Gale Parchoma

Mobile Learning and Immutable Mobiles: Using iPhones to Support Informal Learning in Craft Brewing

This chapter presents two case studies of the use of iPhones in informal learning practices in craft brewing. We trace how a smartphone is entangled in practices and how an informal learning network is assembled. We consider this assemblage through actor-network theory (ANT) describing the origins, applications and intersection of this approach with educational research and networked learning. Using a multi-sited ethnographic methodology and focussed-ethnographic fieldwork methods, we follow connections from participant observation in the home breweries to online forums and media. These are illustrated through thick description and images of the situated use of iPhones in two home breweries. From this fieldwork we draw three implications. Firstly, how those formal educational settings can productively learn from the situated use of apps to support calculation, simulation and recording of data in these informal practices. Secondly, how aspects of Marsick and Watkins’ (New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 2001(89), 25–34) model of informal learning as haphazard and unrecognised are less helpful than a more nuanced and context-sensitive theorisation. Finally, we consider the challenge of ANT to conceptualisations of the epistemology and ontology of networked learning and question the anthropocentric view of agency and narrow views of mediation advanced therein. We suggest that learning assembles an actor-network and reconfigures it with that learning distributed across its heterogeneous elements rather than residing in the human learner alone.

The Ethical and Practical Implications of Systems Architecture on Identity in Networked Learning: A Constructionist Perspective

Through relational dialogue, learners shape their identities by sharing information about the world and how they see themselves in it. As learners interact, they receive feedback from both the environment and other learners which, in turn, helps them assess and adjust their self-presentations. Although learners retain choice and personal agency, even the most neutral-seeming technological environment may encourage some ways of interacting whilst discouraging others. Taking a constructionist perspective, the authors first compare peer-to-peer interaction in online and face-to-face environments. Online self-presentation is adjusted using identity management tools. These tools may provide efficient ways to locate and interact with other learners as well as protection mechanisms for personal information. In particular, the authors discuss the effects of anonymity and pseudonymity on trust and social capital. To illustrate these concepts, the authors discuss two social networking systems, iHelp and The Landing, and how their underlying architectures may affect discourse and identity management. Throughout, there remains a tension between the individual self versus the self as part of a social group. The authors recommend careful consideration of the effects of systems architecture on both the individual and the community – thereby balancing the needs of the individual with her learning communities. From an ethical standpoint, only then can both individual and community flourish online.

Supporting Creativity in Craft Brewing: A Case Study of iPhone Use in the Transition from Novice towards Mastery

This paper presents a case-study of an individual engaged in the practice of craft brewing and the ways in which his use of a mobile device has supported the informal learning underpinning his transition from novice towards mastery. Through participant observation, online ethnographic methods and interview data the authors present a description of how the mobile device is used. The authors argue for the importance of considering the role of constraint in the creative process, and the place of expert assessment in evaluating a product as creative. These arguments are contrasted with theorisation of assessment as absent in informal learning or inappropriate for evaluating creativity.

Traces of Cognition as a Distributed Phenomenon in Networked Learning

In this chapter, I begin with historical and ongoing debates about the nature of cognition in relation to critical and humanistic traditions underpinning networked learning theory and practice. In this context, knowledge is not perceived a transmissible property that can be moved across a network from one person to another; rather, knowledge is viewed as emergent. I go on to trace points in the past decade where networked learning understandings of cognition have come to include sociomaterial perspectives that acknowledge the agencies of both human and non-human actors in knowledge emergence. In the following section on the conceptualizations of the human mind, I critically examine five contemporary perspectives: neuropsychological, environmentalist, phenomenological, situated sociocultural account, and mentalist. From a relational view, each of these perspectives can accommodate the proposition of cognition as a distributed phenomenon without becoming caught in the dualism of abstract mind and concrete material social practice. I conclude the chapter with positing distributed cognition as a unifying theoretical concept underpinning the political, ontological, and epistemological aspects of networked learning.

Disciplinarity Issues in Educational Technology Doctoral Supervision

Abstract Interdisciplinary approaches to doctoral education have been identified as a route towards enhancing research capacity to address pressing technical and socio-technological challenges. Increasingly, technological supports for part-time, distance, and flexible access to doctoral programmes are bringing together international groups of supervisors and students. Doctoral programmes in the field of educational technology often include academic staff and doctoral candidates from a fairly wide range of originating undergraduate and graduate disciplines. While technologies provide these diverse, dispersed doctoral students and their supervisors with digital connectivity, theoretical continuity remains a challenge for both new and established contributors to the field. This chapter reports results of a grounded theory informed study of doctoral supervisors’ experiences in dealing with disciplinary issues in educational technology. Resultant supervisory challenges and practices are reported. We posit a conceptual framework for examining perspectives on disciplinarity within educational technology and present an argument that the field provides fertile trans-disciplinary ground for represented disciplines to influence and potentially be reoriented by others. Trans-disciplinary reorientation provides a promising avenue towards developing shared discourses and theoretical underpinnings for at least broadly uniting the field and could make a substantive contribution to resolving persistent concerns in educational technology doctoral supervision and perhaps beyond.

Blended Simulation Based Medical Education: a Complex Learning/Training Opportunity

Simulation Based Medical Education (SBME) as an innovative approach in Medical and Professionals Allied to Medicine (PAM) education has received international attention in the past few years to support improvement of patient safety and providing better health care services within hospitals. Blended SBME (B-SBME) is a new instructional model recently introduced into the field, which blends on-line briefing sessions followed by a simulation session, and concluded with immediate face-to-face debriefing sessions. In this paper we discuss the complexity of learning in B-SBME and how individualistic learning theories do not support understanding of all these processes. A shift in theoretical lens to socio-cultural theories may develop our understanding of how we depict and theorise the learning that goes on in B-SBME and whether B-SBME can act as a “boundary crossing tool” and support expanding of learning into clinical setting.