21/11/2009 by lizit.

This will no doubt need more work, but is an attempt to capture something of the bigger picture and context against which thinking about adult learning is happening.

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19/11/2009 by lizit.

Since my blog a couple of days ago where I mentioned the way Jane Hart was looking for a different way of categorising learning which moved away from the informal/formal model, Steven Verjans has set up a Cloudworks site which is providing an opportunity to explore Jane’s model further and to consider Harold Jarche’s extension to it.

As a result of reading the comments on the Cloudworks page, reading quite a bit about self-directed learning and how understanding of what it is has developed over the past thirty years, and playing more with my own idea, I have come up with this diagram.

It is very much a first stab at trying to create a model which provides scope for acknowledging the co-existence of both formal and informal and planned and serendipitous within each and every learning experience. This follows the observations of Colley, Hodkinson and Malcolm (2002, 2003) where they suggested there was little value in seeking to differentiate formal and informal learning as characteristics of each were found in both.

Obviously this is a work in progress, but it does begin to feel as though the time might be right to re-examine the informal/formal learning paradigm.

Posted in self-directed learning, social learning, informal learning, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

18/11/2009 by lizit.

Afraid the heading of this blog is a bit of a mouthful, but it comes out of my recent reading around self-directed learning and listening to a recording on Graham Attwell’s blog.  A phrase that jumped out of me from the recording was around how the ‘reflexivity and critique’ which is valued in formal learning can be incorporated into informal learning.  Over the last few days, I have been reading a lot around self-directed learning and one of the things that struck me about this was that in the first instance self-directed learning was something which was observed as happening - recognised in the early informal learning surveys - but then the education/social science community got hold of the concept and began to look at it in relation to formal education. Apart from the attempts to quantify self-directed learning, the emphasis appears to have been on the encouragement of independent learning in formal contexts (use of learning contracts and problem based learning) and questioning whether self-directed learning in the wild was really learning if it was focusing on skill development without the reflective elements.

Brookfield (1984) has a useful discussion about terminology - how the word ‘learning’ is understood and contrasting this with ‘education’ and ‘teaching’. Perhaps the ‘knowledge acquisition’ mentioned by Attwell should also form part of the semantic mix? Brookfield stresses the need for clarity in terminology: “one priority for thinkers in this field must be to propose clear and unambiguous definitions of learning and education in order that internal mental change is distinguished from the external collection, management and analysis of information.” Is it the continuing confusion over terminology underpinning the desire for the mental processes of informal learning to more closely resemble those of formal learning?

Is there a danger that informal learning will be undervalued in much the same way as informal care has been through the imposition of measures and standards that have little or nothing to do with the informal and all to do with something else, whatever label we give that something else?

Posted in informal learning, education, learning | Print | 2 Comments »

16/11/2009 by lizit.

For several months now I have been trying to get my head around informal learning. My starting point was one of endorsing the importance of informal learning. This was based largely on my community development experience, seeing the learning engaged in by people who had been considered educational failures, and more recently on recognising the amount of independent learning engaged in by all manner of individuals through the use of web resources. My involvement in various OU networks and the Sussex Learning Network has made me aware of the importance of Web 2.0 and social learning. I took part in the Clusters project which explored the potential use of a number of Web 2.0 tools in supporting students.

In exploring the informal learning literature, I have found a complex mishmash of debate about categorisation and definitions. The term has gained different meanings in different contexts and there are those who suggest it is an unhelpful term which should be avoided. As long ago as 2003, it was suggested that there is no clear differentiation between formal and informal learning but that both include elements of the other to varying degrees.

At the end of last week, in a flash of inspiration or madness, I suggested to my DPhil supervisor that perhaps a different typology was needed and suggested as a starting point 5 categories: other directed, self directed, incidental, serendipitous, and social. Over the weekend, I spent time doing literature searches on self-directed learning and found this was an area which had attracted a lot of attention and debate in the 1980s and early 1990s but the more recent literature seemed to be focusing on the development of independent learning skills in formal contexts rather than the earlier focus on self-teaching. I was not happy with my initial 5 categories; I find it particularly unhelpful using a term which has a clearly understood meaning in a different context. This morning, I was beginning to think about just 2 categories - self and other initiated - with sub-categories of intentional, incidental and accidental. I then came across a fascinating blog post from Jane Hart, signposted by Jay Cross. Although the focus is on use of social media in organisational training contexts, the starting point is an attempt to find a more satisfactory classification tool than formal and informal learning.

Posted in social learning, informal learning, research ideas, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

14/11/2009 by lizit.

Some of my previous blogs have been journeys down memory lane drawing together different aspects of my life experience and identifying threads which are coming together in the work I am currently engaged in. A more recent blog was a snapshot of some of my ‘informal’ learning experiences. In this blog, I will reflect on my experience of learning in Second Life. As with any retrospective view, lots will be missing and time frames will almost certainly be out of synch, but  it may help in clarifying what kind of learning is happening for me in that environment.

It is now almost 3 years since lizit Cleanslate was born (17/11/2006). I hadn’t heard much about SL in advance of creating an account. In fact, the main reason for taking a look at all was the possibility of an elearning consultancy with the Sussex Learning Network and mention being made of Second Life and various Web 2.0 technologies. I vaguely knew the OU had an interest in SL and a bit of searching unearthed the note with the name of the OU island and the person heading up work in SL.

If I am honest,  I don’t remember very much about what it was like when I first logged into SL - and I don’t really know what I was expecting. I do remember exercising choice in my original avatar - it had to be a furry, not only because this was fun, but also because there was no way I could identify with any of the other avatars on offer. Later on I rationalised this by saying I did not want an avatar that looked like me, or which was some kind of idealised female, but at the time, it probably had more to do with not being sure how seriously I could take this 3D virtual world I was entering. It looked far more like the games my son played than any kind of recognisable educational environment.

Like all newborn avatars, when I entered the virtual world, I landed on orientation island. The first task was learning to move - and there was no help message telling me what to do. I did work out that the arrow keys enabled movement and found my avatar rushing through orientation, surrounded by what seemed a large crowd of other avatars, all equally uncontrollable as my own. I’m not sure when I first referred to my avatar as me, but I suspect it didn’t take long. I tried some of the exercises on orientation island, but they didn’t seem to work - or I didn’t understand them - so I just hurried on with the aim of finding the OU island. I do remember eventually coming to a sign whichgave me a choice of entering the SL mainland or going to some kind of second stage orientation and choosing to go onto the mainland.  I did not know I could have picked up lots of freebies before entering the mainland, and I’m not sure I would have known how to, even if I had known.

By the time I got into SL proper, I was still feeling pretty clueless, unable to control my avatar, and unsure what I was meant to do next. If I remember correctly, I logged out and emailed Jacqui Bennett asking  how to access Cetlment and asking to be put on the list of OU SL users.

The second time I went into SL, I landed in a crowd of avatars in what seemed to be a Greek temple of some description. I got to know that landing place over the next few weeks, as it was my home location until I eventually learned I could make choices about where to enter SL and that I could set my own home location. This time, I had instructions on how to reach Cetlment and took myself there. It seemed somewhat barren, but there were a couple of avatars on the island. One of them looked very much like my avatar - same basic shape but slightly changed and wearing trousers instead of the somewhat strange skirt I had started life with. The other avatar had a name which was familiar from that person’s online identity in other settings. The two avatars were conversing with each other and did not seem aware of my presence - at least they didn’t acknowledge me. I moved out of earshot so I could not see their typed messages and explored the island a bit. I made sure I didn’t move too far away in case I got lost. At that stage, I did not know how to fly - I needed to ask my son how that might be done. Eventually, the conversation stopped and I was able to approach the avatar whose name I had recognised. We checked out that we both were who we thought we were and I got a guided tour of the locality, which basically meant I was shown his house and Anna’s house. Although I made the assumption the other avatar was a SL expert, I realised fairly quickly that he was about a page ahead of me, if that, in familiarising himself with the SL environment.

Not long after this, I visited Walton Hall with other members of the SLN elearning team. It was only my second visit to Milton Keynes and I was very aware of following the others around without a clue where I was or where I was going. As it was, we spent some time with John Woodthorpe looking at Second Life - the room we were in had a telephone conferencing facility, so we were talking to Jacqui over the telephone line while she took us through some SL basics and shared some of her thinking. We also took the opportunity to speak to some other people on campus that day including Peter Twining who was developing the schome project.

A couple of weeks later, I got the task of introducing SL at the SLN elearning advisory group. At that stage the jury was still very much still out. I suspect if I was not being paid to familiarise myself with SL and various other technologies, I would have left SL never to return by this point. I was still unsure how to move. I had visited a few sites but got hopelessly lost and the graphics were so poor I couldn’t see the point. At the same time, I knew people were getting excited about the possibilities of SL and were describing it as the next phase of the web. I had read a few journal articles and joined the SLED list and was ready to explore further, but unsure how…

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10/11/2009 by lizit.

I’ve just come across an interesting posting on Liz Hartnett’s blog. She identifies - and answers - a number of questions relating to her PhD research with the OU Business School:

• Who are the intended readers?
• What did you do?
• Why did you do it?
• What happened?
• What do the results mean in theory?
• What do the results mean in practice?
• What’s the key benefit for readers?
• What’s unresolved?

They look to me like the kind of questions that could help me in focusing on what I am doing …

Posted in methodology, questions | Print | No Comments »

04/11/2009 by lizit.

Spotted a couple of interesting blogs this morning. Steve Wheeler from Plymouth was responding to a blog from Tillman Swinke in Atlantis. Swinke is discussing personal learning and contrasting formal and informal learning and the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in each.  He is basically saying that intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic and asking how the passion of intrinsically motivated informal learning can be incorporated into formal learning, suggesting social learning may be a way forward. (How I find myself wondering just what he means by social learning having seen the term used in so many different ways over the past months.)

Wheeler summarises Swinke’s blog and says that we begin to learn because we are interested - intrinsically motivated - but in formal education extrinsic motivation tends to take over as we seek to keep up with our peers, attain good enough grades, etc, and asks how interest and intrinsic interest can be/is maintained in formal learning. Wheeler then advocates PLEs as a way forward.

A commentator on Wheeler’s blog has pointed to the Futures of Education project which is asking questions about the redesign of education. This brings me back to another blog read this morning, Graham Attwell’s reflections on the use of computers in exams.

At root these posts are all raising some pretty fundamental questions about the nature of learning and education and the dichotomy between them.  Others educate me, but I learn. Some of what I learn is guided by my teachers who share their passion for an idea or a subject area. Some of what I am taught is the use of essential tools to facilitate my learning - the 3 ‘R’s. Much of what I learn now is out of interest and desire to learn and explore ideas and play with them either in my mind or with my hands. Some of what I have been taught in the past, I am rediscovering through my own learning in the present.

Good thoughts to start the day!

Posted in social learning, informal learning, education, motivation, blog | Print | 1 Comment »

03/11/2009 by lizit.

There is an interesting article in the Guardian on ELQ and the costs to students http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/03/second-degrees-higher-education-funding. Although my focus is more on incidental and serendipitous learning, it strikes me that the kind of sums of money involved in taking an additional qualification deemed to be at the same level as one already held is likely to result in a number - potentially large number - of people seeking to gain skills, training, expertise other than through formal education. It also makes me realise how fortunate I have been in the funding of my own education. Even if I have groused from time to time about having to pay my own postgraduate fees, at least they have been heavily subsidised. Whatever the government might be saying about wanting to increase the proportion of the population with degree level education, the possibility of increasing undergraduate fees and the excessive cost of retraining might well prove to have unintended consequences, especially for those who will not be entering the most highly paid of jobs.

Posted in informal learning, Government policy, funding, education | Print | No Comments »