DIscussion session slides from IFIP-OST'12 conference

1. Digital
Learning
Ecosystems:
rethinking virtual
learning environments
in the age of social
media

2. Conceptual mess
 Educational software
 Virtual classroom
 Virtual Learning Environment
 Course/Learning Management System
 E-learning platform
 Problems:
 disconnected from pedagogical
theories, praxis and practices
 Pedagogical neutrality
 Infertile research programme

3. Generations of learning
technology

4. Internet has changed
 Web 2.0: read-write Web
 Social media
 Quickly evolving and integrated services
 Business ecosystems in digital world:
Apple, Google

5. The role of language in social
construction of reality
 Heidegger: language is a house of being
 Gadamer: language speaks us
 Implicit structures and values within a
language (vocabulary) affect the social
reality constructed with this language
 Example: the concept of „e-learning‟
 Proposed by Jay Cross (a business
consultant) as a metaphor (cf. e-mail)
 Picked up by EU policymakers in 2000
 Forsaken by policy discourse by 2007

6. Languages of education
 Languages of „theorists“ and „practitioners“
in education
 Examples: instructional design vs.
Didactics, competencies, learning goals and
effectiveness, strategies &
tactics, andragogy, learning as curing from
stupidity, teacher as project
manager, psychologist, service provider
 „Civil war“ between educational paradigms

7. R.Rorty: researchers as
heroes-poets
 Heroes (turn-makers) in the domain of
research are the poets who are able to re-
describe the field in a new way, with new
“powerful” words
 Evolution of a vocabulary: from metaphors to
strict terminology (encyclopedias and
handbooks as graveyards of metaphors)
 Contingency and incommesurability of
vocabularies
 Survival of vocabularies is partly dependent
on fruitfulness of research programmes
based on them

8. How about vocabulary shift:
Digital Learning Ecosystems
 Digital Learning Ecosystem: an adaptive
socio-technical system consisting of
 mutually interacting digital species
(tools, services, content used in learning
process) and
 communities of users
(learners, facilitators, experts) together
with
 their social, economical and cultural
environment.

9. Questions to discuss
 What are advantages and disadvantages of
Digital Learning Ecosystems approach in
contrast with traditional views on virtual
learning environments?
 To what extent the DLE researchers can
borrow the concepts and research methods
from ecosystems ecology?
 Which are the main research problems, the
big research questions and appropriate
methods for DLE-focused research
programme?

10. Key concepts in ecosystems
ecology
 Ecosystem: a community of living organisms
(plants, animals and microbes) in
conjunction with the nonliving components of
their environment (things like air, water and
mineral soil), interacting as a system.
 Nutrient cycle, energy flow
 Self-regulation
 Biota, niche, habitat
 Biodiversity, disturbance, succession

11. Concept mapping task
 Ecosystem
 Digital Ecosystem
 Digital Learning Ecosystem
 Species
 Services
 Users
 Communities
 What are the advantages and disadvantages
of DLE approach?
 How much concepts and relations can we
project from biological to digital world?