Paper on Learning Design Published in Kybernetes

"Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake" - Bob Dylan

Ranulph Glanville has just edited a special issue of Kybernetes: The International Journal of Systems, Cybernetics and Management Science (voume 36, isue 9/10) on Cybernetics and Design. The hard copy arrived in the post today and it is a very interesting read. I have a paper included co-authored with Bernard Scott, Piers MacLean and Chunyu Cong called 'Cybernetic Principles for Learning Design'.


Title: Cybernetic principles for learning design
Author(s): Bernard Scott, Simon Shurville, Piers Maclean, Chunyu Cong
Journal: Kybernetes
ISSN: 0368-492X
Year: 2007 Volume: 36 Issue: 9/10 Page: 1497 - 1514
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to present an approach from first principles to the design of learning experiences in interactive learning environments, that is “learning designs” in the broadest sense. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is based on conversation theory (CT), a theory of learning and teaching with principled foundations in cybernetics. The approach to learning design that is proposed is not dissimilar from other approaches such as that proposed by Rowntree. However, its basis in CT provides a coherent theoretical underpinning. Findings – Currently, in the world of e-learning, the terms “instructional design” and “learning design” are used to refer to the application of theories of learning and instruction to the creation of e-learning material and online learning experiences. The paper examines the roots of the two terms and discusses similarities and differences in usage. It then discusses how the processes of learning design fit into the larger processes of course, design, development and delivery. It goes on to examine the concept of a “learning design pattern”. Originality/value – The paper contends that, whilst learning design patterns are useful as starting-points for individual learning designs, learning designers should adopt the cybernetic principles of reflective practice – as expressed in CT – to create learning designs where received wisdom is enriched by contextual feedback from colleagues and learners.
Keywords: Cybernetics, Design, Learning
Article Type: Conceptual paper
Article URL: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/03684920710827445

There are a wide range of papers in this special issue that should appeal to anyone with an interest in cybernetics or design. I hope that the cross over between design theory and learning design will be investigated by other researchers. There is too much good design research to be ignored by learning designers.

Ranulph Glanville on cybernetics, design and education

" Who will provide the grand design? ... What is yours and what is mine?" - The Eagles

Ranulph Glanville kindly sent me a couple of very interesting columns he has written for Cybernetics and Human knowing on second order cybernetics and education. I find myself a fellow traveler on Ranulph’s shirt tails on the importance of design disciplines and practice to the construction of knowledge. I am also in agreement that studio-based learning should be imported from design education to mainstream education. I just wish that he had not thought these thoughts ten or twenty years before I did. So I recommend tracking down his columns from Cybernetics and Human Knowing on ‘A (Cybernetic) Musing: Cybernetics and Human Knowing’ and ‘A (Cybernetic) Musing: Some Examples of Cybernetically Informed Educational Practice’. The second paper features excellent descriptions of studio-based and problem-based learning.

Asher Rospigliosi and I applied elements of the studio-based approach when teaching Digital Entrepreneurship, i.e. embedding information systems within SMEs, to entrepreneurs at the University of Essex iLab. We integrated the studio-based approach with action learning / research. So there *were* consequences to the learner's actions. Working together and ‘pinching’ ideas certainly seemed to help the learners to combine experiences in tasks such as authoring change and innovation plans and thus avoid reinventing wheels. My learning from the experience was that eclecticism is important in learning design. Although leaning designers should not be dilettantes, they should select the most appropriate aspects of the available approaches. This requires staying in contact with developments in learning and teaching and being a reflective practioner. As Van Morrison sang “No guru, no method, no teacher …” but perhaps that over states the case. Some of Ranulph’s advice from A (Cybernetic) Musing: Some Examples of Cybernetically Informed Educational Practice’ quoted below can help a learning designer/teacher to remain grounded.

• "Treat students as you would be treated yourself: show concern for them and for their vulnerability. Thus we relearn generosity.
• Remember, if we have to present in “preaching” modes (e.g. lectures), at least to entertain. Lecturing, especially “educational” lecturing at university, is a performance art (that’s why it’s so hard). Tell a good story well!
• If you wish to be interesting, you must be interested.
• Education is involved in helping others learn. It is concerned with the learner, first and foremost. It is not an opportunity for a teacher to display his/her knowledge/authority.
• We, as teachers, are also learners. There is an endless conversation to be had between us all." (Glanville, 2002, p 8).

Further reading

You can download both columns from Ranulph's web site.

Learner-Generated Contexts

"Mercy, mercy me ... the ecology" - Marvin Gaye

Should we conceptualize learners as tourists in zoologicalgardens curated by educators or as explorers in open environments fraught with danger and reward? In other words do we see ourseves as Johnny Morris or our learners as Steve Irwin?

Rose Luckin and her colleagues Jon Akass, John Cook, Peter Day, Nigel Ecclesfield, Fred Garnett, Matt Gould, Tom Hamilton, Andrew Whitworth have published some interesting and much needed theoretical work to frame discussions of education and web 2.0 grounded in ideas of self-organization and ecology. I think they would opt for Steve Irwin!

In 'Learner-Generated Contexts: Sustainable Learning Pathways Through Open Content' they write: "The proposal of a Learner Generated Context arose initially from the suggestion that an educational context can be described as a learner-centric ecology of resources and that a learner-generated context is one in which a user or group of users collaboratively marshal the available resources to create an ecology that meets their needs (see Luckin, R. 2006; Luckin, du Boulay, Smith, Underwood, Fitzpatrick, Holmberg, Kerawalla, Tunley, Brewster & Pearce, 2005; Luckin, Shurville & Browne, 2007 for more detail on the learnercentric ecology of resources framework and for more detailed examples). Through the discussions of the Learner Generated Context group fresh perspectives on thiscontention have developed. For example, both spatial and process issues emerge. These could be described as Changing the learning context and generating learning spaces, and Changing the learning process and the learning context.” (Luckin et al, 2007 p 90).

Elsewhere writing as the The Learner Generated Contexts Group, Luckin et al provide a nice pithy definition: "“A Learner Generated Context can be defined as a context created by people interacting together with a common, self-defined or negotiated learning goal. The key aspect of Learner Generated Contexts is that they are generated through the enterprise of those who would previously have been consumers in a context created for them." You can find out more and add to discussion at the wiki.

I think that the concept of a Learner-Generated Context helps us to start thinking about personal learning environments from a learning and teaching perspective rather than a purely technical one. Supporting approaches like mode two, participative action learning / research and enquiry-based learning with web 2.0 will require its own ecology of models and frameworks. For example, second order cybernetics becomes a useful tool to study and reflect upon Learner-Generated Contexts once we start to view learners as conscious modelers of their own learnings and learning environments. As educators we can teach reflective practice, perhaps using some form of scaffolding, to help learners to become second order cyberneticians in their own right.

Turning to materiality, I think that the ecological metaphor helps to make it clear that virtual learning environments, personal learning environments and other forms of technology mediated learning are part of a wider and more tangible world of books, museums and coffee bar conversations etc that learners inhabit and animate. Sometimes ‘hidden learning environments’ are only hiding in plain sight. Perhaps learning technologisits should get out more ...

Further reading: You can download a great powerpoint on learner-generated contexts. A smart addition to anyone's ecology.

References

• Luckin, R.; du Boulay, B.; Smith, H.; Underwood, J.; Fitzpatrick, G.; Holmberg, J.; Kerawalla, L.; Tunley, H.; Brewster, D. and Pearce, D. (2005). Using Mobile Technology to Create Flexible Learning Contexts, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, Special Issue on Portable Learning .
• Luckin, R. (2006). Understanding Learning Contexts as Ecologies of Resources: From the Zone of Proximal Development to Learner Generated Contexts. In T. Reeves & S. Yamashita (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Elearning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2006 (pp. 2195–2202). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
• Luckin, R., Shurville, S. and Browne, T. (2007) Initiating elearning by stealth, participation and consultation in a late majority institution, Organisational Transformation and Social Change Volume 3 Number 3 and Volume 4 Number 1 pp. 317–332.
  

Further reading

• Judy Robertson attended the recent London Knowledge Lab event on learner-generated contexts (I missed it as I was busy migrating) and her reflections on the event can be found on her previous blog. Judy has now moved her blog to typepad. It looks like an interesting platform. http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~judy/blog/2007/09/learner-generated-contexts.html

Second-order cybernetics, learning design and design theory

"She was lovelier from learning ... And from living, loving more" - Gene Clark

I am interested in the relationship between second-order cybernetics, learning design and design theory/methods. In the future I would like to see more programs to support reflective learning design and for these to be based on sound design theory and ethical practice (see below). LAMS is a great beginning and I would like to see further programs with repositories and technologies such as case-based reasoning to help educators make best use of existing resources. The following paragraphs are an adapted extract from a paper by Bernard Scott, Simon Shurville, Piers Maclean and Chunyu Cong, which is due for publication in Kybernates.

In the discourse of second-order cybernetics, von Foerster coined the term ‘metaphysical’ to describe domains whose navigation requires participant observers to perform value judgements in selecting a problem-setting framework and a set of guiding principles (von Foerster, 1991). Such metaphysical domains contrast to more trivial domains where apparently objective agents can navigate via deterministic problem-solving methodologies (von Foerster, 1991). This distinction has a parallel in design research, where Rittel and Webber (Rittel and Webber, 1973) drew a distinction between ‘tame’ and ‘wicked’ domains. In tame domains, problems come pre-framed such that an apparently objective agent can apply deterministic procedures to solve them. In wicked domains, the framing of a problem by participant observers is a fundamental part of addressing it. Further, a genuinely wicked problem contains irreducible moral, political and professional dimensions which participant observers must take into account. This distinction between tame and wicked problems was re-invented by others working in adjacent domains, such as the systems thinkers Ackoff (1974) and Checkland (1981).

Design researchers such as Archer (1979), Broadbent and Ward (1969) and Jones (1977) appreciated the distinction between tame and wicked problems. They also recognized that the majority of design methods that had been developed during a well-funded period of research following the Second World War were aimed at tame domains (Cross, 1984). These researchers rose above these highly procedural first-generation design methods and began to develop second-generation design methods, which were structured yet acknowledged the personal values and histories of socially situated designers (for further history, see Cross, 1984). Hence, we suggest that there are many design-domains, which can, depending on the observer’s context, equally well be described as metaphysical or wicked. This is useful because it provides a cross-disciplinary bridge and enables research and praxis to be ported to and fro between cybernetics and design.

In a forthcoming paper Bernard Scott, Piers Maclean, Chunyu Cong and I argue that learning design for TEL constitutes a metaphysical domain which yields wicked problems that require second-order sensibilities and second generation design methods. We have two reasons to make this claim. First, learning design for TEL is extremely complicated. It requires “interdisciplinary collaboration across the disciplines of learning, cognition, information and communication technologies (ICT) and education, and the broader social sciences” (TLRP, 2006) and hence requires diligent professionalism (MacLean and Scott, 2006). Second, since learning design ultimately involves the education of real people, its moral, political and professional dimensions cannot be eliminated. So addressing problems in learning design for TEL in an ethical fashion (c.f. von Foerster, 1991) requires learning designers to recognise that they are socially situated, participant observers who need to tame problems with well-founded and appropriately structured methodologies.

I explored design theory and artificial intelligence in depth in my thesis (Shurville, 1998) and would like to return to the area in the context of information systems to support learning design.

References

• Ackoff, R. (1974). Re-defining the Future. London: John Wiley and Sons.


• Archer, B. (1979) Whatever Became of Design Methodology, Design Studies, Volume 1. Number 1, pp 17-18.


• Broadbent and Ward (1969) Design Methods in Architecture, London: Lund Humpheries Publishers Ltd.


• Checkland, P. (1981). Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. Chichester Sussex: John Wiley and Sons.


• Cross, N. (ed.) (1984) Developments in Design Methodology, New York, John Wiley and Sons.


• Jones, J.C. (1977) How My Thoughts About Design Methods have Changed During the Years. Design Methods and Theories, Volume 11, number 1, pp 50-62.


• MacLean, P.J., and Scott, B.C.E. (2006) Learning Design: Requirements, Practice and Prospects. In: K. Fernstrom and K. Tsolakidis, eds. Readings in Technology in Education: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Communications Technologies in Education 2006, 6-8 July 2006 Rhodes. Abbotsford, BC: UCFV Press, 152-156.


• Rittel, H.W.J. and Webber, M.M. (1973), “Dilemmas in a general theory of planning”, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, pp. 155-69.


• Shurville, S. (1998) Method Oriented Design Environments in Knowledge-Aided Design. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Brighton.


• Teaching and Learning Research Programme, (2006) Announcement of Forthcoming ESRC/EPSRC Call for Research on Technology Enhanced Learning: Understanding, creating, and exploiting digital technologies for learning. Retrieved January 19, 2007 from: http://www.tlrp.org/tel/.


• von Foerster, H. (1991) Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics. In Rey, Y. and Prieur, B. (eds) Systemes, ethiques: Perspectives en therapie familiale (Paris: ESF Editeur, 1991) 41-54.