Designing for Emergent Learning

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Barbara Berry -
Number of replies: 10

Hi Jenny, 

Yes, I completely agree and like the idea of designing "environments" that will bring abouot emergence and emergent learning. This will call for some flexibility and/or opportunity for expansion of what is possible and what is valued in the environment. I can see that what I might value for myself as a "learning" might not be valued by a colleague, or a teacher or a boss for instance. So, this raises other questions about who get's to decide what is of value for another person? Hmmmm

cheers, 

Barb

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Phillip Rutherford -

Barbara - we have had a great deal of success with, in your words 'designing' the environment so that learning occurs. Not so much in the classroom but certainly in the workplace where the post-training evaluation takes place. We call it 'shaping' because it enables us to re-'shape' the environment in order to take advantage of the learning as it emerges. Our experience is that trying to 'design' the environment actually imposes a barrier and, once the 'design' barrier is hurdled then learning either stops or goes in a different direction. In order to harness this we continually move the bifurcation point so that the pace and direction of learning is in line with our agreed vision.

 

In reply to Phillip Rutherford

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Scott Johnson -

Phillip,

Can you explain 'shaping'? I'm thinking it means adapting or responding to activity in the environment?

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Phillip Rutherford -

Scott - shaping means preparing the environment in such a way that the emergent learning is 'shaped'.

For example, information based activities such as meetings, networks, communities of practice are designed with a specific learning endstate in mind. Conditions for emergent learning such as procedures, policies, long-learning or feedback information and decision making loops (where the emphasis is on accuracy) or short feedback loops (where the emphasis is on avoiding errors) are established and monitored. These long/short feedback loops are important as they not only facilitate a shaped learning environment but incorporate a kind of creative chaos which slows down/speeds up the learning thereby making it more resilient.

We have only used this with employees and as a means of creating robust learning organisations. I don't know how they would go in a pedagogical environment. Intuitively there shouldn't be a problem, and testing it would be interesting.

 

In reply to Phillip Rutherford

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Scott Johnson -

Thanks Phillip,

Like the idea of short and long loops. Was thinking of my last job where short deadlines usually resulted in greater accuracy, but only because it allowed us to refuse distractions and other assignments until finished. That said, it did force us to trim details and I wonder if what we lost fidelity to our "good enough" attitude?

My experience with teams are that we roughly split into 'production' and 'detail' groups with oversight in the middle. This works for doing things but I wonder if it creates a learning space in the sense that people could go beyond automatic activity to actual problem solving?

In reply to Phillip Rutherford

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Roy Williams -

Phillip, shaping is interesting, and works at many levels. 

If you are monitoring events, and shaping conditions, on a dynamic, ongoing basis, we would call that 'designing for emergence'. They key for us (and I guess it might be for you too) is that shaping conditions as part of a dynamic process of 'mutual adaptation' (or mutual co-evolution, in complexity terms) is quite different from 'setting' conditions, which is what we would call prescriptive design, or design for compliance.  

In systems terms, its the difference between creating a design, shutting down the design process, and then starting the event (setting the conditions and outcomes) - on the one hand, or continuing the design process throughout, on an adaptive, dynamic, co-evolutionary basis (shaping the conditions, not outcomes) on the other hand. 

Which means that both the design and the learning have to emerge simultaneously.  In principle, as soon as the design process 'ends', emergence is likely to end or to reduce drastically. 

So ... is there a straightforward way of describing and naming  'design 1' and 'design 2'?  Are they both 'design' (or are neither 'design'?).  

Perhaps the problem is that once we use the term 'design' to try and describe what we are doing, most people think we are talking of design as 'setting' the conditions (in micro-bytes of stone). 

'Heuticulture' (a mashup of heutagogy and horticulture) is the only option I have for this, but it's just too convoluted - I think it's like a joke that needs too much explaining. (Maybe it'll catch on, who knows).

There is a way to approach this that we get from Dave Snowden's work on complexity, management and leadership, namely to turn the design process upside down, which achieves much the same thing - viz: design by specifying the negative conditions (what should not happen) rather than the positive conditions (what should happen) in learning - as far as is possible.  

So specifying an outcome state (which might be stable or unstable) rather than specific outcomes might suffice too, no?  

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Phillip Rutherford -

Roy,

I like a lot of what Snowden says, particularly his thoughts on knowledge management, but my experience is slightly different. I am more in the camp of Clancy or Shaw who see compexity and emergence as forever iterative simply because the act of change creates each time a different platform from which to launch further change.

As for your comments about 'heuticulture' - I had to laugh. Although I suspect that horticulture still requires a certain 'hands on' approach from the master gardener. Had you thought of the Lamarkian biology?

I am also of two minds with the 'creation' and 'shutting down' of design. Isn't it the aim of emergent learning that learning never starts - nor stops? That learning is because it is? (How Kantian of me.) I don't know, but it sounds like something that is perhaps better discussed over a good red wine :-)

Phil

 

In reply to Phillip Rutherford

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Roy Williams -

Phillip, key texts / ideas from Clancy or Shaw?  Tell me more, please.  I agree that emergence is forever iterative, and have written extensively on affordances in much the same light (see here ... ).

Horticulture is possibly more 'hands on', but I take my cue from Montessori education, in which 'hands off' (and silent demonstration) are key. So a mashup of the two, perhaps. 

I had not realised that Lamark forumulated the idea of evolution pushing biology 'up the chain' of complexity, and in effect countering the hegemony of physics, and the widespread epidemic of 'physics envy' that is still prevalent in social science, and in learning research.  The misapplication of the second law of themodynamics has a lot to answer for. 

I'll join you in the red wine conversation - always a useful prop to have for emergent learning. 

Design - sure, I only realised recently (perhaps I should have read more Kant, and less Barthes) that the discouse of design is largely colonised by people who see it as something that ends before the learning starts. Emegent learning, emergent design, co-evolution of structure and agency, or should we just say co-evolution of design and learning - that feels much better to me, maybe we should change the name of the first quadrant to that Design/Learning? 

 

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Roy Williams -

Hi Barb, one of the issues we faces when we started out was there seemed to be lots of designs which tried to second guess what might be good for learners, and lots of research which asked learners what their learning experience was like ...

But none of this (as far as we could see ...) treated the process as a dynamic, adaptive, changing process - it was generally treated as a single event - one experience. 

Our research and interviews with learners (in our NLC papers some time back) seemed to be telling us something quite different - that learning experience, and strategy, and response, and style could all change substantially during a learning event.  So we tried to find a way to describe that - as learners, as designers, as teachers, as researchers.  

What this yields is a series of snapshots of learning by a range of people, at a range of times.  Not the kind of convenient 'big data' that you can enter into a computer and ask it to do the thinking for you - its messy stuff that you have to engage with - preferably by engaging with the footprints (and showing your own, messy ones too) and with the people concerned.  Its a big-mulit-triangulation process, not a convenient bid-data process.  (Aside: convenient data is like convenience food - very tempting, but not necessarily good for you or sustainable). 

So ... maybe no 'one' decides what's good for your or 'them' - you ask yourself and everyone else to describe their experience/s, and then compare notes, have a conversation, and see what comes out of it.  

mmmmm.... does that i) make sense and ii) appeal to you?  

If not ... well, you might not have come to the right webinar! 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Designing for Emergent Learning

by Barbara Berry -

Hi Roy, 

Messy indeed and yes, this all makes sense ot me. The biggest issue we all face is imposing what we think will work on others and it usually doesn't hit the mark so acknowledging emergence and being able to recognize opportunities to all for emergence  is likely one of the biggest learnings for both learners and instructors especially within systems where "constraint" and overarching expectations seem to be the name of the game. 

Yes, the descriptions clearly are a way to open up the conversations among students and instructional teams and across the board.  I like to also think of this tool as having sociomaterial properties and thus is part of the process of discovery. 

speak with you again!

Barb

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Shadow courses?

by Roy Williams -

Barb, sorry you could not make the webinar, but the recording will be up soon I'm sure. 

I think there are many 'closet' opportunities for emergence (via online social media, but also via f2f meetings and encounters (which might be circulated via tweets and blogs) that we miss in our teaching.  Making people mindful of the opportunities, and the 'closet emergence' going on around us could open up things, even within the constraints of compliance that are imposed on us (and on students) - it really is possible (and desirable???) to encourage 'shadow courses' alongside formal courses, and to start to connect between  them. 

And yes on both counts - i) particularly if we all take 'description' seriously, footprints are an interesting way to start a non-judgemental conversation between members of an instructional team and students, conversations which are normally compartmentalised into 'us' and 'them' (and the 'evaluators'). 

And ii) footprints are definitely a sociomaterial part of discovery - in all its aspects: cognitive, affective, professional, and various 'communities'.  In our previous work on narratives, students definitely said the 'prompted narrative' exploration of their learning was a major part of what they learnt on their course, despite the fact that it had no formal relationship with their course, and didn't 'count' for any credits.