1. A collaborative constructionist learning environment for teachers Diana Laurillard (IOE) George Magoulas (Birkbeck) Elizabeth Masterman ( Oxford ) London Knowledge Lab AERA 2010

2. Outline How might we speed up high quality innovation in TEL? LDSE: a Learning Design Support Environment to help with this Seeing teaching as a design science Teachers discover their epistemologies for TEL Teachers also need to learn through collaboration And through practice, experiences – constructionism System features attempt to emulate an iterative design process www.lkl.ac.uk

3. Theoretical background Constructionist learning as ‘building knowledge structures… in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity’ (Papert and Harel 1991) Social constructivism: ‘the members of the community serve as active agents in the construction of outcomes and activities that produce a developmental cycle’ (Shaw & Shaw, 1999) Collaboration: ‘a coordinated synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem’ (Roschelle and Teasley 1995) Knowledge building: “the capacity to create new knowledge and ideas… collaborative problem-solving… needs optimal environments for knowledge-building” (Scardamalia, 2010)

4. Building designs of Modules and Sessions Context-sensitive help provided on what Session Types to choose, given LOs Learning Outcomes for this session have been selected Teaching methods selected are online tutorial, discussion and game LDSE has interpreted the nature of the learning experience as ‘social’ A working model of the LDSE engine Timeline for the learning design Representation of learning experience as ‘social

5. Two new teaching- learning activities are selected from given list (essay and digital library)

6. building on the work of others in their field; seeking new insights and ways of rethinking their field; constructing ideas, to experiment, investigate and reflect on results; sharing ideas with collaborative teams of respected peers; disseminating findings for peer review and use by others Emulating features of a design science "This is where people start to get keen because they can build from what other people have built. That's when people start to say ‘Wooh: I’m not reinventing the wheel.’ That's what people like." "You don’t want a tool just to reflect what you do now. I would like a tool that would cover what I do now so I feel confident, but it would also help me to develop my own learning. […] to make me think out of the box a bit more." Practising constructive alignment

7. [Laurillard 2006] T-L activities Conventional model, classroom based Blended model, real and virtual, local and global Model returns effect of design on ‘type of learning’ elicited, ‘learning experience’, ‘teacher time’, and ‘learner time in class’ Modelling time costs and learning benefits Model "I like the idea of ‘what if’ […] What I want is something I can play with."

8. building on the work of others in their field; seeking new insights and ways of rethinking their field; resourced to test ideas, experiment, investigate and reflect on results; constructing ideas, to collaborative teams of respected peers; disseminating findings for peer review and use by others Emulating features of a design science Capturing a pedagogical pattern Computationally interpretable representation of a pedagogical pattern “this one is better for thinking, because I think linear, to make me think what aspects of the Conversational Framework I am doing… I want to know if I am providing opportunities in terms of [those categories]”

9. building on the work of others in their field; search seeking new insights and ways of rethinking their field; resourced to experiment, investigate and reflect on results; constructing ideas, to collaborative teams of respected peers; disseminating findings for peer review and use by others “it is good this, it is really structured, to help you think through what you’re doing… “ Emulating features of a design science

10. User requirements The importance of being able to adapt and customise: “I don’t know anybody who has stuck with the same thing from what they’ve borrowed: there is this desire to edit it and make it yours because your areas of focus will be different“ The importance of beginning where they already are: “you learn about the unfamiliar through the familiar. So if you can have a familiar element that means people still think they’re safe, you can challenge them that bit more so they will go a bit further” The importance of an iteration between theory and practice: “I’d regard theories as ways of critiquing something that I’d built in the first place, which would then possibly lead me to redesign it quite a lot, but… I don’t see the theories as being… sufficiently constraining to actually generate a design”

11. Summary Developing the ‘microworld’ for learning design Make teaching more like design research: a learning process Give academics the means for exploring new pedagogies Planning, modelling, experimentation, evaluation, sharing  academics as digital innovators, treating teaching as a design science Dejan Ljubojevic Patricia Charlton Brock Craft Steve Ryan Kim Whittlestone Marion Manton Tom Boyle

12. Notes Kapur, 2008, 2010: productive failure – fficacy to get students to engage in ill-structured problems, provided there is follow-up structured to which they can transfer p-s ideas. Contrast didactic with s generate mult reps, with later instruction or structured problems, etc. Problem: from data on sports, who is the most consistent player over time – used familiar stats, and graph reps. Important to combine didactic with constructive and p-s, rather than contrast

13. Notes Jacobson – assumptions about pedagogical sequences – tend to be structured then unstructured open-ended – like cognitive apprenticeship (structured – ‘but not highly’ – Collins), guided inquiry – tend to minimise frustration. NetLogo model of Ohms Law – compared prod failure and non-prod failure Trad: Worksheet – lab – explain observation Prod F: Work on problem Then both have same worksheet H-H-L vs L-H-L –big effect size for PF group Tested also with teachers.

14. Notes Think – ask – understand – similar to PF but also collaboration phase at start Nikol Rummel Delay of content-related support _ collaboration script to support stdents’ interaction Begin with collab phase where students ask, etc. Compared TAU with didactic – one solution

15. Notes on TEL session Ensemble – supporting case-based pedagogies with SemWeb Machine-readable meaningful representations of content + aggregate different resources, and display visually CBL: how are cases used within a pedagogy – for bringing reality into the classroom, role of technology here - microworlds? Involves collaborative, and exploratory learning? But being reduced versions of the world, do not actually model reality Give the web a definition of what you want and it finds the content you want. Want to find a common way to describe the pedagogy and the technology that could support it

16. Notes on TEL session Andy diSessa Epistemological effects on tech Themes – representation and thought; tacit knowledge Galileo – Two new sciences – you need algebra – Representations we use are infrastructure for thinking ‘material intelligence’ Education is about knowledge – what is the nature of knowledge. Not necessarily propositional knowledge. Not good terminology for epistemology. Tacit knowledge – the frontier in our epistemological u/s Noss – generalisation is not in the curriculum – not the same thing as abstraction; you see variables vary; BUT how get to algebra? Could they design their own representations? San Diego et al – success-based feedback vs substantial feedback – converts technical symbolic displays into action and perception – how do you help them learn the feel? Mercer et al – collaboration as knowledge-driven Scanlon et al – do scripts suggest the right things to think about Laurillard et al – good on learning by design, AC – logo like but not Boxer like – as that is tool-sets for people to design their own – could be a toolkit for them to assemble their own

17. Notes on TEL session Questions PI - Do teachers make use of the ‘IBL Octagon’? – not clear yet SynergyNet – font size can be altered? – yes Ensemble - Do the cases not work because of certain disciplines are not familiar with CBL? Unlike medicine etc.