Disrupt or coopt The role of a pedagogic planning tool in promoting effective design for learning

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Disrupt or co-opt?The role of a pedagogic
planning tool in promoting effective design for
learning

• Liz MastermanOxford University Computing
  ServicesMarion MantonDepartment of Continuing
  Education, University of Oxford

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Overview

• Planning as a response to disruption
• Phoebe show and tell
• Background and design rationale
• Development methodology
• Quick tour of Phoebe
• The tool in context
• Issues and their resolution at the theoretical
  level

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Disruption as a driver to (re-)planning

• E-learning is often talked about as a trojan
  mouse, which teachers let into their practice
  without realizing that it will require them to
  rethink not just how they use particular hardware
  or software, but all of what they do. (Sharpe
  Oliver, 2007, p. 49)
• It fundamentally made me think about what I
  actually do in the class. The VLE really made
  me think about how am I going to project what it
  is that I give to a lesson when Im face to face
  on this screen? Usually I dont have to plan
  my lessons, I just go in and do it What it
  brought me back to was the actual lesson plan,
  you know, like when you first started off it
  was like that all over again. (School teacher)

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The problem space disruption seen as threat

• Technology-reticent practitioners
• Lack of awareness or interest
• Technophobia
• Lack of time to explore (esp. if part-time or
  hourly paid)
• Aversion to risk inherent in experimentation
• Fear of being supplanted
• Incompatibility with institutional model of
  learning
• But pressure to engage with digital technology
• From above
• Implementation of VLE
• Use of technology as a criterion in performance
  assessment
• From below
• Student expectations
• How to engage the technology-reticent?
• Institutional staff-development initiatives
• mediated by pedagogic planning tools

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Enter the pedagogic planning tool

• Where the individual practitioner starts getting
  to grips with technology and exploring its
  implications
• An emergent genre
• JISC Design for Learning programme (2 projects),
  DialogPlus, ReMath
• Guide teachers through the construction of plans
  for learning sessions that make appropriate, and
  effective, use of technology
• Pedagogic planning
• Concept of lesson alien to HE
• Pedagogy embraces an essential dialogue between
  teaching and learning (Beetham Sharpe, 2007,
  p. 2)

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The Phoebe project

• JISC Design for Learning programme
• May 2006-February 2008
• Builds on research-based investigation of
  generic tools used for planning
• Aim
• Enable teachers in post-compulsory education to
  develop their confidence and skills in designing
  technology-mediated learning experiences

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The design challenge

• Maybe its going to be difficult to develop a
  single software tool kit that suits everybodys
  preferences for planning learning (paper based,
  software or a mixture of both!) and maybe it
  could be useful to develop flexible software
  tools that support teachers through the process
  and stages of designing for learning (Teacher
  in HE)

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Design philosophy

• Principles
• Propagate effective practice to a wide audience
• Allow option to use familiar planning tools
• Rationale
• Learning Design tools in limited use output XML
• Successful IT projects build on users work, not
  force them to adapt

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Informant design methodology

• Involve representatives of the e-learning
  community where their contribution will be of the
  most value (Scaife Rogers, 1999)
• Practitioner-informants requirements gathering,
  scenarios of use, initial design
• 5 Higher Education
• 2 Further Education
• 2 Adult community learning, work-based learning
• JISC Experts group confirmation of design
  decisions
• Becta and HEA embedding, sustainability

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The Phoebe prototype

• Phase 1 proof-of-concept tool
• Open source, built on wiki technology
• Supports planning for individual learning
  sessions
• Context of use
• Initial teacher training
• Staff development
• Functions
• Guidance, advice and examples
• Planning a learning session

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The tool in context issues

• Staff development and teacher-training context
  validated by reviewers and informants
• Yet continuing dilemma how to engage
  technology-reticent practitioners
• for whom disruption is not a welcome message
• ?Adopt a theoretical perspective

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The tool in context a theoretical perspective

• Activity Theory and expansive learning (Engeström
  1987, 1999)
• Linking of the individual and the social
• Historicity
• Object and motive the need to work on a problem
  space to achieve an outcome

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The tool in context planning as an activity
system
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The tool in context expansion thro
contradictions

• Development driven by contradictions
• Within the activity system
• Through interaction with other activity systems
• Encounter with a culturally more advanced object
  and motive (Engeström, 1987)
• Design for learning

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The tool in contextD4L as culturally advanced

• The process by which teachers and others
  involved in the support of learning arrive at a
  plan or structure or design for a learning
  situation that strikes an appropriate balance
  between e-learning and traditional modes of
  delivery (Beetham and Sharpe, 2007, p. 7 JISC,
  2004, p. 11)
• Focus on sequences of activities carried out by
  active learners
• Design as rational and systematic and creative
• Design for acknowledges the contingent
• (But NB people can design for learning without
  explicitly doing D4L)
• A perspective, not a methodology

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Towards co-option

• Development through
• Reflection on irrupting activity system
• Appropriation of more advanced models and tools
• Implementation of new model
• D4L as a creative response to challenges of new
  technologies but genetically connected to
  predecessor activity
• Acknowledge connection and build on it
• Identify and capitalise on emergent D4L traits in
  current practice
• Hence co-opt the technology-reticent into a
  community of D4L practice
• BUT acknowledge that entrenched perspectives may
  persist and must be accommodated