EBBL Scenario

For details of the theory of enactive coherence see links below:

The pattern which connects: An ecological model of teaching/learning – Frielick PhD ch.4

Enactive coherence: The ecological model in action – Frielick PhD ch5.

I took the title for the talk from an article on the Edge by David Gelernter.  I was reading this when I got the email inviting participation at the visioning day so I thought I would explore some implications for learning and teaching of what Gelernter was saying.  The main points I was trying to make on the day were:

1. As Gelernter says – “The Internet’s future is not Web 2.0 or 200.0 but the post-Web, where time instead of space is the organizing principle — instead of many stained-glass windows, instead of information laid out in space, like vegetables at a market — the Net will be many streams of information flowing through time. The Cybersphere as a whole equals every stream in the Internet blended together: the whole world telling its own story.”  Now there are profound implications for higher education there – not the least of which for me is the resonance between this vision and an ecological understanding of learning.

2. In her analysis of internet culture and identity Sherry Turkle argued that the earlier theories of Jacques Lacan were given concrete and immediate form in the worlds of online multiplayer chat games, where users adopted different identities in the medium of onscreen text.  The internet made Lacanian theory visible in a compelling and unexpected way.  In the same sense one could argue that the discourses of phenomenography, the relational perspective, and the systems view of constructive alignment are forerunners of a new understanding of learning ­­– now manifesting via the internet in the increasingly networked world of a university that is rapidly changing in response to new technologies, global issues, and increasing demands for relevance and innovation in the curriculum.  So the internet makes the deep/surface understanding of learning visible in a compelling and unexpected way – pointing towards the kinds of pedagogy that best fit with the affordances of a fluid electronic medium that is many streams of information flowing through time.

So having having shared some of my own ‘lifestreams’, at the end of the talk I wanted to ground the theoretical perspective in a more practical strategic model for the institution that could begin to shift development in the appropriate direction.  There is an excellent approach at the University of New South Wales called TELT (Teaching and Learning Enabled by Technology) – so I tweaked this a bit and came up with LATENT (Learning and Teaching Enabled by New Technology) to foreground the idea that new approaches will always be ‘latent’ in the sense of some potential yet to be fulfilled – and also in the technical sense of ‘latency’ as a time-lag between signal generation and reception (ie. the ever-present distance between an educational innovation and its adoption in the mainstream).  This connects with Ian Gibson’s ‘last mile’ concept.

The prezi is really rough and I struggled with the zooming and scaling – but here it is.  Hopefully a start for something more substantial and coherent as I develop a HERDSA paper and some strategic planning over the next few weeks…

As an aside – I guess I was thinking about learning as the ‘imaginative acquisition of knowledge’ in response to a short dialogue between Paul Left and Stephen Downes about the ‘iPad and the LMS’.  Left and Downes agreed that learning was about the generation of information rather than the consumption of information and how important it would be that devices like the iPad enabled the former rather than the latter. All good constructivists would surely agree (but be also be mindful of Sfard’s two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one).

Now in my enactivist mode of thinking, I see learning as inseparable from teaching, where teaching/learning is an ecosystemic process of transforming information into knowledge, in which teacher-subject-student relationships are embedded or situated in a context where complex interacting influences shape the quality of learning outcomes.  Thus the process of knowledge formation in a university is the transformation of information into knowledge by embodied human minds in socially-mediated acts of learning as enquiry into a particular subject. I guess that Downes and co would argue that this process of knowledge formation is no longer confined to a university because of the connective affordances of the internet and new modes of knowledge production – and I would tend to agree – but practically until we get past the accreditation issue the university will continue to be the only place where new knowledge is generated, validated, taught, assessed and accredited (in the sense of an academic qualification) in the same setting.  So for me it’s not about learning as the ‘generation of information’ by inputting, connecting, or mashing up digital sources but rather learning as the transformation of information into knowledge – or echoing Ramsden / Whitehead – the imaginative acquisition of knowledge.  We have really cool tools for extending our consciousness to enhance this process nowadays – but the ecological/biological process is still the same.

Anyway there was no way that I was going to rave on about all that at an official awards ceremony – so just tried to make the point that all the recipients of the excellence awards had in their own way displayed an exciting dialogue between informal and formal theories of teaching – and it was the encounter and grappling with the formal – either as the participation in a qualification in education or tertiary teaching, or formal learning linked to a funded project to develop elearning – that had assisted in the practice and attainment of ‘excellence’.  I also pointed to the fact that all recipients had also done innovative work with wikis, blogs and other social media and had blended the best of the more traditional approaches to teaching with the new.

Sensing that my time was up I left it there, but my internal dialogue continued with Ramsden’s words resonating in my mind ‘the aim of educational development is to develop that integrity of purpose that constitutes excellence in teaching’ – which is just as true in the 21st century digital university as it was in 1993 (why does that seem so long ago ?)….

Lots to think about on the plane back to Auckland.  I need to unpack some thoughts on the ‘last mile’ issue – which sort of resonated with my 3 personal themes for the conference: the McDonaldization of higher ed and how to seriously disrupt it with non-human technologies that enhance human interaction; closely related ongoing tension between the real and the virtual; and the battle between open and closed systems that will shape the future of the internet.

Talking with Ian Gibson and others over dinner last night – Neil Gray quipped that ‘we should do the last mile first!’.  Well yes.  It’s a major challenge for me in my new role – how to upskill academics and upscale blended learning across the university curriculum – incorporating the design-led approaches that have featured here. I take this away from the 2 days along with the sense that Adobe is still making really amazing applications for the digital world – but perhaps need to be thinking about how to make these more accessible to the average lecturer of student through a ‘low threshold’ approach.  Plenty of challenges ahead ….

The kids can’t avoid the digital education revolution – they all have a Lenovo netbook and are eager to use it.  7,000 teacher laptops and 66,000 student laptops netbooks.  All wireless. All Windows-only. Starting the roll-out with 15yr olds. 124 digital learning resources produced.  What about OER ? Can they get YouTube ?  A ‘DigRev’ taskforce has been created to complement onsite technical support.

Direct correlation between leadership and successful laptop programmes.  And shift in pedagogy required – Weston & Bain 2010.  Days of teachers owning their own courses are gone – emphasis is now on sharing and collaboration.  Heaps of resources available to help teachers visualise what the ‘laptop classroom’ will look like.

Problem for me is grafting the non-linear network device onto a lockstep outcomes-driven curriculum. The wireless networked device will encourage bricolage, tinkering, social engagement, – is the curriculum evolving in response to this ? Perhaps that’s why the network has to be filtered, locked-down – the walled gardens under strict teacher control.  I asked this question in relation to the ‘disconnect’ between what kids are doing in the open social network space and what happens in the classroom (presentation yesterday) -  and the presenter confirmed that strict monitoring is in place with YouTube, Facebook etc. blocked –   The kids are learning cool tools though and will arrive at university with good digital literacy and perhaps a creative mindset ?  – depends on whether the assessment standards allow for this. Raises questions I guess about the role of schooling in the digital knowledge economy.