Metaphors for emergent learning

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Barbara Berry -
Number of replies: 9

Hi Jenny, 

I should have put my post here! I did a footprint (template 2) the interactive and loved using the interactive tool. I also used the "mapping sheet for visual learners" to help me to create the map. 

Yes, I am sure that you 3 have spent countless hours discussing the language and so congrats on getting it out there. I found myself pondering what the words meant to me and also found myself wondering if I was interpreting the words in the way that you 3 might have meant for them to be used/considered. I think what happened for me is in doing this footprint on my own (without your expert coaching : ) I was left to my own devices to figure out and work with the language. I think this is fine. I had no real trouble doing this. 

Truthfully, the process helped me to consider my experience and I found myself wondering if the instructor's intentions of the course that I mapped would be reflected in my own experience and map. So, alignments "was her intention and my experience of the course similar or hugely different"? I wonder. I think I should send her your link and get her to do a map and then we can have a cool discussion about her online course for 500!

As for the images -  they can be a useful trigger but wiht all images, they are the designers' representation of what they mean so for me they too shape a construct in one's mind. It's hard to find images that fully and accurately represent intention. I found myself using the text against my own thoughts to help me with the factors.

Clustering - again is a complex process and no doubt you have spent hours re-orgnizing the clusters....let me think about it and get back to you on this. 

cheers, 

Barb

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Jenny Mackness -

Hi Barb - many thanks for this considered post. It's really good to know that you have tried drawing a footprint and that you managed it on your own.

One or two people we know have managed to draw their footprint without any discussion with us, by reading what is on the wiki and watching the video - but we know it is not easy and time consuming. Heli Nurmi wrote a series of six blog posts about drawing a footprint (http://helistudies.edublogs.org/). She is now steeped in EdcMOOC so you need to scroll back through the posts to find those about footprints. It would be interestingif you could get your course instructor to draw a footprint and then compare them - but she would need to be prepared to give up a bit of time!

The comment you make about images shaping constructs in the mind is interesting. We thought the images would be helpful, but i now wonder how much they will influence the way people interpret the factors. Interesting thought!

Thanks Barb.

In reply to Jenny Mackness

Re: Open Metaphors?

by Roy Williams -

Jenny, interesting question - how much do the images influence the way people interpret the factors?

As I said elsewhere here, hopefully the images help to keep the thinking more open (than texts, which tend to tie meaning down), but thinking about your post, I guess images could be too strong, and too directive too.  

What would a usefully open image be like?  And have we got any in our mapping sheet?  

My first impressions are that the images for Unpredictable Outcomes, Open Affordances, Presence/Writing, Informal Writing, and Autonomy - in that order - are the most open, Networking is the most clunky [please help out if you have a better one], and Liminality is the most closed.  But maybe that's just me.  

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Roy Williams -

Barb, good to hear that the 'interactive' tool worked.  

Language, language ... and odd business.  On the one hand we dont mind making the footprint creator do some work in thinking about the language and the terms, and to make them specific enough, (and reference the work of the many people who have designed and researched and thought about this before us) - but on the other hand we would like the creation of a footprint to be as intuitive as possible.  

That means that the simpler the language the better, particularly if the accompanying graphic still opens up the possibliities for mearning and context.  All suggestions on both these issues will be gratefully received and acknowledged! 

An 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' sharing of footprints is exactly what we have in mind, to open up a 'collaborative reflection' conversation.  That's, really, where we think this should all be heading. 

So ... interesting questions and processes for engaging on 'alignment' and alignments (there are so many things to align with), and hopefully an iterative process for open/ended conversations - which ends (or doesn't end) when you have completed what you want to do.  

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Barbara Berry -

Hi Roy, 

Yes, I suspect that the "footprint creator" must do the work!  : ) Yes, also to the opportunities to "show" the footprints for a "learning design" conversation. 

Here's the thing....last night I rode the bus home with a colleague from the teaching and learning centre and I had a print out of the templates - we "worked" it on the bus home. In describing to him my experience of this seminar and ultimately your work with Jenny and Simone on the tool, I realized that this tool might be a way for ongoing "feedback" for instructors if the tool was embedded in the course as a mechanism for students to "record their experience" on certain factors and for the instructor to see the recorded experience and then do something to support the student.

I immediately started to think about the fact that we do too much in terms of pen and paper evaluation forms on teaching and NOTHING on the experience of the learner! (I am in higher ed and a mid-sized, research-intensive setting) so you can imagine the process that unfolds at the end of the term regarding course/instructor evaluation. I believe that a tool like this can be used to have the "conversation" or take the pulse if you will of the experiences (learner by learner) and then there will be a pattern for the instructor to also see and the instructor has also got their own map going of their experience of teaching.....

I also want to see this tool in a "computational" environment where it is possible to visualise in 3D thus making it possible to see the spatial qualities which might lead to ideas about what is happening between students. For me the 2D interactive map is great but I would love to see what would happen if we could rotate and translate these maps in a computational space!  what are your thoughts on this? 

Now I am heading into the research potential....will save it and see what you have to say to these whacky, imaginary comments of mine : )

Cheers, 
Barb

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Scott Johnson -

Hi Barbara,

How does a student experience a class? The footprint seems like good way to record a student response--better than surveys. Learning that is expressive needs a place to live in the students' experience. And be recorded somehow.

Just reading a bit on Rudolf Arnheim at:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/06/15/simplicity-clarity-balance-a-tribute-to-rudolf-arnheim/

"This discovery of the gestalt school fitted the notion that the work of art, too, is not simply an imitation or selective duplication of reality but a translation of observed characteristics into the forms of a given medium (Film as Art, 3).

The Gestalters thought that these principles–figure/ground, completeness, good continuation, and the like–were fundamental to all human perception, across times and cultures. Art and Visual Perception makes a powerful case for this view. Today this position is so unfashionable that Arnheim’s calm confidence in it is quite stunning. For many scholars today, all that matters is what divides and differentiates us. But for eighty-plus years Arnheim emphasized ways in which we share a common experience of the world and of art"

 

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Barbara Berry -

Hi Scott!

Thanks for sending this to me. I absolutely love this and incidently will pass it on to faculty I work wtih in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology here at SFU.

I really appreciate your bridging to the "gestalt" as described in Art and Visual Perception. I have read the blog post and will go back over it again as there are lots of ideas to mull over.

I really believe that "experiencing" is full bodied in the sense that there is somatic, emotive, cognitive, spatial and other dimensions in learning and they all come together as a full package. The footprint seems to alert us to a more wholistic view of what might be happening in a given context and it makes sense that we must pay greater attention to the whole than the parts. 

cheers, 

Barb

 

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Roy Williams -

Barb (and Scott), looking at you own footprints (shared elsewhere in these forums) confirms that this is not the same kind of 'data' that we usually get from our students in feedback and evalutation forms, to wit ...

1. The learner is, really, the primary researcher, and in working through the process of creating the footprint, they are researching reflexively: i.e they research both the course and their experience of it (which is why it can feel quite different from filling in a questionnaire).  You, as a faculty member (or researcher) are really a secondary researcher, researching their research, no? 

2. The footprint is a 'gestalt' of the learner's experience at a particular time, there is a limit to the extent to which an individual factor 'mapping' can make sense on its own (as Scott points out in his reply to you in much more detail, below) - the factors interact with each other.

3. However much I can make sense of your footprint (particularly now that we are asking footprinters to use and share the 'my comments' column - borrowed from Jutta's group), the footprint+comments doesnt yield many answers, but it does yield lots of questions that I would like to discuss with you. 

4. #3 changes everything, and establishes a space for collaborative sense-making ... 

4.1 Epistemologically, it yields opportunities for exploring sense-making, but provides little in the way of conclusions at the footprint stage, although it does provide, intuitively(?), a gestalt of that point in the event.

This inverts the usual process too - it starts at the gestalt (synthesis) and then proceed to analysis - and in all likelihood, returns back to a quite different - possibley collaborative - gestalt.  

4.2 Methodologically, it pre-empts premature evalution (excuse the pun), particularly if everyone focuses on the work of description.

And it sets aside the evaluative and normative process and judgements until later.    

4.3 Ontologically, is changes the status of the people in the conversation - the learner and designer (can) become collaborators in making sense of what happened / is happening - particularly as the learner (or learners) have rich, complex 'data' - better data than the designer or facilitator has - at their disposal. 

 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Barbara Berry -

Hi Roy, 

My footprint does represent my experience of this course however, since I did this footprint after the course was completed, the data offers a summative report - back on my experience. 

I agree that for the learner and the designer to "co-design"  the learning experience, this tool is best positioned in a different way than how I used it (for this activity) and thus would generate different, timely, dynamic data. In my mind then this tool is an "actor"  and with it's own "agency" - and is a bridge between the learner and teacher - as they work together (hopefully) towards "collaborative sense-making" as you point out.

am I getting it? : )
Barb

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Metaphors for emergent learning

by Roy Williams -

Barb, you got it!  For sure.  The footprints as an actors (or a tribe of actors) with their own agency, and role in collaborative sense-making - we couldn't have put it better. 

:))