In my previous post I indicated that our current phase of fieldwork is preparing the grounds for participative co-design processes “for the users, with the users and by the users”. So far, we have had quite a lot of activities with the training centre Bau ABC and made also a lot of experiences with different workshops. Here, the blessing for us has been that we have had a chance to have joint workshops with groups of apprentices (during their stay at the centre) and with full-time trainers (at the time slots when apprentices have been working independently with their projects). Below some remarks on our workshops and on our learning experiences about their ways of making the workshops their events in which they address their own issues, concerns and initiatives.

Firstly, on the workshop concepts with which we worked: We firstly had conversational workshops with one group of apprentices (from different trades) in the morning and with a group of full-time trainers (Lehrwerkmeister) in the initial training plus the coordinator of continuing vocational training programmes. These workshops were supported by some pre-given guiding questions (Leitfragen) but they were run as relatively free conversation to let the participants address their issues with their own accents and their own voice. As a result, the apprentices spoke very freely of what they saw a needs and possibilities for improvement regarding the training in the centre (vis-a-vis advanced practice in the companies). They also emphasised their interest to have joint projects with apprentices from  neighbouring trades. The trainers gave positive comments on the views expressed by apprentices – however, they drew attention to rather inflexible boundary conditions for accommodating the apprentices’ training periods in the centre. Thus, there is very little room for manoeuvre for meeting the wishes of apprentices re joint projects or more flexible timing of periods in companies and in the centre. In addition, the trainers started giving thoughts, how they could use digital media and web appsa more effectively in informing themselves of new developments in the trade and on advanced practice in companies. Here, it seemed that something that was discussed in initial training was already in practice in the continuing vocational training activities.

In the next phase we organised a storyboard workshop that was based on group work to make storyboards of exemplary working days of apprentices (in the morning) and trainers (in the afternoon). The two parallel groups of apprentices had different tasks: one was invited to portray a day in the training centre whilst the other was asked to portray a day in the company and in the construction site. The group that worked with a day in the centre presented a spatial journey with drawings of different locations  at the Bau ABC sites and only after completing this started to give thoughts on eventual problems and how they could be taken into account in the phase of giving instructions. The group that focused on working at construction site portrayed the work flow (and the daily journey) from the company office to the site, setting the site and carrying through the process (drilling the holes for the well to be built) and in completing the task. Here, the apprentices drew attention to eventual obstacles and needs to star again or to give up if no water is found. Thus, they highlighted key problems in the work process – in which however the availability of web tools made very little difference. At the end of this session the joint plenary discussion started top trigger ideas of new apps to extend the learning effect and to draw attention to good practice  (e.g. the Maurer-App) and comments on the (limited) usability of existing apps.

The trainers gave very positive comments on the storyboards of apprentices and gave some thoughts of the possible usability of existing apps as a basis for the proposed Maurer-App. In their own group work phase they presented two parallel storyboards of trainers work at the centre. One story focused on a relatively homogeneous group of apprentices in the initial training whilst the other illustrated the growing complexity when there are apprentices from different phases of their training and eventual visiting groups in continuing training (with visiting trainers) to be supported at the same time. Altogether, the storyboards drew much more attention to the complex social and organisational processes to be managed alongside the key training functions  (instruction, supervision, monitoring, assessing and giving feedback). In the plenary sessions a lot of thoughts were given on the possibilities to offload the trainers with digital solutions in the assessment and in giving feedback. A major issue was the access to norms, standards and regulations in which context new copyright problems had emerged. As a result, a list of several design ideas and issues was drafted to be included into the workshop report (to take into account the issues arising from initial and continuing training).

Here I have emphasised the workshop dynamics rather than particular ‘results’ to be listed as apps or solutions that would have attracted most attention. In the preparation phase our colleagues suggested different techniques to get feedback on particular ‘use cases’ or wireframes drafted on the drawing boards elsewhere. As I have illustrated it above, when the users got control of their workshops, they addressed concerns, how to improve their working and learning processes on the whole. When getting their messages into discussion we then could use  some time to illustrate some of the use cases and emerging wireframes as possible responses to their concerns. In this context the powerpoint slides and the presentation of Martin Bachl (Hochschule Karlsruhe) worked very well.

As I understand it, we are going through similar collaborative learning processes as the earlier Work and Technology projects that couldn’t successfully transplant new technologies into companies as ‘gifts that fall  from Mt Olympus that are parachuted upon users’ but had to discover the possible needs for innovations and benefits for users in iterative processes that took their own time. Yet, after these experiences we have the feeling the we are making progress.

To be continued …

Acknowledgements. This work is supported by the European Commission under the FP7 project LAYERS (no. 318209), http://www.learning-layers.eu.

I see that I have been out of writing blogs on the Learning Layers project quite some time – the previous ones are from April and March. I hope that no one gets the false impression that this would have been a sleepy period in the project. To be sure – it is exactly the other way round. Now, after the first Design Conference and after the Easter break the ITB team, the application partners in North Germany and our supporting partners have been busily engaged in organising Co-Design Workshops or supporting events and in doing their homework with design ideas, relevant web tools and apps as well as drafting use cases and wireframes.

In this context the role of the ITB team has been to work as “explorers on the ground” in the terrains of our application partners (the training centre grounds of Bau ABC, the headquarters of the network/Agentur for ecological construction work  and the offices of craft trade companies (SMEs) in the construction sector. The previous phase of fieldwork was characterised by collecting data of potential users of ICT/Web-based tools and apps – and of exemplary situations in which they could be of some help. Now, the present phase of fieldwork is characterised by a clear step to participative design work – for the users, with the users and by the users.

Here we have encountered different sets of possibilities (and also hurdles) when working together with our application partners (Bau ABC, NNB/Agentur and individual craft trade companies). We have written quite a lot of this in the internal working documents with which we update ourselves and our LL partners of the activities. We have also learned a lot of the visits of other LL partners who have accompanied us to the field activities. Some of such ‘lessons learned’ have also found their way to these working documents.

In the light of the above it is understandable that the motto of this series of blogs is not “what have we learned” (= results) but “what are we learning” (= insights to be considered carefully). This is all work in progress and – for us: learning alongside working in the project. Also, in many respects, the lessons that we are learning, are not completely new – they are similar lessons as were learned in earlier innovation projects for Work and Technology (Arbeit und Technik) programmes in the late 1980s and in the 1990s. Apparently, some of these lessons have to be learned anew every time in newer innovation contexts.

To be continued …

Acknowledgements. This work is supported by the European Commission under the FP7 project LAYERS (no. 318209), http://www.learning-layers.eu.

In my introductory post I told how I was pushed to write a series of blog posts about the value of learning from everyday life situations in different work organisations (including our own ones). This was posed as a challenge for the research partners and technical partners of the Learning Layers (LL) project. After some hesitation I got the point and came to the motto “Socio-technical fantasy and learning in everyday life situations”. (I owe much to C. Wright Mills and to Oskar Negt.)

Here, I want to report of a strange story that we experienced when we here at ITB (Bremen) tried to complete some administrative duties for the LL project and for that purpose sent a letter quickly to CIMNE (Barcelona).  This is how the story went on:

1. Episode: We had to provide documents with  signatures of the authorised persons of the University of Bremen and to send them by post (not only as scanned copies) to CIMNE. We were among the first to obtain the signatures and were ready to send the letter long before the end of November. I was about to engage a courier service (DHL) but colleagues from our administration convinced my that DHL is only the other part of the German post and that a registered letter would be delivered just as quickly.

2. Episode: One week passes and another week has started and the letter has not arrived in CIMNE. Most of the other partners have sent their ones and we are in the rearguard. The web monitoring service of the German post only tells us that the letter has been delivered to a foreign partner. The website of the Spanish post could not inform of the adventure of the letter. So, since we got concerned, we sent an official inquiry to the German post (date 30.11.2012) to find out, what had happened to the letter. We received an automated answer that the German post will promptly examine, what has been the cause of the delay and inform us asap.

3. Episode: Immediately after sending the inquiry we received the good news that the letter had reached CIMNE and that the finalisation of main contract between European Commission and CIMNE could be completed immediately. So, the big problem was no longer there. Nevertheless, we wanted to keep the inquiry going on to find out what had happened (and to see how it will be explained to us).

4. Episode: Just before the Easter holidays we get an official letter from the German post (dated 18.3.2013)  informing that the letter has unfortunately not been delivered to the recipient (CIMNE). There is no explanation what might have happened. Instead, there is a helpful advice, what to do to get a compensation for eventual damage.

Concerning our theme, “learning from everyday life situations in work organisations” we can draw several lessons and locate them on different levels (or – if you insist –  layers):

a. Lessons learned by the individuals involved: We at ITB have drawn our own conclusions on the question, which means of delivery we can rely on in our international correspondence. We also noticed the limits of the web-based monitoring services.

b. Lessons learned at the level of ‘knowledge sharing’ in the organisation: At the moment this story is being shared as a joke that is being told to colleagues as a part of informal chatting. However, there is a far more important lesson that needs to be learned across the organisation. This time a threatening problem situation was avoided but one should be prepared.

c. Lessons learned at the level of ‘knowledge sharing’ in a wider international community: Looking at this story from a wider international perspective, it is again one of those stories of things that have gone (almost) wrong because of practicalities (like sending the letter securely). In some cases huge consortia have lost the chance to submit bids because letters of commitment have not reached the coordinators in due time. This raises a question, whether someone should create a knowledge sharing tool (“Erfahrungssammler”) to raise awareness of such problems and to give recommendations for appropriate practice.  …

I stop my story here before the fantasy carries us too far away from the realities of everyday life. Of course I have put a bit of exaggeration into  my last point. Indeed, it is easy to try to push others to examine their everyday life situations (with the hope that they find the episodes as stimulus for learning). It is a bit more difficult to get inspired of one’s own experiences with everyday life situations as described above. However, this is the motivational hurdle that the LL project and the partners try to overcome.

Acknowledgements. This work is supported by the European Commission under the FP7 project LAYERS (no. 318209), http://www.learning-layers.eu.

After a holiday break it is time to catch up with the developments in the Learning Layers (LL) project. My previous postings were about design ideas and how to get them well grounded. Indeed, there are plenty of lessons to be learned.

In one of our recent meetings I told a story about administrative oddities at the sidelines of the project. Suddenly our colleague Werner started to analyse this story and identified many aspects  of informal learning (to be shared with others) and many challenges for developing our capability to share lessons learned (with or without web tools). The more we discussed, the more we found ourselves in a similar position as our application partners, whom we want to inspire to share episodic information from their everyday life and promote learning via sense-making and scaffolding.

Thanks to a strong push from Werner I have started a new series of blog postings in which I follow this lead by treating episodes, challenges and critical (if not heretical) questions.  I have given these a common heading “Socio-technical fantasy and learning in everday life situations”.  I have taken the liberty to follow the roads that were started long ago by C. Wright Mills (“Sociological imagination”) and by Oskar Negt (“Soziologische Phantasie und exemplarisches Lernen”). I wish that the said forerunners do not mind that I have copied their influential headings and adapted them for the LL context. What I do hope is that the following blog postings help us to identify the value of everyday life situations in different working contexts (including our own ones) and to see the challenges, how they can be treated as a basis for learning.

To be continued …

Acknowledgements. This work is supported by the European Commission under the FP7 project LAYERS (no. 318209), http://www.learning-layers.eu.

In the past, I spent a lot of time researching different kinds of knowledge and how they could be supported by vocational education and training. In particular, I was trying to counter the reductionist approach, as embodied in the then National Vocational Qualifications in the UK, which came from a narrow understanding of competence. Lately I have been returning to that research to try to understand how technologies can support the development of vocational competence and knowledge in a workplace setting.

This is an extract from a paper entitled  ‘Work process knowledge, Communities of Practice and the development and introduction of mobile learning applications in the workplace’, submitted by myself, Ludger Deitmer, Lars Heinemann and Pekka Kamarainen to the ECTEL 2013 conference. You can download the full paper in PDF format here.

When thinking about knowledge development in a richer way, it may be useful to distinguish between different types of knowledge. Lundvall and Johnson (1994) identify four different kinds of knowledge, each requiring different types of mastery: know-what, know-why, know-how, and know-who.

Know-what refers to knowledge about ‘facts’: it can be considered as equivalent to what is normally called information and related to the knowledge ‘corpus’ that each category of experts must possess. Know-why refers to scientific knowledge, influencing technological development and the pace and characteristics of its applications in industries of every kind. Also in this case, knowledge production and reproduction take place within organised processes, such as university teaching, scientific research, specialised personnel recruiting, and so on.

Know-how refers to skills – that is, the capabilities to do something in different contexts (e.g. judging the market prospects for a new product, operating a machine-tool, etc.). Of course know-how is typically a kind of knowledge developed at the individual level¹, but its importance is evident also if one considers the division of labour and degree of co-operation taking place within organisations and even at the inter-organisational level (for instance, the formation of industrial net-works is largely due to the need for firms to be able to share and combine elements of know-how). Know-who is another kind of knowledge which is becoming increasingly important, referring to a mix of different kinds of skills, in particular the social skills, allowing the access and use of knowledge possessed by someone else.

Rauner et al. (2013) modified these categories in order to bring it in line with the ideas of situated learning and communities of practice, emphasising the role of work processes and the corresponding work process knowledge. The categories of know-what and know-how still refer to ‘factual’ knowledge and the ways of ‘expressing’ it in a work process. The third category, know-why, refers to why to carry out a specific task in a certain way (or, if more appropriate, in another). This modification is due to the insight, that work tasks as well as work processes in post-Taylorist work organisations do not follow a logic of right/wrong. Instead, a solution to a problem can be more or less adequate. This adequacy depends on a number of partly conflicting factors, One may programme the control of a car’s motor giving different weight to factors like acceleration, fuel consumption, high speed, exhaust emissions, etc., according to the intended main use. An electrician may counsel his or her customer on the design of a lighting system regarding costs, efficiency, ecological aspects, sustainability, ease of maintenance, etc., according to the end-users’ ideas. This, then, has the consequence that vocational learning has to address all these three dimensions of knowledge as a whole. The ‘reflective practitioner’ (Schön 1983) is not someone reflecting on what he or she has done after work, using analogue or digital media. ‘Reflection’ is a category built in the expert solution of work tasks requiring a deep knowledge of the work process a given task is embedded in.

Each kind of knowledge is characterised by different channels through which learning takes place and can be supported in different ways using technologies. The easiest cases are those of know-what and know-why, that can be obtained through the typical channels of knowledge acquisition (watching videos, accessing data bases), while the other two categories are rooted primarily in practical experience and in terms of technology enhanced learning have been more problematic insofar as they require the availability of informal social channels. Apprenticeship is a fundamental channel for acquiring know-how knowledge: it represents the most important way for skilling newcomers in an organisation, but these protracted processes of learning by doing are also frequently the responsibility of those who are considered the experts in an organisation, capable of above-average performance. Technology can be used to bring together novices and experts Simulations can be used as shortcuts for reproducing the many aspects of the know-how acquisition available in real situations. Mobile technology can capture know-how in the application of knowledge within the workplace. Know-why can be facilitated by helping to make traceable the processes guiding expert workers’ decision making. In general, this points to a use of digital media going far beyond the transmission of information.

References

Lundvall. B.; Johnson, B. (1994) The learning economy, Journal of Industrial Studies, 1.

Rauner, F., Heinemann, L., Maurer, A., Haasler, B. (2013) Competence Development and Assessment in TVET (COMET), Dordrecht: Springer.

Project websites are usually pretty dire. A short piece about the project taken from the project application, a list of partners, news updates of meetings and links to downloadable products.

And that was how we started our website with the Learning Layers project. However, we soon realised that this would not suffice. Our aim is to dramatically scale up the use of technology to support informal learning in Small and Medium Enterprises. To do that we need a forward facing web site -something we can show off to SME managers and be proud of. But that in turn requires content which they will understand and engage with. That is a much trickier part. We need more of a newspaper or journal type website than a traditional project site. This has led to a lot of discussions and we haven’t got all the issues resolved yet. But one thing we have done is moved to an editorial model where instead of having a web site moderator we have an editor. His role is to commission content from the different partners in the project.

And I have been messing around with how to write about project development in a way that it is understandable to those without an advanced knowledge of the technologies, processes and ideas that we are developing.

Here is my first attempt – about one of the design ideas we are pursuing codenamed ‘Sharing Turbine’.

“The Learning Layers project aims to develop a number of new applications to support informal learning in the workplace.  In the first stages of the project we are working with Small and Medium Enterprises in the Construction sector in north Germany and in the healthcare sector in north England.

We are aware that for any applications to gain widespread take up, we have to work closely with managers and workers from the industries. Therefore, we have adopted a user centred design process for iterative development.

What does this mean? We started out with a series of interviews with a wide variety of people from the sector. In construction e gave now made over 50 interviews, looking at work organisation, learning and peoples present use and attitudes towards technology. This was followed up with what we called Application Partner Days in both the UK and Germany, where we visited the workplaces and held a series of workshop activities with different practitioners.

The third stage in the development process was a two-day design workshop held in Helsinki. Building on the ideas from the interviews and visits we started to sketch out a series of design ideas for new mobile applications. The working groups for the four design ideas that emerged at the workshop brought together researchers, developers and industry practitioners.

Since then, the working groups have continued to meet online and are using a wiki to develop the design ideas.

Each of the design ideas has been given a working name. The idea for the Sharing Turbine design idea came from the construction industry but we hope it may also be of use in the health sector.

Apprentices in the construction industry in Germany learn their trade in three different locations: vocational schools, on the job in companies and in a training centre. At the north German training centre – Bau ABC – they undertake a series of practical projects. These last from o0ne to three days and may involve working individually or as a team. They are given project briefing sheets and save the report of their work on paper which is collected in a white ring bound folder. This has a number of practical disadvantages. Obviously paper folders do not last well on a building site. And although they can use photographs in the report on their work, the folders are predominantly text based. The use of multi media could allow much more detailed and rich reporting. It could also allow a richer representation of the different physical objects and tools used in construction. In fact one of the reason that elearning has been slow to take off in the workplace may be just this issue of how to combine learning through digital media with the physical nature of much work activity.

So the first idea behind Sharing turbine is to transform the present folders produced at the training centre into an electronic portfolio. This would also have the advantage of making it much easier to update the task sheets. Trainees could use a variety of different media directly from heir phones including audio, photos and video.

However the idea behind Sharing turbine goes much further. One of the aims of the Learning Layers project is to capture informal learning. Obviously when apprentices are working in their companies much of this informal learning takes place on the building site. And if they were able to use mobile devices and multi-media learning on the site could be linked to the skills and knowledge gained at the training centre. The portfolio could also become a resource both for dealing with practical problems occurring when undergoing training, but also after they have qualified. At the same time they can be linked to personal social networks, both as a means of sharing learning and knowledge, but also as a human resource for getting help and advice.

The German so called Dual System is rightly admired in Europe for providing high quality apprentice training> one of its bedrocks is combining practical training on the job with theory gained from block period in vocational schools. However, in practice it often proves difficult to link the different phases of training. Sharing turbine could be a critical tool in allowing these different phases of training to be brought together.

The use of Learning Analytics, a process of recording and analyzing learning as it happens – could also allow apprentices and trainers to understand what learning has happened and what new learning is needed – and to develop and refine curricula and training and learning opportunities and processes.

At the moment the Sharing Turbine working group is at the phase of developing wireframes. Wireframes are graphic mock ups of applications. They can be developed rapidly and used in design workshops to test and refine ideas, prior to programming prototypes.

In the next month workshops are planned with companies to get feedback from apprentices and skilled workers. These are not confined to project partners. If you are interested in our work and would like to contribute please get in touch.”

Another one from the archives. I think Jen and me wrote this in 2001 but it still seems relevant today, especially in an age when it seems inn0vation is the universal panacea..

“Whilst in organisation learning literature in the late 1990s innovation was seen as the interplay between implicit and explicit knowledge within organisations, in a literature review into innovation Attwell and Hughes looked at the importance of external as well as internal factors in innovation. In particular they differentiated between stimulus catalyst and Imperative.

Stimulus: a specific and particular action or event which provokes a specific and particular response. Typically one off or isolated events which precipitate change.

Catalyst: the presence of a factor or factors ‘in the background’ which speedup the rate of change. Typically these factors will be present over a period of time rather than being ‘one-off’ events

Imperative: the ‘must-do’ situation – an event or series of events that make change inevitable and usually urgent with identifiable negative consequences in the event of failure to change.

Much innovation in the construction industry appears to be driven by an imperative around environmental standards for building with in other cases innovation being driven by the catalyst of new materials and construction methods.

Attwell and Hughes advanced the following ideas as ‘boundary conditions’ or as cornerstones of a theoretical framework around innovation:

• That innovation is a complex social phenomenon (and is not technologically determined);
• That innovation takes place within spatial forms and areas – including regions, supply chains, internal organisation units and networks;
• That innovation is developed in the interrelationships between enterprises and the environment, including suppliers, customers and other ‘knowledge development’ and business support agencies and organisations;
•  That innovation is dependent on the interrelations between work organisation, workforce competence and technologies;
• That there are many and complex motivators for innovation and change that may stem from economic, social and environmental factors;
• That organisational competence and innovation are facilitated by the interplay between the development and use of tacit and codified knowledge and between abstract knowledge and practice;
• That tacit knowledge is bounded and develops in communities of practice – which cannot be organisational prescribed;
• That change for innovation is conceptually driven and may take an incremental form;
• That organisational competence is central to innovation and change;
• That developmental expertise is central to organisational competence for innovation.

Innovation is not only dependent on workforce competence and organisational competence but gives rise for new needs in competence and learning.”

One of the issues which intrigues me about the Learning Layers project is the role of physical tools and objects. We are seeking to develop apps to support informal learning in the construction trade. And one of the big things about construction is that they use a lot of tools, machinery and materials – things that can be difficult to represent in a digital world. Indeed, that is one the the reasons I think elearning has been slow to take off in the workplace, despite the increasing power of mobile devices.

In past work we have tried to understand the learning and work eco-structures through the lens of activity theory. To an extent it is useful, but the bucket category of tools fails I think to represent the central role that artefacts play in work processes.

This morning I stumbled on a paper called ‘Towards a Theory of Social Practices‘ by Andreas Reckwitz. It is not an easy read, at least for me with my limited understanding of social theory. But i find his section on things interesting, particularly the idea that the objects – are the place of the social insofar as they are necessary components of social practices.

This is an excerpt from the section of the paper entitled ‘Things’:

As part of the Learning Layers project, I am working on a paper for the ECTEL Conference taking place in Cyprus in September. In the paper I want to look at the nature of different forms of knowledge and how competence is acquired through work based learning. I am also interested in the links between learning and innovation. That got me digging into papers and ideas about innovation. And by serendipity my colleague Jenny Hughes replied to a query from another partner working on the Layers project pointing to some work we did in 2001 on a project called DISC. I can’t quite remember what DISC stands for. Anyway DISC was looking at innovation but within one particular perspective – that of the development and evaluation of the innovation potential of organisations – and that from a viewpoint heavily influenced by Human Resource Development. However, we said, in order to develop a theoretical basis and underpinning for that work it is necessary to be able to locate project ideas and development within the wider framework of innovation theory. In other words in order to understand the work DISC is undertaking it is necessary to review the wider range of literature and project development at a national and European level.

There is some good stuff in that literature review (which I don’t think was ever published and I’ll post a few excerpts over the next few days. If you want a full copy just email me. The first excerpt is on Working, Learning and Innovation. I think I still agree with it. The most interesting point I think, is that whilst Communities of Practice have been criticised as inherently conservative bodies we say just the opposite: that they avoid the ossifying tendencies of large organisations.

“In a paper entitled “Organisational learning and communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation”, Duguid and Brown (1991) explore in some depth the relationship between communities of practice and innovation.

Working, learning and innovating are closely related forms of human activity that are conventionally thought to conflict with each other. Work practice is generally viewed as conservative and resistant to change: learning is generally viewed as distinct from working and problematic in the face of change; and innovation is generally viewed as the disruptive but necessary imposition of change on the other two. To see that working, learning and innovation are interrelated and compatible and thus potentially complementary requires a distinct conceptual shift.

Within society, formal descriptions of work and learning are abstracted from practice and education, training and technology design generally focus on abstract representations to the detriment of actual practices. Without a clear understanding of the details of actual practice, the practice itself cannot be understood or engendered through training or enhanced through innovation.

This is seen in studies of the variance between organisation’s formal descriptions of work through training programmes and manuals and the actual work practices performed by its members. Reliance on espoused practice can blind an organisation’s core to the actual – and usually valuable practices of its members (including non canonical practices). It is the actual practices, however, that determine the success or failure of organisations.

This is congruent with Lave and Wenger’s practice based theory of learning as “legitimate peripheral participation” in “communities of practice”. Much conventional learning theory, including that implicit in most training courses, tends to endorse the valuation of abstract knowledge over actual practice and, as a result to separate learning from working and, more significantly, learners from workers. The work of Lave and Wenger, and the empirical investigations of the practices of photocopying technicians undertaken by Orr, indicate that this knowledge-practice separation is unsound, both in theory and in practice. Learning takes place in practice through narration, collaboration and social construction. Communities of work and learning are often non-canonical and not recognised by organisations. Significantly, communities are emergent. Their shape and membership emerges in the process of activity as, as opposed to being creating to carry out a task. Therefore the central task in promoting innovation is not the design or creation of groups but more the detection and support of emergent or existing communities. The recognition of and legitimation of community practices is central to the process of learning in communities. This involves issues of legitimacy and peripherality which are intertwined in a complex way. If either is denied then learning will be significantly more difficult.

The composite concept of “learning in working” best represents the fluid evolution of learning through practice. From this practice-based standpoint, learning is the bridge between working and innovating. The periphery is an important site for learning and for innovation.

Small self-constituting communities evade the ossifying tendencies of large organisations. Communities of practice are constantly changing both as newcomers replace old timers and as the demands of practice force the community to revise its relationship to its environment. Communities of practice develop a rich, fluid, non-canonical world view to bridge the gap between their organisations static canonical view and the challenge of changing practice. This process of development in inherently innovative “maverick” communities of this sort allow organisations means and models to examine alternative views of activity, to experiment based on practice and to step outside their limited core world view and try something new.”

In my previous post I presented some first impressions on the results of the Design Conference of  the Learning Layers (LL) project  in Helsinki in the beginning of March.  I was still travelling back and could only raise the question: How to take these ideas further and make them work “on the  ground”? Now we have had more time to digest the results and to develop our thoughts with both feet steadily on the ground.

This week the ITB hosted a joint meeting of the LL partners working with the North German construction sector (ITB, Pontydysgu, Bau ABC and the Agentur/ Netzwerk für Nachhaltiges Bauen. We discussed the results of the Design Conference and how to organise local design teams to get the design ideas properly grounded. Concerning the follow-up of the Design Conference the participants took note of two videos that had been prepared after the design conference:

• The video prepared by Tobias Ley (TLU) and his team that presented the results of the design team Bits and pieces.
• The video (and slidecast) prepared by Tobias Funke (Agentur) to develop the design idea of the team Captus further. (I now see that Tobias is reworking this video and has named this one as “Old version” – work in progress!)

In the discussion the following comments were made on the results of the design teams in the LL Design Conference:

a) The progress of the design team Sharing Turbine was appreciated since the group was able to make good use of the inputs coming from the application partner (Bau ABC) and the documents prepared by the ITB and Pont teams. The contextual map presented the learning cycles between formal training and workplace learning as a dynamic turbine. The group was approaching a common understanding of the challenges (and the application partners were pleased about this progress).

b) The work of the design team Captus had not reached a similar process dynamic. The abstract modelling of capturing knowledge and the illustration of particular applications could not outline a context for common work. Therefore, there was a risk of design ideas falling apart from user engagement (that was to be linked to the idea of Learning exhibition). From this perspective the video and slide share prepared by Tobias Funke has brought into picture the actual context of design activities and a strategy to address different user groups with different apps.

c) The work of the design team Bits and pieces focused mainly on the health care sector (and on the need to collect experience and evidence for the revalidation of health care professionals on regular intervals). Yet, the approach that was piloted by the group – to collect notes to a box file and then arrange the notes with the help of categories and learning paths seemed highly relevant for the construction sector as well. In particular the approach responded to the needs addressed by craft trade SMEs to develop a collector of problem cases or challenging jobs for further learning (Erfahrungssammler). For the sake of launching a parallel activity the pictures presented under this design idea and the video were helpful. However, to address the North German construction sector, German language versions would be needed.

Based on this situation assessment the following conclusions were made concerning local design teams to be launched for the North German construction sector:

1) The needs of Bau ABC provided the basis for the work of the “Sharing Turbine” team. Therefore, it is obvious that a local design team (in Bremen) is developing some key activities that are supported by a wider design team (involving technical partners). In order to link the work of the technical partners to local activities it is necessary to clarify, what occupational areas are to be covered and what kind of examples of apprentices’ projects can be provided (as scanned documents and translations). Also, to ensure a broad-based user engagement it is necessary to clarify, at what stage different target groups (apprentices, trainers and teachers, companies) will be involved.

2) The needs of the Agentur/Netzwerk für Nachhaltiges Bauen provided the starting point for the work of the “Captus” team. Now, the video and slidecast of Tobias Funke have brought the design ideas back into the working contexts of ecological construction work and addressed the possiblities to use ICT and Web within the forthcoming exhibition. These new perspectives need to be brought into discussion in the wider design team and on its wiki page. This provides a basis for linking the local activities and the involvement of the technical partners.

3) The needs of the Bremen crafts and trades companies provide a basis for a sub-team of the “Bits and pieces” team (working with the idea of the Erfahrungssammler for the companies and the trade guilds. Here, the approach needs to be developed in the light of the progress of the main team and the neighbouring teams.

I think this is enough in this context. The rest of our discussion was about planning the field activities and making sure that we are entering the phase of local design workshops with content-related issues and readiness to put the potential benefits of web technologies to the context.

Here it is worthwhile to draw attention to the need to maintain contacts between the technical partners and the “local” partners working with issues raised above. I see two possible traps that we need to avoid:

• If we leave the technical design work floating in its own realm and expect it to come up with something useful we have the risk of putting the carriage before the horse (if I may use such old-fashioned metaphor). It is not likely that the carriage could pull the horse or that the horse would be willing to push the carriage.
• If we go too hastily to the local design workshops with expected users without having a clear picture what our technical partners can deliver (or refer to) we have a risk of chasing the horse running without the carriage. It is not likely that the carriage could catch up the horse by itself or that a loosely running horse would like to get back to the carriage.

I have just spelled out the risks we have to keep in mind in our daily work and see that the work of our design teams (both at the local level and at the consortium level) take this into account. The good spirit at the Design Conference and the active involvement of partners in the follow-up gives ground for optimism.

Follow-up steps to be expected soon …

Acknowledgements. This work is supported by the European Commission under the FP7 project LAYERS (no. 318209), http://www.learning-layers.eu.