INVESTIGATING THE USAGE OF LEARNING OBJECTS IN CONTEXT Liisa Ilomäki, Minna Lakkala & Sami Paavola, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, ( ) EARLI, August, 2005 Faculty of Behavioural Sciences

Examining the usage of learning objects in “advanced pedagogical contexts” Participation and knowledge-creation approaches of learning From teacher-centered to learner-centered activities, supporting student's ownership and active involvement; General skills, abilities and understanding emphasized instead of fact-based learning. Self-regulatory, reflective, and critical learners; Ideas are constructed collaboratively and in social interaction; meanings and interpretations are negotiated socially. Learning is based on collaboration, dialogue, and discourse; Authentic problems taken into account; teaching how to solve authentic, open-ended, and ill-defined problems within complex, real-life environments. Ilomäki, Lakkala and Paavola,

Research questions of the study The goal of the study was to examine the interrelatedness of the pedagogical practices and the characteristics of LOs in order to better understand how LOs can support the development of the learning culture in schools. What was the nature of the activities and knowledge processing in the teaching/learning sequences designed by the teachers? What kind of affordances the learning objects brought into the learning/teaching sequence? Ilomäki, Lakkala and Paavola,

Cases 3 Title of the case School level Gra- de AgeNum- ber of stu- dents Con- tent Length (weeks * hours /week Number and type of LOs Case 1. Do you eat healthily? primary 511 to 12 31Natural scien- ces 5 *1-2 hrs 1 (Exploration) Case 2. Do You Know How to Eat? lower secondary 713 to 14 21English3 * 3 h1 (Exploration) Case 3. Senses and the brain lower secondary 915 to 16 17Biology3 * 2 h9-10, (Information source & Drill- and-practice) Case 4. Multiple- intelligence and learning objects upper secondary 116 to 17 16Health educa- tion 6 x 1-2 hrs / week + virtual discus- sion 3 weeks 2 mainly (Tools, Explo- ration and Guide), evaluation of several others (mainly Drill- and-practice)

Data Ilomäki, Lakkala and Paavola, 2005 DataCase 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 1. Recoded and transcribed teacher interviews xxxx 2. Written observation notesxxxx 3. Video recordings of the lessonsxxxx 4. Teacher's material to studentsxxxx 5. Students' notes about the project x 6. Students' notes in the virtual discussion forum x 7. Students’ final works with comments x 8. Other A letter to parents 4

5 Ilomäki, Lakkala and Paavola, 2005 Do you eat healthily? Do You Know How to Eat? Senses and the brain Multiple- intelli- gence and LOs The nature of activities Authentic activitiesyes Self-reflectionyes Independent work, student's responsibility yes Structured exercises yes Hands on -activities yes Problem-solving yes Knowledge-creationyes Collaborative activities yes Teacher's responsibility Structuring the workyes Content guidance yes Process guidanceyes Technical helpyes Results 1

Do you eat healthily? Do You Know How to Eat? Senses and the brain Multiple- intelli- gence and LOs The nature of knowledge processing Expert-modelyes Different perspectivesyes Personal knowledgeyes Knowledge beyond the school curriculum yes Several means for presenting knowledge yes Sharing understanding yes Affordances of the LO used A toolyes An assessment modelyes Information sourceyes Expert modelyes Exploration areayes A reflection tool yes Objects for evaluation yes Ilomäki, Lakkala and Paavola, 2005 Results 2 6

Conclusions The nature of pedagogical practices All cases ”advanced pedagogical practices” in some ways, In cases 1 and 4, the teachers broke away from the usage of schoolbooks; they relied totally on other information sources: learning objects and other materials from the Web, external experts, and the students own knowledge sharing. The learning content was enriched by other experts: LOs (in all cases) or other human experts (in cases 1 and 4). In this sense learning objects gave extra value for learning. Students collaborated in a meaningful and natural way, even in individual tasks. They helped each other, shared expertise and discussed virtually. 7 Ilomäki, Lakkala and Paavola, 2005

Conclusions 2 Using the idea of three approaches to learning (Hakkarainen, Palonen, Paavola & Lehtinen, 2004) : Case 3 represents (mainly) the knowledge-acquisition perspective. Case 1 represents the participation approach, and case 4 the collaborative knowledge- creation approach. Case 2 is a mixture of all three approaches. The usefulness of the LO LOs were used as an important part of the teaching/learning sequence; in cases 1 and 4 the LOs structured the content. A well-designed LO can be used in various learning settings (cases 1 and 2). The reason was the pedagogical affordances of the LO: it supports a student-centered exploration, which offers possibilities for a variety of pedagogical activities. 8 Ilomäki, Lakkala and Paavola, 2005

Conclusions 3 In cases 3 and 4, the LOs in themselves were so narrow that they did not help the teacher to apply high-level tasks and activities; on the contrary, they promoted the usage of fact-oriented knowledge processing tasks. In case 4, the teacher and the students found it difficult to find proper learning objects for their subject domain and secondary level curriculum. Maybe the usage of the learning objects was unnecessary in these two cases. The importance of teachers’ pedagogical ICT competence Teacher as a guide and organiser of the process 9 Ilomäki, Lakkala and Paavola, 2005