Personal Blogs

Post in response to H817 Learning Design Studio Activity 2: Virtual teamwork

Participating in the Learning Design Studio activity gives us (as groups of students) the chance to work much more collaboratively on a single venture - the development of an online course. This represents a considerable 'ramping up' of the nature of our online interactions, beyond what has up until now been a mix of debate and supportive behaviours - 'geeing' each other along if you will.

To help us reflect on the nature of the teamwork that we will need to enact, we can consider the 'Big Five' (Kay et. al. 2006) and coordinating mechanisms for teamwork.

Figure from Salas et. al. (2005)

Firstly, all of these would appear to be very closely linked (if not the same as) critical digital literacies that we have come across in considering participation in MOOCs; McAuley et. al. (2010)

Thinking about our upcoming Learning Design Studio activity, the ones that immediately stand out to me are:
Shared Mental Models - I see this as being a mix of Vision and Strategy - the 'what' and 'how' of the project. It will be interesting to see how we create this in our small project team on the Learning Design course, since we've only had limited contact with each other, and never met face-to-face. I've witnessed a lack of vision and strategy in teams many times, but I've never undertaken a project in this virtual environment: I imagine it will be even more critical to our success.

Back up behaviour - I've been known on occasion to cut myself off a bit, which would potentially pose a risk here: we need to all be in-the-loop to spot when potential back-up behaviour might be needed.

Looking at the diagram is perhaps a more interesting activity than reflecting on each of the Big 5 and the coordinating mechanisms. While they are all important, I can see that we won't have them all in equal measure. But if we look at the diagram, we can perhaps assess which components we have in place at the moment, and see how critical they are (to do this, I'm making a judgement that they increase in criticality for the success of the project with an increasing number of connections to other components).

By this (very one-dimensional) measure, Shared Mental Models, Back up Behaviour, Leadership and Team Orientation appear to have more critical interdependencies than the rest. Superficially then we could consider these the most important to get right from the word go.

References:

Kay, J., Maisonneuve, N., Yacef, K. and Reimann, P. (2006) ‘The big five and visualisations of team work activity’ in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Berlin/Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 197–206.

Salas, E., Sims, D. and Burke, C. (2005) ‘Is there a “Big Five” in teamwork?’, Small Group Research, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 555–99.

Post in response to H817 activity 13: Connectivism

This theory attempts to assert that changes in technology have changed the activity of learning - a new learning theory.
 
Key foundations:
- Learners move across a variety of unrelated professional fields over their career lifetime
- Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience (formal eduacation provides the minority). CoPs, personal networks and work-related teaks are more important sources.
- Learning is a continual process, and is not separate from working – they are the same!
- The tools we use define and shape our thinking - Well I agree that they make us devote our thinking effort proportionally to different activities.
- Information storage and processing processes can now be off-loaded or supported by technology
- Where to find info is a critical skill
 
I broadly agree with Driscoll's (2000) definition of leraning: 'a persisting change in human performance or performance potential... [which] must come about as a result of the learner's experience and interaction with te world'
 
I see the following as a continuum:
1) Objectivism (similar to behaviouralism) reality is external and objective. Knowledge gained through experiences
2) Pragmatism (similar to cognitivism) reality is interpreted. Knowledge is negotiated through experience and thinking
3) Interpretivism (similar to constructivism) reality is internal. Knowledge is constructed.
 
Similar to Poppers (?) "theory - empirical evidence continnum". If we cannot experience without interpreting external things. Learning is a product of both processes. However, I can conceive that some learning might fall toward one end of the continuum. For example, learning about an abstract scientific theory, might involve more objectivism. Something more personal to you, and subjective, might be more interpretive. I tentatively put forward an argument that in the more messy work situations we find ourselves in, more decision making, and therefore associated learning, falls toward the interpretive end.
 
Question - is one end of this continuum, more than the other, associated with innovation?
 
Principles for connectivism
*       Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
*       Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
*       Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
*       Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
*       Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
*       Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
*       Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
*       Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

What I think is important about Constructivism:

Constructivism raises 2 important considerations to existing learning theories:
1) There is more cognitive effort of the individual put into a process of evauating whether knowledge is worth acquiring, before expending effort to learn it.
2) The skill in making connections and synthesising different bits of knowledge has become more important where there is easy access to vast quantities of it.
 
In these ways, I do believe that elearning has a difference balance of learner activities than other forms of learning.

Reflection point - How did I decide this course was worth doing?
- I think I wanted people input - I wanted connectivity. Did I subconsiously realise that this was valuable?
 
 
Connectivism says that we expand our access to experiences (though second hand access to other peoples' experiences) though technology. Our connections are surrogates for our knowledge. Karen Stephenson's quote
"Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people's experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. 'I store my knowledge in my friends' is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people (undated)."
 
Connectivism als talks about an issue of organisational learning. I think there is an issue of the asynchronous timing of planning, learning and decision-making activities, and our difficulties in making these work effectively in organisations. The actors in each of these processes are not weakly tied. Often they are not tied at all!
 

 
Most useful bit of this theory for my own professional context:  Connectivism talks about creating the optimal flow of knowledge through an organisation via interdependence and weak ties. Perhaps this is a good model for what training organisations should
provide:
*       An infrastrucure that supports interdepence and weak ties
*       Supports the development of skills to navigate
*       Supports the connectivity of ideas and individual nodes
*       Makes special effort to connect large scale diverse knowledge areas with small ones (perhaps work-based communities of practice)
 
The above should lead to an amplification of relevant learning!
Design of learning implications

References:

Driscoll, M. (2000) Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Needham Heights, MA, Allyn & Bacon

Stephenson, K., (Internal Communication, no.36) What Knowledge Tears Apart, Networks Make Whole. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://www.netform.com/html/icf.pdf

Seimens, G. (2004) Connetivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age