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CONFERENCE SERIES
www.uibk.ac.at/iup
i
up •
innsbruck university press
Series Editors: K. Habitzel, T. D. Märk, B. Stehno, S. Prock
00-Titelei_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:08 Uhr Seite 1
innsbruck university press in Conference Series
:
Series Editors: K. Habitzel, T. D. Märk, B. Stehno, S. Prock
Also available by i
up
in this series:
Contributions – 2
nd
International Conference on Proton Transfer Reaction
Mass Spectrometry and Its Applications – ISBN: 3-901249-78-8
Editors: A. Hansel, T. D. Märk
41
st
Symposium on Theoretical Chemistry – Innsbruck, Austria September 5-7, 2005
ISBN: 3-901249-80-X
Editors: Bernd M. Rode, Bernhard R. Randolf
Contributions – 15
th
Symposium on Atomic and Surface Physics and Related Topics
ISBN: 3-901249-82-6
Editors: V. Grill, T. D. Märk
00-Titelei_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:08 Uhr Seite 2
Microlearning: Emerging Concepts, Practices
and Technologies after e-Learning.
Proceedings of Microlearning 2005.
Learning & Working in New Media
Book Editors:
Theo Hug, Martin Lindner, Peter A. Bruck
00-Titelei_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:08 Uhr Seite 3
© 2006
innsbruck university press
1
st
edition
All rights reserved.
Vizerektorat für Forschung
Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Christoph-Probst-Platz, Innrain 52
A-6020 Innsbruck
www.uibk.ac.at/iup
Book editors: Theo Hug, Martin Lindner, Peter A. Bruck
Layout: Carmen Drolshagen
Produced: Fred Steiner, Rinn – Book on Demand
ISBN: 3-901249-83-4
00-Titelei_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:08 Uhr Seite 4
Table of Content
Forewords
Tilmann Märk
Media Research and Instructional Design at the University of Innsbruck.............. 1
Lynne A. Chisholm
Micro-Learning in the Lifelong Learning Context .................................................. 5
Introduction
Theo Hug
Microlearning: A New Pedagogical Challenge........................................................ 7
Peter A. Bruck
Microlearning as strategic research field: An invitation to collaborate ................ 13
Erich Neuhold, Martin Lindner
Quo Vadis, e-Learning? ........................................................................................ 19
On Microlearning
Markus F. Peschl........................................................................................................ 23
The Challenge of Triggering Profound Processes of Understanding
in Microlearning Environments.Theoretical Foundations and a
Case Study for a “Micro-learning Laboratory”
Richard Eichenauer
The complementary character of microlearning .................................................. 37
Silvia Gabrielli, Stephen Kimani, Tiziana Catarci
The Design of MicroLearning Experiences: A Research Agenda ........................ 45
Christian Swertz
Customized Learning Sequences (CLS) by Metadata .......................................... 55
Christina Schachtner
Precise and Succinct Yet Interlinked Requirements
for e-Learning in the Workplace .......................................................................... 71
Microlearning and Microknowledge in a Microcontent-based Web
Chris Langreiter, Andreas Bolka
Snips & Spaces: Managing Microlearning ............................................................ 79
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Stephan Mosel
Self Directed Learning With Personal Publishing and Microcontent.
Constructivist Approach and Insights for Institutional Implementations.............. 99
Gernot Tscherteu
The Blogosphere Map Visualising Microcontent Dissemination –
Inspired by Maria Montessori ............................................................................ 109
Roger Fischer
Microlearning with Mobile Weblogs .................................................................. 121
Junichi Azuma
Need for Web-based Metadata Repository on
Online Resources Usable for Language Teaching .............................................. 131
Projects and Practices: Learning Spaces, Mobile Learning, Microlearning
Pasi Mattila
MOOP – Mobile Learning Environment As Part of Daily School Work.............. 141
Beverley Oliver
Mobile blogging, ‘Skyping’ and podcasting: Targetting under-
graduates’ communication skills in transnational learning contexts .................. 157
Mario Po’, Luca De Marchi, Jacopo Viscuso
Multimodal Integrated System for Learning – MISL: A Health Experience ...... 163
Priyakorn Pusawiro
Just-In-Time Learning: Re-Design of Micro Learning Platform.
Toward Design Framework for a Small Group of Learners ................................ 173
Silvia Breu, Franz Lehner, Holger Nösekabel
LL2 (Learners Learn 2gether) – a P2P-based E-Learning System ...................... 185
Gariele Frankl
Designing Parts of A Puzzle – The Road To A Successful Outcome ................ 195
O Sinead Averill, Timothy Hall, Ulrich Mill
Analysing and Reporting on the Implementation of
Electronic Learning in Europe (ARIEL)................................................................ 205
Carola Salvioni
From A Young Academic Institute A Broad Minded Approach:
The Working and Learning Environment of the
ALaRI Intranet Tool (Case Study)........................................................................ 211
Table of Content
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Media Research and Instructional Design
at the University of Innsbruck
(Forword)
Tilmann Märk
University of Innsbruck (Austria)
Vice-Rector for Research
Having been asked by the organizers of this conference it is with great pleasure that
we provide this foreword for the Proceedings of the International Conference
“Microlearning2005. Learning & Working In New Media Environments”. Our special
thanks go to Prof. Peter Bruck, the head of the ARC Research Studios Austria, and
Prof. Theo Hug, Associate Professor of Educational Sciences at Leopold Franzens
University Innsbruck (LFUI) ARC Research Studio “eLearning Environments”, for
bringing this important international conference to Innsbruck. We take this as a very
positive sign for the work performed at the LFUI the past years.
The conference was organized in cooperation with our Institute of Educational
Sciences. This is only one example of the collaboration between the Austrian
Research Studios and the Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck (LFUI), which has
already generated innovative and competitive research results, which have had an
impact on the national and international scientific community. The main goal of this
collaboration is a close relationship between academic research and R&D that will lead
to the development of products and services in the field of e-technologies, smart con-
tents and new media.
The ARC Research Studio “eLearning Environments” , co-funded by the Tyrolean Future
Foundation, is an important research unit for the LFUI in terms of generating new kno-
wledge in the field of microlearning. This studio is part of a broader interdisciplinary rese-
arch effort within a network to be founded called “Innsbruck Media Studies (IMS)”.
Prof. Theo Hug was essential in initiating and coordinating this LFUI based network. This
future center of excellence has the aim to increase competences in the field of new
media at all levels at the LFUI, including our research and teaching activities.
We believe that excellent education needs to be based on excellent research, thus one
of our goals is to promote excellent research at our university. Universities worldwide
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have a leading role in new research fields, and one of it is definitely in the field of
eLearning and eScience. As the Vice Rector for Research I want to highlight some of
the developments which are presently taking place at the LFUI in this field of
eLearning and eScience.
In the last few years, at the LFUIs a number of media related research projects have
been carried out. The research subjects covered include various aspects of
• media communication,
• media aesthetics,
• media critics,
•research methods which are supported by IT,
• questions of knowledge generation,
• new learning methods in the field of information and communication technologies
as well as the design of geographical information systems,
• semantic web topics and
• quality engineering processes.
Moreover, it is interesting to note, that in summer 2004 the first ever “media day”
took place at the LFUI summarizing and presenting all of those activities taking place
in the media-related research fields. The significance and potential of the field of media
research became apparent during this meeting. A decision was made to establish an
integrated research field including a number of faculties. This new interdisciplinary
research field called “Innsbruck Media Studies (IMS)” consists of partners from 11 dif-
ferent faculties with numerous research projects. This new interdisciplinary research
field “Innsbruck Media Studies” can be divided into three main fields, that is,
• media and culture (e.g. literature and media, chat-communication, media and vio-
lence, learning cultures)
• media and society (e.g. political communication, e-tourism and e-commerce)
• media and technology (e.g. semantic web, tools for content analysis)
In addition to that, several projects in the field of media didactics and higher educati-
on are carried out (e.g. civil.law.online and civil.law.onlearn, “Basic Support for
Educational Studies and Research” (BASES)) and you can find quite a few professio-
nal LFUI based archives online (e.g. Innsbruck Newspaper Archive, Documentation of
Integration of Disabled, a huge database of historical pictures).
The IMS is focusing on the already existing strengths in the various fields, partial integration
as well as theme- and problem-oriented cooperation. The heterogeneity of the different
approaches is providing good opportunities for future oriented research performances.
2 Märk • Media Research and Instructional Design at the University of Innsbruck
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A few of the goals of the Innsbruck Media Studies are the following:
• internal and external networking of media related research
• development and promotion of promising cooperations
• positioning of the LFUI in the media- and knowledge based society
• testing of new media related applications
• acquisition of third party funds
• support of media-related developments in the teaching field (eLearning, eTeaching)
• design of new curricula, programs, degrees and didactics (and therefore improving
the occupational outlook for graduates)
To reach these goals the staff members of this network are collaborating with collea-
gues from all over the world. Among the partners and networks there are MediaWatch
– Institute for Media analysis (Innsbruck); Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI)
and it’s partners: W3C, BIT, National University of Galway, FFG, Information Society
Technologies, Tyrolean Future foundation; eTourism Competence Center Austria
(ECCA) ; EC3 – E-Commerce Competence Center, Wien; Global Media Research
Network (GMRN) ; Europaen Fund for regional development: INTERREG IIIA Austria –
Italien; International Research group “Film and Theology”; Webplattform math online:
Franz Embacher, Petra Oberhuemer (Vienna); and last but not least the Research
Studios Austria (RSA) of the ARC – Seibersdorf research GmbH, Research Studio
eLearning Environments (in cooperation with the transIT and Tyrolean Future
Foundation).
So far I have mentioned our activities in terms of research. In concluding I would like
to mention that also accomplishments in the field of “teaching” are already existing at
the LFUI, as well as future plans have been established. A proposal for the develop-
ment of new e-learning/e-teaching strategies at the University of Innsbruck has been
submitted to the ministry of education, science and culture and has been recently
approved. The use and integration of an e-learning system in the lectures and
programs at the LFUI are of major importance. They will be integrated in the target
agreements between the faculties and the rector and will be also incorporated in the
development plan with the ministry.
The e-blackboard system (eCampus) is already used by all faculties at our university. At
some faculties (biology, chemistry/pharmacy, engineering, faculty of education) over
60% of the lecture courses and seminars are supported by the blackboard system
eCampus, and this number is still rising. Production of high quality e-learning materials is
also an issue. Several study programs have decided to teach certain courses as distance
courses or blended learning courses. A time schedule has been worked out to dis-
Märk • Media Research and Instructional Design at the University of Innsbruck 3
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 3
seminate the use of learning technologies as well as improve e-learning strategies at the
university. The reason for the intensified implementation is to generate qualitative and
didactical improvements for the future student generation.
Thus, the LFUI is giving a high priority not only to the field of ICT, but also on new
concepts of technology-enhanced education and research on new media in general. In
concluding, the Proceedings of the International Microlearning 2005 Conference
impressively show that in the future unique and inspiring perspectives and ideas will
come from activities bridging the borders between academia, technology and
economy.
Innsbruck, October 2005
Tilmann Märk, Vicerector for Research, LFUI
Gerlinde Braumiller, Assistant to Vicerector for Research, LFUI
4 Märk • Media Research and Instructional Design at the University of Innsbruck
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Micro-Learning in the Lifelong Learning Context
(Forword)
Lynne Chisholm
Institute of Educational Sciences
University of Innsbruck (Austria)
Institute Director, Professor
We have reached the stage at which e-learning is virtually synonymous with learning tech-
nology. In the rapidly expanding field of e-Learning, micro-learning is a new arrival on the
scene. It responds to the urgent need to pay greater attention to e-learning tools and
methods from an educational and not simply a technological point of view. Learning tech-
nologies as such are by no means a new invention – they reach back to the age-old chalk
slate and beyond – but their effectiveness depends on the way in which they are embed-
ded in the social construction of teaching and learning relations and processes. The more
powerful and pervasive the learning technology, the more crucial and complex will be the
pedagogic strategies and didactic methods devised and employed for and with that tech-
nology.
The pervasiveness of digital communication technologies in everyday life is indisputable,
and is by no means limited to the advanced economies. Indeed, one of the most remark-
able features of their take-up is the extent to which developing and ‘tiger’ regions have adop-
ted, for example, the Internet and mobile telephones. The Web is already a core relay for
learning programmes in Latin America, where there is a longstanding distance learning tra-
dition using radio and television. The Philippines have the highest SMS usage rate in the
world – an intriguing phenomenon, which reflects the intersections between a highly com-
municative culture, a history of emigrant labour, an island archipelago geography and, not
least, the need to keep telephone costs down to a level that ordinary citizens with low aver-
age incomes can afford.
Such examples illustrate that cultures do not simply adopt technologies, they equally adapt
them to suit their own needs and ways of life. This tells us something important about deve-
loping effective learning technologies: pedagogy and didactics must relate appropriately to
the cultural, economic and social contexts and conditions of people’s lives. This is clearly
one of the key challenges for micro-learning, which seeks, in a variety of ways, to integrate
learning into everyday life. One obvious consequence is that this situates the micro-learning
agenda in proximity to that of non-formal and informal learning, a theme that has also seen
a meteoric rise to the top of European education and training policy concerns in the past few
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 5
years. This has taken place in the context of identifying lifelong learning as the overarching
paradigm for teaching, training and learning in knowledge societies, in the interests of not
only employability but equally social cohesion, active citizenship and personal development
in a democratic polity.
These may be fine words in principle, but turning them into positive practice means a great
deal of hard work in research and development terms. This collection illustrates how some
of that work is taking place – some examples are well developed, others are just starting
out. And no collection of this kind would be complete without visionary accounts of what
the future may hold. The combined outcome is stimulating and will generate readers’ exci-
tement about the potential of micro-learning. At the same time, it is all too easy to forget
that e-learning innovations also generate new polarisations in learning opportunities and life
chances: people need to be digitally literate in order to access digital learning tools, and they
cannot participate in e-societies and e-cultures unless they have access to and know how
to use digital information and communication channels.
It is still the case that the majority of today’s Europeans – let alone those living in less deve-
loped world regions – do not possess basic digital literacy skills, and there remain signifi-
cant social and regional differences in pure and simple access to the technological hardware.
And even where citizens do largely use relevant tools – such as mobile telephones – levels
of competence to exploit their potential are generally low. Those with low levels of educati-
on, those in low-level jobs, older citizens and those living in more isolated areas are especi-
ally likely to be ‘digitally disadvantaged’, and there is a striking digital gap between the north
and the south of Europe in these respects. Given the combination between demographic
transition to ageing European societies, structural change in the labour market towards hig-
her-level skill and competence requirements, and cultural change towards a learning society
as the basis for inclusion and participation of all kinds, it is abundantly evident that dismant-
ling the digital divide is and will remain one of the most significant educational challenges
for the coming decades.
Micro-learning can contribute to meeting that challenge, and in doing so it must invest inge-
nuity to design low-threshold tools and methods that can engage learners with low levels
of basic skills – both traditional and digital – in ways that attract and encourage them, in ways
that are relevant to their everyday lives and in ways that provide rapid, visible affirmation and
recognition of what they have learned.
The Institute of Educational Sciences at the Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck is
delighted to have been associated with the conference that gave rise to this collection, and
regards e-learning research as an important element of its academic profile within the newly-
founded Education, Generation and Life-course Research Group. We look forward to conti-
nuing the positive co-operation with the e-Learning Research Studio that has been establis-
hed in the context of this conference.
6 Chisholm • Micro-Learning in the Lifelong Learning Context
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Microlearning: A New Pedagogical Challenge
(Introductory Note)
Theo Hug
Institute of Educational Sciences
University of Innsbruck (Austria)
Professor
RSA Studio eLearning Environments (Innsbruck, Austria)
Manager
The papers in this volume emerge from the conference Microlearning2005 :: Learning
& Working in New Media Environments, held on June 23 - 24, 2005 in Innsbruck
(Austria). This first international conference on microlearning was organized by the
Research Studio eLearning Environments
1
in cooperation with the Institute of
Educational Sciences at the University of Innsbruck. The conference aimed at creating
a transdisciplinary, but clearly focused forum for exciting discussions between scho-
lars and experts from quite different fields, like didactics and learning technology, aca-
demia and corporate training, instruction design, semantic metaweb technologies and
studies in new media cultures. Academic perspectives on learning and pedagogy met
market-oriented R&D approaches, heading for new concepts and applications. Both,
contributors and participants accepted the invitation to build bridges, to bring forward
cross-over orientations and to promote collaborations beyond common borders.
2
So, what is it all about? What do “microlearning” and “microcontent” mean?
Looking at some spontaneous appraisals, there are optimistic and sceptical voices.
When I spoke to some colleagues and e-learning experts last year, one said: “It’s too
late for microlearning, you should think of something new – we have had microtea-
ching since the late 60ies.” For those, who are not familiar with concepts of “micro-
teaching” – it is a training concept that can be applied in various stages in the profes-
1 The Research Studio eLearning Environments is one of currently five studios of the Research Studios
Austria. Its projects are supported by the Federal Ministry of Economy and Employment (Austria) and
also the Tyrolean Future Foundation (http://ele.researchstudio.at). The Research Studios Austria are a
sub-division of ARC Seibersdorf research GmbH, Austria‘s largest research institution for industrial rese-
arch and development (http://www.researchstudio.at).
2 For further information and an online version of the proceedings see http://www.microlearning.org.
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 7
sional development of teachers. Basically, it means teaching a small group of peers for
a relatively short period of 5 to 15 minutes and then giving and taking feedback on the
performances. Microlearning in this context means the microteaching experience as a
learning experience and a very effective method of learning for students, but also the
counterpart process on the side of the pupils. Of course, there are more precise defi-
nitions and you can find many books on teacher training concepts in terms of micro-
teaching. In my view, we can learn a lot from the experiences related to this field, but
it would be a big mistake to reduce the question of microlearning to the questions of
formal education, teacher training or pedagogical discourse horizons.
Another colleague said: “It’s too late for a conference of this format because economy
has not only gained the precedence over politics but also over education and research.
The only areas that are still researched and taught are those that can be used com-
mercially. As a consequence, a conference like this would have to be aimed directly
and strictly at economy and the current market in order to be successful.” And a third
one thought that it would be too early, because the new forms of microlearning are
just evolving and we would have to focus on a few very special learning cultures in
order to say something serious about the topic.
Well, in whatever way one sees the thesis of the commercialization of knowledge and
the maybe pre-paradigmatic situation: I believe that the present moment is most
appropriate for the conference and the questions of microlearning, microcontent and
microknowledge.
It’s not a well designed paradigm we have as a starting point – it’s rather bits and pie-
ces from different discourses and practices we are starting from. Therefore, the con-
ference has a semi-structured and hopefully exhilarating character. We are going to
explore the field, figure out crucial topics, present work in progress and sound out the
situation and perspectives of learning and living in mediated environments. The dis-
course backgrounds may refer to
• the process of medialization, mediation, transformation and order of knowledge
(especially questions of fragmentation of knowledge, bricolage and micro-aspects
of meaning and sensemaking)
• the relation of changing media and changing learning cultures
• the relation of new media and new markets
• challenges in the context of Lifelong Learning and e-inclusion policy
• anthropological dimensions (homo medialis) and the epistemological question of a
“mediatic turn” (R. Margreiter) [1]
• and to other aspects and related dimensions.
8 Hug • Microlearing: A New Pedagogical Challenge
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 8
Let’s have a look at the microlearning discourse as it is represented currently. If you
start a search, you’ll find quite a lot of concepts and versions of microlearning. Here
are some selected examples:
Fig. 1: Concepts and Versions of Microlearning – Mindmap
There is not one precise definition which covers all the different concepts. In my view
there are versions which are brought forth by different interpretations of particular
dimensions such as:
• Time: relatively short effort, operating expense, degree of time consumption, mea-
surable time, subjective time, etc.
• Content: small or very small units, narrow topics, rather simplex issues, etc.
• Curriculum: part of curricular setting, parts of modules, elements of informal
learning, etc.
• Form: fragments, facets, episodes, „knowledge nuggets“, skill elements, etc.
•Process: separate, concomitant or actual, situated or integrated activities, iterative
method, attention management, awareness (getting into or being in a process),
etc.
• Mediality: face-to-face, mono-media vs. multi-media, (inter-)mediated, information
objects or learning objects, symbolic value, cultural capital, etc.
• Learning type: repetitive, activist, reflective, pragmatist, conceptionalist, construc-
tivist, connectivist, behaviourist, learning by example, task or exercise, goal- or
problem-oriented, „along the way“, action learning, classroom learning, corporate
learning, conscious vs. unconscious, etc.
Hug • Microlearing: A New Pedagogical Challenge 9
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The various versions of microlearning can be analyzed by looking at the explicit or
implicit comprehension of these dimensions and their interplay. This preliminary
framework makes clear that the general term microlearning is used as a metaphor
referring to a set of models of learning.
In addition to that, all these versions correspond with certain versions of meso-lear-
ning and macro-learning. For example, if single letters are part of the micro level,
words and sentences may refer to the meso level and linguistic communication to the
macro level. If the micro level is characterized by vocables and phrases, situations and
episodes may refer to the meso level and socio-cultural specifics and complex seman-
tics to the macro level.
It is similar with the term ‘microcontent’: It can refer, for example, to small, granular
pieces of content, to simplex semantic units or to small-sized semiotic entities.
What are the challenges for pedagogy and educational sciences?
Let me give you a few examples:
• Developing a generational awareness with regard to new media cultures, techno-
logies, and forms of knowledge and learning
• Investigating the interplay of symbolic and techno-material aspects of media in pro-
cesses of learning, education and socialization
• Developing concepts and methods for the future of learning by integrating formal,
non-formal and informal aspects and micro-, meso- and macro-levels
•Creating learning spaces in relation to cultural, historical, commercial, technologi-
cal, networked and ludic spaces
• Rethinking knowledge and learning in the context of mobile devices, new global
public spheres (I. Volkmer) [2] and metaweb developments (N. Spivack) [3].
Needless to say, that this selection of challenges is strongly related to societal and
technological dynamics and that you will encounter more challenges when reading the
papers in this volume.
Digital technologies and media institutions have transformed knowledge structures as
well as processes of knowledge distribution and knowledge acquisition. In this situa-
tion, we have to rethink classical models of distributing learning and to investigate new
learning spaces. Concepts of microlearning, microcontent and microknowledge offer
flexible and dynamic alternatives which are needed in view of medial, societal and
environmental changes. The following articles present a wide range of theoretical and
practical options focussing on learning theories for the digital age, pedagogical learning
and teaching models, approaches to learning with microcontent, frameworks for small
learning groups, mobile learning environments, questions of interaction design, web-
10 Hug • Microlearing: A New Pedagogical Challenge
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 10
based metadata repositories, and on rather new developments such as RSS feeds,
Blogs and Podcasts.
Obviously, proceedings like these and also the conference on microlearning are pro-
ducts of many people working together. My sincere thanks go to
•the conference preparation-crew that has taken many hours to contact the presen-
ters, prepare the programme, flyers and posters, the website, the organisation of
the rooms etc., namely Martin Lindner, Silvia Gstrein, Christian Bablick, Claudia
Kirchmair, Eric-Jan Kaak, Manuala Ruzicka, and the helpers from the International
Centre for New Media (ICNM) in Salzburg (Austria)
• the speakers and presenters who have in some cases travelled far and who bro-
ught in their skills and contributed to animated discussions and learning processes
and also to this volume
• again, Martin Lindner, for proof-reading, and Carmen Drolshagen for the print lay-
out of the proceedings
• the sponsors and partners, namely the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and
Culture, the Federal Ministry for Economics and Labour, the University of Innsbruck
and its Vice-Rector for research, Prof. Tilman Märk, the Research Studios Austria
and its general manager, Prof. Peter A. Bruck, the regional government of Tyrol, the
transfer centre of the university (transIT), the Canadian Studies Centre, the Donau
University in Krems, the Austrian Computer Society and SYSTEM ONE.
References
[1] Cf. Margreiter, Reinhard (1999): Realität und Medialität. Zur Philosophie des 'Medial Turn'.
In: Medien Journal. Zeitschrift für Kommunikationskultur, Jg. 23, H. 1, pp. 9 – 18.
[2] Cf. Volkmer, Ingrid (2003): The Global Network Society and the Global Public Sphere. In:
Development, Vol. 46; Part 1, pp. 9-16.
[3] Cf. http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/the_metaweb/index.html; con-
sulted: 2005-06-20.
Hug • Microlearing: A New Pedagogical Challenge 11
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Microlearning as strategic research field:
An invitation to collobarate
(Introductory Note)
Peter A. Bruck
Research Studios Austria (Salzburg/Vienna)
General Manager
Trading routine labour for freedom of flexible work:
The need and pressure to learn
In today’s working environments individuals are constantly challenged to learn,
respond to new situations and meet new demands. In industry, small and medium
sized businesses as well as public administrations, new information needs to be
continuously acquired.
In the past, in both agricultural as well as industrial society people had to engage in
lots of repetitive work. In the emerging information society all work which is perfor-
med according to specifiable routines is being bit by bit automated. Individuals are
thus set free to do work which is “more interesting”, i.e. which demands flexibility
and still defies machine intelligence. For this they have to learn.
The need to act flexibly and to change and improve work as well as other purposeful
activities implies a continuous necessity to learn. The adage that learning has become
life long is a basic truism of the information society. It is the result of the victories of
human invention in automating more and more routines. While liberating people from
much toil, this generates also pressures for individuals to acquire multiple skills in how
to learn.
The information society is the result of humankind’s success in reducing ignorance and
overcoming lacks of information. As the amount of information available increases, it
has become a major field of human research and endeavour to master its use and
acquisition.
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 13
Flipping from scarcity into abundance:
Information richness and overload
The beginning of the information society thus also marks the end of two key features
of human history: the fact that information was scarce and that communication was
difficult has structured all past civilisations and given shape to systems of belief, has
shaped the behaviour of peoples and their social organisations and has decided over
the rise and fall of empires.
Today, we are part of a social transformation in which information has become abun-
dant and communication is global. Both are more and more instantaneous, or 7/24, as
it is called in the jargon of today’s markets.
The increase in the pace of performance of information and communication techno-
logies is continuing to accelerate. At the time of this writing, the Internet is less than
15 years old as a common medium of information presentation and communication
exchange, but it has irreversibly penetrated all aspects of social and economic life in
all developed countries.
The flip from information scarcity into information abundance is one of the main
factors making learning an integral part of everyday activities. To be confronted with
new information is part of the normalcy of life today.
An alternative to mega-information and macro-learning:
Taking small steps
The need to improve on learning has thus become the key to coping and taking advan-
tage of the opportunities present society offers.
Your are holding in your hands the proceedings of the first international conference
“MICROLEARNING 2005” organised by the Research Studios Austria together with
the University of Innsbruck. This conference was designed to deal with a quite new
and maybe even alternative approach to coping with the above described phenomena
and specifically with the ways of dealing with information abundance and the constant
need to learn. Its basic premise is that people can learn better, more effectively and in
an easier, more enjoyable manner if information is broken down into smaller units and
if learning takes the shape of small steps.
14 Bruck • Microlearning as strategic research field: An invitation to colloborate
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Three aspects characterise this shift to microlearning:
1. The first aspect is to reduce the overflow and complexity of information and struc-
ture it into sequences and strings, into small and well linked units; this requires
creating new architectures of information and makes an active engagement with
the design of information necessary.
2. The second aspect is to undertake this reduction from the perspective of the per-
son who needs to cope with big amounts of new information and who wants to
learn; this requires new didactic models and makes inquiries into and redesign of
learning processes necessary.
3. The third aspect is to allow individual learners to chose themselves time, place and
pace of learning; this requires technology to support learners in their individual
habits and needs and to offer personalised services, and it makes reducing the
experience of overload, overdemand and underperformance necessary.
Microlearning thus uses continuous improvements in I&C technology performance.
The constantly decreasing cost of technology increases the affordability of microlear-
ning over all different platforms including mobiles. It assists organisations and indivi-
duals in dealing with the pressing issues of overflow of information and with the rapid
pace of changes which require the absorption of new information.
The move to microlearning is also motivated by taking recent experiences with normal
e-learning serious which show that individuals use available systems much less than
expected. “Normal” e-learning does not seem to meet the demands of many people
and organisations for continued learning. In organisations, the tracking of learning pro-
gress and the assurance of information reception quality together with consistency of
understanding are also becoming increasingly critical issues.
Hard to get and difficult to manage:
Creating time is critical for learning
Microlearning is also offering an answer to another of the key issues affecting lear-
ning: time. Having or making time is becoming one the most critical elements for lear-
ning and knowledge acquisition. Managing time productively is a key success factor
and qualification for individuals and organisations. The failure to “make time” for lear-
ning is one of the most common reasons why learners do not succeed to meet their
own expectations and to realise the goals which they set themselves or which are set
for them by the organisations they work in. “Lack of time” often results in a strong
Bruck • Microlearning as strategic research field: An invitation to colloborate 15
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 15
sense of frustration on the personal side and a continuous missing of targets in orga-
nisational development. The quality of an organisation as a successful learning group
is the result of the individual’s ability to “create time” for learning.
Microlearning allows a different way of handling time. Instead of delaying learning, it
is done in small steps which take little time. Microlearning does not require the crea-
tion of a larger “time-space”. It is enough to use the inter-spaces between different
activities to take the small learning step. The power of microlearning results from the
repeated use of “inter-spaces” over time. The assumption is that this allows individu-
als to manage their information acquisition and thus to meet their personal goals and
those of the organisation they work in.
Microlearning as strategic research field:
An invitation to collaborate
The conference “MICROLEARNING 2005” has allowed for presentation of investiga-
tions and conclusions and open discussion of new and alternative approaches where
information is not “too big” and learning materials are not “too distant”.
The Research Studios Austria want to work with scholars, researchers and practi-
tioners who are interested in microlearning and micro-information.
We are interested in research on individual user’s specific needs, experience patterns
and situational perspectives to change the top-down “delivery” of info content and
learning matter. We want to exchange views and share experiences with people who
design micro-content environments for learning and information acquisition that use
new ways of content distribution and cooperation. We want to understand how users
can immerse themselves in a “learning flow” which accompanies other activities but
sustains the acquisition of information and assists in applying information in work and
other social activities. We want to better understand the motivational factors of lear-
ners and how to integrate information acquisition and learning for organisations into
the ongoing flow of daily activities. And we want to see if one can demonstrate signi-
ficant improvements in the speed and quality of, for instance, second language acqui-
sition or professional-technical news-retention when using a micro-learning approach.
“MICROLEARNING 2005” is a start for the Research Studios Austria to network with
scholars, researchers and practitioners from around the world on all issues relating to
the issues and topics mentioned above. It will be an annual event for the foreseeable
16 Bruck • Microlearning as strategic research field: An invitation to colloborate
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future and I wish to extend an invitation to each and every reader of this publication to
contribute and partake in the next and upcoming meeting.
Please respond and send us your input and suggestions, submit your papers and your
research!
The website of www.microlearning.org is offered as a platform for staying in touch,
exchanging research and preparing the next conference.
Thank you for your interest in collaborating!
Salzburg, September 2005 Prof. Dr. Peter A. Bruck
General Manager, Research Studios Austria
Head of Division, ARC Seibersdorf research GmbH
www.researchstudio.at | www.arcs.ac.at
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Quo Vadis, eLearning?
(Introductory Note)
Erich Neuhold
Darmstadt University of Technology (Germany)
Professor of Computer Science
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems / IPSI (Germany)
Director Emeritus
Martin Lindner
Research Studios Austria (Innsbruck)
Learning and Technology: Broken Promises
“People will believe anything if it’s fantastic enough.”
Petronius, in the film Quo Vadis (1951)
Welcome to the Cemetary of Learning Technologies and Promises: In the last century
every new media technology promised to revolutionize our learning. Radio, Video, TV,
Language Labs, CBT … In general, all those visions failed. And there was always one
main reason: too simple a concept of “learning and technology”.
Learning is not just sending messages with the help of advanced media technologies.
Learning is a complex cognitive and social process. New forms of learning cannot be
introduced just by the distribution of new technology. They have to develop organically
out of media practices and media environments.
And not to forget: learning is always hard labour. There is no easy way to learn, despite
the promises of new media and new utilizations.
So what about this conference? If Microlearning
1
is to mean more than just another buzz-
word, it has to be checked against the lessons learned in over 40 years of e-learning.
1 http://www.microlearning.org
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Claimed Potentials of eLearning
What can technological enhanced learning do that conventional learning can not? The
promises have always been similar: to be always accessible (anytime, anywhere …);
to be more learner-centered (personalized, more individual choice); to save costs
(fewer classrooms, fewer teachers); to increase quality by enabling wider access to
knowledge and expertise; to increase effectiveness through better motivation and
understanding.
Now we know that eLearning kept – in parts – its first promise, at least technically,
since it is more and more based on the web. But the other claimed potentials are still
far from being realized. And it is not even clear if some ever will: e.g. costs are not so
much saved as transferred to other areas.
Up to this day, eLearning has not exactly been a success story. But on the other side,
that is not the real point. There is no way back. In today’s digital media environment
there is no choice. People must learn, and because digital media have become ubi-
quitous, they must learn using digital media.
Challenges for eLearning and Microlearning
Microlearning is one of a number new concepts that aim at a new level of integration
of learning with the rapidly emerging digital technologies and media practices. The real
challenges for all new approaches to eLearning are basically known for a long time:
• Interaction that goes beyond “go to the next step”;
• Personalization that is not hampered by predefined standards and methods;
• Integration of feedback/support into complex learning processes whose character
is still not sufficiently understood;
• Social embedding of individual learning aspects into collaborative contexts and
team processes;
• Flexible reuse of content, which is up to now restricted through monolithic,not suf-
ficiently adaptable material;
And last not least the integration of eLearning into organizations: There are in many
cases still incompatible organizational structures and little managerial acceptance of
digital learning as a fundamental part of flexible and innovative organizations.
20 Neuhold/Lindner • Quo Vadis, e-Learning?
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Current Trends in Lifelong Learning
Currently I see four main trends of Next Generation eLearning: Multimedia Learning,
Cooperative Learning, Tutor-based Telelearning, Ubiquitous/Mobile Learning.
Microlearning, introduced by this conference, is another, quite new one. So a look at
its relations to the other four trends should be interesting.
Multimedia Learning: Driven by permanent technological improvements, the trend
towards multimedia in learning is unbroken. The effects will be “multi” in different
respects:
• multi-modal, addressing different senses and preferences of the learner;
• multi-layered codes, building on different media channels (textual, visual, audio,
audiovisual), to create richer meaning;
• multi-perspective, enabled by dynamic metadata and learner models and persona-
lized and experience-based content offered.
The crucial question for Microlearning is on how it will fit here: “Micro” in time and
“micro” in the amount of information may mean a reduced level of multimedia richn-
ess. How can it still reflect a rich media environment?
Cooperative Learning: Another trend surely goes away from isolated learning experi-
ences, towards cooperative learning in small groups, forming ad-hoc or long-term
collaborations, and thus to new forms of digital mentoring, tutoring and teaching. One
example is the Virtual Classroom project, developed by Fraunhofer IPSI
(www.ipsi.fraunhofer.de). Again, at first glance, it seems to be difficult to integrate the
Microlearning approach here. Obviously, one possibility is the integration of
Microlearning into Blended Learning scenarios. Another, more challenging approach
would be to experiment with new ways of “micro-collaboration”.
Telelearning and Microlearning have in common the problem of deciding between pull-
or push-approaches. A “micro-pull” would be too tiring: people will not want to deci-
de all the time to take a microlearning step or not. But “micro-push” can easily be
experienced as too intrusive, as the intervention of some mysterious “big brother”-
like machinery. Finally, the close relation of microlearning and forms of ubiquitous /
mobile learning is obvious: smart/small micro-units could well be delivered platform-
independent through mobile devices. What needs to be discussed here is the interre-
Neuhold/Lindner • Quo Vadis, e-Learning? 21
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lationship of the microlearning approach and the more technology-centered concepts
of “mobile learning” or the still to come “pervasive learning”. In what respects could
microlearning be more than that?
Quo Vadis?
It seems that Microlearning is not a new technological or pedagogical concept in the
first place, but a whole new perspective on Next Generation eLearning. The question
arises: How can complex learning processes be put together and then held together,
if they consist of large numbers of micro-steps, experienced not in a special “time for
learning” setting, but along the routine activities of everyday digital life? Many will be
skeptical about this. But again, as with eLearning itself, it can be argued that there is
no choice: In today’s digital media environment informations and knowledge already
have started to become more and more fragmentized. People must learn, and in mul-
titasking and micromedia environments that means that in some way or another they
have to find some strategy of microlearning.
But it is also clear that this change of perspective will then have to result not only in
new technologies or uses of technologies, but in new didactics and new pedagogical
approaches as well.
Thus the proceedings of the Microlearning2005 conference stake the claim of a new
field of technology-enhanced learning. This is quite a challenge, but the problems of
the “knowledge society” we now face are not less challenging. And the contributions
to this book show that the participants didn’t take the easy way out.
If eLearning is failing again in the next decade, the consequences will be severe. A sig-
nificant digital divide in learning represents the real danger that the world would furt-
her separate into a small digital literate class, that knows how to acquire knowledge,
and the uneducated masses getting sedated with digital entertainment. New concepts
like microlearning may help steering away from such a dystopian scenario.
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The Challenge of Triggering Profound Processes of
Understanding in Microlearning Environments.
Theoretical Foundations and a Case Study
for a ”Microlearning Laboratory”
(On Microlearning)
Markus F. Peschl
Dept. of Philosophy of Science
University of Vienna, Austria
Professor
Abstract: An epistemologically and cognitively founded pedagogical learning/teaching model tackling these
goals is developed. Possible solutions will be suggested by developing a meta-model for learning/teaching
processes in a stepwise manner. It turns out that philosophy of science concepts play a crucial role in these
processes. Furthermore, the role of micro-learning and technologically supported (mobile) forms of teaching/
learning in such a scenario will be investigated.
Keywords: collaborative scientific theory construction, double-loop learning, reflection processes, single-
loop learning, virtual communities
1. Introduction and Motivation
1.1 The Primacy of Know-What over Know-How
Most approaches in teaching/learning both in the field of secondary education and of
universities focus on the level of skills and competencies. From an epistemological
perspective it can be shown, however, that these approaches do not really aim at what
is the peak of human cognitive capacities: generally speaking, skills concern rather
superficial knowledge on the level of functionalities, algorithms, “know-how”, techni-
ques, “systems”, “recipes”, guidelines, methods, etc. Yet, human mind is designed
to penetrate much deeper into reality or into the phenomenon of our interest. Our
intellect is not satisfied with being able to grasp the functional aspects of a pheno-
menon (e.g., the dynamics of a particular system) or to control certain aspects of
reality. Rather, both our cognition and most complex tasks in almost every field (of
science, economics, technology, etc.) call for a profound understanding of the object
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 23
being under investigation first; only then one can start making any decisions or taking
action. So, what do we mean by the term to “profoundly and deeply understand” a
phenomenon or a reality? In fact, this question is as old as philosophy and metaphy-
sics and has a wide spectrum of possible answers. In general, one can summarize that
what our intellect is interested in is the meaning and the deeper sense of a pheno-
menon. All of our intellectual efforts aim at achieving a profound answer concerning
the understanding of the “what” (and the “why?”) of a thing. Above that, we are cap-
able of reflecting both on the understanding of the phenomenon itself and the proces-
ses having led us to that understanding. Only when we have reached this level of
operations we can claim to have come to a kind of profound judgment on a particular
aspect of reality
1
.
Of course, the aspect of the “how?” or functioning of a reality is an important contribution
for the process of understanding it. However, as has been well known since Ancient
Philosophy and metaphysics [e.g., Aristoteles, 89], there is a clear (intellectual) primacy of
meaning of and understanding a reality (e.g., “causa formalis”) over having some idea
about its functioning. One can only fully understand the functioning of a phenomenon, if
one has reached some understanding of its meaning, of its “what?”, and/or its finality.
Remaining on the level of functioning means that one has not penetrated very deep into
the phenomenon, because s/he has just arrived at some more or less basic pseudo-under-
standing of the dynamics and of behavioral patterns of the phenomenon under investigati-
on without having a profound understanding of its meaning. This focus on the process of
understanding (in its most profound sense) is a point having been almost forgotten in most
educational approaches nowadays. Only, if one takes into consideration issues from epi-
stemology or even ontology and metaphysics, the deficiencies of such a reduction to the
functional aspects become evident. Hence, a profound pedagogical approach has to be
based also on concepts from cognitive science as well as from epistemology and theory
of knowledge [Peschl, 03; Swertz, 04 ].
Certainly, it is relatively uncomplicated, comfortable, and cost-effective to teach “reci-
pe knowledge”, skills, algorithmic knowledge, etc. This especially applies to the field
of eLearning and virtual modes of learning and teaching. We have to admit that it is
already an intellectual challenge for ourselves to understand a phenomenon in its pro-
found meaning. Hence, it is even more of a challenge to “teach” this process of
understanding! Transferring these processes into a virtual environment is an ultimate
pedagogical challenge. One reason, why that is so difficult seems to be that “teaching
the process of understanding” calls for a completely different approach to teaching/
learning: the teacher is not the instrument for knowledge transfer any more; rather,
24 Peschl • The Challenge of Triggering Profound Processes of Understanding ...
1 Of course, this does not imply that this knowledge is final—rather, due to the inaccessibility of reality
the process of constructing knowledge and understanding is never-ending; compare [Pieper, 03].
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he/she has to act only as a coach or as a person accompanying the student in his/her
personal process of discovering the meaning and, by that, achieving some understan-
ding of the phenomenon in question [Glasersfeld, 89; Baumgartner, 04]. Above that,
the teacher has to be ready for conducting a structured process of reflection in which
s/he her-/himself could be questioned profoundly. From that perspective it is inte-
resting to discover that new learning technologies offer tools, which exactly fit these
requirements (e.g., tools for collaborative knowledge construction, communication,
knowledge negotiation, etc.).
When the student has not only become familiar with these basic intellectual opera-
tions of deep understanding and reflection, but also has achieved some sovereignty in
this domain, it will be very easy for him/her to quickly learn particular practical skills or
competencies.
1.2 Knowledge Illiteracy in knowledge society
That is why it seems essential to focus more on the processes of understanding and
reflection; especially in our so-called “knowledge-society” it is crucial to be trained in
making an effort to understand things in their deeper dimensions, their relations, their
meaning, etc. The trouble in our “knowledge society” is not so much the question of
the digital divide or digital illiteracy, but rather the problem of “knowledge illiteracy”.
I.e., due to the focus of our educational systems on the know-how, on skills, on fact-
learning, on “recipe knowledge”, and on portraying a rather limited view of the world
(e.g., presenting only a purely positivistic or economic perspective) it becomes increa-
singly difficult to intellectually enter into the deeper dimensions of a given phenome-
non (e.g., finding out its finality, its deeper meaning, etc.). Restricting education and
learning processes to a rather limited class of knowledge types causes a highly restric-
ted perspective and understanding of reality. Knowledge illiteracy seems to be one of
the most critical problems which become apparent in our emergent knowledge
society.
That is why a model will be developed in the following sections, which lays the theo-
retical ground for going beyond the classical scope of knowledge types and for rea-
ching a deeper level of understanding. The questions we are going to tackle in the sec-
tions to come concern the processes of understanding, of developing a shared under-
standing, and reflection; more specifically, how these cognitive operations can be
taught and developed in an educational setting. This means that we have to take a clo-
ser look at the following phases: the process (i) of accessing reality/a phenomenon, (ii)
of constructing knowledge about that reality, (iii) of abstracting from particulars of that
reality, and by that (iv) achieving a profound understanding of it. Finally, (v) this process
itself has to be reflected. (vi) The overall question is, how these processes can be
Peschl • The Challenge of Triggering Profound Processes of Understanding ... 25
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realized in an environment going beyond the standard classroom setting; namely, how
internet and mobile technologies as well as microlearning strategies can be applied in
order to enhance these cognitive operations.
2. Learning to Understand a Phenomenon and to Construct Knowledge
in a Reflected Manner
In the course of the following sections a theoretical foundation and model will be deve-
loped for the learning and knowledge construction processes, which are necessary for
improving the cognitive operations of understanding, of making abstractions as well as
how the resulting knowledge can be shared in a reflected manner.
2.1 First-Order Learning in a Single Loop process
Classical fact-learning (“drill-and-practice”), which is not very efficient with respect to
the process of understanding, is a rather simple and linear from of learning. Whereas
the focus of linear learning is on mapping more or less static and predetermined
chunks of knowledge from one brain to another single loop learning or first order
learning aims at emphasizing the process of developing knowledge. Knowledge is not
predetermined, but has to be extracted from reality in an active process of personal/
individual and collective construction.
As is shown in Fig. 1 (internal loop) learning is embedded into a circular process: this
epistemological loop is realized as a process of continuous interaction and feedback
between the dynamics of the cognitive system’s knowledge and cognitive structures
and its external and internal environment. The goal is to construct structures of kno-
wledge in such a way that they fit into the environmental dynamics. This is realized in
a circular feedback process. Via processes of perception and primary construction kno-
wledge structures are built up in the cognitive system. This knowledge is externalized
as behavioural actions and it becomes evident whether the internal model/knowledge
has been successful or not. The learner’s knowledge has to be changed and adapted
according to the level of success/failure and (mis-)match between the expected/desi-
red results and the real environmental dynamics. This epistemological pattern is well
known from the classical approach to knowledge construction in the natural sciences.
It has been described by Popper (as the process of falsification; [Popper, 62]) or in the
area of constructivist philosophy of science (e.g., [Peschl, 99, 01]). Abstractly spea-
king, this procedure can be interpreted as a kind of “epistemological optimization and
adaptation process”. While linear learning is driven by an external teacher and his/her
pre-structured knowledge, single loop learning is an internally driven and self-control-
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led learning process having the goal of producing functionally fitting knowledge (e.g.,
[Glasersfeld, 95]) being the result of an active interaction with reality.
Limits of Single Loop Learning
From an intellectual perspective, such an approach to learning is not really challenging.
Nevertheless this is the major paradigm of theory construction in the “normal” [Kuhn,
70] natural sciences. Looking more closely reveals that—on an epistemological level—
this mode of learning has several limitations:
1. It is a rather conservative process: instead of exploring new alternatives or taking
the risk of new approaches this mode of learning tries to conserve the existing
knowledge structures as long as possible; only if there is a crucial mismatch the
cognitive system is forced to adapt and change his/her knowledge.
2. Low/no chance of fundamentally new insights: due to the predetermined space of
knowledge (“paradigmatic space”) there is very little chance that something com-
pletely and fundamentally new is discovered or learnt in this process.
3. Low level of understanding: due to the goal of generating functionally fitting kno-
wledge the question of “what?” is of almost no.
4. Primacy of projection: the more or less consciously chosen premises and assump-
tions (a paradigm I the sense of [Kuhn, 70]) predetermine a space of possible “solu-
tions”, theories, knowledge and the learner only has to explore (in the sense of
making explicit) this pre-structured knowledge space. As an implication of the pre-
determined paradigmatic space projections of these knowledge categories are
more important than being receptive to the structure and dynamics of the environ-
ment in the process of knowledge acquisition. Thus, there is a high chance that
completely unexpected or unwanted aspects of reality will be filtered out in this
learning process.
5. Lacking reflection: single loop learning does not offer a possibility for reflection.
There is no possibility to question the paradigm itself within this mode of learning.
2.2 Second-Order Learning and Learning to Reflect in a
Double-Loop Learning Process
In order to overcome some of the limitations of single loop learning an extension is
suggested: a second feedback loop is introduced which realizes a kind of meta-
learning strategy.
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Fig. 1. Double Loop Learning. The internal loop depicts the process of single-loop learning.
This second feedback loop takes into consideration that any kind of knowledge is
always based on assumptions, premises, or a paradigm [Kuhn, 70]. In general, know-
ledge always has to be seen as being embedded in and pre-structured by a particular
framework of reference. Knowledge receives its meaning and structures from this
framework of reference. Thus, understanding of a phenomenon can only be reached,
if this framework is taken into account. As we have seen in single loop learning this
framework of reference plays a key role in the process of learning, as it determines
the structure of the space of potential knowledge and gives meaning to its basic
dimensions – although the role of the framework of reference is never made explicit
in the context of single loop learning. In double loop learning a second feedback loop
(see figure 1) introduces a completely new dynamics in the whole process of learning:
each modification in the set of premises or in the framework of reference causes a
radical change in the structure, dimensions, dynamics, etc. of the space of knowled-
ge. By that process entirely new and different knowledge, theories, interpretation
patterns, etc. about reality become possible. In the context of science this process can
be compared to what Kuhn refers to as scientific revolutions [Kuhn, 70].
The introduction of this second order dynamics reduces the problem of projecting
always the same structure of knowledge on the phenomenon under investigation.
Although it cannot be avoided in principle, it can be cut back by systematically apply-
ing modifications, variations, mutations, combinations, etc. (compare evolutionary
operators; [Peschl, 99]) to the premises in the framework of reference. These syste-
matic changes are exactly what is happening in this second feedback loop: the pre-
mises are modified and, by that, the whole framework of reference and the structure
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of the body of knowledge changes. The method being applied in this process is basi-
cally the technique of reflection. It is a process of radically questioning and changing
the premises and studying their implications on the body and on the dynamics of kno-
wledge. Double loop learning has its roots in cybernetics, learning theory, in cognitive
science, and in the domain of organizational learning [Argyris, 96; Senge, 90].
2.2.1 From Individual to Collective Double Loop Learning
The mode of double loop learning unfolds its full effectiveness, if it is performed in the
milieu of a group or a team (under the assumption that the members of the group are
ready and motivated to listen and learn from each other). Findings from organizational
learning (e.g., [Argyris, 96; Senge, 90]) show that collective reflection is one of the
most powerful instruments in the process of achieving both an individual and a mutual-
ly shared understanding of a phenomenon or of a problem. Apart from the double
feedback loops of the double loop learning procedure, an additional feedback loop is
introduced between individual and collective learning- and knowledge-processes. This
additional feedback loop enables an even more radical process of questioning premi-
ses, as the space of possible perspectives and frameworks of reference is not limited
to an individual, but to the diversity of the participants knowledge backgrounds. Apart
from the readiness of the group’s participants to listen to each other and to share
knowledge an atmosphere of mutual trust is a conditio sine qua non for the success
of such a collective reflective setting.
3. A Concrete Double-Loop Learning Setting
3.1 Individual and Collaborative Knowledge Construction in a Virtual Environment
How can such a deep understanding be achieved in a virtual learning environment? In
this part of the paper a concrete learning scenario is presented in which the double-
loop learning strategy is implemented as a (blended) micro-learning environment (see
[Peschl, 05] for more details): students have to first individually and, later on, collec-
tively develop a theory/model by making virtual experiments with a virtual organism
(being realized as a non-trivial machine) in an interactive internet application. This
process happens in several micro-learning steps and loops integrating the following
processes:
• Conducting virtual experiments: learning how to design an experiment, how to
observe, and how to collect data in an experiment
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• Individual theory/model construction: learning how to generate knowledge by app-
lying inductive methods
•Verifying/falsifying hypotheses
• Presenting and defending these hypotheses/models to the peer-group in the virtual
domain (via discussion boards, chats, etc.)
• Negotiating these results and trying to find a collective understanding/model of the
virtual organism
• Finding a final form/visualization for presenting the resulting model in a pedagogi-
cally adequate manner
• Reflecting the whole process of theory construction itself (both in the virtual
domain and in the classroom)
Each of these steps can be (partly) completed in a time span of 3–15 minutes. Due to
its interactive design (concerning both the virtual experiment dimension and the soci-
al dimension of knowledge construction) these learning processes can be carried out
in an iterative manner going through several loops and repetitions of micro-learning
steps in a double-loop learning style. Experience and feedback from the students has
shown that a continuous learning process accompanies the learner over a period of
10–40 days.
The goal is not to learn something by heart (like in foreign language training or drill-and-
practice learning environments), but to keep the learner in a continuous active process
of thinking and pondering over a single non-trivial problem over a longer period of time.
By that, she dives into the “deeper levels” of the problems concerning both the parti-
cular questions of the virtual organism and the process of theory/knowledge-con-
struction (= meta-level). These thinking/learning-processes are supported by an addi-
tional stream of interventions: the dimension of virtual collaboration, negotiation and
social interaction. These processes are minute steps of micro-learning which are
implemented in continuous integrating feedback-loops. That guaranties continuous
processes of reflection on an individual and collective level.
3.2 Implications for Processes of Collaborative Knowledge Construction
and Knowledge Sharing
Making double-loop learning the foundation of a microlearning strategy has turned out
to be a highly efficient learning strategy in the context of learning how to achieve a pro-
found and deep understanding of a phenomenon, a reality, or a problem, and how to
share this knowledge between the participants of this collective knowledge construc-
tion process; this is due to the fact that the learner is forced to step back and take an
external perspective on the original (single loop learning-) task of simply trying to adapt
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to the environmental dynamics and construct mechanisms generating the observed
regularities. Above these construction processes, he/she has to reflect (a) what it is
he/she is investigating and (b) on which foundations and framework of reference this
process of theory construction is based. Here is exactly the point where philosophical
and philosophy of science concepts turn out to be highly relevant in the process of
knowledge construction, understanding as well as knowledge sharing. The key for
successful knowledge construction and sharing seems to be the factor of systematic
individual and collective processes of reflection being realized in the external feedback-
loop of the double-loop learning model (see Fig. 1).
Conducting double loop learning not only on an individual level but also in a
group/team-environment of cooperative knowledge construction has amplified the
effect of the learning and knowledge sharing process. Due to collective processes of
reflection completely new and unexpected spaces of understanding and solutions
have opened up both on an individual and on a collective level. Mutually revealing
one’s knowledge and premises to each other induces a completely new dynamics and
opens new aspects and sometimes dimensions in thinking and cooperative knowled-
ge construction and understanding. It was due to the continuous microlearning based
learning strategy slicing the learning tasks into small peaces and being supported by
methods of virtual knowledge sharing, knowledge construction, and discussion that
these processes have been highly successful and satisfying for almost every partici-
pant (as well as the teacher).
Apart from this microlearning course-design, one of the main conditions for such an
emergent process is an atmosphere of openness and trust in the group of participants.
It is the responsibility of the teacher or moderator to establish such an atmosphere,
which facilitates these processes of developing shared understanding, shared mea-
ning, and perhaps shared vision.
What are the goals and some of the basic implications having been reached by
embedding the mode of double loop learning into a microlearning strategy (in the con-
text of knowledge construction and knowledge sharing)?
1. Blind spots, ideologies, unconscious and perhaps unwanted assumptions, prejudi-
ces, or biases are uncovered and become evident in such a process of radical que-
stioning and reflecting.
2. Due to changes in the realm of premises the range of possible knowledge spaces
and knowledge dynamics explodes exponentially.
3. Reflection is used as a “weapon” against single minded and mono-disciplinary
approaches and learning processes.
4. Double loop learning does not only encourage inter-/transdisciplinarity, but makes a
multi-disciplinary approach a necessity.
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5. The profound understanding of a phenomenon is supported in this process. By syste-
matically taking different positions and by reflecting these positions the “what?” and
“why?” of a reality is revealed in a radical manner. The learner is forced to go beyond
pure functional descriptions and penetrate into deeper layers of reality.
6. Focusing on and Sharpening the Cognitive Capacity of Perception and Observation.
Due to a rigorous process of questioning and reflecting the capacity of one’s percep-
tion is constantly trained as well. One is forced to take new perspectives on the same
phenomenon; by that multi-perspective approach blind spots are uncovered, but
what counts even more, new dimensions and new categories are discovered. Not
only categories concerning the particular phenomenon under investigation, but new
categories of how to observe, perceive, and interpret reality in general! This is extre-
mely important for almost every process of knowledge management/sharing, as a
multiple perspectives and their reflected consolidation are the foundation for every
process of shared meaning and understanding.
7. Meta-learning. Double loop learning forces the reflection of the learning process its-
elf and, by that, allows a critical perspective on the learner’s own processes, assump-
tions, and habits of knowledge construction and knowledge acquisition.
4. Conclusions and Perspectives for (Mobile) Microlearning
What are some of the implications from the concepts having been presented above?
What are the insights for a technology based learning setting, more specifically for a
mobile learning scenario as well as for the application of a microlearning strategy?
4.1 The Concept of Enabling in Face-to-Face and (Mobile) Virtual Learning Settings
One of the implications of double loop learning concerns the role of the teacher; it has
radically changed in such a setting of learning/teaching: His/her primary task is to provi-
de a “pedagogically augmented environment”; furthermore he/she is responsible for
creating an atmosphere of collective reflection (e.g., via drawing attention to the impor-
tance of openness and trust). Beyond the role of a coach [Baumgartner et al., 04] the tea-
cher has to act as a facilitator or “enabler” for the (individual and collective) processes of
double loop learning rather than transmitting knowledge.
4.1.1 Integrating Mobile Technology and Microlearning
Apart from the teacher’s role as facilitator mobile technology and microlearning as well
has to be recognized as a catalyst enabling processes of individual and collective under-
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standing. Normally, mobile technology is seen as a means for communication only. The
(intellectual) value of these technologies can be increased by magnitudes, if they are
extended and explicitly applied in the context of a (collective) double-loop learning set-
ting. As has been shown above these settings are based on highly interactive processes
in a twofold manner: (i) interaction between environmental structures/dynamics and the
learner/user and (ii) interaction between learners/users. Both interaction types can be
supported by mobile technologies:
Interaction type (i) concerns mostly processes of single-loop learning: whereas classical
e-learning technology offers rather static and predetermined chunks of knowledge
(perhaps providing variations in knowledge types or paths through that space of know-
ledge [e.g., Swertz, 04]) both microlearning strategies and mobile technology can be
used to enhance learning processes by providing “augmented reality” features being
adaptive and sensitive to concrete real-world situations (e.g., by utilizing location based
or RFID services in combination with personal and public knowledge bases). Of course,
the process of understanding has to be carried out by the learner him-/herself; however,
it is supported by mobile technology providing the “raw material” (i.e., basic informati-
on/data and knowledge) for a particular (micro-)learning situation in a mobile context.
Personal data, personal knowledge profiles/bases, personal interests and learning prefe-
rences, etc. can be combined with location based (public)/RFID data and the user’s/lear-
ner’s particular questions. The challenge is (a) to integrate these huge amounts of kno-
wledge and data, (b) compute them into a result, and (c) transform these results into a
visual and multi-modal representation that supports the learner’s process of understan-
ding (on the fly).
Type-(ii) interaction mostly is present in the context of double-loop learning. Beyond clas-
sical one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many communication mobile technologies
have to be developed towards supporting, structuring, molding, and shaping these com-
municative settings in the sense of double-loop learning processes having been develo-
ped above. I.e., the task is to provide a structured virtual space enabling efficient and suc-
cessful processes of reflection in a microlearning design.
These processes go beyond classical knowledge sharing—the objective is to create a
kind of (virtual) “knowledge market” as a place where meaning and understanding of
knowledge/reality is negotiated in the sense of double-loop learning: i.e., a space where
it is possible to share, to make explicit, and to make accessible/visible every participant’s
premises, background assumptions, paradigm, or (implicit) framework of reference.
Normally, this is not a process which can be accomplished within a relatively short peri-
od of time-rather, this is a procedure typically taking many little steps (of negotiation, pre-
sentation, discussion, etc.) which can be split up in a microlearning style process.
The goal is to use such a space of shared reflection for arriving at building a commu-
nity of shared meaning and understanding and, by that, perhaps at developing a joint
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vision of a group (e.g. [Scharmer 01]). In other words, these processes could improve
both the individual and the collective understanding. On the one hand mobile technolo-
gy is challenged to provide the means for supporting these processes of shared reflec-
tion. Here are some examples:
• An instrument for supporting the process of making visible and making comparable
diverse “knowledge perspectives” (e.g., via shared knowledge maps, topic maps,
etc.);
• An instrument for structuring and shaping this communication and interaction pro-
cess;
• An instrument for supporting this socio-epistemological process of negotiating and
consolidating the meaning and understanding, etc.
On the other hand, microlearning strategies and designs will have to be developed in
order to bring these learning processes to a successful end. Mobile technologies offer
the advantage that double-loop learning is not restricted any more to a particular physi-
cal space, but can be carried out in a distributed manner without interfering too much
with the constraints of collaboration. It has to be clear, however, that mobile technology
cannot completely replace face-to-face communication – this applies especially to the
rather sensitive area of the reflective processes of double-loop learning. Progress in vir-
tualization of learning processes increases the demand for high-quality face-to-face com-
munication/dialogue [cf. Scharmer et al. 02]. Nevertheless, mobile technologies in com-
bination with microlearning strategies play he role of an enabler for supporting the virtual
and, as an implication, the face-to-face quality of knowledge construction.
4.2 (Mobile) Microlearning Laboratories
As an implication of the points having been made above as well as of the concepts of
double-loop learning one could think of developing “Microlearning Laboratories” which
could act as virtual spaces explicitly dedicated to learning processes in microlearning
style. Such a Microlearning Laboratory acts as an interface between reality, cognition,
learning processes, and the creation of new knowledge. The strengths of the “micro-
learning laboratory” approach clearly lie in the following points:
1. The integration of different modalities of learning, knowledge construction, and inter-
action;
2. The integration of various forms of knowledge: the approach having been exempli-
fied above follows a radical knowledge-oriented strategy. This implies that all aspec-
ts of reality/knowledge are taken into consideration and integrated in an overall per-
spective the full range of know-how (in the process of theory/model construction),
know-what (process of questioning what this organism is about, what are its goals,
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etc.), meta-knowledge (reflection on the process of theory construction);
3. Slicing the learning tasks into micro-tasks which can be accomplished in a managea-
ble period of time and
4. at the same time trigger a continuous cognitive activity being focused on a single
complex problem (vs. learning of more or less disconnected facts) by providing a con-
tinuous stream of interventions;
5. Breaking through the superficial levels of knowledge (e.g., the functional aspects of
a phenomenon) and accessing “deeper” dimensions (such as the meaning or the
finality of a phenomenon).
6. Supporting the processes of understanding (on the level of the particular problem as
well as on a general level), reflection (meta-level), and knowledge construction in an
effective and sustainable manner.
7. Above supporting processes of understanding the microlearning laboratory approach
can be applied as a highly effective tool in the processes of applying knowledge in
the context of design, art (inspiration), building technology, etc.
As a near future perspective mobile collaboration/communication plays a central role in
this “microlearning laboratory” approach: It acts as a permanent “companion” for indi-
vidual and collective processes of knowledge construction and shared understanding in
a kind of ubiquitous learning and shaping process.
4.3 Outlook – “Ubiquitous Individual Cultivation”
As a final step of our learning model one could imagine the introduction of a third lear-
ning loop, “triple-loop learning”; this loop concerns the most fundamental level of the
person(-ality): his/her values, being, etc. and their role in understanding, learning, and the
person as a whole. On that level microlearning in combination with mobile learning plays
a central role: it acts as a continuous “companion” for individual cultivation in a kind of
ubiquitous and permanent learning and shaping process of the person. Whether this is
a desirable application of microlearning technology remains to be answered.
5. References
[Argyris, 96] Argyris, C. and D.A. Schön (1996). Organizational learning II. Theory, method, and
practice. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley.
[Aristoteles, 89] Aristoteles (1989). Metaphysik (third ed.). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.
[Baumgartner, 04] Baumgartner, P. and M. Kalz (2004). Content Management Systeme aus bil-
dungs-technologischer Sicht. In P. Baumgartner et al. (Eds.), Content Management Systeme
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für e-Education. Auswahl, Potenziale und Einsatzmöglichkeiten Innsbruck, Wien: Studien
Verlag.
[Glasersfeld, 89] Glasersfeld, E.v. (1989). Cognition, construction of knowledge, and teaching.
Synthese 80(1), 121–141.
[Glasersfeld, 95] Glasersfeld, E.v. (1995). Radical constructivism: a way of knowing and learning.
London: Falmer Press.
[Kuhn, 70] Kuhn, T.S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (second ed.). Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
[Peschl, 99] Peschl, M.F. (1999). The development of scientific theories and their embodiment
in the representational activities of cognitive systems. Neural representation spaces, theory
spaces and paradigmatic shifts. In P.v. Loocke (Ed.), The Nature of Concepts, pp. 184–214.
London: Routledge & K. Paul.
[Peschl, 01] Peschl, M.F. (2001). Constructivism, cognition, and science. An Investigation of its
links and possible shortcomings. Foundations of Science 6(1), 125–161.
[Peschl, 03] Peschl, M.F. (2003). Structures and diversity in everyday knowledge. From reality to
cognition and back. In J. Gadner, R. Buber, and L. Richards (Eds.), Organising Knowledge.
Methods and case studies, pp. 3–27. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
[Peschl, 05] Peschl, M.F. (2005). Acquiring basic cognitive and intellectual skills for informatics.
Facilitating understanding and abstraction in a virtual cooperative learning environment. In P.
Micheuz, P. Antonitsch, and R. Mittermeir (Eds.), Innovative concepts for teaching informa-
tics, pp. 86–101. Wien: Ueberreuter.
[Pieper, 03] Pieper, J. (2003). Was heißt Philosophieren? (new ed. ed.). Einsiedeln, Freiburg:
Johannes Verlag.
[Popper, 62] Popper, K.R. (1962). Conjectures and refutations; the growth of scientific knowled-
ge. New York: Basic Books.
[Scharmer, 01] Scharmer, C.O. (2001). Self-transcending knowledge. Sensing and organizing aro-
und emerging opportunities. Journal of Knowledge Management 5(2), 137–150.
[Scharmer, 02] Scharmer, C.O. and K. Käufer (2002). Universities as the birthplace for the ent-
repreneuring human being. Reflections. The SoL Journal on Knowledge, Learning, and
Change (forthcoming)(http://www.ottoscharmer.com (Feb. 2, 2005)).
[Senge, 90] Senge, P.M. (1990). The fifth discipline. The art and practice of the learning orga-
nization. New York: Doubleday.
[Swertz, 04] Swertz, C. (2004). Didaktisches Design. Ein Leitfaden für den Aufbau hypermedia-
ler Lernsysteme mit der Web-Didaktik. Bielefeld: Wilhelm Bertelsmann Verlag.
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The Complementary Character of Microlearning
(On Microlearning)
Richard Eichenauer
IVG-Data (Linz, Austria)
Production Manager
Abstract: From the application of microlearning, two striking distinctive features arise. Firstly, it is a new way
of information access for the learner, which is an expression of a new learning environment. Secondly, a
complementary character becomes self-evident from many different points of view. It is this second aspect
that this paper is taking a closer look on. It is the object of this article to make aware the manifold and
complementary character of microlearning and to identify the resulting implications for specification,
implementation and utilisation of e-learning propositions.
1. Introduction
The well-known quotation by Laotse “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with
a single step.” does also apply to microlearning. Too many projects are not realised,
because people encounter obstacles that let us flinch from realising them.
Microlearning, in contrast, makes us go step by step in the right direction.
Quickly the question arises, in which areas this could be helpful. In this connection,
one thing is especially remarkable: the complementary character in many areas. On
the one hand, completely new forms, areas as well as markets of learning can be
opened up; on the other hand, it also becomes apparent that microlearning alone is
often not sufficient.
From which different directions are complementary characteristics evident?
A. Complementary from the environmental situation of benefit
B. Complementary for the information landscape
C. Complementary in education
D. Complementary in specification, implementation and application
Below, these four areas will be specified in detail.
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A. Complementary in situations
It is important for the acceptance of e-learning and, in particular, microlearning to sel-
ect a precise catalogue of questions and contents. In this connection, it is made use
of the situation context of the user, i.e. by taking into consideration particular situati-
ons, in which the user is situated, the information to be communicated is controlled
with regard to the target group. Especially in microlearning, this precision is of parti-
cular importance, specifically since the considered user contexts open up new mar-
kets for e-learning. For instance, the following examples can be discussed in this fra-
mework:
• Utilisation of waiting time
People want to avoid waiting time. Where this is not possible, means for micro-
learning can be provided in order to use this time in an expedient way. One exam-
ple would be the waiting time at a petrol station during fuelling: the operation of the
air pressure device by the user sheds light on the current environment (e.g. tyre
pressure is too low) and is an appropriate device for user input.
• Education of women in household and family
Due to their situation, women with multiple responsibilities do not have much time
for monolithic learning programmes. Moreover, the need to integrate the computer
into the common daily life rises further. This aspect will be discussed below.
• Utilisation of transport-related passive phases
The further rising penetration of computers in means of transportation and, at the
same time, the rising automation of the journey itself provide for the further utili-
sation of microlearning during the transport time. The exploitation of location infor-
mation plays an important role within this domain. First of all, public transport
comes to mind (journeys by train, etc.); in the future, automated individual trans-
portation will surely play a role as well.
• Exploitation of location information
The information itself of the location of the user provides for a high precision with
regard to the contents of microlearning. This refers, for instance, to tourist offers
(foreign language offers, information on places of interest, etc.).
Women in household and family. Three examples for this area of education of women
in household and family show the enormous scope and potential of microlearning.
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In the household and the family, women very often perform tasks, which inherently
are composed of active phases and phases of waiting:
Example babysitting. Most of the time, children have to be looked after. This time can
be used for microlearning. Depending on the place (= children’s room) and the time
(e.g. in the afternoon) and the saved profiles of the persons involved, learning and laug-
hing together with the children can be achieved in a playful way, since it is by all means
possible to combine microlearning with entertainment.
Example cooking. It takes hours to cook the roast in the oven. However, the cook can-
not leave the kitchen for a longer period of time. In this situation, waiting time occurs
increasingly, which should be made use of. Depending on the place (= kitchen), the
time (e.g. at noontime) and the saved personal profile, it is possible to learn new things
by way of deserts without leaving the environment. Appropriate input and output devi-
ces ensure adequate means of communication (display on refrigerator, etc.).
Example exercise machine. Most often, the exercise machine stands unused in a cor-
ner, since the use costs quite an effort and is not very stimulating. During training,
appropriate topics can be presented. Depending on the place (= training room), the
training situation (duration, heart rate, etc.) and the saved profile, precise questions
can be asked.
Generally speaking, one has to be aware of the fact that everything the user does
actively or passively on a device, each button that is pressed, constitute more infor-
mation, to which people can respond in an appropriate way. The example with the
exercise machine makes this very clear. Current biometric data, like for example the
pulse beat, of the user are known. In this way, the learning programme can even give
feedback in the sense of bio-feedback.
B. Complementary in information environments
Corresponding to the ever rising rate of availability of information during the last years,
the offers of information media are also becoming more sophisticated. This applies
also to e-learning propositions. It is now possible that microlearning can further pro-
mote the availability of information by the exploitation of user conditions in particular
situations, at the same time enhancing the quality of the information by the potential
precision.
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Microlearning can also supplement non-linear information accesses, like for instance
encyclopaedias. This is also one of the means to close the gap between knowledge
competence and implementation competence further.
Information is made available to the user in manifold ways, but most often also to a
too large extent. The offer forms a wide information landscape with only few sign
posts. Therefore, the decisive challenge is to obtain the right information at the right
time. The user can respond to this challenge with the application of microlearning.
Microlearning takes on an active role in the filtering and the supply of information. With
the help of the knowledge about the learning context of the user, microlearning can
offer and initiate interesting information.
The precision of questions can also be enhanced by providing the user with possibili-
ties of intervention. This makes it possible for the user to respond accordingly to
imprecise questions. The programme is always learning and the hits are becoming
more precisely.
In this way, current information of the present information landscape is used and
linked to the context information about the user and the learning situation and is
subsequently presented in an appropriate way.
However, one danger has to be mentioned here: with this kind of approach, only a sub-
optimum can be created for the user. Even though further optimisations are possible
in the framework of the known context, but modifications of the user profile, for
instance, could be hard to reproduce. Therefore, it is nearly impossible to implement
the will of the user, if the user has not (yet) selected his/her preferences. Most often,
users are looking for something and do only know what they were looking for when
they have found it. In these cases, conclusions by analogy for other topics have to be
tested on relevance on an ongoing basis.
C. Complementary in education
Microlearning can supplement existing education systems in many areas. It ranges
from presence seminars, which gain a persistent character by microlearning, via sup-
plements for professional journals to school and university, where the implementation
competence is especially promoted. Here, it becomes evident that microlearning
alone is not sufficient in most of the application cases.
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One example for the complementary character of microlearning is an extended form
of blended learning. The originally harmonic interaction between conventional e-lear-
ning and presence seminars is supplemented by the component microlearning.
This results in a structure with three levels. Each level is characterised by different
objects. One classification could be the following: conventional e-learning is applied in
phase 1 to introduce the learner to a field of knowledge, to level the basic knowledge
and to make particular difficulties visible. Subsequently, further knowledge is imparted
in presence seminars, in which the results of the first phase are further developed.
Until this point, the first phase creates basic knowledge and the second phase crea-
tes “main knowledge”.
3-level structure of blended learning with microlearning:
Depending on the learning efficiency, the learner has acquired enough knowledge of
the topic by the end of phase 2. Naturally, it cannot be expected that all participants
know 100% of the learning matter. Furthermore, how many percent of the learning
matter are considered sufficient depends on the domain. Moreover, the knowledge
will disappear slowly after the seminar, unless it is repeated and practically applied. A
consequent aftercare is seldom pursued. This results in a situation in which much of
the acquired knowledge disappears again and in which the relation between learning
effort and benefit is very poor.
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This is where microlearning comes in. Based on the results of the conventional e-lear-
ning phase and the presence seminars, the learning matter can be repeated conti-
nuously. Gradually, the knowledge curve will rise to 100% and the knowledge will stay
in the learner’s memory.
Microlearning can be seen as one form of e-learning aftercare as it were. The curve
can even rise above the original 100%, if the persons responsible for the context are
able to integrate further knowledge in the aftercare phase.
Naturally, this kind of aftercare does also work in combination with conventional
e-learning without presence seminars.
D. Complementary in specification, implementation and application
The specifications of traditional e-learning projects are characterised by a low extent
of formalisation. Microlearning contents, on the other hand, are predestined for fra-
meworks formalised to a larger extent. Frequently, a dynamic model is necessary to
generate the contents and put them into a framework, which has more static charac-
teristics. As a matter of fact, the supplementation with microlearning contents results
in great modifications in both project implementation and utilisation.
Specification
A number of different ways of characterisation is suited for the specification of e-lear-
ning contents. [Ei04] A wide arc can be described from methods with a rather low
extent of formalisation, like user stories and requirement lists, to methods with a rat-
her large extent of formalisation, like formatted specifications or even formal specifi-
cations. Whereas forms like user stories and requirement lists are better suited for
conventional e-learning, these specifications can be supplemented in microlearning by
formal ways of characterisation. Kappel assess the suitability of different ways of cha-
racterisation with the characteristics precision, easy to test, effort, suitability for lay-
persons, and scalability. [Ka04] We will follow this system here:
•Precision. With regard to the necessary precision, they correspond more to the
needs of microlearning.
• Easy to test. Concerning the testing, it has to be mentioned that even though the vali-
dation of individual micro steps may be trivial, the awareness of the whole knowled-
ge landscape, i.e. the interrelationships between the individual “knowledge atoms”,
is rather complex. Suitable visualisation and validation tools are indispensable.
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• Effort. The effort for the content preparation can vary considerably for each domain.
Generally, the effort is notably less than with conventional e-learning applications,
though.
• Suitability for laypersons. A special advantage of microlearning with regard to the
content specification is the particular suitability for laypersons, i.e. professional
experts can contribute their knowledge to the content without having to have spe-
cial design or programming knowledge.
• Scalability. Another advantage is the very easy scalability of the contents.
In conclusion, one can say that the specification of microlearning contents is more
formal than the specification of more conventional methods. Specifications can also be
carried out with high precision and little effort by professional experts. An additional
advantage is the high scalability of the content. However, the difficulty of validation
remains virulent.
Implementation
In contrast to other application implementations, the implementation of traditional e-
learning contents is also characterised by the fact that persisting data is already crea-
ted in the development phase of the application and not only after its utilisation.
In microlearning, on the other hand, the time span in which the contents are imple-
mented is extended. On the one hand, contents are still created during the develop-
ment phase, but on the other hand, it is possible and intended to integrate further con-
tents in the content stock also after the completion of the application. The point in time
for the creation of contents tends to be relocated towards the direction of utilisation
again and supplements the creation of conventional e-learning contents very well with
regard to the time flow.
Application
The application of microlearning is probably the greatest difference with regard to tra-
ditional e-learning forms. This aspect is part of the peculiarities of the compatibility
described under A-C and therefore the reader is referred to theses sections.
Eichenauer • The Complementary Character of Microlearning 43
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 43
Conclusion and outlook
In conclusion, one can say that the complementary character appears in so many ways
that the additional benefit becomes apparent. IVG Data, for instance, is testing at the
moment in how far microlearning is suitable for the aftercare of highly interactive appli-
cation trainings, since it is not yet clear how highly interactive contents can be trans-
ferred to the reduced presentation possibilities of microlearning.
One disadvantage of the complementary character lies inherently in the fact that
microlearning is not sufficient in many application areas. That is why the limits of
microlearning have to be shown precisely so that this access to e-learning can be
applied in appropriate cases.
References
[Ei04] Eichenauer, R.: Evolutionäre Content-Spezifikationen am Beispiel eLearning. Diss.
Johannes Kepler University Linz, 2004; p. 21-25.
[Ka04] Kappel, G.; Pröll, B.; Reich, S.; Retschitzegger, W. (Ed.): Web Engineering – Systematische
Entwicklung von Web-Anwendungen, dpunkt.verlag, Heidelberg, 2004; pp. 34.
44 Eichenauer • The Complementary Character of Microlearning
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The Design of MicroLearning Experiences:
A Research Agenda
(On Microlearning)
Silvia Gabrielli, Stephen Kimani, Tiziana Catarci
Università di Roma ”La Sapienza” (Roma, Italy)
Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica
Abstract: In this paper we focus on the interaction design properties of microlearning experiences to outline
relevant research directions and main challenges of the field. We start by analyzing current efforts in the
area of educational technologies in terms of their support of anytime-anywhere access to learning
resources, which is a core property of microlearning environments. We also overview learning theories that
are relevant to address the lifelong dimension of informal everyday activities of knowledge acquisition. From
this discussion a set of design requirements and evaluation issues are derived to inform future investigation
and experimentations in the microlearning area.
1. Introduction
Technological innovation has made our society a knowledge intensive one, where suc-
cessful performance of individuals or groups heavily relies on the acquisition and use
of relevant information contents and suitable communication means to achieve task
objectives. Microlearning is a new research area aimed at exploring new ways of res-
ponding to the growing need for lifelong learning or learning on demand of members
of our society, such as knowledge workers [6][11]. It is based on the idea of develo-
ping small chunks of learning content and flexible technologies that can enable lear-
ners to access them more easily in specific moments and conditions of the day, for
example during time breaks or while on the move. In this paper we analyse, from an
interaction design perspective, which are the core requirements, as well as some main
challenges, in the design of microlearning experiences. We start by focusing on the
spatial and temporal dimensions of learning to identify possible differences and syn-
ergies of microlearning with other current approaches to educational technologies. In
section 3 we briefly discuss learning theories that are relevant to inform microlearning
environments, while in section 4 we list a minimum set of requirements that should
be met by this type of learning contexts. Section 5 suggests possible methodological
01-Manus_Microlearning 19.01.2006 17:09 Uhr Seite 45
approaches for the designevaluation of microlearning concepts and scenarios, accor-
ding to the requirements listed above. It also raises a number of issues, such as the
evaluation of lifelong microlearning experiences, that seem to have been particularly
difficult to tackle by learning studies till now [1]. We conclude the paper by sketching
some interesting areas of inquiry for microlearning that should be part of its research
agenda.
2. Anytime-Anywhere Access to Learning Resources
Microlearning activities, by definition, rely on access to learning resources which may
happen at the time of breaks or gaps in learners daily work/life activities. Since these
gaps may take place in many different space locations and moments of time, micro-
learning is definitely the most typical form of anytime-anywhere learning. Also, rese-
arch literature has shown that much learning in life is often informal, in fact “opportu-
nistic and strictly under the control of the learner” [10]. Marchionini and Maurer say
that learners take advantage of other people, technology, and the context during infor-
mal learning. Some research also indicates that informal (science) learning outside the
formal class setting significantly contributes to the motivation to learn [17]. It is rather
interesting to note that nearly 85% of students_ time is spent outside formal clas-
sroom settings [3]. ⁄
In Fig. 1 we compare different typologies of educational environments and technolo-
gies that might support informal learning by taking into account their temporal-spatial
dimensions. Pervasive learning environments, for example, are characterised by the
presence of embedded technologies and a series of small devices like tags, sensors,
badges etc., that are dedicated to detect, observe and build dynamic models of the
environment and learners’ activities, so as to adapt to (and possibly support better)
learning processes [11]. Among interesting applications of pervasive technologies, we
mention mixed realities environments for learning [12], that recently have been deve-
loped to transform or augment traditional learning activities carried out indoor (clas-
sroom) or outdoor by designing innovative interfaces between the physical and the
digital world [13][14]. However, the complexity of design and dedicated nature of
these environments make their use quite limited and localized in terms of time/space
dimensions [11].
A more desktop-based type of experience is provided by Computer Assisted Learning
Environments and Web-based applications on which most of eLearning systems and
activities typically rely on. In some way, the large availability of desktop computers and
simple network connections in everyday environments (like home, work etc.) increa-
ses the level of anywhere/anytime access to eLearning by its users. However, a pos-
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sible disadvantage of this conditions is that the devices and learning contents typical-
ly used for eLearning are not particularly easy to move or transfer from one place/devi-
ce to another, neither specifically suitable to be accessed while on the move. To remo-
ve this problem mobile learning environments are more appropriate to use, since they
are based on portable devices like PDAs, cellular phones etc., supported by wireless
network connections to enable a flexible and seamless accessexchange of learning
contents anytime and anywhere. This is particularly important for microlearning expe-
riences, that due to their ubiquitous emergence and lifelong duration, need to integra-
te the mobility capabilities of these devices with the computational power and support
provided by pervasive/ubiquitous environments. This would be expected to effective-
ly support learners in their access and transfer of learning resources across different
surroundings, as microlearning requires. Moreover, it has been observed that in mobi-
le computing user activities tend to be implicit, opportunistic, and informal. Mobile
users tend to rely on (or indirectly take advantage of) the context, including aspects
such as: location, infrastructure/resources, environment, time, and other people.
Considering the previous observations reported in [10] [17], mobile computing does
therefore afford a great opportunity for supporting (micro)learning [7].
Fig.1: Types of Learning Environments according to Temporal-Spatial Access
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3. Learning Theories for MicroLearning
All the learning environments mentioned above share the same foundation on con-
structivism and/or social cultural theory as a common understanding of knowledge
acquisition [4][5][20][21]. Microlearning makes no exception to that, but can also be
informed by a range of more recent learning approaches, projects1 and studies, that
have focused on investigating the characteristics of adult learning during lifelong activi-
ties [8][18]. A main observation from these studies has been that most adult learning
happens outside formal education. It often responds to the need for a personal/pro-
fessional growth of individuals that dedicate part of their (informal) daily activities to
the acquisition of new competences or to an updating of their knowledge, motivated
by changing conditions or circumstances in life (for example getting prepared for a
new job).
Also, informal learning typically is based on task specific activities, where learners are
interested more to access very specific pieces of information instead of a complete
body of knowledge, in order to support decision making or the acquisition of a certain
skill [18].
Mobile and ubiquitous technologies are particularly indicated to support this type of
learning; in the case of microlearning they should be designed to enable a natural blen-
ding of it within the flow of everyday activities carried out by learners.
It is also worth mentioning that these technologies are suitable to support both inten-
tional and unintentional types of learning; the former are characterised by intensive
and deliberate efforts to acquire new knowledge by a learner, the latter consist of not
deliberate learning experiences derived from conversations, observations in the world,
accidents etc., that cannot be planned in advance, but are potentially enabled as unex-
pected outcomes from the informal learning activities [8][18].
Microlearning is thus to be considered a contextual lifelong learning process, that
according to [15] is most effective when it can enable activities such as:
i) the construction of knowledge, by means of finding new solutions to problems or
creating connections between past and current experiences,
ii) conversation with both the socialphysical world and with oneself (like in reflection,
experimentation in the world and interpretation of results) as well as,
iii) learner control over any continuing cycles of experimentation and reflection.
1 See, for instance, some results of the MOBIlearn EU Project "Guidelines for
Developing Mobile Learning Deliverable"
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4. Main Requirements of MicroLearning Experiences
In the light of the microlearning properties discussed above, we now provide a list of
requirements that should guide the design of both technologies and contents for
microlearning experiences.
According to our analysis, they should be:
1. highly transferable and unobstrusive of the learner’s activities, so that learners can
easily download and upload the didactic materials they have been provided from
one device to another. This should also enable learners to work always on the most
updated version of the learning material wherever they are, by using the most
appropriate device according to the specific conditions in which they happen to
carry on learning activities. This would also entail the study of natural interfaces for
multimodal interaction with the learning system to support the learners in situati-
ons such as: multitasking, hands-free or eyes-free interaction, exposure to possible
distractions (noise, interruptions, etc.) from the surrounding environment.
2. Easily available and user-friendly, enabling anytime-anywhere access to it, suppor-
ted by the use of mobile phones, PDAs or other wireless communication devices
connected also by Local Area Networks (LANs). Usability aspects of microlearning
technologies and contents should be analysed carefully, in such a way to enable the
most intuitive and straightforward interaction with them by people with different
levels of expertise with technologies.
3. Persistent, meaning that the learning environment including all the modifications
operated on it by a learner in a lifetime, should be independent from its physical
instantiation on a certain device, thus easily accessible at anytime through the spe-
cific technology at hand. The use of a persistent user profile may enable the lear-
ner freedom in accessing her same profile from different devices, settings and for
different services.
4. Useful, especially through enhancing the different activities contributing to the
achievement of the learning goal(s). This is only possible if technologies are able to
present an adequate and simple image of the learning environment to the user, no
matter how complex its inner organization might be. For microlearning, appropria-
te system metaphors, especially ‘off the desktop’ ones, should be uncovered and
studied in order to fulfil this requirement.
5. Individual as well as sharable, so that they adequately support individual learning
activities but also enable learners to get or provide support from/to peers, tutors or
other experts by the use of communication technology.
6. Adaptable and/or adaptive to learners’ needs, so that different interaction styles
can be selected by learners according to their preferences or skills (for instance,
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their level of expertise with the learning environment) or automatically suggested
by the system according to specific learner profiles or models developed during
lifetime interactions with the microlearning environment. Personalization features
should be carefully designed to avoid making user interaction more complex or run-
ning against principles such as transparency, predictability, control etc.. By contrast,
the aim of this requirement is to support a more natural and consistent interaction
of the learner with digital (learning) resources, according to the opportunities and
affordances provided by everyday environments.
As far as microlearning contents are concerned, below we mention a number of meta-
requirements that, according to the theoretical approaches cited in section 3, should
be fulfilled. In particular, they should:
1. promote the acquisition of basic skills such as flexibility and adaptability in learners,
making them aware of the very rapid and changing nature of knowledge in ever-
yday environments,
2. foster the development of creativity skills, as well as problem solving and managing
competences,
3. capitalize on learners communication abilities as a way of supporting the social pro-
duction and reconstruction of knowledge during learning and working activities and
try to improve them by providing learners ways of analysing their own communi-
cation styles as recurrently practiced in the field.
5. Design and Evaluation Approaches
So far we have discussed possible suggestions for developing effective microlearning
experiences. However, due to the early stage of work in this field much experimenta-
tion at the level of design and evaluation of microlearning environments is required. If
we analyse research in innovative design areas such as ubiquitous computing, we can
observe that participatory design approaches or observation of users’ activities in
authentic everyday settings have been the most appropriate methods applied to
generate relevant data to inform design [12][16]. We claim that adopting this approach
would also be key for microlearning, due to the need of uncovering original and effec-
tive combinations of microcontent with natural interfaces to support learners during
their lifelong knowledge acquisition. Ethnographic observations, as well as participa-
tory design techniques, may provide interesting hints for developing design concepts
to be tested in microlearning scenarios of use. Previous studies have demonstrated
how technological possibilities, if appropriately presented to users within meaningful
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and (possibly) authentic scenarios, can be of inspiration for developing creative and
useful design solutions that would hardly be found by following more traditional design
approaches [12]. As we mentioned before, new metaphors beyond the ones current-
ly used in distant education should be devised and investigated to present a more
appropriate microlearning system image to its users. This should be founded on
indepth and longitudinal analyses of learners actions and interactions with the physical
world and with microlearning resources as they are experienced and reused for
knowledge acquisition.
Evaluation studies on microlearning would also be key to inform a better design of
these systems. For what concerns evaluating microlearning technologies, usability
approaches could inform the analysis of microlearning concepts and scenarios.
However, assessing usability of cutting edge technologies for which usually only
proof-of-concepts or early prototypes are available, might be particularly difficult. This
is because task centric evaluation techniques are not ideal to be applied for studying
informal everyday activities and also because it is unclear how it would be possible to
apply quantitative evaluations or controlled experiments to assess lifelong learning
processes. For the evaluation of more advanced and robust microlearning systems
some adapted usability techniques may turn out to be useful, for instance, recent
efforts towards developing usability heuristics for the evaluation of mobile environ-
ments/applications (such as [9], [19]) and shared environments (such as [2]).
Somewhat problematic would also be measuring the effectiveness of microlearning
experiences in terms of the learning objectives achieved. Specifically, a main challen-
ge would be to assess achievements at the level of metaskills acquired by the learner
through a life long assimilation and personal (re)interpretation of the contents provi-
ded. This is an area where currently more investigation is required. If microlearning
research will undertake this challenge it is likely to provide interesting insights for a
better understanding of learning activities as instantiated within everyday informal
settings.
6. Conclusion
This brief excursus in the field of microlearning theory and technological development
has shown that there are several areas and opportunities for future inquiry that pro-
mise to advance the state of the art in microlearning and also to bring relevant results
to the HCI community interested on educational technologies. To summarize, some
main directions to be included into the microlearning research agenda are the follo-
wing:
Gabrielli/Kimani/Catarci • The Design of MicroLearning Experiences: A Research Agenda 51
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• Experimentation into the design of anytime anywhere access to digital learning
resources by devising ubiquitous computer interfaces and suitable interaction
metaphors enabling flexible use of microlearning environments by learners during
informal lifelong learning activities.
• The development and application of different combinations of HCI metodologies for
a better analysis and understanding of lifelong learning practices within authentic
scenarios of use, by means also of iterative and participatory generation of design
concepts and solutions, suitable to match learners’ needs.
• The design of cutting edge technologies and prototypes responding to the list of
microlearning requirements mentioned in section 4 and possibly to an extended list
of them as informed by current and future research on everyday use of ubiqui-
tous/mobile technologies.
• The study of more suited evaluation methods for microlearning environments that
would properly take into account the lifelong dimension of learning, as well as any
future advancement of teaching methods and models more specifically addressed
to match the emerging requirements of informal learning activities.
7. References
1. Abowd G.D., Mynatt E.D. (2000). Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in
Ubiquitous Computing. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Vol.7, No.1,
29-58.
2. Baker K., Greenberg S., Gutwin C. (2002) Empirical development of a heuristic evaluation
methodology for shared workspace groupware. Proc. of the ACM Conference on
Computer Supported Cooperative Work, New Orleans LA, 96-105.
3. Bannasch S. (1999). The electronic curator: Using a handheld computer at the exploratori-
um. The Concord Consortium Newsletter.
4. Brown J. S., Collins, A. and Duguid, S. (1989), Situated Cognition and the culture of lear-
ning. Educational Researcher, 18(1).
5. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6. Florida R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure,
Community and Everyday Life. Perseus Books Group.
7. Kimani S., Bertini E. (2005). Exploiting Ubiquitous Computing to Support Digital Library
Tasks. Proc. of Human-Computer Interaction International Conference (HCII 2005), Las
Vegas Nevada 22-27 July, to appear.
8. Livingstone, D.W. (2001) Adults’ Informal Learning: Definitions, Findings, Gaps and Future
Research, Toronto: OISE/UT (NALL Working Paper No.21) at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/
depts/sese/csew/nall/res/21adultsifnormallearning.htm, accessed 1 March 2002.
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9. Mankoff J., Dey A., Hsieh G., Kientz J., Lederer S., & Ames M. (2003). Heuristic evaluati-
on of ambient displays. Proc. of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI 2003), Ft. Lauderdale CA 5-10 April, 169-176.
10. Marchionini G., Maurer, H. (1995). The roles of digital libraries in teaching and learning.
Communications of the ACM, Vol.38, 67-75.
11. Ogata H., Yano Y. (2003). How Ubiquitous Computing can Support Language Learning.
Proc. of KEST (Knowledge Economy and Development of Science and Tech-nology) 2003,
1-6, Honjo, Akita, Japan, 2003. (Invited paper).
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seem to be: innovation through technology inspiration. Proc. of ACM/SIGCHI DIS02,
London 25-28 June, 373-378.
13. Rogers, Y., Price, S., Fitzpatrick, G., Fleck, R., Harris, E., Smith, H., Randell, C., Muller, H.,
O'Malley, C., Stanton, D., Thompson, M. and Weal, M. (2004) Ambient Wood: Designing
new forms of digital augmentation for learning outdoors. In Proc. Interaction Design and
Children, ACM, New York. 3-10.
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Mobile Learning Resource. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 6, 220-234.
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Computing, 8, 200-207.
17. Stronck D. R. (1983). The comparative effects of different museum tours on children's atti-
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ristics and their application. Proc. of OzCHI 2003, Brisbane Australia, 24-32.
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Customized Learning Sequences (CLS) by Metadata
(On Microlearning)
Christian Swertz
Institute of Educational Sciences
University of Vienna (Austria)
Professor
Abstract: Computer technology as a medium requires a special form of knowledge organisation, which allows
learners to go individually and in a reflective way through the content (Customized Learning Sequences), thus
requiring teachers to produce individually navigable hypertexts. Individualization does not mean offering “pure”
self-directed learning, as learning presupposes instruction by others. We have to aid teachers in reorganizing kno-
wledge to hypertexts that allows individual navigation. Supporting learners in finding their individual path is also a
crucial factor.How to aid teachers and how to set up meaningful navigation aids will be discussed in four steps:
1.) Theoretical considerations; 2.) First step of Web-Didactics: Decontextualisation; 3.) Second step of Web-
Didactics: Recontextualisation; 4.) Research. Which theoretical considerations are eternal for Web-Didactics?
1. Overview
As Meder (1998) and Swertz (2000) demonstrated in a theoretical analysis of the
media structure of computer technology, this medium requires a special form of
knowledge organisation, which allows learners to go individually and in a reflective
way through the content (Customized Learning Sequences), thus requiring teachers to
produce individually navigable hypertexts. Individualization does not mean offering
“pure” self-directed learning, as learning presupposes instruction by others. We have
to aid teachers in reorganizing knowledge to hypertexts that allows individual naviga-
tion. Supporting learners in finding their individual path is also a crucial factor.
1.1 Books
It is difficult to write a theory about media, since writing a theory on media presup-
poses the use of media. Therefore a medium could only be reflected in the relation of
media (on pluralism see Fromme 1997). Comparing computer technology to books
shows certain differences in the physical dimension of the medium: Books consist of
colour on paper. The paper is tied in numbered sequences.
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The colour is most often used to form letters. Letters are dominantly used in books,
in doing so matching the arrangement of the tied paper (McLuhan 1992). This arran-
gement is characteristic for the production of equal copies: Books require knowledge
to be arranged in linear sequences that are reproduced in equal copies. This well
known structure of books requires a certain style of instruction: The idea of „every-
body learns the same thing equally“ (Comenius) and the idea of an single perfect
learning sequence were reflecting the equal copies of books.
These ideas change when another medium gets culturally predominant. How could
computer technology be understood from this perspective?
1.2 Hypertext
Today computers are built as electrical digital universal Turing machines. Usually key-
boards and mouses are used as input devices and screens as output devices. Key attri-
butes of this medium are the possibility to use algorithms during the presentation of
knowledge to alter the presentation of the knowledge and the limited space on the
screen.
The application of algorithms during presentation substitutes the equal copies; an
individual presentation becomes possible. From this point of view individual learning
has to reflect the physical structure of computer technology. This individualisation is
connected to another granularity: Screens only show a small part of computer memory
– everything not shown is detracted from sensual reception.
As we know Hypertexts (Iske 2001) are best suited for the specific structure set by
computer technology – but in practice we often find continuous texts in on line
learning environments (as on this CD).
How could the question of individualized Hypertexts be answered by didactics?
1.3 Navigation
The key problem is the navigation aid: How does a learner find the next step? How
could the available knowledge be opened up? How has a hypertext to be arranged to
support individual navigation, self dependant learning and a individually chosen didac-
tical model? To solve these problems we have to offer navigational aids allowing the
learner to move around efficiently, and we have to offer a variety of didactical models.
Web-Didactics does not offer a single instructional design model (e.g. Problem Based
Learning, Tasks Oriented Learning) but a choice of didactical models, that where
approved in the educational tradition. These models were specified concerning the
granularity of the computer screen. The aim of Web-Didactics is a systematically and
therefore clearly structured knowledge base that takes concern of different didactical
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models, therefore allowing individual learning. Self-directed learning and dependent
learning are aligned.
How should learning material be prepared to allow individual navigation?
2. Decontextualisation
Preparing content for learning requires two steps:
1. The content has to be decontextualizied. It has to be derived from existing sources
and transformed to the required granularity. That leads to an knowledge base being
organized accordingly to didactical principles.
2. The produced elements must be recontextualisised to map them into learning
time. (for de- and recontextualisation see Flechsig 1991).
Decontextualisation means building up a dicaticaly structured knowledge base. Know-
ledge is derived from existing contexts and is prepared for the learning process. Web-
Didactics draws a distinction between four levels. The lowest level is the screen page.
Which attribute is relevant on the level of the screen page?
2.1 Media Types
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The key attribute of the screen page is the media type. The media type of the shown
page from Lerndorf (www.lerndorf.de) is „Text“.
Using different media is an old didactical principle that applies to hypertexts accor-
dingly. Computer technology offers varied forms of presentation: Pictures, drawings,
videos, sounds etc. thus opening different didactical options. Which media types have
to be considered from a didactical perspective?
The graphic shows the Media Types specified in Web-Didactics. The idea is not to pro-
duce every media type in every learning environment, but to guide authors to a syste-
matic production of different media types. Crucial is the variation of media types.
For navigation different media types have to be combined with a knowledge type.
Which knowledge types have to be considered?
2.2 Knowledge Types
Knowledge Types are the second level in decontextualisation. The screenshot shows
the navigation between knowledge types. In other words: The knowledge types are
used as a navigational aid for self-directed learning.
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Web-Didactics draws a distinction between to classes of knowledge types:
- receptive,
- interactive and
- cooperative knowledge.
Receptive Knowledge is passively perceived, interactive knowledge offers interaction
with the computer and cooperative knowledge means communication with other peo-
ple. The distinction was made concerning the didactical models to be realised. We
chose knowledge types that occur in didactical models mentioned in literature. The
compilation is therefore derived through a heuristic approach and has in so far to be
proven by empirical studies. The compilation could be modified if needed.
2.2.1 Receptive Knowledge
Beside perceiving the knowledge learners stay passive while using receptive know-
ledge. The diagram above shows the systematics of receptive knowledge types. The
distinction of orientation, explanation, action and sources is derived from a concept
suggested by Flechsig (1990).
Orientational Knowledge mentions objects, places them in context without detailed
explanations or giving instructions on how to use them. One possible composition
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starts with by accessing previous knowledge („As you may know...“), places the kno-
wledge in context („... belongs to ...“) and mentions relevant concepts („Important
concepts are ...“).
Explanational knowledge offers reasons why something is in the was it is or why
something is looked upon in a certain way.
Instructional Knowledge tells you what to do and how to do it.
Source knowledge indicates places where more informations could be found.
2.2.2 Interactive Knowledge
Interactive knowledge means that learners interact with the computer. Interaction with
the computer takes place in assignments where the answers could be automatically
evaluated and in simulations. Assignments that require cooperation with a teacher or
other learners belong to the cooperative knowledge types.
Simulation is a versatile genre that could be used from social behaviour to technical
controls. Most often the association with cooperative knowledge is sensible:
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2.2.3 Cooperative Knowledge
Within cooperative knowledge learners communicate with other learners or teachers.
We distinct spontaneous cooperations that could happen at any time from planned
cooperations that are planned at certain point in a didactical model.
Planned cooperations are classified by group size. Consultations take place between
two persons, learning conferences are planned for several hundred participants. The
mentioned models are all well established and we already specified software require-
ments, but implementation only exists rudimentary. Empirical prove for the mentioned
cooperations is therefore still a desideratum.
5-10 receptive, interactive or cooperative knowledge units are combined in a learning
unit.
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2.3 Learning Units
Learning units are the third level of decontextualisation. Learning units are defined by
concepts. The navigation within concepts is highlighted in the drawing.
The distinction of media types, knowledge types and learning units makes up a hier-
arcical structure:
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Learning units consist of knowledge units. Knowledge unit consist of media units. The
network structure, that is typical for hypertext, seems to be missing. The network
emerges from the following structure: The concepts of the learning unit are under-
stood as thesaurus terms. A thesaurus term has to be unique, that is a term that occu-
res only once in a knowledge base. The terms are linked not by a hierarchiy but
through typed relations.
Terms linked with typed relations make up a knowledge network that consists of local
hierarchies of knowledge types and media types. Relations make relevant concepts
accessible within a media unit, when a concept is mentioned but not explained within
a media unit. In this case the concept has to be made accessible through a relation to
keep the coherence of the hypertext.
Which relation types have to be considered?
Relations Types are taken from thesaurus standards. Within thesauri hierarchical and
associative relations are distinguished. Hierarchical relations reproduce concepts that
are subordinated. Associative relations reproduce concepts that are co-subordinated.
Relations are used to map the logical structure of concepts. As the logical structure is
often followed by didactical models logical structures could be used for didactical
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design. Only in rare cases didactical steps are made across the logical structure In this
cases didactical relations are used.
Relations make up the forth level of Web-Didactics and they are the last element for
decontextualisation. We can summarize:
Web-Didactics as an ontology to prepare knowledge for learning by decontextualisati-
on differentiates media types, knowledge types, index terms and relations. These
types could be used as a vocabulary for meta data systems (e.g. IMS-LD). The gra-
duation is orientated an the granularity of the screen.
A knowledge base that allows for varied individual navigation paths is set up by a
systematical variation of media types, knowledge types and relations. How could
didactical models be applied to such a knowledge base?
3. Recontextualisation
Recontextualisation is implemented by
- media models,
- micro models,
- macro models and
- course models.
3.1 Media Models
Didactical models are used for recontextualisation, that is the arrangement of screen
pages within a didactical hypertext. As self-directed learning and dependent learning
are necessarily aligned (Litt 1964), we have to take care for both ideas. Web-Didactics
integrate self-directed and dependent learning by offering media-types, knowledge-
types and index-terms as navigation aids. These navigation aids avoid cognitive over-
load and lost in hyperspace problems through their systematic structure. Thus learners
are offered the possibility for self-directed learning.
For dependent learning the screen pages are arranged by applying didactical models
to the meta data. How could this sequence be presented to learners?
Recontextualising screen pages by didactical models means to fix a certain sequence.
This sequence can be offered to learners at the same time as the navigation aids, thus
integrating self-directed and dependent learning.
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The sequence leads by simple forward and backward buttons through the media
types, knowledge types and learning units. In the screen shot above the backward but-
ton leads to the screen page containing an animation.
Didactical models are specified for every level of decontextulisation in Web-Didactics.
Which didactical models have to be taken into account?
Media types are ordered according to media models. There are two media models:
from concrete to abstract and from abstract to concrete. The first model goes from
concrete to abstract since fewer and fewer qualities of the object are represented: The
word „tree“ does not show much of a real tree, while a picture of a tree shows more
qualities of the real tree.
In practice hardly every possible media type is produced. In most cases only one ore
two media types are presented for every knowledge type. So how are the knowledge
types sequenced?
3.2 Micro Models
Knowledge types are sequenced by micro models. The next knowledge type is called
if every media type within the knowledge type has been presented to the learner.
Micro models are:
- example oriented models
- models according to Herbart
- learning by discovery
- task oriented models
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- role based learning
- theory driven
- action oriented
- problem based learning
I will show the last three models exemplary:
3.2.1 Theory driven
The drawing shows the theory driven micro model. The core is explanatory knowled-
ge that contains the theory, understood as justification for knowledge. This model
does not contain cooperative knowledge. It thus matches the requirements of the
lonely learner.
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3.2.2 Action oriented
The core of the action orientated micro model is action knowledge, that is to say it is
placed early in the learning sequence. This model shows advantages derived from
decontextualisation: By organising knowledge to media types, knowledge types and
learning units it is possible to offer different didactical models without rearranging all
of the knowledge for every model. As explanatory knowledge is used in the theory dri-
ven model and in the action oriented model the same knowledge unit will be presen-
ted to the learner. This allows for an effective reuse of knowledge units. This can also
be seen on the problem based learning:
3.2.3 Problem based
The core of problem based learning is the task to be solved. Hence the task is pre-
sented at an early stage within the learning unit.
Problem based learning shows another thing to consider while using Web-Didactics:
Learner do not need to complete the learning sequence: If learners are able to solve
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the tasks without further knowledge, they can answer the question and skip to the
next learning unit.
The presented micro models gave evidence that a great variety of didactical models
could be realised by different sequences of media types, knowledge types and lear-
ning units. If the possibility of altering the media types, knowledge types and relations
is considered too, the complexity of didactics shows up. To develop varieties matching
the requirements of different cultures is an interesting task that requires empirical
research.
3.3 Macro Models
The third level of decontextualisation covers the sequencing of learning units. The next
learning unit is called if all media units and knowledge units within the learning units
are passed through. Which didactical models can be differentiated on the third level?
Didactical models on the third level are referred to as macro models. As micro models
use one knowledge type as a key type, macro models use a relation type as a key
type. Macro models that have been specified so far are (key relations in brackets):
- deductive model (hierarchical relations) with the varieties depth first and width first
- inductive model (hierarchical relations) with the varieties depth first and width first
- goal based bottom up (hierarchical relations)
- spiral model (context-of)
- constructive model (used-for)
- network model (all types)
- guides tour (didactical before).
As an example the drawing shows a simple hierarchy of learning units. The inductive
model with width first sequences the learning unit as 4-5-2-6-7-3-1. The deductive
model with depth first sequences the learning units as 1-2-4-5-3-6-7.
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In bigger learning environments the learning units can be combined to courses.
Between courses only the relations “generalize“ and “beside“ are used, accordingly
only inductive and deductive strategies are used.
4. Empirical Studies
By decontextualising knowledge to a knowledge based on considering different didac-
tical models it is made sure that different paths for individual navigation are available.
At the same time the recontextualisiation enables the single learner to choose his own
didactical model, as the application of the models to the metadata can be done by
algorithms.
What do empirical studies show about the Web-Didactic?
One point we use quantitative studies for is to test the satisfaction of learners with
knowledge types and navigation aids. The diagrams show results from a small semi-
nar in a University (n=21). We asked learners if they feel that the knowledge types are
helpful („Knowledge Types helpful“) and if they fell they understood the navigation
aids („Navigation graspable“).
Results show that the knowledge types are accepted and the navigation aids where
judged as helpful (Ja = Yes). Critical points where that we do not offer off line versi-
ons and that the content could not be downloaded at once.
For qualitative research we asked learner to use the platform while thinking aloud. We
used a screen cam to record the visible screen and the verbal expressions. We analy-
sed the recordings taking account for usability, navigational behaviour and knowledge
reception.
Our analysis shows that learners understand the navigational aids very fast – even
without any introduction (we gave learners just the task to learn something about a
certain concept and the URL) the navigational aids are used intuitively. While learning
learners use very different strategies for navigation. That shows that the aim of Web-
Didactics, to support an individual navigation, is reached.
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References
Comenius, Johann Amos (1964): Orbis sensualium pictus. Osnabrück : Zeller.
Flechsig, Karl-Heinz (1991): Wissenssynthesen (Verfahren). Studienbrief im
Weiterbildungsprogramm Wissensorganisator. GQWO: Göttingen.
Fromme, Johannes (1997): Pädagogik als Sprachspiel. Leske+Budrich: Opladen.
Herbart, Johann Friedrich (1979): Zwei Vorlesungen über Pädagogik. In: Adl-Amini, Bijan:
Pädagogische Theorie und Erzieherische Praxis. Stuttgart, S. 106-111.
Heimann, Paul (1976): Didaktik als Theorie und Lehre. In: ders.: Didaktik als
Unterrichtswissenschaft. Klett: Stuttgart, S. 142-167.
Hönigswald, Richard (1927): Über die Grundlagen der Pädagogik. Ein Beitrag zur Frage des
pädagogischen Universitäts-Unterrichts. Ernst Reinhardt: München.
Iske, Stefan(2001): Hypertext als Technologie des Umgang mit Informationen. Bertelsmann:
Bielefeld..
Litt, Theodor (1964): Führen oder Wachsenlassen. Klett: Stuttgart.
Meder, Norbert (1998): Neue Technologien und Erziehung/Bildung. In: Borrelli, M.; Ruhloff, J.:
Deutsche Gegenwartspädagogik Bd.III, Hohengehren 1998, S. 26-40.
Meder, Norbert (2001): Didaktische Ontologien.
http://www.l-3.de/de/literatur/download/did.pdf (25.2.2002).
Rousseau, Jean Jaques (1981): Emile oder über die Erziehung. 5. Aufl. Schöningh: Paderborn.
Swertz, Christian (2002): Konzepte und Methoden zur Qualitätssicherung bei der Produktion von
hypertextuellen Online-Lernumgebungen. In: MedienPädagogik (1) (http://www.medienpa-
ed.com/02-1/swertz1.pdf [15.4.2002]).
Swertz, Christian (2004): Didaktisches Design. Ein Leitfaden für den Aufbau hypermedialer
Lernsysteme mit der Web-Didaktik. Wilhelm Bertelsmann Verlag: Bielefeld 2004.
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Precise and Succinct Yet Interlinked
Requirements for E-learning in the Workplace
(On Microlearning)
Christina Schachtner
Institute for Media and Communication Studies
University of Klagenfurt (Austria)
Professor
Abstract: The goal of the study ‘Learning for Production’ is to develop a concept for an E-learning system in
collaboration with the workers. The workers are interested in small learning units; these units should also
show the connections within the working process. They would like to learn theoretical knowledge and they
asked how experience could be a part of the E-learning system. The paper focuses on the relation between
these expectations and the necessary consequences for computer-aided learning systems with regard to
the possibilities of micro learning.
0. Introduction
"Precise and succinct yet interlinked.“ This statement neatly summarizes the repeated
demands made by skilled workers at a paper mill when interviewed about the design
of E-learning modules during our study on “Learning for Production“ (LfP).
1
This de-
mand fits in very well with the idea of microlearning. Picking up on it, one could imme-
diately start to develop small learning units, but that would be tantamount to taking the
second step before the first.
In my opinion, too much emphasis has usually been placed on aspects of technology
when developing E-learning systems, and not enough attention has been paid to what
knowledge is required in specific learning and working situations and how this know-
ledge has been traditionally acquired. This information should affect the way know-
ledge is presented in E-learning programmes. The probable consequences of ignoring
these factors are learning systems which do not correspond adequately to the re-
quirements of the specific learning situation.
1 Head: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christina Schachtner; Coordination: Mag. Gabriele Frankl; Colleagues: Angelika
Hoeber, Ewald Rommé.
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In this paper I would like to deal with this deficit by firstly looking at fundamental
aspects of the constitution of knowledge in the workplace. I will then discuss the
requirements for E-learning against this background. My remarks are mainly based on
the study I mentioned at the beginning, the aim of which was to develop computer-
aided learning software for initial and further in-house training programmes. In addition
to an analysis of production processes in the paper industry, thematically structured
interviews were carried out with the skilled workers in which they described what kno-
wledge they require to carry out their work routines and to master critical situations.
Finally, the skilled workers attended a workshop at which the various findings were
discussed, clarified and evaluated. The situation-oriented participative research
approach which was chosen starts from the assumption that precise knowledge of the
circumstances in which the systems are to be used is required to design computer-
aided learning software and that this knowledge can only be acquired by working
together with potential users of the learning system.
1. What and how?
Generally speaking, it is the task of employees in production industries to ensure that
production is trouble free (cf. Böhle 2004, 17), that any problems that arise are solved
as quickly as possible and that quality is maintained. What knowledge do they need to
achieve this? The reason why I asked that question is that the answer has to create
the foundations for computer-aided learning software.
1.1 Theoretical knowledge and experience
All of the skilled workers interviewed in the paper factory agreed that the theoretical
knowledge acquired during their apprenticeship was very important. They characteri-
zed it as background knowledge about the fundamental connections between various
aspects of paper production. Theoretical knowledge includes information about work
routines and general trouble-shooting. It is explicit, systematized, standard knowledge
and thanks to these properties it can be integrated in a text-based learning system
relatively easily. However, as the workers pointed out, theory alone is not enough to
ensure qualified work on the shop floor. While theory tells you about the “road signs“
or the general rules, additional knowledge is required to know how to react in concre-
te situations, and this knowledge is called experience. It is not only in this study that
interviewees insisted that experience is indispensable. Similar results have also been
obtained in other studies in the paper industry (cf. Krenn/Flecker 2000), in the metal
producing industries (cf. Böhle 2004), in connection with project management (cf.
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Porschen/Böhle 2005) and with doctors (cf. Schachtner 1999) and nursing staff (cf.
Benner 1994).
What does experience involve? Amongst other things, experience includes a good feel
for materials and machines, a good ear for the noises made by machines, lightning
reactions to what is going on, knowledge of the “bugs“ in systems and machines,
foreseeing faults and the right instinct for sources of technical trouble (cf. Böhle 2004,
18). Knowledge of this nature is essential in order to recognize looming problems in
production processes at an early stage and to intervene to deal with them; experien-
ce helps to interpret situations in all their complexity. As one skilled worker explained:
“You always have to take account of so many factors, and just how easy that is for you
largely depends on how much experience you have“ (stock preparation worker, LfP).
According to Fritz Böhle's findings in the metal producing industries, skilled workers
are able to diagnose and predict processes without stopping to analyse them (cf.
Böhle 2004, 20). What is going on at any one point is interpreted by experienced wor-
kers in the light of what has happened previously. That hones their prediction skills:
“You just have a feeling that something is going to happen“ (quoted in Böhle, ibid.).
An important facet of experience is knowledge of how things interact in situ, as illust-
rated by a skilled worker's comment analysing a crack in the paper: “You look at the
web. Are there any indications of where the crack might have started? Is there any
sedimentation? I'll be able to see it in the paper. Is there anything else I can see? Is
there a clump somewhere on the edge? Then it'll crack at the edge“ (foreman, LfP).
Knowledge based on experience is founded on a close relation between worker and
machine. “He (the worker) has to slowly build up a relationship with the machine“
(LfP), a foreman explained. The intimacy required here demands a differentiated, emo-
tional and sensorial relationship to the machine. It is not enough to follow standardi-
zed parameters in order to operate the paper-making machine successfully: “I have to
be able to use my eyes. It doesn’t make sense to tell you what speed I set the machi-
ne at. I have to take a look at it or sense it. That's what makes a machine operator with
experience stand out“ (foreman, LfP). Alongside looking, listening to the noises made
by the machine is also important, as is the sense of smell, e.g. when the bearings
overheat, and the sense of touch, e.g. when assessing the quality of the paper.
Building up a relationship with the machine, as the foreman put it, means becoming
sensitized to the peculiarities of the technology, being able to identify changes and
setting the machine code to cope with changes in the raw materials. Experts opera-
ting the machine see a situation and know what has to be done; they act intuitively,
backed up by their experience.
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1.2 How has experience-based expertise been acquired to date?
When I know something about how expertise is acquired, I can draw conclusions rela-
ting to the didactic design of an E-learning system. Generally, the paper workers
recommend learning on the job, in front of the equipment, either by observing or by
being trained by experienced workers: “To start with the apprentices get to know the
general surroundings, where things are and what things are happening (...) and then
you have to tell them how you can influence certain things“ (1st assistant, LfP). On
the basis of this knowledge, which can be defined as basic knowledge, the apprenti-
ces have to make their own experiences with what is going on. Learning by doing is
stressed as the most important way of appropriating knowledge: “I have to do it mys-
elf and then I know, aha, that's how it works“ (1st assistant, LfP). Seen from the point
of view of learning, when a mistake is made, it forces learning to take place, as was
repeatedly emphasized. “Pushing the wrong button is the best way of learning“ (1st
assistant, LfP). Mistakes initiate learning processes with lasting effect because people
are emotionally involved in what they have done wrong; they are annoyed, embarras-
sed or frustrated.
The high status accorded to experience by workers in the paper and metal industries
as a way of acquiring knowledge is confirmed in the educational approach formulated
by John Dewey: “The analysis and rearrangement of facts which is indispensable to
the growth of knowledge and power of explanation and right classification cannot be
attained purely mentally – just inside the head. Men have to do something to the thing
when they wish to find out something; they have to alter conditions“ (Dewey 1949,
359).
2. Gearwheels which mesh: How to integrate theory and experience
Just to pose the question again: What is the relationship between theory and know-
ledge when performing tasks at work? The answer to this question provides clues on
how to combine both forms of knowledge in computer-aided learning software.
Knowledge from experience is object oriented and work related knowledge; in
contrast to theoretical knowledge, it is geared towards particularities. It is implicit
knowledge in the form of feelings, premonitions and hunches; it is holistic knowledge
imbued with sensorial perceptions, emotional impressions and thought processes.
Just because I am giving more space in my paper to experience as a form of
knowledge and a skill than to theoretical knowledge, does not imply that theoretical
knowledge is less important. It is rather more a question of combining both pools of
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knowledge when dealing with work routines, or as a worker in the paper industry put
it: “It's like when one gear meshes with another, you need both of them". The exper-
tise of a skilled worker consists in putting general theoretical knowledge into practice
and in making flexible use of this knowledge, as one worker explained: “I can't say
which switch has to be operated when a red light goes on as it's not always the same
switch. Once it's this switch and once it's that switch, and that's why I need experi-
ence so that I can be flexible“ (1st assistant, LfP). It is experience which allows skil-
led workers to be flexible.
Illustration 1: Gearwheels which mesh
Thus knowledge born of experience has just an important function as theoretical kno-
wledge when acting and reacting appropriately in the working process. Irrespective of
this function, experience tends not to have been appreciated very much so far in indu-
strial science and in practice. The extent to which a task or job is considered qualified
depends on the extent to which theoretical knowledge and abstract thinking are requi-
red. Occupational qualifications are based on a model of scheduled-rational actions
while feelings and impressions, the senses and the body are classified as contributing
less to knowledge (cf. Böhle, 2004, 18). This failure to recognize the importance of
unfolding “subjektivierendes Arbeitshandeln” (one's subjectivity in the working pro-
cess), as Fritz Böhle defines it, is the same as reducing the workers' opportunity to
build up an sensorial relationship to a machine, as production processes become
increasingly encapsulated.
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E-learning systems also follow this trend, particularly when they reproduce the domi-
nance of theoretical knowledge over experience with the help of computer software.
This is to be expected as it is extremely difficult to develop software which takes
vague, implicit, physically and sensorially related experience into account as software
developing is dependent on knowledge being explicit, nameable and unambiguous.
Nevertheless, it is imperative that the knowledge from experience is not ignored,
unless E-learning is “pre-programmed“ to fail.
3. E-learning as integrated learning
I would now like to discuss two possibilities of taking experience into account when
designing computer-aided learning software: on the one hand, experience can be
integrated in the learning units and on the other hand learning situations can be
created which combine online and offline learning. I would like to fall back on sugge-
stions which were developed during the “Learning for Production“ project, without
restricting myself just to these suggestions, and finally I will look into the possibilities
of micro learning.
3.1 The integration of experience in learning systems
One way of integrating experience into learning systems is to transfer the logic of
learning from experience into the system. This can happen in the form of learning
paths which can branch off time and again. This gives the learner the possibility both
to gain deeper understanding of specific aspects of a production process and to gain
insights into how this operation relates to other operations. The learner has to make
decisions as to which learning path is chosen.
Learners have the opportunity to acquire closely connected knowledge because the
work process is reproduced more realistically than with a linear structure. Having the
potential to branch off at any point, the learning paths follow the typical networked
logic which constitutes the acquisition of experience on the job based on the inter-
action between the individual and the machine. A second opportunity to include
connective logic in an interactive way is in the form of experimental action based on
simulations, something which Gabriele Frankl will deal with in her paper in more detail.
3.2 Blended learning
The second possibility to allow enough space for acquiring experience in the context
of computer-aided learning is so-called blended learning. A concrete example of this is
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writing experience journals in the form of weblogs, which particularly give apprentices
and workers the opportunity to record observations on the job during training phases,
e.g. when inspecting the machinery, in critical situations (cracks in the paper) or during
repair and modification work. Recording their observations helps trainees to hone their
skills of perception offline, to become more aware of what they have seen or heard by
having to express it in writing and to profit from the observations of others. The expe-
rience journal has a communicative component which is typical for the acquisition of
experience on the job. Discussion forums offer another possibility to exploit commu-
nication for the acquisition of knowledge in that experienced workers can provide the
answers to questions posed by the apprentices. This online dialogue between the
generations can even help preserve knowledge for both individual workers and the
company as a whole which would otherwise be easily lost when older employees
leave the company.
Research in industrial science has shown that story telling, or simply talking about
work and machines, is an informal yet central component in experience-governed coo-
peration (cf. Porschen/Böhle 2005). It takes place during breaks and often even begins
at the breakfast table, once again illustrating that the acquisition of knowledge is clo-
sely associated with communicative settings. Story telling in the company is a further
starting point for blended learning, for example by retaining niches offline and exten-
ding them into virtual space, in the form of regular chats under the title of “Talking
about Machines“ (Orr 1996) in which everybody can take part who has the time and
desire to do so.
3.3 Microlearning
Microlearning using small handheld computers extends the possibilities of learning on
the job and communicative learning in the production process. Trainees could use por-
table computers to display explanations about how the machine works, while they are
standing by the machine. The computers could also be used as digital advisors to help
repair faults. When the small computers have communicative applications, they could
be used to consult experienced colleagues who are not available on the spot but who
have expert knowledge. It is not, however, clear whether the use of portable compu-
ters while working on a machine contravenes safety regulations. In any case they
could be used for training purposes. Apprentices could be given the task of inspecting
the machinery and finding out more about the machine and its functions online while
being able to look at the actual machine. It is also conceivable that trainees could fol-
low a recommended learning path or select what they want to learn themselves, thus
encouraging individual learning.
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Something mentioned by the interviewees that I referred to right at the start was
small, precise units. This wish reflects the intentions of micro learning in an ideal way
although I do see a contradiction in the demand for short learning units with the
demand for emphasizing interrelated themes. Maybe this dilemma can be avoided by
not even attempting to precisely describe a process or alternative ways of acting on
the screen but by deliberately choosing concepts which require interpretation, i.e.
which appeal to experience.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that E-learning and microlearning can provide
new impulses for learning on the job. They only gain this innovative strength, howe-
ver, when the starting point is the complex knowledge required in the work process
and the specific forms of acquiring knowledge and not the technical possibilities.
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zwischen Tradition und Zukunft, Bremen, S. 10 – 27
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Braunschweig / Berlin / Hamburg
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Forschungsbericht 3 / 2000, Wien
Orr, J. E. (1996): Talking about machines. An ethnography of modern job, Ithaca
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Lengerich
Schachtner, Ch. (1999): Ärztliche Praxis, Die Kraft der Metapher, Frankfurt/Main
78 Schachtner • Precise and Succinct Yet Interlinked
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Snips & Spaces: Managing Microlearning
(On Microlearning and Microknowledge
in a Microcontent-based Web)
Christian Langreiter, Andreas Bolka
synerge development services (Austria)
Abstract: Radically lowering "barriers to publish", wikis and weblogs are rapidly gaining acceptance as simple
and hassle-free ways to share and link information in a community of interest (or overlapping communities
of interest). Based on a working definition of microlearning as learning from microformats, we discuss the
characteristics of both formats and outline problems that may arise in a microlearning context. We propose
that by combining both formats to form an integrated whole, those problems can be largely solved. This is
complemented by a description of several aspects of Vanilla, a system based on this idea.
1. Microlearning
We understand microlearning primarily as learning from microcontent
1
– from "small
pieces, loosely joined" (Weinberger 2002).
Microlearning as a term reflects the emerging reality of the ever-increasing fragmen-
tation of both information sources and information units used for learning, especially
in fast-moving areas which see rapid development and a constantly high degree of
change.
While in the past a single authoritative work (or even a single authoritative teacher)
may have been all that was necessary to sufficiently acquaint oneself with a given
topic of interest, this is increasingly untrue, especially as the necessity to (quickly)
learn (a lot) extends into almost everyone's work life.
Books, magazine articles, a multitude of web resources (like online books, tutorials,
encyclopedias, forum and weblog postings, emails and comprehensive teaching mate-
1 As defined by Nova Spivack: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2003/12/defi-
ning_microc.html (accessed Jun, 2005)
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rial collections as produced by MIT's OpenCourseWare
2
project or the Connexions
3
effort hosted at Rice University) form essential ingredients of the source mix of almost
any non-institutionalized learning effort – and, increasingly, of many institutionalized
efforts as well.
Fragmentation of sources has both positive and negative aspects. From a producer's
standpoint, information fragments are much easier to create than larger works.
Furthermore, disaggregated content – theoretically – can be re-aggregated to optimal-
ly suit an individual learner's preferences (instead of the needs of an idealized common
denominator). The other side of the coin is that a significant fraction of the consolida-
tion and organization effort is shifted towards the learner.
It will increasingly be the task of microlearning management systems to assist the
learner (or group of learners) to consolidate information gleaned from such disparate
sources into a coherent whole. We see personal knowledge mapping as enabled by
combined wiki/weblog software as a first step in that direction.
Based on our working definition of microlearning, a microlearning management tool
should assist an individual learner or a group of learners in
• stating a plan of learning,
• representing recognized concepts and the relations between them,
• attaching relevant information to those concepts,
• and, ideally, guide further exploration.
2. Weblogs
2.1 Introducing Weblogs
In only a couple of years, weblogs have gone from fringe to mass phenomenon. The
format of reverse-chronological short articles with lots of links has existed since the
earliest days of the web, but only in 1999 the terms "weblog" and "blog" gained trac-
tion; one of the effects was a surge in self-awareness (some might say self-obsessi-
on) of the then small community of webloggers.
80 Langreiter/Bolka • Snips & Spaces: Managing Microlearning
2 http://ocw.mit.edu/ (accessed Jun, 2005)
3 http://cnx.rice.edu/ (accessed Jun, 2005)
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Theoretically, weblogs can be created without dedicated tools at all. A simple text edi-
tor suffices. However, dedicated weblogging software like Blogger, Manila and Antville
emerged quickly, relieving publishers of routine chores like uploading HTML pages to
a server and manually moving articles to archive pages. Those tools played an essen-
tial role in the popularization of the format. In Rebecca Blood's words: "[...] the band-
wagon-jumping turned into an explosion" (Blood 2000).
Soon, the simple format began to evolve, and today features like accepting comments
from visitors, "permalinks" and trackbacks are almost universally supported. Some of
those concepts warrant further discussion.
Permalinks ("permanent links") emerged when people began to refer to other people's
postings. When linking only to the frontpage of a weblog (as was common in the
beginning), the referenced posting might have disappeared into the archive already
when a reader followed said link (often providing crucial context necessary to under-
stand the referencing posting). Permalinks allow authors to address individual postings
(or even smaller units of information like paragraphs) permanently, whether they are
still visible on the front page or not. This allows readers to track cross-weblog threads
of discussion.
Trackbacks enable authors to notify other weblog owners of the fact that they refe-
renced one of their postings.
Another noteworthy development which originated within the weblog community are
"really simple syndication” standards like RSS and Atom. Those were developed
primarily in order to make the consumption of a large number of weblogs feasible in
the first place (Robert Scoble
4
: "But, remember, I read 1000 blogs [...]"), relieving the
reader of having to surf through a long chain of weblogs again and again – only to find
out that on many, nothing new had appeared since the last visit.
In the context of education, many lecturers have embraced weblogs as a natural com-
munication medium providing everything from slide sets, supplemental links touching
on relevant issues discussed in the last lecture to administrativa like cancellation
announcements.
For additional background on weblogs, the interested reader is referred to Blood
(2000), Winer (2003) or the German article by Praschl (2001).
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4 http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/11/28.html (accessed Jun, 2005)
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2.2 Problems with Weblogs
The biggest problem of weblogs in the context of microlearning management is that
in many cases, the potentially valuable and relevant archived body of information is not
used to full effect.
Remembering, finding and referencing archived postings are not particularly well-sup-
ported activities in most weblog publishing systems, the root cause being the limited
facilities commonly provided to relate and organize individual items.
Apart from the format-native organizational principle of time (e.g. monthly archives),
most current weblog publishing systems either
- do not support categorization at all (Blogger),
- only allow a single category per posting (Antville) or
- make creating new categories comparatively cumbersome, with the predictable
result that the set of said categories often remains relatively small and static.
Overly coarse-grained categorization in turn results in overloaded category overview
pages, severely limiting their usefulness.
Recently, ad-hoc tagging as known from del.icio.us and Flickr has been implemented
for weblog publishing systems as well
5
. If current practice as observed on del.icio.us
is an indicator, it can be expected that this scheme will result in significantly finer-grai-
ned categorization.
Another issue is that representing lexical knowledge – information about companies,
products, people, books, etc. and the relations between them – does not fit well with
the mainly narrative-focused approach traditionally encouraged. This limits the use-
fulness of weblogs as personal knowledge mapping tools.
82 Langreiter/Bolka • Snips & Spaces: Managing Microlearning
5 See e.g. “Jerome’s Keywords” by Jerome Lavigne: http://vapourtrails.ca/wp-keywords (accessed Jun,
2005)
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3. Wikis
3.1 Introducing Wikis
A wiki is a web application that enables any user to easily add to and modify a collec-
tion of interlinked snippets of information. We argue that three aspects are funda-
mental to a wiki:
- Snips and spaces
- Effective support for content creation and modification
- Ridiculously easy linking
3.1.1 Snips and Spaces
A wiki is generally understood to be a web site where any user is allowed to add,
modify or delete a significant fraction of the content present. The following definitions
from two of the most important sources regarding wikis capture that common ground
very well:
"A Wiki [..] is a web application that allows users to add content, as on an
Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content."
— Wikipedia
6
"[A wiki is a] freely expandable collection of interlinked Web 'pages,' a hypertext
system for storing and modifying information – a database, where each page is
easily editable by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client."
— Leuf & Cunningham (2001)
Beyond this general agreement, terminology used to describe and discuss wikis is
ambiguous. The term wiki itself is widely used to refer to both
- a particular web site that embraces the wiki fundamentals – as in "the C2 wiki" and
- a particular web application that can be used to maintain such web sites – as in "the
Vanilla wiki".
We use the term “space” to refer to the former. A space is a web site (supported by
wiki technology) that consists of a collection of pages or snips. We strongly prefer the
term “snip” for two reasons: it disambiguates discussion between web-pages (pages)
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6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki (accessed Jun, 2005)
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and wiki-pages (snips) and it aptly depicts the typical nature of wiki-pages in a perso-
nal learning context – small snippets of information related to a specific concept.
3.1.2 Effective Support for Content Creation and Modification
The “effective” here refers to two things: content management facilities must be easy
to use and easy to discover. Discoverability (and therefore a low entrance barrier) is
typically achieved by placing an “edit” button prominently on each page (see Figure
1). Snip creation facilities vary among wiki implementations, some enforce a policy
that new snips ought to be created only when the (not-yet existing) snip is linked to
from some other snip – wikis typically present a “create” link in those situations (see
Figure 2). This policy stems from the belief that all wiki snips should be interlinked –
no insular snip shall exist. Other implementations simply provide an additional “create
new snip” button.
Figure 1: The infamous "edit" link
To facilitate easy editing, a simple markup language for snip content is usually provi-
ded. No standard has emerged yet, so wiki implementations differ substantially in the
markup capabilities provided – but some functionality is common to most. Important,
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obviously, are means for linking to other snips. Traditional wiki implementations like
the C2 wiki
7
use the CamelCase convention for linking, under which snips are named
by joining capitalized words (a snip on the Portland Pattern Repository which discus-
ses this convention is named JoinCapitalizedWords, for example). As this convention
is certainly counter-intuitive for wiki novices, we will not discuss it and the associated
advantages and problems here.
8
More recent implementations abandoned the CamelCase convention for something
less idiosyncratic. Snips can be named freely and links to other snips can be establis-
hed by surrounding the name of the target snip with minor markup like two rectangu-
lar brackets (MediaWiki), asterisks (Vanilla) or similar. So to link to a snip named
“Microlearning 2005” one would simply write [[Microlearning 2005]] or *Microlearning
2005* (cf. the right part of Figure 2).
Figure 2: A create link, link markup, backlinks
Langreiter/Bolka • Snips & Spaces: Managing Microlearning 85
7 The first Wiki, created by Ward Cunningham in 1996 - http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki (accessed Jun, 2005)
8 The following places provide an introduction to the discussion:
- http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?JoinCapitalizedWords (accessed Jun, 2005)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelCase (accessed Jun, 2005)
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Beyond link markup, typically various text formatting options are supported. Capabilities
encountered range from simple things like boldface or italics formatting to support for lay-
ing out complex tables or even creating diagrams. Furthermore, some implementations
allow the use of full HTML for advanced users, others provide a WYSIWYG editor.
3.1.3 Ridiculously Easy Linking
While the “anyone can edit everything” functionality is well-understood and prominently
featured as a fundamental wiki principle in almost every article discussing wikis, we argue
that another aspect is at least as important. Over a decade after the creation of the web, we
got used to interlinked information. The key to wikis is that they make fundamental hyper-
text ideas so ridiculously easy to access that applying them becomes second nature.
Creation and maintenance of links is a no-brainer in a wiki. Links – and the functions enab-
led by them – are central to the power of wikis.
"We should work toward a universal linked information system"
— Berners-Lee (1989)
The importance of the link was obviously appreciated by Tim Berners-Lee in his seminal
work that lead to the creation of the World Wide Web. But wikis are able to provide func-
tionality that goes beyond what unidirectional HTML links can support. As a wiki space is a
closed, self-contained entity, links between snips are fully bidirectional, i.e. not only outgoing
links of any snip are known, but also the incoming links (cf. Figure 3). Those are usually refer-
red to as “backlinks.” We will expand on the power of backlinks in Sect. 4.
Figure 3: Backlinks displayed in a sidebar
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“Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged – people keep pretending they can
make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can't.
Everything is deeply intertwingled.”
— Nelson (1974)
It is through the clever use of hypertext features a wiki achieves its flexibility. Links
can be used to establish almost any kind of structure over the underlying content snip-
pets, and indeed, even multiple structural views can be provided in parallel.
Classical hierarchies pose a barrier to quick content creation. Unless something fits
perfectly into one of the available drawers, attention of the content creator is drained
by the ever-nagging question “now where the heck shall I put this?” Using bidirectio-
nal linking, a hierarchical structure can easily be established. The original Portland
Pattern Repository (the “C2 wiki”) employs backlinks to categorize snips
9
, a pattern
later adopted by Wikipedia
10
. We will briefly describe how this works in Sect. 4.
"A Wiki, a free form, unstructured space, is like a room. A room can be used for
anything. For meetings, for sleeping, for swimming (provided it has a pool), but
a room is just a space. And to the people using the room, that space becomes
a place. A place to situation themselves, a place to call home, a place to orga-
nize themselves, or a place to orient from."
— Meatball
11
The three fundamental principles of the wiki result in an extremely flexible medium,
aptly described on Meatball wiki by analogy to a room.
Contemporary wiki implementations supplant those basic features with a slew of use-
ful extensions. While the totally open nature is appropriate in some situations, perso-
nal wikis or wikis supporting small project teams often require access control, a fea-
ture found in almost every modern wiki implementation. Another widespread piece of
functionality is snip revision control, which not only aids against vandalism in totally
open wikis but also supports cooperative document creation or similar tasks in project
scenarios.
Full-text search with results sorted by relevance is a natural and important comple-
ment to the hypertextual “browsing” typically used to retrieve information from a
Langreiter/Bolka • Snips & Spaces: Managing Microlearning 87
9 cf. http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?CategoryCategory (accessed Jun, 2005)
10 cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization (accessed Jun, 2005)
11 http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiAsRoom (accessed Jun, 2005)
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space. Especially useful in wikis targeted at personal learning support or smaller pro-
ject teams is an attachment feature, where arbitrary files can be attached to a snip.
This effectively extends the wiki to also become a document repository; current imple-
mentations are, however, typically rather basic.
A list of “recent changes”, i.e. pages that were created/modified during a certain time
period, helps users in watching the activity on a wiki. “Cross-pollination” from weblog
publishing tools resulted in the availability of the recent changes list as RSS feed or
similar formats. Further, comment systems in the style of those found on weblogs or
web forums are incorporated into some wikis to replace the discussion method used
in traditional wikis, where users wanting to discuss a certain paragraph in a snip sim-
ply append their contribution indented right below the paragraph in question.
Plug-in mechanisms and/or macro facilities allow wikis to be used as small-scale web
application development frameworks and provide powerful tools for experimentation.
In Vanilla, for example, most of the features (snip attachments, full-text search etc.)
are implemented as plug-ins on top of a slim wiki “core”.
3.2 Problems with Wikis
Traditional wikis not enriched with weblog functionality suffer from a set of problems
which are mostly inherent in the format (“problems of format”). Furthermore, wikis in
general also suffer from a “problem of perception”. We use this to describe the phe-
nomenon that wikis are widely perceived as exclusively collaborative tools. This per-
ception obviously hinders adoption for personal microlearning purposes and can only
be overcome by further research and proper communication of the possibilities of
wikis in this context.
A major problem with the format is the lack of guidance. Using the “Wiki as Room” analo-
gy mentioned before, people confronted with an empty room do not immediately apprecia-
te what can be possibly made of that room. In another situation, a person entering a multi-
floor building is certainly not aware of “what’s going on” in that building.
While helping users with initially getting acquainted with a corpus of content is typi-
cally achieved through “entrance” or “guided tour” snips, users who actively want to
watch the progress on a given wiki are usually left with only the recent changes lists.
In active wikis where lots of different threads are developing simultaneously those
recent changes lists can quickly get overwhelming. Voß (2005) measured the change
rate of the English Wikipedia at an average of 16 changes per minute and while this is
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certainly an extreme example, it makes obvious the fact that even far less active wikis
cannot be completely monitored by a single user. Traditional wikis lack effective means
for providing a condensed, edited summary of what is happening inside the space.
"[People] either fall in love with the use of hypertext on Wikis or they run away
screaming"
— Angeles (2004)
People trying to establish a personal wiki are often intimidated by the “empty space”
they are initially confronted with. Questions like “what should I put into it?”, “how
should I name things?”, “how can I structure my thoughts?” result in a considerable
entrance barrier. Those questions arise because a wiki can be used for almost ever-
ything (at least that is how they are typically promoted). This naturally leads to confu-
sion – what is “everything”? Those who already drank the wiki kool-aid are regularly
baffled by those problems – they have already found their personal nail to use the wiki-
hammer for.
But even advanced users are confronted with problems inherent in the format. A wiki
has no natural or obvious place where information snippets that are to be recorded for
later reference (clippings) can be stored. Every page stored in a wiki must be named,
so there is a certain burden on the user to come up with proper names. But some pie-
ces of information simply resist attempts to be named at the moment they are recor-
ded – as in situations where the user has no or limited knowledge of the field of
information the piece is related to. Traditional wikis have no practical facility to handle
ephemeral notes and observations.
And finally, even a feature as fundamental as bidirectional linking is underrepresented
and underused in traditional wikis. Usually, backlinks are not displayed along with the
content of a snip but are only accessible through an explicit request by the user (for
example by clicking on the snip title). Once requested, only the backlinks are dis-
played, so the user has to switch between content and context. This severely reduces
the value of backlinks as "context providers".
4 Combining Wikis and Weblogs
We argue that some weaknesses of the two formats – wikis and weblogs – can be
overcome simply by combining and integrating them. This claim is supported by sever-
al years of experience with using, developing and observing the use of the first
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combined wiki/weblog tool, Vanilla
12
. Such combined wiki/weblog systems are also
commonly referred to as “Blikis” or “Wikilogs”.
Vanilla was originally developed by Christian Langreiter as a testbed for experiments
in web application design in late 1999 and has since been developed by Christian
Langreiter, Andreas Bolka and a group of contributors. The original inspirations were
exposure to the Swiki wiki implementation and the release of Userland's Manila con-
tent management system, which was one of the first CMSes to embrace weblog fun-
ctionality as conceptual cornerstone.
It soon became obvious that both weblog postings and wiki snips are fundamentally
similar. Both are small snippets of information (hence the term snip), and by adopting
a simple naming convention (YYYY-MM-DD) for weblog snips, a couple of lines of plug-
in code ("dynasnips" in Vanilla parlance) would be sufficient to appropriately render
weblogs in the familiar reverse-chronological order.
A significant portion of common wiki functionality can be reframed and understood as
a "dynamic view" onto the contents of a space: recent changes are a limited (filtered)
view sorted by the date of last modification. An index is a full view, sorted lexicogra-
phically. Backlinks are a view of snips which link to the current snip. Full-text search
results are an ad-hoc view defined via user-provided criteria. And, ultimately, a weblog
is nothing but a limited view over snips following a certain naming convention, sorted
reverse-chronologically.
It should be noted that this paradigm of decomposing information into small, easily
consumed, easily (re-)arranged units and then proceeding to provide dynamic views
upon such collections is rapidly gaining favor. On the decomposition side this is evi-
denced by the enthusiasm surrounding microcontent formats/microformats
(hCalendar etc.). Dynamic views as supplement (and in many cases, replacement) to
the rigid, hierarchical folder structures of desktop operating systems, mail clients and
other "productivity" software have recently been implemented in mainstream software
like Apple's iTunes ("Smart Playlists"), MacOS X Finder ("Smart Folders") and various
email clients ("Virtual Folders", e.g. in Novell Evolution, Mozilla Thunderbird or
TheBat!).
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12 http://www.vanillasite.at/ (accessed Jun, 2005)
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4.1 Benefits of Adding Weblog Functionality to Wikis
Lower barrier of entry: When introducing wikis and weblogs to new project teams, it
has been observed again and again that of the two formats, weblogs provide the lower
barrier of entry. Usually it takes a while before opportunities to use wiki functionality
are recognized; the value of weblogs as project communication tool however is intui-
tively obvious upon first contact.
By starting with weblogging in a learning context, the situations where a user wants
to gather background information related to certain concepts naturally arise. In a tight-
ly integrated system like Vanilla, the writer of a weblog entry only has to surround a
reference to the concept to be expanded on with asterisks – after storing the weblog
entry, a link will be displayed that allows to immediately create the wiki snip.
It is through this combination of easy-to-grasp weblog functionality and the seamless
availability of wiki functionality that a smooth progression towards using the full power
of the wikis is enabled.
Narrative glue: Weblogs are often used to provide contextualizing narrative to an
effort. In a combined wiki/weblog, this narrative can serve as the glue between other-
wise disconnected information fragments. This also helps to overcome the problem of
overwhelming recent changes lists by providing a human-edited view, a window into
the wiki space. Jon Udell (2001) precisely describes the value of such a “storytelling”
facility.
“[Weblogging is] a powerful new way to tell stories that refer to, and make
sense of, the documents and messages that we create and exchange in our
professional lives.”
— Udell (2001)
Short-term memory: The problems related to storing ephemeral information in a
sensible way are effectively eliminated by using the weblog as “dump” for interesting
news and information snippets with appropriate links to the rest of the space. Through
those links, these small notes are interconnected and therefore retrievable through a
variety of means (full-text search, browsing) or even automatically visible through a
permanently visible backlinks list.
An interesting effect arises out of the fact that a weblog view typically lists only a
certain number of postings (e.g. the most recent 10 postings or the postings of the
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last month). As such postings are visible on the front page for a limited amount of time
only; the weblog can be regarded as the “short-term memory” of a wiki. Ephemeral
weblog postings stay around for a few days and then vanish (metaphorically speaking)
into the subconsciousness of the space.
4.2 Benefits of Adding Wiki Functionality to Weblogs
Obviously, the place for storing lexical knowledge that is missing in a weblog is provi-
ded by the supplemental wiki functionality. As soon as weblog entries (“weblog
snips”) are linked to other snips (“wiki snips”), a number of interesting synergetic
effects can be observed.
The aforementioned problems of remembering and referencing weblog entries are
alleviated. The archived body of information in weblog entries stays readily accessible
– backlinks from non-weblog snips to weblog snips contextualize weblog information,
which in turn leads to serendipitous remembering of postings. Referencing a weblog
posting (which is nothing but a snip following a certain naming convention) is as easy
as referencing any other snip.
Figure 4: The backlink browser
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In contrast to many other wiki implementations, backlinks are always visible in Vanilla.
In combination with the weblog functionality, a special tool called the "backlink brow-
ser" easily allows to track contact with certain topics over time (see Figure 4).
Generally, bi-directional links provide a rather surprising flexibility in building all kinds of
information structures. Categorization can be maintained by simply linking “content”
snips to “category” snips. For example, a snip about “K” would link to a “Category
Programming Language” snip. The backlinks of a category snip then automatically
form the list of all snips belonging to a category. Even “tagging”, as has recently beco-
me popular, can be subsumed by this functionality with ease: no one restrains the aut-
hor from placing multiple links to different “category” snips. Add sweet user-interface
sugar consisting of powerful pivoting and browsing functions and have your delicious,
tag-enabled wiki served ice-cold.
5. Future Directions
5.1 Profile-driven Information Filtering
Interest profiles have been used to filter and personalize large information collections
for a long time, with varying degrees of success. Two axes along which profile-driven
filtering systems can be categorized are:
- Mode of data collection - implicit (side-effect of primary user action, like buying a
book) or explicit (solicitation of ratings).
- Nature of data to be filtered - system-supplied or user-supplied.
Amazon.com regards an individual customer's purchasing and viewing histories as
interest profile; the data is therefore generated as side-effect of the primary actions of
looking at product details and purchasing products. Through item-to-item collaborative
filtering (Linden, Smith & York 2003), product recommendations are generated. Users
cannot reference products not already in Amazon.com's database.
Findory
13
is a "personalized newspaper" service being developed by Greg Linden, one
of the prime architects of Amazon.com's recommender systems. By reading news
and/or weblog articles, an interest profile is implicitly built up. It is possible for users
to add new syndication feeds.
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13 http://findory.com/ (accessed Jun, 2005)
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del.icio.us
14
is a "social bookmarks manager" having rapidly gained in popularity over
the past year. The central organizing metaphor is "tagging". An arbitrary number of tags
(lightweight keywords) can be assigned to every bookmark posted (popular tags:
"web", "design", "music", "css", "java"). What makes this service interesting from an
information filtering perspective is the multitude of possibilities to filter bookmarks –
by user, by tag or even by a combination of tags. This allows users of the service to
discover other people interested in the same topics (and, prerequisitely, using the
same tags). As in the case of snips and spaces, we can interpret the set of all tags
used by a user as an interest profile.
Google Personalized is an experimental search service based on technology originally
developed at Kaltix (Haveliwala, Kamvar & Jeh 2003). It requires the user to explicitly
select from several dozen domains of interest before search results can be persona-
lized.
The totality of all snips contained in a space can be regarded as an extraordinarily fine-
grained interest profile of the individual or group contributing, conditioned on the spe-
cific context the space was created and used for. As the main components of such a
profile are subjectively relevant concepts represented by individual snips, we propose
the term concept-centric interest profiles. When combined with data gathered through
usage tracking (logged edit/view events), the profile can be seen as an accurate time-
dynamic model of equally time-dynamic user interest.
Concept-centric interest profiles can be used to
- seed automatically repeated, long-running web queries ("agents") using search
engine APIs,
- filter high-volume streams of information (world news, RSS feeds or even emails),
- automatically generate (and then weight) combined-term queries,
- discover people with similar interest profiles.
Discovery of people with similar interest profiles (people matching) could be
implemented based on simple concept intersection counts, maybe allowing for some
fuzziness in spelling. More sophisticated implementations could use a variation of the
well-known TF/IDF algorithm (cf. Baeza-Yates & Ribeiro-Neto 1999) to weight indivi-
dual concepts. In this case, concept counts over all spaces examined should deter-
mine term frequency, whereas concept counts local to a given space should contribute
to what is usually referred to as document frequency. Similar to the effect when
94 Langreiter/Bolka • Snips & Spaces: Managing Microlearning
14 http://del.icio.us/ (accessed Jun, 2005)
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filtering document collections, concepts everyone is interested in would therefore be
discounted, whereas rare concepts would contribute heavily to the final similarity
score.
For example, if it is observed that people who first were interested in a given concept
cluster A often progress to map out or otherwise show interest in concept cluster B,
the system could present that information to people currently showing interest for
concepts in cluster A.
In an educational context, both fellow learners currently dealing with similar topics and
potential tutors competent in the area of interest could be discovered in such a fashion.
It should be noted that a similar concept-centric interest profile can be extracted from
traditional weblogs as well. This, however, requires the application of sophisticated
natural language processing techniques such as key phrase/concept extraction, etc. -
for a good introduction see Manning & Schütze (1999). Furthermore, the precision of
selecting subjectively valid relevant concepts manually can be (and usually is) much
higher than when utilizing automated techniques.
As many more people are using weblogs than wiki/weblogs at the moment, however,
the potential value of deriving interest profiles in such a fashion could nevertheless be
substantial - despite the higher complexity. As informally captured in Metcalfe's "law"
and shown heuristically in Odlyzko & Tilly (2005), the value of a network increases with
the number of participants:
"[...] if we have to select a rule [...] that is concise and yet captures many of the
key features of communication networks, then we feel that our n log(n) formu-
la fits the available evidence and is supported by reasonable heuristics.”
— Odlyzko & Tilly (2005)
The distinguishing feature of the proposed approach is its inherent simplicity - when
using a wiki/weblog, the profile comes for free.
5.2 Automated Syllabus Construction
Above we observed that while microcontent reduces the effort to create and there-
fore the barriers to publish, it shifts the job of organizing disparate pieces of informa-
tion into a coherent whole to the learner. For microlearning in a decentralized setting
to realize its full potential, the emergence of either organizing intermediaries or power-
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ful tools for semi-automatic organization of materials is a necessity, so that learners
can invest most energy in learning - instead of spending disproportionate amounts of
time hunting down the proverbial herd of chunk-sized cats.
In a network of wiki/weblog spaces, we can observe publishing and (to a certain
degree) consumption patterns, leading to time-varying interest profiles as described in
the latter section. By analyzing a sufficiently large number of such profiles, patterns of
dependency among topic clusters can be inferred from frequently appearing similar
subsequences of the complete event/activity sequence. By linking those sequential
dependency patterns to a measure of individuals' learning performances, it will be pos-
sible to discover preferential topic exposition sequences; those in turn could then be
used to either directly guide new learners or as valuable input for syllabus designers.
A precondition for such a scenario to be realistic at all is critical mass, in terms of both
the number of participating persons as well as in volume and level of detail of indivi-
duals' learning journaling.
6. Conclusion
We have shown that the combination of weblogs and wikis is, especially in a micro-
learning context, more than the sum of its parts. Complementing each other, the prima-
rily associative nature of wikis and the more ephemeral, journal-like nature of weblogs
allow for and motivate both the constant inflow of new information as well as the gradual
build-up of a body of more permanent, lexically structured information, which serves as
a meaningful structural backbone for this kind of personal knowledge store. The im-
mense flexibility hypertext systems gain through the power of the link assists in building
structures that support multiple means of re-discovering information.
As avenues for further research, we sketched the possibilities of observing learning
behaviour to derive material sequencing hints, eventually contributing to automated
syllabus construction, as well as regarding the set of concepts and relations recorded
as an extraordinarily rich and fine-grained interest profile to be used for calibrating
information filtering systems or matching like-minded persons.
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7. References
Angeles, M. (2004), ‘Using a Wiki for Documentation and Collaborative Authoring’, LLRX.com.
URL: http://www.llrx.com/features/librarywikis.htm (accessed Jun, 2005)
Baeza-Yates, R. & Ribeiro-Neto, B. (1999), Modern Information Retrieval, Addison Wesley
Longman.
Berners-Lee, T. (1989), Information Management: A Proposal.
URL: http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html (accessed Jun, 2005)
Blood, R. (2000), ‘Weblogs: A History and Perspective’, Rebecca's Pocket.
URL: http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html (accessed Jun, 2005)
Haveliwala, T., Kamvar, S., Jeh, G. (2003). An Analytical Comparison of Approaches to Persona-
lizing PageRank, Technical report, Stanford University.
URL: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/haveliwala03analytical.html (accessed Jun, 2005)
Leuf, B. & Cunningham, W. (2001), The Wiki Way, Addison Wesley Longman.
Linden, G. D., Smith, B. & York, J. (2003), Amazon.com Recommendations: Item-to-Item
Collaborative Filtering’, IEEE Internet Computing 7(1).
Manning, C. D. & Schütze, H. (1999), Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing,
The MIT Press.
Nelson, T. H. (1974), Computer Lib (& Dream Machines), Distributors.
Odlyzko, A., Tilly, B. (2005). A refutation of Metcalfe's Law and a better estimate for the value
of networks and network interconnections. (Preliminary version, March 2, 2005)
URL: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf (accessed Jun, 2005)
Praschl, P. (2001), ‘Was ist eigentlich ein Weblog’, jonet – Das Journalistennetz.
URL: http://web.archive.org/web/20021229002617/ http://www.jonet.org/modules.php?
name=News&file=article&sid=17&mode=&order=0&thold=0 (accessed Jun, 2005)
Udell, J. (2001), ‘Telling A Story’, Tangled in the Threads, Byte.com, May 2001.
URL: http://udell.roninhouse.com/bytecols/2001-05-24.html (accessed Jun, 2005)
Voß, J. (2005), Measuring Wikipedia, in ‘Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the
International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics’.
Weinberger, D. (2002), Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Perseus Books.
Winer, D. (2003), ‘What makes a weblog a weblog?’, Harvard Weblogs.
URL: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog (accessed Jun, 2005)
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Self Directed Learning with Personal Publishing and Microcontent
(On Microlearning and Microknowledge
in a Microcontent-based Web)
Stephan Mosel
Department for Adult Education
University of Giessen (Germany)
Abstract: The paper will be sketching out a constructivist approach to learning with microcontent, with
special regard to new web technologies emerging in the “blogosphere”, the networked space created by
weblogs and widened by many new web services that help to assign metadata to objects, or to construct
social networks and webs of trust through the use of personal publishing or social networking platforms.
Especially new "tagging" technologies and practices, creating "soft" metadata, show a possible way to new
kinds of collaborative knowledge environments. It will be shown that is not only microcontent itself, but also
its contextualization through learner-centered approaches, discussion through trackbacks or commentaries,
and “soft” object metadata which contribute to an understanding of microlearning and provide insights for
implementing personal publishing systems in (educational) institutions. Until now, most of these concepti-
ons are emergent on the web, so future research would have to identify possible uses and integration into
learning environments and didactical applications.
Keywords: social software, weblogs, microcontent, constructivism …
1. Microcontent through Personal Publishing
Microcontent has been increasingly gaining importance with the rise of personal
publishing on the web. Nowadays, virtually anybody can upload / generate and share
content through the use of web services and personal publishing systems. Many new,
sophisticated web services have arisen, helping us also to assign metadata to objects,
or to construct social networks and webs of trust through the use of personal publishing
or social networking platforms. Presently, most Microcontent is generated, published
and shared through personal publishing systems (blogs [1]) photo sharing (like flickr) [2],
collaborative text editing (wikis [3]) or social bookmark managers (like del.icio.us [4], furl
[5], or scuttle [6]).
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2. What is Microcontent?
Microcontent itself is a term which is vaguely defined. Wikipedia [7] does not have
any entries for “microlearning” [8] and “microcontent” [9], so there does not seem
to be a common consensus which is known to or relevant for a larger number of peo-
ple until now. Some valuable attempts of definition can be found in the blogs of Nova
Spivack [10] and Arnaud Leene [11].
Important (formal) aspects of microcontent are that it is referable, can be machine-rea-
dable through metadata / xml formats (RSS [12], Atom [13]), and is generally focused
on one or few single ideas or topics. The most popular type of microcontent are
weblog-postings, which are referable through a permalink, often provide metadata
through RSS, Atom, or other XML formats, and are usually focused on a relatively
small subject.
Therefore, MicroContent does not mean a genuine quality of content, but is a formal
approach of how to present content.
3. Theoretical Implications
With personal publishing, it becomes more and more easy to generate and publish
microcontent, based on one’s personal, subjective view of the world. This does have
various implications for an understanding of self-organized learning.
A theoretical approach to this relatively new way of sharing, accessing and contextual
understanding of information should focus on our personal perception, interpretation
and representation of communication and personal, subjective knowledge. The lear-
ner-centered approach of the weblog-format [14, 15] facilitates self-organized learning
processes on the web and corresponds with a constructivist’s theoretical view on per-
ception, consciousness and learning.
The theoretical works of (Radical) Constructivism (Von Glasersfeld, Von Foerster, Hejl, et al.
[16]) provide a perspective on the construction of subjective reality and personal knowledge.
4. Constructivism
(Radical) Constructivism describes any perceived reality as an active mental construc-
tion of human beings. Therefore, we do not perceive objective reality itself, but we
actively invent an individual representation of it through our subjective perception and
interpretation of the world which surrounds us. Therefore, an objective reality which
is beyond any individual perception cannot initially be perceived at all, because any per-
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ceiver is a part and also actively taking part of what she perceives and constructs as a
subjective world view.
Accordances between a postulated objective world and an individual’s constructed
reality are not understood as equality, correspondence or a mere copy. To postulate a
fundamental difference in the relations of compatibility, radical constructivist Ernst von
Glasersfeld introduced the term “viability”. [17] Instead of relations of accordances,
the relation of viability is based on “fitting” in the sense of functioning/working. This
means that a construct of reality, a perception or an action is viable, if it is not in con-
flict with any restrictions or obstacles.
Radical constructivism sees an “objective” outside world as something which actual-
ly cannot be perceived, so the concept of viability is the measurement if people suc-
cessfully interact with the world surrounding them. The outside world and its popula-
tion are understood as non-trivial machines. Non-trivial machines are dependent on the
past, analytically indeterminable, and unpredictable. How they act is dependent of
their present inner state and self-references. Any action, which is an interaction with
the outside world, can trigger a change of the current inner state. This will have an
effect on subsequent perceptions and mental constructions.
5. Self-organized Learning
The theoretical approach of radical constructivism can be used to come to several
conclusions when it comes to an understanding of active self-organized learning. They
are based on the assumption that perception is a construct of a living being and not
simply a copy or an image of reality. This means that an objective reality cannot be dis-
covered, and conceptions of “absolute truth” lose their meaning. Furthermore, chan-
ges of the environment do not have deterministic functions for the individual, but are
merely constraints which have to be either evaded or overcome. Any theoretical con-
ception of the world (space and time, laws of nature, scientific formulas) are under-
stood as constructed inventions which do not belong to the environment or any idea
of “objective” reality. Therefore, a solution to a problem, the result of an action, an
assertion or realization cannot be verified through reality itself, but through considera-
tions concerning intersubjectivity and viability.
This leads to the conclusion that human beings do not only actively construct percep-
tion and consciousness, but also knowledge and learning. Humans are not seen as
recipients without any self-activity which could be determined by changes of their
environment, inscribing cognitions into them. In fact, they are seen as inventively
active subjects (autopoietic) who create (the perception of) their environments through
self-activity and the resulting constructions.
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This understanding of learning emphasizes the learner’s self-direction and autonomy.
An orientation towards the individual learners and the subjective meaning of what is
learned comes into focus, learners can personally identify with what they learn, and
reflect on it. [18]
During my blogging activities within the last two years, [19] I have noticed that the gai-
ning of an online identity through blogging is the key factor to web-based learning and
networking. I have been publishing on the web before, but have gotten much more
awareness and feedback through being represented through a blog. Instead of static
texts, blogs make persons and personalities visible, allow for archiving of subjective
knowledge and personal communication, and help building up social networks through
references in blog postings and blogrolls.
6. Personal Publishing as subjective World View
The theoretical framework which was described so far, helps us to explain activities in
self-organized learning settings, and research & design micropublishing and micro-
content conceptions.
The most popular way of micropublishing currently is blogging. Short weblog-postings
with a timestamp, a permalink, and the possibility of leaving a comment right on the
site usually are chronologically arranged on a web-page, which usually represents one
or few authors of that particular weblog. Weblogs often are subject-based and learner-
centered. They do not only represent their authors, giving them a personal space on
the web, but also their subjective views, statements and relations (references to older
weblog postings or external sources).
Entries in a weblog are microcontent items, which are mostly rather short, and consist
of one or few central ideas or topics. Therefore, they can be more focused than lon-
ger, elaborate articles which tend to have many interrelated arguments and are often
highly complex. Small units of knowledge are much easier to discuss and deconstruct
on a peer-to-peer basis. [20]
Bits and pieces from a specific field of interest or simply because of personal curiosi-
ty / involvement can be blogged, often taking into account what they personally mean
for the author. These bits and pieces of information or microcontent are combined
through external and internal references, shaping a personal knowledge history of the
author. By identifying, formulating and discussing problems and interests, a socially
shared view can evolve through interaction with other users.
Personal publishing systems seem to be able to support some of the implications
which the theory of radical constructivism has for self-directed learning: The subjec-
tive personality of the learner is taken into account through being represented by his
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personal weblog space, situation and personal motivation can be expressed because
of the subjective approach of personal publishing, a personal knowledge history beco-
mes accessible through archiving and combining microcontent items with internal and
external references, and a socially founded view of an intersubjective “reality” can
evolve through interaction with other readers and authors. Furthermore, content can
be searched and found through specific search methods which are unique to micro-
content, like collaborative categorization through ”tagging” or inbound link searches
which show links or blog-posts pointing to a specific url. This helps users find content
of their personal interest, and incorporate it into their previous knowledge of a field.
Since learning is always socially situated, and a constructivist understanding of know-
ledge denies the existence of absolute truth, intersubjective knowledge is the key to
a shared view upon the world, or at least parts of it. Learners’ motivations, personal
interests and states they are in have to be taken into account, because they construct
knowledge on a highly subjective basis.
Therefore, two important requirements for self-organized learning with microcontent
are emphasized:
•Microcontent, published by an individual, is a subjective view upon the world,
which can form a personal knowledge history through chronological archiving and
references to other items (internal and external). It furthermore is easily discussa-
ble and can be referred to.
• If intersubjectivity replaces the idea of absolute, objective knowledge, the social
construction of knowledge comes into focus. Through web-based collaboration,
intersubjective knowledge can be socially constructed. This does not only happen
in text (collaborative wiki entries, discussion in weblog comments) itself or through
the infrastructural emergence of metawebs through external references, trackb-
acks and the like. Another important aspect is the possibility of adding metadata to
microcontent items. This way, learners can express what an item means to them
(how they construct it), and combine these subjective constructions with how they
labeled other items, or how others did.
7. A Perspective Towards Introducing Microlearning
in Institutional Conceptions
Much of the topics discussed so far seem to be emergent. The theoretical backgro-
und helps to understand why microcontent is an emergent phenomenon and how it is
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opposed to traditional methods of instructional learning or objective, factual knowled-
ge. The question, how to implement the approach of generating web-based micro-
content through self-directed, constructivist learning in curricular activities, remains
unanswered. Similar to the microcontent conception itself, the usage of it can be intro-
duced by the subsequent incorporation of its elements into existing or experimental
learning scenarios and / or conceptions.
7.1 Static Text vs. Microcontent
One example how at least the rather simple, formal requirements of microcontent can
already enhance learning activity in online courses is the modification of static text.
The Adult Education at the University of Giessen, where I worked as a student
researcher, conducted a blended learning course which goes by the name of ew.web.
[21] It is a blended learning course, which introduces students at a beginner level to
common pedagogical theories and concepts. Furthermore, the students learn meta-
cognitive skills for a better learning. The course was run several times, and at first
mostly consisted of modules with static texts, and instructional tasks. During the time
which was reserved for reading of a module, students were instructed to discuss the
text and their questions in a bulletin board. This rarely happened at all, which is a rather
common occurrence when the trainer wants relatively long, static, and theoretical
texts to be openly discussed in a bulletin board. Students said that they found it hard
to formulate a question, or if they should take the entire text, or just a single idea into
account when posting in the bulletin board. Forum activity was not very high, and
mostly on a general basis.
However, in a later run of the course, I introduced wiki technologies to the department
and we implemented it in their course, replacing the bulletin board with it. We used
the wiki more for collaborative text editing in groups with a learning task, than in an
encyclopedic format. The course consisted of several student groups of two to four
people, who shared one wiki page for each group. Furthermore, we split the static
reading texts into much smaller units, with a separate wiki page for each bit (a para-
graph, a single topic or at most about one page) of reading text. The wiki-pages with
the text were linked together in both the linear format of the original text, and through
non-linear hyperlinks which connected text references and ideas to each other.
Note that the reading text itself did not change, but the matter of representing the text
on the web did. Not only were topics connected to each other to allow a further
reading without necessarily having to follow the original’s linear structure.
Furthermore, some rudimentary aspects of microcontent conceptions were introdu-
ced: The reading on wiki pages consisted of smaller text units which were grouped
around the original text’s headlines and / or paragraphs. Each of them was referable
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through the wiki pages’ URLs [22], and allowed the learners to edit the text or insert
questions, assumptions or notes into or below the text at any time, due to the under-
lying wiki technology.
This mode of presenting a text for reading and discussion on the web notably increa-
sed the learner’s discussion activities: “On-site” questions or discussions emerged
right where the microcontent text is (in the wiki). Through the ability of writing down
notes, statements or questions directly into or below the corresponding text passa-
ges, learners have the possibility to engage in discussions which are situated towards
their personal interests, and can concentrate on a single topic or “micro-discussion”,
in order to re-construct their personal knowledge about it through intersubjective, soci-
ally shared knowledge. Note that this discussion of smaller text units cannot be as ela-
borate as a discussion on a larger scale with complex theories possibly could. The
advantage lies in the circumstance that learners have to formulate their statements in
micro discussions very clearly, because they cannot assume a particularly high level of
previously shared knowledge in the group. This facilitates discussions on a peer-to-
peer basis, and requires less previous knowledge from students at a beginner level.
7.2 Socially constructed knowledge through tagging?
In 2004, tagging [23] became popular through web services like the collaborative photo-
sharing site flickr.com, social bookmarking systems like del.icio.us, and Technorati.com’s
tagging feature for weblogs, just to name a few. Generally, tagging can be understood
as labeling a unit of data with appropriate metadata. The aforementioned web-based
applications of collaborative categorization through tags imply that a tag is a freely cho-
sen keyword, which is assigned to an object by an individual user.
In a constructivist sense, the act of tagging an item is an individual’s expression of how
the object is represented in her mental constructions. This subjective construction is
based on the individuals knowledge history and how this construct knowledge about
this item was viable for reaching one’s goal or not. Therefore, this kind of metadata is
not a description of an “objective” world, but an expression of knowledge of others
about it. The advantage of collaborative tagging is, that either all tags assigned by any
user to an object can be viewed (flickr photos, for example), or that it is possible to
visualize how individuals tagged an object without knowledge of any other possible
tags which might have already been assigned by other users (this is usually the case
when using a social bookmarking system). Tags can be analyzed and visualized as tag
clouds [24], which show the most popular tags in a system as weighted words,
usually by displaying them in bold type and / or larger print.
Another kind of further references are the related tag features, which show the most
important or all tags, which are related to a specific tag. This features enables users
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to browse through “adjacent” tags of an object, and helps identify coherent areas of
knowledge. Note that this type of representation of information is actually derived
from collaborative efforts of describing an object through the use of tags as keyword
by several different users.
For the individual user, the universe of tags which habe been assigned to objects on a
system is sheer endless, and can hardly be “objectively” perceived in their entirety, or
would be without any identifiable sense or meaning. For (social) groups however, tags
can be used to negotiate the meaning or at least the categorization of objects among
its members. This practice might be able to support a deeper understanding and / or
interpretation of microcontent objects.
Learners in an online course, for example, could use a social bookmarking system
which is integrated into the course environment in order to tag their weblog postings,
(microcontent) reading texts, and external material they find and reference. If multiple
users assign metadata based on their individual constructions of reality and under-
standing of microcontent objects (like adding keyword sidenotes to paragraphs of prin-
ted text on a paper, for example), a socially founded shared view will evolve. The per-
sonal knowledge history in the learner’s weblogs could lead to a categorization through
tags, which visualizes shared knowledge through tag clouds.
So, it is not only microcontent itself, but also its contextualization through learner-cen-
tered approaches, discussion through trackbacks or commentaries, and “soft” object
metadata which contribute to an understanding of microlearning and provide insights
for implementing personal publishing systems in (educational) institutions. Until now,
most of these conceptions are emergent on the web, so future research would have
to identify possible uses and integration into learning environments and didactical
applications, possibly based on the constructivist approach to learning with microcon-
tent, of which I hopefully managed to describe some core aspects in this paper.
References
[1] Weblog. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs
[2] http://www.flickr.com/
[3] Wiki. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikis
[4] http://del.icio.us/
[5] Looksmart’s Furl. http://www.furl.net/
[6] Scuttle - Online Bookmarks Manager. http://scuttle.org/
[7] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlearning
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcontent
106 Mosel • Self Directed Learning with Personal Publishing and Microcontent
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[10] Spivack, Nova: Minding the Planet: Defining Microcontent.
http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2003/12/defining_microc.html
[11] Leene, Arnaud: Microcontent Musings: Characteristics.
http://www.sivas.com/aleene/microcontent/index.php?id=P1456
[12] RSS 2.0 Specification. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
[13] The Atom Syndication Format 0.3 (PRE-DRAFT).
http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php
[14] Wrede, Oliver: Weblogs and Discourse. Weblogs as a transformational technology for hig-
her education and academic research. http://weblogs.design.fh-aachen.de/owrede/publika-
tionen/weblogs_and_discourse#23
[15] Wagner, Christian; Du, Helen S.: Constructivist Learning with Weblogs: An Empirical
Investigation.
http://wagnernet.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Constructivist+Learning+with+Weblogs
[16] Gumin, H.; Meier, H. (Hrsg.): Einführung in den Konstruktivismus. Piper, München Zürich
2000.
[17] Glasersfeld, Ernst von: Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit und des Begriffs der Objektivität, S.
18. In: Gumin, H.; Meier, H. (Hrsg.): Einführung in den Konstruktivismus. Piper, München
Zürich 2000, S. 9-39.
[18] Park, Eunhong: Ist Lernen steuerbar? Digitale Dissertation, FU Berlin 2003.
http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/2003/308/
19] I am blogging on http://plasticthinking.org/ (english), http://weblog.plasticthinking.org/
(german), and http://bildung.twoday.net/ (german), among others.
[20] Berger, Ingrid: Weblogs – Virtual Discussion in Educational Settings.
http://bt-mac2.fernuni-hagen.de/peter/gems/ibweblogsindiscussions.pdf
[21] EW.WEB: Net-based introductory study phase. Department of Further Education at the
Justus-Liebig-University Giessen.
http://www.erziehung.uni-giessen.de/wb/projekte.html?Projekt=EW.WEB&Lang=en
[22] Uniform Resource Locator. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator
[23] Tagging. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagging
[24] Tag Clouds. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_clouds
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The Blogosphere Map
Visualising Microcontent Dissemination –
Inspired by Maria Montessori
(On Microlearning and Microknowledge
in a Microcontent-based Web)
Gernot Tscherteu
realitylab (Vienna / Austria)
Head
The Blogosphere Map was originally presented two years ago at the first Blogtalk
conference in Vienna by Christian Langreiter and me. I have been asked to reformu-
late the concept for the Microlearning Conference. The Blogosphere Map hasn’t
changed a lot but the narrative around it is entirely new.
1. Blogstreet, Blogdex
The Blogosphere Map is a combination und further development of web services like
Blogstreet, Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex, and others with the focus on two things:
• The visualising the dissemination of microcontent over time.
• Interaction with graphical representations is more important then plain text.
There are two services that come closest to our concept of the Blogosphere Map:
Blogstreet’s Visual Neighbourhood and Blogdex.
Blogstreet (http://www.blogstreet.com/) visualises the neighbourhood of a weblog
which is defined by its blogroll:
"we take into account whom you blogroll and who blogrolls you, add to that a few
other factors, give weightage to all the factors and there it is – the neighbourhood."
(http://www.blogstreet.com/faq.html)
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Example for Blogstreet’s Visualization of a blog’s “neighbourhood”)
Blogstreet is the perfect tool for exploring your own neighbourhood, especially neigh-
bours of neighbours - because each node is expandable. Thus you get a brilliant over-
view of who is reading whom and who is quoting whom. Blogstreet gives us an
impression about the spread of news though it doesn't inform us about single news-
items.
And that's exactly what Blogdex does.
Blogdex (http://blogdex.net/) shows the diffusion of Microcontent within the blogos-
phere. It lists those postings, which have been cited most by other Weblogs within
last two or three days. Topicality and the amount of citations are the key criteria. (For
more info see http://blogdex.net/about.asp)
Blogdex displays dissemination over time: It shows the exact time and date when a
posting has been cited by other Weblogs. That is not necessarily a indicator for a cer-
tain sequence of citations (e.g. A -> B -> C ->…) but nevertheless it allows some con-
clusions about news dissemination.
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1. The Blogosphere Map
The aim of our blogosheremap is to visualise the flow of postings among weblogs. It
is not a list like Blogdex but a graph, which allow some important observations:
• Where are the hubs, i.e. most influential weblogs that distribute microcontent;
• where does the postings originally come from;
• patterns of dissemination: the blogospheremap shows that there are some news
that spread only within a certain community and others which spread over the
whole web. Cultural and national barriers become evident.
There are a lot of practical applications:
Blogosphere Maps may be used for commercial purposes, like e.g. visualising how
campaigns spread; showing the dissemination of microcontent (slogans, citations)
related to a certain campaign. That could be interesting for entertainment industry
(music, movies, gaming, gadgets,…) E.g. it would be possible to track how a certain
album spreads among webloggers.
On the other hand, probably more interesting, a Blogosphere Map may show the
drifting of ideas and memes, which may enhance our abilities and competences to
interact with those knowledge environments.
And that’s how learning comes into play, because learning is of course not reduced to
sequentially absorbing knowledge. Learning always means getting generic compe-
tence, like to get acquainted with an new field of knowledge or like to find his personal
method to solve a problem or to perform a task.
At present the Blogosphere Map is only working as a prototype. Unfortunately we
cannot offer a service that is available to the public. –
Maybe you have an idea how we further develop this – but even as a concept it is
worth thinking about the potential of such tools. They may be used to visualise the dis-
semination of Microcontent within the blogosphere and they could generally be inte-
resting for learning environments, where self organised learning takes place. The
Blogosphere Map and similar tools may make us comprehend something which is invi-
sible by nature namely the dissemination of knowledge. After all it’s a plea to leave
learning up to learners by providing adequate tools and materials that help them to
navigate and experience new realms of knowledge.
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2. Microlearning with Maria Montessori
The idea „to leave learning up to the learners“ is naturally not new. It is part of the
natural idea of men by Chinese Taoism as well as it is part of western Romanticism,
which both is not meant here. The tradition I specifically want to follow on has its roots
in the pedagogy of Maria Montessori, which is offering a hundred years of experien-
ce. The principles of Maria Montessori may not only be applied to kindergartens and
schools. Montessori herself wanted to apply her principles of non-violent education
also to universities and basically to all spheres of society. The idea behind
Microlearning seems if it was inspired by her thoughts and automatically applies some
of her learning principles. Some of them I’d like to introduce here [2]:
(a) The Montessori pedagogue is acting in the background. He or she is not a teacher
in the common sense, cause he is not giving lessons, but defining special learn-
settings that allow for certain learning experiences. Special materials supplied by the
pedagogue support the learner in the process of learning by him or herself.
That shows already a main difference to Microlearning. On the one side it is true that
the Web and especially weblogs allow for free and independent learning but those
learn-settings are mostly not arranged by a pedagogue. They are mostly unreflecting
learning environments driven by personal preferences, with often unexpected outco-
mes, whereas learning environments by Montessori are well reflected with clear
objectives. Montessori learning has its clear objectives whereas Microlearning is often
aimless and accidental. But the main objective of Montessori learning is to educate
young people to independent learners who are able to define their own goals. So soo-
ner or later they all should end up as Microlearners.
(b) Learning by playing in mixed groups: Learning groups and classes in Montessori
schools and kindergartens usually consist out of children of different ages. E.g. from
3 to 5 from 6 to 9, or from 10 to 12 and so on. Montessori realized that children like
to learn from other children especially from older ones, and that children generally like
to help each other in learning specific skills. Such learning often takes place without a
direct intention, simply by playing.
Also Microlearning in the blogosphere takes place amongst learners of different ages
and levels of knowledge there is usually no distinction between academics and non-
academics. It is mutual learning, but sometimes of course some webloggers know
more and/or post more and other people are learning by them. A good example of
mutual Microlearning gives del.icio.us, a service for the exchange of bookmarks. It
demonstrates that there is cooperation even in anonymous and very heterogeneous
groups if it is for the benefit of participants. This kind of benefit is typical for the Web
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and for its cooperative potential. It happens not because people become better men
when using the web but by making the experience that cooperation pays and that it
may be very funny to cooperate.
(c) Free schedules, no collective teaching; The learner is free to make his/her exerci-
ses whenever he/she wants but within a certain period of time. He is able to learn
according to his own state of mind and at his own speed. He is not forced to the uni-
formity of collective teaching; he is getting individual help according to the progress
he makes.
Free schedules are also important key factors for the success of Microlearning through
Weblogs. Weblogs are perfect for learning and writing in between times for both for
personal Weblogs as well as for professional documentation of web inquiry. Weblogs
demonstrate perfectly the advantage of asynchronous media. Asynchronous learning
is characteristic for both, Montessori and Microlearning.
(d) Prepared Environment: Freedom must not be misunderstood as arbitrariness.
Unintentional learning may be very effective but it needs a certain framework. It is
quite challenging to create his own framework if it is not provided by a pedagogue or
another helpful spirit. The lack of limiting conditions while learning may end up in dis-
content just like you feel when arbitrary browsing the web. It’s kind of interesting but
you don’t really know what you’re doing and end up with a dull feeling in your head.
That’s the reason why Montessori stressed the importance of an adequate framework
for learning.
It is a common prejudice that Montessori learning is antiauthoritarian and that it lacks
rules. That’s not the case at all, it’s quite the opposite. When visiting a Montessori kin-
dergarten one will realize that the learning material is very organised. It is a rule for all
children to put everything in its place after having played or learned with a certain
material. The whole environment is prepared to fulfill the needs of children. It is not
only child adequate in respect to ergonomics but also in respect to perception and
cognition, by providing specific learning materials.
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Abbildung 1: Vorbereitete Umgebung im Kindergarten.
Bildquelle http://www.doerfles -online.de/f_kiga.htm
(e) Learning Materials are kind of small interactive games for real life learning experi-
ences.
Image 2 :Learning Material, Source:http://www.montessori-shop.de/
As a key feature Montessori Materials provide physical experience. Knowledge and
skills emerge out of a process which is guided by the learning material and which
involves not only the brain but also the body as much as possible. Skills emerge spon-
taneously by continuously playing with the materials. Thus Montessori is not about
transmitting abstract knowledge from the teacher to the learner. It provides a prepa-
red learning situation that enables the child to learn by itself resulting in a certain com-
petence.
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Microlearning obviously lacks such a framework or prepared environment for learners.
Learners have to produce their own methods and learning materials. The blogosphere
is full of highly personalized learning environments created by web personalities. But
this is not representative for all learners. Microlearning is avant - garde and it is a chal-
lenging goal for people who try to guide young persons to become such self respon-
sible learners.
(f) Sensomotoric: As we could see, Montessori learning experience involves the body
to a large extent. The body takes part in learning and even in thinking, perfectly by the
number materials made out of sandpaper, which have been invented by Montessori
herself.
Image 3: Number material made out of sand paper, Source:: http://www.montessori-shop.de/
By touching and following numbers cut out of sandpaper with their fingers children get
a sensomotoric experience. The numbers become physical.
It is one of the biggest disadvantages of Microlearning that desktop computers redu-
ce physical interaction to a minimum by using only screen, keyboard, and mouse.
Microlearning with mobile devices may help to involve more senses and allow for a
richer experience.
In schools and universities it might be possible to distribute microcontent stored e.g.
on RFID tags over the campus which can be experienced by walking around equipped
with mobile devices thus linking certain topic to certain locations. (It was common in
antique rhetoric to learn a speech by literally walking from one topoi to the other – the
original meaning of Greek “topoi” is “site” and the English word topic obviously deri-
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ves from that antique habit of learning by walking. But even within the web there are
promising approaches to create richer perceptions by stimulating haptic experience.
Touchgraph is one of the most interesting and popular approaches into haptic brow-
sing and that’s why we would like to integrate a Touchgraph concept into the
Blogosphere Map
3. Microlearning is not Autodidactic but „Ambididaktic“
It’s quite senseless to talk about Microlearning “in general” without looking at speci-
fic learning situations. Basically one should distinguish between learning with a
pedagogue and free and self-reliant learning in the web (Microlearning).
The first may lead to the latter but depending on age, talents, personality and learning
objectives either one mode or the other will be predominant. Montessori pedagogy
demonstrates that self-reliant learning needs a perfect framework (prepared environ-
ment and a educated pedagogue) which is obviously hard to provide outside of school
and university. Self-reliant Learning without a pedagogue makes only sense for older
and mature learners who are able to define their own learning objectives.
In real life such a learning behaviour is generally called “autodidactic”, but that is not
the case for Microlearning, which can be better described as “ambididactic”. This
term seems to be more appropriate for learning in a community of learners. In such a
learning situation there is no clear distinction between learners and teachers, there is
a mutual benefit. “Ambididactic” describes individual and self-reliant learning in a coo-
perative learning environment which is exactly the case for Microlearning.
Microlearning environments are made possible only because there are certain pre-
conditions:
• First of all there are conventions like archives, formats of postings, blogrolls which
are generally accepted and understandable in all parts of the blogosphere. Weblogs
and Wikis are not only technical devices for organising thoughts and memes. They
are social standards of interaction and exchange.
• There are generally accepted technical standards like RSS.
• There are services and innovative tools like del.icio.us, blogstreet, blogdex and so
forth that help us to comprehend and navigate this vast realm of information.
By using these conventions, standards and tools people unintentionally create Micro-
learning environments with fluent boarders and open groups of participants. Compa-
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red to school the social relations amongst (Micro-) learners are far more anonymous
and far less obliging but at the same time the mutual benefit is considerable.
Microlearning through Weblogs and Wikis create an emergent phenomenon which is
often called collective intelligence.
4. Tools for new comprehension and competence
Microlearning is obviously closely related to new and fast developing fields of know-
ledge, because they attract much awareness and a large amount of postings. A long
time before universities and other institutions start to react, webloggers create new
trends and approaches. This conference is a good example.
New trends and approaches are generally accompanied by new terms which open up
a large space for imagination and interpretation. In spite of the fact that such open
situations may hold some risks and disadvantages, a lot of people – like us – consider
them as a real blessing. We love Weblogs and Wikis because they offer openness and
vividness.
So when talking about Microlearning we should have an eye on keeping that openn-
ess and vividness alive. That’s a reason why I am personally quite sceptical about the
semantic web, especially in new fields.
The Semantic Web requires clear definitions and relations between terms which on
the other side might become obstacles to vivid discussions and knowledge evolution.
It is hard to imagine that we can agree on a general ontology of microlearning without
endless debates. I am quite sure that such debates would be that interesting that they
will end up in a new topic and the process will start again. Definitions and other tools
of comprehension should only serve for keeping that process alive.
All kind of services mentioned above and our Blogosphere Map should not only be jud-
ged by their suitability to find interesting sites and personalities but also by their con-
sequences to our learning and capabilities.
The critical question is whether they are able to create new experiences of knowled-
ge and new behaviour competences, which is quite hard to explain. Probably the best
explanation how cognition evolves was given by Jean Piaget who proved that com-
prehension of so called “absolute categories” like space and time are constructed
during a child’s early development. They are not inherited but emerge out of a series
of sensomotoric experiences that involve that whole body. Only by interacting with a
“ball” a child gets a concept of what a “ball” is what it can do with it.[3]
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In other words a „ball“ is not only what we perceive in a certain moment but the emer-
gence of previous experiences including the social context of learning.
Similar to children who construct a concept of reality, we construct concepts of the
blogosphere and other social spaces of the web. Our basic intention is to raise our
adeptness and our competences. Web technologies like the Blogosphere Map will
help us by sharpening our senses for flows of communication and by intuitively reali-
sing situations and constellations, which is quite close to the role that Montessori
materials play for young learners. We urgently need more learning materials that help
us to create new perceptions und experiences what finally may result in comprehen-
ding new objects and new forms of cognition.
It seems quite impossible to produce such experience without personal contact amon-
gst learners and without giving guidelines. This conference is another evidence that
one cannot replace personal contact. Nevertheless it is a fact that Microlearning works
amongst people who have never met in real life. Microlearning is collaboration amon-
gst equal and like-minded learners who mutually create new fields of knowledge by
simultaneously smoothing the way for comprehending them. So as a minimum
Microlearning will provide not only Microcontent but also Microlearning materials in
the form of web services like the Blogosphere Map that may help us to acquire new
forms of perceptions within new media spaces. Especially the second part, the crea-
tion of Microlearning materials, seems to be only at its beginning and we may look for-
ward to more.
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References
[1] The original paper by Chris Langreiter and me can be found at: http://www.realitylab.at/
blogospheremap/blogospheremap_eng.PDF; german version at:
http://www.realitylab.at/blogospheremap/blogospheremap.PDF
[2] Those principles haven been extracted from the following book- there is no “official list” of
Montessori principles: Oswald,Paul/Schulz-Benesch,Günter (Hg.), Grundgedanken der
Montessori-Pädagogik – Aus Maria Montessoris Schrifttum und Wirkkreis zusammenge-
stellt, 18.Aufl., Freiburg 2002 (enthält neben Texten Montessoris auch Beiträge zur Praxis
der Montessori-Pädagogik und eine Biographie Montessoris.)
[3] A brief introduction into Jean Piaget is provided by wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget, and in german at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
The best german introduction online are [werner.stangl]s arbeitsblätter at:
http://arbeitsblaetter.stangltaller.at/KOGNITIVEENTWICKLUNG/Piagetmodell.shtml
Find more papers by the author in English and German at:
http://www.realitylab.at/aufsaetze.shtml
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Microlearning with Mobile Weblogs
(On Microlearning and Microknowledge
in a Microcontent-based Web)
Roger Fischer
KAYWA AG (Zürich, Switzerland)
CEO
Abstract: Blogs are a core phenomenon of the “bricolage” or “remix culture” John Seely Brown (among
others) had anticipated, and the connectivistic “learning theory for the digital age” of George Siemens.
Mobile communication in general widens this tendency, finally blurring the boundaries between the
traditionally separated sectors of life: private communication, work, entertainment. In the field of learning,
Mobile Blogs or “moblogs” may be an instrument to capitalize on the new technological, social and cultural
breakthrough of “ubiquitous” media. In detail The paper will cover the following areas: Smart M-Learning
applications / Micro and Mobile; New media technologies and media cultures between mobile devices and
the web; Practical experiences with and theoretical reflections on microlearning; Microdidactics in story- &
scenario-based learning.
Keywords: Blogs, Moblogs, Mobile Blogs, Mobile Learning, Microlearning, Autonomous Learning, Social
Software, Comments, Tags, RSS, learning/work/life balance, locative media
Blogs and the Future of Learning and Learning Institutions
Blogs (or Weblogs) are not only having an impact on traditional media, they could also
become a challenge for learning institutions. Not long ago traditional media had the
news monopoly, but thanks to the internet which made publishing cheap and global,
and helped by the strong fragmentation of the reader- viewership, this monopoly today
no longer exists. Blogs have significantly accelerated this evolution offering an “open,
real-time, two-way information flow” (George Siemens [3]). Today blogs already play a
significant role in the current media environment as studies (PEW Internet), media
companies of a new type (Gawker) and some interesting cases (Dan Rather) show.
Learning institutions like schools and universities had the monopoly of giving access
to knowledge and more importantly to the community which shares and generates
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this knowledge. Naturally the possibility to learn by oneself – as an autodidact – was
possible, but such a learning was always perilous as one lacked the setting of learning
or – as we say today – the community of practice. The reason is that a large part of
learning is not in what one learns explicitely, but the knowledge gained implicitely by
following guides and peers. It’s this commonly constructed reality, that makes one’s
learning “productive”, that makes it possible to use it in real life.
With the advent of blogs and other social software tools, autodidacts do now have a
direct and open access to their community of practice. In the technology area which
is quite naturally a forerunner in this field (the tools were made by the first users), the
immense benefits of blogs are obvious: no learning institution, no book can offer a
similar “live feeling” of what’s going on, what and who is important, what one has to
delve into, how to find and how to filter information etc.
Tech bloggers are also the early adopters of learning by blogging and lifelong learning.
Here learning is seen as something ongoing and as an integral part of working. In
accordance with constructivist learning theories, constructing the reality together with
others is just normal, an example here is the recent discussion about tags and tagging
in blog and other social software.
Also Bloggers have already adopted, what John Seely Brown [1] calls “Bricolage”:
At some point it might be worth noting that the shift from linear logic to brico-
lage is actually a very subversive move away from the Cartesian Frame to much
more of a situated, action frame. It also paves the way for considering the
'Remix Culture' as being a new form of social learning, social capital formation
and becoming a more central member of a community of practice/interest.[2]
This seems a good description of blogging, as quoting and linking are two basic blog-
ging activities. For the blog reader this practice has not only the advantage of gaining
new knowledge, but also to see the context - where it is coming from. And here we
join George Siemens’ Connectivism:
The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn
what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real
challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of
application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to
plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowled-
ge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important
than what the learner currently possesses. [3]
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As George Siemens shows, blogs are not only important for what they offer today, but
also for the access to what is needed in the future. As one gets to know more blog-
gers their interests and skills and the clusters they form, one can tap – if needed – into
this network.
Having seen the impact blogs can possibly have on learning, we now see that the role
of learning institutions has to change as well. They no longer can simply deliver infor-
mation – that at its best is good to know or worse is totally outdated – they have to
bring learners together and enable them to join professional communities of practice.
If every learner has a personal learning tool, a blog, evaluation of the current situation,
coaching and connecting become the essential services a learning institution needs to
offer – the learning is done by the blogger himself.
The blogger or lifelong learner connection to the learning institution also will change:
instead of a strong tie (e.g. taking courses for a semester) for a short period of time,
the tie is weaker but it could lasts over a longer period of time. At its best this new
kind of connection is a mutual relationship which benefit both parties – the learning
institution gains a learning partner who can help the next learner, the learner has a
coach which can offer him opportunities to connect with relevant people.
Mobile Blogs and Learning
So far we have only spoken about the traditional weblog, but when the blog gets mobi-
le, more opportunities to learn, to share and to connect are offered. Mick Masnick noted:
Increasingly, it appears that young people who grew up within the always-on
technology world have no problem being connected all the time, any place, and
won’t think twice about turning “down time” into “productive time”. Of cour-
se, they’re also just as used to having their personal life encroach on their
work/school life – so employers need to be prepared for this increased blurring
of the boundaries. 84]
No dependency on space
As Mick Masnick notes, the boundaries between work/school and personal life will fall
and the mobile device has a lot to do with it. The world we are coming from was one
where physical space ruled our life – a place for home, a place for work, leisure spa-
ces and in-between spaces. With the advent of the mobile phone, our life is no longer
dependent on physical space and we can connect with others in whatever space we are.
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Personal Tools
Another characteristic, shared by the blog and the mobile phone is that these are per-
sonal tools. With fixed telephony we called a place, now we call the person. With most
institutional software the person is not that relevant, but with the blog the person is at
the center of the themes aborded.
Discussions
Third characteristic, Blogs like Mobile Phones are strongly used for discussions. The
term Live Web has been coined in regard to blogs and it mainly meant what is dis-
cussed now, what are the hot topics right now. Blogging not only seen as publishing,
but also as an exchange via comments can have the characteristics of a chat, a chat
nevertheless which can be studied and searched later.
Mobile phone is no longer used for calls only
It is also important to note that the evolution of mobile phones and the habits of mobi-
le phone users make text and images in some situations more attractive than speech.
As Japan, the i-mode country, and the heavy usage of SMS in western countries show,
the mobile phone gets more and more used to write and read. SMS texting or using
the mobile internet is used in idle time situations where most of the time others are
around (during commuting, queueing etc.).
All this makes blogs and even more their mobile usage extremely