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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

209.85.129.132/search - Preview

e-learning design ULOE_MSc IDEL_MSc IDGBL_MSc game context tool self

Notions:
video games, social, interactivity, violence, collaboration, transfer (context), creativity, challenge, peer, motivation

Evidence that games in themselves aren't necessarily addictive nor expensive
Their popularity mainly comes from visual action (not necessarily violent action) and interactivity

Violence:
- all media present some violent content
- evidence that violent games breed violent behaviour but the same goes for other media
- two-player aggressive video games, whether competitive or cooperative, reduce the level of aggress in children's play
- attracts boys but is a turn-off for girls (critical issue since video games are the entry point of children to computers)

Skills (depending on games):
- eye-hand coordination
- rules and patterns induction from observation (Pacman example) may generate in much of the games' excitement
- quickness
- parallel processing (more accessible to children whose main media was tv)
- interacting dynamic variables
- visual-spatial skills (Rubik's cubes may do that too)
- coordinate visual information coming from multiple perspectives (same as parallel processing?)
- creative thinking
- character development
- reflection
- construction, programming or other specific skill
- curiosity
- peer-teaching

Fantasy role-playing games are particularly interesting

Multiple levels: constant challenge, tangible progress, scaffolding create a long-term appeal. Provides guidelines to incorporate in all learning situations

** Interesting chemistry game example **

Transfer from medium to skill depends on how the medium is used: often seems to require verbal formulation (need to bring games to the classroom?)

www.hup.harvard.edu/...GREMIN.html - Preview

e-learning design IDGBL_MSc collaboration social peer context game

Notions:
videogame, interactivity, social, context, collaboration, participation, immersion, engagement, embodiment, rules, objectives, exploration, practice

Videogames are difficult to define.

Categorization:
- by genre (problematic)
- by location of play: arcade, home (may as well include an arcade mode)

A list of things a game isn't is given
Video games may be characterized as a sense of "being here" (presence), rather than controlling, playing

Skills developed through using by video games may be useful for ICT literacies

The disruptive effect of puzzles (in which an initial disequilibrium state is disrupted, recognized, tackled and ultimately resolved) may be important in linking video games to academic learning

Any discussion about video games must be sensitive to the contexts in which the form is used and consumed

Video games, which being oriented around a transformable and, importantly, responsive simulation, may dynamically adapt to the performance of the player

** Definition: **

Participation is crucial but interactivity isn't uniform: sequences of high and low participation and differing modes of engagement
Video games offer combinations of chance, competition, role-play and kinaesthetic (movement) pleasures
They can offer both plaidea (no specific objective other than those imposed by the player) and ludus (objective-driven) rules, thereby allowing players to engage in goal-oriented or "free play" activity
Note that these terms don't hold the same meaning as that proposed by Caillois.
The term "player" is ambigous because videogames are often experienced in groups with "non-controlling" players, and are absorbed and understood withing participatory cultures of talk both online and offline (social practices)
The definition isn't concerned with any interface systems

www.amazon.com/...041528192X - Preview

e-learning IDGBL_MSc virtual_world social context interactivity play game

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

dialnet.unirioja.es/...articulo - Preview

e-learning tool design social community virtual_world context ULOE_MSc self

Notions:
situated cognition, community, activity, authentic activity, induction, abstraction, cognitive apprenticeship, enculturation, social, collaboration

A must-read, seminal paper

Example of learning words from dictionary definition compared to learning vocabulary outside of school shows the situated nature of cognition
A concept is always under construction

Tools share significant features with knowledge:
- only fully understood through use
- using them entails changing the user's view of the world and adopting the belief system of the culture in which they are used
It isn't possible to use a tool properly without understanding the community or culture in which it's used

** Learning is a process of enculturation which must involve activity, concept and culture in a collaborative way **

School activity too often tends to be hybrid, implicitly framed by one culture but explicitly attributed to another, which limits students' access to the structuring cues that arise from the context.
It is often very different from what authentic practictioners do (and from what people do when they naturally learn) and students rely on cues that are not those of real practitioners (authentic culture of an authentic community vs school culture)

In authentic settings, the problem statement is also the solution and the procedure for solving it.
Problem solving isn't carried out solely in the heads but in conjunction with the environment. Even students do that in unexpected ways in school but this becomes ineffective in authentic settings.

Cognitive apprenticeship methods try to enculturate students into authentic practices through activity and social interaction

** Very helpful examples illustrating excellent and natural learning strategies are provided **
- continuity with familiar knowledge
- several cases leading to students generating their own learning path (and participating in the community's activity)
- abstraction
All of which are carried out collaboratively with the teacher becoming a facilitator of the process

edr.sagepub.com/...32 - Preview

e-learning design ECDEL_MSc context social collaboration

Notions:
scaffolding, feedback, social, context, collaborative, peer, constructivism

** Characteristics of constructivism **

Three-stage process proposed by the authors that can be used in many settings (including diagram):

1. Designing learning tasks

open-ended learning environments

- authentic context
- authentic activities (give meaning and structure but little directed content) such as task-based, problem-based learning and case study
- authentic assessment seamlessly integrated in the activity, able to provide criteria for marking varied products

According to Toohey, designing activities around outcome results in a performance-based approach though (but authors explanations make sense)

2. Designing learning supports (elements used to provide scaffolding)

usefulness of peer work

- creating collaborative learning activities
- coaching and scaffolding of learning by the teacher and other students
- providing opportunities and support for reflective learning
- encouraging articulation and expression of understanding

3. Designing learning resources

suggestions that content should assume a far lesser role in the design process
use of a variety of resources to provide perspective and leave freedom as far as learning trajectory is concerned

- access to expert performances and the modelling of processes
- multiple roles and perspectives

Examples of programs designed using that framework

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e-learning design ECDEL_MSc feedback social collaborative context peer

Notions:
constructionism, social, context, active interview, formative, conversation, facilitator, validity, reliability, collaboration

Interviews are widely used
All approaches to interviewing presume an image or subject behind the interview participant
Commonly viewed as one-way pipeline for tranporting knowledge but this only gives standardised data (passive "vessel of answers")

Active (or formative) interview:

Recently, recognised as a meaning-making conversation: unavoidably interactional and constructive (hence, active). We should therefore embrace this perspective.
Appreciating and striking a balance between the whats and hows of the interview process
We merely have to ask the right questions and others' reality will be ours
"Reliability" doesn't make sense anymore while "validity" needs to be redefined

** Interview must be seen as an interpersonal drama with a developing plot **

Reality is constantly assembled, using the interpretive resources at hand, in light of the respective contingencies of every moments: not meaning contamination but meaning construction
The subject behind the participant doesn't pre-exist but emerges in relation to the give-and-take of interviewing (hows) and the interview's purpose (whats)

** Examples given **

Active interviewers facilitate their respondents' explorations of alternative possibilities and considerations

This is fairer as it also rewards the participants by helping them make sense of their truths and identities

Analytic objective is to show how what is being said relates to the experiences and lives being studied in the circumstances at hand
Reports must deconstruct participants' talk to show the reader both the hows and whats of narratives of lived experience
Challenge is to consider what is said in relation to how, where, when and by whom experiential information is conveyed and to what end

** I included my own interesting views as comments in the paper **

www.amazon.com/...0803958951 - Preview

e-learning RM_MSc social context collaboration

Notions:
e-learning design, experiential, personal relevance, approach, androgogy, cognitive development, experience, accomodation, assimilation, feedback

A holistic integrative perspective on learning that combines experience, perception, cognition and behaviour

Lewin, Dewey and Piaget: 3 models of experiential learning (see figures)

Accomodation and assimilation

** List of 4 major stages of cognitive growth: 0 to 15 years old **

Characteristics of experiential learning:

1. Learning is best conceived as process
- from an experiential perspective, defining learning in terms of outcomes can lead to a definition of non-learning
- the purpose of education is to stimulate enquiry and skill in the process of knowledge getting
2. Learning is a continuous process grounded in experience
- all learning is re-learning
- cognitive dissonance essential for learning to occur
- job of educator is to implant new ideas, dispose of and modify old ones (important to make learner's thinking apparent): integration leads to more stable and useful knowledge and understandings than substitution
3. The process of learning requires the resolution of conflicts between dialectically opposed modes of adaptation to the world (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experience)
4. Learning is a holistic process of adaptation to the world
- integrated functioning of the total organism
- the major process of human adaptation
5. Learning involves transaction between the person and the environment
fluid, interpenetrative relationship between objective conditions and subjective experience
6. Learning is the process of creating knowledge
- knowledge results from transaction between social knowledge and personal knowledge
- intimate relationship between learning and knowledge
- all social knowledge requires an attitude of partial scepticism in its interpretation

** Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience **

eric.ed.gov/...detailmini.jsp - Preview

e-learning design context feedback

Notions:
online, design, constructivism, collaboration, peer, social, community, context, reflection, feedback
References to course evaluation survey

Curricula customised to learners' prior knowledge, teaching strategies tailored to background and responses, open-ended questions that promote extensive dialogue among learners
Authentic tasks, reflective practice, collaborative construction of knowledge through negotiation

Extensive course planning is needed

Students use technology to articulate knowledge, reflect on learning, support meaning making, construct personal representations and mindful thinking

Distance education can be as effective as traditional education when appropriate methods, peer-interaction, timely teacher feedback

Elements that need careful consideration:

1. Presentation of content
Variety of multimedia resources, supportive course overview or welcome page

2. Interactions
Instruction should be design-driven and planned. Topic-based discussions, peer-critique and role-playing. Immediate communication behaviours. Role of instructor varies from content authority to facilitator.
Graded discussions result in stronger participation and sense of community. Socialising.

3. Individual and group activities
Balance between individual work, class discussions (skillfully facilitated so as to trigger self-directed learning and collaboration) and group work.
Group work:
- positive interdependence among learners
- regular group self-evaluation
- behaviours promoting each member's learning
- individual accountability and personal responsibility
- frequent use of social skills
Role of instructor

4. Assessment
Multiple forms of assessment (with some negotiation): discussions, tests, portfolios, individual and group projects
Peer-evaluation, timely feedback
Course evaluation to improve it (references given)

www.sciencedirect.com/science - Preview

e-learning design ECDEL_MSc peer collaboration social community context reflection feedback

Notions:
collaboration, constructivism, course design, threshold concept, dissonance, ways of thinking and practicing, tunnel vision, transfer, episteme, active learning

See also Bransford et al 2000

Constructivism as a toolkit rather than a credo

The social and creative elements can contribute richly to learning but they aren't as constitutive to constructivism as active learning

Constructivism more time-consuming and cognitively demanding than "transmission", while not always effective (performance-oriented learners)

Good teachers know what knowledge is troublesome and draw constructivist approaches to address it

Five sorts of troublesome knowledge: ritual, inert, conceptually difficult, foreign and tacit knowledge

- Make knowledge meaningful
- Good mastery, diverse practice and mindful abstraction
- Active problem-solving with knowledge connected to learners' world
- Active problem-solving where concepts are acquired through medium-scale project
- Confront students with discrepancies in their initial theories
- Introduce learners to metaphors or have them invent their own
- Exploration and model building before presenting the official story
- Ientify and elaborate alternative perspectives
- Debates requiring reprensenting differnet viewpoints
- Role playing that requires learners to get into mindsets different from their own
- "Surfacing and animating" tacit assumptions
- Authentic problem-based learning that foreground the game of the discipline
- Surfacing the game through analytic discussion and deliberate practice
- Combination of self-management and explicit modeling

Much of what is difficult about concepts concern the conceptual games around them

Threshold concepts change learners' ways of perceiving and thinking

Learning the language of the discipline involves threshold-like transitions, as do the discipline’s ways of thinking and practising (episteme)

Providing proof machines

Try various constructivist approaches. If not particularly troublesome, teaching by telling may be sufficient

www.informaworld.com/...tent=a755535048~tab=references - Preview

e-learning design ECDEL_MSc social collaboration community context

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

connect.educause.edu/...40216 - Preview

e-learning ULOE_MSc context social community collaboration

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

www.tla.ed.ac.uk/...EoL4.pdf - Preview

e-learning ULOE_MSc idea connections context

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

www.informaworld.com/...tle~content=t727466116~db=all. - Preview

e-learning context ULOE_MSc

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

books.google.fr/books - Preview

e-learning social community context ULOE_MSc self design

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

www.informaworld.com/...tent~content=a713696137~db=all - Preview

e-learning ULOE_MSc idea self reflection context peer assessment collaboration design

Notions:
self, identity, communication, participation, moderator, phatic signs, meta-communication, contextualising, monitoring, weaving, community, absorption

Communication seems most complete and successful where the person is physically present ‘in’ the message.

Many unfamiliar problems and possibilities:
communication anxiety, management of identity, relationship to discourse, absorption, the moderator, meta-communication and weaving.

The paucity of phatic expression in CMC amplifies certain social insecurities.

Speeding up and improving asynchronous exchanges causes unexpected distress.

When writing, it is easier to choose a tone and attitude.

Communication by computer enhances the sense of personal freedom and individualism by reducing the ‘existential’ engagement of the self in its communications

A group which exists through an exchange of written texts has the peculiar ability to recall and inspect its entire past.

Today the difference between retrieval and repetition no longer correlates neatly with the distinction between writing and speech.

** Powerful hypothesis about modern individualism holds that it grew with the emergence of printing and literacy **

The social cohesion of conferences depends not only upon the extrinsic motives participants bring from their off- line lives, but also the intrinsic motives that emerge in the course of the on-line interaction.

Absorption: sharing of purpose among people who do not form a community but have accepted a common work or play as the context for an intense, temporary relationship

CMC is a privileged technological scene where we may observe the 'atomisation of society into flexible networks of language games’.

The moderator has to work very hard at both the ‘social host’ and the ‘meeting chairperson’ roles.

Contextualising (defining the communication model) and monitoring (monitoring conformity with the communication model) roles of the moderator.

Explicit meta-communication is needed online. Weaving comments are meta-comments about the content

www-rohan.sdsu.edu/...Writworl.htm - Preview

e-learning context IDEL_MSc social community self

Notions:
identity, embodiment, virtual world, context, simulation

Through avatars, users embody themselves and make real their engagement with a virtual world
It's through the dynamic performance of identity and social life that users come to be "made real" - that they come to experience immersion. This grounding of presence not only consists of embodied practice, but of embodied social practice

People report having a sense of personal space and body boundaries get expressed through the proximity of avatars. Avatars position and face expressions can convey fighting, friendship, etc.

Poor design often conspire to disrupt presence

Avatars can become a way to opt-in or opt-out of a group

People make judgements based on how users present and represent themselves

Use of avatars to gather for social events, playful activities, experimentation and sexual practices (requires creativity)

Identity is one of the most evocative uses of an avatar

The actual form of embodiment can influence particular kinds of personal or social engagement

Avatars can be reflective material to explore both one's inner self and the social world

Some users have identified their avatar as more like them than their corporeal body

Embodiment can be used for experimentations

A feeling that there is something about employing an avatar that lies outside of our control. "The ultimate learning experience": the "understanding" and social context of the digital body may turn out to be quite different from that intended by the user

Experiences in virtual worlds can reshape users' sense of their bodies and selves

Questions about what our bodies are, who we are and what we can be "virtually"

Avatar systems also limit and constrain interesting and progressive possibilities (structural as well as social limitations - i.e. what is seen as appropriate - e.g. anxiety around sexual orientation)

209.85.135.104/search - Preview

e-learning IDEL_MSc social context virtual_world tool design self

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

books.google.fr/books - Preview

e-learning ULOE_MSc social context

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

mitpress.mit.edu/...default.asp - Preview

e-learning context idea ULOE_MSc tool

Notions:
sustainable assessment, lifelong, long-term, participation, community of practice, constructive alignment, feedback, peer, collaboration, formal, informal, context

HE must equip students to learn beyond the academy once it's no longer available

A few limitations of both summative and formative assessment are identified
Ability to be an effective assessor of learning is central to sustainable assessment

Assessment tasks often emphasise problem solutions rather than problem formulation
Students are discouraged from working collaboratively
A few negative influences of assessment on students' behaviours are identified
Need for learners to identify for themselves what they need to learn

Formal features can be identified in what is otherwise taken as informal learning and vice-versa
Sustainable assessment is a way of building on summative and formative assessment to foster longer-term goals

Participating in communities of practice can be a helpful way of viewing students as learners
Learning in educational settings tends to be decontextualised (stark contrast to learning in work and life)

Points to be taken into account for making assessment practices more sustainable:
- importance of a standards-based framework to enabled students to view their own work in the light of acceptable practice
- belief by teachers that all students can succeed
- belief to foster confidence about students' capacity as learners because their beliefs about this affect achievement
- need to consider seperating comments from grades because grades distract from engaging with feedback
- need to focus assessment on learning rather than performance
- vital role of the development of self-assessment abilities
- encouragement of reflective assessment with peers
- ensuring that comments on assessment tasks are actually used to influence further learning

** List of illustrations of thinking about everyday practices that emphasise preparation for learning that is socially constructed, participative, embedded, contextualised **

www.informaworld.com/...tent~content=a747644284~db=all - Preview

e-learning OA_MSc assessment peer community collaboration social context feedback