Posts made 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

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

 

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

Hi Roy, 

Yes, as you point out, the experience of chaos was in this instance one leading to frustration and boredom due to the fact that it was not "meaningful". It essentially was a waste of time and from reading the posts, I got the sense that other students were expressing similar sentiments. So, it seemed like a poor way to assist students to engage in a way that might be meaningful. For instance, had we been in teams or themes even, the discussions might have been more fruitful. What I did learn is what not to do as a designer! (e.g. have 500 - 2nd year undergraduates in threaded discussion with little to no guidance; random comments can produce "noise" and thus for some students can be a real distraction.

Yes, I believe that there were 2 courses in one and I think doing another footprint of the software learning would be a cool idea. My sketch of this is in my sketchbook so I will try to remember to take a photo and upload it. Also will do a footrpint. Yes, the two footprints could be superimposed for deeper analysis. Good idea!  

cheers, 

Barb

Hi Joyce, 

Yes, you are correct and we do share some common insights about emergence as a part of the development of both practical knowledge while undertaking work and that it must be continuous and intentional if it will amount to anything. For me there is a creative dimension in the sense that to interrogate practice one must be willing to delve for truth and this often takes another to listen, to ask questions and to work through the process of reflecting in and on action. Sometimes it happens when you least expect it, at other times, I have found this practice only when push comes to shove and one has to reflect for one reason or another. 

My undergraduate degree is in Nursing and I worked in clinical practice (intenstive care, surgery and pediatric surgery) for a total of 6 years then in public health for another 5 followed by the emergence of my consulting practice after my graduate degree (still in the health sector). 

Depending on the practice context, clinical reasoning in my experience takes place in association with the practice of dealing with the patient or client or family or community. It is a complex, reasoning process that entails inductive and deductive reasoning happening at the same time and sometimes very quickly in actue settings. What is interesting is that good clinical reasoning includes "critical thinking" and this includes rigorous habits such as analysis, inferential, evaluative, predictive, and explanatory thinking all in order to make sound clinical decisions in context.  The intent is to resolve the particular clinical problem and treat/care for the patient/client as said with their safety uppermost in mind. Clinical reasoning is highly intentional processing and done by an individual and in certain situations by a team who "reason together". There is an "emergent" dimension to some situations in clinical practice where the patient's condition is in constant flux and responds based on judgements that are being made almost simultaneously. It can be a full-body experience in the sense that after all is said and done, a person can feel emotion, physical, cognitive and social exhastion. (no wonder I used to go home and collapse!). I am sure you have seen and or experienced this in your own professional work. I think that emergent learning (as I am learning about it in this seminar) can happen at the same time as clinical reasoning but how this all "happens" together and in fact how it might be similar to but different from clinical reasoning as I experienced it, I need to give more thought to! It has been years since I have "recalled" this kind of "work" and so, now I am once again curious : ) 

cheers, 

Barb