the basis of these features
2. Advanced beginner: the learner begins to note (or is pointed out) transparent examples of meaningful additional aspects of the situation/domain
3. Competence: with more experience, the number of procedures the learner can recognise becomes overwhelming. He/she chooses a perspective (without knowing it's the right one) that determines which element must be treated as important
Involvement makes learning possible. The resulting positive and negative emotional experiences will strengthen successful responses and inhibit unsuccessful ones
Since students tend to imitate teachers, these play a crucial role on their learning orientations
The author states that if we're at home in front of our computers, there's no place for risk taking and therefore, for learning.
4. Proficiency: after spontaneously seeing the point and the important aspects of the current situation, the learner must decide what to do (without having sufficient experience do be sure of taking the right decision).
Only then do intuitive reactions (experiential cognition as Norman put it) replace reasoned responses
5. Expertise: thanks to his vast repertoire of situational discriminations, he straightaway does the appropriate thing. Emotional involvement is crucial. Usefulness of apprenticeship. "Authentic" environments in schools. Learners pick up the teacher's style.
6. Mastery: working with various masters enables learners to avoid merely copying them and forces them to restructure their learning and develop their own style
7. Practical wisdom: learners also have to acquire the style of their culture. Those make us human beings and provide the background against which all other learning is possible
The value of adaptivity based on cognitive style: an empirical study - Triantafillou et al 2004
Notions:
cognitive styles, advanced organisers, concept map, adaptive hypermedia tool, organiser, concept map
Field dependence (FD)/independence (FI)is probably the most well-known division of cognitive styles: tendency to approach the environment in an analytical/global way
Amount of learner control is a central variable in the implementation of adaptive system
FI learners are better hypermedia processors, especially as the form of the hypermedia becomes more referential and less overtly structured
The main characteristic of AES-CS is that it can be adapted to the cognitive style and to the level of knowledge acquired by the student:
- adaptive presentation technique
- adaptive navigation support
Evidence that the adaptivity based on student’s cognitive style could be beneficial for the observed learning outcomes, especially for FD students
Students felt challenged by the system’s flexibility and they were satisfied with the fact that the system was completely controllable by them
Instructors, therefore, might well be encouraged to consider cognitive style as a valuable factor throughout the development of a hypermedia environment
Knowledge in the head and in the world - The design of everyday things - Norman 1988
Notions:
distributed knowledge, rote, memory, mental models
Knowledge can be distributed in the head, in the world and in its constraints. People routinely capitalise on this fact.
Knowledge of (declarative) and knowledge how (procedural which is difficult to teach)
We make use of strong constraints (and often create them) that serve to simplify what must be learnt
We store only partial descriptions of things to be remembered: sufficient to work at the time we learn but maybe not when new experiences are entered into memory
** Before, people judged similarity according to what mattered to them. Rote learning is a modern notion that can only be held after printed text became available. Otherwise, who could judge the accuracy of a recitation? More important, who would care? **
There seems to be a conspiracy overloading our memory. Where there are too many things to remember, we put them in the world (paper, etc.)
Storage in and retrieval from long term memory are easier when the material makes sense, when it fits into what we already know
- Memory for arbitrary things: rote learning (for most things, not appropriate)
- Memory for meaningful relationships: when things make sense, they can be interpreted (not the same as understood) and integrated with previously acquired material
- Memory through explainations: understanding, a more powerful form of memory. Role played by mental models: not ideal for tasks that must be done quickly, effective in figuring out what would happen in novel situations.
External memory is a good example of interplay between knowledge in the head and in the world
Keeping the information in the head can especially be done when it is of great personal importance
The arrangement of burners and controls on the kitchen stove is a good example of the power of natural mappings
A design principle: whenever labels seem necessary, consider another design
Knowledge in the head and in the world are both essential but, to some extent, we can choose to lean more on one or the other
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