Jocene - cck08

I have been wading through the other dimensions of my PLE. Time to get back to the blog. What better way than to paste a book proposal about the blog. That’s whatDavid would do.

Book Chapter proposal:

Working Title: The Secret and Password Protected Diary of a Web 2.0 Novice Background:

Background

Central Queensland University (CQUni), in Australia, have a current research project that is seeking to better understand the nature of web-based Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and the consequential implications of these PLEs for teaching and learning. The proverbial elephant in the lounge room however, is that many otherwise capable academics, still resist technology. As a Research Fellow with this project, and oddly, a self-confessed (but now evangelised) technophobe, I used my blog data to map and analyse the learning curve resulting from my new and frequent encounters with Web 2.0 technology. Using a methodology that I had developed and published earlier, I analysed the blog entries to gain insights into this phenomenon of academic resistance to technology.

This knowledge now informs our approach to professional development for academics who identify as technologically recalcitrant.

Chapter summary:

Our PLEs@CQUni research sets out a model for using blog writing in research. I believe that a theoretical framework for any methodology must be able to show a logical, philosophical consistency. The details and the methods used need to sit sensibly under the overarching epistemology of the research design. The methodology that I developed some years ago, as a type of arts-based, qualitative and intuitive tool for data analysis, begins with the subjective perspective of the practicing researcher, but shows in the end a universal metaphor in answer to the research question.

I will set out the methodology in this familiar framework. The concept is simple, despite the necessary terminology:

A Theoretical Framework for blog data analysis

Epistemology: Objectivism (because the way of knowing is through the universal archetype – the object - that will result from the research inquiry.)

Theoretical

Perspective Transcendental Phenomenology (because the theory informing the thinking behind this design is the intuitive phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. I argue that Husserl’s work has been misunderstood, misrepresented and maligned during the reign of twentieth century modernism.)

Methodology Subtextual Phenomenology (Vallack2005) (I translated this philosophical thinking into a sequence of methods for common-sense, intuitive research. Like art, it produces archetypal or mythical images, rather than complex descriptions. The picture, of course, tells us more than the words.)

Methods

1. The researcher and the research subject are one and the same. In the tradition of Heuristic Inquiry (Moustakas) and Autoethnography (Boucher & Ellis), this methodology adopts Kant’s view that the most subjective data will reveal the most universal insights.

2. Free-association of thought through blogging.

3. Consciously remaining alert for myth or metaphor, arising from the unconscious, as the distillation of this information. This might manifest through dream, artwork, idle day-dream etc. Also at this stage, as in meditation, it may be necessary to disciplining the conscious mind’s interruptions.

NOTE - Some researchers may stop here. Some may choose to follow through to a possible triangulation of results, as follows:

4. Interrogating the myth for further nuances or information as it relates to the inquiry. This may be done through creative work such as play writing.

5. The creative outcome, that is the mythical archetype, may be further interrogated through an exhibition of the art or replies to blog posts or through the performance of a play, for example.

We are using Subtextual Phenomenology as an approach to the reflective phase of an Action Research approach to our project. In other words, once we have reflected on the situation, using Subtextual Phenomenology, we then plan and act to improve learning, based on this reflection. Here is a concrete example of how Subtextual Phenomenology has worked to inform our research into the use of Web 2.0 technology, as part of the PLES@CQUni project.

The outcome of blog-based reflection on the PLEs@CQUni project:

The myth of Echo & Narcissus surfaced as an analogy for the relationship between the recalcitrant technologist and the technology itself. Like the nymph, Echo, the blog data of the Web 2.0 Novice reveals that she is frustrated at her inability to articulate her experiences with technology. Like Echo, she seems dumb. In contrast to her situation, the technology itself, like Narcissus is self-contained and apparently without empathy for the plight of the Web 2.0 novice. Some academics resist technology because they need inter-personal empathy rather than cold, sense-based exactitude.

The chapter would include blog samples to illustrate this point, like this one:

R

Concluding remarks

Weblogs provide a plethora of data for research. Subtextual Phenomenology, as illustrated in the chapter, would provide academics and students with a methodologically sound approach to drawing insights from their own, otherwise random blogs. The approach may be used by academics or indeed artists, to access the candid yet profound truths that materialise through weblogs.

http://www.gardencom.com/freepics  2^nd March, 09

I have been browsing for inspiration. Web 2.0, or participatory media as I prefer to call it today, in itself is inspirational. My new hobby is puppeteering my Second Life avatar. I need to be able to manipulate her movements better, and I would like a more extensive repertoire of “gestures”, but it is great fun. I have vague ideas of the many ways this instrument might be applied to instruction and interactive learning. Part of me wants to let this emerge, intuitively. The other part (the boring left brain, most likely) wants me to find a valid, pedagogical use for it – you know, to prove I haven’t been just mucking around! We all know about necessity and invention and the importance of play, but I like it so much that I can’t help feeling guilty. And I’m not even Catholic!

So, to appease the stupid, logical part of my brain, I will try to list what we have discovered so far about PLEs:

·

The recalcitrant user of Web 1.0 technology may, like Echo in the legend of Narcissus, feel unsure in a context of unfeeling logic. Like Narcissus, technology is self-contained and without empathy for its users. The personality types who thrive in an interactive pedagogical environment (probably those who would score highly on the extrovert/ feeling/ intuitive indicators of the Myer/Briggs test - though I have not tested this. I just have a hunch about it in a feeling/ intuitive sort of way) are uncomfortably estranged by technology. They may resent that it doesn’t care what they think. It is inflexible and will not easily yield to new ways of doing things. It is passively aggressive and it refuses to discuss it. Yes, I think it’s called anthropomorphization. But there goes the stupid left brain compensating with labels for that which it cannot understand.

· Participatory media is different. It welcomes in the unpredictable and the creative. It is inspirational.

I would like to know if these findings relate directly to the learning style of the participator (or student). I suppose I could begin some extensive surveying, but priorities are being pressured by time. Perhaps for now it is enough to know that Web 2.0 engages a new cohort of learners who could not easily relate to predictable “old” technology?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzen3TiXow8

My research colleague : http://nfhood.wordpress.com/ and I continue to be amazed at how much of the dialogue surrounding PLEs ends with the question, “So what is a PLE?”.

We decided early on that we must bind our research to the technological aspects of PLEs. We know that in any broad sense, one’s personal learning environment consists of non-e things. But we ignore them in order for our research to be focused and manageable. We only look at enabling and enhancing PLEs through engagement with Web 2.0 (yes- still using that term. Maybe we should rename it Harold or Jane?) media. So why can’t we agree on a clear definition for a PLE? It’s got a name, but it doesn’t tell us anything. Is that because we have sliced it up, extracted the technological bits, and thrown the rest away? Do we see the PLE out of its essential perspective?

If I cut up a Yeppoon Pineapple so that only the flesh remains, I have the useful bit, but I lose all perspective on the visual entirety of the fruit. Sometimes that matters and sometimes it does not. But I would not understand certain things about that yellow mush if I could not see it in its own context - its own pinappleness.

Maybe we can’t define PLEs because we are looking at a single segment of it, and wondering why it doesn’t look like a total picture.

So - instead of talking generally about PLEs that we can’t totally visualise, maybe we should acknowledge that our research is only about segments of ideas, not entire concepts. 

Now it makes more sense. Instead of talking about integrating whole PLEs into our HE courses, and creating a nightmare of accountability and assessibility implications, we just aim to slip in little pieces of PLEs (the thin ends of wedges?), into the gaps and maybe where they embellish the existing design?

Maybe this is what Snowdon & Jones http://davidtjones.wordpress.com/ are on about with their  talk of ’safe-fail’ antics. (By George, she’s got it!?)

There has been so much talk about PLEs but very little committed action from those of us who ponder its pedagogical potentials. Graham Atwell’s Slideshare presentation –

http://www.slideshare.net/GrahamAttwell/personal-learning-enviroments-the-future-of-education-presentation?type=presentation

is interesting and insightful, until the concluding questions: What is a PLE? and What can we do with a PLE?  Arrrg!. We thought for a moment there that some answers were in the offering. But we understand that this thinking is simplistic.

He talks about the need to contextualise the PLE. Well, yes. My colleague and I have decided to push ahead with our own contextualised understanding, so we can start to reflect upon rather that speculate about our PLE work. But we still keep getting stuck, half way over the implementation hurdle! If we telelogically suggest a way forward for any group of learners, then we are not facilitating a PLE, we are imposing our values. It’s easy to join in the chorus of what a PLE is not!

Atwell points out that in a PLE, learners will set their own goals. Now here is the difficulty. We are trying to fit a free-flowing design into a rigid situation like an assessed and accredited course. Course designers draw up rubrics - boundaries and fences in which learning objectives and assessment strategies are imprisoned. PLEs, if they were released on the system, would, by their very nature, transcend those boundaries.

I think this is why it is so hard to implement PLEs into higher education courses.