03/01/2009 by lizit.

This is going to be a bit simplistic, but I need to get some of what I’m thinking on paper (or on screen) rather than just in my head.

“Troublesome learning spaces are places where ‘stuckness’ or ‘disjunction’ occurs.” (Savin-Baden, 2007). She goes on to identify a number of catalysts that may be involved in moving into such a space.  The idea of troublesome learning appears to originate with Perkins (1999) - at least he articulated it - and he identifies some types of learning which can be seen as troublesome.  This is developed by Meyer and Land (2005) in their consideration of Threshold concepts.  Others have applied this thinking to specific disciplines (eg Davies, 2007).

Savin-Baden offers a model of transitional learning spaces which relates to how stuckness is dealt with. She suggests that a learner arrives at a place where disjunction is experienced: “Disjunction is not only a form of troublesome knowledge but also a ‘space’ or ‘position’ reached through the realisation that the knowledge is troublesome. Disjunction might therefore be seen as a ‘troublesome learning space’ that emerges when forms of active learning (such as problem-based learning) are used that prompt students to engage with procedural and personal knowledge. Alternatively, disjunction can be seen as the kind of place that students might reach after they have encountered a threshold concept that they have not managed to breach.” Other authors have spoken about ’stuck places’ (Lather 1998). Savin-Baden goes on to suggest that learners deal with disjunction in one of five ways: “students may opt to retreat from disjunction, to postpone dealing with it, to temporize and thus choose not to make a decision about how to manage it, to find some means to avoid it and thus create greater disjunction in the long term, or to engage with it and move to a greater or lesser sense of integration”. She suggests that: “Engaging with disjunction requires that students acknowledge its existence and attempt to deconstruct the causes of disjunction by examining the relationship with both their internal and external worlds. Through this reflexive examination process, students can engage with what has given rise to the disjunction and they are then enabled to shift towards a greater sense of integration.”

How students deal with stuckness is also examined by McCartney et al (2007) and a lengthy list of potential strategies is identified and linked to types of learners.

These studies suggest that having reached a place of disjunction of stuckness, there is a choice over how this might be approached which essentially is a choice between retreating from the uncomfortable place or rising to the challenge.  The second of these approaches would appear to link with thinking about ‘flow’, a term first suggested by Csikszentmihalyi in 1973 and since developed and applied in many different fields by Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and numerous other authors. Chen (1999) has considered flow in relation to use of the web and identifies 9 factors involved in a flow experience: “(1) clear goals; (2) immediate feedback; (3) personal kills well suited to given challenges; (4) merger of action and awareness; (5) concentration on the task at hand; (6) a sense of potential control; (7) a loss of self-consciousness; (8) an altered sense of time; and (9) experience which becomes autotelic.” An important aspect of flow appears to be a level of challenge such as is achievable, that is the challenge should not be too daunting but needs to such as can be perceived as a challenge. The question that arise for me is whether being able to deal with disjunction or stuckness is in part related to the personal challenge involved in the process.  In other words, does disjunction which leads to understanding involve a flow process?

Linking this to Second Life.  It can be anticipated that the introduction to Second Life will induce a range of different feelings within learners.  Some will be positive and some negative.  Being presented with the stress of being asked to create within Second Life presents learners with a challenge requiring a number of different learning experiences, some of which may lead to feelings of stuckness and disjunction.  How do learners deal with the difficulties they encounter in Second Life.  On reflection, how is the experience viewed? What are the factors which lead to a positive or a negative experience?  To what extent do students experience flow in meeting the challenges presented by creating projects in Second Life? Does the learner’s approach to Second Life - augmentalist or immersionist - make a difference to the way in which challenges are dealt with, or flow experienced?

Chen, H., Wigand, R. T., & Nilan, M. S. (1999). Optimal experience of Web activities. Computers in Human Behavior, 15(5), 585-608.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York,NY: Harper and Row.

Davies, P., & Mangan, J. (2007). Threshold concepts and the integration of understanding in economics. Studies in Higher Education, 32(6), 711-726.

Lather, P. (1998). Critical pedagogy and its complicities: A praxis of stuck places. Education Theory, 48(4), 487-498.

McCartney, R., Eckerdal, A., Mostrom, J. E., Sanders, K., & Zander, C. (2007). Successful students’ strategies for getting unstuck. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 12th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education.

Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2005). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. Higher Education, 49(3), 373-388.

Perkins, D. (1999). The Many Faces of Constructivism. Educational Leadership, 57(3), 6.

Savin-Baden, M. (2007). Second Life PBL: liminality, liquidity and lurking. Paper presented at the Reinventing Problem-based learning, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore.

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01/01/2009 by lizit.

Did a bit of searching after yesterday’s post.  I’ve tracked down a few recent papers which include reference to SL and flow but very little around with mention of flow and threshold concepts or troublesome learning.  Will hunt around a bit more with some other search terms and read the stuff I have found.

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31/12/2008 by lizit.

The more I read about flow, the more I find myself wondering if this is actually a serious concept or some kind of joke.  On the other hand, it is clearly taken seriously and a lot of work has been done relating the concept to VE, web usage, etc, etc.  There seems to be a general sense that it is when one is in a state of flow that there is maximum potential for learning.

I find I am questioning quite a lot of what I am reading - and some of it I am finding very difficult to take seriously - but if the basic assumption (and there does seem to be research to back it up) that learning is enhanced when in a flow state, then it is worth looking at in relation to SL and IVWs.

Thinking back to previous ideas about threshold concepts and stuckness, one of the aspects of flow is a sense of challenge (but challenge which is attainable rather than over-bearing).  Is there a connection between flow and being challenged appropriately so as to move beyond stuckness?

So using Chen (1999) as a model for considering what the attributes of flow might be in SL and Savin-Baden (2007) for what happens when stuckness occurs, how might this be related to SL and turned into something useful?

Chen, H., Wigand, R. T., & Nilan, M. S. (1999). Optimal experience of Web activities. Computers in Human Behavior, 15(5), 585-608.

Savin-Baden, M. (2007). Second Life PBL: liminality, liquidity and lurking. Paper presented at the Reinventing Problem-based learning, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore.

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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?

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06/10/2008 by lizit.

Background

Over the past 2-3 years there has been an increasing interest in the education community in the potential for using MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments) in learning and teaching.  There has been a particular interest in the virtual environment known as Second Life and a strong community of education professionals is developing. That this is not just an interest of a few individuals on the margins is evidenced by the recent £200,000 JISC funding to PREVIEW, a joint project of Coventry University, St George’s University of London and Kingston University to “investigate and evaluate a user-focused approach, linking the emerging technologies of virtual worlds with interactive PBLonline, to create immersive collaborative tutorials”. [i]

During the past 12 months there have been a number of major education conferences focussing on MUVEs and Second Life and more are planned in the coming months. Some of these have been held entirely within the virtual environment - Second Life Best Practices in Education: Teaching, Learning, and Research 2007 International Conference, some have been held in the real world and streamed into the virtual world – Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2007: Virtual worlds, real learning? and others take place in the real world with workshops in the virtual world - Researching Learning in Virtual Environments - ReLIVE08.

I have been involved personally in Second Life for about 18 months.  During that time, I have explored the virtual world, visited many of the educational facilities, engaged in discussion on the SLED (Second Life Educators) list, and been involved in facilitating projects in Second Life through The Open University, the University of Sussex and the Sussex Learning Network.  In general, I have been disappointed by the tendency of much of the educational presence in Second Life to replicate real life educational facilities and environments rather than make use of the possibilities inherent in the virtual world.

Focus of research

Following on from the ILE 08 project undertaken with the University of Sussex, I intend to further explore the potential of Second Life as a learning environment.  It has been suggested that Second Life provides an opportunity to reinvent problem based learning in an environment free of many of the constraints of the real world. [ii] In the same paper, Savin-Baden begins to explore the relationship between Second Life as a transitional learning space and threshold concepts as discussed by Meyer and Land. [iii]  In reading this discussion I was strongly reminded of the language I encountered in therapy and personal growth circles in the 1980s, for example “Transitional spaces are places where shifts in learner experience occur, caused by a challenge to the person’s life-world in particular areas of their lives, at different times and in distinct ways. The notion of transition carries with it the idea of movement from one place to another and with it the necessity of taking up a new position in a different place. Leaving the position and entering the transition may also be fraught with difficulties that may result in further disjunction for the student….” If in the same passage, the words “learner” and “student” were replaced by “patient” or “client”, the passage would not be out of place in a psycho-therapy or counselling text.

ILE 08 presented students with the task of developing learning experiences in Second Life for real life clients. The clients were asked to identify learning themes which were difficult, dangerous or impossible to teach in real life.  In ILE 09 it is proposed to look for clients within the University of Sussex, but instead of presenting problems which are difficult to teach, identifying projects where learners experience problems, including disjunction. ILE 09 students will be asked to develop learning experiences in the virtual space relevant to these areas of troublesome knowledge, and may themselves undergo a learning transition in order to understand the concept they are working with.

Contribution to knowledge

The research project will explore:

• The potential of Second Life for developing learning environments in areas where students experience problematic learning experiences;
• Whether learning experiences in a virtual environment can affect the degree of disjunction experienced by students confronted with threshold concepts;
• Whether the experience of learning does in any way correlate with the experience of therapeutic change

Methodology

ILE 08 gave an opportunity to pilot the development of learning experiences in Second Life. This needs to be reflected on and lessons learned identified before proceeding to ILE 09. Areas to be considered are the preparation and infrastructure of the project as well as the actual content and how the products have been utilised.

ILE09 provides an opportunity for a more structured approach:

There are 3 distinct areas of activity which are of interest:

• The ILE students, their response to a problem based learning scenario and their use of Second Life
• The learning experience of students on other courses when experience in a virtual world is offered – including the need to distinguish the learning curve of getting into Second Life with the learning experience being presented in Second Life
• The nature of learning experiences themselves and the extent to which therapeutic language is appropriate in describing the movement from “stuckness” to ownership of knowledge

Relevant Work by others

There is a considerable amount of work being undertaken in Second Life by academic institutions in the UK, the USA and elsewhere. There is a need to clarify which of this is most relevant to this project and to engage in networking with others involved in the field.

Meyer and Land have provided the lead on thinking about threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge.  The Teaching and Learning Network at the University of Cambridge has been extending this work through projects undertaken by the Centre for Applied Research into Educational Technologies (CARET).[iv]

[i] http://www.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/d/467/a/4432

[ii] Savin-Baden, M. (2007) Second Life PBL: Liminality, Liquidity and Lurking

[iii] Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R. Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: issues of liminality, in Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R. (2006) (eds) Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. Abingdon: RoutledgeFalmer

[iv] http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/tel/index.html

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