Learning Technology: vision and reality

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Learning Technology vision and reality

• Tom Boyle
• Learning Technology Research Institute
• School of Informatics and Multimedia Technology

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Introduction

• Context
• Vision
• Pedagogically informed design
• pedagogical framework and principles
• case studies and examples
• Structure the domain
• Build deep and precise theoretical knowledge
• Summary

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Context

• Revolutionary change
• driven by developments in IT
• Moores law
• processor power doubles every 18 months
• The IT revolution has a transformative effect
• captured in phrases such as e-commerce and
  e-learning

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Tsunami waves of change

• Microcomputers
• - from the early eighties
• Hypertext
• - mid to late eighties
• Multimedia
• - early nineties
• Internet and the Web
• mid nineties
• hypertext/hypermedia
• electronic communications

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The Reality challenge

• A period of huge, technologically driven change
• Challenge of of adapting to this revolutionary
  change and trying to control its shape
• We are at a key, pivotal point
• In education the success with which we adapt
  will shape the educational experience, for good
  or ill, of generations to come

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Getting it wrong

• The salutory story of the querty keyboard
• Huge pressure to adapt quickly
• Produce sub-optimal solutions that become set as
  standards
• Immediate opportunistic adaptation to the new
  reality is essential, but
• So is a sense of vision driven by deeper
  theoretical understanding

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Striving to get it right

• Need a vision of
• where we are going
• what we are engaged in
• Develop a deeper theoretical understanding
• driven by technological opportunity?
• driven by pedagogy?
• Apply this theoretical understanding at the level
  of design
• a highly creative creative discipline
• Build a discipline of Learning technology?

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A vision of what we are engaged in

• At the highest level
• Alan Kay and story of the printing press
• Jerome Bruner
• biology and culture
• cultural artifacts and ratiocinative amplifiers
• Kay - the interface as an amplifier of human
  abilities
• Fourth class of amplifier
• - cultural amplifier of learning

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The Challenge

• Stop chasing the technology (all of the time)
• Pedagogical based drive
• to guide the creative exploitation of the
  technology
• interactive design
• Develop a deep theoretical base
• Build an effective discipline of learning
  technology

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Pedagogy

• Instructional systems design
• Formal didactic method of developing computer
  based teaching systems
• underpinning traditional CBT (computer based
  training)
• the computer as teaching machine
• Constructivism
• The computer not as a teaching machine but as a
  learning environment

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Constructivism?

• The person as a constructor of their knowledge of
  the world
• Rejection of a simple transmission model of
  learning
• Piaget and Vygotsky
• Translated as principles for educational design
• Variants of constructivism

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The Psychological Base

• Piaget
• The person as a constructor of their knowledge of
  the world
• Vygotsky
• the social dimension
• Modern research in language and cognitive
  development
• Context and scaffolding

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Principles of Constructivism

• Rich user-centred interaction
• e.g. active discovery versus formal instruction
• Use of authentic problem situations
• use of multimedia
• Collaborative learning
• peer to peer (e.g. Linn 1996)
• tutor/student (Cognitive Apprenticeship)
• Deep learning experience of and with
• the knowledge construction process

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Constructivist Learning Environments

• Virtual Clayoquot
• CaBLE in management training
• active goal driven
• the use of war stories
• The Virtual Factory
• Lake Nardoo
• Similar learning principles mapped on to a
  variety of
• media

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Learning to program

• A highly structured problem domain
• Teaching through lectures, textbooks and practice
• the CORE - guided discovery learning approach
• Applying ideas from natural language acquisition
• CLEM - CORE Learning Environment for Modula-2

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CLEM

• CLEM - CORE Learning Environment for Modula-2
• Guided discovery approach - based on natural
  language acquisition
• Example (micro-problem) based learning
• Active learning - where students construct for
  themselves the rules of the language
• Hypertext tool environment (Guide)

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Use and Evaluation of CLEM

• 240 students in year 1
• Observation - Questionnaire - Focus groups
• Module results
• Reductions in failure rate of between 32 to 47
• Interpreting results

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Other CORE systems

• DOVE
• Dynamic
• Observation in
• Virtual
• Environments

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VirCom
Build your own virtual computer
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Wider applicability
Screen-to-Screen multimedia decision support
system
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The domain layers of impact

• Dealing with the complexity of the domain
• Re-usability and extendibility
• Theoretical analysis
• Layering the problem space

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Partitioning the problem space

• We need to articulate the nature of the problem
  space
• Student centred/resource based learning
• Resource layer and pedagogical layer
• Fits with hypertext paradigm (Hall)

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Layering the problem space
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Summary

• Context
• A vision - a fourth class of amplifiers -
  cultural amplifiers of learning
• Pedagogically informed design
• Layering the problem space
• The need for theory-guided deep design

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In dreams begins responsibility
W. B Yeats
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