PowerPoint slide deck used at the 10th Networked Learning Conference 2016, Lancaster University, UK - May 2016
Full paper at http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/
1. The role of human actors in legitimising informal
networked learning of academic digital practice
Lecturer: Information Management & Teaching
School of Healthcare Sciences
Mike
JohnsonPhD Candidate
Department of Educational Research
2. Plan
• The Digital Scholar
• Methodology & Method - Phenomenographic
• The ‘tech’ – shared records
• Participants – 4 staff
• Outcomes – a table
• Discussion- Wenger
• Conclusion
4. Methodology and methods
• Phenomenographic
• differences and their relations
• 2nd order perspectives
• ‘vivid contextualising’
• Narrative analysis and reporting
• ‘Dual channel’ method
Working memory
Sounds
selecting
Words
ImagesPictures
selecting
Visual mental
model
Verbal mental
model
organising
organising
Long-term
memory
Prior
knowledge
5. Academic Supervision
Record Keeping (ASRK)
• Paper on multiple
sites, and email
records
• 2008: Share
supervision securely
internationally
By Manny Wilson from http://www.wikinomics.com
7. Participants
Established staff
Ash – Lecturer for 20+ years. Technologically positive.
Daryl – Lecturer for 10+ years. ‘Technologically reluctant’,
keen educationalist.
New staff
Cameron – Years of clinical experience; lecturer for under a
year. Doctoral student. Twitter fan.
Jamie - Many years of clinical experience. Less than a year
as a lecturer. Taught digital record-keeping to nurses.
8. Outcomes
Ash Daryl Cameron Jamie
Adoption Enthusiastic
opportunistic
independent
‘Head in the
sand’ – student
invoked
Clinical
expectation
Clinical
scruples
Support in
exploitation
for learning
'supervision'
Valued
'Human'
resources
(infrastructure)
PDF guide
over-whelmed
'Just try it for
15'
Peers helped
with basics,
but more at
interview!
Peer mentor,
but wanted
explicit student
permission too
Organisational
positioning
Ambassador Reluctance fed
off rumour but
became
advocate
Instant
advocate
Uptake lagged:
terror of the
unfamiliar
Access
analogies
‘Safe’ – no
alternatives
‘Safe’… to
ignore
‘not the
knickers
drawer’
Voyerism
9. Discussion points
Legitimate peripheral participation?
• ‘New’ staff brought professional values/practices
• New and old varied in requiring ‘legitimation’
• Supervision a core role, no space for the ‘peripheral’
Promoting connections?
• But not without participation
by humans vital to learning
• Tension: Surveillance vs.
management & learning
Wenger et al. 2002 p.57
10. Conclusion
The study sought to be phenomenographic
The digital scholar sent her first email >20 years ago
- with the help of other humans.
11. Post Script
• ‘more attention should be “paid to textual practice around
learning and less upon the technologies and their
applications” (Lea & Jones, 2011, p. 377).’ ah… yes.
• Contradictions between political-ethical vs. economic-
pragmatic (Levinsen and Nielsen, 2012, p. 239)
• Networked learning assumes
‘promoting connections’, and
weak vs. strong links but
Networked learning relies
upon a ‘chain of weak links’
or synapses.
Something about technology makes people always have to talk about it in deterministic and, often, positive ways.
This is especially when compared with ‘the old’. Actually, not much is as old as a university – I went to Aberdeen (founded by papal bull in 1495 – yes I was there for the 500th anniversary).
But perhaps a transformation has happened and sortof under our noses because actually information technology has transformed knowledge work. This, for me, is the elephant in the room.
Amidst calls for universities to ‘get with it’ or roll over and die, we continue to make small but significant advances in working practices.
Such as a move to digitise academic supervision record-keeping. This did not feel like a tweak to those involved.
So this was me trying out phenomenography which is looking for the qualitative differences between aspects of phenomena AND the relationships between those differences.
Phenomenographic epistemology values 2nd order perspectives as about as close to the phenomena experienced as you are likely to get. Another aim is ‘vivid contextualising’ so with such a small number of interviews – this had to be a manageable small project – I decided to try and bring the interview data together in a narrative. I tried to stay as close to the data as possible. In the paper, I make the point that while we might be ok with 2nd order perspectives, by the time the researcher has transcribed and analysed the data, we’re then a ways on from 2nd order. So I decided to use a method that borrows from cognitive science – Richard Mayer talks about this, the dual channels of eyes and ears, the visual and the verbal mental models that we need to marshall in order to select, organise and integrate information into working and then long-term memory. I decide to apply this to transcript analysis. F4 is great for transcribing because it creates time-stamps that ATLAS.ti can recognise so that I can navigate anywhere within the transcripts AND hear the voices of participants making the comments.
Don’t worry – the acronym is a bit of a tease – I wont be referring to it in the talk – just the paper.
Data was collected late spring 2014. participants selected on an axis of their length of time as academics and then on some kind of tech enthusiasm/engagement scale.
Really in terms of learning, the role in notionally having recourse to support, the reified practice, and the people in terms of leveraging the resource...
They all needed real human supporting to come to the point of taking advantage.
In some sense they needed a pedagog, but who, what or where that person was was very different in each case.
‘Innovating Design for Learning in the Networked Society’. In Exploring the Theory, Pedagogy and Practice of Networked Learning, edited by Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Vivien Hodgson, and David McConnell, 237–56. New York, NY: Springer New York, 2012. http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-1-4614-0496-5_14.