E-Learning in its Element: Building Informal Learning and Research Capacity in Large Communities

John Cook

Learning Technology Research Institute,

London Metropolitan University

ESRC funded National Centre for Research Methods, 10th Nov, Work-Based Learning for Education centre,

Institute of Education, London

Email: john.cook@londonmet.ac.uk Home page: http://staffweb.londonmet.ac.uk/~cookj1/ Blog: http://blogs.londonmet.ac.uk/tel

Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnnigelcook Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook Skype: johnnigelcook Google Wave: johnnigelcook@googlewave.com Blip.fm: http://blip.fm/johnnigelcook

Possible tag:#ncrm09

Structure1. Overview2. Strategies that could be adopted, particularly

to support informal learning within communities3. Resources that are available4. How these resources can be used to help build

research capacity

1. Overview

• Digital media and e-learning provide a cost-effective means of reaching large widely-distributed communities and building their research capacity.

• The session offers experiential advice on – the strategies that could be adopted, particularly to

support informal learning within communities– the resources that are available and – how these resources can be used to help build

research capacity.

2. Strategies that could be adopted, particularly to support informal learning

within communities

• I don’t have a strategy to give you as such!

• I will present some frameworks and trends/issues and hopefully your can develop your own strategies …

Preece, J. (2000) Online Communities

• Preece (2000) has proposed that online communities are all about– people– policies and – purpose.

• Typically, a group of people may come together in order to fulfil a particular purpose or to satisfy particular needs.

• The online groupings of people who manage to build successful communities tend to be guided by formal and, or sometimes informal policies that are defined early on in the evolution of the online community.

Preece, J. (2000) Online Communities

• A member of a community brings with them their own set of characteristics, thus the people dimension can include such things as: gender, expertise, personality, age, culture, motivation, abilities and disabilities.

• A policy refers to the norms and rules of the community, which include: etiquette, flaming and privacy.

• The purpose of a community can vary depending on the domain and task involved, but may include: education, information, civic, support, practice, health, problem-solving.

• Thus in Preece’s (2000) framework there are strong elements of individual and collective sociability.

Another possible framework for developing strategy: “Socio-Cultural Ecology” Pachler, Bachmair and Cook( in press)

Pachler, Bachmair and Cook

Mobile Learning: Structures, Agency, Practices.

New York: Springer.

Due Feb 2010.

http://www.springer.com/education/learning+&+instruction/book/978-1-4419-0584-0

Socio-Cultural Ecology

• Agency (capacity to act on the world)– Formation of identity and subjectivity.– Environment a potential resource for learning.– Giddens (1984).

• Cultural practices (routines in stable situations) – Institutional settings, be they school, university, the work place etc.– Media use in everyday life (includes informal/non-formal).– Cultural practices in the context of media and everyday life (Hall, 1997).

• Structures (mass communication and technology)– Educational institutions no longer define alone what learning and

knowledge are and they are certainly no longer the only, even the main location where learning and knowledge can be accessed and takes place.

– From push to pull, change of mass communication and media convergence.

– Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory, relationship of agency and structures in educational and media contexts

Blurring of boundaries between formal & informal communication

(Czerniewicz, 2009)• Formal scholarly communication

– selection, editing, printing and distribution of author content – by an intermediary – preferably one with some name recognition

• Informal communication enabled by Information and Communications Technology– sharing of working papers, reports etc– “gray literature”

• Blurred spaces in between – preprint servers, blogs

• Repositories show all output

Scholars will rely on integrated electronic environments

(Czerniewicz, 2009) Layered, interlinked platforms containing a wide variety of

content – from fee-based to free – including: traditional peer-reviewed published material (monographs, journals,

reference works) multimedia projects raw primary source material (data sets, gray literature) primary source material designed with the interpretative and

conceptual insights of scholars conference proceedings and other non-peer-reviewed output from

universities pre-print workspaces that allow scholars to collaborate in advance

of publication (working paper repositories, wikis) post-print conversation spaces that encourage scholarly

communication (message boards, author sites, newsletters, blogs ) dissertation repositories subject matter repositories

3. Resources that are available

• How not to do it: Sharepoint imposition

• Tools I use in research networks (my PLE)

• Example experience of drawing on a community of professional practice in Twitter

How not to do it: Sharepoint imposition

• Reusable Learning Objects CETL

Tools I use in research networks my PLE – Personal Learning Environment

• Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook

• Skype: johnnigelcook• Flashmeeting:

http://flashmeeting.open.ac.uk/home.html• Semantic Wiki in MATURE (need password)

http://wiki.mature-ip.eu/index.php/Main_Page • Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnnigelcook• Wordpress for TEL Blog:

http://blogs.londonmet.ac.uk/tel

http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook

MATURE session on http://flashmeeting.open.ac.uk/home.html

http://blogs.londonmet.ac.uk/tel

Example experience of drawing on a community of professional practice in Twitter

• In preparation for this workshop I tweeted the community/network of professional practice that I have built up in Twitter for suggestions/cases on use digital tools to building research communities (loosely defined).

• I got plenty of pointers to relevant resources plus a suggestion from Martin Weller and Grainne Conole (UK OU) to start a cloud so that people can add links an comments. So here it is please contribute ...

• I have summarised the 15 or so responses I got in 5 hours from Twitter ...

• Cloud for suggestions/cases on the use of digital tools to building research networks/communities can be found at http://bit.ly/4xVsgO

http://cloudworks.ac.uk/index.php/cloud/view/2505.html

http://cloudworks.ac.uk/index.php/cloud/view/2505.html

http://cloudworks.ac.uk/index.php/cloud/view/2505.html

http://academia.edu/

http://reports.jiscemerge.org.uk/

http://ntupgce.ning.com/

4. How these resources can be used to help build research capacity

(all this section from Czerniewicz, 2009)

• Change of mindset

• If you don’t tell people they don’t know

• No false modesty

• It is not crass marketing

• Not just the output that is online - it is also the scholarly community- are you?

What is possible:less effort

• A website with a list of all output• Copies on personal web sites and appropriate

repositories of all output from journals listed on sherpa romeo website– http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

– “Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.”

• Copies of penultimate versions

http://staffweb.londonmet.ac.uk/~cookj1/#pubs

What is possible:more effort

• Develop an online presence

• Become part of online communities

• Use social software

What is to be done?

• Lobby to change and expand the system

• Get informed

• Get involved with the open access debates

• Take control

• Exploit the many opportunities to share the knowledge that is produced

Thank You

Questions

Take the debate to:http://cloudworks.ac.uk/index.ph

p/cloud/view/2505.html

Reference

• Czerniewicz, L. (2009). Scholarly communication ICT-enabled opportunities for academics. http://tinyurl.com/ld7l2f, accessed 9 November 2009.

• Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. University of California Press. Reprint edition (January 1, 1986).

• Hall, S. (1997) (ed.). Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.

• Pachler, N., Bachmair, B. and Cook, J. (in press). Mobile Learning: Structures, Agency, Practices. New York: Springer. Due Feb 2010. http://bit.ly/3r3xRl

• Preece, J. (2000) Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. John Wiley & Sons.