The Wales-Wide Web

As regular readers of the blog will know, my main research interest is the pedagogy of e-learning. for some time I have been inching forward towards trying to develop a new and more expansive understanding of the way in which we can use ICT for learning - particularly in vocational education and training. This is my latest paper on the subject. It is only a beta edition - but in the best spirit of web 2, I am publishing it in the hope of feedback and help from the community.

Despite considerable research and investment, the sponsorship of many pilot programmes and projects and policy initiatives, e-learning has been less influential and successful than was predicted in education and training. Although there are substantial differences between sectors and organisations, in general the use of ICT for learning in vocational education and training has tendered to be confined within islands of good practice. That practice has not as a whole entered the mainstream, at least within the more developed education and training systems. It should be noted however, that in those countries with less developed institutional systems, and those countries and regions with difficult geography, poor communication infrastructure or with low population densities there has often been more use of ICT for learning.

There have been a number of studies into barriers to the development of e-learning. Commonly ascribed reasons are lack of ICT infrastructure, cost, the lack of appropriate and localised learning materials and resistance or lack of confidence on the part of teachers and trainers (Schuermann et al, Attwell 2003a). More recently, there has been an increased focus on the issue of pedagogic approaches to the use of ICT for learning. Despite this welcome development, such studies tend to be limited by a technologically determinist approach (Attwell et al, 2003b).

Moreover, most studies fail to appreciate the different factors and relationships in play. Any consideration of the use of ICT for learning or the potential of new technologies requires an understanding of the relationship between the subject of vocational education and training, the processes of learning and the nature of applied knowledge and skills in an occupational setting and the context of their application. This is especially so for work based learning. This is a much more complex relationship than the use of ICT for the acquisition of general (non-occupational) learning.

This short paper will explore those relationships. It will start with a short snapshot of the previous use of ICT for learning in vocational education and training. It will go on to consider the different ways in which people are using ICT for informal learning and will suggest an emergent pedagogy based on ‘making’ or ‘doing’. It will examine new technological developments - Web 2.0 and the advent of ubiquitous computing. The paper suggests that these developments could lead to a new approach to didactics, overcoming the divide or duality between theory or academic knowledge and practice or the skills based application of knowledge (a duality with its roots in the Renaissance (Rauner, 1997)). However, the adoption of such transformational didactic approaches, requires not only the adoption of new technologies for learning and new pedagogic approaches but also new approaches to the organisation of vocational education and training and to curriculum.

Technorati Tags: e-learning , pedagogy , work based learning

Extended text for this entry:

Introduction

Despite considerable research and investment, the sponsorship of many pilot programmes and projects and policy initiatives, e-learning has been less influential and successful than was predicted in education and training. Although there are substantial differences between sectors and organisations, in general the use of ICT for learning in vocational education and training has tendered to be confined within islands of good practice. That practice has not as a whole entered the mainstream, at least within the more developed education and training systems. It should be noted however, that in those countries with less developed institutional systems, and those countries and regions with difficult geography, poor communication infrastructure or with low population densities there has often been more use of ICT for learning.

There have been a number of studies into barriers to the development of e-learning. Commonly ascribed reasons are lack of ICT infrastructure, cost, the lack of appropriate and localised learning materials and resistance or lack of confidence on the part of teachers and trainers (Schuermann et al, Attwell 2003a). More recently, there has been an increased focus on the issue of pedagogic approaches to the use of ICT for learning. Despite this welcome development, such studies tend to be limited by a technologically determinist approach (Attwell et al, 2003b).

Moreover, most studies fail to appreciate the different factors and relationships in play. Any consideration of the use of ICT for learning or the potential of new technologies requires an understanding of the relationship between the subject of vocational education and training, the processes of learning and the nature of applied knowledge and skills in an occupational setting and the context of their application. This is especially so for work based learning. This is a much more complex relationship than the use of ICT for the acquisition of general (non-occupational) learning.

This short paper will explore those relationships. It will start with a short snapshot of the previous use of ICT for learning in vocational education and training. It will go on to consider the different ways in which people are using ICT for informal learning and will suggest an emergent pedagogy based on ‘making’ or ‘doing’. It will examine new technological developments - Web 2.0 and the advent of ubiquitous computing. The paper suggests that these developments could lead to a new approach to didactics, overcoming the divide or duality between theory or academic knowledge and practice or the skills based application of knowledge (a duality with its roots in the Renaissance (Rauner, 1997)). However, the adoption of such transformational didactic approaches, requires not only the adoption of new technologies for learning and new pedagogic approaches but also new approaches to the organisation of vocational education and training and to curriculum.

Approaches and pedagogies to the use of ICT for learning in vocational education and training

There are considerable differences in the use of ICT for learning in different subjects, different contexts, different sector sand even different countries.

Not surprisingly the most use of computers of for learning in vocational education and training has been in those subjects or occupational areas in which computers are most heavily used. Indeed, it would be odd if computers were not used for learning to programme computers! But ICT is also extensively used for such diverse areas of learning as CMC machining, graphic design and in the medical fields. Conversely ICT has had much less impact in more traditional craft trades or in the care occupations.

Secondly, ICT is used far more extensively for learning in Continuing Vocational Training than in initial education and training and in larger companies rather than small enterprises. The latter may be partly explained by the lack of trainers in the Small Enterprises and the lack of organised in-house training. The more extensive use of ICT in CVT may be due to a perception, at least, that more experienced workers are better able to organise their own learning and due to a reluctance to release staff from the workplace for training. CVT is also more often required in ‘just in time’ situations, less suited to traditional training.

At a country level ICT has tended to have been less adopted in those countries with stronger education and training systems and with a denser education and training infrastructure. Whilst the attitude of ‘If it’s not broken don’t fix it’ may be understandable this has been unhelpful for the development of vocational didactics and pedagogy using ICT.

It is also interesting to note that the implementation of e-learning tends to be most advanced in those countries following an Anglo Saxon model where moves towards privatisation and commodification are also most developed and most accepted (for discussion of different models see Wickham, 2005)

In technological terms there has been a big move from floppy disc and CD ROm based training and learning to the use of the Internet and particularly the web. Whether this has resulted in a change in pedagogy is open to question. Certainly there has been a move from the early days of Instructional Design when it was often suggested that whilst constructivist pedagogies were well suited for higher order academic learning, the most appropriate approach for ‘lower level’ or occupational learning was behaviourist.

Most e-learning researchers and developers espouse a constructivist approach to e-learning. Yet there would still appear to be a considerable divide between espoused theory and practice. The main application of ICT for learning has been essentially for conveying information, albeit with add on discussion boards and formative testing.

There are of course many exceptions. Once more these are most notable where the subject of learning and the means of learning are the same, where the computer interface is used for learning the use of a computer interface for occupational work.

A further exception may be the simulation of of occupational or work based experience. Simulations have been widely adopted for learning about tasks involving critical situations, with safety implications, or for complex situations where equipment is too expensive for more traditional hands in practice (for example the maintenance of CAT scanners). For some occupations, for instance aircraft pilots or ships pilots, computer based simulation has become the norm. It is also notable that ICT is now being extensively used in medical education. In general, however, the use of simulations has been limited by the expense in programming such learning scenarios. There are exceptions, of course. Simulations are widely used in business education where it is relatively easy and cheap to produce authentic appearing text based scenarios.

The lack of innovation and the limited didactic approaches to learning using computers is perhaps not surprising. The development and adoption of e-learning has not taken place in an ideological vacuum;

the forms and uses of technologies are shaped by political and social processes (Attwell & Heidegger). If learning is a social process (Young), then any consideration of the development and impact of e-learning and e-learning technologies needs to examine the wider social, economic and cultural processes and discourses involved in the development and implementation of new technologies in education.

Three dominant policy discourses in education have shaped the development and implementation of e-learning: commodification, privatization and a restricted discourse of lifelong learning, which in turn are based on broader discourses around globalization and the privatization of knowledge (Attwell, forthcoming).

Such dominant discourses have tended towards limiting the impact of ICT within the mainstream education and training systems and of holding back the development of new didactic and pedagogic approaches within formal learning. However, there has been considerable changes in the way people are using computers for informal learning.

Informal learning with ICT

John Seely Brown in a speech in 1999, looked at the new dimensions of learning, working and playing in the digital age. One dimension he drew attention to was literacy and how it is evolving. The new literacy, the one beyond text and knowledge, he said, is one of information navigation.

Linked to this was learning and how that is shifting. He pointed to the growth of discovery or experiential learning. As kids work in the new digital media, he said, rather than abstract logic, they deploy Bricolage. Bricolage relates to the concrete and has to do with the ability to find something – an object or a tool, a piece of code, a document - and to use it in a new way and in a new context. But to be a successful bricoleur of the virtual rather than the physical you have to be able to decide whether or not to trust or believe these things. Therefore the need for making judgments is greater than ever before.

Navigation is being coupled to discovery and discovery being coupled to bricolage but you do not dare build on whatever you discover unless you can make a judgement concerning its quality or trustworthiness.

The final dimension Seely Brown addressed was that of action. He suggests new forms of learning are based on trying things and action, rather than on more abstract knowledge:

Learning becomes as much social as cognitive, as much concrete as abstract, and becomes intertwined with judgement and exploration.

Seely Brown’s early study has been reinforced by more recent research by Pew Research (2005). The study found that 56 per cent of young people in America were using computers for ‘creative activities, writing and posting of the internet, mixing and constructing mulimedia and developing their own content.

Of course there is almost certainly a generation gap in the way computers are used for learning. But a seven country study of the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises found a number of surprising results

There was little use of ICt for formal learning in the SMEs (in fact there was little formal learning taking pace at all). In contrast to the paucity of formal learning provision in the SMEs studied, there was a great deal of informal learning taking place. From the study most informal learning appeared be learner driven, rather than planned in conjunction with others in the enterprise, and was problem motivated, although some learners were motivated by their own interest rather than in response to any specific problem. In many cases ICT was being used as part of this informal learning. The main means of ICT based learning was Google key word searches. Managers were often unaware of this learning, although they were frequently aware of the problem which inspired it.

There were considerable differences in the use of ICT for informal learning between different enterprises. It would be tempting to ascribe these differences to age, sector, size or occupation but it is hard to discern such causal factors from the case studies undertaken.

The one causal relationship which appeared was the link between work organisation and the use of ICT for learning. ICT was most frequently used for learning in those enterprises with flatter hierarchies and more devolved decision talking responsibilities and in which employees had greater autonomy in the organisation of their own work. Interestingly, these enterprises also tended to have a more experienced workforce and low turnover of employees.

Conversely, hierarchical work organisations tended to have the least use of ICT for learning. In some cases only managers and administrative staff in these enterprises had access to computers and the internet. There was no evidence of any organised support or informal learning – either face to face in the workplace or on-line. However, in some enterprises the learning acquired was discussed with peers as part of everyday collaboration and team work.

None of the employees in the enterprises studied had attempted to claim recognition or accreditation for the skills and knowledge gained through informal learning. It is not clear if this is because they are not interested in pursuing further formal qualifications or if it is because they are unaware of any opportunities of claiming accreditation for informal learning.

The use of the Google search engine as the major tool for learning is interesting. It raises the question of how people are framing their search terms, how they are refining search strings, how they are selecting from the results of search queries and how they are following hyperlinked texts. For a search result to be useful it needs to both produce materials, ideas and concepts which can connect with the learner’s existing knowledge base of the one hand and approach the issue or problem being addressed on the other. The ideas of legitimate peripheral participation and proximinal development may be helpful for explaining this process and of understanding how people are making sense of knowledge.

Lave and Wenger (1991) propose that the initial participation in a culture of practice can be observation from the periphery or legitimate peripheral participation. The participant moves from the role of observer, as learning and observation in the culture increase, to a fully functioning member. The progressive movement towards full participation enables the learner to piece together the culture of the group and establish their identity.

Knowing is inherent in the growth and transformation of identities and it is located in relations among practitioners, their practice, the artifacts of that practice, and the social organization…of communities of practice.

Especially in micro enterprises, SME employees have tended to be isolated from communities of practice. This may be a greater barrier to learning than the lack of time to attend training courses. One of the most powerful uses of ICT for learning in SMEs is the ability to connect to distributed communities of practice. There has been much comment on the phenomenon of ‘lurkers’ on discussion sites, lists servers and bulletin board. Lurking is very much a process of legitimate peripheral participation. Watching, listening and trying to make sense of a series of posts and discussions without being forced to reveal oneself or to actively participate allows the development of knowledge ‘about knowledge’ within a community and about the practices of the on-line community.

Similar to the idea of legitimate peripheral participation is Vygotsky’s (1990) “Zone of Proximinal Development”. This theoretical construct states that learning occurs best when an expert guides a novice from the novice's current level of knowledge to the expert's level of knowledge. Bridging the zone of proximinal development construct with legitimate peripheral participation construct may be accomplished if one thinks of a zone in which the expert or mentor takes the learner from the peripheral status of knowing to a deeper status. This may be accomplished with or without intention as Lave and Wegner (1991) state:

Legitimate peripheral participation is not itself an educational form, much less a pedagogical strategy or a teaching technique. It is an analytic viewpoint on learning, a way of understanding learning. We hope to make it clear that learning through legitimate peripheral participation takes place no matter which educational form provides a context for learning, or whether there is any intentional educational form at all. Indeed, this viewpoint makes a fundamental distinction between learning and intentional instruction (1991, p. 40).

However, the expert scaffolds the environment to the extent in which the learner is engaged with the discourse and participants within the zone and is drawn from a peripheral status to a more engaged status. The peripheral learner interacts with the mentor, expert learners and peers within this zone. More able learners (peers) or the mentor will work with the less able learner potentially allowing for socially constructed knowledge.

Within the SMEs studies there were few instances of mentoring or continuous contact with an expert. The use of ICT was allowing distributed access to expertise – albeit mediated through bulletin boards, forums and web pages. This leaves open the question as to the process of scaffolding which essentially becomes an internalised process. However the process of less able learners working with more able peers is a common process in seeking new knowledge through the use of ICT.

Essentially workers are using search engines to seek out potential forums and contexts for learning. Selection depends on closeness of interest and the level of discourse in the community. There is little point in following a discourse of too low a level, of knowledge already gained, neither is their an attraction to a discourse clearly on an level which cannot be understood. Learners wills eek a community with knowledge at a higher level than their own but which can connect with their prior learning, learning and practice. Typically they will lurk in order to understand the workings of the community and to gain some basic knowledge. After a period of time they might contribute in the form of a question and later again might themselves contribute to the hared knowledge pool. In this ways they move from the periphery through lurking to full bound participants in a community. It should be noted that communities are frequently overlapping and that the use of hyper-links and more recently standards like track-back allow the communities to be dynamic with the emergence of new groups and discourses.

Both studies quoted above point to the development new ways of learning using ICT. They suggest the potential for the emergence of new didactic approaches to occupational learning. However that begs the question of how forms of informal learning can be transposed within the formal vocational education and training systems and within the confines of previous and present approaches to the development of use of ICT for formal learning. In this respect, there are two important technical changes to consider: the emergence of ubiquitous computing and the spread of social software and Web 2.

Ubiquitous computing and vocational didactics

The term ubiquitous computing refers to two technological developments. The first is the growing ubiquitous nature of internet connectivity with the development of wireless and GSM networks, as well as the spread of broadband, resulting in connectivity becoming available almost everywhere in the future. It is also expected that devices will be able to search for and seamlessly switch to utilise available networks. The second and associated use of the term is for the many different devices now able to access the internet, including mobile communication devices such as PDAs but also household appliances and industrial and electronic tools and machinery.

The development of ubiquitous computing may offer profound opportunities for vocational education and training.

Previously occupational learning has been divided between the theory and knowledge base to be acquired in training schools and the practice which often takes place in the workplace. With the use of mobile devices and the spread of connectivity it is at least theoretically possible to bring this learning together and to access theory and knowledge in the context in which it is to be applied - in the work process.

Secondly - and possibly more important from a didactical point of view - is the embedding of computer based communication within the tools of the workplace. This offers the opportunity to develop learning environments whilst simultaneously accessing and shaping the production and business process through such interfaces.

In other words the context in which learning takes place becomes the context in which the learning is to be applied and the nature of the learning interface - or the learning materials become the occupational tools with which the (work process) knowledge is carried out.

Whilst ubiquitous computing is not yet fully developed, there are a number of pilot activities with the use of mobile devices and with new interfaces to learning and working.

Key to an understanding of the potential of such devices is the idea of being able both to shape the work process through the application of occupational knowledge whilst shaping the learning process through carrying out work processes.

It also facilitates participation in dispersed communities of practice and collaboration between different enterprises in providing training (although arguably such opportunities already exist without ubiquitous computing).

Social software and Web 2

Social software is simply software that lets people rendezvous, connect or collaborate by use of a computer network. It supports networks of people, content and services that are more adaptable and responsive to changing needs and goals. Social Software adapts to its environment, instead of requiring its environment to adapt to software. In this way social software is seen as overcoming “the absurd distinction between e-learning and knowledge management software” (Hiebert, 2005).

Social software underpins what is loosely referred to as Web 2. Whereas Web 1 was largely implemented as a push technology - to allow access to information on a dispersed basis, Web 2 is a tow way process, allowing the internet to be used for creating and sharing information and knowledge, rather than merely accessing external artefacts.

Social software is increasingly being used in education and training through such applications as web logs (or blogs), wikis (as epitomised by the wikipedia), tools and applications for creating and sharing multi media and tools for sharing all kinds of different personal knowledge bases including bookmarks and book collections.

In software terms, rather than monolithic vendor driven and designed applications, Web 2 and social software is based on the idea of ‘small pieces, loosely connected’ utilising commonly recognised standards and web services for linking ideas, knowledge and artefacts.

Social software offers the opportunity for narrowing the divide between producers and consumers. Consumers become themselves producers, through creating and sharing. One implication is the potential for a new ecology of ‘open content, books, learning materials and multi media, through learners themselves becoming producers of learning materials.

Social software has already led to widespread adoption of portfolios for learners bringing together learning from different contexts an sources of learning and providing an on-going record of lifelong learning, capable of expression in different forms.

There is also ongoing research and development into personal learning environments allowing learners and configure and shape their own learning tools and to access learning from different sources (of which academic institutions may be only one)

Whilst early pedagogic experiments in the use of social software have tended to be in academic education the potential may be far more profound in vocational education and training. Vocational education has always had a tradition of ‘making’ or ‘constructing’ through the use of tools in applied work practice contexts. However, such a tradition has largely been separated from academic (or theoretical) learning. Social software offers the opportunity for developing a didactic where the process of learning is based on the process of making and creating - overcoming the divide between theory and practice and in the course of so doing transforming our understandings of knowledge and overcoming the Renaissance divide between hand and brain.

At the same time the tools used for learning and the products of that learning become authentic in their relation to the subject and object of the learning. through shaping their own learning environments, learners can themselves shape technology and technology driven working situations.

Shaping technology and shaping learning environments

The scenario outlined in his paper postulates a transformative process - where work, technology and learning each play their part in the development of a new didactic approach.

To a certain extent the new pedagogic approach is emerging anyway, as seen in the examples from young people and significantly from the case studies of learning in SMEs.

However this is largely confined to informal learning. There is a certain danger that in some countries formal education and training will become seen as largely irrelevant as opposed to informal learning acquired in practice and recorded in a personal portfolio.

To utilise the opportunities for new forms of didactics will require profound reform in education and training systems and practice and new responsibilities and roles for teachers and trainers.

Two requirements stand out. The first is the need for wider and more flexible occupational profiles capable of being shaped both by the learners and by the requirements of changing technologies and work processes. It is striking that through informal learning in SMEs learners were able to develop new and emergent occupational practice, building on previous learning and shaping the use of new technologies in the work process.

The second involves the structure and form of the curriculum. Present formal e-learning is largely context free, is usually subject based, and is sequenced by teachers and trainers. Above all e-learning is driven by the demands of the education process, rather than by the demands of the work process. A new didactical approach requires curricula based on a holistic understanding of work processes, allowing learners to create and make as they learn and to engage in a community of practice through their activities and understanding of those activities. In this way the subject of learning and the process of learning can be brought together developing new and dynamic forms of ‘applied knowledge’ or ‘work process knowledge’ as both the subject and object of learning.