Education 2.0? Designing ambient pedagogies and meaningful

experiences for future learning

Andrew Ravenscroft

Talk at JISC-CETIS Conference 2007“Beyond Standards, Holistic Approaches”

Deputy Director & Principal Research FellowLearning Technology Research Institute (LTRI)

Learning interaction and dialogue design London Metropolitan University

Overview of talk

A motivational problem? from interest to learningRationale and methodology for learning designAmbient pedagogy and ‘experience design’Exemplar projects and tools (DDGs & Learn2getha)

…questions and issues

From interest to learning?!

A design approach that implicitly addresses the key, and ostensibly motivational, challenge:

How to convert huge-scale social and media-rich interaction for interest to large-scale media-rich interaction for learning?!!

…re-conceptualise e-learning to emphasise digital practices rather than media form and representation

…the most important thing about content and tools is what you can do with them that is relevant to you

…resonates with old ideas

‘I hear and I forget.

I see and I remember.

I do and I understand.

(Confucius, 551 – 479 BC)

…give learning practices, or ‘active doing’, back to the learners through exploiting their developing digital literacies

Increasingly we are not ‘on’ the web, or ‘in’ the web, we are part of the web

“here comes everyone” (Imagine, BBC)

…through web-technologies

A design rationale and methodology

Towards future learning practicesAmbient learning designs (or pedagogies)Designing for the learner experience (cf. just content

and tools)

Stance that reconciles personal and institutional needs in the context of developing digital literacies

(evolution or paradigm shift?)

Future learning practices

Embrace developing digital literacies (OS, Web 2.0 etc.)– media-rich, multimodal, participation-centric, provisionality of

representations etc. Design for opportunities offered by new technologies cf.

optimising old/existing methods (e.g. VLEs)– text and book, author-reader/broadcaster-consumer, fixed

representations etc.

+ Get ‘back to basics’ about learning and re-claim…thinking, meaning making, understanding, dialogue, communities

of inquiry etc. …cf deliver learning = management of instructional content

Ambient pedagogies and ‘experience design’

1. Build on and integrate with developing media-rich digital technologies and practices, learning ‘feels like’ a natural digital practice

2. Highly social, communicative, relevant and engaging experience

3. Semi-formal activities reconciling institutional and personal activities and requirements

4. Flexible, open and yet configurable experiences – ‘bounded

openness’

5. Realised through ambient learning designs in open learning environments

attractive learning opportunities cf. enforced instructional practices

Exemplar projects, tools and approaches

- Digital Dialogue Games (the InterLoc tool)- Highly structured and

engaging learning practice

- Learn2getha consortium- Configurable

pedagogical interface to open technologies

Digital Dialogue Games (DDGs) and InterLoc

i. Collaborative exercises in ‘digital discourse’ ii. Development of reasoning and discussion skillsiii. Linking dialogue and thinking to writing iv. Range of adaptable dialogue games

• Argumentation (CDR)• Exploratory dialogue• Creative thinking

v. Attractive, inclusive and engaging• e.g. low barriers to participation (like web 2.0

stuff)

InterLoc: A structured learning practice

Synchronous Interaction as a social game– Structured rule-based interaction (scaffolding)– multimedia dialogues (4-6 players)– Roles: player, facilitator, learning manager– Pre-defined dialogue features that promote thinking

• Moves: Inform, Question, Challenge, etc.• Sets of Openers to perform each move: “I think…”, “I

disagree because…”, “My evidence is…” etc.– Feedback on personal dialogue style

Content generated as an Active Document Coordination with Web 2.0 and mobile devices

Technical approach

1. Client-server architecture, based on Jabber messaging protocol (sophisticated OS messaging protocol)

2. JAVA application programming (sophisticated learning and interaction design)

3. Html interface (attractive user-experience)4. Client deployed through Web-start technology

…flexible and sophisticated tool that is easily deployed and feels like a ‘web-experience’

InterLoc: future thinking and meaning making?

InterLoc: turn taking and ‘listening’

User selected content (Web 2.0)Feedback on performance

Replay on mobile phones

Extreme Sports example

Pilots: Some comments

Did the dialogue game, using the sentence openers, change how you expressed, clarified or refined

your ideas on this topic? Please comment as appropriate (LonMet)

S1. Yes it did, with the openers, I then had to t think before composing the rest of the sentence

As a student, would it be useful to participate regularly in dialogues like this one? (Southampton)

S2. Yes, because everyone can put their views across without loads of pupils shouting!

S3. Good point.Often quiet people do have very good points to make, but are too scared to

make them.

Did you enjoy discussing the topic in this way, and do you have any further comments? (LonMet)

S4. yes. %100

LondonMet pilots:

Most learners enjoyed it & several said they wanted it for other courses. Most preferred the dialogue

games to f2f discussion!

Learn2getha consortium

More powerful and wide-ranging realisation of Ambient Pedagogies and ‘experience design’

Develop a configurable pedagogical interface to Web 2.0 technologies (LondonMet, ELP2 – Bradford, MeAggregator – Reading, OpenLearn – OU)

Model examples of good learning practice with Web 2.0 technologies and address known problems

Provide a ‘one stop shop’ for Web 2.0 technologies that Institutional technologies can link with

An interface and middleware for overlaying ambient learning designs and structured experiences on existing open technologies

The vision

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare” (Japanese proverb)

Truly pervasive (‘anywhere’), inclusive (‘anyone’) and transformative (‘valuable’) learning interaction and practice for the digital age

more democratic learning and collective inquiry

Questions and issues

Are we mixing apples and oranges?Social networking and Web 2.0 technologies will only support superficial

communication and media sharing and should not be confused with more formal learning and more sophisticated meaning making?

Should we be looking to import practices and technologies from outside the Academy, or will there always be parallel worlds?

Will practices with knowledge technologies supplant conventional educational institutions and practices?

Special Issue of JCAL: “Web 2.0 and learning: a revolutionary paradigm or a development of CSCL?" (mid 2008)

More information

Contact & papers etc.: a.ravenscroft@londonmet.ac.uk http://homepages.north.londonmet.ac.uk/~ravensca/

Research theme: Learning interaction and dialogue design http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ltri/research/interaction.htm

Digital Dialogue Games www.interloc.org