www.cs.kent.ac.uk

The Disciplinary Commons

Sally Fincher

Disciplinary Commons

9th June 2006

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The Commons

• We’ve been meeting for 10 months.• You’ve been focussed on creating your portfolios.• And I’ve been focussed on you creating your portfolios,

too. • Doesn’t seem fair, really. So here’s my Commons

portfolio.

ORTFOLIO JOURNEP Y

CONTEXT

• Elinor Ostrom Governing the Commons– “Common pool resources: a general term for

shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest.”

• Lawrence Lessig: the Creative Commons• Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin West

Antecedents ofthe Disciplinary Commons

Private Goods: bread, shoes, cars, haricuts, books …

Toll Goods: theatres, libraries, telephone service, toll roads…

Public Goods: peace & security, air pollution control, pavements, weather forecasts …

Common Pool Resources: water from the ground, fish from the sea, crude oil …

Exc

lusi

on

Feasible

Infeasible

Subtractive Joint useConsumption

Education is a Public Good. But like the research publications (on which other sorts of knowledge are built) might teaching information be a Common Pool Resource? Because “ ‘more people pooling resources in new ways’ is the history of civilization”

Antecedents ofthe Disciplinary Commons

Antecedents ofthe Disciplinary Commons

• Lawrence Lessig: came to the realisation that old copyright laws were useless in digital age.

• So he formed a non-profit organization that offers an alternative to full copyright: the Creative Commons.

• This built on the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" modern copyright.

• Offering work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up copyright.

• And provides a nice mechanism for establishing authorship and attribution for teaching materials.

Antecedents ofthe Disciplinary Commons

He found schematic carvings on the rocks made by previous inhabitants of the land. In particular, a representation of two joined hands - palm to palm - fingers curled together.

•Built a new home in Arizona: Taliesin West

CONTEXT Artefact

CONTEXTDevised together … delivered in parallel

OOThe Tacoma Commons

OO Josh Tenenberg

Elinor Ostrom

Lawrence Lessig

Frank Lloyd-Wright

OContex

t

• The most obvious thing about the Commons is that the “teacher” is not the expert.

• It’s not about “teaching”, it’s not about transmitting material.

• The participants are the knowledgeable experts, skilled in their own practice. (It may be that this is a necessary characteristic of all intellectual Commons).

• So, the only option, the only possibility that this will work, is via facilitation.

Condition of the CommonsINSTRUCTIONALDESIGN

• Are there models for this sort of work?• Donald Schön Educating the Reflective Practitioner:

“reflection-in-action” is the definition of professional practice, so the way to improve practice is “reflection on reflection-in-action”

• What is important to my practice? What is expendable? What impedes it or progresses it?

• These are not simple questions: they are highly sensitive to context - but practitioners are highly sensitised to their own context.

• Can the Commons sensitise practitioners not to what they know (their own context) but to evidence of what they know (that which convinces others)?

Reflective PractitionersINSTRUCTIONALDESIGN

• Meeting Plans

ArtefactINSTRUCTIONALDESIGN

OInstructionalDesign

DonaldSchön

Practitionerexpertise

CONTENT

• The Commons, as a model, is about two things.

Participation• We meet every month over the course of an

academic year (the lifetime of the courses we are focussing on).

• We reflect, we share. We observe, we review.• We have the deep and meaty discussions about

the minutiae of our practice.• We gain an unusual depth of knowledge about

practice in other communities. (Knowledge normally only otherwise acquired through a process of “charismatic embedding”).

Participation & Reification

CONTENT

• The Commons, as a model, is about two things.

Reification• We expose details of our work, through

documentation, peer review, peer- and self- observation.

• We record our otherwise invisible practice—via course portfolios—so it exists without our continuing presence.

• By working together, using a common form, individual portfolios are enhanced by being part of the larger archive.

Participation & Reification

CONTENT

• Participation: exercises and readings that shed a new light.

• Reification: ordering the content to support portfolio production.

• 9 meetings:• 1 overview, introduction.• 1 personal context.• 1 each for each section (6: context, content,

instructional design, delivery, assessment, evaluation).• I portfolio presentation and evaluation.

Participation & Reification

CONTENT Artefact

OContent

Participation

Reification

Reflection: privateDELIVERY

• I had no “peer observation”.

• But I had reflection at private and protected levels

Private• Me and my logbook• Me and my self-talk• Not for public

consumption

Reflection: protected

• I talk with Josh (of the US Commons) more-or-less weekly.

• We debrief how each session has gone, and how it might be improved in any future instantiation.

DELIVERY

Reflection: protected

• After most sessions, I’ve had tea at the Bramah Tea Museum with a couple of Commons participants, and had their views of how the preceding session went.

• It’s hard being a single presenter: short-cycle feedback is invaluable.

DELIVERY

O

Delivery

De-brief

Reflective PractitionersASSESSMENT

• So, if you can’t “teach” a Commons, you can’t “assess” it either. Assess it in the sense of “making judgement on others’ work”.

• But there is a separate way of “assessing” - in the tradition of the design school, the fine arts “crit”, the reflective practicum of Donald Schön.

• In that tradition, you expose your work to a “coach” and your peers. You see your practice reflected in theirs – and theirs in yours – and inside this “hall of mirrors” you learn your way to your own expertise.

• “Assessment” in the Commons then becomes a sense of calibration. About an individual and collective reflection on a common endeavour.

Three phases

I planned “Assessment” - in this sense of engaging in peer and group reflections - in three phases:

• Structural: can we effectively identify artefact & commentary for each of the six elements? (Context, Content, Instructional Design, Delivery, Assessment, Evaluation)

• Absolute: can we say “this reaches this standard” given some reasonable definitions?

• Fit for purpose: do our portfolios demonstrate a relationship between our actions and the student learning that is the purpose of the course?

ASSESSMENT

Three artefacts

• Structural: home-grown instrument, specific to our Commons

• Absolute: derived from Glassick’s work and Hong Kong rae criteria, including:– Qualities of Surprise and Delight– Transparency of Argument and Evidence– Commitment to Rigor and Peer Review– Communication and Dissemination of Standards and

Examples

• Fit for purpose: using the “standard” peer-review instrument devised by Dan Bernstein and the Peer Review of Teaching Project

ASSESSMENT

Structure

HK RAE

Peer Review of Teaching

Project

O

Assessment

EVALUATION

• A continuation of the “delivery” debrief into the public level.

• Change is neither one-dimensional nor one-shot: nor should evaluation be.

Public

• Summative questionnaire in the last session - all participants.

• A more reflective e-mail survey in a week or so - all participants.

• In July, selective telephone interviews (selected to provide a representative cross section of opinions and reactions).

• All “public” level evaluation is the same in UK and US Commons. I’ll interview the Tacoma Commoners, Josh will interview the Londoners.

EVALUATION

OEvaluation

Under construction. Due for completion January 2007

Elinor Ostrom

Lawrence Lessig

Frank Lloyd-Wright

OOThe Tacoma Commons

OO Josh Tenenberg

OContex

t

OInstructionalDesign

DonaldSchön

Practitionerexpertise

OContent

Participation

Reification

O

Delivery

De-brief

Structure

HK RAE

Peer Review of Teaching

Project

O

Assessment

OEvaluation

Under construction. Due for completion January 2007

PORTFOLIO LINE

Thank you for your attention.

Have a safe onward journey.

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References

• Slide 5: Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom Public Goods and Public Choices in Alternatives for Delivering Public Services: Toward Improved Performance E.S.Savas (ed) ,1977 Not quoted here, but very influential on the thinking that informed the Commons is Elinor Ostrom’s book Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action C.U.P. (1990) Because of this the Disciplinary Commons metaphor is not one of physical territory (as in the “Common Treasury” of Gerald Winstanley) or conceptual territory in the “Teaching Commons” of Mary Huber and Pat Hutching). Rather it is a metaphor of how access to (and use of ) common resources are negotiated and boundaries maintained.

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References

• Slide 5: "Whenever a communication medium lowers the cost of solving collective action dilemmas, it becomes possible for more people to pool resources. And ‘more people pooling resources in new ways’ is the history of civilization in... – pause – ... seven words“ spoken by Marc Smith, p. 31, Smart Mobs, Harold Rheingold, 2002

• Slide 12 & 23: Donald Schön Educating the Reflective Practitioner : Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions Jossey Bass, 1990

• Slide 24: Donald Schon delineates three ways in which a “coach” may interact with “students”: follow me, joint experimentation and hall of mirrors. Because of the distribution of expertise throughout the Commons, I believe that my interaction was in “hall of mirrors” style.

• Slide 25: Charles E. Glassick, Mary Taylor Huber, Gene I. Maeroff, Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate Jossey Bass, 1997

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