24/12/2009 by lizit.

I’ve been struck by the number of articles I seem to be encountering which are discussing workplace learning as informal learning. Very few writers apart from possibly Billett (2002) seem to suggest learning at work can be seen as formal learning. Given the range of learning and training that is undertaken within the workplace this seems odd, and again suggests that the formal and informal labels are less than helpful. Seeing learning in the workplace as a mixture of intentional, incidental and serendipitous seems to make more sense (to me at least).

As an aside, I have been struggling a bit with how to differentiate incidental and serendipitous as I sense they are different. It seems to me that incidental learning is where something is learned while engaged in an activity, so undertaking a word processing task may include discovering how to change default font styles for a particular document. This is not intentional in the sense of being engaged in a learning task and it is not serendipitous in the sense of being stumbled across by chance, but it is a by-product of engagement in a task.

In thinking about workplace learning, I have been thinking about what is meant by workplace. Virtually everything I have read appears to envisage the workplace as a place of paid employment. I have not encountered any articles which recognise the home as the workplace - though this is self-evidently the case for some many parents and for others who are not in paid employment for whatever reason. For some reason, the workplace is seen as somewhere separate from the other environments people engage with during their daily lives.

Some of the work concerned with biography of learners appears to acknowledge the importance of other environments. For example, Hodkinson, et al, (2004) engage in a somewhat complex philosophical discussion about the relationship between the person and their social world, before identifying 4 principles (the comments in italics are mine):

• Workers/learners bring prior knowledge, understanding and skills with them, which can contribute to their future work and learning; (this reminded me of the illustration I often use in training contexts of having a ruc-sac of knowledge, skills and experience garnered from the totality of our life experience which we take with us from place to place and add to and adapt as we go)
• The habitus of workers, including their dispositions towards work, career and learning, influence the ways in which they construct and take advantage of opportunities for learning at work; (why just at work - surely the same applies in other environments people engage in)
• The values and dispositions of individual workers contribute to the co-production and reproduction of the communities of practice and/or organisational cultures and/or activity systems where they work; (again this could apply in other communities and environments people are part of)
• Working and belonging to a workplace community contributes to the developing habitus and sense of identity of the workers themselves. (ditto)

Although workplaces are easily identifiable environments from the perspective of study of learning, the observations drawn from workplace learning appear to be transferable in many circumstances to other environments where people learn, communities of interest being a fairly obvious example. One of the areas I need to consider as I read these various articles on workplace learning is the extent to which the findings are only relevant within the workplace or are equally relevant in other contexts where people learn. Given that people spend much of their time learning in one way or another, this could mean virtually any context.

On the surface at least, it appears that by favouring some forms of learning and some contexts above others, there is a danger that we fail to notice what different forms of learning have in common.

Billett, S. (2002). Critiquing workplace learning discourses: Participation and continuity at work. Studies in the Education of Adults, 34(1), 56-67.
Hodkinson, P., Hodkinson, H., Evans, K., Kersh, N., Fuller, A., Unwin, L., et al. (2004). The significance of individual biography in workplacelearning. Studies in the Education of Adults, 36(1), 6-24.

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04/06/2009 by lizit.

It’s so often said that the most important content of conferences goes on outside the formal sessions and that is proving true of these few days in Milton Keynes.  That is not to say there hasn’t been some interesting and stimulating content in the presentations, but it has been useful touching base with a whole lot of people, some old friends and some folk I hadn’t met before.

Out of the various discussions, I’ve got some new leads to follow up in my literature review. There are a number of terms that seem to be spoken about in considering informal learning: social capital, practical intelligence, learning through social action.  Will be useful to put these through some search tools.

I had a chat with one of the OU specialist librarians this morning.  She has suggested I have a look at the British Journal of Sociology, the Community Development Journal and the Social Science citation index.  In looking through some of the material on the shelves, I also came across the International Journal of lifelong education which has references to informal learning.  I also found that an OU colleague had included informal learning in her MSc dissertation and had built on this in her PhD.  I’ve been in touch with her and got copies of the relevant part of her lit review, her dissertation and a paper she has co-authored with references to informal learning.

I’m starting to collect quite a bit of material around informal learning now - and noting most of the things I am reading refer to this as an under-researched area and problematic because of problems with defining what exactly is meant by informal learning.  I still have to start exploring community development in any serious way, but I do know there is a lot in the Sussex library, so I guess I am going to be spending some time there soon.

I must admit I am enjoying myself!

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24/12/2008 by lizit.

I’m starting to feel a bit as though I’m drowning with all the different things that I’m reading at the moment. This is an attempt to pull some of the threads out from some of the things that I have been reading and get some kind of overview on the basis that if I can get some kind of picture of the big map then I might be able to start seeing which bits of the detail I am actually interested in. Just how that will relate to the ILE course, I’m not absolutely sure at this instant.

So what kind of things have I been reading? So far today, I’ve read two papers which are quite contrasting in content and style. Winn considers developments in the use of learning technologies over a lengthy period and links the description to a range of different learning theories and how they have grown in or out of favour over the same period. He highlights the advantage of virtual environments in making it possible to do what it is not possible to do in real life for a number of different reasons, focusing mainly on simulations. On the other hand, de Winter and Vie focus on Second Life and identify a number of considerations educationalists should bear in mind when considering teaching in that environment. These range from the technical to considerations of the environment itself and the experiences students may encounter in the spaces. It is interesting that Winn makes no mention of virtual worlds, though the idea of 3-D graphical interfaces underpins much of what he says. On the other hand de Winter and Vie differentiate games from Second Life but take it as a given that their readers will be familiar with such environments, at least in theory if not in practice.

Thinking more broadly about the stuff I’ve been reading, quite a lot of it has had a focus on instructional design, for example (Cheal, 2007; Dickey, 2003) and many others are concerned to place 3-D virtual environments within a model of development of instructional design which leads almost inevitably to the adoption of such environments. Other papers have adopted a case study approach; and these have varied between straightforward accounts of what has been done and how it has been done to much more complex descriptions linking theory and practice.

A number of authors offer taxonomies for use in differentiating between different virtual worlds or environments. These include (de Freitas, 2008; Mayes & de Freitas, 2004; Robbins-Bell, 2008). A number of features or characteristics are generally identified such as the immersive nature of the virtual world, its persistence, user generated content, communication within the environment, and the social nature of the virtual world. The most complex of the taxonomies is that developed by Robbins-Bell.

A recurring theme is the relationship of 3-D virtual environments to virtual reality. This focuses on immersiveness, presence and flow. Different authors use these words in different ways and some deliberately use immersion and presence as synonyms. Understanding of flow seems to vary between a general feeling of well-being and a total absorption.

A further strand relates to the activity taking place within the virtual environment. There is some focus on Second Life as a third place (Peachey, 2008) and this links with other authors focusing on social context of learning. Alternatively, and not often found in the same paper, is a focus on the creativity possible within many 3-D virtual worlds linked to constructivism and sometimes to experiential learning.

Cheal, C. (2007). Second Life: hype or hyperlearning? On the Horizon, 15(4), 204-210.

de Freitas, S. (2008). Serious virtual worlds: A scoping study: JISC.

de Winter, J., & Vie, S. (2008). Press enter to “say”: using Second Life to teach critical media literacy. Computers and Composition, 25, 313-322.

Dickey, M. D. (2003). Teaching in 3D: pedagogical affordances and constraints of 3D virtual worlds for synchronous distance learning. Distance Education, 24(1), 105-121.

Mayes, T., & de Freitas, S. (2004). Stage 2: Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models.

Peachey, A. (2008). First reflections, Second Life, third place: community building in virtual worlds. Paper presented at the ReLIVE08, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.

Robbins-Bell, S. (2008). MMORPG, MUVE…What’s the difference? Examining the communication facets of virtual worlds. Paper presented at the ReLIVE08. Retrieved 29/11/2008, from http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?whichevent=1248&s=31&schedule=1470

Winn, W. (2002). Current Trends in Educational Technology Research: The Study of Learning Environments. Educational Psychology Review, 14(3), 331-351.

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11/11/2008 by lizit.

I’m feeling quite tired this evening - well I guess it is 9.30pm and that is the kind of time when one is allowed to be a bit tired!

I’ve read the JISC report, published last Thursday, on serious virtual worlds.  A lot of interesting content and areas identified for exploring.  Some interesting typologies worth re-visiting and thinking about. Interesting to read about some of the other virtual worlds (despite the very large number - 80 - only a few are examined in any depth).  The two that sounded interesting to me are OpenSim, which I have been curious about for some time, and Croquet, which I had heard of but knew nothing about.  I would quite like to get both of them installed and take a look.

This evening I’ve been working through some of the articles and papers in the Educause virtual worlds edition.  Interesting how many of the authors I have heard of and how many of the references I have already encountered - or have encountered something else written by the same authors.

Hoping the EndNote training will be useful tomorrow and that I will be able to decide what I want to do about bibliographic stuff.  I need something more satisfactory than just having electronic or paper copies of lots of stuff even if that means I have the bibliographic data attached.

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