Reclaiming distributed cognition in networked learning: An inter-subjective, socio-material perspective

On the tenth anniversary of the networked learning conference I am looking back at developments in identifying the sites of learning in networked learning design and praxis. Beginning with McConnell’s (1998) premise that collaboration is central to the development of democratic ‘learning communities’ and Jones’ (2000) relational perspective on the role of technologies in connecting learners, tutors, and learning resources, I examine early critiques of community and the implications of those critiques for design, tutoring, and assessment practices. I then turn to a discussion of interrelated human and technological agencies and a historical trajectory of design foci at the resource, task, and activity levels. Tensions between research orientations that focus on individual learning and those that focus on collective learning are traced to associated theoretical perspectives and methodological choices. The construct of the individual mind and the notion of connectivism are critiqued. The agencies of socially constructed technologies to distribute learning capacities across networks are examined for insights into and implications of differing approaches to collective coordination of social-material practices. In concluding this retrospective, I return to the critical and humanistic roots of networked learning and introduce Hodgson, de Laat, McConnell, and Ryberg’s (2014) call to “transcend the dualism between abstract mind and concrete material social practice” (p. 3). I use discourse analysis to critique contemporary cognitivist, computational conceptualizations of the individual mind and the resultant focus on instructionalist underpinnings in broader educational technology approaches to design. I argue that this perspective on cognition is reductive: focused on teacher-designer-researcher control, hierarchical perceptions of learning contexts, and suggest the quest for designed orchestrations of learning processes has led to an assumption that the efficaciousness of learning can simply reside in resources. The computational, cognitivist perspective on design is contrasted with Conole’s (2006) rejection of resource-level foci on design and with Goodyear, Carvalo, and Dohn’s (2014) distinctions among designable tasks and emergent activities; situated conceptualizations of affordances and mutually constitutive perspectives on the relationships among material social practices and learning. The “reclaiming” section of the paper examines three pre-computational conceptualizations of distributed cognition as embodied, integrated with socio-material artifacts, and enacted through practices. I conclude with looking forward to a time where pre-computational conceptualizations of distributed cognition provide links to networked learning theory, a route to transcending dualisms, and opens new examinations and problematizations

Assessment in clinical simulation: Current practices, changing influences, and the potential role of networked learning in shaping the future

Clinical simulation is a well-established practice in health professional education programs employing technologies to replace or amplify real experiences with guided experiences representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of selected physical or abstract systems. Educators generally employ collaborative debriefing as an integral part of clinical simulation for reflexive and experiential learning. A movement in higher education towards using simulation for competency-based assessment for high stakes testing such as certification or licensure of health professions has been observed. In face of such a complex evolution in educational practice, social practice theory may be useful to gain an understanding of the ways in which contextual factors affect how assessment practices become embedded into higher education contexts. Therefore, in this paper we take a social practice perspective and contend that these pressures are externally derived requirements. We note that in health professional education these requirements are often observed to be mandated by professional regulatory bodies and discipline-specific accrediting agencies.Debate over the appropriateness of each of the various purposeful approaches to assessment (assessment ‘of’, ‘for’, and ‘as’ learning) are not novel. However, our examination of how a potential move from assessment ‘for’ and ‘as’ learning towards adoption assessment ‘of’ learning practices in clinical simulation brings to light concerns over this contemporary pedagogical movement. To now, the body of literature that demonstrates the pedagogic advantages of employing clinical simulation in health professional education has been informed by research into learning environments that are highly supportive of reflexive and collaborative debriefing. Through review of the literature on assessment in clinical simulation we identify several important social elements of that learning environment, including trust and ontological security. We suggest these social elements may be at risk in the face of these evolving assessment practices, and that they warrant deeper investigation in this context.Lastly, we compare themes that emerge through this review of the literature with the essential values of networked learning. With connectivity and co-production of knowledge at the fore, the parallels between these themes and values suggest the utility in adoption of networked learning theory as a pedagogical framework in clinical simulation. Networked learning theory offers the area of assessment practices in clinical simulation, an at once undertheorized yet highly technologically enhanced and connected approach to learning, with a pedagogical framework upon which to build deepened understanding of an important social learning phenomenon

Threshold Concepts and Conceptual Change Processes

This paper reviews the idea of threshold concepts in the context of conceptual change processes students experience at the cognitive and social dimensions of learning.  Literature suggests the role of students’ ontological views in the development of their prior conceptions, which could be alternative to scientifically accepted ideas.  It is proposed that students may be able to negotiate such troublesome concepts in a productive way as they engage in the meaning-making process with peers.  Moreover, the social negotiation of knowledge can influence the conceptual change processes students experience in a discipline.  This paper will serve as a theoretical benchmark towards designing a study that will focus on exploring how peer to peer collaboration supports the understanding of chemistry threshold concepts. 

Faculty integration of computer-mediated learning technologies into teaching praxis

The purpose of the study was to examine organizational structural, cultural, pedagogical, and economic (reward system) elements of a traditional research-oriented university for influences on faculty adoption of computer-mediated learning technologies (CMLTs). Emergent driving and restraining societal and organizational influences (Lewin, 1951) on faculty members’ adoption of CMLTs were examined. Faculty members’ perceptions of the extent to which university policies and practices were aligned to support the successful design, development, and implementation of CMLTs were explored. A case study of faculty members, who had led CMLT development teams in a provincially funded Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) initiative at one university between 2000 and 2005, was conducted in four stages. In the first stage of the study, focus groups and members’ checks were held with instructional designers in order to identify potentially information-rich CMLT projects. Findings from this included an examination of the social negotiation process among members of CMLT development teams, and provided the bases for selecting faculty members to invite to participate in the study. Stage Two was a pilot of the faculty interview protocol that resulted in protocol refinement. In Stage Three, seven faculty members and one graduate student participated in interviews and members’ checks of the results. Faculty members were asked to describe their motivations for adopting CMLTs into teaching praxis, any resultant changes to their scholarship of teaching, the compensation they received for time invested in pedagogical and technological innovation, and the extent to which institutional structures, cultures, and policies had supported or impeded their efforts. Stage Four involved an environmental scan of institutional and provincial documentation of the TEL initiative as an avenue to corroborating interview data.In this study, it was found that faculty motivations for CMLT adoption included individual responses to departmental initiatives, curricular renewal and standardization activities, personal-professional development, integrating research into teaching, enhancing student learning, increasing the flexibility of student access to learning opportunities, and improving communications with students. Participants reported a variety of resultant changes to their scholarship of teaching: (1) a shift away from traditional lectures and toward learner-focused tutorials, small group and peer-to-peer discussions, and independent learning opportunities for students accessing electronic learning resources; (2) a new or renewed interest in using innovative instructional strategies and learning environments; and (3) a new or heightened interest in researching educational effectiveness. Organizational support for CMLT projects included fiscal support from the TEL program, and in some cases, additional funding provided by departments or colleges; project management support from the institution; pedagogical support from instructional designers; technical and aesthetic support from information technologists, media developers, graphic artists, and a medical illustrator. Organizational and cultural impediments to successful completion of projects varied across college settings. Lack of sufficient time to devote to CMLT development projects, balancing competing research, teaching, and administrative responsibilities with project activities, and therefore, coping with a mismatch between tenure and promotion requirements and necessary time commitments to CMLT projects were pervasive. Difficulties in coordinating large development teams, the slow pace of acquiring approvals for new programs, problematic project management models, and colleagues’ skepticism about and fear of integrating technology into teaching were common themes. This study surfaced implications for organizational change that could better enable faculty efforts to adopt CMLTs. Expanding tenure and promotion criteria to include CMLT development work (Archer, Garrison, & Anderson, 1999; Hagner & Schneebeck, 2001) and revising intellectual property policies for CMLT artifacts to better acknowledge faculty efforts (Hilton & Neal, 2001; Tallman, 2000) could do much to encourage the integration of technology into teaching. Promoting educational effectiveness research studies (Chyung, 2001), and bringing CMLT efforts in from the margins to become a core activity in the scholarship of teaching (Bates, 2001) could erode current skepticism and fear about technologies displacing faculty members (Olcott & Schmidt, 2000). Finally, in this study, theoretical implications for organizational change were posited. Traditional centralized and bureaucratic management styles are not well suited to supporting CMLT initiatives in higher education (Bates, 2001). A more distributed approach to leadership (Knapper, 2006) could better support necessary efforts to innovate, experiment, prototype, evaluate in order to incrementally improve project outcomes (Suter, 2001), create synergies between teaching and research activities, and garner faculty commitment to integrating computer-mediated learning technologies into contemporary teaching praxis

Toward theorizing spatial-cultural ‘othering’ in networked learning and teaching practices

In response to networked learning community members’ calls for theorizing the underpinning causes of “othering,” this paper examines the concepts of transculturalism, boundary crossing, and third spaces to provide insights into cultural issues that can occur within networked learning environments. Suggestions are made for working from a transcultural perspective, working within and across boundaries, and teaching and learning in Third Space. We begin by examining challenges posed by increasing cultural diversities among learners in universities and then focus on how these challenges play out for both learners and tutors. In particular, we focus on issues that impact international learners who remain in their home contexts, but engage in university learning via networked learning opportunities. In the introduction, we discuss the complexities learners face when they are simultaneously “land-locked” within their own cultural and educational settings and being acculturated into new learning opportunities in a foreign university. We then draw upon transcultural scholarship to examine instances of encountering vulnerability and instability and possibilities for shifting conversations within teaching and learning contexts first to celebrating difference and then to negotiating potential academic consequences of acknowledgements of differences. We move on to discuss tensions that arise from boundary crossings that evoke discontinuities. In particular, we examine points of exclusion and inclusion where decisions are made about whose voice is heard and whose knowledge is deemed valid and relevant. Within our discussion of the complexities and tensions of boundary crossings, we draw upon the concepts of identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation. At this point, we introduce Third Space theory as a meeting point for recognizing tensions, but also problematize provision of a restrictive definition of a Third Space with a view to maintaining an open approach to theorizing spatiality that retains sufficient flexibility to propose practices that can lead to overcoming otherness. Within this context, we examine dialogical collaborative spaces where individuals share values, meanings and priorities, but also acknowledge Third Spaces as spaces as potential sites for encountering antagonism, conflict and incommensurability: tension-filled messy sites of seemingly insurmountable cultural difference and competing powers. We conclude with implications for theorizing otherness in networked learning practices

Mapping Patterns of Relations in an Online Graduate Course: A Sociomaterialist Perspective

This study explores the patterns of relations that emerged and mutated during a particular semester of an online, graduate course, Multimedia Design for Learning. The assemblage, a learning community, was comprised of a professor-course designer, learners, the course content, digital connectivity, a learning management system (LMS), digital media production software, learning tasks, assessment criteria, and emergent activities. We describe the expected and unexpected relational interplays observed among the actors and map the performativity of the learning community. Within this interplay we were more concerned about how particular nodal points (actors within a network) came to operate as sites of attachments (bonds between actors), and simultaneously promulgated different sensibilities and new relations, which in turn, worked to transform material/digital/human objects into agents.  Our main interest was to better understand how, from an initially fragile assemblage, an online learning community could emerge, reconstitute, and/or dissolve. We first describe Sørensen’s (2009) patterns of relations (regions, networks, and fluids) metaphor. Then, we consider the shaping, reshaping, and co-constitution of the patterns of relations (Mol & Law, 1994). We also describe the role of obligatory points of passage, and sites of attachment that held the assemblage’s network together. Our methodological approach drew upon Hine’s (2000; 2004) principles for undertaking a virtual ethnographical study. In order to gather our data, we conducted online, structured, asynchronous, text-based interviews with seven of the fourteen course participants. A second data set was derived from the course designer-instructor’s (also a co-author here) reflective notes. As a research-group, we spent reflexive time constructing and applying a guiding conceptual framework for data analysis. We engaged in two rounds of coding. The first round was descriptive; the second round was self-reflective.  In this paper, we focus on key themes that describe student-participant’s chosen sites for: 1) finding familiarity/continuity in the processes of navigating synchronous and asynchronous communication channels and associated resources initially chosen by the instructor, (2) finding ways to collaboratively engage in knowledge construction within the course, and (3) circumventing the patterns of relations initially implemented within the course design. We conclude the paper by discussing how initial attempts to create spaces for specific patterns of relations (“design choices”) appeared to evolve within the learning community assemblage; that is, how activities emerged unexpectedly

Designing for Networked Learning in The Third Space

The focus of the argument in this paper is first situated in an allegory based on Van Gogh’s Expressionist masterpiece, The Yellow House, in that, our argument shares Van Gogh’s theme of looking for a home for a diverse community, engaged in a shared social movement, imagined/acted upon to evoke change. Our argument is fraught with commitments, investments, hopes, debates, rifts, and conflicts involved in the tentative, emergent nature associated with social movements. Within this diverse and contested context, networked learning praxis is set apart from mainstream e-learning and educational technology theories and practices. The problem of designing learning, in general, and designing for networked learning, in particular, is critically examined through a comparison of the projects, histories, and tenets of instructional design (ID) and learning design (LD). Associated notions of teacher-centred, learner-centred, and community/context-centred approaches to design are compared. Contrasts are drawn and commonalities are identified. The shared LD/ID claims that their projects are pedagogically neutral is interrogated. We then introduce Third Space theory as a way to open a dialogue between ID/LD proponents/researcher-practitioners. Third Space theory begins with abandoning aspirations for emergence of consensus from difference, arguably a practical stance to take when dealing with wide-ranging diversities across multicultural, interdisciplinary, international contexts. Having abandoned consensus, Third Space theory is directed toward ‘multilogues’ that promote boundary crossings and hybridisations, which can result in the emergence new “presences”: newly co-constructed ways to identify and accomplish shared goals. If we conceptualise The Third Space as, (Dare we suggest, an Expressionist social movement?), then based on historical examples of earlier social movements, it is relatively safe to suggest that this space too will likely be marked by misunderstandings and incommensurabilities. Third space ‘multilogues’ will involve participants sometimes talking ‘past each other’ rather than ‘with each other.’ We can expect substantive disagreements and retreats to previously held positions prior to arriving at places of mutual recognition, and perhaps even one or more forms of reconciliation. The paper concludes with an invitation for LDs and IDs to enter The Third Space with a view to finding varied, but sustainable, hybridised conceptualisations of design theories and practices that can contribute to designing future opportunities for networked learning across multicultural, multilinguistic, international, interdisciplinary context

The practice of simulation-based assessment in respiratory therapy education

Clinical simulation has gained prominence as an educational approach in many Canadian respiratory therapy programs and is strongly associated with improved learning, clinical and nonclinical skill, future performance, and patient outcomes. Traditionally, the primary assessment approach employed in clinical simulation has been formative debriefing for learning. Contextual factors, such as limited opportunities for learning in clinical practice and technologically oriented perspectives on learning in clinical simulation, are converging to prompt a move from using formative debriefing sessions that support learning in simulation to employing high-stakes testing intended to measure entry-to-practice competencies. We adopt the perspective that these factors are intricately linked to the profession's regulatory environment, which may strongly influence how simulation practices become embedded with respiratory therapy educational programs. Through this discussion we challenge the profession to consider how environmental factors, including externally derived requirements, may ultimately impact the effectiveness of simulation-based learning environments

Towards an enhanced conceptualization of fidelity for instructional design in simulation-based respiratory therapy education

Despite the apparent centrality of fidelity to clinical simulation instructional design and practice in respiratory therapy education, it remains one of most contested constructs in the simulation literature. Fidelity has been described as educationally under-theorized resulting in an emphasis often being placed on technological sophistication rather than theory-informed design, particularly in respiratory therapy. This article critically examines various conceptualizations of fidelity in the field of clinical simulation in an effort to inform its instructional design practices. We adopt the perspective that a shift in the theoretic lens from individualistic to a more socio-cultural orientation may better support our understanding of learning in simulation environments. The instructional design framework (IDF) developed by the Canadian Network for Simulation in Healthcare provides a solid pedagogical foundation on which to base clinical simulations design. The IDF has also been a platform upon which designers can frame the characteristics of simulation environments. We propose an enhanced IDF informed by contemporary education theory describing the joint learning relationship that exists between learners and technology-enhanced learning environments. The enhanced IDF includes each of the interdependent design elements in the original model and incorporates a socio-culturally informed conceptualization of fidelity. The framework will be useful in fostering the relationships that support an effective clinical simulation learning environment. This will be of particular value to practitioners, researchers, and theorists in the clinical simulation-based respiratory therapy education field