A collaborative constructionist learning environment for teachers

Diana Laurillard (IOE)

George Magoulas (Birkbeck)

Elizabeth Masterman (Oxford)London Knowledge Lab

AERA 2010

OutlineHow might we speed up high quality innovation in TEL?

LDSE: a Learning Design Support Environment to help with this

Seeing teaching as a design science

Teachers discover their epistemologies for TEL

Teachers also need to learn through collaboration

And through practice, experiences – constructionism

System features attempt to emulate an iterative design process

www.lkl.ac.uk

Theoretical backgroundConstructionist learning as ‘building knowledge structures… in

a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity’ (Papert and Harel 1991)

Social constructivism: ‘the members of the community serve as active agents in the construction of outcomes and activities that produce a developmental cycle’ (Shaw & Shaw, 1999)

Collaboration: ‘a coordinated synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem’ (Roschelle and Teasley 1995)

Knowledge building: “the capacity to create new knowledge and ideas… collaborative problem-solving… needs optimal environments for knowledge-building” (Scardamalia, 2010)

Building designs of Modules and

Sessions

Context-sensitive help provided on

what Session Types to choose, given LOs

Learning Outcomes for this session have

been selected

Teaching methods selected are online tutorial,

discussion and game

LDSE has interpreted the nature of the learning experience as ‘social’

A working model of the LDSE engine

Timeline for the learning designRepresentation of

learning experience as ‘social

Two new teaching-learning activities are

selected from given list (essay and digital library)

• building on the work of others in their field;• seeking new insights and ways of rethinking their

field; • constructing ideas, to experiment, investigate and

reflect on results;• sharing ideas with collaborative teams of respected

peers;• disseminating findings for peer review and use by

others

Emulating features of a design science

"This is where people start to get keen because they can build from what other people have built. That's when people start to say ‘Wooh: I’m not reinventing the wheel.’ That's what people like."

"You don’t want a tool just to reflect what you do now. I would like a tool that would cover what I do now so I feel confident, but it would also help me to develop my own learning. […] to make me think out of the box a bit more."

Practising constructive alignment

[Laurillard 2006]

T-L activities

Conventional model,

classroom based

Blended model, real and virtual,

local and global

Model returns effect of

design on ‘type of

learning’ elicited, ‘learning

experience’, ‘teacher

time’, and ‘learner time in class’

Modelling time costs and learning benefits

Model

"I like the idea of ‘what if’ […] What I want is something I can play with."

• building on the work of others in their field;• seeking new insights and ways of rethinking their

field; • resourced to test ideas, experiment, investigate and

reflect on results;• constructing ideas, to collaborative teams of

respected peers;• disseminating findings for peer review and use by

others

Emulating features of a design scienceCapturing a pedagogical pattern

Computationally interpretable representation of a pedagogical pattern

“this one is better for thinking, because I think linear, to make me think what aspects of the Conversational Framework I am doing… I want to know if I am providing opportunities in terms of [those categories]”

• building on the work of others in their field; search• seeking new insights and ways of rethinking their

field; • resourced to experiment, investigate and reflect on

results; • constructing ideas, to collaborative teams of

respected peers;• disseminating findings for peer review and use by

others “it is good this, it is really structured, to help you think through what you’re doing… “

Emulating features of a design science

User requirementsThe importance of being able to adapt and customise:

“I don’t know anybody who has stuck with the same thing from what they’ve borrowed: there is this desire to edit it and make it yours because your areas of focus will be different“

The importance of beginning where they already are:

“you learn about the unfamiliar through the familiar. So if you can have a familiar element that means people still think they’re safe, you can challenge them that bit more so they will go a bit further”

The importance of an iteration between theory and practice:

“I’d regard theories as ways of critiquing something that I’d built in the first place, which would then possibly lead me to redesign it quite a lot, but… I don’t see the theories as being… sufficiently constraining to actually generate a design”

SummaryDeveloping the ‘microworld’ for learning design

Make teaching more like design research: a learning process

Give academics the means for exploring new pedagogies

Planning, modelling, experimentation, evaluation, sharing

academics as digital innovators,

treating teaching as a design science

Dejan Ljubojevic

Patricia Charlton

Brock Craft

Steve Ryan

Kim Whittlestone

Marion MantonTom Boyle

Notes• Kapur, 2008, 2010: productive failure – fficacy to get

students to engage in ill-structured problems, provided there is follow-up structured to which they can transfer p-s ideas. Contrast didactic with s generate mult reps, with later instruction or structured problems, etc.

• Problem: from data on sports, who is the most consistent player over time – used familiar stats, and graph reps.

• Important to combine didactic with constructive and p-s, rather than contrast

Notes• Jacobson – assumptions about pedagogical sequences – tend

to be structured then unstructured open-ended – like cognitive apprenticeship (structured – ‘but not highly’ – Collins), guided inquiry – tend to minimise frustration.

• NetLogo model of Ohms Law – compared prod failure and non-prod failure

• Trad: Worksheet – lab – explain observation• Prod F: Work on problem• Then both have same worksheet• H-H-L vs L-H-L –big effect size for PF group• Tested also with teachers.

Notes• Think – ask – understand – similar to PF but also collaboration

phase at start• Nikol Rummel• Delay of content-related support _ collaboration script to

support stdents’ interaction• Begin with collab phase where students ask, etc.• Compared TAU with didactic – one solution

Notes on TEL sessionEnsemble – supporting case-based pedagogies with SemWebMachine-readable meaningful representations of content +

aggregate different resources, and display visuallyCBL: how are cases used within a pedagogy – for bringing reality

into the classroom, role of technology here - microworlds? Involves collaborative, and exploratory learning? But being reduced versions of the world, do not actually model reality

Give the web a definition of what you want and it finds the content you want.

Want to find a common way to describe the pedagogy and the technology that could support it

Notes on TEL sessionAndy diSessaEpistemological effects on techThemes – representation and thought; tacit knowledgeGalileo – Two new sciences – you need algebra – Representations we use are infrastructure for

thinking ‘material intelligence’Education is about knowledge – what is the nature of knowledge. Not necessarily propositional

knowledge. Not good terminology for epistemology.Tacit knowledge – the frontier in our epistemological u/sNoss – generalisation is not in the curriculum – not the same thing as abstraction; you see

variables vary; BUT how get to algebra? Could they design their own representations?San Diego et al – success-based feedback vs substantial feedback – converts technical symbolic

displays into action and perception – how do you help them learn the feel?Mercer et al – collaboration as knowledge-drivenScanlon et al – do scripts suggest the right things to think about Laurillard et al – good on learning by design, AC – logo like but not Boxer like – as that is tool-sets

for people to design their own – could be a toolkit for them to assemble their own

Notes on TEL sessionQuestionsPI - Do teachers make use of the ‘IBL Octagon’? – not clear yetSynergyNet – font size can be altered? – yesEnsemble - Do the cases not work because of certain disciplines

are not familiar with CBL? Unlike medicine etc.