Education 2.0? Designing ambient pedagogies and meaningful experiences for future learning

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Education 2.0? Designing ambient pedagogies and
meaningful experiences for future learning
Andrew Ravenscroft Talk at JISC-CETIS Conference
2007 Beyond Standards, Holistic
Approaches Deputy Director Principal Research
Fellow Learning Technology Research Institute
(LTRI) Learning interaction and dialogue design
London Metropolitan University
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Overview of talk

• A motivational problem? from interest to learning
• Rationale and methodology for learning design
• Ambient pedagogy and experience design
• Exemplar projects and tools (DDGs Learn2getha)
• questions and issues

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From interest to learning?!

• A design approach that implicitly addresses the
  key, and ostensibly motivational, challenge
• How to convert huge-scale social and media-rich
  interaction for interest to large-scale
  media-rich interaction for learning?!!
• re-conceptualise e-learning to emphasise
  digital practices rather than media form and
  representation
• the most important thing about content and tools
  is what you can do with them that is relevant to
  you

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resonates with old ideas

• I hear and I forget.
• I see and I remember.
• I do and I understand.
• (Confucius, 551 479 BC)
• give learning practices, or active doing, back
  to the learners through exploiting their
  developing digital literacies

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• Increasingly we are not on the web, or in the
  web, we are part of the web
• here comes everyone (Imagine, BBC)
• through web-technologies

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A design rationale and methodology

• Towards future learning practices
• Ambient learning designs (or pedagogies)
• Designing for the learner experience (cf. just
  content and tools)
• ? Stance that reconciles personal and
  institutional needs in the context of developing
  digital literacies
• (evolution or paradigm shift?)

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Future learning practices

• Embrace developing digital literacies (OS, Web
  2.0 etc.)
• media-rich, multimodal, participation-centric,
  provisionality of representations etc.
• Design for opportunities offered by new
  technologies cf. optimising old/existing methods
  (e.g. VLEs)
• text and book, author-reader/broadcaster-consumer
  , fixed representations etc.
• Get back to basics about learning and re-claim
• thinking, meaning making, understanding,
  dialogue, communities of inquiry etc.
• cf deliver learning management of
  instructional content

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Ambient pedagogies and experience design

• 1. Build on and integrate with developing
  media-rich digital technologies and practices,
  learning feels like a natural digital practice
• 2. Highly social, communicative, relevant and
  engaging experience
• 3. Semi-formal activities reconciling
  institutional and personal activities and
  requirements
• 4. Flexible, open and yet configurable
  experiences bounded
• openness
• 5. Realised through ambient learning designs in
  open learning environments
• attractive learning opportunities cf. enforced
  instructional practices

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Exemplar projects, tools and approaches

• - Digital Dialogue Games (the InterLoc tool)
• Highly structured and engaging learning practice
• Learn2getha consortium
• Configurable pedagogical interface to open
  technologies

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Digital Dialogue Games (DDGs) and InterLoc

• Collaborative exercises in digital discourse
• Development of reasoning and discussion skills
• Linking dialogue and thinking to writing
• Range of adaptable dialogue games
• Argumentation (CDR)
• Exploratory dialogue
• Creative thinking
• Attractive, inclusive and engaging
• e.g. low barriers to participation (like web 2.0
  stuff)

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InterLoc A structured learning practice

• Synchronous Interaction as a social game
• Structured rule-based interaction (scaffolding)
• multimedia dialogues (4-6 players)
• Roles player, facilitator, learning manager
• Pre-defined dialogue features that promote
  thinking
• Moves Inform, Question, Challenge, etc.
• Sets of Openers to perform each move I think,
  I disagree because, My evidence is etc.
• Feedback on personal dialogue style
• Content generated as an Active Document
• Coordination with Web 2.0 and mobile devices

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Technical approach

• Client-server architecture, based on Jabber
  messaging protocol (sophisticated OS messaging
  protocol)
• JAVA application programming (sophisticated
  learning and interaction design)
• Html interface (attractive user-experience)
• Client deployed through Web-start technology
• flexible and sophisticated tool that is easily
  deployed and feels like a web-experience

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InterLoc future thinking and meaning making?
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InterLoc turn taking and listening
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Extreme Sports example
User selected content (Web 2.0)
Feedback on performance
Replay on mobile phones
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Pilots Some comments
Did the dialogue game, using the sentence
openers, change how you expressed, clarified or
refined your ideas on this topic? Please
comment as appropriate (LonMet) S1. Yes it did,
with the openers, I then had to t think before
composing the rest of the sentence As a student,
would it be useful to participate regularly in
dialogues like this one? (Southampton) S2. Yes,
because everyone can put their views across
without loads of pupils shouting! S3. Good
point.Often quiet people do have very good points
to make, but are too scared to make them. Did
you enjoy discussing the topic in this way, and
do you have any further comments? (LonMet) S4.
yes. 100 LondonMet pilots Most learners
enjoyed it several said they wanted it for
other courses. Most preferred the dialogue games
to f2f discussion!
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Learn2getha consortium

• More powerful and wide-ranging realisation of
  Ambient Pedagogies and experience design
• Develop a configurable pedagogical interface to
  Web 2.0 technologies (LondonMet, ELP2 Bradford,
  MeAggregator Reading, OpenLearn OU)
• Model examples of good learning practice with Web
  2.0 technologies and address known problems
• Provide a one stop shop for Web 2.0
  technologies that Institutional technologies can
  link with
• An interface and middleware for overlaying
  ambient learning designs and structured
  experiences on existing open technologies

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The vision

• Vision without action is a daydream. Action
  without vision is a nightmare (Japanese
  proverb)
• Truly pervasive (anywhere), inclusive
  (anyone) and transformative (valuable)
  learning interaction and practice for the digital
  age ?
• more democratic learning and collective inquiry

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Questions and issues

• Are we mixing apples and oranges?
• Social networking and Web 2.0 technologies will
  only support superficial communication and media
  sharing and should not be confused with more
  formal learning and more sophisticated meaning
  making?
• Should we be looking to import practices and
  technologies from outside the Academy, or will
  there always be parallel worlds?
• Will practices with knowledge technologies
  supplant conventional educational institutions
  and practices?
• Special Issue of JCAL Web 2.0 and learning a
  revolutionary paradigm or a development of CSCL?"
  (mid 2008)

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More information

• Contact papers etc.
• a.ravenscroft_at_londonmet.ac.uk
• http//homepages.north.londonmet.ac.uk/ravensca/
• Research theme
• Learning interaction and dialogue design
• http//www.londonmet.ac.uk/ltri/research/interacti
  on.htm
• Digital Dialogue Games
• www.interloc.org