Research in Distance Education: impact on practice conference, 27 October 2010. Opening keynote by Dr Josie Taylor of the Open University: Open Educational Resources and Learning Spaces: research questions.

1. Open Educational
Resources and Learning
Spaces
Josie Taylor, Professor of Learning Technology,
Director, Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University

2. The Open University, UK
• Higher education needs to prepare itself to exist in a
more open future by embracing openness and the
implications for change that it entails
• These changes are likely to be profound
• However, we don’t yet fully understand what they are,
or what the impact on organisations or students is likely
to be

3. OpenLearn at The Open University
• 2006 – William and Flora Hewlett foundation provided
us with funds to investigate sharing educational
resources and more open approaches
• Our definition of OER:
“The open provision of educational resources, enabled
by information and communication technologies, for
consultation, use and adaptation by a community of
users for non-commercial purposes.”
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk

4. OpenLearn
• Designed on a model analogous to the open source
software movement
• >11million unique visitors have used OpenLearn since
2006
• Gradual build of user base

5. Studies by OLNet
• Patrick McAndrew and the OLNet team at the OU
• Analysis of user behaviour, targeting those who used
the site more heavily, supported by follow-up interviews
and monitoring of activities taking place with the open
content
• The results from one of these studies (n = 2,011)
highlighted two distinct clusters of learners: "volunteer"
students and "social" learners.

6. Volunteer students
The volunteer students sought the content they wanted
to learn from, and they expected to work through it.
These learners were most interested in:
– more content
– tools for self-assessment
– ways to reflect on their individual learning.

7. Social Learners
The social learners were less motivated to work through
the content. Rather, they seem to see learning as a
way to meet people with shared interests. This cluster
of learners ranked communication tools more highly
and were more interested in advanced features on the
website.

8. What are these learners trying to
do?
• How might they frame those tasks?
• How will they know when they have succeeded? i.e.
what ‘counts’ as success?
• What will be the quality of the experience?
• How can we best support them?

9. Massive challenge for new
learners on a trajectory
Lots of other stops along the way...

10. What is this process?
• It is not just a process of skill acquisition
• These are profound developmental stages for the
individual
• There are equally profound issues for the academy –
what is a university for?
• In a completely open world, who determines what is
(or should be) of value?
• Who holds the power to say ‘this is worthy’? Will that be
determined by the employment market?

11. Digital Literacies
(Mary Lea & Sylvia Jones 2011)
• Learners bring a wealth of experience to bear – some
appropriate, some not
• Learners are engaged in meaning-making
• Recognition of the central role of texts in construction of
knowledge and practice of learning
• Potential shifts of power between learners, communities
and institutions
• Role of the institution is critically important
• Boundaries of ‘texts’ are more fluid and unstable than in
previous times

12. Improving our understanding of
student behaviour?
• ‘Rich accounts in the literature of students’ use of
technology’
• ‘No detailed or in depth examination of what students
actually do in contexts when using different
applications, or how meanings are being made from,
and through, engagement with digital technology’
• ‘Recognition of the central nature of texts both in the
construction of knowledge and the practice of learning’
Lea and Jones (2011)

13. Building on 25 years of previous
studies
• Learning programming:
• Taylor, J., PROLOG project 1983-88
• Learning from multimedia:
• Laurillard, D., Plowman, L., Taylor, J., Stratfold, M.,
The MENO project: Multimedia, Education and
Narrative Organisation (1996 – 2000)
• Mobile Learning:
• Sharples, M., Taylor, J., McAndrew, P., Vavoula, G.,
MOBIlearn (2004 – 2008) Mobile Learning

14. Also building on ...
• Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education.New York: Free Press.
• Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: the development of higher
psychological processes.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical
approach to developmental research.Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.
• Engeström, Y. (1996). Perspectives on activity theory.Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
• Bruner, J. (1996). The Culture of Education. Harvard University
Press, Cambridge MA

15. Multimedia, Education and Narrative
Organisation (MENO) 1996 - 1997
• ESRC funded - Diana Laurillard, Lydia Plowman, Rose
Luckin, Matthew Stratfold
• Close observational study of learners using multimedia
to learn about Darwinian theory (Galapagos)
• Examining the impact of different interfaces on the
same material
• Young students (A-level/first year undergrad)

16. Bruner’s use of narrative (1996)
• a connected sequence of events
• the representation of those events
• a mode of thought (‘a primary act of mind
transferred to art from life’)

17. Bruner
'I have found it impossible to distinguish sharply what is a
narrative mode of thought and what is a narrative 'text'
or discourse.'
Bruner, Culture of Education, 1996

18. Definition of narrative in MENO
‘Narrative is a process of both discerning
and imposing structured meanings which
can be shared and articulated’
Lydia Plowman, Diana Laurillard, Matthew Stratfold, Rose
Luckin, Josie Taylor (1998/99)

19. Narrative guidance and construction
• Guidance (explicit/implicit)
–Offered by the teacher
–Offered by the multimedia system
–Offered by other materials
–Offered by the interface
• Construction (explicit/implicit)
–A process brought to task by learner
–Needs to be carefully scaffolded

20. 3 versions of the Galapagos application
• Linear:
–students led through each sub-task in sequence.
Close to traditional narrative in film/TV
• Resource Based:
–offers no guidance, closest equivalent being an
encyclopaedia
• Guided Discovery:
–offers guidance in breaking down the task, but
narrative line not as strong as Linear version

21. Narrative Guidance: Navigating Galapagos
Linear
RBL
GDL

22. Summary of studies learning
from digital resources
• Less experienced learners benefit from explicit
narrative support to assist in process of narrative
construction, which can be effected through interface
design
• Leaving (even quite experienced) learners to drive their
own learning resulted in incomplete coverage of all the
necessary material
• Need to explicitly support the development of this
literacy

23. Support ‘Volunteer’ students
• Structure interfaces to optimise narrative construction
by learners
• Have experts providing services, offering narrative
guidance
• Provide some explicit pathways through materials, with
options to branch and return
• Provide implicit support embedded in the interface that
influence learners implicitly

24. Pask: Conversation Theory (1975)
o Conversation is the converse of control.
o Concepts are exchanged in a conversation and often
some public concept is shared …
o ‘But may just as well lead to enrichment by divergence
(of our personal concepts) as to convergence...'
(1987)
o Cybernetic view of conversation: participant might be a
computer or a person (or anything else)

25. Members
feel some
connection
– they care
Contribute
when you
want
Space in which learning happens

26. Ecological approach (Jenkins 2004)
• interrelationship among all the different communication
technologies and
– the cultural communities that grow up around them
– the activities they support.
• Interactivity is a property of the technology, while
participation is a property of culture.

27. Affinity Spaces: James Paul Gee (2009)

28. Gee’s distinctions
Formal education system
• Conservative
• Static
• Structures to sustain are
institutional
• Remain little changed over long
periods of time
• Communities are bureaucratic
and often national
• Does not allow for easy
movement in and out
Informal affinity space
• Experimental
• Innovative
• Structures to sustain are
provisional
• Can respond to short-term
needs and temporary interests
• Communities are ad hoc and
localised
• Allows for easy moves in and
out of informal learning
communities

29. Support Social Learners
• Provide ‘affinity space’ for learning
• Ensure it is populated with a rich mix of people (look at
the ecology of the community to make it sustainable)
• Optimise conversations between peers
• Optimise conversations between learners and experts
• Allow people to come and go easily

30. What is the role of pedagogy?

31. ….
…to guide media use, development and integration
1970's 1980's 1990's 2000's
Broadcast
course related
Television
Interactive
Print media
Broadcast
course related
Radio
Tutors
f2f/phone/
post
Broadcast
course related
Television
Interactive
Videocassette
Broadcast
course related
Radio
Interactive
Audiocassette
Interactive
Print media
Interactive
Videocassette
Interactive
Audiocassette
Interactive
integrated
Multimedia
Print media
Outreach TV
A/V digital
media
social media
Web 2.0
Support media
conferencing/
email
Tutors
f2f/phone/
post
Tutors
f2f/phone/
post
Support media
conferencing/
email
Non course
related TV
(outreach)
Internet/
Web 1.0
On-line and postal delivery
Interactive
integrated
Multimedia
Disk-based media and postal
delivery
Support media
conferencing/
email
Broadcast and postal
delivery
Broadcast and postal
delivery
Print media
Tutors
f2f/phone/
post
Web 3.0 and
beyond
Virtual
Worlds
Mobile
technology

33. SocialLearn
• This work is at the heart of our SocialLearn project, an
affinity space optimised for learning
• Pilot running from November 10 – Mar 11 with staff in
the area of professional development (~ 11k staff
potentially)

34. Research questions
– What is required to establish a successful distributed
community of learners?
– What is required to ensure sustainability of learning
communities, and to support their growth?
– How can the community determine and agree ‘what
counts’ as learning and how it should be ‘counted’ and
‘accounted’ for?
– How are leaders identified, and supported in these
communities?

35. Control
• Who is in control?
• Does it matter?
–Who decides what is of value?
–Who decides what counts?