Madeleine Fiona Sclater

The realities of researching alongside virtual youth in late modernity: creative practices and activity theory

Young peoples use and understanding of the Internet is still under-researched. We argue that researching alongside young people in technological settings (a virtual world on the Internet in this paper) is a complicated nexus of conceptual, methodological and theoretical challenges. We argue that these are in dialectical, and sometimes incoherent, relationships with the realities of research processes and young peoples lived experiences with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The Economic and Social Research Council/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESRC/EPSRC)-funded Inter-Life Project developed a ‘Virtual Research Community’ in Second Life™ to investigate how young people can work creatively to develop their own agency and subjectivities. We reflect on these challenges as they articulated with the ‘Inter-Life’ Projects aims. They include the need for more empirical evidence of the realities of young peoples lives with ICTs, and for re-theorisation of their subjectivities in ICT settings. We interrogate the challenges of participatory research in such settings and the role of creative practices and virtual spaces in finding a voice and being a participatory researcher. In the second part, we illustrate the realities of researching in a virtual world through the lived experience of young people who worked with us. We also explore how activity theory (AT) might assist in the methodological and analytical work of researching young peoples creativity in a virtual world.

The Inter-Life project: researching the potential of art, design and virtual worlds as a vehicle for assisting young people with key life changes and transitions

ABSTRACT Careers work in the twenty-first century faces a key challenge in terms of digital technologies: to evaluate their potential for careers work in challenging settings. Given the rapidity of developments, technologies require evaluation in research innovations and naturalistic settings. Virtual worlds offer potential for careers and guidance work, and the therapeutic domain. To illustrate this, we present examples in which young people explore their feelings and ideas, plans and difficulties, while preparing for film-making. During this they develop important life transition skills. We argue that the power of virtual worlds – to support emotional and cognitive engagement – could be utilised in practice settings. We conclude that they are serious candidates as digital tools in the careers and guidance domain.

Factors influencing students’ orientation to collaboration in networked learning

This chapter examines the application of collaborative learning strategies advocated for online learning and uncovers what, in practical terms, occurred when students undertook an online module forming part of an MSc in Adult and Continuing Education at Glasgow University. Three separate forms of collaboration emerged when participants were asked to work together in three small project groups in order to write a joint paper. Groups presented papers that exhibited varying levels of cohesiveness in terms of outcome. Members of the groups also revealed differing levels of participation during the project work. An obvious tension thus arose between individual attitudes to work versus the requirement to collaborate.

Critical perspectives on TEL: art and design education, theory, communities and space

ABSTRACT This paper explores three themes, emerging from the Inter-Life project, an Art and Design education and social skills project set in a virtual world. We argue that they connect with the concerns raised by critical Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) researchers at the Alpine Rendezvous workshop entitled “TEL: the Crisis and the Response.” The first theme focuses on theory and TEL. We consider Cultural Historical Activity Theory, but we strongly feel that our argument has broader application as part of the intellectual “self-defence toolkit” that researchers and practitioners in the critical TEL community need if they are to “resist” the crises arising from educational globalisation. A second theme relates to the importance of working together in research communities and joint enterprises, focused on using a joint set of tools to investigate an issue or set of issues in a systematic way. In our final theme, we focus on the significance of learning spaces. They are part of the “intellectual toolkit” with which critical TEL researchers can resist the subordination of our ideas and work to globalised interests.

Sustainability and Learning: Aesthetic and creative responses in a digital culture

The research presented in this article strives to answer the question: how do we educate for sustainability? I have provided evidence that arts-based educational research methods and major cultural resources provide very rich learning experiences that extend across disciplinary boundaries and can be crafted into pedagogical practices that help orientate learners of all levels to issues of sustainability. The article addresses the challenge of developing pedagogies for socio-ecological sustainability across disciplines in higher education. I present three kinds of conceptual resources in support of this project: theoretical influences that provide a range of lenses through which I can focus on my research concerns and pedagogical developments; methodological innovations – the use of the Dérive combined with a narrative record; and real-world aesthetic resources derived from gallery visits, an architectural exploration and interactive, scientific visits to major botanical gardens in Europe. I also briefly outline the importance of research resources derived from my own interdisciplinary work in virtual worlds - technology enhanced learning (TEL). These resources have led to a fusion of ideas from my own empirical research and personal experiences and observations in the real world. The most significant outcome of my Dérive experiences is a reminder of the power of aesthetic and emotional responses in learning activities. The blending of digital and analogue conceptual resources has synergised my thinking about pedagogies of sustainability, and increased my understanding of the importance of engagement with the real world, the role of emotion in learning and the power of experiential learning. I argue that personal and collective responses to artwork can act synergistically, and that community learning and individual learning are linked in informal settings, as evidenced by the Dérives presented in this article.

Interdisciplinarity and technology-enhanced learning: reflections from art and design and educational perspectives

The main focus of this article is our project of reimagining higher education for ourselves and our students using the central theme of technology-enhanced learning (TEL), which is inextricably linked to education in the present and in the future in many contexts. We argue that interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary working are central and essential features of TEL and, yet, they are largely invisible in the TEL literature. TEL itself is still largely invisible in the sociology of education literature and, hence, suffers ‘dual invisibility’. We suggest that this may be connected to the crisis that has beset TEL research and pedagogy. We examine the power of theory in TEL work, citing the use of cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT) in our own TEL work. A detailed account of an interdisciplinary, theory-informed TEL project is provided, and this is analysed to explore how the weave between disciplines, particularly art and design, and education, and interdisciplinary project working can be mutually beneficial in our project of reimagining higher education for work and study.

Technologies, Learning and Culture: Some Emerging Themes.

This paper reflects on some of the themes emerging from a consideration of recent research at the nexus of technologies, learning and culture. The authors comment on the expansive nature of the concept of learning spaces in papers featuring an investigation of technology enhanced learning (TEL) and communication design studios in the UK and Australia, the use of interdisciplinary research collaborations to develop novel implementations of TEL learning spaces, and the challenges of developing an e-university in Malawi. They also examine a comparative study focused on classroom-based learning spaces augmented by computer-based assessment technologies, and the role of TEL both within and in response to protests at universities in South Africa. Massive open online courses are then considered as distinctive educational designs that may offer diverse student experiences, either formal or informal. The next emerging theme considers the sources of tension and richness arising from the widely divergent values that can be embedded in TEL. This is followed by consideration of infrastructural issues and the technologies–learning–culture nexus, followed by the use of theory in TEL work, leading to interdisciplinary theory-informed TEL projects that may be beneficial in the wider project of reimagining higher education for work and study. Finally, the paper examines the theme of mobile TEL and the hegemonic issues surrounding the building of sustainable and authentic foundations for learning with mobiles in the globalised South. The theme points to the methodologically challenging and problematic aspects of this hegemonic analysis and considers how the arguments may be further developed.

Critical Perspectives of Technology-Enhanced Learning in Relation to Specialist Communication Design Studio Education within the UK and Australia.

This paper investigates the widespread integration of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) within specialist Communication Design studio education in the UK and Australia. The impetus for this paper has grown from the challenges facing day-to-day design studio education and the recognition that the use of technology in higher education today has increased dramatically. Conventional design studio facilities are being reconfigured into blended studio-based classroom learning spaces (often generically termed as ‘studio’). This study compares the lived experiences of students interacting with technology within two differing international studio settings. The two case studies used a Participatory Action Research approach and employed sensory affect as a lens through which learning within studio education was investigated using Participatory Design practice-led methods. The study finds that the Australian participants working within a TEL classroom-based environment faced significant obstacles to engagement and that their UK counterparts, who were situated within a conventional studio environment, much less so. This paper aims to support Communication Design students as they engage with studio education via the proposed transferable methodological framework – the Methods Process Model.

Foreword: Technologies, learning and culture across disciplines: International perspectives

Guest Edited Special Issue - Editorial Abstract by Madeleine Sclater (Glasgow School of Art, UK) and Professor Vic Lally (University of Glasgow, UK) The nexus of Technologies, Learning and Cultures is a complex area of study that is currently under-researched. It could be argued that this collection of papers itself represents an experiment in interdisciplinary research. In bringing these papers together, as guest editors, we have found the richness and diversity they contain to be a reminder of the complexity of this nexus. It is also a challenge: to synthesise some of the fundamental undercurrents and discontinuities that the papers clearly reveal, and to remain open to the incoherencies and conflicts that are also uncovered. The special issue has a very broad scope, including policy and educational systems analysis, quasi-experimental work, theoretical studies, as well as comparative work, and informal and mobile learning. These studies embrace disciplinary perspectives as diverse as Art and Design Education, Engineering, Mathematics, and Education. The featured research frameworks include participatory work, collaborative action research, and arts-based methods, as well as more formal mixed method studies. Major themes of sustainability, inequality, and employment cut across political contexts from Europe to Asia, Africa and Australasia. The settings feature practices from the design studio to the mathematics classroom, and include both formal and informal learning designs. Furthermore, the technologies of learning embraced in the research collected here inevitably transform and challenge our notions of place, as teachers, learners and researchers. Mobile learning, and three-dimensional simulations of the real-world act as a serious stimulus to methodological diversity and innovation. It has been a privilege to edit and present this work; we hope that it will serve as a platform for future study.