Systemic intervention for computer-supported collaborative learning

This paper presents a systemic intervention approach as a means to overcome the methodological challenges involved in research into computer-supported collaborative learning applied to the promotion of mathematical problem-solving (CSCL-MPS) skills in schools. These challenges include how to develop an integrated analysis of several aspects of the learning process; and how to reflect on learning purposes, the context of application and participants' identities. The focus of systemic intervention is on processes for thinking through whose views and what issues and values should be considered pertinent in an analysis. Systemic intervention also advocates mixing methods from different traditions to address the purposes of multiple stakeholders. Consequently, a design for CSCL-MPS research is presented that includes several methods. This methodological design is used to analyse and reflect upon both a CSCL-MPS project with Colombian schools, and the identities of the participants in that project

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

Reinventing learning: a design-research odyssey

Design research is a broad, practice-based approach to investigating problems of education. This approach can catalyze the development of learning theory by fostering opportunities for transformational change in scholars’ interpretation of instructional interactions. Surveying a succession of design-research projects, I explain how challenges in understanding students’ behaviors promoted my own recapitulation of a historical evolution in educators’ conceptualizations of learning—Romantic, Progressivist, and Synthetic (Schön, Intuitive thinking? A metaphor underlying some ideas of educational reform (working paper 8). Division for Study and Research in Education, MIT, Cambridge, 1981)—and beyond to a proposed Systemic view. In reflection, I consider methodological adaptations to design-research practice that may enhance its contributions in accord with its objectives

NEXUS/Physics: An interdisciplinary repurposing of physics for biologists

In response to increasing calls for the reform of the undergraduate science curriculum for life science majors and pre-medical students (Bio2010, Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians, Vision & Change), an interdisciplinary team has created NEXUS/Physics: a repurposing of an introductory physics curriculum for the life sciences. The curriculum interacts strongly and supportively with introductory biology and chemistry courses taken by life sciences students, with the goal of helping students build general, multi-discipline scientific competencies. In order to do this, our two-semester NEXUS/Physics course sequence is positioned as a second year course so students will have had some exposure to basic concepts in biology and chemistry. NEXUS/Physics stresses interdisciplinary examples and the content differs markedly from traditional introductory physics to facilitate this. It extends the discussion of energy to include interatomic potentials and chemical reactions, the discussion of thermodynamics to include enthalpy and Gibbs free energy, and includes a serious discussion of random vs. coherent motion including diffusion. The development of instructional materials is coordinated with careful education research. Both the new content and the results of the research are described in a series of papers for which this paper serves as an overview and context.Comment: 12 page

Contextual Sensitivity in Grounded Theory: The Role of Pilot Studies

Grounded Theory is an established methodological approach for context specific inductive theory building. The grounded nature of the methodology refers to these specific contexts from which emergent propositions are drawn. Thus, any grounded theory study requires not only theoretical sensitivity, but also a good insight on how to design the research in the human activity systems to be studied. The lack of this insight may result in inefficient theoretical sampling or even erroneous purposeful sampling. These problems would not necessarily be critical, as it could be argued that through the elliptical process that characterizes grounded theory, remedial loops would always bring the researcher to the core of the theory. However, these elliptical remedial processes can take very long periods of time and result in catastrophic delays in research projects. As a strategy, this paper discusses, contrasts and compares the use of pilot studies in four different grounded theory projects. Each pilot brought different insights about the context, resulting in changes of focus, guidance to improve data collection instruments and informing theoretical sampling. Additionally, as all four projects were undertaken by researchers with little experience of inductive approaches in general and grounded theory in particular, the pilot studies also served the purpose of training in interviewing, relating to interviewees, memoing, constant comparison and coding. This last outcome of the pilot study was actually not planned initially, but revealed itself to be a crucial success factor in the running of the projects. The paper concludes with a theoretical proposition for the concept of contextual sensitivity and for the inclusion of the pilot study in grounded theory research designs

Collective intelligence for OER sustainability

To thrive, the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, or a given initiative, must make sense of a complex, changing environment. Since “sustainability” is a desirable systemic capacity that our community should display, we consider a number of principles that sharpen the concept: resilience, sensemaking and complexity. We outline how these motivate the concept of collective intelligence (CI), we give examples of what OER-CI might look like, and we describe the emerging Cohere CI platform we are developing in response to these requirements

Transdisciplinarity seen through Information, Communication, Computation, (Inter-)Action and Cognition

Similar to oil that acted as a basic raw material and key driving force of industrial society, information acts as a raw material and principal mover of knowledge society in the knowledge production, propagation and application. New developments in information processing and information communication technologies allow increasingly complex and accurate descriptions, representations and models, which are often multi-parameter, multi-perspective, multi-level and multidimensional. This leads to the necessity of collaborative work between different domains with corresponding specialist competences, sciences and research traditions. We present several major transdisciplinary unification projects for information and knowledge, which proceed on the descriptive, logical and the level of generative mechanisms. Parallel process of boundary crossing and transdisciplinary activity is going on in the applied domains. Technological artifacts are becoming increasingly complex and their design is strongly user-centered, which brings in not only the function and various technological qualities but also other aspects including esthetic, user experience, ethics and sustainability with social and environmental dimensions. When integrating knowledge from a variety of fields, with contributions from different groups of stakeholders, numerous challenges are met in establishing common view and common course of action. In this context, information is our environment, and informational ecology determines both epistemology and spaces for action. We present some insights into the current state of the art of transdisciplinary theory and practice of information studies and informatics. We depict different facets of transdisciplinarity as we see it from our different research fields that include information studies, computability, human-computer interaction, multi-operating-systems environments and philosophy.Comment: Chapter in a forthcoming book: Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity - Forthcoming book in World Scientific. Mark Burgin and Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Editor

Knowledge Cartography: Software tools and mapping techniques

Knowledge Cartography is the discipline of mapping intellectual landscapes.The focus of this book is on the process by which manually crafting interactive, hypertextual maps clarifies one’s own understanding, as well as communicating it.The authors see mapping software as a set of visual tools for reading and writing in a networked age. In an information ocean, the primary challenge is to find meaningful patterns around which we can weave plausible narratives. Maps of concepts, discussions and arguments make the connections between ideas tangible and disputable. With 17 chapters from the leading researchers and practitioners, the reader will find the current state–of-the-art in the field. Part 1 focuses on educational applications in schools and universities, before Part 2 turns to applications in professional communitie

Technology and science education

The incorporation of technology into the school curriculum is part of a worldwide trend in education. The way in which technology is incorporated depends on which country the reform is initiated in. The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 1993a) includes science and technology as distinct learning areas. This chapter considers the view of technology expressed in both science in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1993b) and in Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1995). The chapter is divided into four sections. Firstly, the concept of technology in the science curriculum is identified and discussed; secondly, the use of some types of technological application to enhance the learning of science outcomes is considered; thirdly, the technology curriculum itself is discussed in order to highlight the concept of technology underpinning this statement so that comparisons can be made with the concept employed in the science curriculum, and finally the introduction of technology outcomes by science teachers in a science environment is explored

Networked learning in higher education: Practitioners’ perspectives

There is a growing use of a variety of communications media to provide networked learning in higher education. The practitioners in the field vary from experienced educators who have many years’ experience to early adopters who have begun to use networked technology for teaching and learning recently. Using interviews informed by a phenomenographic approach, this paper investigates the varieties of experience of practitioners of networked learning. It reports initial findings that represent an early stage of analysis. The findings point towards a common philosophy held by current practitioners of networked learning but a lack of ‘rules of thumb’. Practitioners expressed ideas close to a new paradigm in education but were cautious about specific design outcomes meeting expectations. This finding raises questions about design and whether networked learning is yet stable enough a field to provide guidance on best practice. The paper also reflects on criticisms of the phenomenographic method, in particular its reliance on interview data, and offers some possible ways of dealing with the criticisms