Learning Layers – What are we achieving with our fieldwork of Year 1 (Part 1: Overview)
In my previous post I looked back at my blogging on the Learning Layers (LL) project during its first year of activities. I explained how the most recent weeks have been characterised by reporting and preparation for the Year 1 review. I also made the claim that our fieldwork has progressed from a transition phase (August/September) and made clear steps forward. Now it is time to have a closer look at what has happened and why I give it such an importance.
However, before we go into details, it is worthwhile to clarify on what basis I am making these comments and what status I assume them to have.
Firstly, I do not try to give an overall picture of the LL project as a whole – and not even on the work in the construction sector. During the recent months I have been mainly involved in the cooperation with Bau ABC (with focus on LL Design team Sharing Turbine and its prototype Rapid Turbine). Thus, I have not been able to follow parallel developments as thoroughly.
Secondly, my role has varied in different activities – sometimes I have been in charge of the interpretation but most often I have been the one to make notes and reports. Thus, I have had to keep an eye on the whole process and the details as well.
Thirdly, I am not trying to write these comments only from the perspective of ITB but looking at the fieldwork as our joint effort – the research & development partners, technical support partners and application partners working together.
I formulated deliberately my question as follows: “What are we achieving with our fieldwork of Year 1?” I didn’t ask: “What have we achieved …? What is the great difference ? Does it really matter, how the question is posed. To me and to us it does. The latter question draws attention to the results but leaves aside the process, how they have been achieved. The question that I have raised draws attention to the process and results as preconditions for each other. In this respect, what we see as results now, may not be the whole truth of the achievements, if the process has more potential and is only becoming mature.
Finally, I do not wish to give a list of separate achievements or indicators of improvement. Instead, I try to give a picture of (initially) separate initiatives and activities that are growing together as mutually supporting processes. Moreover, I want to give a picture of growing user engagement. Here we can give examples of the empowerment of trainers as contributors to participative processes – as dialogue partners in design sessions and as peer learners and peer tutors in training activities. And finally, what we have been seeing in the recent phases, is the growing interest to involve others once the activities are getting consolidated.
In the next blog articles of this series I will focus on the following activities and demonstrate, how they exemplify the process dynamics that I have outlined above:
a) The developments in the work of the LL design team Sharing Turbine and in the work with the Y1 prototype Rapid Turbine (see the next blog post – Part 2);
b) The developments in the training activities – progress from singular initiatives towards a coherent and scalable training concept (see the following post – Part 3.
I stop my introductory remarks here and try to get to the two above promised blog articles without further delay.
To be continued …
Acknowledgements. This work is supported by the European Commission under the FP7 project LAYERS (no. 318209), http://www.learning-layers.eu.
