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Fenno Steginga (064.06.036)

Learning and Designing ICT in Virtual Environments for Informal and Community Learning




Abstract

The Governments have demonstrated faith in information and Communications
Technology (ICT) as a means of achieving a participative and inclusive society through various high-profile initiatives. It is also claimed that ICT or e-learning can bring about new patterns of power and participation for excluded learners. In this context, this article examines the following questions: What new patterns of power and participation are ICTs enabling through elearning? And what else is needed for a participative and inclusive society? The article addresses the questions from two different perspectives. First, the authors look at the small but growing empirical base in the area of informal and community learning, including the description of a previously unreported study in this area. Second, they discuss what is required to design digital media that plug into the motivations of ‘real people’ in a way that empowers them. It is argued that we need a merging of interdisciplinary perspectives if we are to enable true power and participation for e-learners. Specifically, the authors illustrate how the careful design of ICTs can contribute to empowerment.


Introduction

Through initiatives such as LearnDirect, the Government has demonstrated
faith in information and communications technology (ICT) as a means of achieving a participative and inclusive society. It is also claimed that ICT or e-learning can bring about new patterns of power and participation for excluded learners. This policy drive is exemplified by the provision of many online learning centres, which provide technology-mediated opportunities for learning These initiatives aim to widen participation to those groups traditionally underrepresented in adult learning. ICTs are perceived as having a pivotal role in this ‘empowering’ process. Consequently, in this article i present what i hope is a balanced discussion of the relationship between participation and technology. The nature of participation in our view is fluid, moving beyond e-voting and the provision of e-government services to include participation in e-learning and that includes participation in the way society shapes the technologies that are developed for
learners, citizens and consumers. My view is that there are several precursors needed if ICTs are to make any difference to participation levels. Blind optimism that the provision of technology will enable, rather than further alienate, is not one of them. At the very least, e-learning is an important precursor for e-government and e-democracy; higher level ‘e-gearing’ can not be accessed before lower level ICT e-learning ‘competency’ has been acquired.

The Background

The Internet brings the opportunity for ubiquitous computing: networks of things where the connections are as important as the individual devices. Suddenly new dimensions to our world can emerge out of ordinary objects, rather as the cupboard opened into Narnia, in C.S. Lewis’s chronicles. The trend is already apparent: as well as colonising education, networked digital devices are becoming part of our domestic scene, our apparel and our social world. The impact will be felt more broadly too, where decisions about implementation of civil projects will increasingly involve understanding digital phenomena, and differentiation in people’s understanding would see a new
kind of digital divide emerge, what Light has called the ‘Narnia Effect’: as some people ‘see’ the digital dimension, and others do not (Light, 2003). In other words, as networks offer the potential to develop from connecting people to connecting the things around us, new skills and sensibilities are needed to understand the world
and design for it. We need to make explicit what these new abilities are and place the means for learning these skills at the heart of society. The alternative is the gradual curtailment of democratic processes, as people lose their power to contribute to debates about their future, the services they wish to use, even the systems in their homes. This is true for e-learning, as it is for other arenas in which self-determination is to be encouraged. So we can also ask:

• What is the most effective way to teach about the potential and impact of these structures and systems?
• How do we avoid a new digital divide between people who have the power to manipulate their learning and those who, because they do not understand the potential of e-learning, cannot?

It is in this context that our article will examine questions about power and participation. We will address the questions from two different perspectives. First, we will look at the small but growing empirical base in the area of informal and community learning, including a report of new research on ‘informality and progression’ in this area conducted by one author.
Second, we will draw on this empirical work in order to discuss the design of digital media that plug into the motivations of ‘real people’ in a way that empowers them. It is a merging of interdisciplinary perspectives that, we argue, is needed if we are to enable true power and participation for e-learners.
Specifically, we will illustrate how the careful design of ICTs can contribute to empowerment by looking at some new design initiatives in the field of reusable learning objects.


Study Case

Designing ICT for Informal and Community Learning

The letters ‘A’ to ‘J’ have been used to refer to each of the 10 interview subjects in this study. All 10 subjects were female (the reason for the absence of male subjects was not explored in the
pilot study). Four subjects were centre managers, four subjects were centre users and two subjects were tutors. Where its use was not considered intimidating (and permission was granted by the subjects), audio recordings were made during the interviews and the recordings later transcribed to support analysis and accurate quotation. A set of research questions was developed based on key issues identified during the earlier studies (Cook & Smith, 2004).

The designers of ICTs may need to take these more egalitarian notions of social inclusion into account. (We return to this point below.) Following on from the pre-progression stage, users may begin to develop goals and motivations to consider and begin to work towards changes in their lives. What emerged from our study was a richer picture of the meaning of ‘progression’ as an instantiation of socially productive, informal, community-based learning for those in pre-employment and pre-further education situations. So it can be seen that, in arguing for the egalitarian notion of ICT designs that are capable of empowering, and focusing this on ‘pre-progression’ stages where community centre users build up confidence and start to articulate personally motivating progression goals, we may be questioning government purposes in providing the training, but we are not in conflict with centre users’ purposes in taking up offers available in community centres. They are potentially more receptive to the value of the less immediate learning gained, such as an awareness of areas that ICT can impact upon and how it might be used. What emerges is the prerequisite that personal goals, such as a gain in confidence, must be met as part of any broader training agenda. Of course, while confidence and awareness are individually enabling, fostering them is part of producing a digitally literate and effective population, with longer-term benefits to the economy than just a greater number of IT-trained workers. It could be argued that this fostering should thus also be part of the country’s economic vision.

The Master of Teaching course team shares Lapadat’s view (2002) that ‘the interactive textual environment of asynchronous online conferences is particularly facilitative of both social and cognitive construction of meaning’. Like her, we attribute this partly to the possibilities afforded by technology in terms of creating online learning communities as well as, more crucially, to the fact that the nature of interactive writing can support meaning making and conceptual change, in particular due to the increased demands on higher order thinking compared with speaking. The Master of Teaching course pedagogy, therefore, is predicated on notions of socialinteractionist knowledge construction in which students become not only participants but take the lead in knowledge construction and negotiation around topics and themes that relate directly to their professional lives (see also Pachler et al, 2003). Working with texts online has, however, proved problematic in inducting participants into collaborative interaction at Master’s level. For participants to be authors of learning texts in what they write online, the text should operate as a thinking tool, and the interaction needs a process orientation.


Empowering through Design

This article is fuelled by the need to examine current trends in the use of ICT to enable participation by individuals and groups who have normally been excluded. We have highlighted the way in which pervasive computing promises a ‘network of things’, a joined-up world where learning can be conducted anywhere, at any time, about anything. An emerging question must then be: How can people understand the potential of what is within their grasp? We have argued that a new divide will emerge between the people who can ‘see’ and control the structures behind digital environments and those that cannot even conceive of what they are missing. Indeed, we have presented some empirical evidence above that appears to suggest that the affective and personal goals of potential learners must be supported if more citizens are to be digitally included. The following question now arises: Are the excluded to remain mere recipients of learning systems at a time when technologies are potentially enabling everyone to take these matters into their own hands?
In creating learning systems to which individual learners can contribute some design input, it is possible to combine a variety of goals. At base, this kind of system will meet the needs of the learner better than less flexible approaches. The content, pace and means of the learning may be chosen by the learner or in peer groups. But in assembling the means of learning, the learner and their group must engage in several of the research and reasoning activities that underpin successful engagement with a digital society. Informal learning situations lend themselves especially to this kind of shared responsibility for learning design and so offer greater potential for serendipitous learning about ICTs. In other words, the process of working with the technology is educational both in terms of skills development and also in vision development, and can be – more or less deliberately – extrapolated to give a perspective on the potential of digital technology more generally. So, as learners gain confidence in their skills, they are also gaining the awareness that will equip them to be participants in the developments of the twenty-first century. Above we pointed out that what emerges from our empirical work is the suggestion that a number of important prerequisite goals, such as a gain in confidence, must be met as part of any broader training agenda. Because these goals can be potentially infinite, we need cyberspace resources that can easily be repurposed in a way to meet these different needs in countless situations. Reusable learning objects (RLOs) and mobile learning are two potential yet promising approaches to meeting this need. This approach is exemplified by work at the Designing for Informal and Lifelong Learning (DILL) Research Group [3] at London Metropolitan University. DILL is looking at how computer-based adaptive learning support and mobile devices can be designed for learner empowerment. As will become clear in the following discussion, what we have in mind is at this stage aspirational; in this article we are interested in teasing out the implications of our proposed approach. This is a jargon-ridden area and so first some definitions are required:
• Adaptive learning support is a type of learning support typically found in tutorial session or peer group informal learning.
• Computer-based adaptive learning support (Ljubojevic et al, 2005) has the goal of orchestrating the available reusable learning objects so as to meet a particular learner’s context and learning needs.
• Reusable learning objects are web-based interactive ‘chunks’ of e-learning designed to explain a stand-alone learning objective.
• A learning object is any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, reused and referenced during technology-supported learning.
• A Tiki is an open source Content Management System and Groupware web application.[4]
• A blog (or weblog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles with, in some cases, the opportunity for the wider public to comment on the blog
• Mobile blogging is the use of mobile digital devices such as phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) to blog with.


Conclusions

This article has covered a lot of ground. holistic look at the complex issues involved in equipping today’s society for a digital future. As a society, we face difficult questions about the nature of citizenship when ‘technology does not serve the solution of problems; it is, rather, the accessibility of a given technology that redefines successive parts of human reality as problems clamouring for resolution’ (Bauman, 1990, p. 220). If the interests of technology developers shape the future, their narrow definition of education remaining unchallenged and their insights outpacing the educators who might encourage debate, then means become an end in themselves. The nature of the learning needed to keep abreast of developments is changing. A century ago, engineering a concrete world required information about the nature of physical matter. In acknowledging the implications of a paradigmatic shift to the simultaneous existence of a digital world computing tools offer an extension of the brain (1964). It follows that we will need a corresponding shift, not just in what, but also in how, we learn, since we are dealing with something qualitatively different from the challenges of the past. Informal learning seems a particularly rich area in which to pursue these goals for all the reasons mentioned above. Evidence from the study shows that participants are not driven exclusively by vocational objectives, being motivated by a variety of personal goals, which include, but do not rest upon, keeping up to date. Their way of approaching study and the contexts in which they learn lend themselves to the kind of thoughtful customisation that gives the best insights into the potential that digital networks might unleash. What we raise at the end of this article are considerations about how to support that customisation. A successful policy for digital inclusion can be seen to require considerable support if everyone is genuinely to be able, even if not willing, to participate. It must do so in a way that adds to the process of participation: able to lead the learner through the process transparently, while offering exactly as much learning about the process as each individual can stand.
Teachers, and all online learners in the ‘knowledge age’, have a range of affordances at their disposal to support processes of knowledge construction. We have referred to some of the most significant of them here – argumentation, interactive writing, autonomy, peer-learning, selfdisclosure, inceased capacity for risk-taking and experimentation – but the list is perpetually expanding. In terms of ‘who they become’ and ‘how they learn’, there is evidence that virtual environments can have a significant impact on teachers’ identities as learners, by fostering engagement with reflexive processes in order to negotiate the meanings of their professional actions and the contexts within which they occur. Playing out the self can invoke a range of autonomous and interdependent practices, but each contributes to the professional reassessment of an issue or topic. These teachers’ accounts of online learning indicate that multiple transformational processes take place within the electronic environment, and that learning in this medium is indeed not only a reality, but can support communities of professionals to better understand the learning practices they are engaged in, and thereby the learning potential of constructivist pedagogies.


Reference

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