Learning architectures and negotiation of meaning in European trade unions

As networked learning becomes familiar at all levels and in all sectors of education, cross-fertilisation of innovative methods can usefully inform the lifelong learning agenda. Development of the pedagogical architectures and social processes, which afford learning, is a major challenge for educators as they strive to address the varied needs of a wide range of learners. One area in which this challenge is taken very seriously is that of trade unions, where recent large-scale projects have aimed to address many of these issues at a European level. This paper describes one such project, which targeted not only online courses, but also the wider political potential of virtual communities of practice. By analysing findings in relation to Wengers learning architecture, the paper investigates further the relationships between communities of practice and communities of learners in the trade union context. The findings suggest that a focus on these relationships rather than on the technologies that support them should inform future developments

Towards an ontology of networked learning

Networked learning, conceived of as networks of people, informational resources and technologies, constitutes what has been termed a ‘highly interwined’ technology. In this paper we develop our earlier argument that sociotechnical networks can form the basis for a non-determinist theory of learning technology. Firstly, we argue that Kling et al’s sociotechnical interaction network (STIN) is compatible with a realist ontology, drawing on Fleetwood’s ‘ontology of the real’ and Lawson’s proposition of the social nature of the artefact in networks of ‘positioned practices’. This, we suggest, gives a more secure basis for the STIN concept, and provides a clear alternative to actor network theory (ANT)-based views of sociotechnical networks which do not distinguish between the influence of human and material agents. This also, we argue, provides an alternative way of anchoring concepts from the social informatics literature, often influenced by Giddens’ structuration theory, in ways that can help networked learning research. Secondly, we explore some potential implications of such an approach for theories of networked learning and learning more widely. In particular, we suggest a possible ontology of elements of learning technology. The use of the word ‘learning’ here is somewhat problematic, as it is routinely used rather loosely to describe changes at multiple levels but which are likely to have rather different underlying mechanisms. A more thorough ontology of learning technology would allow us to distinguish between these uses and identify potentially distinct mechanisms at play in different forms and levels of learning. Thirdly, we use this approach to explore how viewing learning technologies as sociotechnical networks helps to clarify our thinking about identities in social networking for personal, learning and professional purposes

The STIN in the Tale: A Socio-technical Interaction Perspective on Networked Learning

In this paper, we go beyond what have been described as 'mechanistic' accounts of e-learning to explore the complexity of relationships between people and technology as encountered in cases of networked learning. We introduce from the social informatics literature the concept of sociotechnical interaction networks which focus on the interplay between participants, technology, learning artefacts and practices. We apply this concept to case material drawn from transnational trade union education to identify and to analyse three aspects of networked learning: the local sociotechnical networks of learners; the construction of an overarching, global sociotechnical network for learning; and the evolution of such networks over time. Finally we identify issues for further research highlighted by these models

Fish or Fowl: A Wizard of Oz Evaluation of Dialogue Strategies in the Restaurant Domain

Recent work on evaluation of spoken dialogue systems suggests that the information presentation phase of complex dialogues is often the primary contributor to dialogue duration. This indicates that better algorithms are needed for the presentation of complex information in speech. Currently however we lack data about the tasks and dialogue strategies on which to base such algorithms. In this paper, we describe a Wizard of Oz tool and a study which applies user models based on multi-attribute decision theory to the problem of generating tailored and concise system responses for a spoken dialogue system. The resulting Wizard corpus will be distributed by the LDC as part of our work on the ISLE project

What did the Romans ever do for us? ‘Next generation’ networks and hybrid learning resources

Networked learning is fundamentally concerned with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to link people to people and resources, to support the process of learning. This paper explores some current and forthcoming changes in ICT and some potential implications of these developments for networked learning. Whilst we aim to avoid taking a technologically determinist stance, we explore the potential for future practice and how some educational and pedagogic practices are evolving to exploit and shape the digital environment. We argue that we can change both the ways in which connections between people (learners and other learners; learners and tutors) are made and the nature of the resources that learning communities (particularly distributed communities) can engage with. In doing this we draw on two strands of work. Firstly, we draw on the ‘IBZL Education’ a UK Open University initiative to develop new scholarship in the context of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) through which educators are encouraged to think about technological change in the next five to ten years and ways in which we can intervene and shape these developments. We use problem-based learning as an example of a learning experience that can be difficult to implement in a networked learning environment. IBZL identified two broad strands of significant technological development. 'Superfast' broadband networks that are capable of supporting novel applications are being rolled in the UK (and elsewhere). Also, boundaries between the real and virtual worlds are becoming blurred as in the ‘internet of things’ where, for example, RFID tags enable information about the real world to be brought into the virtual one. We use the term ‘artefact’ to describe designed components, whether entirely digital, such as a computer forum, or material, such as a tablet PC. Networked ‘hybrid’ technologies of virtual and material components have may great potential for use in education. Secondly, we illustrate how these changes may be beginning to happen in distance education using the example of TU100 My Digital Life, a new introductory Open University. . TU100 Students use an electronics board in their own homes to work on a programming problem in collaboration other students through a tutor-led tutorial in a web conferencing system. We also note some of the evident complexity that establishing such resources as part of wider infrastructures of networked learning would be likely to involve

Digital, material and networked: some emerging themes for SET education

Boundaries between the digital and material worlds are becoming blurred as the internet increasingly connects us to things as well as people and information. This is increasingly relevant to education as initiatives which significantly combine digital and material elements in networks are becoming a reality for Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) learning. Our paper reports on the initial findings of a project to carry out a ‘state of the art’ review of literature to establish the key themes, opportunities and obstacles that are emerging from the development and use of these ‘hybrid’ systems in learning. We wanted to explore the extent to which this new domain of study is being reported in the literature and to identify work representative of this area. Our aim was to investigate the depth of research in this area by going beyond the technologically descriptive to focus on pedagogical and organisational issues raised in the literature. To identify the state of current research in the area we carried out a systematic search of databases of Science, Engineering and Technology education literature. We found 808 papers relating to the hybrid learning initiatives we are interested in, of which the majority, 81%, involved the Engineering and Technology disciplines while 6.8% related to Science. The vast majority of papers referred to remote laboratories and most of these were concerned with describing the technologies involved. In order to explore issues emerging from the research, we carried out an in-depth text review of a particular subset of the papers found that focussed on pedagogical issues. The three main themes that emerged were: the importance of real data and authenticity in learning; the importance of a sense of presence (e.g. telepresence, social presence and/or immersion) and the locus of control in, and responsiveness of, a hybrid system. We conclude that these new digital ‘hybrid’ pedagogies offer a lens with which to view both the more traditional material pedagogies, e.g. laboratory-based learning, and purely digital pedagogies, e.g. virtual labs. Finally, issues of authenticity, presence and control/responsiveness will be of increasing pedagogical importance to other ‘hybrid’ systems, such as those involving ubiquitous computing

Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models using lme4

Maximum likelihood or restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimates of the parameters in linear mixed-effects models can be determined using the lmer function in the lme4 package for R. As for most model-fitting functions in R, the model is described in an lmer call by a formula, in this case including both fixed- and random-effects terms. The formula and data together determine a numerical representation of the model from which the profiled deviance or the profiled REML criterion can be evaluated as a function of some of the model parameters. The appropriate criterion is optimized, using one of the constrained optimization functions in R, to provide the parameter estimates. We describe the structure of the model, the steps in evaluating the profiled deviance or REML criterion, and the structure of classes or types that represents such a model. Sufficient detail is included to allow specialization of these structures by users who wish to write functions to fit specialized linear mixed models, such as models incorporating pedigrees or smoothing splines, that are not easily expressible in the formula language used by lmer.Comment: 51 pages, including R code, and an appendi