A number of years ago I did a couple of studies, funded by the European Commission on the use of technology for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). SMEs are defined by the European Commission as those employing less than 350 employees. My overall conclusions were that whilst few enterprises were using Virtual Learning Environments or indeed any other formal e-learning platforms or technologies for learning this did not mean that learning was not happening. Instead many employees used computers everyday for informal learning. Learning was motivated by the need to solve problems in the workplace or surprisingly often by curiosity and interest.

The technologies employed varied but they included Google, Bulletin Boards and email. Ask-a-friend was a common pedagogic strategy.

Now several years on, the European Commission’s Research Programme on information technologies has launched another call for projects designed to crack the perceived issue of the lack of use of Technology Enhanced Learning in SMEs.

And they still haven’t got it. They seem to have an assumption that there are hard to reach sectors or that the technology just isn’t good enough. Or, often is cited, the lack of access to hardware and connectivity.

Of course, since I did my orginal study, there has been considerable changes in technology. The biggest is probably the widespread use of mobiles, (handys, GSM, cells), many of them internet enabled.

But talking to employers this week I don’t see many changes in how the internet is being used for learning. There is one big change though. The employers I have spoken to are aware that computers can facilitate learning and knowledge exchange and support those processes. Back before few employers even knew their employees were involved in learning (mind, many of the employees also didn’t call it learning!).

but the learning processes remain informal. Human communication is most valued, albeit technology mediated. There remains little take up of formal e-learning programmes.

There does seem to be an increasing awareness of the need to link learning and information and knowledge management processes. There is also intense interest in the ability of new technologies to be utlisied at or near the work process and to support the development of what I call work process knowledge or developmental competence.

The concept of Work Process Knowledge emphasises the relevance of practice in the workplace and is related to concepts of competence and qualification that stress the idea that learning processes not only include cognitive, but also affective, personal and social factors. They include the relevance of such non-cognitive and affective-social factors for the acquisition and use of work process knowledge in practical action. Work often takes place, and is carried out, in different circumstances and contexts. Therefore, it is necessary for the individual to acquire and demonstrate a certain capacity to reflect and act on the task (system) and the wider work environment in order to adapt, act and shape it. Such competence is captured in the notion of “developmental competence” (Ellstroem PE, 1997) and includes ‘the idea of social shaping of work and technology as a principle of vocational education and training’ (Heidegger, G., Rauner F., 1997). Work process knowledge embraces ‘developmental competence’, the developmental perspective emphasising that individuals have the capacity to reflect and act upon the environment and thereby forming or shaping it. In using technologies to develop such work process knowledge, individuals are also shaping or appropriating technologies, often developed or designed for different purposes, for social learning.

it seems to me that if we really want to introduce Technology Enhanced Learning in the workplace (and especially in SMEs) we have to find ways of supporting the development of work process knowledge and developmental competence. The problem is that most formal elearning programmes are tied to very traditional notions of competences, which are often only loosely connected to practice. This is one of the reasons I like the idea of rhizomatic knowledge, as put forward by Dave Cormier and currently being discussed on the #Change11 MOOC. Rhizomatic knowledge in the sense of work process knowledge is  generated by practice in communities and technology can be used to scaffold the development of developmental competence through practice (incidentally I think this overcomes many of the objections to the idea of rhizomatic knowledge as discussed on Dave’s blog).

The ever provocative Donald Clarke has posted an interesting article – E-Portfolios – 7 reasons why I don’t want my life in a shoebox. It has sparked off a lively debate with Simon Grant wading in to defend E-Portfolios.

Clarke makes two key points in his argument. The first regards lifelong learning:

People do not see themselves as ‘learners’, let alone ‘lifelong learners’. It’s a conceit, as only educators see people as learners. Imagine asking an employer – how many learners do you have? People are individuals, fathers, mothers, employees, lawyers, bus drivers, whatever….but certainly not learners. That’s why an e-portfolio, tainted with ‘schooling’ will not catch on. By and large, most adults see school as something they leave behind and do not drag along with them into adulthood.

Of course he is right, but there are two ways to look at the idea of lifelong learning. And I do not think this new paradigm of the lifelong learner is a conceit of educators but rather is a policy directive. In a fast changing economy and a period of rapid changes in technology and working practices the drive of such policies is to say that we should all be involved in learning for all of our lifetimes to ensure we are employable and have up to date skills and knowledge etc. etc. This is part of a longer term debate over who pays for education and whose responsibility is it for maintaining our ability to find jobs. In this scenario, unemployed people only have themselves to blame for having no job. If they had maintained their skills they would now be able to find employment. It is indeed a conceit – or rather a deceit – but one which is ideological in intent. But of course educators are being coerced to make this happen.

But there is a second way to look at the idea of lifelong learning. We all learn to a greater or lesser extent every day. Not from the schooling system but through work and play, through informal learning. Of course we do not recognise that as learning and often would not identify ourselves as learners. And then the issue is how that learning can be recognised societally. Not through ‘my life in a shoebox’ but precisely my life outside the shoebox of formal certification and records of achievement.

And coming back to Donald’s shoebox – is this anything new? Prior to e-Portfolios, we all kept bundles of certificates and formal qualifications – indeed often in a shoebox. e-Portfolios have the potential to free us from such restrictions and such narrow ways of looking at learning.

But I agree with Donald when he says:

Media are linked on the web and cannot be easily stored in a single entity or within a single entity, so the boundaries of a real e-portfolio are difficult to define, and will change. An e-portfolio would have to cope with my social networks but they are proprietary. Information wants to be free fiscally and ontologically. We want to be part of all sorts of expansive and variously porous networks, not boxed in.

E-portfolio systems – as they have been conceived – have often been proprietary – despite Simon Grant’s and others’ best efforts to promote interoperability standards. Even that is not the main problem. The main issue is that our digital identity and thus the story of  our personal achievement is scattered across the web. E-portfolios have firstly tended to overly value (and prescribe) formal learning and achievement and secondly have failed to allow us to present our digital presence and life stories in any meaningful way.

Then arises the issue of whether all the effort (and money) expended on e-portfolios has been wasted. On the whole I think not. e-Portfolios is merely a term which was used to encompass the research and development of new forms of technology beyond the VLE – what we now often call Personal Learning Networks or Personal Learning Environments. Perhaps the term e-portfolio is no longer relevant. But that work maintains its coherence and validity. That we have moved on from earlier developments is unsurprising. The use of computers in business and entertainment and for all kinds of other uses is hardly a slow moving field. We cannot expect the use of technology for learning to be any different.

There is one part of Donald’s article with which I would disagree. He talks of a ‘recruitment myth’ saying:

I spent a lot of time recruiting people and what I needed wasn’t huge, overflowing e-portfolios, but succinct descriptions and proof of competences. If by e-portfolio you mean and expanded CV with links to your blog and whatever else you have online, fine. But life is too short to consider the portfolios of hundreds of applicants. Less is more.

In my experience employers are precisely wanting to move away form formal competences to learn what people can do. One Romanian CEO in an advertising company told me he would not employ anyone who did not have an active web presence. Many employers – especially in small enterprises – just Google someone to find out more about them. So yes, I do think we need an application which allows us easily to create an expanded (digital) CV with links to whatever we have online. We do not really have such an application at the moment. If this is to be called an e-portfolio or something else does not matter.

Finally I think Donald disproves his own point when he says:

I can see their use in limited domains, such as courses and apprenticeships, but not in general use, like identity cards.

It seems to me Donald’s “limited domains” are pretty broad. Of course the use of any software, educational or otherwise, is contextual. Contextual in place and time and contextual in terms of why and how we use it. And those are some of the main issues for those wishing to explore the future of e-portfolios or whatever else we call them!

I have been doing some thinking recently on the use of technology for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Or rather the lack of it. Some six or seven years ago we did a project on this finding that although there was much use of technology for informal learning, there was very little awareness, take up or implementation of elearning systems in SMEs (the book of the project is available on our publications page).
Since then there has been considerable public expenditure in Europe encouraging the enhanced use of technology for learning. Small and Medium Enterprises are seen as a key sector for creating employment and for innovation. Training and Continuing Professional Development are critical to innovation and the growth of SMEs. SMEs do not provide sufficient training because they cannot spare the time for staff to attend external training programmes and because internal training is too expensive. Therefore use elearning – so goes the logic. But the logic is clearly flawed. SMEs have not rushed to embrace the possibilities of elearning, despite pubic subventions. So what are the barriers and constraints. The following list is based on a series of meetings and consultation albeit in the somewhat specialist field of careers guidance, which, in England, is organised through private careers companies under contracts with local and national government. Indeed, one of the problems, I think, is that we have tended to treat SMEs as a homogeneous entity, whilst, in reality, the possibilities and approach in different sectors varies greatly and there is also big differences between an SME of 250 workers (the EU says an SME is any organisation employing less than 300 staff) and small enterprises with say 8 or ten staff.

1. Lack of resources. Lack of formal based learning courses or resources. Most training programmes and Continuing Professional Development opportunities are face to face. This may reflect culture, lack of awareness of potential of e-learning and lack of technically proficient specialists to develop e-learning resources, plus of course the cost of producing high quality learning materials.
2. Poor infrastructure. Many careers companies have a poor network infrastructure and are using out of date computers with even more out of date web browsers etc. Furthermore many of companies have set up heavy firewalls preventing access to social networking sites.
3. Lack of competence or confidence in use of computers by some careers advisers. May be some reluctance by staff to become involved in elearning.
4. Lack of awareness by senior managers and staff development officers of potential of elearning. Lack of local champions for change
5. Despite all these problems and barriers, most careers advisers use computers as part of their everyday job. There are requirements to use networked systems for record keeping. In addition many use the computers for informal learning and especially for browsing for resources, also using the computer in direct work with clients. However such activity is not viewed by managers as ‘learning’ neither is it accredited.
6. Lack of time. It is difficult to persuade managers to provide time for informal (or formal) online learning, especially given present financial climate. Many do appear to use computer for work purposes at home and in their own time.
7. Cost. Many online resources are expensive and at present careers services are under heavy financial pressure. Is also worth noting that practices of companies in paying for online access by say mobile phone varies greatly. Staff may be unwilling to use mobile devices if are expected to pay themselves.
8. Confidentiality. Much of the work is confidential. This may mitigate against the use of open social software networks.
9. Organisational structures. Careers companies have to bid for contracts and may be unwilling to share learning opportunities or resources with other companies who may be perceived as competitors.
10. Lack of functionality to share informal learning. Are only limited networks and community applications for sharing learning. there are some signs this may be changing but most learning is hared and disseminated face to face or by email.
11. Much of the work of careers advisers take place outside the office. Access to resources including internet may be limited.

These barriers could be categorised as social, pedagogical, organsiational and technological. In reality the different categories probably reinforce each other and overlap. But each area needs to be addressed if progress is to be made.

I would be interested in other opinions as to barriers in developing elearning in SMEs – in this or other sectors

I am ever more interested in how we can use technologies for knowledge development and sharing. In terms of research I think we need to bring together ideas and insights from different academic and research communities. Although there has been a traditional of discourse between those working in education and technology developers, this is less so when it comes to ideas about organisational learning and different forms of knowledge.

I have just read an interesting paper by Bengt-Ake Lundvall, Palle Rasmussen and Edward Lorenz on ‘Education in the Learning Economy: a European Perspective’. Let me first say I have always been sceptical about such terms as ‘learning economy’ and ‘knowledge economy ‘which seem to be too often bandied about as a mantra, rather than with any exact meaning. But I would agree with the authors observation that knowledge is becoming obsolete more rapidly than before so that employees have to learn and acquire new competencies. the authors say “It makes a major difference whether economic growth is seen as being fuelled by investments in codified scientific and technological knowledge, or whether it is seen as being driven by learning processes resulting in a combination of codified and tacit knowledge.”

International comparisons tend to focus on the first measure,. looking, for example at expenditure on research and development (R&D) and at the number of science and technology graduates. The latter perspective – captured by the term the learning economy –they say,  “can be seen in work focusing on the way informal networking relations, practical problem-solving on the job, and investments in lifelong learning contribute to competence building.”

At the heart of their argument is the nature of different forms of knowledge. They propose “a taxonomy of knowledge where it is divided into four categories (Lundvall & Johnson, 1994):

Know-what refers to knowledge about ‘facts’. Here, knowledge is close to what is normally called information – it can be broken down into bits and communicated as data.

Know-why refers to knowledge about causality nature, in the human mind and in society. This kind of knowledge is important for technological development in science-based industries.

Know-how refers to the ability to do something. It may be related to the skills of artisans and workers. But actually it plays a role in all economic activities, including science and management.

Know-who involves information about who knows what and who knows what to do as well as the social ability to cooperate and communicate with different kinds of people and experts.

Lundvall, Rasmussen and Edward Lorenz point to important differences in the degree to which these four categories of knowledge can be codified and in how education systems are affected by the degree of codification. the main point of their paper is to look at how traditional schoolings systems have become isolated from society and how the organisation into subjects and disciplines fails to maestro the needs of how we are developing and using knowledge. they also point to dramatic difference sin work organisation and opportunities for work based learning in different countries in Europe concluding that “Educational principles and cultures focusing on collaboration, interdisciplinarity and engagement with real-life problems are needed to prepare people for flexible and innovative participation in the economy and society.”

They do not deal with the issues of how we are using technology for learning  and knowledge development although they acknowledge that “data bases can bring together know-what in a more or less user friendly form”. Interestingly they piontyt0 to “the failure of IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard to develop management information systems that could substitute for ‘the art of managing’ ” despite considerable investment and incentives to do so,
Traditional, Technology Enhanced Learning has focused on the know what and know-why. There has been little attention on the know how. yet it is this form of knowledge which is perhaps the most important within many enterprises and is changing most rapidly.  True, we have access to increasing numbers of know-how videos. yet we have possibly failed to develop pedagogical and learning approaches to how to use video and audio in an active sense. We tend to use it in the old English pedagogic sense of ‘watching Nellie’ rather than in any thought through way. and even though the web allows us to find people, their is only limited linkages to knowing who does what well, and even less to “the social ability to cooperate and communicate with different kinds of people and experts.”

Can social networking fill such a gap? Once more my feeling is that it can, but only to a limited extent. Social networki9ng allows us to tell what we are doing and what we are thinking. recommender systems allow the development of patterns. Yet they lack the idea of purpose and intent.

There are many instances of exchange of knowledge through different platforms in communities of practice. equally companies like CISCO or IBM have set up platforms to promote the process of turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge though for example podcasts and other companies such as Shell-BP have established extensive wikis for the same purpose. However these initiatives fail to ‘scale=down’ for use in smaller enterprises. One of the issues may be that of fragmentary knowledge and the difficulty of how we can scaffold fragments of knowledge gained through practice – or know how = into wider knowledge bases, which necessarily have to build on purpose and context.

Furthermore, looking at practice in smaller enterprises, the nature of collaboration and social exchange becomes critical, Lundvall, Rasmussen and Lorenz cite the work of Marshall (1923), “who was concerned to explain the real-world phenomenon of industrial districts, (and) emphasised the local character of knowledge. He found that specific specialised industries were concentrated in certain regions and that such industrial districts remained competitive for long historical periods.”

So another issue is how to support that local character of knowledge – and indeed to rethink what local might mean in a connected world.

(More to come in a later post)

Here is the other part of the paper on the future of learning environments which I serialised on this web site last week. In truth it is the section I am least happy with. My point is that young people (and not just young people) are using social software and Web 2.0 technologies for work, play and learning outside institutions. Furthermore the pedagogic approaches to such (self-directed) learning are very different than the pedagogic approaches generally adopted in schools and educational institutions. Social networking is increasingly being used to support informal learning in work. The issue is how to show this. there are a wealth of studies and reports – which ones should I cite. And I am aware that there is a danger of just choosing reports which back up my own ideas. Anyway, as always, your comments are very welcome.

Web 2.0 and Bricolage

Web 2.0 applications and social software mark a change in our use of computers from consumption to creation. A series of studies and reports have provided rich evidence of the ways young people are using technology and the internet for socialising, communicating and for learning. Young people are increasingly using technology for creating and sharing multi media objects and for social networking. A Pew Research study (Lenhart and Madden, 2005) found that 56 per cent of young people in America were using computers for ‘creative activities, writing and posting of the internet, mixing and constructing multimedia and developing their own content. Twelve to 17-year-olds look to web tools to share what they think and do online. One in five who use the net said they used other people’s images, audio or text to help make their own creations. According to Raine (BBC, 2005), “These teens were born into a digital world where they expect to be able to create, consume, remix, and share material with each other and lots of strangers.”

Such a process of creation, remixing and sharing is similar to Levi Struass’s idea of bricolage as a functioning of the logic of the concrete. In their book ‘Introducing Levi Strauus and Structural Anthropology’, Boris Wiseman and Judy Groves explains the work of the bricoleur:

“Unlike the engineer who creates specialised tools and materials for each new project that he embarks upon, the bricoleur work with materials that are always second hand.

In as much as he must make do with whatever is at hand, an element of chance always enters into the work of the bricoleur……

The bricoleur is in possession of a stock of objects (a “treasure”). These possess “meaning” in as much as they are bound together by a set of possible relationships, one of which is concretized by the bricoleur’s choice”.

Young people today are collecting their treasure to make their own meanings of objects they discover on the web. In contrast our education systems are based on specialised tools and materials.

Social networking

It is not only young people who are using social networks for communication, content sharing and learning. A further survey by Pew Internet (Lenhart, 2009) on adults use of social networking sites found:

• 79% of American adults used the internet in 2009, up from 67% in Feb. 2005
• 46% of online American adults 18 and older use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 8% in February 2005.
• 65% of teens 12-17 use online social networks as of Feb 2008, up from 58% in 2007 and 55% in 2006.
• As of August 2009, Facebook was the most popular online social network for American adults 18 and older.
• 10-12% are on “other” sites like Bebo, Last.FM, Digg, Blackplanet, Orkut, Hi5 and Match.com?

Lest this be thought to be a north American phenomena, Ewan McIntosh (2008) has provided a summary of a series of studies undertaken in the UK (Ofcom Social Networking Research, the Oxford Internet Institute’s Internet Surveys, Ofcom Media Literacy Audit).

The main use of the internet by young people, by far, is for learning: 57% use the net for homework, saying it provides more information than books. 15% use it for learning that is not ’school’. 40% use it to stay in touch with friends, 9% for entertainment such as YouTube.

Most users of the net are using it at home (94%), then at work (34%), another persons house (30%) or at school (16%). Only 12% use public libraries and 9% internet cafés. Most people’s first exposure to the web is at home.

A further survey into the use of technology for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises found few instances of the use of formal educational technologies (Attwell, 2007). But the study found the widespread everyday use of internet technologies for informal learning, utilizing a wide range of business and social software applications. This finding is confirmed by a recent study on the adoption of social networking in the workplace and Enterprise 2.0 (Oliver Young G, 2009). The study found almost two-thirds of those responding (65%) said that social networks had increased either their efficiency at work, or the efficiency of their colleagues. 63% of respondents who said that using them had enabled them to do something that they hadn’t been able to do before. The survey of based on 2500 interviews in five European countries found the following percentage of respondents reported adoption of social networks in the workplace:

• Germany – 72%
• Netherlands – 67%
• Belgium – 65%
• France – 62%
• UK – 59%

Of course such studies beg the question of the nature and purpose of the use of social software in the workplace. The findings of the ICT and SME project, which was based on 106 case studies in six European countries (Attwell, 2007) focused on the use of technologies for informal learning. The study suggested that although social software was used for information seeking and for social and communication purposes it was also being widely used for informal learning. In such a context:

• Learning takes place in response to problems or issues or is driven by the interests of the learner
• Learning is sequenced by the learner
• Learning is episodic
• Learning is controlled by the learner in terms of pace and time
• Learning is heavily contextual in terms of time, place and use
• Learning is cross disciplinary or cross subject
• Learning is interactive with practice
• Learning builds on often idiosyncratic and personal knowledge bases
• Learning takes place in communities of practice

It is also worth considering the growing use of mobile devices. A recent Pew Internet survey (Lenhart et al, 2010) found that of the 75% of teens who own cell phones in the USA, 87% use text messaging at least occasionally. Among those texters:

• Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month.
• 15% of teens who are texters send more than 200 texts a day, or more than 6,000 texts a month.
• Boys typically send and receive 30 texts a day; girls typically send and receive 80 messages per day.
• Teen texters ages 12-13 typically send and receive 20 texts a day.
• 14-17 year-old texters typically send and receive 60 text messages a day.
• Older girls who text are the most active, with 14-17 year-old girls typically sending 100 or more messages a day or more than 3,000 texts a month
• However, while many teens are avid texters, a substantial minority are not. One-fifth of teen texters (22%) send and receive just 1-10 texts a day or 30-300 a month.

Once more, of those who owned mobile phones:

• 83% use their phones to take pictures.
• 64% share pictures with others.
• 60% play music on their phones.
• 46% play games on their phones.
• 32% exchange videos on their phones.
• 31% exchange instant messages on their phones.
• 27% go online for general purposes on their phones.
• 23% access social network sites on their phones.
• 21% use email on their phones.
• 11% purchase things via their phones.

It is not just the material and functional character of the technologies which is important but the potential of the use of mobile devices to contribute to a new “participatory culture” (Jenkins at al). Jenkins at al define such a culture as one “with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices… Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways.”

Thus we can see the ways in which technology and the internet is being used for constructing knowledge and meaning through bricolage and through developing and sharing content. This takes place through extended social networks which both serve for staying in touch with friends but also for seeking information and for learning in a participatory culture.

Much of our work in Pontydysgu involves trying to support the learning and knowledge development needs of others – individuals and organisations. So it was interesting when I was asked what were our learning needs. This is what I wrote:

Pontydysgu is an SME, based in Wales, UK.
It employees one full time worker, one intern student and four part time workers. Pontydysgu is a research and development company, working in the field of information and technology communications for knowledge development and sharing and education and learning.
Staff are distributed, with three of the workers mainly based n Wales and three in Bremen, Germany. Although the organisation has two offices, in Pontypridd and Bremen, most staff work from home and are heavily reliant on computer based technologies for coordination and communication.
Most of the work of the organisation is project based, with projects varying in length between three months and four years. Clients include both the private and public sector, with a number of projects sponsored by the European Commission. The projects involve a considerable amount of traveling and at any one time, half of the staff may be away from the offices.
Pontydysgu is a knowledge based organisation and the work involves continuos learning in multiple disciplinary based fields. Excepting the Intern student all of the staff are qualified to degree level.
Learning is informal and on-the-job and may take as high as 33 per cent of work time. This process is not unproblematic. There are issues as to how to coordinate learning, how to support what is essentially peer based learning and how to develop a shared organisational knowledge base. Whilst staff are highly motivated in self learning, there is an issue as to how best to balance individual learning interests with organisational learning needs.
Formal courses are generally seen as too inflexible to meet learning needs. Accreditation is not required by the company, but the development and use of a portfolio would allow individual learning to become more transparent than it is at present and allow for potential transfer in future employment.
The organisation has invested in mobile devices and all employees have an iPod touch. However the use of such devices is largely  up to individual staff. The organisation is presently looking at the use of advanced smartphones to improve communication and learning.

In December I wrote about a workshop I had attended at the Alpine-Rendezvous event organised by the European Stellar Network. The workshop: on ‘Technology-enhanced learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformation’ was organised by Norbert Pachler, the convenor of the London Mobile Learning Group (LMLG), housed at the Centre for Excellence in Work-based Learning for Educational Professionals at the Institute of Education, London.

The LMLG comprises an international, interdisciplinary group of researchers from the fields of educational, media and cultural studies, social semiotics and educational technology. The aim of the workshop was to augment the work of the LMLG, in particular around its socio-cultural ecology, and to extend the interdisciplinary nature of its work through exposure to perspectives advanced by (TEL) researchers in cognate fields from across Europe and the US, in particular in relation to design-based approaches.

This blog is an edited verion of Norbert’s report on the workshop. The full report will be published as part of proceedings of the workshop will be published as a Special Issue of the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning in 2010 guest edited by Norbert Pachler.

For me, one of the most interesting points about the recent debate around Open education is the exploration of the links between theory and practice. I have been long frustrated by the paucity of theory in the area of Technology Enhanced Education. and it is apparent that if we are to develop a convincing body of theory which can properly inform and reflect practice, it is necessary to engage in a multi-disciplinary discourse with researchers and practitioners coming from different fields of study and action.

The workshop in Garmisch comprised of an attempt at developing such a discourse and whilst the findings may represent only our early efforts to understand each other, I valued the opportunity to take part in such a discussion.

Norbert says:

“The LMLG sees learning using mobile devices governed by a triangular relationship between socio-cultural structures, cultural practices and the agency of media users / learners, represented in the three domains. The interrelationship of these three components: agency, the user’s capacity to act on the world, cultural practices, the routines users engage in their everyday lives, and the socio-cultural and technological structures that govern their being in the world, we see as an ecology, which in turn manifests itself in the form of an emerging cultural transformation. Another significant trend, which requires pedagogical responses, is the prevalence of what we call ‘user-generated contexts’. We are currently witnessing a significant shift away from traditional forms of mass communication and editorial push towards user-generated content and individualised communication contexts. These structural changes to mass communication also affect the agency of the user and their relationship with traditional and new media. Indeed, the LMLG argues that users are now actively engaged in shaping their own forms of individualised generation of contexts for learning through individualised communication contexts. New relationships between context and production are emerging in that mobile devices not only enable the production of content but also of contexts. They position the user in new relationships with space, i.e. the outer world, and place, i.e. social space. Mobile devices enable and foster the broadening and breaking up of genres. Citizens become content producers who are part of an explosion of activity in the area of user-generated content. What are the implications for education?

The workshop inter alia sought to explore the following questions and issues:

• Learning as a process of meaning-making for the LMLG occurs through acts of communication, which take place within rapidly changing socio-cultural, mass communication and technological structures. Does the notion of learner-generated cultural resources represent a sustainable paradigm shift for formal education in which learning is viewed in categories of context and not content? What are the issues in terms of ‘text’ production in terms of modes of representation, (re)contextualisation and conceptions of literacy? Who decides/redefines what it means to have coherence in contemporary interaction?
• What synergies are there between the socio-cultural ecological approach to mobile learning, which the LMLG developed (see Pachler, Bachmair and Cook, 2010), with paradigms put forward by different (TEL) research communities in Europe and beyond?
• What relationship is there between user-generated content, user-generated contexts and learning? How can educational institutions cope with the more informal communicative approaches to digital interactions that new generations of learners possess?
• What pedagogical parameters are there in response to the significant transformation of society, culture and education currently taking place alongside technological innovation?

Position papers and questions for discussion were made available in advance of the workshop on Google Groups as well as Cloudworks. During the workshop contributors’ presentations were added and participants in Garmisch and beyond contributed to the discussion on Cloudworks as well as on Twitter.

Key messages from the workshop:

The mixture of theory and practice was felt to have worked well and to have been fruitful particularly in view of a potential chasm developing between the research community and the policy and practitioner communities in the field of mobile learning.

The workshop underlined the importance of definitional clarity around key terminology, particular in the context of interdisciplinary work in an international context.

Mobile learning, the main focus of the workshop, can be seen to deal with complex issues, which benefit from an interdisciplinary approach. Despite interdisciplinarity adding complexity and this complexity needing to be managed sensitively, there exists a need for greater richness in the conceptual foundations of mobile learning; there is arguably a need to challenge the hegemony of education, psychology and computer science as the foundational disciplines of the mobile learning research community.

Some topics, such as sustainability, have proved to be multi-layered and the concurrent discussion of different layers during the workshopprovided fruitful insights into possible different framings of each given topic and issue.

The workshop showed that the key theoretical framework used at the event for illuminating the use of mobile learning – the LMLG’s socio-cultural approach – has provided a useful lens and a shared vocabulary for analysis. At the same time it transpired that, in relation to some topics such as work-based learning, more work is required to align it and its theoretical underpinnings with established discourses in certain areas, such as WBL. Work-based mobile learning has to be embedded in the work-processes and current practices and not be designed as an extra layer. Structure in WBML is not only related to media platforms but also to organisational structures and focusing only on the first issue would be too narrow. Power-relationships are a central construct to be considered in WBML. And, the fact that businesses are orientated towards a productivity paradigm, rather than towards a learning paradigm, poses a particular challenge for WBML. A key question appears to be to what extent practices around mobile devices influence work-life balance.

The discussion around user-generated contexts demonstrated the complexity of the notion of context and how its different understandings are rooted in divers epistemological and ontological traditions.

The discussions around augmented reality brought to the fore a number of issues in particular around retention, perception and coherence as well as filtering and the need for criticality on the part of the user.

With respect to augmented contexts for development, the question arose whether Vygotskyan notions of perception / attention / temporality are a way forward and how these notions link in concrete terms to more academic / traditional views of ‘literacy’. And, what are the implications of for the emerging field of mobile augmented reality? Is it possible to replace the more capable peer in the zone of proximal development?

Synergies with design-based research were generally seen to offer considerable potential for the work of the LMLG and beyond. In particular, there emerged a strong sense of potential around the bringing together of a hermeneutic and critical historical approach to planning and analysis of teaching and learning, i.e. critical didactic, with the experimental, empirical evaluative approach offered by design research.

In terms of sustainability, the workshop concluded that much more still needs to be done in terms of understanding the complexity of the notion of sustainability. The discussion showed that there exists an important, and currently under-explored, ethical context to mobile learning, that is the context in which we connect with learners, composed in part of challenges such as sustainability, scalability (or transferability or replication), equity, inclusion, opportunity, embedding. It relates to a concern for the role of mobile learning for addressing forms of deprivation and disadvantage and informing the relevant policy environment.

Overall it can be noted that the discussions during the two days reiterated the need for a paradigm change in education to enable young people to deal with the implications of ongoing transformations.”

References:

Pachler, N., Bachmair, B. and Cook, J. (2010) Mobile learning: structures, agency, practices. New York: Springer

The Open Education debate is continuing – see contributions by George Siemens, Dave Wiley, Frances Bell, Jim Groom and Stephen Downes.

But I still feel the debate is to narrow and too focused on Open Educational Resources. Don’t get me wrong – I am delighted at the way in which OERs have entered the mainstream of teaching and learning activities. But Dave Wiley, in an excellent paper entitled ‘Open for learning: the CMS and the Open Learning Network‘ and co-written with Jon Mott, explains the failure of Technology Enhanced Education as being due to the way technology has been used to maintain existing practices:

“by perpetuating the Industrial Era-inspired, assembly line notion that the semester-bound course is the naturally appropriate unit of instruction (Reigeluth, 1999).”

The paper quotes Herrington, Reeves, and Oliver (2005) who argue that course management software leads universities to “think they are in the information industry”. In contrast to”the authentic learning environments prompted by advances in cognitive and constructivist learning theories”:

“the industrial, course management model has its center of gravity in teachers generating content, teachers gathering resources, teachers grouping and sequencing information, and teachers giving the information to students.”

Yet the moves to Open Education through Open Education Resources have perpetuated that model. Yes, open educational resources are a good thing in empowering and assisting teachers, yet they remain wedded to the idea of teachers gathering resources, grouping and sequencing information and giving the information to students.

Of course there have been attempts to advance Open Education beyond OERs through opening up courses to non registered students. Dave Wiley himself has run courses on Open Education, George Siemens and Stephen Downes have for the last two years run Open Online courses on Connectivism.

Essentially these courses aim at opening up Higher Education to all those who wish to participate. And indeed the idea of increasing participation in higher education is not limited to the educational technologists. In many countries there has been a long tradition of what in the UK is called Adult Education, run buy a variety of organisations such as the Workers Education Association and sometimes receiving state funding. In the UK, government policy has been to increase the proportion of young people attending university (although this policy seems to have broken down in the present financial crisis).Yet all these initiatives appear to have ignored the issue of class. According to an analysis in the UK comparing achievement in examination results to those receiving free school meals (due to low family incomes), the percentage of pupils getting free meals who achieved the equivalent of five or more A* to Cs was 49% in 2009. For those who did not get free meals, the result was 73%. Another report in the Guardian revealed that:

“children from the richest 2% of all households, are more than four and a half times more likely to study at high-ranking universities such as Bristol and Warwick than children from average neighbourhoods. They are twice as likely as the average child in Britain to go to university at all…..By contrast, children from the poorest 25% of households, typically living in terrace homes or flats, make up less than 6.3% of the student population of these universities.”

The Milburn report, Unleashing Aspiration, recently highlighted that many top jobs are dominated by privately educated people. Although they form only 7% of the population, they account for 75% of judges, 70% of finance directors, 45% of top civil servants and 32% of MPs.

Thus policy attempts to open up higher education to wider social groups have basically failed. And any bottom up approach to Open Education needs to take such failures into account and consider what the aim of such a campaign is. In that light, I understand George Siemens’ frustrations with the prersent movement when he says:

“We need some good ol’ radicals in open education. You know, the types that have a vision and an ideological orientation that defies the pragmatics of reality. Stubborn, irritating, aggravating visionaries.”

The problem is that the existing education systems are wedded to societal structures aiming to perpetuate class differences. In a paper entitled ‘Critical and Vygotskian theories of education: a comparison’ , Willem Wadekker says:

“Transmission of objectified knowledge has displaced personality formation as the aim of education. Its primary function is to ensure the production of persons that fit into existing societal structures.”

Merely using technology to open out existing Higher Education to non registered students will not overcome existing divides of class and race. As early as 1971, Ivan Illich pointed out:

“Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education.”

In an excellent analysis, Danah Boyd points out that the digital divide is not just a question of access:

“We’re closer to universal access today than ever before, but access is not bringing us the magical utopian panacea that we all dreamed of. Henry Jenkins has rightly pointed out that we see the emergence of a “participation gap” in that people’s participation is of different quantity and quality depending on many other factors. Social media takes all of this to a new level. It’s not just a question of what you get to experience with your access, but what you get to experience with your friend group with access. In other words, if you’re friends with 24/7 always-on geeks, what you’re experiencing with social media is very different than if you’re experiencing social media in a community where your friends all spend 12+ hours a day doing a form of labor that doesn’t allow access to internet technologies.”

Boyd goes on to say:

“I’m much more concerned about how racist and classist attitudes are shaping digital media, how technology reinforces inequality, and how our habit of assuming that everyone uses social media just like we do reinforces social divisions that we prefer to ignore.”

If Open Education is to mean anything, it has to address the question of social divisions including class, gender and race. I am unconvinced this can be done from inside the existing educational institutions, although of course is will need the support of those working in those organisations. Instead I think we need to use the power of the internet to provide opportunities for education and learning outside the present system and to embed those learning activities in wider communities than the present institutions address.

Open Educational resources are a good starting point in providing free access to learning materials. But we also need to go beyond the present focus on higher level academic knowledge. My own research on the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises suggest people are using the internet for informal learning. And, contrary to expectation, whilst some of that learning was driven by need in terms of work based activities, much of it was driven by personal interest. In other words, many people are motivated to learn if they have the opportunity.

However, motivation and access to materials are not enough alone, nor for that matter is access to a Personal Learning Environment. Many learners will need support to help them overcome problems and to scaffold their learning. The idea of a Personal Learning Network is good. But once more, many learners will not have access to the people they need to support them, nor will they know where to go to get such support.

In Deschooling Society, Illich proposed using technology to overcome this problem through “learning webs.”

The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity.

Illich argued that the use of technology to create decentralized webs could support the goal of creating a ‘good educational system’:

A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.

Illich’s idea of a good educational system could be the basis for a truly radical movement for Open Education

In general I don’t like Christmas. Difficult travel, rampant consumerism, enforced jollity and all that kind of thing. But there is one thing I like about it and that is the peace away form day to day meetings to try and think and write a little. In this case I have an overdue short paper to deliver for the MatureIP project looking at teh work of Vygotsky and what we can learn from his work for knowledge maturing processes and for Personal Learning Environments.
Needless to say, I have not finished it yet and the more I read the more confused I seem to get.
The approach Vygotsky took to cognitive development is sociocultural, working on the assumption that ‘action is mediated and cannot be separated from the milieu in which it is carried out’ (Wertsch, 1991:18).Vygotsky considered that “higher mental functions are, by definition, culturally mediated.” Social processes give rise to individual processes and both are essentially mediated by artefacts.
Furthermore Vygotsky held that “environment cannot be regarded as a static entity and one which is peripheral in relation co development, but must be seen as changeable and dynamic.” The social cultural approach to learning has been extended through Activity Theory and I find that interesting in the context of comparing formal education and the use of tools compared to informal learning in social networks. Within an activity system tools or instruments – including technologies – are considered to be mediating elements.

First lets look at formal education. Formal education systems are heavily rule bound, with rule determining both the contents and usually the process of learning. The divisions of labour are strongly defined, especially with regard to the roles of managers and teachers within teh system. the community is that of the institution, which once more is heavily prescriptive regarding tools and objects with outcomes frequently being seen as formal acquisition of qualifications. In this subject – or learner – situation the selection of the tools which mediate the learning. Indeed in this activity system the selection of tools is intended more to preserve the rules and the division of labour and to contain the outcomes, than it is to support learning per se.

Then lets compare that with the use of social software for learning in the workplace. Firstly the division of labour is very different and more likely to be influenced by work place divisions than that of teachers. In this respect if the object is knowledge acquisition the outcomes may well be bounded by work processes, for instance through the need to solve a problem or through the introduction of new technologies or innovation in the workplace. The division of labour still remains important to the activity, especially the object, in permitting or restraining the time and the access of the subject to the tools they need to undertake the activity. However it is important to note that Vykotsky saw learning as taking place in Zones of Proximal development and to be influenced by the interventions of a Significant Other Person. This could be  a teacher, a trainer, a peer. However this process is once more mediated by instruments or tools thus meaning that significant person or persons could be supporting learning through a forum or through a Personal Learning Network.
Once more the tools will mediate the activity of learning. But here the prescription may be less in that the community itself will influence the tools and may be a broader community of learners or a community of practice, recommending tools based on a collective experience. However, rules may still apply especially through the Terms and Conditions of Service and use of any particular social software service. In the context of the tools, Vygotsky considered that all artefacts are culturally, historically and institutionally situated. “In a sense, then, there is no way not to be socioculturally situated when carrying out an action. Conversely there is no tool that is adequate to all tasks, and there is no universally appropriate form of cultural mediation. Even language, the ‘tool of tools’ is no exception to this rule”. (Cole and Wertsch).
In terms of informal learning and work based learning, the tools are less likely to be culturally bound to the institution of the school. Thus more often we may see the appropriation of cultural tools or artefacts used in wider society and repurposed for learning, than the use of explicitly ‘educational software’. But over a period of time, as the practice of the use of such tools for learning becomes culturally embedded within society, it may start to influence the selection of tools and instruments for learning within institutions framed through the rules and division of labour of the education systems.
Sorry if all this is not too clear. But I would very much welcome any feedback 🙂

Is Google running short of imagination. Not when it comes to applications – there seems to be a new product announcement almost everyday. But Google Goggles – who thought that up? Its a terrible name. But in terms of developing a work based mobile learning platform it may represent a big step forward.

Goggles is a very simple application. You merely point your Android phone at an object – a building, an object, an artefact – and it produces search results based on the image (Google say they will be porting it to other platforms in the future).

If course Goggles has not been developed for learning. Google are interested in driving more search traffic to their site and have arguably paid little attention to education in the past (witness the little attention paid to developing Google scholar). But we have noted before the way in which social software applications (as well as mobile devices) are being appropriated for learning despite their original design purpose.

Work based learning poses particular opportunities and issues and for mobile learning.  Most elearning courses are based on formal programmes of study, on a curriculum, usually designed around a particular discipline. Even vocational programmes envisage steady progression through a corpus of ideas and knowledge, albeit with practice based phases. Work based learning is predicated on occupational practice. Practice is often inter disciplinary in terms of a knowledge base and progression is dependent on the nature of the work being carried out. In other words in work based learning the context of action is king. Up to now it has proved difficult to develop elearning base don widely differing contexts of practice based action.

Mobile devices have portability to be used in workplaces where access to computers may be problematic. Goggles can allow simple gesturing to allow access to a wealth of information about the particular practice being carried out. Of course this is not enough to support learning. Learning requires reflection. But it is not difficult to envisage a simple interface allowing reflection through audio, video or text input which could then be aggregated along with the original video which sparked the reflection and the results of the Google search. The addition of keywords could allow such reflections to be added to a Personal or Organisational Learning Environment. Geotagging could also allow an extension to enhanced reality applications thus allowing interaction with other learners also encountered similar learning situations.

The object or artefact opens a Zone of Proximal Development in Vygotsky’s terminology, with ‘the significant other’ supporting learning being mediated through technology.

Workplaces could become a rich learning environment with learning opportunities embedded in artefacts and in geographical spaces. And at the sameGoogle Giggles  time informal learning, that learning which takes place everyday in relation to context, can be brought together within a formal learning base.

None of this seems unrealistic to me. Who wants to build me some apps to try it?