These are my attempts
(based on my own experience) to define and clarify some of the concepts under discussion. It
might be useful if those with differing ideas would state not only that they
disagree, but based on what experience or personal story. I have numbered the list
of possible topics in case we want separate threads for them. Feel free to add
to these numbered topics. David Millar, of Victoria and Montreal
Formal learning: is school & curriculum-based education (with printed texts and tests, lesson plans with fixed outcomes, disciplinary boundaries), for large groups, and age-specific. Each of these built-in assumptions denotes a severe limitation compared to other kinds of teaching e.g. discovery, peer-to-peer, the ?multiple intelligence? approach of Howard Gardner(1) Usually sets quantitative / behavioural objectives (Malcolm Knowles), sometimes with additional reference to Maslow?s schema of human needs, which are rarely defined in a way that can be verified as a ?learning outcome?.
Needs examination of drop-out rates and their causes: though research is almost entirely lacking, spotty data and my teaching as a sessional in several universities suggests that 25%-33% of all admitted students are incapable of literate and organized writing, so much so that they are simply incapable of rational exposition.Smith, M. K. (2002) 'Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences', the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm last updated: 28 Jan 2006;
http://adulted.about.com/cs/learningtheory/a/gardner_MIT.htmAbout.com on adult learning theory http://adulted.about.com/od/adultlearningtheory/
Needs examination of drop-out rates and their causes: in one DL university where I worked fewer than 20% of students (most of them highly motivated mid-career adults seeking certification) completed courses of all kinds; the 80% dropout was considered normal [sic! ]Albert Bandura, Self Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, 1977. and Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, 1986.Retention will be increased by story-telling, seeing, and doing (approximations of real-life experience) Summa cum avaritia: plucking a profit from the groves of academe, Nick Bromell, Harper?s Magazine, February 2002 and Us Versus Them: Laboring in the Academic Factory, Michael Yates, Monthly Review, January 2000.
- The European Community?s attempt to validate informal learning, defined as lived experience in ?daily life activities related to work, family or leisure? (p.27) appears to be only paper certification of previously acquired skills or competencies (Table 5, pp.152-156) . In other words, the formal education system (state, professional or corporate) formally recognizes that learning ?outside the bounds? has been achieved. This is not news. Some crucial questions (p. 112) are raised about by whom & what power structures, and how the certification/validation/accreditation is made, which remain unanswered. EEC-CEDEFOP ?The Learning Community: European inventory on validating non-formal and informal learning?, 2005 http://www2.trainingvillage.gr/etv/publication/download/panorama/5164_en.pdf
Some answers are attempted in SEEQUEL-TQL Guide for Informal Learning, 2004 http://www.education-observatories.net/seequel/SEEQUEL-TQM_Guide_for_informal_learning.pdf
- The ?social networking? of radical NGOs on the internet is one of the few hopeful signs. See http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wto/OpposeWTO.html
- There is a huge ongoing debate about this phenomenon in Delicious, see http://del.icio.us/search/?all=social+networking a mishmash list of software, wiki, blogs, CIA spying methods, teen and adult matchmaking. See items marked tagging, folksonomy, and social bookmarking, which are probably the most relevant to our discussion.
Some specific kinds of informal learning we might discuss:
- Discovery learning, curiosity
- Child?s play
- Multiple intelligences (H. Gardner)
- David A Kolb?s ?experiential education? http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~dschugurensky/faqs/qa8.html
- Open-ended, lifelong
- ?Free university?: any good model? Success rates? In what specialty or discipline? Cf New School of Social Research NYC, Berlin Free University, Black Mountain. Danish Folkschule (I don?t know enough about them)
- ?free? NGO research groups: e.g. CorpWatch, PIRGs, environmentalists
- (other) good examples of informal learning? SCoPE participants can decide for themselves to relate them to the topics above, or establish new numbered topics, e.g.
- Ann Busby?s post on - sharing, incidental, tacit, and unconscious learning [I could comment on various types of the the ?non-dit? unsaid, unsayable etc on which I published several papers]
- Bryan Zug - self-correcting, stabilizing, elearning ecosystems
- Chris Macrae - action learning
- Stephanie Chu - definitions of different learning communities
- Nancy Riffer ? world internet conference [in my experience, gossip in the corridors was always the crucial element of scholarly conferences; what is the Internet equivalent? See also James Gleick?s account of gossip networks vs scientific publication in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992)]
- Elhanan Gazit ? learning in MMOGs and space science Futurelab website (cf. my comments above on interactive learning]
- Gunnar Bruckner ? EEC validation [cf. topic 9 above]
My incomplete list
of other useful resources
found while writing the above comments
- About.com on adult learning http://adulted.about.com/od/adultlearning/
- Athabasca Univ RIDE [currently unavailable, maintained by DE students]
- CASAE http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/CASAE/maineng.html Resources for Research, last update appears to be 1998
- D?Arcy Martin ?Building Capacity, Caring and Craft? (1996) http://www.web.net/~darcym/capacity.html rethinking by a labour educator with years of experience
- INFED bibliography on informal education by Mark K Smith ca. 1998 http://www.infed.org/lifelonglearning/b-aeprin.htm
- INTIME checklists and bibliography by T. Martin 2001 http://www.intime.uni.edu/model/learning/info.html
- Stephen Downes, ?Some principles of effective e-learning,? 2005 http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?db=post&q=crdate=1114559592&format=full
- Review of Straka, Gerald A. ?Informal learning: genealogy, concepts, antagonisms and queestions? (2004) http://www.elearning-reviews.org/topics/pedagogy/educational-principles/2004-straka-informal-learning-genealogy-concepts-antagonisms-questions/
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