Education and Information Technologies 10:3, 157163, 2005.c 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Learning Our Way Forward in eLearning:The Story of Something FishyS EAMUS O CANAINN AND JEAN HUGHESBlackrock Education Centre, Kill Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, Ireland; School of Science and Technology,Institute of Art Design Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, IrelandE-mail: seamus@blackrockec.ieE-mail: jean.hughes@iadt.ie

Abstract

This paper describes how a number of unlikely publishing partners unexpectedly found themselves exploringeLearning as a medium for teacher and pupil learning. Blackrock Education Centre supports teachers throughprofessional development programmes and the publication of educational resources under the auspices of theDepartment of Education and Science (DES) in the Republic of Ireland. This paper describes how the intention tocreate a standard primary school classroom resource by the Education Centre has been unexpectedly transformedin ways which have enabled us to explore eLearning in partnership with a local Institute of Technology, IADT.In doing so, we have ourselves become learners in unexpected ways with our teachers and students. The paperdescribes how intentions emerge in conversation in processes of local interaction and that the strategic directionof an organisation (in our case, our unexpected involvement in eLearning) is best understood in retrospect.It is about how our identity is transformed in our learning and how strategy can be viewed as an emergentproperty of relationships. The learning resource is entitled Something Fishy, a humorous play on an Englishexpression meaning something a little suspicious, even subversive. Somethnig Fishy can be viewed at www.somethingfishy.ie

Keywords: elearning, strategy, emergence, conversation, complexity

The process of producing Something Fishy began with a request to the Blackrock EducationCentre from the Central Fisheries Board (CFB) to assist them in publishing a classroompack on the work of the Board. Over the next year other partners joined in an unplanned way,including most importantly, the Institution for Art Design and Technology (IADT), a collegein the Irish polytechnic sector. This unplanned process and the collaboration betweendiverse partners was what allowed the emergence of a novel and unexpected outcome thatwent far beyond our initial expectations. Our unintended exploration of eLearning is anexample of how strategy emerges in practice.

In describing this initiative at this point in time it is important to emphasise that theprocess is not complete: in fact I will argue that by looking at the project from the insidewhile it is unfinished will give a better understanding of the emergence of strategy in theprocess. I hope that this will communicate a better sense of the interactions taking placeand the opportunities and choices we face continually, and which at the end of the day area better indicator of what is going on in our organisation than any final summary report.

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In taking this approach I am aware that I am in conflict with prevailing mainstreamthinking on strategic planning, with its emphasis on goal setting in moving towards aknowable future. My contention will be that strategic direction emerges in continuouscommunicative interaction between human beings. It emerges in what John Shotter callsa zone of indeterminacy, a zone of uncertainty. . . a zone between actions (what I as anindividual do) and events (what actually happens to, in, or around me, outside of myagency to control (Shotter, 1993:38). This activity Shotter describes as joint action,which though it will produce unintended and unpredictable outcomes does nonetheless havean intentional quality to it which is apparent to the participants. In this process strategicdirection is continually being negotiated and is really only evident in retrospect:

Strategic management is the process of actively participating in the conversationsaround important emerging issues. Strategic direction is not set in advance but un-derstood in hindsight as it is emerging or after it has succeeded (Stacey, 2000: 413,italics added).

The Blackrock Education Centre is primarily concerned with teacher professional devel-opment under the auspices of the Department of Education and Science (DES) in Ireland.We also have our own publishing and consultancy division which generates a significantindependent income which enables us to take our own initiatives. It was in the latter capac-ity, as publishers, that we were approached by an unusual educational partner, the CentralFisheries Board.

The Central Fisheries Board in Ireland has responsibility for inland fisheries includingimmediate coastal areas and had wanted to promote a greater awareness of its role amongschools by publishing a curriculum resource pack and poster. The Education Centre hasconsiderable experience of this kind of publishing and we agreed to meet with them. Wemet, typically enough with their public relations people, because these kinds of publicationsare usually seen by sponsors as public relations exercises.

We spent a long time with them discussing the poster they had had designed and whichthey proposed distributing to schools with the proposed pack. Many fish species weredisplayed in full colour. We were a little apprehensive about becoming involved in a projectwhich just fed more information into schools which already had a surfeit of posters andpacks, and we sought to turn the discussion around. We probed them on the work of theBoard, what the Fisheries Officers do from day to day. It became clear that much of theirwork was concerned with negotiating with local authorities, farmers, construction foremen,industry about the quality of water in their local environment. If the water quality was notof a high standard, fish could not survive and there would be no industry.

It was my colleague Marian who had the moment of insight: Your job is to managehabitat was her observation. It was a brilliant observation because it enabled us to thinkof the work of the CFB in a way which would allow us to bring it into the classroomas an integral part of the curriculum and not just as a detached body of information. Ourmarketing friends were bemused at being told their job but they did see the sense of it. Itwas an exercise in joint action which to use another Shotter tool revealed something thatwas there in peoples experience but which was rationally invisible to those closest to it.

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It also had the effect of contributing to the formation of the identity of the Centre as wellas that of the Central Fisheries Board.

Fishermens Tales

However, we werent happy with meeting the public relations department only, and wesought a meeting with the CFB staff who worked in the field. This was arranged some timelater and we spent a very animated Friday afternoon participating in a discussion among amost agreeable and persuasive group of people who were so enthusiastic about their work.We had asked that they each describe what they do. What we hadnt realised when wesought the meeting was that this group had not met to converse like this before and that theyenjoyed hearing one anothers description of their work as much as we did. We noticed thatthey paid increasingly less attention to us. Occasionally we interjected and we tried out mycolleagues sense of the role of the Central Fisheries Board, as a manager of habitat. Wasthat how they saw their role on a day-to-day basis?

What we were trying out was a new way of looking at what they did, helping to create anew identity which would make sense in a classroom as well as among CFB staff. We werechallenging a patterned understanding of role that had emerged within the organisation overmany years. It was also possible of course that the idea of producing the educational packwas a defence against changes being imposed from the outside resulting from changes ingovernment policy. In suggesting a new way of looking at the organisation were we addingto anxiety that had been hidden from us?

As we conversed, a possibility began to emerge which we had not anticipated: it becameclear that some of these officers were already in the habit of visiting schools and on occasioninviting schools to lakes or rivers at important times -when rivers and lakes were being re-stocked. We wondered whether this could become part of the work of other Fisheries officersas part of the development of the pack. It wasnt possible to develop this idea as much as wewould have liked at that time, but we had a tantalising glimpse of how another resource couldbe made available in a way which would be very beneficial to the environment and wouldalso enable our colleagues in the Central Fisheries Board to get their message across. Atthe heart of this suggestion was the realisation that the formation of real relationships withreal people would be more persuasive to children than information however well presented.

Patricia Shaw writes of the transformative activity of conversing in her book ChangingConversations in Organizations (Shaw, 2002). I felt that in the conversations in which wewere engaged with the Central Fisheries Board we were together transforming our way ofviewing ourselves and our way of viewing one another. The Education Centre was helpingthe Central Fisheries Board to create a sense of its changing identity in our conversation. Atthe same time the Centre was being transformed and we could each glimpse possible futures.

Teacher Professional DevelopmentA New Partner on Board

When we agreed with CFB to write the materials, the Education Centre undertook toorganise the necessary teacher professional development at our own expense. This would

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be a cost to the Centre and we hoped that we would be able to persuade other EducationCentre colleagues in the Irish network to also take part. While thinking about it, I had aconversation with Jean Hughes, a colleague from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology(IADT DL), our neighbour in Dun Laoghaire. Jean had just completed a training coursewith Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada and chaired the eLearning interestgroup in IADT. We discussed whether we might try out our fish project as an eLearninginitiative: IADT had the software and the technical skills; we had the content and the clients.The content was well written and designed with a curriculum focus so it was relativelyeasy to present on the web. We decided to explore the possibility of providing teacherprofessional development as a web-based project, something we hadnt considered at thebeginning.

Once again there had been no master plan, just the judgement that could recognise anopportunity that we had co-created in conversation. The Education Centre has taken somepride in being in the vanguard in relation to some developments in ICTs in education in thepast. We had not yet been involved in eLearning for teachers, or as we put it, integratingICTs into teacher learning. We were also of course conscious of the interest the Departmentof Education and Science (DES) had in eLearning and here was a wonderful opportunity toexplore it. The CFB had paid for the materials development and the Centre was partneringwith IADT a college with unique expertise in digital media to add a dimension to our workthat we hadnt explored before. Unexpectedly, we were now talking about possibly the firstindigenously designed bi-lingual eLearning project for Irish teachers.

We wanted to pilot the materials and we sought the collaboration of colleagues in otherEducation Centres. 17 of us turned up in the IADT on a cold November morning to take partin the training. All of the teachers had some experience of ICTs and were enthusiastic aboutactive environmental learning. None had experience of eLearning. At that initial meeting,Jean agreed to be on line for chat and discussion during the week. The time chosen wasunusual and for me unexpected: when the kids are in bed9.00 to 10.00 pm. Mondays andWednesdays. Its not a time that we would have thought of for teacher training.

Once the on-line chat started it became apparent that the materials were being used inways which we hadnt expected. Intended as a teachers resource, the teachers quickly beganto use the online material in the classroom and got a remarkably positive response from thechildren. We began to think that the electronic version of our project would take precedenceover the hard copy in the classroom. That was curious because, in our first conversation withthe Central Fisheries Board, a poster and worksheets were the intended outcomes, and wehadnt even considered using the internet. Once again the conversation between participantswas setting the direction of the project in unexpected ways. This continued over severalmonths of the pilot.

We met with the teachers on a further occasion to reflect on what we had learnt, andto speculate on where we might go next. It was evident from our discussions that thecurrent form of the resource was not well suited to childrens use. This wasnt altogethersurprising because what we had put on the web had been designed for teachers and itwas on the teachers initiative that it had been used in the classroom before it had beenmodified. We were asked why more animation and video hadnt been included. The answerwas simple: we had designed the resource for production as hard copy and had been put

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on the web for teacher training in a pilot project. The issues which were coming up hadto do with the capabilities of another medium and schools didnt have the bandwidthbut could Something Fishy act as a driver for broadband in schools? This wasnt entirelyspeculative because the Central Fisheries Board is under the control of the Departmentof Communications, Natural Resources and the Marine, and the Secretary General of theDepartment, who had seen the project had expressed great interest.

Other comments included the observation that Something Fishy should be used as a stim-ulus for other classroom work, rather than being studied exclusively as a generic project onfish: that students should be encouraged to explore aspects of their own local environment asa response to using the material we had devised. In fact several of the teachers recommendedthat the web based materials not be too well finished: it should be up to the teacher and herclass to add their own material. If it were too polished, there would be less inclination to en-gage with it. A question I was concerned about was whether the exercise we had engaged incould be described as professional development at all. Hadnt the professional developmentdimension been lost as the teachers resource had been translated into a classroom resourcestraight away? One teacher responded with the very acute observation that the professionaldevelopment was taking place in the classroom. Another referred to the chat rooms as alearning environment. None of them had used chat rooms before and not all used it in thecourse of the pilot project. This led me back again to my earlier observation that it is in theengagement that we are giving shape to our learning: the Education Centre and IADT arelearning about eLearning by doing it. Teachers are learning to use web based resources inthe classroom by doing it. Something Fishy has also prompted several pieces of research:one participant is doing a Masters thesis on it and a lecturer in IADT has used it for studentresearch in a course on instructional design.

Arising from these conversations with teachers and with colleagues in other EducationCentres, other opportunities have begun to emerge. The Blackrock Education Centre andIADT will collaborate in a teacher professional development course in July which will focuson the creation of locally developed resources which will supplement the resources providedby Something Fishy. But well do it in a different way to anything weve tried before:the participants will be trained in the use of digital media and in the use of instructionaldesign software (Web CT) and will then be required to produce their own resources in theirlocal environments. The course will be offered at the same time in three widely dispersedEducation Centres linked by video conferencing over a period of the week of July 5th9th.Teachers in each of the three locations will work in their own environments and collaborateand share with colleagues in other parts of the country. The intention is that they will learnto develop digital media resources based on the natural environment in their own localities,and do so in a collaborative interaction with colleagues in other parts of the country. It willbe a course in instructional design using ICT and based on resources in their own immediatelocality, using Something Fishy as a stimulus.

Another interesting suggestion brings us back to the afternoon we met the CFB offi-cials: in organising a local course during the summer shouldnt we invite the local fisheriesofficers to take part to assist in identifying local resources and opportunities for contin-uing cooperation. This would make a lot of sense in addressing our original objective ofmaking the work of the CFB better known to school children, but it would also make it

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possible to form the local relationship that would help in bringing the curriculum out of theclassroom.

A complex process

Looking back it will probably look as if Blackrock Education Centre, IADT and the CentralFisheries Board had set out to design an eLearning project, but of course we didnt, andgiven that it has been such a dynamic project to date, we are reluctant to speculate onany final state. There is a real sense of our not knowing what we are doing. Howeverthere is something extraordinarily exciting about engaging with our not knowing in goingforward. It is in engaging with our not knowing that we co-create new knowledge incontinuous interaction with our many collaborators. And the range of those taking part inthe conversations is increasing: the children who took part in the pilot project contributeddirectly, by way of email and through sharing their experiences with their teachers. Theproject is being shaped by the users, teachers and students in the very process of usingit. Lessons have been revised on the suggestion of users, and the recent announcementof broadband to all schools encourages us to explore the addition of video and animationduring the coming months.

We dont know much about eLearning as a tool in teacher professional development,but were learning as we use it in a process of continuous transformation in conversation.I think of it as continuous co-creation of identity. And all of us are creating our identity:obvious institutional partners are the Blackrock Education Centre, the Central FisheriesBoard, the IADT, Dun Laoghaire, and indeed the Primary Curriculum Support Programmewhose curriculum acts as an enabling constraint on our course design. But also participatingin this transformative process are all the groups and individuals whose sense of themselvesand the sense that others make of us is changing in unforeseen and unpredictable ways.

Stacey et al. (2000) describe organisations as complex responsive processes of relatingwithin the causal framework of transformative teleology. By describing human organising inthis way they are challenging taken for granted assumptions about causality and agency.Organisational change can best be understood, not as the outcome of rational decision-making by senior management, nor as the unfolding of some mature form of an alreadyexisting state. They contend that the future is continually under construction in the present,what they call transformative teleology, teleology meaning final cause. This means that therelational processes of communication are themselves actively constructing the future inthe present and that the future is unknowable in advance:

Throughout, the process is characterised by the paradox of the known-unknown andin it emerges the aims people formulate, the goals they set, the intentions they formand the choices they make. What is being expressed here is individual and collectiveidentity at the same time (Stacey et al., 2000:188,9).

The process I have described seems to me to be a much better indicator of how strategyemerges in an organisation and of how we learn our way forward in practice, than any patdescription of a finished and polished initiative.

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References

Aram, E. (2001) The Experience of Complexity: Learning as Potential Transformation of Identity. UnpublishedPhD Thesis, University of Hertfordshire.

Paechter, C., Edwards, R., Harrison, R., and Twining, P. (2001) Learning, Space and Identity Paul ChapmanPublishing in association with the Open University, London.

Schon, D. A. (1991) The Reflective Practitioner. Aldershot, Ashgate.Shaw, P. (2002) Changing Conversations in Organisations. Routledge, London and New York.Shotter, J. (1993) Conversational Realities. Sage, London.Shotter, J. (2003) Participatory action research: A finished classical science or a research science? unpublished

article.Stacey, R. (2000) Strategic Management and Organizational Dynamics, 3rd edition. Financial Times/Prentice Hall

Pearson Educational, Harlow Essex.Stacey, R., Griffin, D., and Shaw, P. (2000) Complexity and Management. Routledge, London.