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 »

16/10/2009 by lizit.

Trying to catch some of the ideas from this morning’s supervision.

Discussion about whether my DPhil is actually social policy or whether it does rightly belong in informatics.  My last blog had given the impression of moving away from technology, and we examined whether or not this is actually the case or not.

Some key areas I identified a week or two ago are:

• informal learning in virtual communities
• motivation for learning in virtual communities
• understanding motivation for informal learning
• what motivates informal learning

One of my concerns is the real world relevance of what I want to do. I am dis-satisfied for various reasons with the material I have read about informal learning. Much of this dis-satisfaction is related to the problem of what informal learning is and and the way it is measured. All too often, it seems to be more about informal adult education than informal learning - the consultation document produced by the UK government in 2008 is a good example of this. It starts by saying it is about “structured and unstructured adult learning for enjoyment, personal fulfillment and intellectual, creative and physical stimulation” but the focus is more on reducing inequalities and opening new pathways into learning and much of the discussion is about adult learning in general. It is recognised much informal learning is self-directed, but asks, expecting an affirmative, whether the government has a key role in maximising and sustaining current arrangements (arrangements which the government has had no part in establishing or nurturing).

Virtual environments have been used as a petri dish for much research over the past 25 years. Although none of what I have read is specifically about informal learning (and apart from the specifically education based research, little is about learning), informal learning is implicit in most of the accounts of virtual worlds.

Virtual worlds are also interesting in the role they cast the user in when they first enter a virtual world.  Although an analogy can be made with a speeded up version of human development, it doesn’t hold together well, but entering a virtual world, as opposed to an interactive game, does present a rapid learning curve. It is necessary to learn how to walk and talk, how to move to new locations, how to alter appearance and a myriad other things before being able to function in the virtual world. Many of these actions are not intuitive. Inadequate technology, eg a low spec graphics card, can compound the difficulties. What is is that keeps the newcomer to the virtual world continuing to learn to use the environment when they have stuck a box on their head 3 times and still don’t know how to extract the hair?

So where does this leave me? I am still wanting to focus on what and how people learn in virtual worlds.  I think this will tell us something about how people learn in real life and about what motivates such learning. It is possible it will assist in refining the definition of informal learning and differentiating this from informal education.

The question remains whether virtual world experiences are transferable to virtual worlds and vice versa.

Technology provides the virtual environment, whether it is one of the early MUD or USENET based communities or the 3-D worlds we are more familiar with now. But virtual communities do not exist in a vacuum - behind  every avatar or nickname is a person who is living in a physical world environment.

Posted in informal learning, research ideas, concepts, community, motivation | Print | 1 Comment »

21/07/2009 by lizit.

In supervision yesterday, Judith suggested I write an abstract of my thesis as though I had already undertaken the research.  I could see the practical value of this as I have been mulling over what I might actually do, rather than think about doing. Although I am working on a draft abstract, there are a couple of issues that are concerning me, both of which I now think I can see a way round or through.

The first is the so what question - and here again yesterday was helpful.  I can now see that what I want to show is very much related to why people engage in informal learning.  Although the government white paper is suggesting that informal learning should be recognised and supported, my position is that this is unnecessary and possibly counter-productive - and not just for the reasons propounded elsewhere in this blog of possibly repeating the errors of the 80s in relation to voluntary action and community care.

The second concern relates to justifying the use of Second Life for my studies.  One clear argument is that there are no inbuilt extrinsic rewards in SL.  Today it struck me that there are elements of SL learning which are not dissimilar to that happening in some of the physical world communities I am part of. For example, if I am monitoring SL mailing lists for evidence of informal learning (probably SLED and one other), I could also monitor arachne.  At about this point my imagination takes off and I have to remind myself that I haven’t got unlimited time and resources…. But if the SL can be shown to be not dissimilar from other communities which engage in informal learning…

Time for a cuppa.

Posted in informal learning, lace, research ideas, community, motivation, reflections | Print | 1 Comment »

17/07/2009 by lizit.

Came across an interesting article yesterday on social learning theory and Second Life (Smith, M., & Berge, Z. L. (2009). Social learning theory in Second Life. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 5(2), 439-445).

Bandura had reached my peripheral vision a couple of times before, but I hadn’t followed up, but this article made interesting reading.  It takes what the authors see as the 3 key components of Bandura’s social learning theory - observational learning, imitation and behaviour modelling - and considers how these might apply in a virtual world context.

What struck me first about the article - though I haven’t yet looked at any of the originals - was that social learning theory appears to be based on the idea that we learn from others through our interactions in a social context. This clearly has relevance for a virtual social world - it is Boellstorff’s observation that most SL users are there for social reasons. Although Smith and Berge apply the model to formal learning situations within SL, it looks as though it is probably equally applicable in informal learning. Taking it together with SDT, suggests a way of looking both at how people learn and why people learn.

Yesterday, I registered a new avatar, principally because I wanted to check the current registration arrangements and in particular registering into a different orientation space. I was surprised just how many orientation experiences are now on offer - probably 40 plus - including several using languages other than English. Unlike the Linden Labs orientation, these are all based in PG areas which are accessible to existing SL residents as well as new.  It might be possible to either do observational stuff in one of these spaces with appropriate permissions or to become a mentor.  I’m beginning to see some possibilities…

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05/07/2009 by lizit.

I’m playing around with ideas about what motivates informal learning and wanting to move beyond the idea that it is somehow innate and something human beings do all the time.  I’m outlining some of my thoughts below, but would really appreciate comments and other ideas on this.

• People engage in informal learning because we have an inbuilt drive to learn.  This probably applies to babies and children, but is not so obvious once we have acquired basic life skills - or is it?
• People engage in informal learning out of interest in something.  This could be things like researching a holiday destination, route planning, language learning - other examples?
• People engage in informal learning do develop a hobby or skill.  This may be similar to becoming part of a community of practice - start by learning the basics, look to improve by practising/reading/etc, extend understanding by experimenting, become expert and help others (expertise might be in one part of hobby - not overall).  Had lace making in mind here and the process I went through becoming competent but there may well be hobbies it doesn’t fit.
• People engage in informal learning by accident. The sort of serendipitous learning that comes from watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers, browsing the web, etc. Not setting out to learn or expecting to learn but picking up interesting facts on the way.
• People engage in informal learning intentionally - perhaps to enable social relationships or to pursue an existing interest (is this any different from hobby/skill?). Examples might be learning to play a game, learning how to build/script/use gestures in SL, etc.
• People engage in informal learning out of necessity. This might be around house and family. Undertaking household chores, maintaining and repairing property, looking after baby, etc.
• People engage in informal learning to look after their health. Reading or using web to explore diet or to understand a medical condition.  Taking up exercise and learning how to do it probably to avoid injury.
• People engage in informal learning because they are bored.

Why else do people engage in informal learning?  Other examples/idea?

Posted in informal learning, motivation, questions, learning | Print | 5 Comments »

23/05/2009 by lizit.

I’m feeling a great deal happier about the DPhil than I have for weeks. I think there are two things contributing to that, one less expected than the other.

Driving into Sussex yesterday, it struck me that one of the positives out of the annual review meeting was something more than feeling affirmed; it was actually that I had a sense that I had as much right as anybody else to be a DPhil student.  In fact more than that, a recognition that I have always felt a bit of a fraud academically - sort of gate crashing a gathering full of clever people.  Although I haven’t suddenly started thinking of myself as clever, I do realise I am probably (note the slight caution there) as capable as anybody else who is on that path of working towards and completing a DPhil. No doubt there will be times ahead when I feel an even bigger academic imposter, but for the moment I’m staying with the positives!

The second thing is a sense that I have now got some ideas about what my DPhil will be about.  Although I know not many people read this blog, I don’t feel quite ready to formulate those ideas apart from for myself at the moment but I do have a much more distinct sense of where I am going and I am feeling quite excited and interested in the ideas I am playing with. I think it is also very clear to me that it is highly unlikely I would have arrived where I am at this moment if I hadn’t been on the circuitous journeys of the past months.

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17/05/2009 by lizit.

OK - I don’t know what people will make of my ideas at my thesis committee tomorrow, but I feel a whole lot clearer and more focused.  The last two postings have been helpful in clarifying some of my own thinking, identifying stuff I know something about and, more importantly, identifying some of the key thoughts that have meaning for me.

My focus hasn’t moved from virtual worlds, but rather than seeing them as the main focus and how their affordances can be used, I am shifting to seeing them as an environment in which people do things.  I have also realised that a primary interest of mine - and I have said it before is ‘ownership’.  By ownership, I am talking about whether we own our own learning and relational experiences or whether we are engaged in activities which are owned by somebody else.  For instance, the model of education I was brought up with in the 50s and 60s was essentially one of learning a lot of facts and then regurgitating them in an exam and being marked on how well I remembered those facts.  There was no real encouragement or enabling to engage with what I was learning in contrast to the more prevalent learning philosophy today where the emphasis is on constructing our own understanding based on a mix of previous experience, information and experimentation leading to an ownership of knowledge.

My main problem with social work was that there was too much emphasis on doing things for people - or pressuring them to do things in a way which met the approval of the professionals, rather than in enabling people to own their own problems and be actively involved in finding solutions.  Today, many older people or people with disabilities are given a budget and are able to determine their own care priorities (the direct payments scheme).  When we started having interdisciplinary meetings with ‘clients’ in the 1980s and letting them know in terms of hours what support they could have each week and asking how they wanted that support divvying up it was almost revolutionary. Yet it was only recognising we were dealing with adults with a right to own their own care agenda rather than having solutions imposed on them by professionals.

Self-determination theory suggests that people are intrinsically motivated from birth to learn and to respond to challenges, or set themselves challenges.  It also recognises that extrinsic rewards can lead to a decrease in intrinsic motivation. The education system has become very extrinsically focused over the past couple of decades - standards pre-date New Labour even though New Labour has gone in for target setting with a vengeance. During the same period there has been a steady decline in adult education - all recent surveys by NIACE suggest fewer and fewer adults who are not actually in education undertake any educational activity.  This may be reflective of the decrease in adult education leisure classes - many classes have ceased because they lead to no recognisable qualification - but it may also be how those being questioned understand learning and education. The more education is certificated in one way or another, the less aware we are of the learning we engage in daily in our interactions with others in the communities where we live and work.

Two things that struck me when I first started looking at Second Life were the amount of learning that was going on and the existence of a gift economy.  Learning was sometimes semi-formal - attending building classes given by other residents - but it was also informal - asking questions in a sandbox or just when trying to move around.  It was the same learning we do when we live, however briefly, in a different country or even a different place in our own country. The gift economy represents the way information was freely given with no expectation of reward.  Not only was information imparted, but gifts of various sorts.  When I set up an area for the Sussex Learning Network, I was able to rent a large sky platform and have it fully equipped with all manner of things for a relatively small sum of money which in no way covered the time that had been given to build the facility.

Although Second Life has been colonised by educators and there is much formal education taking place there, there is a continuing community of people who use/live in Second Life and undertake a range of activities there.  I am interested in exploring what can be learned about informal, intrinsically motivated learning in this setting. I suspect that community development theories will help in understanding what is happening.  It is likely there are similar behaviour patterns in other virtual environments, including child facing ones.  What can we learn from these settings about what motivates people to learn?  What can virtual worlds teach the physical world about re-enabling basic values of wanting to learn and be challenged.

That last bit sounds a bit woolly and pompous - need to work on it.  But basically, I am interested in informal learning, intrinsic motivation, ownership and community and the virtual world offers a place to look at this and relate stuff to the physical world.

Posted in informal learning, community, motivation, ownership, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

09/05/2009 by lizit.

I’ve got just over a week now to get this report written and if anything I am getting more, rather than less, confused about what I am doing, or trying to do.  Try as I might to focus in, I am finding myself focusing out and looking at big pictures rather than little details - maybe the result of too many OU systems thinking courses.

I am hoping that putting down some of my thinking may help me to make some sense out of the muddle and to come up with something credible to discuss with my thesis committee.  Guess my main concern is not to look too foolish!

My starting point about this time last year was whether Second Life was providing any added value to learners in formal learning situations.  I had read Maggi Savin-Baden’s paper which had addressed troublesome learning and was struck by the language being used being reminiscent of the language used in counselling and therapy - the suggestion that working through a learning disjunction leading to a complete change of thought patterns (maybe I exaggerate!)

During the past months, I have done a lot of learning and thinking and become aware of lots of different ideas which can contribute to thinking about virtual worlds and education. I have also found myself re-visiting my own personal history and ideology and looking at how my own thinking has developed against a background of big ideas and socio-economic-political change over the past half century. In looking at academic papers in particular, I am increasingly aware of the narrowing of focus of so much I read which makes little attempt to engage in joined up thinking across disciplines or ideologies. At times it feels as though wheels are constantly being re-invented or origins of ideas are being ignored as knowledge is developed incrementally rather than holistically.

At the same time, in my own thinking, I am finding I am looking more at big ideas, influences and trends.  For example, when I began work in community development in the early 70’s, there was a strong awareness of the roots of community development being in the philanthropic movements of the 19th century, the university settlements of the inter-war period and post-war socialism, all tinged with the emerging rights movements (at that time women and black, but later others), and counteracting the individuality of the 60’s.  Though there was a recognition of links between community development in the UK and community action in the States, there was little attempt to look for common methodology with community development elsewhere (I can’t even remember what the terms used to describe the third world or developing nations was back then).

Community development in the UK effectively disappeared in the early 80’s - no funding - and the volunteer movement had to re-assess itself because of changes in political ideology.  It is possible to trace the language used by Margaret Thatcher in various key speeches through that period which signalled a change from community being important to the rise and fall of voluntarism to emphasis being placed on the individual with the famous words ‘there is no such thing as society’. Behind these changes seemed to be a growing awareness than community development, voluntary organisations and even volunteers cost money.  By the end of the 1980’s the notion of voluntary organisations being contracted to undertake specific tasks by public bodies was firmly rooted and much social care is provided today on this type of contractual basis.  At the same time, the lottery was born and grant giving to charitable bodies gave a new lease of life to more innovative organisations.

Other major changes during the past 4o years have been in communications and globalisation - each feeding the other.  We have become familiar with seeing news as it happens.  Film of famine in Africa no longer has quite the shocking quality it had when we saw the first pictures of the Ethiopian droughts, but perhaps we are still shocked by the effects of natural disasters in New Orleans or Italy - at least briefly. In recent months we are being reminded again of community, this time in the form of the global village as we are told that it is only through collaboration and working together that the credit crunch can be overcome.  Again in recent days, the risk of global pandemic has raised its head, and with it a realisation of what a small place the world is now that so many people are involved in travel to so many different places.

Returning to virtual worlds, my starting point was very simplistic - what does Second Life offer to education by way of added value.  Over the past months, I have become much more aware of the existence of other virtual worlds and have visited some, albeit briefly.  More importantly, I have realised that any thinking about Second Life has to recognise previous thinking about virtual worlds  - and the scope gets quite scary.  At the very least this needs to acknowledge Usenet and bulletin boards, the 2-D web, gaming, virtual reality and social networking.  In considering education and virtuality, there is a need also to be aware of changing trends in elearning and open access learning materials such as the MIT and OU repositories. Second Life was not developed as a learning environment, although parts of it have been colonised by educational institutions. There is a lot of informal learning happening in Second Life, just as there is throughout Web 2.0, and much of this reflects community initiatives of one sort and another.

My journeying over the past months has also led me into an awareness of some motivational theories, principally Flow and Self-determination theory.  SDT is of particular interest with its emphasis on autonomy and relatedness (both important themes to any community development professional).

Looking even more specifically at Second Life, apart from reading a lot of stuff about things going on in the virtual world and attending several workshops and conferences with a virtual world focus, I have been involved informal educational experiences with both OU and Sussex students. There is no doubt that the virtual world does offer an opportunity to develop learning experiences using the specific affordances of the virtual world, but I am beginning to question whether this is actually what I am interested in. However, I am still interested in Second Life as a learning environment and I am finding myself thinking again about some of the tenets of community development and self help and how they apply within the virtual world.  Linked to this is the recent government white paper with its emphasis on informal learning.

This blog is getting even more disjointed now!

Informal learning has always interested me as so much of what happens in community is experiential, informal learning involving a transfer of skills and knowledge. It fits in with various personal growth philosophies. Self-help fed the development of the WEA.  Early years education in the UK has formalised the work initiated by parents in the development of pre-school playgroups. Although APL and APEL have been around for some years, there is very little accreditation of informal learning - it is so varied, it is difficult to see how this can happen and even if it is a good thing.  Does formally recognising the informal change or restructure it?  Some would say the early years curriculum with it’s emphasis on assessment runs totally counter to the objectives of playgroups.

So where is this leading?  I am interested in the potential of Second Life as a learning community and I am interested in informal learning.  I am also interested in how people own their own learning and how they support each other through self-help and exchange of skills.  I am interested in what makes people want to learn when there is no formal recognition or validation of that learning.  I am interested in drawing connections between the developing community in Second Life and the trends which are observable in the bigger world picture. I am interested in joined up thinking rather than disconnected nuggets.

Now how do I turn any of this into anything that will make sense for my DPhil annual review meeting?!

Posted in community, concepts, research ideas, motivation, flow, ownership, questions, learning | Print | 2 Comments »

27/04/2009 by lizit.

I keep feeling as though I am going around in circles, but struck me that some of the stuff I am thinking about actually relates to things I have thought about before in other contexts but where I haven’t looked at connections.

Nearly 40 years on, it’s difficult to remember details of my social work training and I can’t claim to remember any of the detail of the various theories we learned except that they were primarily psycho-analytically driven.  There was little about the socio-political systems which led to a whole range of inequalities, but a lot about the personal/psychological growth and behaviour and what led to a healthy individual and what led to dysfunction. If I recall correctly we first of all considered ‘normal’ growth and development, then considered what can go wrong and finally looked specifically at issues around mental health, aging and disability. I remember being deeply dissatisfied with what we were being taught as it seemed to me that this particular form of person centred psychology had little to offer people who were struggling through inadequate housing, insufficient income, poor health, etc, etc.

When I finished my training, I became a community worker.  The philosophy here was different and essentially was that people working together can make a difference to their lives and their environment through collective effort and action.  The reality was that most people were alienated from their environments and rather than seeking to change them, they were looking for opportunities to escape to somewhere better.  There was little sense of ownership of the problems within the community, and little belief that anything could be different. At the same time, I can remember individuals who somehow did find they could do something to change some elements of their situations. Perhaps the person who made the greatest impression on me was a man who was probably 30 something. He had grown up in care and had never been in employment as far as I knew.  He lived with his wife and 2 sons in a 2 bedroom flat on a notorious sink estate in a northern city.  As a result of various community development projects on the estate, he had been persuaded to get involved in producing a community newspaper. The hitch was that he was barely literate.  But the newspaper task somehow provided him with the impetus he needed to learn to read and write and to commit himself to ensuring that somehow his sons would have a better future. What struck me most about him was that he took ownership of his situation and began to do something about it in a situation where most people felt unable to take any action at all.

I didn’t remain a grassroots community worker for long, but took the lessons I had learned into a voluntary organisation support role and later into management roles in both statutory social services and voluntary organisations.  It was a time when voluntary agency culture was moving from doing good to others, a sentiment expressed in more sophisticated language in most charitable deeds of governance, to a time when it was slowly being recognised that people could do a lot for themselves. The 1981 International Year for Disabled People challenged us to rethink the terminology to International Year of People with disabilities.  For all the political correctness that has followed, the emphasis was on seeing people first and foremost as people and then taking note of the problematic almost as an afterthought. My MSc research was concerned with intermediary bodies for disability and the change which was taking place from these being organisations with a membership made up of other organisations to organisations with a membership of people with disabilities.  Instead of able-bodied people being the experts in matters of disability, there was a change of ownership and people with disabilities were expressing loudly and clearly their expertise and their right to have a say in what they needed by way of housing, employment and care provision. In the 21st century most provision for people with disabilities is made through direct payments and the client of yesterday is the customer of today choosing how to spend the money to meet their needs.

I could go on tracking this strand through my other work and personal experiences, but that would get boring! Suffice it to say that I have a deep seated belief that people should be in control of their own destinies - and this includes making resources available when necessary to enable that personal ownership and control.

So where does that fit into education and virtual worlds?

The first link is with constructivism, that educational theory which suggests (if I’ve understood it correctly) that knowledge isn’t something which is learned or transferred from teacher to learner, but rather that each individual is responsible for their own learning and constructs their knowledge framework by incorporating new information and ideas into their existing knowledge structure.  This process sometimes involves dismantling parts of that structure as new knowledge leads to re-evaluation of former knowledge.  Underlying this thinking is the idea of a learner owning their own learning. The nature of a virtual world which encourages and enables exploration and experimentation offers opportunities for creating and building knowledge frameworks.

The second link is possibly around ownership and autonomy, one of the facets of self-determination theory, and what motivates learning.  From what little I’ve read about this theory so far, it seems that it focuses on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and seems to say that extrinsic motivation decreases the intrinsic motivation which is a basic human quality.  From my early work experiences, change happened through intrinsic motivation and believe in self rather than extrinsic motivators, whether carrots or sticks. In a virtual world there are few experts as everybody is on a learning curve.  This changes the relationship between teacher and taught and leads to greater fluidity, flexibility and experimentation. Is it possible that virtual worlds enable ownership of learning and contribute to a positive feedback loop which enables further experimentation, exploration and learning?

Guess that will do for the moment!

Posted in creativity, community, motivation, change agents, learning, ownership, virtual environments | Print | 1 Comment »

17/03/2009 by lizit.

There is a weekly meeting in Second Life for people who are involved in research in the Virtual World.  As these meetings tend to be at 10pm or later, I rarely get to them, but yesterday evening I made a point of going to Jeremy Kemps’s presentation on how he has introduced 1100 information science students to Second Life over the past year.

The context is a distance learning course with a large number of units introducing many different electronic resources of which Second Life is one - students are also introduced to Web 2.0 technologies including social networking and blogging, to Elluminate, and a range of other resources.  The students never meet face-to-face.

A background to the course is available on these slides.

Basically students have a choice between learning about Second Life through a short video, reading some selected papers and answering a quiz, or learning about Second Life at first hand by registering an avatar, undergoing a brief induction and undertaking a quest inworld which includes pasting an image of their avatar on the university social networking site.  The majority of the students choose the second option and this is being refined for the next cohort with additional quests and more attention to orientation; instead of relying on the generic induction offered by Linden Labs, Jeremy intends to use a well-designed and staffed orientation space such as Virtual Ability.

The work on this course is supporting Jeremy’s doctoral research which is focusing on what motivates students and stimulates flow.

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