From boot camp to holiday camp? Some issues around openness, Web 2.0 and learning

Andrew RavenscroftLearning Technology Research Institute (LTRI)

London Metropolitan University

Patrick McAndrewThe Institute of Educational Technology (IET)

The Open University

OpenLearn is a ‘work-bench’, an experiment, that can help us to understand revolutionary changes in digital literacy

(Open source, Web 2.0 etc.)

Who are the users and why?

…we can’t really know though we can anticipate different profiles

informal, formal…or is this distinction no longer important?

Impact of radical publishing?

…media no longer contains fixed social relations (author/broadcaster, reader/consumer) it creates them and they are different and fluid (the ‘Web 2.0 world’)

…democratic and collaborative media creation, sharing and consumption

Is all content and media provisional?

What counts as closure?

Who designs the interaction? (designer or user)

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

“here comes everyone” (Imagine, BBC)

Are we designing content and interactions or ‘experiences’?

With such bewildering opportunities for interaction and experience how do learners decide what they do?

From interest to learning?!

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

…re-conceptualise 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

Practices involve identities and social relations etc., ‘humanness”

Open learning practices – Ambient pedagogies and learning designs

- Digital Dialogue Games

- Learn2getha – a ‘pedagogical web 2.0’

Aesthetics of interaction – as increasingly people will do what they like doing rather than what they are told to do

Formal education- Sticks and carrots

Assignment deadlines Examinations Tutors who call

• Qualifications• Progression• Peer approval

Open education- What sticks and carrots?

Assignment deadlines Examinations Tutors who call

• Qualifications• Progression• Peer approval

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Reasons for study (data from initial study of OpenLearn registered users March 2007)

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Professionaldevelopment

Interest Hobby Job progress Job change Study

Courses users want

What users like

“Ability to try OU course units before registering for the course.”

“To upgrade skills … and to meet the requirements for the jobs”

http://tagcrowds.com (Thanks to Gill Clough for pointer!)

“I like the idea of learning for pleasure as opposed to learning to achieve targets.”

“Free learning that you can dip into at your leisure.”

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Content Taster Free Easy/Fun

OpenLearn “Boot Camp”

Results 1 - 10 of about 11,800 from openlearn.open.ac.uk for work

OpenLearn “Holiday camp”

“I live in New Zealand and wonder if there are many kiwis registered. If so it would be nice to know. :-)”

“I would like to meet any student that are on similar courses as me. :-)”

It is just for fun. Your answers are not assessed, so don't worry about getting things wrong.

Results 1 - 10 of about 214 from openlearn.open.ac.uk for fun.

A few curves to think about…

Towards learning clubs

How can we support learning for fun?– Chance to do something

straight away– Keep track of plans and

activities– Personal information and

shared information– What other people do and it

works– Reward what you do

– Tools and community to help this happen

OpenLearn tools

FlashMeeting: weekly get togethersCompendium: shared pathsMSG: Who is online now - and shares your

interestSocial tools and new tools

Ambient learning designs

Exemplars:

- Digital Dialogue Games (the Interloc tool)- Highly structured

dialogue practice

- Learn2getha consortium- Configurable

pedagogical interface to open technologies

User selected content (Web 2.0)Feedback on performance

Replay on mobile phones

Extreme Sports example

Key interface:

Is it all about degree of scaffolding?

‘hard’ scaffolding (e.g. Dialogue Games) or ‘soft’ scaffolding (typical open technologies) to suits users purposes

Isn’t openness a configurable dimension? (not part of a dichotomy)

More info…

a.ravenscroft@londonmet.ac.uk homepages.unl.ac.uk/~ravensca/

Research theme: Learning interaction and dialogue

design www.unl.ac.uk/ltri/research/interaction.htm

Digital Dialogue Games www.interloc.org

p.mcandrew@open.ac.uk iet.open.ac.uk/pp/p.mcandrew/

Research theme: Computers and learning creet.open.ac.uk/groups/calrg/

OpenLearn www.open.ac.uk/openlearn

Overall comments

What users dislike