A relational, indirect, meso-level approach to CSCL design in the next decade

This paper reviews some foundational issues that we believe will affect the progress of CSCL over the next ten years. In particular, we examine the terms technology, affordance, and infrastructure and we propose a relational approach to their use in CSCL. Following a consideration of networks, space, and trust as conditions of productive learning, we propose an indirect approach to design in CSCL. The work supporting this theoretical paper is based on the outcomes of two European networks: E-QUEL, a network investigating e-quality in e-learning; and Kaleidoscope, a European Union Framework 6 Network of Excellence. In arguing for a relational understanding of affordance, infrastructure, and technology we also argue for a focus on what we describe as meso-level activity. Overall this paper does not aim to be comprehensive or summative in its review of the state of the art in CSCL, but rather to provide a view of the issues currently facing CSCL from a European perspective

A context for collaboration: The institutional selection of an infrastructure for learning

This paper discusses the role of institutional issues in the deployment of infrastructures for learning and the ways in which they can impact on the range of choices and opportunities for collaboration in university education. The paper is based on interviews with 12 key informants selected from relevant staff categories during the deployment of a new institutional infrastructure in a large UK based distance learning university. It is supplemented by participant observation by the author who was part of a group of advisors tasked with working with the project team developing and deploying the new infrastructure. The paper investigates the development and deployment of the infrastructure as a meso level phenomena and relates this feature to the discussion of emergence and supervenience as features of social interactions in education

Networked learning environments

This chapter introduces the idea of networked learning environments and argues that these environments provide the totality of surrounding conditions for learning in digital networks. It provides illustrative vignettes of the ways that students appropriate networked environments for learning. The chapter then examines the notion of networked learning environments in relation to the idea of infrastructure and infrastructures for learning and sets out some issues arising from this perspective. The chapter suggests that students and teachers selectively constitute their own contexts and that design can only have an indirect effect on learning. The chapter goes on to argue that design needs to be located at the meso level of the institution and that a solution to the problem of indirect design lies in refocusing design at the meso level and on the design of infrastructures for learning

ijCSCL – A journal for research in CSCL

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 1 (1): pp. 3-

Sharing practice, problems and solutions for institutional change

This chapter critiques the roles of different forms of representation of practice as part of an institutional change process. It discusses how these representations can be used both to design and to share learning activities at the various levels of decision-making in a university. We illustrate our arguments with empirical data gathered on change processes associated with an institution-wide change programme: the introduction of a new virtual learning environment (VLE). In particular, we describe a case study of the introduction of the VLE tools in a business course. We focus on two particular forms of representations to describe the essence of the innovation: a pedagogical pattern and a visual learning design. We argue that pedagogical patterns and learning design have emerged as parallel approaches to describing practice in recent years. Despite their very different origins, both provide complementary representations, which emphasize different aspects of the practice being described. We are attempting to combine these approaches. We briefly outline the Open University Learning Design initiative, of which this work is part, and describe its key underpinning philosophies. We believe our approach provides a vehicle for enabling a better articulation of design principles and the discussion of issues concerning the re-use of educational resources and activities

Collaboration in the age of personalised mass(ive) education

In the paper we explore a number of issues we believe challenge some current notions of collaboration. We explore tensions arising from the increased interest in personalised open learning, and how this challenges, but also offers new ways of conceptualising collaboration towards group-organisations that are more nomadic entanglements of shifting participation

Bridging research and practice: Implementing and sustaining knowledge building in Hong Kong classrooms

Despite major theoretical progress in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), relatively less attention has been paid to the problem of how research advances may impact schools and classrooms. Given the global changes and educational policies for twenty-first century education, issues of how research in CSCL can be integrated with classroom practice for innovation pose important challenges. This paper draws on experiences in Hong Kong and examines research-based CSCL classroom innovations in the context of scaling up and sustaining a knowledge-building model in Hong Kong classrooms. It begins with an examination of the rationale for CSCL research in classrooms and then considers a range of problems and constraints for school implementation. Classroom innovations involve complex and emergent changes occurring at different levels of the educational system. The experience of CSCL knowledge-building classroom innovations in Hong Kong schools is reported, including: the macro-context of educational policies and educational reform, the meso-context of a knowledge-building teacher network, and the micro-context of knowledge-building design in classrooms. Three interacting themes-context and systemic change, capacity and community building, and innovation as inquiry-are proposed for examining collaboration and knowledge creation for classroom innovation. © 2011 The Author(s).published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 21 Feb 201

Academic librarians’ Twitter practices and the production of knowledge infrastructures in higher education

This short paper describes the use of infrastructural theory to interrogate data gathered for an ongoing study on the Twitter practices of academic librarians at one research-intensive university in the United Kingdom. In tandem with wider changes in networked technologies and ways of producing scholarship, academic librarians’ roles have shifted increasingly to knowledge production, particularly in the area of research support. A related shift has been academic librarians’ adoption of social media, particularly Twitter, to disseminate information and encourage community and collaboration. The few existing studies of librarians’ Twitter practices, however, frame such activity as service promotion, overlooking the relationship between technology and professional practice entwined and concomitant social effects in the university. The theoretical framework devised for this study was woven from research in anthropology and Science and Technology Studies about the nature of infrastructure. Instead of viewing infrastructure as separate and monolithic substrates supporting the circulation of goods and information, such theory posits infrastructure as relational and contingent, constituted of political decisions and having broad and co[1]constitutive social effects on knowledge, subjectivities and agencies (Jensen & Morita, 2017). The study’s theoretical framework particularly draws on the notion of knowledge infrastructures defined as “networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share, and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natural worlds” (Edwards, 2010). The framework therefore emphasises the invisible labour of infrastructure — often dubbed infrastructuring — and related socio-political practices of design and maintenance that embody promises for the future (Larkin, 2018). In this picture, infrastructure is fragile and contingent, shaped by its installed base, and remarkably complicated, unfixed and open to contestation. Based on preliminary findings, the study argues that academic librarians' Twitter practices constitute knowledge infrastructures in higher education. Using an infrastructural framework helped foreground the material conditions of librarians’ knowledge production in terms of entanglements of technology and professional values, shifts in professional subjectivities and performative effects within the university. A tentative implication for studies of technology and learning is that, by insisting that infrastructure and social activity are intertwined, learners and teachers are not framed in opposition to infrastructure and are thus better able to contest totalising narratives surrounding infrastructural learning technologies such as VLEs or MOOCs. In this picture, therefore, infrastructure is not simplistically background bulwark or sinister force. Appreciating the invisible labour involved in creating and sustaining infrastructure is therefore important for understanding contemporary learning contexts