Peter Goodyear

Competences for Online Teaching: A Special Report.

During June 2000, practitioners and researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European countries participated in a workshop on competences for online teaching. The workshop was held in Bowness-on-Windermere in the United Kingdom and was cosponsored by the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (ibstpi), the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology (CSALT), Lancaster University, and the Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK universities funding councils. As a member of ibstpi, I wanted to document the workshop so that the issues discussed there could be shared with the wider Educational

Advances in Research on Networked Learning

Networked learning is learning in which information and communications technology (ICT) is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners; between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources. Networked learning is an area which has great practical and theoretical importance. It is a rapidly growing area of educational practice, particularly in higher education and the corporate sector. This volume brings together some of the best research in the field, and uses it to signpost some directions for future work. The papers in this collection represent a major contribution to our collective sense of recent progress in research on networked learning. In addition, they serve to highlight some of the largest or most important gaps in our understanding of students perspectives on networked learning, patterns of interaction and online discourse, and the role of contextual factors. The range of topics and methods addressed in these papers attests to the vitality of this important field of work. More significant yet is the complex understanding of the field that they combine to create. In combination, they help explain some of the key relationships between teachers and learners intentions and experiences, the affordances of text-based communications technologies and processes of informed and intelligent educational change.

Patterns, designs and activities: unifying descriptions of learning structures

In this paper, we examine emerging ways to describe and structure learning material, learning tasks and learning situations. In particular, we consider three different approaches, looking at common issues and differences in emphasis. These approaches are: learning patterns, inspired by the architectural patterns of Alexander; learning design, as described in the IMS Learning Design specification and which itself draws on Educational Modelling Language (EML) developed at The Open University of the Netherlands and learning activities as used in the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS).

Inquiry-based learning in higher education: principal forms, educational objectives, and disciplinary variations

Learning through inquiry is a widely advocated pedagogical approach. However, there is currently little systematic knowledge about the practice of inquiry-based learning (IBL) in higher education. This study examined descriptions of learning tasks that were put forward as examples of IBL by 224 university teachers from various disciplines in three Australian universities. Data analysis uncovered the principal forms of IBL, the features of each form, their characteristic educational objectives, and possible disciplinary variations. The findings show that underlying the diversity of language and tasks regarded as IBL there is a limited number of distinct task forms and a broad conception of inquiry that is shared by university teachers. The findings also indicate that IBL is practiced in a wide range of disciplines, in both undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs, in smaller and larger classes, and in universities which are more and less research intensive.

DISCUSSION, COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE WORK AND EPISTEMIC FLUENCY

ABSTRACT:  This paper argues for an action-oriented conception of learning in higher education: one which marries higher order learning (coming to understand) with apprenticeship in knowledge work. It introduces epistemic tasks, forms and fluency as constructs that are useful in giving a more precise meaning to ideas about collaboration in knowledge construction. Discussion is seen as central to collaborative knowledge work and we examine the role of discussion in supporting weaker and stronger interpretations of collaborative knowledge construction.

University students’ approaches to learning: rethinking the place of technology

In this article, we argue that educational technology research has spent too long trapped in a paradigm of simplistic comparisons, wherein normal science consists of evaluating a technology‐based intervention by contrasting it with some established set of educational practices. Our argument is different in significant ways from the claim that media will never influence learning. Rather, it focuses on two sets of issues. The first is concerned with the nature of comparison, and especially with the hidden work of simplification that is usually entailed in comparative research. The second is also concerned with a shift in perspective – from that of the educational innovator to that of the student. The article has implications for thinking about the design and management of learning environments in more holistic or ecological ways.

Using pattern languages to mediate theory–praxis conversations in design for networked learning

Educational design for networked learning is becoming more complex but also more inclusive, with teachers and learners playing more active roles in the design of tasks and of the learning environment. This paper connects emerging research on the use of design patterns and pattern languages with a conception of educational design as a conversation between theory and praxis. We illustrate the argument by drawing on recent empirical research and literature reviews from the field of networked learning.

Computer-supported collaborative learning: instructional approaches, group processes and educational designs

This chapter reviews research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Its scope includes learning that takes place face to face (F2F), remotely and in blends of F2F and remote activity. It considers learning in groups of various sizes (from dyads to learning communities). It considers a range of approaches intended to promote and support collaborative learning, including instructor-led methods, scripted methods and methods that open up space for the autonomous, creative, productive work of the collaborating learners.

Researching Design Practices and Design Cognition: Contexts, Experiences and Pedagogical Knowledge-in-Pieces

If research and development in the field of learning design is to have a serious and sustained impact on education, then technological innovation needs to be accompanied – and probably guided – by good empirical studies of the design practices and design thinking of those who develop these innovations. This article synthesises two related lines of research into teachers’ design thinking. We draw attention to the importance of context in working on the solution of design problems and introduce the idea that some pedagogical knowledge can best be understood as ‘knowledge in pieces’, rather than as a coherent system of pedagogical beliefs.

Technology and the articulation of vocational and academic interests: reflections on time, space and e-learning

E-learning is commonly thought of as a means of overcoming the constraints of time and space: offering the possibilities of ‘anytime, anywhere’ learning. The argument in this paper is not intended to debunk this as a myth, but to examine some of the ways in which time and space are understood in relation to learning and e-learning. In the context of e-learning for continuing education time takes on a special value. Yet it is strangely under-examined in the literature of e-learning. The paper emphasizes two things: (i) that time and space are not containers for activity, but social constructs; (ii) the spatio-temporal simplifications to be found in the discourse and practice of e-learning are not neutral, benefiting some people and not others, obscuring as well as revealing choices. The same is true of the simplifications about learning and knowledgeable action in the workplace, so the paper also reflects upon some of the dominant simplifications about the relationships between knowledge and action in the academy and the workplace.