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 »

25/10/2008 by lizit.

I was able to attend (and present) at the National Workshop in Learning in Immersive Virtual Worlds at Coventry University on 23rd October.  It was really good to be amongst people who understood what virtual worlds were about and were beginning to explore their potential in a whole range of different ways.  Met  a number of people I knew online (or by their SL names) and a number of people I had only heard of before.  Useful to share ideas and to discover some of the things we were thinking about were very similar - not going mad after all!

One of the mst interesting notions to me was the reference to the work Steve Warburton has begun to explore on Barriers to innovation in learning and teaching in MUVES - I want to look at this a bit further and relate it to the boundaries we found in ILE 08. Must check if Steve is down to attend ReLIVE - would be good to meet him.

It was also useful hearing others are finding that students can familiarise themselves very quickly with SL once they are thrown in at the deep end - though there is a learning curve it clearly varies for different individuals.

Looking at some of the very sophisticated simulations, I am still concerned about the overhead  of SL, but if the gift economy can work between educators, that may be less of a problem.  Definitely seemed to be some thinking that if development has been publically funded it should be shared as long as the products can be protected from others selling them.

Another impression was the growing maturity of work in virtual worlds - a move from ’suck it and see’ to understanding and planning.

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18/10/2008 by lizit.

Thinking about what Judith said yesterday about research questions.  What is it that I am actually interested in about Second Life (in a learning context of course)? Woke up thinking about this and the word which was very much in my mind was ‘ownership’.  I guess that has been a key word for me for many years. In my social work days, it was about whether people owned their problems or externalised them in some way as somebody else’s fault or responsibility. As a community worker, and later managing staff involved in multiple projects, it was again about who owned the project - the people involved in it directly or the organisation working with those people.

Another discussion yesterday which started in the lab meeting but continued in Plurk was around learning, information and knowledge - when does one become another, for example it was suggested that learning is when information becomes knowledge. Another suggestion was that information becomes learning when it is used.  I don’t feel particularly satisfied with either of those.  For me there is more than one type of learning. Some of what is learned is static; it is information/knowledge which is learned for a purpose, eg passing an exam, but once the purpose is fulfilled, what has been learned is of no more relevance to the learner.  It may be remembered and dragged out of memory in a quiz or conversation, but the learner is not owning, using and developing what has been learned - it has not been internalised to become part of them and their way of thinking. Some of what is learned is utilitarian - tools which enable other learning or activities. For example once we can read, that process is learned and internalised providing a means of accessing other information.  This may link with threshold concepts - troublesome learning which once learned is obvious.

A further aspect of learning is a dynamic one, where there is something of interest to the learner to the extent they own their own learning and engage in an exploration which goes beyond what is taught - the initial learning experience is a springboard for further exploration and discovery.  Here ownership is paramount - the learning experience is owned and given meaning by the learning whether or not it has anything to do with necessary or assessed knowledge.

Thinking about this in a Second Life context - and also musing a little about that discussion about immersive virtual worlds - it is possible to be an observer is Second Life, to participate in something but do nothing with it.  Yesterday evening I had a look at 2 interesting models being developed on a medical sim.  My purpose was purely utilitarian - I wanted to see these models and with a view to including them on my list of places to share with students.  I was not concerned about the content, though I was very impressed with the build and the achievement in creating them.  They did not impinge on me in a way that led me to want to know more about the subject or to make me want to start building and creating myself.  I was a voyeur, an observer.

What, if anything, does an IVW offer to move the learning experience from observation and learning the facts to involvement in and ownership of the learning experience?

Posted in questions, ownership, learning, threshold concepts, Second Life | Print | No Comments »