JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed

Sect and House in Syria: History, Architecture, and Bayt Amongst the Druze in Jaramana

This paper explores the connections between the architecture and materiality of houses and the social idiom of bayt (house, family). The ethnographic exploration is located in the Druze village of Jaramana, on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. It traces the histories, genealogies, and politics of two families, bayt Abud-Haddad and bayt Ouward, through their houses. By exploring the two families and the architecture of their houses, this paper provides a detailed ethnographic account of historical change in modern Syria, internal diversity, and stratification within the intimate social fabric of the Druze neighbourhood at a time of war, and contributes a relational approach to the anthropological understanding of houses

Active Algorithms: Sociomaterial Spaces in the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC

This paper will explore two examples from the design, structure and implementation of the ‘E-learning and Digital Cultures’ Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) from the University of Edinburgh in partnership with Coursera. This five week long course (known as the EDCMOOC) was delivered twice in 2013, and is considered an atypical MOOC in its utilisation of both the Coursera platform and a range of social media and open access materials. The combination of distributed and aggregated structure will be highlighted, examining the arrangement of course material on the Coursera platform and student responses in social media. This paper will suggest that a dominant instrumentalist view of technology limits considerations of these systems to merely enabling or inhibiting educational aims. The subsequent discussion will suggest that sociomaterial theory offers a valuable framework for considering how educational spaces are produced through relational practices between humans and non-humans. An analysis of You Tube and a bespoke blog aggregator will show how the algorithmic properties of these systems perform functions that cannot be reduced to the intentionality of either the teachers using these systems, or the authors who create the software, thus constituting a complex sociomaterial educational enactment

Learning, digital technologies, and sociomaterial approaches:A critical reflection from the perspective of materialist dialectics

In this article, I attempt to critically reflect on sociomaterial approaches to learning, especially as it is conducted with digital technologies. By pursuing detailed ethnographic case studies, these approaches argue for the active character of digital technologies in the constitution of learning. More specifically, digital technologies are treated in this paradigm as co-participants—along with humans—in the formation of learning practices. Despite their invaluable empirical insights, I suggest that these approaches do not adequately emphasize the transformative potential of learners and do not conceptualize learning from the perspective of human development. In addition, I propose that, apart from empirically based research, which is the preferred mode of research of sociomaterial approaches, there is also a need for categorical thinking to conceptualize the mediation of learning by digital technologies. In my critical reflection, I draw on scholars working in the traditions of cultural-historical theory and activity theory, and on materialist dialectics more generally

The Dematerialising Studio and the Discovery of the Dérive:Precarity and Resilience in Teaching Art Practice during a Pandemic

Art Education has a tradition of pedagogical flexibility and innovation in response to theoretical, institutional and societal pressures. The Covid-19 pandemic presented the art education community with unprecedented challenges. During lock-down, teaching was sharply reimagined under emergency conditions, before gradually shifting back to a ‘new normal’. The return to pre-pandemic teaching has been hugely positive in many ways: relief that we can teach face-to-face, joy that students get a final degree show, liberation from endless online meetings, gratitude for studio space and workshops. However, although many things slot comfortably back in place, it is my experience as a lecturer working in an art school within a University, that some things have been lost, and other things have surfaced that demand further inspection: a space has opened up to do things differently. The present study uses an autoethnographic approach to develop a critical perspective on the transformation of the learning experience in one institution. In particular, I reflect on the dematerialisation of the studio during lockdown and its impact on teaching art practice, and what emergency measures revealed about the pedagogy of the studio. A shift to alternative sites to produce and exhibit student work had the effect of stimulating innovation in teaching and learning, including acknowledging the importance of nearness, the rediscovery of the derive and other radical pedagogies past and present, and collective learning from historical perspectives on how artists have worked together to handle precarity and built resilience

The Dematerialising Studio and the Discovery of the Dérive:Precarity and Resilience in Teaching Art Practice during a Pandemic

Art Education has a tradition of pedagogical flexibility and innovation in response to theoretical, institutional and societal pressures. The Covid-19 pandemic presented the art education community with unprecedented challenges. During lock-down, teaching was sharply reimagined under emergency conditions, before gradually shifting back to a ‘new normal’. The return to pre-pandemic teaching has been hugely positive in many ways: relief that we can teach face-to-face, joy that students get a final degree show, liberation from endless online meetings, gratitude for studio space and workshops. However, although many things slot comfortably back in place, it is my experience as a lecturer working in an art school within a University, that some things have been lost, and other things have surfaced that demand further inspection: a space has opened up to do things differently. The present study uses an autoethnographic approach to develop a critical perspective on the transformation of the learning experience in one institution. In particular, I reflect on the dematerialisation of the studio during lockdown and its impact on teaching art practice, and what emergency measures revealed about the pedagogy of the studio. A shift to alternative sites to produce and exhibit student work had the effect of stimulating innovation in teaching and learning, including acknowledging the importance of nearness, the rediscovery of the derive and other radical pedagogies past and present, and collective learning from historical perspectives on how artists have worked together to handle precarity and built resilience

Personalised learning networks in the university blended learning context

In researching student learning experience in Higher Education, a dearth of studies has investigated cognitive, social, and material dimensions simultaneously with the same population. From an ecological perspective of learning, this study examined the interrelatedness amongst key elements in these dimensions of 365 undergraduates’ personalised learning networks. Data were collected from questionnaires, learning analytics, and course marks to measure these elements in the blended learning experience and academic performance. Students reported qualitatively different cognitive engagement between an understanding and a reproducing learning orientation towards learning, which when combined with their choices of collaboration, generated five qualitatively different patterns of collaboration. The results revealed that students had an understanding learning orientation and chose to collaborate with students of similar learning orientation tended to have more successful blended learning experience. Their personalised learning networks were characterized by self-reported adoption of deep approaches to face-to-face and online learning; positive perceptions of the integration between online environment and the course design; the way they collaborated and positioned themselves in their collaborative networks; and they were more engaged with online learning activities in the course. The study had significant implications to inform theory development in learning ecology research and to guide curriculum design, teaching, and learning

Digital Literacy Circulation: Adolescents and Flows of Knowledge about New Media

The aim of this paper is to discuss the output of an empirical research on digital skills in order to develop a typology of skills circulation among young digital users. Relying on research on digital literacy in media studies and on users in STS, in this article we start criticizing the concepts of \u201cdigital divide\u201d, \u201cdigital inequalities\u201d and \u201cdigital competencies\u201d. Then, we present the principal results of a research study involving 50 adolescents in Italy about how they acquired their competences in the use of digital media. This gave us the opportunity to focus on the digital skills of young people and the development of their abilities in using digital media. The research outlines the patterns of circulation in digital competences among young people in relation to family, school and peer group, defining four kinds of \u201cflows\u201d: parental flow (involving fathers and mothers), peer flow (connected to friends and people of the same age), educational flow (referring to formal education) and technological flow (involving technological devices, such as computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.). The aim is to understand the interactions between digital skills and the social, institutional and technological conditions that influence the youth\u2019s digital literacy for the everyday use of digital media