Learning 2 Session (AoIR Conference)
Stewart, Future of History
History difficult subject to teach; digital history – various views about what digital history is – is it using computers to DO history? probably not; references H-net “perpetual annual conference”; makes a similar point about Wikipedia – it;s like a first draft of history being updated regularly and collaboratively. Digital history includes the idea of assignments for students that involve different approaches to previous research.
“digital resources encourage students…to become historians themselves”; also emphasises “interactivity” to mean… (perhaps) interaction between community and classroom.
Significant curricular and pedagogic materials to show/help teachers to do history effectively in classroom [am imagining this means school teachers];
Strong emphasis on making people into historians.
[Question - how does the web and its less narrative form re-arrange the nature of history which is so often driven by narratives which spellbind the reader?]
Kazmer, E-learners prepare to graduate
Focus is on students at distance learning only online in LIS program (Masters); what happens when the come towards graduation? – 20 students, 677 posts over 1.5 years in an LMS. “Analytic frame” was ‘social world of disengaging’ with learning – various items (eg time, friendship, etc). Basically – something is going to change, and its about the withdrawal from the community as they graduate.
Findings
what were the roles of the participants? – social coordinator role – these ppl catalysed offline interactions, kept online world functioning; in disengaging, they organised ritual meetings and similar and kept ppl in community aware of the transition that is coming.
During the last semester, students’ posts shifted away from study related matters to what to do next.
Side note – students are LIS; their online sharing of information practices reflected their knowledge and practice – organised, catalogue-like, structured. Communities’ practices embody the ‘practice’ of the CoP?
The loss of resources when exiting from the course of study is not just functional, but strong emotional and intellectual relations built via the discussion groups. [I would turn this around and say, therefore, the sense of loss from exiting students is evidence of the positive value of these kinds of relations in the working of the learning community]
Reporting on interview evidence about the way students have learned various means of managing online communications which then will flow into professional lives.
Concludes with a reference back to the analytical frame (methodological conclusion) – need to refine the survey items which constitute the frame. Also – social capital in the community exists within that commuynity so they are left with it in their hands, but it can’t be spent. (VERY NICE).
Davies, No Time for Paradigms
Been thinking about Internet since 1993 when went to grad school and noone else got it.
He’s talking around the issues of why LMS is bad; and hinting at the need for better software that isn’t so formulaic (eg Prezi). [See Coopman on Blackboard's problems; see my piece on Learning Networks]
Talk is an enthusiastic pitch for Prezi.
Then moves on to give an impressionistic critique of his own school’s approach – basically it’s info dump online and add a quiz; not enough proper instructional design (which he is linking to outcomes based learning).
[question - is outcomes based learning the Blackboard of instructional designers, locking academics into their boxes?]