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The Analysis of Complex Learning Environments
... Going back to the conventional definition of 'pedagogy' as 'the art or science of teaching', Goodyear & Carvalho (2013) broke down the term teaching, explaining what pedagogy comprises and asserting that '[it is] the art and science of helping other people learn, [which] can be practised in a variety of ways ' (p. 49). ...
... Hence, it seems there is some confusion as to what a learning goal constitutes (knowledge and skills), and how it can be achieved. Defining clear objectives is an essential part of any lesson (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013;Hayes et al., 2001;Loveless, 2011). Hayes et al. (2001) argues that teachers often focus on lesson content, activities and stages, overlooking how each section concurs with the learning objectives. ...
... In the lesson plan documents, I found that technology introduction and its relationship between content and learning objectives was not always explicit in each case. Although the STs' plans presented the content and lesson objectives, they did not specify the pedagogical purpose of using Several studies have highlighted the importance of good planning for successful integration of technology (Beauchamp, 2017;Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013;Haugerud, 2011;Hayes et al., 2001;Rodríguez et al., 2012). Marzano and Kendall (2007) and Churches (2009) based on Bloom's work, proposed taxonomies to help designate clear objectives for the role that technology is expected to pursue in relation to students' cognitive stages to reach higher-order thinking skills (Anderson et al., 2001;Bates, 2019). ...
This thesis examines Chilean student teachers' (ST) understanding of digital technology's pedagogic uses and primary classroom issues. Its initial assumption is that focusing on technology use in particular contexts is critical to understanding its effects on education and creating contextually appropriate pedagogies that can enhance students’ experiences. This work presents qualitative case studies of seven primary STs from a small city in southern Chile, exploring how they used and conceptualised technology and how they dealt with issues in their teaching practice. These aspects reflected their pedagogical understanding of the technologies used and their relationship with the educational context. The data collected comprised lesson plans, videos of classroom teaching, semi-structured interviews, audio recordings of supervision meetings and field notes from classroom observations, analysed thematically. The research revealed a pattern across cases. The intended and enacted pedagogies using technology supported existing teacher-centred approaches. The technology employed consisted of multimedia resources conceived to deliver and explain content, attract students' attention, and engage pupils in dialogic interactions. This perception of technology reveals a strong interest in maintaining discipline and learning environments in the classroom. The issues STs faced when using technology ranged from the inexistent digital culture at educational institutions to aspects of their agency and identity as teachers who use technology. This thesis uses the analysis to propose the Orchestration and Improvisation Pedagogical framework for integrating digital technology into teacher training. The framework aims to support STs in planning, implementing and reflecting on the uses of technology in synergy with the context. Using this framework, practitioners can evaluate different intertwined pedagogical aspects from research to practice. By foregrounding the importance of pedagogy and contextual reflection on technology application, these findings have value not only for STs and their teaching practice teams, but also for teacher-training programmes, educational policymakers and syllabus designers.
... This approach gives intention to something that happens anyway: students inevitably contribute to the design of a course, even when it is prescriptive. Students 'complete' designs by reinterpreting them, and by co-configuring their learning environments (Goodyear and Carvalho 2019;Fawns et al. forthcoming). ...
... Thick descriptions have been employed in a research context, most notably by Clifford Geertz, an anthropologist who borrowed the term from Ryle and applied it to culture and ethnography (Geertz 1973). In research, thick descriptions help us to make sense of complex phenomena and dynamic contexts by providing a framework for interpreting the researcher's understanding. ...
... Significance and interpretation are more important than adding layers of description (Freeman 2014). In other words, we need a contextualised interpretation of our data and how different elements relate to each other, translating this holistic idea into language that is meaningful to others (Geertz 1973). Using a theoretical lens is one way of doing this. ...
Evaluating postgraduate online courses needs to go beyond the market-driven surveys and output measures currently collected by universities and governments. Such approaches tend to isolate educational elements, such as student satisfaction, resulting in thin and ambiguous descriptions of curriculum implementation and functioning. We propose instead an ecological perspective, which takes account of a broad range of educational elements and the relations among them. This presents a promising direction for evaluation practice that can supplement existing standardised evaluation information with more useful and meaningful comprehensive accounts. Ecological evaluation distributes responsibility for course and programme functioning across institutions, teachers, students and the broader systems in which educational programmes are embedded. To realise this vision, we make a plea for 'thicker descriptions' that acknowledge active participation of students and teachers in shaping assemblages of designs, environments, purposes, ideas, tasks, people and other elements of education; many of these cannot meaningfully be separated from each other. Thick descriptions should incorporate knowledge derived from theory, pedagogy, conventions, or beliefs about what counts as success or failure. We provide examples from educational literature illustrating how evaluation of online courses can produce information that supports development of teaching and increases the formative value of evaluation.
... In this paper, our aim is to explore the complex and dynamic interplay of learning, space and the heterotopic university and draw implications for future educational design directions. Students learn and make sense of their learning tasks within complex learning environments comprising of networks of tools, artefacts, practices, places, interpersonal relationships and ways of knowing (Goodyear and Carvalho 2019). We want to problematise this space by suggesting that the current pivot to online learning has blurred the distinction between the Foucauldian conceptualisation of university as a 'Heterotopia' with the real world. ...
... In this paper, we highlight the need for a broader approach to educational design which requires a re-conceptualisation of the learning environment to include the students real-world postdigital spaces and their socio-cultural environments. This would require a more holistic approach and a need for what Goodyear and Carvalho (2019) describe as 'the communicative (or "invitational") rather than controlling side of design' (51). In this approach, educational design takes into consideration the complex heterogenous networks of interacting digital and non-digital entities through which learning spaces are constructed. ...
... It values learning through authentic engagement in practice and considers competence as the ability to hold together the entities needed for the task at hand. And finally, it allows for student reflexivity and understands that learning involves students co-configuring their learning environments, but they need practice and guidance to do so (Goodyear and Carvalho 2019). In essence, students are learning in complex environments where the boundaries between the heterotopic spaces of the university and the real world are blurred and where heterogenous networks of people, physical and digital entities, activities and postdigital practices of students necessitate a new and more holistic approach to educational design. ...
The move to online learning has blurred the distinction between the Foucauldian conceptualisation of university as a ‘Heterotopia’ with the real world of contingent alternative learning spaces students create. In this paper, we highlight the need for a broader and more holistic approach to educational design which requires a re-conceptualisation of the learning environment to include the students’ real-world spaces and their socio-cultural surroundings through a postdigital paradigm. We seek to understand how Covid-19 has accelerated postdigital disruption of the concept of university as heterotopia, where learning is traditionally highly structured and segmented in slices of time for seminars, lectures, and workshops. In April 2020, the University of Sydney Business School invited students to share stories of their remote learning experience using the #OurPlace2020 hashtag. Using Actor Network Theory (ANT), we analyse 37 digital stories to provide examples of how the boundaries of the traditional learning spaces of university campus are blurred with real-life learning spaces when students are studying remotely. We argue for the need to adopt a broader analytical approach that can elucidate the complexity of heterogenous networks of interacting digital and non-digital entities through which learning spaces are constructed.
... Ease of use (capability and effort) is explained as parents' perception of how easy or difficult it is to use educational technology given their abilities (Davis, 1989). It includes positive and negative factors, such as complexity [negative] (Rogers, 1983(Rogers, , 2003Prensky, 2005;Goodyear and Carvalho, 2019;Haaranen et al., 2020), perceived ease of use, effort expectancy, and past experiences and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1978(Bandura, , 1997. ...
... Ease of use (Capability and effort); Complexity (Rogers, 1983(Rogers, , 2003Prensky, 2005;Goodyear and Carvalho, 2019;Haaranen et al., 2020) 10 Data was collected using an online survey with a total sample of 4,658 parents/caregivers of children between 6 and 16 years old, living with their child. Children were between grade 1 and 13, which represents between 1 and 13 years of schooling, counting from the beginning of Level 1 of the International Standard Classification of Education-ISCED (UNESCO, 2011). ...
... Parents perceive that the school has facilitated access to educational technology, such as learning management systems and apps; however, ease of use (capability and effort) often prevents them from engaging with technology to support learning. They report how some of the school educational technology is complex (Rogers, 1983(Rogers, , 2003Prensky, 2005;Goodyear and Carvalho, 2019;Haaranen et al., 2020). This idea of complexity is explained by lack of experience in dealing with technology, the intricate look and feel of the platforms and apps as well as bugs and errors in some low-tech educational tools. ...
One of the long-term lessons from the school closures due to the global pandemic COVID 19, is that technology and parental engagement are the best levers to access education so as to bridge the achievement gap between socially disadvantaged children and their peers. However, using technology is not as simple as bringing equipment into the school and home and initiating its usage; these are just the first steps into a more complex and ambitious achievement of using technology as a catalyst for a shift toward new learning models in remote and hybrid settings. A theoretical framework based on the theory of acceptance and use of technology and social cognitive learning theory was used to analyse data from a survey completed by 4,600 parents from 19 countries during the national lockdowns in 2020. Regression models and thematic analysis of open-ended responses were employed to identify factors that contribute to parental acceptance and use of technology in support of their children’s learning. Our results show that parents are more engaged in children’s learning when well-structured technological tools are provided or suggested by schools, and when parents are socially influenced by the opinions of other parents, teachers, children, the general public, relatives, etc. Conversely, they are less engaged when they perceive the technological tools to be challenging and beyond their knowledge or skills. The study’s findings have practical implications for governments and school leaders, who need to be aware of the factors likely to determine the use of technology at home and take action to meet parents’ needs when using technology to support learning.
... Simplistic allocations of responsibility, as either belonging to students or teachers, for example, are likely to result in instrumental approaches to evaluation (Braskamp 2000), based on actions or characteristics in isolation of context. Instead, we argue for seeing teachers, not as providers of experience or knowledge, but as designers and practitioners who help students to engage with materials, peers, learning communities, and environments (Goodyear and Dimitriadis 2013;Goodyear and Carvalho 2019). From this view, agency is best seen as relational Edwards et al. 2009), and control and responsibility cannot simply be held by the teacher or given to the student. ...
... Our position is that, irrespective of the educational approach, responsibility is distributed across teachers, students, and systems, and reductionist metrics cannot capture these fluid and dynamic relationships. For these reasons, we call for analytics that are part of a wider, ecological view of education, where relationships and holistic conceptions of practice are valued above individual variables (Goodyear and Carvalho 2019), and where it is acknowledged that metrics do not capture everything that is important. ...
... As Goodyear and Carvalho (2019) argue, our ways of analysing and interpreting data should support ecological conceptions of education and inform complex judgements. They describe educational ecologies as relational, in which all elements (e.g. ...
Current evaluation of higher education programmes is driven primarily by economic concerns, with a resulting imbalance towards the summative assessment of teaching and away from faculty development. These agendas are advanced through datafication, in which the transformation of social and material activity into digital data is producing a narrow, instrumental view of education. Taking a postdigital perspective on contemporary practices of evaluation outlined in higher education literature, we argue for an ecological view, in which evaluation must take account of those aspects of teaching, learning, and educational context, missing from digital data. We position quality as distributed across teacher, student, institution and context, arguing for the cross-fertilization of diverse kinds of data and non-datafied understandings, along with greater involvement of teachers and students in ways that enhance their agency, and develop their evaluative judgement of the quality of educational practices. We conclude that datafied practices can complement expert judgement when situated within a trusting, formative environment, and informed by an understanding of both pedagogy and technology, and clarity of educational purpose.
... With the learners at the heart of the learning system, Ellis and Good- year (2010) attempt to frame the connections between the learners, teaching design and campus planning (at university) in a learning system. The ecology of the system is complex and dynamic, with human and non-human actors and a variety of possible connections, e.g. between the material/digital elements of the system, between human/learner activity (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013). ...
... An ecology of learning represents the attempts to shift the focus of design and analysis to an individualised learner and his/her learning environment. It also intends to move from attending individual elements of an educational setting to the system level -the ecologies and networks (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013). ...
... Another important perspective in design for learning is an architecture of learn- ing -an alternative framework for capturing, designing and analysing learning networks, developed by Goodyear and Carvalho (Carvalho & Goodyear, 2014a;Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013) and others over the past two decades (Goodyear, 1993(Goodyear, , 1997(Goodyear, , 2000(Goodyear, , 2005Goodyear & Retalis, 2010;Goodyear & Markauskaite, 2012;Kali, Goodyear, & Markauskaite, 2011). The framework shows a deep appreciation of the increasing complexity of modern learning environments, which consists of big agents (e.g. ...
This exploratory review brings together research that investigates computer-assisted language learning (CALL), and research in the field of learning design, paying particular attention to the theoretical frameworks and approaches of design for learning. The attempts of connecting the two fields stem from two critical foci and commitments of design for learning: (1) on the contemporary learning context which has become increasingly learner-centred and technology-rich and (2) on the learning process which is, now widely recognised and accepted, constantly evolving, configurative, dynamic and complex. Design for learning asserts that technology-enhanced learning (TEL) could only be partly designed; the other part – the learning process – is emerging and created through the actions of participants in the learning networks. Therefore, the ecology and architecture of a learning network become the focus of investigation. This author argues that design for learning, which is firmly grounded in the contemporary theories of learning, merits being seriously looked at by CALL. A preliminarily synthesis of the two fields is presented, which signals potential synergies. The synergies will broaden the understanding of CALL and strengthen its design. (ePrint Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/zzt6yeb25ukfykIqFemm/full)
... A common language for describing and analysing examples of ICT-mediated learning networks is useful for developing the networked learning in agricultural extension and for transferring knowledge between examples (Carvalho and Goodyear 2014;Goodyear and Carvalho 2013). A network is considered to be made up of learners, educators and learning resources (Figure 1) (Banks et al. 2003;Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Jones, and Lindström 2009). ...
... A common language for describing and analysing examples of ICT-mediated learning networks is useful for developing the networked learning in agricultural extension and for transferring knowledge between examples ( Carvalho and Goodyear 2014;Goodyear and Carvalho 2013). A network is considered to be made up of learners, educators and learning resources ( Figure 1) ( Banks et al. 2003;Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Jones, and Lindström 2009). ...
... Resources are identified as those non-human elements within the network that contribute to the co-creation of knowledge. Within a learning context, there is the potential through network design to have some control over the connections between these elements within the network in three ways: set design, social design and epistemic design ( Goodyear and Carvalho 2013). Set design is concerned with the architecture of the virtual and nonvirtual spaces for the network; the resources, tools and materials available to learners. ...
Purpose: This paper presents economic and pedagogical motivations for adopting information and communications technology (ICT)-mediated learning networks in agricultural education and extension. It proposes a framework for networked learning in agricultural extension and contributes a theoretical and case-based rationale for adopting the networked learning paradigm.
Design/methodology/approach: A review of the literature highlights the economic and pedagogical need for adopting a networked learning approach. Two examples are described to instantiate the language for learning networks: a small community of farmers in India and large Twitter community of Australian farmers.
Findings: This paper reviews evidence that successful networked learning interventions are already occurring within agricultural extension. It provides a framework for describing these interventions and for helping future designers of learning networks in agricultural extension.
Practical implication: Facilitation of learning networks can serve to achieve efficient agricultural extension that connects farmers across distances for constructivist learning. To realize these benefits, designers of learning networks need to consider set design, social design and epistemic design.
Theoretical implication: This paper contributes a theoretical framework for designing, implementing and analysing learning networks in agriculture. It does this by integrating existing ideas from networked learning and applying them to the agricultural context through examples.
Originality/value: This paper contributes an understanding of the value of networked learning for extension in terms of economic and pedagogical benefits. It provides a language for talking about learning networks that is useful for future researchers and for practitioners.
... Many higher education institutions in Australia are investing in the design and redesign of build- ings and grounds in acknowledgment of the necessity to refocus on the campus experience and needs of both students and staff (Lippincott 2009;Radcliffe 2009). Such 'macro' level design pro- cesses can have a powerful influence on what happens at the 'meso' level-the design of tasks that occur in spaces-as well as the "micro" level, for example choosing which pipettes to use (Goodyear and Carvalho 2013). The influence of space and the physical setting (digital and material) on learning activity is important, but under-researched (Goodyear, Carvalho, and Dohn 2014). ...
... Rather than determining observational focus in advance, emergent activity was evaluated in situ, yielding ecologically-valid determinants of learning through changes in activities, interactions, and manipu- lation of the physical environment. Observations were anchored in the framework developed by Goodyear and Carvalho (2013) for the analysis of complex learning environments ). Furthermore, observations were informed by theories of materiality (Sørensen 2009), material ecology (Ingold 2011), and practice (Shove 2012), and resulted in thick descrip- tion (Geertz 1977) with both breadth and depth. ...
... Our findings echo those of Hunley and Schaller (2009), who found that students and instructors engage in a full range of learning behaviors when the atmosphere encourages students and instructors to behave as if 'serious work' is taking place. Students interpret the cues provided by instructors and the physical and digital setting to guide activities for their learning (Goodyear and Carvalho 2013). Indeed 'our material environment visualizes as signs and meanings, pointing at our own physical presence and above all indicating our possibilities for performance, creativity and productive activity' (Osterberg 1993, cited in Wiers-Jenssen, Stenkaser, andGrogaard 2002). ...
... The conceptual framework for the current study was developed for the analysis of complex learning environments (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013; 2014), where the focus for analysis is learner activity. It is well-suited to analysing situations in which students' activities are not tightly controlled by teaching staff. ...
... Observation of activities in the older disciplinespecific spaces occurred in (1) custom-built computer laboratories as well as multi-purposed spaces where desktop computers were located around the periphery of the classrooms, and (2) traditional classroom laboratories equipped with the basic equipment required for conducting 'wetlab' and experimental practical classes. In the Charles Perkins Centre Hub, observations were conducted in (3) the flexible 'dry' laboratories, equipped with reconfigurable furniture and laptop computers for individual student use as needed, and (4) the 'X Lab' The approach to observation took an activity-centered approach (Carvalho & Goodyear, 2013; 2014), informed by theories of materiality (Sørensen, 2009), material ecology (Ingold, 2011) and social practice (Shove, 2012). In tracing the movement of people and things, consideration has been given to pedagogy and place, with the intention of describing how materials participate in practice and the ways in which arrangements of the material and the digital point to valued activities (Sørensen, 2009). ...
... In tracing the movement of people and things, consideration has been given to pedagogy and place, with the intention of describing how materials participate in practice and the ways in which arrangements of the material and the digital point to valued activities (Sørensen, 2009). The materials described here include " the networks of interacting people, objects, activities, texts etc. that shape learning activities and outcomes " (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013). The data recorded consisted of field notes and sketches. ...
Learning spaces can play a powerful role in shaping and supporting the activities of the students and teachers who use them: they can be agents for change when the success of new pedagogical approaches depends on shifting entrenched practices. The laboratory is a key site for science education. It is here that discipline knowledge and generic competences are fused and honed, in the very act of 'doing science'. This paper focuses on communication of science. It looks at how students learn to participate in science communication, and acquire both scientific and more generic communication skills, while engaged in laboratory-based activities. This paper reports some findings of ethnographic research that involved observing student activity in laboratories. This opportunity to examine differences in patterns of communicative activity arose from a relocation to new purpose-designed laboratory spaces. Ethnographic research is appropriate for gathering data about space usage. It helps trace relations between student activity, characteristics of the spaces in which the activity is unfolding, the social organisation of the work being done, and the disciplinary practices that underpin the tasks that students are set. Our research identifies the importance of sightlines, communication tools and instructor behaviours in promoting students' communicative activity.
... Physical institutional environments are active participants in this distributed learning process, enabling, structuring, connecting, and guiding (Dron, 2022). As Goodyear & Carvalho (2019) put it, "matter matters". Learners see others learning around them, and inhabit spaces designed to support learning, whether through conversation, reflection, or study. ...
... In the classroom itself, however, the in-person teacher is, by default, expected to be the locus of control of each second of what happens, albeit that there may be significant complexity in this exchange in real life (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2019), and there are many things that the teacher may do to delegate control to students along the way (Dron, 2007). There is a strong implied expectation that, if a teacher has a timeslot to fill, they should fill it, and everything about the structure and process, from the placement of podia to timetabling and rules contrives to emphasize their dominant role. ...
In online educational systems, teachers often replicate pedagogical methods, and online institutions replicate systems and structures used by their in-person counterparts, the only purpose of which was to solve problems created by having to teach in a physical environment. Likewise, virtual learning environments often attempt to replicate features of their physical counterparts, thereby weakly replicating in software the problems that in-person teachers had to solve. This has contributed to a vicious circle of problem creation and problem solving that benefits no one. In this paper I argue that the term ‘environment’ is a dangerously misleading metaphor for the online systems we build to support learning, that leads to poor pedagogical choices and weak digital solutions. I propose an alternative metaphor of infrastructure and services that can enable more flexible, learner-driven, and digitally native ways of designing systems (including the tools, pedagogies, and structures) to support learning.
... lectures or Zoom have accumulated cultural and personal baggage). Teachers must also account for how physical environments, materials and social arrangements are influenced not only by educational design but also by institutional policies and centralised configurations of technology (Goodyear and Carvalho 2019). What is relevant is not always knowable beforehand: context does not simply pre-exist learning activity, it is also shaped by it (Ellis and Goodyear 2009). ...
... A meaningful account of these interdependent factors requires a complex analysis that produces actionable knowledge (Markauskaite et al. 2020). This analysis should be based on observation, evidence and dialogue that focus on relations rather than individual elements (Goodyear and Carvalho 2019). Each stakeholder may hold different values and purposes, and have different contextual forces acting upon them. ...
‘Pedagogy first’ has become a mantra for educators, supported by the metaphor of the ‘pedagogical horse’ driving the ‘technological cart’. Yet putting technology first or last separates it from pedagogy, making us susceptible to technological or pedagogical determinism (i.e. where technology is seen either as the driving force of change or as a set of neutral tools). In this paper, I present a model of entangled pedagogy that encapsulates the mutual shaping of technology, teaching methods, purposes, values and context. Entangled pedagogy is collective, and agency is negotiated between teachers, students and other stakeholders. Outcomes are contingent on complex relations and cannot be determined in advance. I then outline an aspirational view of how teachers, students and others can collaborate whilst embracing uncertainty, imperfection, openness and honesty, and developing pedagogical knowledge that is collective, responsive and ethical. Finally, I discuss implications for evaluation and research, arguing that we must look beyond isolated ideas of technologies or teaching methods, to the situated, entangled combinations of diverse elements involved in educational activity.
... The term 'affordance' is widely used, and its utility widely debated, in the literatures of human computer interaction (HCI) and educational technology (see e.g. Norman 1999;Turner 2005;Laurillard 1987;Oliver 2005;Dohn 2009;Goodyear and Carvalho 2019;Davis 2020). It originates in the work of the ecological psychologist James Gibson (1977). ...
... Moreover, affordances can be found in artificial environments -for example, as objects on a computer desktop that are designed to suggest some action (like clicking or dragging) or, in classrooms, such as when chairs and tables are laid out in clusters for group work, rather than in straight lines for a lecture. Goodyear and Carvalho (2019) argue that designed learning environments have effects on how students use them that operate through a mixture of (directly and quickly perceived) affordances and (slower, more cognitively demanding) interpretive processes. Thinking about this mixture of processes can be used in order to reason about connections between aspects of a learning environment (or tool, or resource) and student activity. ...
This paper is a contribution to the collective work of imagining better universities. It starts from Raewyn Connell’s account of the good university, and develops four main ideas. Connell’s insistence on thinking about universities as real workplaces, with real workforces doing real work that has real consequences, provides a disciplining foundation. On this basis, we must acknowledge that although changes are often set in motion outside a university, their realisation always depends on the work of university staff and students. Secondly, research on learning and teaching and the spaces in which they unfold can contribute to real change by providing stronger concepts and clearer language in which to imagine, discuss and plan. Thirdly, course and curriculum redesign, oriented to the great challenges that our students will be tackling in the next few decades, would benefit from an infusion of practices and values from the fields of social innovation and participatory design, and that design for social innovation needs a grounding in design justice. Finally, I outline some of the implications that we can infer for better learning spaces — understood from both a postdigital and a postcritical perspective. A connecting theme within this exploration is the realisation of care as thoughtful work.
... They suggest instead that a balance of data, evidence, dialogue, and expertise is necessary. Furthermore, within their 'ecological' view of HE institutions, rather than considering the performance of individuals in isolation, evaluation can also look at policies, systems and environments, and how these support and constrain educational practice (Goodyear and Carvalho 2019;Fawns et al. 2020;S. Hayes 2019a). ...
... Hayes 2019a). As such, they call for analytics that are part of a wider, ecological view of education, where relationships and holistic conceptions of practice are valued above individual variables (Goodyear and Carvalho 2019), and where it is acknowledged that metrics do not capture everything that is important (Fawns et al. 2020). It is here that we suggest that audible regional debate has an integral part to play. ...
As agendas for data-driven measures of excellence dominate policy in UK Higher Education (HE), we argue that the generic structure of national policy frameworks virtually silences regional voices. This furthers a territorially agnostic discourse about universities, downplays institutional history and purpose, risks concealing innovative practices, and fails to tackle entrenched inequalities. In response, we point to the value of live, place-based debate in HE institutions to highlight distributional inequity, raise local voices and connect these with national policy. Yet even as we compiled this article about HE debate, the Covid-19 pandemic took hold globally, cancelling face-to-face meetings, by necessity. We therefore draw on a postdigital perspective, as we share our individual dialogues in support of debate, via collective writing, against this new backdrop of social distancing and widespread uncertainty. We may not currently be able to convene our Midlands HE Policy Network (MHEPN) debates in person, but we can voice the essential part that regional universities play in connecting global technological and biological change, with local social projects, citizens and industry. Postdigital theory offers one route to understanding that Covid-19 does not sit apart from other political economic challenges in HE and beyond, that we need to debate simultaneously.
... Our research builds on developments in the learning sciences that seek to honour both the relational and the material. The Activity Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) framework (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013 acknowledges that learning is physically, epistemically and socially situated. In taking an indirect approach to design for learning, ACAD makes a clear distinction between elements that can be designed ahead of time and the activity of learners, which cannot be designed but emerges at learntime . ...
... Networked learning focuses on the use of technology to promote connections between learners, tutors and resources, and involves participation, co-creation and knowledge building (Goodyear, Banks, Hodgson, & McConnell, 2004). Our work builds on a recent development in networked learning-the ACAD framework (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013. The heart of the framework is learning activity-what people actually do, their thoughts and feelings-which cannot be entirely predicted. ...
Designing for digitally enhanced learning has increased in complexity. In response, this paper calls for a reconceptualization of technology—as the reconfiguring of space, place, materials, time and social relations—enrolled and refashioned in emergent learning activity. Such reconceptualization requires analytical tools, methods and processes to map heterogeneous assemblages of people, tools and tasks. Educational researchers and designers are in need of approaches and theories that move beyond deterministic accounts about the utility of individual learning technologies, to connect theory, research and practice. Our research shows that in learning to distinguish between elements that are open to alteration through design and those that are not, educational designers gain deeper insights into the flows of matter, information and humans characteristic of productive networked learning environments. And this, in turn, gives rise to valued qualities of emergent learning activity in alignment with current theories about learning. In this paper, we present a series of methods adapted from archaeology and design, illustrating their power in tracing the complex webs of dependence characteristic of productive learning entanglement, with the aim of supporting future design for learning.
... As Wittgenstein describes in the following aphorism: "Words are the chains that set us free" (cited in Derry et al., 2010), words allow us to communicate and make sense together, but we are limited by the words that are available between the participants. Goodyear & Carvalho (2013) are also critical of the idea that learning designs can be operationalized across different contexts with a high level of neutrality. They point out that tasks and learning activities are transformed and implemented by teachers and students in their respective environments (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013). ...
... Goodyear & Carvalho (2013) are also critical of the idea that learning designs can be operationalized across different contexts with a high level of neutrality. They point out that tasks and learning activities are transformed and implemented by teachers and students in their respective environments (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013). They suggest that researchers and teachers instead should recognize that they can plan, design tasks and tools that can support the learners, but that they cannot design learning. ...
This paper explores various strands of ‘Learning Design’ and the understandings of Learning Design that have been developing or are emerging across research fields. We aim to understand the differences and similarities that have developed within various areas, such as Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), networked learning, designs for learning and draw out their development and branching to understand potentially different ontological or epistemological roots they draw on. Further, we wish to inquire into how the area of ‘Learning Design’ relate to or distances itself from the philosophy and values of networked learning
... Social scientists have begun to use or advocate for multilevel approaches to study these topics. They have proposed multilevel models for examining professionalism in medicine [33], adopted micro-meso-macro models to analyze learning in other complex environments [34], studied multilevel contextual factors in burnout among high school teachers [35], and called for multilevel approaches to address implicit bias in medicine [36]. ...
Context in diagnosis and management of patients is a vexing phenomenon in medicine and health professions education that can lead to unwanted variation in clinical reasoning performance and even errors that cause patient harm. Studies have examined individual-, team-, and system-level contextual factors, but the ways in which multiple contextual factors can interact, how both distracting and enabling factors can impact performance and error, and the boundaries between context and content information are not well understood. In this paper, we use a theory-based approach to enhance our understanding of context. We introduce a multilevel perspective on context that extends prior models of clinical reasoning and propose a micro-meso-macro framework to provide a more integrated understanding of how clinical reasoning is both influenced by and emerges from multiple contextual factors. The multilevel approach can also be used to study other social phenomena in medicine such as professionalism, learning, burnout, and implicit bias. We call for a new paradigm in clinical reasoning research and education that uses multilevel theory and analysis to enhance clinical reasoning performance expertise and improve the quality of patient care.
... Applying a social constructivist perspective, networked learning generally emphasizes learning as socially situated, learner-centered activities. "Through their physical properties and embodied intentions, designed objects have effects on human perception and action, but the nature of those connections depends upon an interplay between affordance, interpretation and capability" [11]. J.J. Gibson's affordance concept offers a widely known analytical perspective on the relationship between agents and technology that is based on the idea that the physical environment, including media technologies, always somehow influence our actions. ...
This study investigates how Google Docs is used and affects group work in classrooms. Inspired by networked learning theory and the concept of learning spaces in education theory, Google Docs group work is conceptualized as a hybrid learning space. Based on close video ethnographic examinations of group work sessions, the analysis focuses upon what the pupils actually do when combining oral and written communication, how the hybrid Google Docs space affects collaborative and cooperative activity, as well as the role of the group’s social context. Whereas Google Docs is often associated with collaboration, the findings in this study suggest: (1) that Google Docs in fact helps single group members to establish multimodal leadership to dominate the hybrid learning space of the group work settings; and (2) that Google Docs provides space for non-leaders to make cooperative contributions. This motivates a conceptual reassessment of collaboration and cooperation as working patterns before the paper ends with a discussion of potential pedagogical implications for the use of Google Docs in group work.
... Furthermore, "places" are spaces that are valued' (3). At the same time such views have been explored in depth within the work of Goodyear and Carvalho (2019), where they explain that highly complex learning environments must be investigated as whole systems, not in their component parts. ...
Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching, and learning encounters in higher education have changed. Online teaching has become routine and a variety of virtual learning platforms are being explored. Within this article we, two higher dance education teachers and researchers, reflect on using TikTok in our work. Taking a duoethnographic approach, we explore engagement with TikTok in our contexts of teaching in higher education institutions in China and Norway. From our duoethnographic dialogue we discuss how TikTok offers an example of a posthuman educational encounter. From there, the idea of how a platform such as TikTok might be able to create a space and place for teaching and learning within a higher education setting is unpacked. Then a reflection on disciplinary specific contribution is given, asking: what can dance offer to the conversation about using a social media platform such as TikTok within higher education? Through reflecting on our pedagogical experiences and cultures, this article reveals that while queries surround the use of social media platforms such as TikTok in higher education, there are benefits in experimentation with such platforms. Specifically, there is value considering the interaction between the human and non-human aspects of teaching and learning in higher education settings.
... New learning environments for active learning need to be carefully designed to meet the needs of all users, and it is within this context that the interconnectedness of the learner and the learning environment, pedagogical approaches and social relations need to be considered (Oblinger, 2005;Goodyear and Carvalho, 2013;Knaub et al., 2016). This interconnectedness can be framed within the pedagogy, space and technology (PST) framework proposed by Radcliffe (2009), though it is important to note that the design of learning spaces "is challenging and under-researched" and "students often play an active role in adapting the learning spaces, tools and tasks that have been designed for them, to better match their own requirements" (Goodyear, 2020(Goodyear, , p. 1046. ...
The use of digital technologies and online tools to support both students and educators has become synonymous with transforming learning within Higher Education, particularly within post graduate courses. It can be argued that the recent push for transforming Higher Education aligns itself with the notion that postgraduate students need more flexible learning opportunities while still retaining access to high quality, engaging and collaborative pedagogical approaches. This paper reports on an exploratory case study that focuses on cross campus/university collaboration and flexible learning opportunities for students studying a masters level degree in the area of Music, Communication and Technology (MCT) within a Nordic context. The research question guiding the study is “What factors do educators in a hybrid cross-campus learning environment identify as essential for providing a supportive learning experience for students?” A pedagogy, space and technology (PST) framework underpins the development of this program and forms the basis for its development. The findings from our research identify three themes that need to be considered when attempting to design and implement high quality learning opportunities for students studying a largely synchronous hybrid music, communications and technology program. These themes were flexibility, trust and the human element, and ownership. The findings also highlight the need for a renewed focus on pedagogical approaches that can be adapted and continually revised to meet the changing needs of students in a synchronous hybrid learning space.
... In an unpredicted and sometimes messy context such as classrooms [18], [20] as well as the changing social contexts and technological developments [12], there seems to be a paradox that learning activity designs and applications of technology have been so stable and conventionally used in education, usually with only discrete adaptations. Based on the work of Higgins, Beauchamp, & Miller (2007), Voogt & McKenney [21] asserted that teachers have a propensity to get used to integrating technology in a way that adjusts to their current practices, disregarding the potential that the resource can offer to them. ...
This paper reports preliminary findings of qualitative multiple-case study associated with the understandings and uses of digital technology among student teachers involved in school-based teaching practices. In addition, the article presents the issues they faced when integrating technology into their lessons. In order to explain the effects that technology has had on education, it is vital to address the particular contexts of practice. From this, it is possible to develop appropriate pedagogies that better suit the learning environment and expand the pedagogical value of teaching and learning experiences. Research in the field suggests that the effects of technology in education can only be understood within the cultural context where these social practices occur. The effective use of technology in the classroom requires an understanding of the limitations and the potentials of resources, and it demands teachers to be able to evaluate and rethink their practice critically according to the context. The data collected involved seven case studies from a southern Chilean city that was analysed thematically. They included lesson planning documents, video of the lessons, semi-structured interviews with student teachers, audio recordings of the supervisory meetings. Additionally, written field notes from classroom observations were taken as a complementary source of data collection. Although the literature concerning educational technology from both academic and political fields reveal the presence of favourable conditions for teachers to change their traditional practice for more student-centred ways of teaching, it seems that teaching remains unchanged. As a common trend among the participants, this research evidences an understanding of technology as a technical tool rather than a pedagogical resource that can constitute a means for increasing learning. This situation was illustrated by a greater priority that practitioners put for teacher-centred practices. Albeit some cases revealed pedagogies that fostered higher degrees of students' participation and autonomy, the dynamic was characterised by teacher-led activities. The most common pedagogical strategy applied was to generate dialogical interactions directed towards the entire class, which were also teacher-guided. In all cases, the technology uses involved an interest in following up on students learning, either by monitoring or reviewing content already taught. Furthermore, practitioners coped with similar emergent issues in their particular learning contexts such as technical or logistical problems, classroom management and technology features, among others. These findings challenge initial teacher training programmes leaders and teacher educators to rethink how to offer more opportunities for student teachers to understand the potential synergies between pedagogy and technology, experiment and reflect on the implications of a given technology use in their practices. The value of this research resides in its role as a bridge between schools, policymakers, and universities regarding the role and scope of technology in students' learning.
... In the context of learning environments, recent years have led to the study of the environment as a system, and how the interactions within them can lead to effective learning experiences. Goodyear and Carvalho (2013), suggest the importance of mapping and understanding the complex relations between artefacts, their affordances, and the learning situations, in order to design effective experiences. Shapiro, Hall, and Owens (2017) suggest an interaction geography methodology, underpinned by human geography and interaction analysis, which serves to map and understand users' experiences and interactions, with the environment and other users, across time and space within museums. ...
Higher education institutions (HEI) have undergone fundamental changes driven by ICT developments, globalisation, and the advent of socio-constructivist pedagogic approaches. As a result, within the UK, capital investment in new and retrofitted facilities has reached a record expenditure. Recent research on user-related evaluations of facilities, particularly in HEI learning spaces, highlights the prevalence of evaluations dominated by reductionist approaches focused on measuring outcomes, on users, such as satisfaction, learning outcomes or engagement. These approaches have a major pitfall, neglecting the complexity of the dynamic relationships between people, spaces, technology, institutional structure and pedagogic practices. In response, this paper aims to propose a shift on current approaches by exploring the application of sociotechnical systems theory to learning space design and evaluation. Amid these, it is argued that Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) offers promising alternatives to inform design and management of higher education learning spaces. Finally, within the paper, three CWA interventions are proposed and discussed, focusing on how these address previously identified shortcomings of predominant approaches used in HEI learning space design and evaluation. Relevance to human factors theory Dominant approaches used in higher education space evaluation appear largely deterministic and dominated by focus on user outcomes. However, the relationships between the campus environment and its users, include multiple characteristics of complex sociotechnical systems. The application of CWA within this novel domain is suggested, and its implications and potential interventions are discussed.
... Such perspectives also suggest entangled learning states whereby bifurcations between formal and informal learning are weakened (Kumpulainen & Sefton-Green, 2012;Zürcher, 2015). These are important insights; educationists, technologies, and environments should pursue ways of attending to this complexity (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013). ...
Lecture recording is an increasingly common practice in UK universities, whereby audio, video, and multimedia content from lecture theatres can be captured and distributed online. Despite a large body of recent lecture capture literature, much of the empirical research adopts positivist paradigms, which overlooks the complex and unpredictable nature of teaching and learning. Addressing this knowledge gap, this exploratory case study adopts sociomaterial approaches, specifically perspectives from the domain of actor-network theory (ANT), to view learning technologies as complex assemblages involving heterogeneous human and non-human entities or actors.
This paper explores the entanglements involved in enacting online pedagogy and learning across spatiotemporal dimensions using trace ethnography and visualisation mapping. Examining the student-led study practices revealed that multitasking and fluid task switching, between contrasting networks and spaces, was a significant activity during the playback of lecture recordings. Exploring an innocuous and ubiquitous practice, such as video pausing, affords nuanced perspectives into the sociomaterial entanglements involved in enacting study practices. Moreover, adopting multimodal sensitivities reveals how often overlooked modes, such as iconography, can become actors within an assemblage. This may offer new insights into how modes help produce or stabilise configurations and advance efforts in attending to the non-human within actor-networks.
... The type of knowledge structure identified in Figure 4(b) has been labelled as a process-oriented chain of practice; and it may indicate tacit knowledge unencumbered by complexity and goal-orientation (Kinchin, Cabot, & Hay, 2008b). However, reliance on tacit knowledge does not indicate a mindful approach towards distinguishing between designing for learning (Beetham & Sharpe, 2013;Bennett, Agostinho, & Lockyer, 2017;Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013) and designing for professional accreditation via assessment (Lester, 2000). Undoubtedly, there are situations where a chain-of-practice is an effective strategy to consider relative to an industry skills-need. ...
This research study explores the relationship between the socio-cognitive concept of mindfulness and university educators’ learning design conceptualisations. The multi-method research strategy utilises a concept-mapping exercise to reveal learning designer mental models for comparison with Langer Mindfulness Scale scores and critical event interviews to further illuminate the conceptualisations and factors that impact educators’ thinking when designing online units. Research participants were asked to create a concept map of their learning design and to be mindful of concepts incorporated into a Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Education. The analysis highlights some congruence between educators’ mindfulness dimensions and their learning design conceptual frameworks. The mindfulness scores appear to indicate a propensity to be more mindful in designing curriculum, as indicated by participant concept maps, yet not necessarily towards the adaptive use of technology or learner/activity-based pedagogies. The authors suggest metacognitive strategies to encourage learning design reconceptualisation.
... For this reason, it is useful to adopt a common language for describing design principles. In this work, we adopt the framework of Goodyear and Carvalho (2013), which has three elements: set design, epistemic design, and social design. Set design refers to the look, feel, and tangible aspects of the environment; the stage within which the network is acted out. ...
This paper describes a design-based research study in which an online platform for teachers was designed and implemented over 3 years. The study uses a networked learning approach to support teachers in the transition from university into service. It addresses the question of how online communities of teachers can support the development of situational knowledge. The paper describes the potential and the challenges of designing and implementing learning networks for teachers. A major challenge identified is the need for design that supports trust and stability within large networks. Significant potential is identified through the reuse of knowledge and greater collegiality within the profession. The platform, TeachConnect, was developed as a collaboration between academics at eight Australian universities, to create a platform to support teachers across the boundary from preservice into the profession. The study presents results from design and implementation, and includes site usage statistics and coding of types of support present within the platform. The paper contributes design principles for online communities of teachers and raises theoretical questions about future online communities.
... Teachers are increasingly using social network sites (SNSs) to obtain support, especially during their early years in the profession where they need to manage significant challenges (Goodyear, Casey, & Kirk, 2014a;Kelly & Antonio, 2016;Kennedy & Archambault, 2012;Rutherford, 2010). Connected technologies, typified by SNSs, have created a new space within which teachers can connect to one other and to knowledge (Goodyear, Carvalho, Beetham, & Sharpe, 2013). The use of technology for developing supportive communities warrants further study, as "an important area of practice, and one that needs to be developed and nurtured to yield its fullest potential" (Wenger, White, & Smith, 2009, p. xii). ...
This paper describes the support that Australian early career teachers are accessing through private groups within social media. It presents findings from 22 interviews with teachers who indicated that Facebook was a source of support. Participants describe using private online groups for: (a) support during casual employment; (b) accessing collegial support from pre-existing connections, in particular those formed during initial teacher education; and (c) support to deal with challenging situations such as a hostile work environment. The paper suggests that further research needs to be conducted into how private media groups might support the needs of early career teachers.
... On-campus learning these days involves a meshwork of the physical and the digital-of activities that are distributed in physical space and across the Internet, using mixtures of university-provided, commercially provided, and personal tools and resources. Current knowledge falls well short of what is needed to understand, design for and manage such complex hybrids effectively (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013). ...
Learning space research is a relatively new field of study that seeks to inform the design, evaluation and management of learning spaces. This paper reviews a dispersed and fragmented literature relevant to understanding connections between university learning spaces and student learning activities. From this review, the paper distils a number of core concerns and identifies some gaps in the literature. One of its primary goals is to clear the ground for the construction of models of learning space that can be used by the various parties involved in the design and evaluation of new learning spaces: teachers, architects, interior designers, IT managers, educational leaders and students. A closely related goal is to help those participating in learning space research locate and understand each other's contributions. Fragmentation in research related to learning and physical spaces makes progress in the field slow. Our review makes two passes over the field: drawing together research from architecture, the learning sciences, environmental psychology, human computer interaction and elsewhere to identify research foci and gaps, and then also capturing some work by learning space researchers that directly attempts to model the main relationships in the field. The paper ends with a summary of implications for research and practice.
... If we want to understand the actual lived experience of networked learning from the perspective of those most closely bound up in it we need to take into account extensive networks of various kinds of things. It is a profound mistake to restrict analysis to that which 'exists' in 'cyberspace' – to ignore the qualities of the place in which a person is physically located, the tools and resources which come to hand in that place, or their face-to-face interactions with colleagues, friends and family (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2013). Learning networks cannot be understood, and design for learning networks cannot be informed solely by, the aggregated or averaged experiences of participating individuals. ...
A good repertoire of methods for analysing and sharing ideas about existing designs can make a useful contribution to improving the quality and efficiency of educational design work. Just as architects can improve their practice by studying historic and contemporary buildings, so people who design to help people learn can get better at what they do by understanding the designs of others.
This paper presents the development of a Learning Ecosystem (LE) to cope with the challenges brought by the characteristic complexity and uncertainty of research and innovation projects. These projects are made up of consortium partners who constitute a complex socio-technical system (STT), which works towards the development of cutting-edge technology by creating new and valuable knowledge. Through the creation of a LE grounded in complexity, learning and knowledge management theories, the project consortium aims to enable an efficient knowledge exchange and effective learning processes within the system, which are ultimately conducive to the achievement of the project goals. After a review of the literature about complex STTs and LEs, the development of the LE for a specific project taken as a pilot is discussed in detail, elaborating on its components, knowledge flows, learning processes, learning tools, and the methods to assess its effectiveness.KeywordsComplex socio-technical systemLearning ecosystemEffective learningKnowledge gapResearch and innovation project
The adoption of digital technologies in higher education offers new opportunities for student learning but also adds complexity to course design and development processes. Although practice varies across institutions and nations, a common response is that teams of people are now involved in the development and creation of blended and online courses. Members of such teams typically include instructional designers, academics, learning designers and technologists, and production teams, and courses are developed over time, often across separate locations and organisations. These factors are creating a need for tools that support the sharing of design information in distributed course design teams. This paper introduces such a course design tool, EdVee, which supports pedagogical innovation through the sharing and visualisation of constructive alignment of learning outcomes, content, learning, and teaching activities and assessment. Key concepts that underpin EdVee are drawn from systems engineering and product development. We demonstrate its value to course design through two case studies: the design of a new course and the evaluation of an existing course.
This paper discusses the uses and applications of the Pedagogy of Experience Complexity for Smart Learning (PECSL), a four-tier model of considerations for the design and development of smart learning activities. Using existing mobile apps and relevant activities as illustrative examples, the PECSL is applied to indicate concepts and mechanisms by which useful pedagogical considerations can work alongside user-centred design principles for the design and development of smart learning in urban hyper-localities. Practical application of the model is discussed using real world examples of activities as a basis to demonstrate the potential for manifold opportunities to learn, and plan for experience complexity in a smart learning activity. Case study approaches reflect on aspects of the PECSL in how it might be a useful and pragmatic guide to some of the issues faced when designing digital citizen learning activities in complex urban environments.
The Pedagogy of Experience Complexity for Smart Learning (PECSL) is a four-tier model of considerations for the design and development of learning activities situated in real world hyperlocal locations, mediated by smart enough technologies. Learner experience is placed at the centre of learning design, focusing on the complex interrelated experiences that may be possible. A wider awareness of types of learning may enhance potential for gaining value for learners and offer more flexibility for instructors or others. Learning is considered as any potential object of vital interest for the learner, and may include making connections with others, dialogic space expansion between learners and wider relevance of topic or location as much as any intended learning outcome.
Taking inspiration from digital artefact user centred design, the PECSL adopts a position of flexible layers of considerations that impact stages of design for complex smart learning activities. Each tier being interrelated to the others, these iteratively adapting as a result of decisions being made throughout the design and development process. Categories of learner experience variation derived from a phenomenographic study of smart learning journeys inform the foundation of the PECSL, providing concepts of experience relevance structures leading to related pedagogies, further pedagogical relevance considerations and deeper epistemological reflections. Acknowledging significance of the context, process and content of learning in these activities, considerations expand to enable pragmatic support for much of value towards effective learning. This paper seeks to provide a means for learners to learn from each other as much as any specified learning goals or assessment.
This paper uses two complementary examples from an autoethnographic study of learning and sailing to explore some connections between informal lifelong learning activities, their objects (purposes) and the hybrid (digital and material) technologies on which they depend. The examples focus on an aspect of the craft of sailing and on understanding the relations between sailing, place and local history. The paper argues that close attention to activities in which people engage can help discover some less visible purposes of learning and can broaden our understandings of situated skills. The paper also argues that being able to find and configure environments suitable for learning are important capabilities for successful lifelong learners. The paper has two additional implications for thinking about research and development in educational technology. First, a technology becomes educational by virtue of its relation to emerging activity, rather than because of any intrinsic physical properties. Second, educational technologies are often assembled in complex meshworks. Understanding how they function involves analysing dynamic relations and interdependencies: listing the affordances of individual components is not enough. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Across the life course, a good deal of valuable learning is informal, incidental or both. Informal lifelong learning depends upon an ability to monitor and manage one's own learning activity. Informal lifelong learning also depends upon an ability to find useful (digital and other) learning resources. What this paper adds The purposes (objects) of lifelong learning activities are not always evident. They can be ‘discovered’ through inquiry and reflection. Finding useful learning resources is sometimes complex. In some cases, it amounts to constructing and/or reconfiguring a productive learning/epistemic environment. Creating a productive learning or epistemic (knowledge‐making) environment entails assembling and holding together a meshwork of digital, material and hybrid artefacts. Learning ‘in the wild’ can also entail finding the right place for learning: the right spot in a ‘skillscape’. A technology becomes educational by virtue of its relation to activity, rather than through a priori classification or because of its intrinsic features. Implications for practice and/or policy Those who encourage and/or support informal lifelong learning may want to consider the significance of implicit purposes for, and outcomes of, learning activities and may find it helpful to have a richer conception of how learning environments are found and assembled. What is already known about this topic Across the life course, a good deal of valuable learning is informal, incidental or both. Informal lifelong learning depends upon an ability to monitor and manage one's own learning activity. Informal lifelong learning also depends upon an ability to find useful (digital and other) learning resources. What this paper adds The purposes (objects) of lifelong learning activities are not always evident. They can be ‘discovered’ through inquiry and reflection. Finding useful learning resources is sometimes complex. In some cases, it amounts to constructing and/or reconfiguring a productive learning/epistemic environment. Creating a productive learning or epistemic (knowledge‐making) environment entails assembling and holding together a meshwork of digital, material and hybrid artefacts. Learning ‘in the wild’ can also entail finding the right place for learning: the right spot in a ‘skillscape’. A technology becomes educational by virtue of its relation to activity, rather than through a priori classification or because of its intrinsic features. Implications for practice and/or policy Those who encourage and/or support informal lifelong learning may want to consider the significance of implicit purposes for, and outcomes of, learning activities and may find it helpful to have a richer conception of how learning environments are found and assembled.
Institutions are increasingly redesigning academic learning spaces with the aim of enhancing learning outcomes. Existing research into this phenomenon has shown promise regarding how these new spaces are being designed and used; however, there has been much less effort towards developing a language for analysing the emergent learning activity within these spaces. In other words, it has been under-theorised. This paper responds to this gap by proposing three analytical framings and grounding each in vignettes illustrative of how they might be applied: (1) space-time-feedback as an assemblage for emergent interest-driven student activity; (2) embodiment-material as an assemblage for emergent public sensemaking; and (3) proximity-material-time as an assemblage for emergent collaborative benchmarking through group awareness and ambient feedback. Although not an exhaustive list, the three analytical framings serve as a starting point for investigations of emergent activity within future learning spaces from a sociomaterial perspective.
Online curriculums increase self-regulatory learning behaviors among students and facilitate knowledge transfer essential for deep learning to take place. Additionally, threshold concepts are best taught using a format that is designed for repeated point-of-need access by students. Pairing flipped classroom pedagogy, in which students engage with content independently prior to a synchronous class, with online learning objects intentionally designed to promote self-regulatory learning behaviors helps to build a strong foundation of information literacy. This paper discusses the decision of one library to move its information literacy curriculum to a fully online format in order to more effectively teach information literacy threshold concepts to students at all levels of college. The online curriculum was designed using both synchronous and asynchronous models of instruction and built upon the library's online learning pilot project with first year Communication Studies students. A high-level analysis of effective online pedagogy is offered in conjunction with a detailed look at the online course and content development process, librarians' training requirements, and the communication strategies used to inform campus stakeholders of the curricular change.
This chapter addresses the increasingly well-documented problem of teacher stress and attrition, focusing upon the need for critical conversations about this problem. Our response to this problem centres on online networks of teachers, which have the potential both to (a) counteract the stress experienced by pre-service and early career teachers and to (b) minimise the attrition of early career teachers. The case in favour of online learning networks of teachers focuses on three features of productive learning networks. The first is criticality, which includes critical thinking and combines it with communicative action as part of critical dialogue. Teachers in online learning networks engage in particular kinds of critical dialogue, and in doing so they display professional identities and exercise professional agency. One of the results of this critical dialogue is the development of shared understanding and a form of social cohesion, which manifest as the other two elements, communality and collegiality. Working in combination, these elements can drive innovative learning opportunities for neophyte teachers, while acknowledging the ongoing deprofessionalisation and politicisation of teachers’ work and identities that render a reimagined and reinvigorated criticality ever more timely and urgent.
Internationalisation has been a key theme in higher education (HE) for decades. Multiple initiatives across the world have contributed to creating offerings of high-quality online education, with collaborations across national borders. Two of the concepts that have proved to be influential are Virtual Mobility (VM) and Open Education (OE). Virtual mobility refers to study activities that students enrolled in HE in one country undertake online in other countries without physically moving. Such activities are certified and mutually acknowledged by participating institutions. Open education covers global initiatives increasing access to free online quality education, without or with alternative forms of certification. The research presented in this article identifies the learner skills and competences that are supported by Open Virtual Mobility (OpenVM), a new trend in online education that builds upon these two concepts. A group concept mapping study based on the contributions of experts in both VM and OE resulted in defining seven learner skills and competence areas including: intercultural skills and attitudes; networked learning; active self-regulated learner skills; media and digital literacy; autonomy-driven learning, interactive and collaborative learning in an authentic international environment and open-mindedness. The study provided input for further conceptualising of OpenVM as a bridge between VM and OE.
This paper draws on a series of studies of design teams working on the creation and evaluation of novel complex learning spaces: spaces in which students' activity is situated and supported by rich mixtures of material and digital tools and resources. In most of the cases observed, students also played a substantial role in co‐configuring the learning spaces and/or the learning tasks they were set and the ways they worked with other students. The complexity of the design challenges involved revealed the inadequacy of normative models for design for learning. In other words, the people creating new spaces for hybrid learning are often doing so in ways that go beyond the capacities of existing design models. The paper draws on analyses of real‐world design practice to advance and illustrate an argument for higher level, more abstract, descriptions of how such work is done, and how design lessons learnt might be more easily shared. In so doing, the paper contributes to the literature on educational technology and learning space design by drawing out some relations between the pragmatics of design practice and the role of students' co‐configurative activity in realising instances of hybrid learning. The empirical research informing the paper was mostly undertaken in university settings, but the practical implications are of wider relevance to people who are professionally involved in shaping novel learning spaces in other areas of education and training.
In some high school learning environments, hundreds of students engage in collaborative, term-long, project-based learning STEM or STEAM units of work. In this chapter, the authors report on an ongoing design-based research project in which researchers and teachers collaborate to design, teach, and assess STEAM units of work. They draw on research on project-based learning and interdisciplinary collaboration to inform the analysis drawing on Jonassen's typology of problem solving. The purpose of this chapter is to present two tools that functioned as boundary objects mediating learning and self-assessment: (1) a ‘STEAM slider' used by students in groups to reach consensus on the use of the tools, knowledge, and processes employed in their project and (2) a criteria sheet developed to mediate students' and teachers' engagement in self- and teacher-assessment. The authors use these results to make recommendations for the next iteration of the project.
Knowledge plays a significant role in networked learning. Epistemic activities, and the structures that support such activities, do not just spring into life when a networked learning resource is created. They exist prior to, and outside of, any specific networked resource. They go on in the world. So epistemic activities and structures can be seen as part of a broader social-cultural context. In this paper, we argue that people who design for networked learning benefit from having a richer repertoire of ways of understanding relationships between epistemic activities and the structures that support them, and of viewing these in their social contexts. Educational designers need to be aware there are different ways of expressing knowledge, associated with implicit values that underlie knowledge practices within any social context. These varied ways of expressing knowledge have diverse effects on learners’ activities. Understanding such connections is useful when designing new networked learning resources, or when devising ways to improve existing learning networks.
Using an approach from the sociology of knowledge, this paper explores the structuring of knowledge in a case study of networked learning drawn from an undergraduate design course about graphics and programming. The course uses a computer-based platform called Peep to extend what would otherwise be a set of timetabled, lab-based learning and teaching activities. Students and teachers can interact using Peep, at any time, from any location. These networked learning activities involve a mixture of lecturer-led tasks and student-driven collaborations, including requests for and offers of help, and sharing and discussing code and graphical designs. Our focus in this case study is on variations in the degree to which the knowledge being dealt with is dependent on its context for meaning and condensed. Our analysis reveals that one of the key design elements of Peep – the code editor – facilitates a distinctive, important epistemic activity. The code editor enables the ‘object of discussion’ (programming and the visual and animated effects of it) to come to the fore. Instead of students having to describe phenomena, events or processes that happen elsewhere, they each have the object of their discussion in front of them, embedded within all of Peep’s varied spaces for learning. Our analysis explores the relations between this design feature and Peep’s support for students’ discussions of complex concepts, sharing and exchanging views, and building on each other’s ideas and work.
The chapters in this book both contribute to, and raise fundamental questions about, the knowledge that is valuable in the creation of good places to learn. Whether one is designing, managing or inhabiting a learning place, there are kinds of knowledge that can beneficially affect the relations between one’s activities and surroundings. What does this mean for research? Are there directions in which learning space research might be steered, or ways it might be organised, that might improve the likelihood of useful discoveries? While we are happy to agree that valuable knowledge often appears through serendipity , in this chapter we also argue that more explicit framings of the nature of useful knowledge can help strengthen our collective endeavours. More specifically, we provide some framing for the production of actionable knowledge in learning space research by: looking at the situations of designers , managers and users of space; attending to both analysis and design; factoring in both fast and slow (reflective , interpretive) modes of thought, and warning against the dangers of narrow ontological or epistemological assumptions. Understanding the relations between qualities of learning spaces and the vitality of valued learning activities is not straightforward. It requires diverse forms of knowledge and ways of knowing—linked in holistic, systemic or even ecological modes of knowledgeable action.
This chapter explores the role of digital technologies in collaborative open space learning programs developed at Northern Beaches Christian School in Sydney, Australia. The chapter begins by recounting the role of an in-house innovation incubator called Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning in nurturing a school philosophy that values emergent interactivity, and offers justification for this philosophy using Self-Determination Theory. It describes a number of ensuing open space learning designs, making specific reference to the practical use of digital technologies. The chapter concludes by proposing ecological design language that interprets structures in physical, virtual, and cultural space by their ability to facilitate emergent, unscripted interactions between people, their environment, and information. It emphasizes the paradoxical importance of linearity, constraint, and expert teaching in learning designs that set the scene for emergence to occur.
This chapter draws on a programme of research into the architecture of learning networks. This research programme has been examining a number of diverse learning networks, to identify reusable design ideas. The analytic work has been structured around a distinction between elements of learning networks that can be designed (partially, or completely) and processes that are emergent. From a learning perspective, the emergent processes are most important: what network participants actually do, including what they think, feel and say, is what matters most. Everything that can be designed and set in place is merely to resource and guide their activity. Thus, activity mediates between outcomes and what can be designed. One cannot assume a direct relationship between (say) a specific digital tool and some desired outcomes. Rather, one needs to understand the kinds of connections that can exist between such tools/devices and participants’ activities. More generally: how is what participants actually do influenced by the qualities of the place in which they are working, and by the tools and other resources that come to hand? Neither networked learning, nor the broader field of educational technology, have well-developed theories or constructs to create analytical connections between activity and its physical setting. Our chapter draws upon our experiences of analysing learning networks to create some framing within which connecting constructs might be articulated. About the only theoretical construct that has become widely used in the field is that of “affordance”. It is a term that is also very widely critiqued and contested, in part because of deep conceptual ambiguities, but also because of lax usage. We draw upon some ideas from metaphysics to help frame the relationships between the physical world and human activity, to redeem the term “affordance” and to add some further terms that help identify other kinds of relations between activity and its physical setting. The point of this is actually quite practical. Without some analytical constructs that provide connections between things that can be designed and valued activities, designers cannot provide a rationale for what they do. They can copy ideas, set things in place, and proceed by trial and error. But they cannot apply principled knowledge to the solution of complex problems. They cannot design.
In this chapter, I examine the kinds of theories of learning that might be applicable in a network society and explore how theories of learning are changing. A society based on digital networks has clearly changed the kinds of labour that are required in the economy, and this shift in the demand for labour has an influence on the kinds of learning that are required. A starting point for this chapter is the term learning and the way digital and networked technologies intertwine with social forms in contemporary universities, corporate training and continuing professional development. Digital and networked technologies play a part in forming and reforming work, social life and higher education. It is this complex and dynamic mix of work, social life and the higher education system that we need to understand alongside the different theories of education and learning.
Networked learning has a clear view that theory and theoretically informed research are central to the successful use of technologies in education and learning, but I argue that the need for theory is not answered by proposing a new theory of learning or limiting networked learning to one approach or theory of learning. Networked learning while not having any one particular learning theory is not neutral in relation to theories of learning and it tends towards what might be broadly described as social theories of learning.
The introduction of digital and network technologies can have an influence on who teaches, how teaching is configured and the balance between the different elements in the teaching process. Two significant issues are identified in this chapter concerning the teaching function. Firstly, whether there is a fundamental requirement for ‘teaching’ when dealing with adult learners and to what degree teaching interventions are required. Secondly, what kinds of choices are enabled by the introduction of digital and networked technologies in terms of the disaggregation of the teaching function?
Learning design is part of the multifaceted role of the university teacher. However, very few university teachers have expertise in this field. The Educational Design Team at Monash University is addressing this need by developing a suite of digitally enabled capacity-building resources to support teachers at their point of need as they work towards enhancing teaching and learning practice. These resources, known as the BLT (Better Learning and Teaching) Bytes, provide just-in-time answers whilst also enabling and enhancing further understanding of the learning design process. These self-access digital resources are designed to support individuals and foster the development of communities of practice. This paper addresses the rationale for a just-in-time approach to professional learning in the higher education context. It describes the range of strategies that the educational design team has implemented in order to meet the complex professional development needs of university teaching staff.