Our response is to emphasize the human in all of this. We emphasize trust, discussion, collage. Trust is critical. Trust in ourselves as learners and teachers that we will find significance in our daily lives. Trust fuels discussion, a search for feedback and negotiated meaning. Discussion leads or is supported by collage, stitching meaning over the environment and media. A simple, human approach to build learning activities from. Our response is to emphasize the human in all of this. We emphasize trust, discussion, collage. Trust is critical. Trust in ourselves as learners and teachers that we will find significance in our daily lives. Trust fuels discussion, a search for feedback and negotiated meaning. Discussion leads or is supported by collage, stitching meaning over the environment and media. A simple, human approach to build learning activities from.
Pekka and I recently presented at Networked Learning Conference 2014 in Edinburgh. The paper is titled Mobile Learning Field Activities: a Pedagogy of Simultaneity to Support Learning in the Open. Our goal in this and subsequent papers is to make the case for generating new or altered pedagogies to support instruction in the open places of life outside the confines of the classroom (or even formal disciplinary instruction). Pekka and I will be recording this and uploading it to YouTube and Slideshare in the coming weeks, but in the interim I wanted to present the images along with some textual description.
The basic sequence is the elements of open learning (time, place, social presence), the continuum of activities through them (important step), and pedagogical approaches to making use of that environment. The big takeaways from this (which several of the questions at the conference reinforced or alerted us to) are that
From our evidence and experience, mobile learning seems to emerge primarily from informal spaces
Hence, pedagogical approaches to mobile learning in the open should embrace that emergence and model activity based on that.
However, this does not mean that there is some grand chasm between informal and formal learning in mobile. We haven’t found any evidence for that in our work. Our participants (in workshops or in observations) have routinely moved between informal and formal spaces without any conscious sense of impediment.
In keeping with the approaches of the Manifesto for Teaching Online and extending them into mobile spaces, we believe that the pedagogy most appropriate for this environment is the one that emerges from it. In short, the best mobile learning is born mobile. We can find connections on the peripheries to formal instruction, but it shouldn’t start there. Even in field sciences, the rigidity is in the process, not the pedagogy. Scientists are comfortable with the serendipity of just finding something. We should all begin from a place where we are open to the sheer possibility of finding something and working from there.
The Elements of Open Learning: Time, Place, Social Presence
Our presentation is on developing pedagogies to support learning in the open through mobile or any other technology. We define open broadly to basically include anything outside the spaces of the classroom. However, it implies a sense of motion.
We believe that there are three basic elements at work in this kind of mobile open learning. The first is place. Physical, material, mobile, digital, niches, journeys. We are constantly reconfiguring space to place.
Social presence is the second. We believe that we are constantly generating and enacting our social presence in mobile open spaces.
Time is the third. We believe there are different kinds of times as well. Dots (single discrete acts) and pulses (elongated acts). We believe with mobile we are constantly moving between these and our past.
These three elements come together to form the background of our pedagogy.
Continuum #1: Intentionality & Serendipity
The first continuum is intentionality and serendipity. We are constantly moving between these two through a process of attunement (Pekka) or alignment (me).
We walk and see something unexpected that has been embedded in our daily landscape. We just haven’t seen it up to this point.
We naturally and often subconsciously (our pedagogy wants to make this process visible) align ourselves to receiving it, transforming it.
This process transform it into an intentional learning artifact. We make it intentional to operationalize it for later use.
Continuum #2: Informal and Formal
The second continuum is informal and formal. We naturally move between these states in mobile open learning.
We enact this from informal spaces (primarily). A cafe. A daily scene.
Suddenly there is a perception that the environment is presenting substance. Emotional, intellectual, or otherwise. We align or attune our perception to receive it.
We begin to collage meaning onto it. This is the messy space where we draw, scribble, experiment, and transform. Real or unreal, it doesn’t matter.
We realize we need feedback on it. We circulate it through our networks.
Continuum #3: Initiative, Seduction, and Sense of Intervals
The third has to do with trusting in yourself to forego an initiated learning objective for another. We call this initiate and seduction. We should be open to being seduced by our environments if we sense significance.
So I walk into my favorite park. I initiate an engagement with that bench where I like to reflect and watch the sunset.
I am seduced by the symbol etched into the tree. I forego my initiated activity for the seduction of another. I begin to heighten my awareness of my environment to see these patterns and symbols.
I initiate a search throughout London capturing symbols. I find evidence.
I am in turn seduced by my environment. I am fueled by this seduction to find patterns everywhere. From wicker chairs to alignment patterns in buildings. I began to write meaning on all of it.
Pedagogical Response
We have this heady environment of elements and continuums (not to mention motivations, identities, etc.). How do we make use of it pedagogically?
So we posed this question to the audience and got some great responses.
Our response is to emphasize the human in all of this. We emphasize trust, discussion, collage. Trust is critical. Trust in ourselves as learners and teachers that we will find significance in our daily lives. Trust fuels discussion, a search for feedback and negotiated meaning. Discussion leads or is supported by collage, stitching meaning over the environment and media. A simple, human approach to build learning activities from.
Please note that several of these slides are from Pekka’s own hand-drawn images and several more are from my sister, Jennifer Gallagher, from a project we did earlier. The rest are my own manipulated images.
Tweets as Feedback
Mobile pedagogies need to make learning visible in daily environments and design reflective engagements into that landscape. #NLC2014
My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.
