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!?)

(Secret and password protected) Diary of a Web 2.0 Novice – A Subtextual Phenomenon.

Web 2.0 social media tools, such as Twitter, Second Life, Delicious, Flickr, RSS feeds, Weblogs, Webcasts and more, are mutating on a daily basis and have already permeated the daily communication activities of our clients, our students and our loved ones. At (our university) we are currently doing research into encouraging and enabling the use of Web 2.0 technology in the form of personal learning environments (PLEs). Within the Action Research framework, we are using a creative, (and for this study a) blog-based methodology called Subtextual Phenomenology (*Vallack, 2006), to deal with the reflective data, and to thus identify the obstacles faced by recalcitrant users of this new technology. 

In this paper I set out the research design and some sample, autoethnographic-style, reflective data for the project. Surfacing from the thick and candid blog-data are themes about the learning experiences of an academic, middle-aged, Web 2.0 novice, as she struggles to master the social media that will enable her to build her web-based, Personal Learning Environment(PLE). The focus of this paper, however, will be on the reflective component of the Action Research paradigm, and the efficacy of Subtextual Phenomenology as a methodology for processing this (seemingly) random data.

The first part of the paper argues that systematic positivism should give way to more interpretive and comprehensive qualitative data, if the business of tackling new technologies is to be understood. The second part of the paper explains and demonstrates the phenomenological processes that reveal the essential elements of experience for the Web 2.0 novice as she embraces her Personal Learning Environment (PLE).

The general framework for our inquiry into the PLE phenomenon is Action Research. Within the reflective phase of the Action Research, Subtextual Phenomenology is used to critically manage the subjective Weblog data:

Our emergent Action Research has evolved alongside our research questions, to best support and validate the inquiry into PLEs. I demonstrate that the essentially reflective and subjective data can be rigorously processed through Subtextual Phenomenology, to inform the researchers as they confront this Web 2.0 communication phenomenon.

                                                    ……………………………………………………

 SAMPLE DATA ONLY – please do not include in word count:

@http://jocene.edublogs.org/

October 8th, 2008:

Gee you spend a lot of time for nothing in front of a computer screen. I have wasted hours this week trying every password I’ve ever used to get back into this weblog (for some reason I prefer the full name of the thing. The abbreviation sounds obscene.). Anyway, Edublog has been closed for renovations, but, of course, I just thought it was me. When it asked me if I had forgotten my password, I affirmed that this was the case and put in a request for a new one to be sent to my email. Unfortunately, when I set up this blog, I had to use my home email, and to get into that from work required me to send for another password from Bigpond. This line of obscurity is now prominently in my work diary, for there is no way I could remember it, and I am afraid to change it to something else that, clearly, is forgettable. I try    to use the same password, but then some machine trying every password I’ve ever used to get back into this weblog (for some reason I prefer the full name of the demands that I embellish it by adding a lot of B*##y! I style characters. So then, like it not, I have another password to contend with. Another password that will ensure that no-one can break in to see what I am about to publish on my PUBLIC WEBLOG!

I don’t know what all this security is about – it’s just a nuisance. Anyway, I work with a shop load of super-geeks (all gorgeous) who could break into anything I construct (if they really wanted to be bored out of their brains!). 

So the thought for the day is – just because you’ve hit another “invalid username“, doesn’t mean that it’s not because the system isn’t down! (Love all those triple negatives when I’m feeling like the martyr.

Which reminds me – I still haven’t been able to access my car radio since they took out the battery!

 

 

 

 

My colleagues and I are satisfied that our little presentations were well received. It was encouraging for me to see a small but enthusiastic fan club in the audience of former work colleagues from Swinburne University. (Thanks, guys – especially the bit where you publicly congratulated us on our project!) My project partner, Nathaniel, has made some good contacts as a result of his presentation. There apparently are others out there who want to explore learner-centered pedagogy using platforms outside of the LMS. It seems that the universal difficulty is getting organisations to take their proverbial hand off the LMS control stick. Incidental discussion at this conference has indicated that the institutions, especially (and ironically) the technology divisions controlling the LMSs, are recalcitrant when it comes to shifting the center of learning management to the users. And of course there are logistical and pedagogical challenges associated with such change, which will need to be investigated. But already, there is an irresistible transition taking place. Novices like me, who used to hate being forced to be technically consistent and accurate, and therefore resisted technology, are now being creatively empowered by opportunities to control their own learning tools. I love it. Web 2.0 could draw in a whole new cohort of “end-users” who rather than doggedly “bringing up the rear” for the ICT task masters, can now venture forth as pioneers and leaders of their own experiential learning.

The session on second-life machinimas was inspiring. I really want to do something along those lines within my PLE. Now I just have to learn how to do it. The good thing is that the learning won’t hurt because the relevance of what I want to create will be ever-present throughout my transformation.

I wonder if I could blog with machinimas? Groovy. Watch this space.

Using the Ps Framework (Jones, 2008), I will reflect on my view (limited though it is) of the research project into personal learning environments.

Here are my perspectives of the project so far:

I have been working in pedagogy at universities for a little while now, as an Academic or Education Advisor (they change the title from time to time). The last couple of years have seen me leaning on lecturers and enforcing course-writing rules to comply with AQUA audits, but they were rules with which I would sometimes (secretly) disagree.

This thinking, firmly based in an epistemology of Objectivism (and let me declare right here that there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, and in fact, I chose to write my own PhD thesis in that domain – partly because it was methodologically subversive in content – but that’s a story in itself that I will leave alone for now) …where was I? …Firmly based in Objectivism, this was once known as “goal-based” assessment. It requires the course-writer to predict what will be learned and then, by some rational means, be able to measure the success with which the students have learned it! Ok for the six-times-table, I suppose.

How can this approach survive Personal Learning Environments and learner empowerment? Clearly it is not relevant to them. So, what sort of pedagogical questions should we now be asking, in the clear dawn of social- media-enabled learning?  What do we do with that learning objective, “At the successful completion of this course the student will be able to….” who knows? And who ever really knew anyway! Was it not just an exercise in semantics?

I am fascinated with this new pedagogical riddle about where PLEs will take teaching and learning, for surely it is no longer the metaphorical matter of the cart before the horse.  

Place

What is my place of work? My personal learning and working place is all about me – at home, on campus, on the beach where I (should) walk daily with the dog. I do a lot of synthesising of ideas in the car while driving, and when I walk the dog. This project would have advanced further had I kept my promises to the dog. My office is becoming more of a place for housekeeping work – emails, discussions with colleagues, meetings,  and planning activities take place there. I prefer working at home in the evenings if I really want to reflect and focus. Like now. After dark, when everyone is mostly asleep – except for the cats – the imagination conjures.

Since this project is about learning places, it seems fitting that I should emphasise the fact that (to put a new spin on an old term) I have a flexible learning and working environment – within reason.

People

The PLE project has an extraordinary workforce.

The people with whom I work are an unlikely bunch. We are all quite different, and yet there is something unusually cohesive about the group. It is as if we have landed our positions via some sort of intuitive phenomenon. It’s a remarkable group because it is unusually motivated and the individuals are respectful towards one another  - no, more than respectful – kind. Irreverently funny, and kind. I work with kind, funny and slightly peculiar people. They are highly intelligent and happy in their work. The fact that they are enduring a lengthy and cruel workplace restructure may have tempered the last factor a little.

Because I work with nice people, I have a sense of belonging and ownership in what I do. I feel a sense of responsibility towards them and their welfare, and although I am usually selfish about intellectual property, I am learning to relinquish my precious little claims to nothing. All of this makes me uncharacteristically happy. Clearly this can’t go on! I am trying to adopt the spirit of sharing that has been so ingrained for so long amongst the gorgeous geeks. I see that the Web has developed beyond all expectations because these blokes (mainly, for some reason) just share stuff. Now it’s out there, and the tide is not about to turn. And I think that’s good – but it’s confusing because it is not what I know. So much for those lectures on plagiarism that I delivered last year! The wave’s quite happily dumped me! I don’t know which way is up.

Process & Product

This might relate to the methodology (process) and the achievements so far (product).

What follows has been lifted straight from a draft of a paper I am trying to write.

It is a possible theoretical framework of our research methodology:

EPISTEMOLOGY

 An epistemology of constructionism means that like the objectivism of positive research, we accept that for the purpose of this research, the real world objects and behaviours in existence that we will be able to observe and record. Unlike positivism, our focus will be on the interpretations that we make of those observations. Our subjective experiences of the worldly facts will result is an observed reality that has been constructed. Moreover, sometimes the construction will be from one researcher’s perspective, while at other times it may be a reconstructed idea, as one researcher persuades another to see things in a different way. This way of knowing the world is dynamic and organic because it will keep growing and changing throughout the research.

Let us first turn our attention to the perspective of interpretivism, and deal with the postmodern aspects of the research as they become more apparent when viewed alongside the methods of this design.

Interpretivism goes back to the thinking of Max Weber (1864-1920), C:\Documents and Settings\Jocene Vallack\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\ID03A1U5\263,8,Max Weber- Interpretivistwho delineated between the type of research needed for the natural sciences – that of observation and certitude, and the sort of methods used by social scientists who needed to understand human behaviour rather than just report on it. Understanding will always involve some subjective mind activity on the part of the researchers as they construct their knowledge base. Providing the researchers are aware of this, and if necessary, disclose known biases in their understandings, interpretivism is a way forward for many research projects. In our discipline of technology, interpretivism seems to be increasingly adapted for use.

Throughout our research the questions that are emerging are about understanding PLEs and the users of Web 2.0 technology. In order to understand, we will need to employ qualitative methodology. It is quite likely, however, that more finite questions requiring quantitative answers will also be raised. The methodology of Action Research will accommodate a mixed method approach throughout the cycles of the research.

The key researchers for this project communicate daily. We share reflections, plan further action and so on it goes. Kemmis & McTaggart would assure us that we are on the right track with this Action Research practice – the researchers are committed to the project, we share information willingly and work in conscious collaboration towards our common goal of better understanding the impact of Web 2.0 tools on personal learning environments and lifelong learning, and exploring ways to better support the future directions of learners at CQU. (I apologise for the excessive verbosity of the last sentence. This is merely a symptom of early research questions that are awaiting concision. It’s part of the process towards clarification, and this is indeed a work in process.)

The three arms of Action Research- those of planning, acting and reflecting -  each hold a set of methods, which realise them. These are they: (see next post…)

 ACT

·          Actively learning and/or refining Web 2.0 skills

·          Contact points made to engage staff and students in the pedagogy of PLEs

(Voice thread poster expo)

·          Conference presentation & paper (ASCILITE)

REFLECT

·          Blog writing for clarification of thought

·          Formal discussions

·          Informal conversations

·          Analysis of writing (including reading between the lines)

·          Altered consciousness revealing phenomena as metaphor and image

(I am the only one at present prepared to admit to this)

*A note on process

This is emergent research. If we tried to prdict at the beginning what we would achieve, then we would be closing our minds to seeing something new – beyond that which was forseeable and predictable.

As all Action Research must be, this is bottom-up research. If it was controlled autocratically, we would not avail ourselves to the diverse perspectives of everyone involved.Also, if this was not a transparent process that clearly valued the perspectives of various ones from various places within the workplace heirarchy, the research participants would not know the empowerment that goes alongside commitment and intrinsic motivation.

Pedagogy & Past experience

I have been working in pedagogy at universities for a little while now, as an Academic or Education Advisor (they change the title from time to time). The last couple of years have seen me leaning on lecturers and enforcing course-writing rules to comply with AQUA audits, but they were rules with which I would sometimes (secretly) disagree.

This thinking, firmly based in an epistemology of Objectivism (and let me declare right here that there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, and in fact, I chose to write my own PhD thesis in that domain – partly because it was methodologically subversive in content – but that’s a story in itself that I will leave alone for now) …where was I? …Firmly based in Objectivism, this was once known as “goal-based” assessment. It requires the course-writer to predict what will be learned and then, by some rational means, be able to measure the success with which the students have learned it! Ok for the six-times-table, I suppose.

How can this approach survive Personal Learning Environments and learner empowerment? Clearly it is not relevant to them. So, what sort of pedagogical questions should we now be asking, in the clear dawn of social- media-enabled learning?  What do we do with that learning objective, “At the successful completion of this course the student will be able to….” who knows? And who ever really knew anyway! Was it not just an exercise in semantics?

 

I am fascinated with this new pedagogical riddle about where PLEs will take teaching and learning, for surely it is no longer the metaphorical matter of the cart before the horse.  

           

 

Purpose

What is the purpose of the PLEs@CQU project? Education – purely. Self-education. Shared education. Redefined and dynamic…etc

Social media has changed me. Already I have learned so much that I actually found myself getting impatient with some dithering dope who couldn’t get the powerpoint to work at the PD session. Suddenly I’m the one who has become Helpdesk! If you knew how hostile, insecure and impatient I have been with technology- for decades- you might see the irony in having me now side with it against some stupid, lazy end-user who can’t even get her act together enough to deliver a damn powerpoint without someone having to go out of their way to say something like “F7″!

So now that I’m nearly an expert, like probably anyone who would bother to read this, let me say that (unlike me) you must be patient with the end-users, because they don’t have the luxury of spending the time in front of the screen like we do. That’s it. Lecturers have other priorities – pressure from other people making demands on their time and emotional energy.

As for me, I think I am becoming content in the zone of the computer screen. The more  literate you become, the more confident you get the better it is. And it’s an affective escape to communicate with your own mind via your own motor skills. I think I’m raving now. Good night.

I happened to be talking to a bloke about Blackboard (as you do around here when you sit out in the Queensland sun at lunchtime with your hot and raw MSG stir-fry). He was a fan of the system. Apparently it only costs the university $55k per annum to run it as the CMS. Now I haven’t actually shopped around, but it sounds like a bargain to me. Anyway, we are moving away from it, apparently, to something more expensive and less familiar to the end-users (don’t you just love that term! No wonder no-one wants to be one). He’s not worried about losing his position of control with the current system, because he’s a fast ‘it’ (my new, nerdy pun on IT) learner, and since the rest of us will be struggling, there will be plenty of powerful support positions about for the gifted ones like him. So what? Well…

I have been listening to a voice-thread by Scott Wilson at Bolton University on PLEs. He mentions control, and I have been pondering on that as a factor in the debate about PLES vs CMSs. (Look at me ! A month into this stuff and I’m sounding like them – all acronyms.  My apologies to anyone there still able to communicate in plain English – rage! rage against the dying of the light…!, as DT would almost say) So we can eliminate the control factor from the support staff, because they can pick up any other system without  bother – or can we?

Maybe it is not about which system, so long as there is something or other in place to make the rest of us need them so very much. And if it metamorphosises  intermittently, so much the better. Ah- ha!

Like this – (sorry if you’ve seen it):

Medieval helpdesk

Hmm. The power of the nerd. Interesting. Why else would they actually want to engage with all that code – all those acronyms?! They block us out with them, make us feel isolated, inadequate until it gets so bad that you just can’t…can’t hear them ask again- yet again – “ar sorry, don’t you know what that means?”…and so you smile glibly, almost convincingly, and just nod in acknowledgement  to some string of consonants, as your brain starts thrashing through the alphabet, heading for a crash. Don’t send that error report again today. How much stupidity can one admit to at one time! Lots – I’m brave – but not that much!

That’s how they control us! BUT if we start using PLEs – JUST THE STUFF WE LIKE – instead of having to do it all THEIR way, we might stage some sort of turnaround, the new revolution. They will have to catch up with us when we call in the helpdesk. “Ar, what’s this?” they will ask. “ar sorry. Don’t you know what that means?”, we reply, dry as chips!  Pure as power. Then! – what if I refused to focus on new tools and instead thought about some issue or question?  Something I knew about but wanted to explore further – in an expert kind of way? What if I slipped into alpha-theta mode and the technology didn’t thump me back to beta with error messages? What if it was gentle and poetic and polite?? What if ‘it’ wasn’t akin to fascism?

But wait. Willis points out that some people don’t like the idea of PLEs because they don’t want to be independent learners. I suppose that’s like the prisoner who falls in love with the prison guard (don’t look for the link. I wouldn’t know where to start). Imprisonment is safe. You can’t make mistakes if you can’t make decisions. And how judgemental do I sound now! Who’s the fascist here? And how the heck do we reconcile this?

Unlike other therapies in which the skills of the therapist are to be exercised upon the client. in this approach the skills of the therapist are focussed upon creating a psychological atmosphere in which the client can work.

So my question for Jocene is, what is the underpinning philosophy of student-centred education?

… whatever we perceive is organized into patterns for which we the perceivers are largely responsible

shapes, are located in depth and have permanence…. As time goes on and experience builds up, we make greater investment in our system of labels. So a conservative bias is built in.   It gives us confidence.

 

 

The link containing this quotation talks about pattern entrainment. (Reminiscent for me of my dog training days, and “shaping” methods of behaviour management – they work, but so does electro-shock therapy)  She reminds us that,

Humans use patterns to order the world and make sense of things in complex situations.

I have no argument there. But I think there’s more. It’s more complex than just that. What concerns me a little, is the implication that these patterns are random and meaningless – “a conservative bias is built in (and) it gives us confidence”. Now call me a Jungian (as if that’s a bad thing), but I think that most of our pattern forming, and consequent learning, occurs during altered states of consciousness. Reference to the “aha” moment is now common. When we dream, or meditate, or aha, we experience a mind-state through which we know via images and patterns. It’s not just about salivating dogs and NLP – is it?

The links to cognitive-based explanations explain in mental mode the virtues of starting where the learner is at. If we haven’t got the grooves, the stuff won’t stick. That’s ok, but that’s just part of the picture, I dare say.  I believe, and I will argue in a future blog, that student-based learning might also embrace an individual’s spiritual growth and knowing through what Gebser calls, magical, mythical and integral consciousness. Cognition is over-rated – do you think?