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Description of the group: "Learning with ICT is a field of research that operates in the intersection between the computer sciences and the humanities. In the next decade or so we perceive a continually stronger saturation of communication and information technologies into the social and cultural practices connected to learning. Broadband connected portable devices will afford the learner with a ubiquitous learning environment. Important to the user perspective is the development of enhanced user interfaces, such as agents and avatars, and VR environments. Learning metaphors will revolve around of interaction, participation, peer-to-peer, and exploratory methods of learning. Whereas previous research has generally looked upon isolated components, future approaches will address compound and complex research objects, among which the net based resources provide a nexus. The future challenges are connected both to how to understand and how to utilize different levels of computer mediated artefacts. Future research will follow some related and interdependent lines:"
Position paper Slide Show Position paper InfoSam2020 – Learning with ICT.
Introduction
This note is a contribution to the InfoSam project, and connects the proposal to considerations expressed in the mandate of LIKT, i.e. to specifically address research issues that relates to how information and communication technologies may be understood and utilized as integral and enhancing constituents of learning environments.
The project InfoSam reflects the fact that information technologies become increasingly interwoven into the social and cultural practices related to work, communication, entertainment and education. The coming generations of students, born from around 1990 and onwards, will from their early childhood have had access to game consoles, the internet, GSM and different digital devices, and have appropriated these into their lifeworld.
Consequently, the educational system will be influenced by the affordances of technology, both from within the educational institution itself, but also from the ways in which the information technologies are appropriated by learners in their activities outside the institution.
To the main axes of InfoSam, Enabling Technologies and Artefacts in the Human Environment, the research questions of LIKT borders onto several of the items on the agenda.
Through the sciences that are consulted to enhance our understanding of what learning and teaching is, a more complex understanding of learning and teaching emerges. Increasingly, learning is seen as a complex interplay between individual and social processes, relations and activities. More specifically related to a technological environment, this includes play and game metaphors, networks, simulations and immersion in virtual environments connected to open-ended exploratory learning assignments.
Also, the interplay with the environment, be that natural or technological, is also seen as more important. Salient theoretical points of entry are connected to the areas of learning theory commonly labelled activity theory and ecological perspectives on learning, and the tradition of Didaktik. Metaphors for learning and knowledge development revolve around concepts of interaction, participation and communities of practice in physical and virtual networks. Ecology is such a metaphor, applied to describe the relationship between man and his surroundings.
To this is added an understanding that the information technologies constitute a part of the very fabric of how we communicate, how we are educated and entertained. These technologies are increasingly portable and connected to WiFi-broadband internet connections. Furthermore, technologies converge, such as the convergence of computer and communications technologies and consumer electronics. Consequently, functionalities migrate towards unified or hybrid devices. More so than previously these appliances and their functions are embedded in and intertwined into cultural practices. As accounted for elsewhere in the InfoSam context, information and communication technologies are in the process of becoming ubiquitous or ambient.
In sum, the description above points in the direction of applying the term knowledge ecology as an analytical point of entry. How will future learners develop skills, competences and knowledge in the framework of a knowledge ecology?
To the educational system, the challenge is to understand and utilize these into an overall project of reading the world. As integral parts of learning environments, these technologies afford ideas connected to change, interaction, negotiation, participation and influence. In short, this represents a strong departure from the traditional classroom.
Previous learning methodologies have often been based on all-embracing ideas that the learner should adapt to. Technology enhanced methods will afford more individualized learning methods, enabling more learner-centred approaches that approach methods as choices to be made after assessing the context.
From the position of LIKT, a 10 – 15 year forward-looking research perspective will include the components and themes described in the below. The basic concern of an educational system is to address the questions of the how, the what, and the why. These questions are at the heart of Didaktik. The development will be characterized by two trends; one is the shift from improvement to transformation.
The first generation of ICT-enhanced learning tools and their accompanying methods have so far mainly represented an improvement aspect. In general existing methods have been incorporated into a new technological framework. The challenge of the next generation will be to transform the what, the how and the why in an integrated conception that reflects an interplay and coexistence with the affordances of technology.
The other trend is from representation to participation. Whereas up to the present, ICT in learning has been focused mainly on the affordance of representation, future approaches will focus more upon participation, where learning materials, learning processes and activities are seen in a context of the what, the how and the why.
Both trends incorporate an increased emphasis upon the procedural aspects of the learning activities.
Research themes
Below a few research themes are suggested. The net-based learning environments have applications and tools that give both the opportunity to roam or to wander, but also to gather and congregate. The themes have in common that they address these dual forces of the IC-technologies. The net lends itself to learning styles that are distributed in time and space, and in that respect become highly individual, but contains also means to connect the participants and foster collaborative work forms.
Theme 1
Perspectives upon technology
A major concern to the educational society is to develop a perspective upon technology that is integrated into the overall framework of education. This is a perspective that goes beyond the instrumentalistic notion of technology as merely a tool. Hitherto, the educational traditions have been somewhat reluctant to incorporate the presence of technology into educational design. This includes a long chain of interrelated themes, including the organization of learning, the re-conceptualization of a Didaktik that incorporates the net based learning environments, and the evaluation and certification mechanisms. The introduction of learning management systems (aka LMS) is but a first step.
From the perspective of learning with technologies, more research will have to be conducted in the area where the interplay between learners and technology is the focus. One point of entry will be to study the complex and many-faceted interplay as to how affordances of technologies are appropriated into activities, processes and relations that enhance or even transform learning.
Theme 2
The learning resources: Hyperlinked, multi-medial and immersive virtual environments
In the very close future a substantial portion of the learning resources, if not all, will be available on the web. To the producers of learning material, including the educational institutions, this will enable a high degree of flexibility, of both keeping curriculum texts up to date, and to produce material on demand.
However, more important to the learner and teacher is the affordance of producing highly individualized learning materials. This aspect of web-based learning has several implications, some of which are already in their emergence, especially through ideas connected to portfolio assessment.
One also needs to perceive these changes in an ontological perspective; the ‘objects’ of the world are changed, “the world to be known”, in the way they are composed or assembled, and accessed through digitization. Among the effects of the net based learning resources in this particular respect is the blurring between the “authorized” and “unauthorized” material, thus adding a strong component of evaluation and assessment before the material is included.
These characteristics of the learning environment also represent a tension between in the need for exploratory and linear learning processes. Learning activities in these learning environments create a need for addressing in a didactic way continuity, coherence and closure. All these are aspects of a learning process that in ICT environments needs to be addressed more specifically.
One characteristic of learning as it is described within the prevailing present paradigm, the socio cultural, learning occurs in an intricate interplay between internalization and externalization. Or in other words, an interplay between cognitive and individual processes on the one hand, and social or collective processes on the other. The internet has tools and applications that accommodate both aspects, but the exact relationship and the inner dynamics of these processes have not been given a thorough research attention.
A fundamental aspect of the internet resources to follow with regards to development is the very nature of the web itself. Metaphorically, the web has been described as a library, but one where all the books are thrown on the floor. Worldwide, research initiatives are taking place with regards to the very infrastructure of the web, concerned with redefining the inner fabrics of the web itself through initiatives such as the Semantic Web. Given that these initiatives will produce a “new generation” web, consequences will be substantial, and the development needs to be carefully monitored from an educational perspective.
The overall challenge will be to develop literacies that enable learners to thrive and develop in web-rich learning environments.
Theme 3: Enhanced interfaces and ‘intelligent’ tools
This theme reflects most explicitly the relationship between man and technology, one that might best be characterized by “a two way exodus”. Future interfaces will include a wide variety of tools, agents and avatars, and immersive simulated environments. A main characteristic will be the ability to adapt to both the technological environment, and to the human. These applications or tools will thus be in a middle or third position between man and technology, and a common denominator will be the increased ability to enter into dialogues with these tools. As mediating artefacts, these may bee seen as interlocutors, offering an interlanguage between the learner and technology.
Basically, one may distinguish between three different types of artefacts, although they tend to appear in clusters. Learning behaviour involves the movement between all three levels of artefacts.
Primary artefacts are the tools themselves, the “axes and clubs” and applications such as word processors. Secondary artefacts are the resulting practises that occur out of the interchange between the tool and the established practice, i.e. ”e-mail- language”. Tertiary artefacts are established when the tools and practices change the social and cultural realities, and reach into the very perspective of the how we perceive the actual world. In this respect tertiary artefacts may initiate change in current practice, usually representing a deep saturation of techno cultural practices.
These three types also represent a continuum, where the third stage represents a deeper saturation of the way the tools and the associated practices are appropriated into our daily lives. This type of artefacts will occur when a critical mass of people have lived in technological settings over a long time, and technology “disappears” into the fabric of everyday life. We are beginning to see the effects upon a generation of learners who are born into this setting, thus representing a challenge to the educational system.
Theme 4: Educational challenges
The following topics are seen as some of the consequences of the description suggested in the above.
A: From classrooms to virtual campuses
The future learning context is on the one hand characterized by a migration out of the traditional classroom context, one in which co-localization of learners, teachers and learning materials are less typical. On the other future learners will not be restricted to one physical campus, but will rather migrate between courses held at campuses in different countries, and even on different continents. Learner behaviour or learner styles will thus need to be addressed. On an on-campus level, the need for research and development into infrastructure development is required.
B: Environments for collaboration
The last few years have seen a growing interest and institutional efforts to incorporate learning management systems (LMS) as a component of the educational offer. The most used at present are It’s learning and ClassFronter, both sharing a fairly similar set of functionalities. However, the present generation of LMS tend to focus upon elements of control and information representation, say, in the form of lecture material dissemination, channelling student papers to teachers and tutors, to name some examples. Future realizations of LMS will need to address more thoroughly the participation and production aspect of the learning processes, in which learners are connected in collaborative efforts, emphasizing how the individual may be “enhanced” through being connected to other people and external resources through dialogue. Added functionality will include audio, streaming video in a more technological mature realization than what we have seen up to now.
An interesting line of development is the relationship between an LMS and a various handheld portable devices. Handheld multifunction (i.e. GSM, MP3, PAD and storage in any combination) devices hold many promises seen in combination and as supplements to an LMS, thus extending the communicative and collaborative opportunities of the learner. The common denominators to the attraction of users are size and mobility. This very mobility will mean that activities connected to learning may on the one hand be more incorporated into other activities, and on the other be more cut-up and even evasive. As of yet the didactic implications of these emerging learning styles here are not fully studied and accounted for.
The incorporation of an LMS in the learning environment addresses both the two main trends pointed out in the introduction; the transition from improvement to transformation, and the transition from representation to participation.
In sum, the interchange between the learner and the computer mediated learning environments afford the learner with a gamut of possible approaches to learning, spanning from the highly individualized and solitary work profile, to partaking in communities of practices that jointly develop and exercise their domain of knowledge. C: Multiliteracies
The themes in the above lead to the challenge of defining and fostering multi-literacies- the skills, competences and attitudes attributed to reading the world in a digital context. Multiliteracies build on traditional literacy (reading, writing etc), but are augmented by coping with several semiotic systems that are blended into a unified but ever changing representation on f.ex. the web, in dialogic exchange with digital agents, or immersed in virtual environments. The notion of literacy as an analytical point of entry will define and clarify the skills needed for the learner, and will give way to describe new ways in which to utilize the ICT resources. Among skills in an augmented literacy are those connected to browsing for information, such as different reading strategies, navigation skills, verification and selection strategies, reading and incorporating text, sound, stills and video in a unified understanding of a given topic. Dealing with dynamic, ever changing information systems will be one of these. These skills are both of an operative and practical nature.
At the heart of a re-conceptualized understanding of the emerging multi-literacies is the dual notion of communities of practice and genre, which seen together extends the traditional notion of dialogue.
In sum, the process of being skilled in multi-literacies, is to address questions of continuity, coherence and closure in the learning processes conducted in technology-rich learning environments.
D: Assessments, the curriculum and certification
Our traditional understanding of assessment, curriculum and certification are under pressure. Since the idea of a stable or fixed curriculum is more or less a thing of the past, the web-based resources will afford flexible curriculum and curriculum development at a higher speed than previously. Assessment and grading systems, as well as vocational certification will be influenced. The relationship between the actual ICT-rich practices on the one hand and the questions of assessment on the other will need to be addressed from a research point of view.
E: Epistemological considerations and challenges
One consequence of the themes briefly outlined in the above, is a need to re-conceptualize themes connected to epistemology, and establish the digital epistemologies as a field of research.
At all times, there has been a relationship between what we consider to be knowledge, and the means and methods by which this knowledge has been gathered, assessed and passed on through an educational system. In addition, the educational system has had an elaborate grid of control and gatekeeper functions, and certification mechanisms. The educational system has also been built upon the premise that information has on the one hand been limited in terms of access (distribution through teachers and paper). These premises are now challenged. The impact of digitizing relates both to the learning objects themselves (hyper structured and multimodal), their availability, the problems connected to authorisation; in short, the very process of ‘coming to know’. From the perspective of Didaktik, this means a re-conceptualization of the core questions in learning and teaching: the what, the how and the why.
The term the information society is by many critics now replaced by terms such as the integration society, the hyper complex society and the Network Society. From a learning perspective it becomes paramount to develop the ability to read the world, through dealing with a dynamic and ever-changing learning environment. This means a change of focus from a standard towards a procedural epistemology:
The distinctions between a standard and procedural epistemology may be sketched as follows (Lund 2004):
How this is carried out in communities or practice, how to identify and how to assess in the educational framework becomes a major research challenge. In short, the very constitution of ‘knowers’ in a techno-cultural framework.
Concluding remarks
The field of learning with ICT is a field that needs to consult a large variety of research areas, both from the humanities and from the natural sciences. The main focus described above is a focus upon the interaction between man and technology. We think that it will be a main characteristic of future generations of learners that they have from early childhood on their main points of references technologies used to interact and communicate, and are accustomed to shaping technology into constituents of their own lifeworld. Their ability to develop, participate with, and share mediating artefacts thus goes far beyond the primary level, of only using the “clubs and axes”.
Furthermore, the field of research has a strong relationship to the field of practice, and research here need to be conducted in a close relationship with the users themselves, both the learners and the teachers. Research from the point of view of Didaktik has a strong emphasis of innovation and change of educational practice.
Proposed priorities
On the “tool/technological” side:
On the “cultural” side:
Coda
What won’t happen:
Schools won’t disappear Teachers won’t disappear. Students will still be around….. Learning won’t happen without hard work.
References
Visions 2020 – Transforming Education and Training through Advanced Technology. http://www.technology.gov/reports/TechPolicy/2020Visions.pdf
Colin Lankshear: The Challenge of Digital Epistemologies. http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/challenge.html
Feenberg, Andrew: Perspectives upon Technology. http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/
Lund, Andreas (2004):
Løvlie, Lars: Danning i støpeskjeen. http://www.apollon.uio.no/apollon02-99/3.html
Murray, Janet: Hamlet on the Holdodeck. http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~murray/hoh/tablecontents.html
Norris, Mason, Robson, Lefrere and Collier A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0350.pdf (EDUCASE Review Sept/Oct 2003)
The Semantic Web: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
The Norwegian Program for Digital Competence (Program for digital kompetanse): http://odin.dep.no/ufd/norsk/satsingsomraade/ikt/045011-990066/index-dok000-b-n-a.html
Tapscott, Don: Growing Up Digital http://www.growingupdigital.com/
Members of the working group: Researcher Leif M. Hokstad, NTNU LIKT, Program for Learning with ICT. |