#16 A conceptual framework for the development of theories-in-action with open-ended learning environments (OELEs)

A conceptual framework for the development of theories-in-action with open-ended learning environments (OELEs) -by Susan M. Land and Michael J. Hannafin ERT&D. Vol.44, No.3, 1996, p.37-53 ISSN 1042-1629

Land et al’s “ conceptual framework for the development of theories-in-action with open-ended learning environment (OELE)” (1996), though written 12 years ago, is still an important framework added to currently available learning environments. This paper provided unique perspective for pondering. The following are my reading summary and reflection/questions.

Summary:

The authors proposed five elements of OELEs to represent the theory-in-action development process. They are:

1. Learner and system context

2. System affordance

3. Intention-action cycle

4. System response/feedback; and

5. Learning processing.

They also detailed the conceptual framework with a real life example -ErgoMotion to illustrate the processes of theory-building via their model. The authors concluded that open-ended learning involves learning process that was mediated by the “unique” intentions and purposes of individuals.

Reflection:

The word “unique” in the article caught my attention. These groups of individuals with unique intentions and purposes of individuals, from my observation of learners that I have encountered with, tend to be at the high end of individual characteristic spectrum. For example, they tend to possess non-normality of motivations, endeavors, preferred learning styles, specific interests, self-efficacy, problem solving strategies and skills, prior experience and knowledge, goal-orientation and so on personal characteristics. These non-mediocrities are what Cervone & Wood refer to – the background context that influences the choices learners make in the environment, and the extent to which they persevere on a task and the types of goals they set (1995). This is what I meant – Land and Hannafin’s framework is a unique one.

Observations/questions:

Contemporary theoretical constructs such as constructivism (Jonassen, 1991), situated cognition (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989), and cognitive flexibility (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1991) emphasize learners’ active learning processes. The ideas of microworlds (Papert, 1993a; 1993b; Rieber, 1992), anchored instruction (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1992) were linked to contemporary pedagogical approaches initiated by Vygotsky and Piaget. In their views, the learner is perceived as AN ACTIVE CONSTRUCTOR of KNOWLEDGE. Thus, the whole tout of self-directed learning, experiential learning, situated/anchored learning comprise a range of empowering learning theories and frameworks to provide learners with the optimal learning environments.

I did not pose an inquiry on such a theory or assumption relating to constructivism or OELEs model that whether all the learners, majority of learners, some of the learners, or just a small group of learners are viewed as active constructors of knowledge (sounds like an anti-democratic -elitism obscurant?!) Furthermore, to what extent of activeness and constructiveness the knowledge is generated or claimed is my another question. For in the era of Piaget and Vygotsky, the elements of systematic contexts , system affordance, intention-action cycle , and system response/feedback might not have been added into the scenario. Not until Bronfenbrenner did bio-ecological system approach appear in the larger picture of human processing learning.

Personally, I see the merits of constructivism, particularly in the cyber knowledge explosive era. Constructivism and its sister theoretical pedagogies open the venues for the cyber knowledge aggregation (such as networking and learning communities) and knowledge generating. In our Joomla assignments, we adopted much of adult learning theories into our project reflecting such a preferred approach. Nevertheless, even within our mini higher education learning community, the ideals of collaborative and self-directed learning essence is still facing many challenges in terms of different levels of prior knowledge (or individual experience), self-regulations and endeavors, and different perception, interpretation, evaluation, and extrapolation in the intention-action cycle (i.e., levels of process in theory-in-action).

I understand and appreciate OELEs model’s richness and uniqueness. Diversity or variability, like collaboration, cooperation, group work, even as well as team work, is a double edged sword. It brings up kaleidoscopic points of views and challenges the homogenous monotony, as well as stimulates deeper understanding and problem solving capacity, but it also accompanies with some cumbersome or undesirable effects that tolls time and energy.

Comparing our mini Joomla collaborative adult learning group to my experiencing in engaging with my much diverse student body, ranging from having reading and writing challenges to the mature, authentically self-directed learners; from the young high school drop-out to the silvery 60+ grandparents; from the once wearing jump suit guys to the single mom/dad all gathering in the same online or f2f classrooms , the OELEs model indeed, is a unique one if it is applied into my teaching and learning environment with great caution and endeavors.

#15 Reflection and question on experiential learnign with working adults

Continuous, Interactive, and Online: A Framework for Experiential Learning with Working Adults by Eric Riedel, Leilani Endicott, Anna Wasescha, and Brandy Goldston published Volume 3 issue 6, August/Septermber/2007

When I was studying some quality assurance issues on adult learning, this article showed up during my browsing. It is like a case report. I gleaned over it and picked some good points for reference.

Summary: The article started with retrospection on the response to the criticism that universities were either dangerously aloof from the practicalities of the workplace or aligned with the military-industry complex. Later the higher education picked their new roles in facilitating students’ internships, field experiences, and service-learning to demonstrate some functionalities in preparing citizens for meaningful work and participation in the larger society.

The central theme of this article focuses on Walden University’s practice as a showcase. Walden is a distance learning alternative to traditional graduate schools, enrolling over 22,000 masters and doctoral students seeking several of degrees. The programs at Walden are administered through online courses, faculty-guided independent study projects called Knowledge Area Modules (KAMs), or a mix of the two approaches:

A. Lead faculty develop courses and are administered by full and part-time faculty who guide discussion, provide feedback on assignments, and supplement standard course materials. B. Faculty mentors guide student work on KAMs through e-mail, telephone, and an online forum providing continuous support to all of a mentor's students. Doctoral students are also required to attend 20 days of in-person residencies with faculty and other students held at temporary meeting spaces each year.

The school applies the intersection between experiential and online learning relies on those professional and social experience the students bring to the learning environment from their lives beyond the classroom. This scholar-practitioner approach contrasts with the traditional university model whereby a young adult with little work experience withdraws from the wider society to focus primarily on learning. The opportunity costs for older adults already engaged in professional, community, and family life often preclude such a withdrawal.

Reflection:

A significant point in Walden’s practice is that their admissions policy requires doctoral students having 3 years of practice within the field in which they seek a degree. Master's students are not required to have experience in their field at the time of admission, although these students typically do have such experience above and beyond the requirements they otherwise must meet. The average age of the Walden student is 37.6 years old, and nearly all of them are employed full-time during the period in which they are enrolled.

I can see the functions of the admission standards that obtain a certain degree of homogeneity in terms of age, educational level and occupational elements among those online students. From my observation, they comprise several aspects of adult learning theory: self-directed, transformative, experiential and contextualized learning within and beyond their learning communities. And like most of the busy adult life style, they juggle against time constraints in engaging in the multitasks among family, career, or communities.

Questions:

One of my puzzles in engaging in online teaching and learning is that there are population under various circumstances, seemingly having or seeking the possibility to do more with less resources (both the quantifiable and unquantifiable resources, in particular, time and money, and others, such as the emotions and relations etc.- the cost and effectiveness consideration). Time constraint is a typical factor in many people’s teaching and learning experiences. In Bransford et al’s (1999) “How people learn: mind, brain, experience and school”, pointing out an important component for learning to be transferred to new problems and situations is the time element. The same point was also presented in Lindsey Godwin and Soren Kaplan’s “Designing ee-Learning Environment” as posted in my previous reflection. They honestly addressed an important challenge that confronted the ee-learning: the time commitment from both participants and facilitators. Time spending is a measurable factor. Some research and experienced on liners claim that online teaching and learning are time consuming. According to this line of understanding, then it presents a contradictory scenario that people seek to save time and other resources by selecting a time consuming mechanism to fulfill that goal. I am not referring to the issue of short change of the educational quality. My question is about under what kind of conditions that people can do more with less, in particular, in term of the time constraints – the quantifiable equalizer – because we all have the same 24 hours a day!

Here is a vivid example to illustrate my question- some of my students – such as parents and single parent with young kids, dealing with many other family affairs (sick child, old relatives, personal illness and so on physical and emotional issues), juggling a couple of paid jobs, taking full time loads, busy with other communities issues, and expect to be an “A” student! Sometimes, I am thinking that most of them are supermen and superwomen!! In my case, as a slow bloomer, I have to sacrifice so many things and time in order to get one thing to be done a time!

#14 on AI+ee learning

Via our XtremeJoomla discussion, I decided to make a synopsis on Lendsey Godwin and Soren Kaplan’s Designing ee-Learning Environment-Lessons from an Online Workshop, published on Innovate Online Journal (http://innovateonline.info/?view=issue) Volume 4, Issue 4, April/May 2008. I suggested to our team to well document the processes and make it a potentially publishable work.

Here is my summary and reflection: The whole concept of ee-learning came from some program offered in the field of organizational development . The program innovated a term-the appreciative inquiry which is an approach in the OD learning. Cocreated by David Cooperrider, appreciative inquiry is a strength-based management philosophy and whole-system change methodology (Cooperrider and Whitney 2005) that is said to be "revolutionizing the field of organizational development” (Quinn 2000, 220) through its application of guiding principles that focus an organization's energy on success and possibility.

Before going to next section, I quoted the definition of appreciative inquiry (AI) from this paper as follows:“Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization of inquiry through the crafting of the “unconditional positive question” often-involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. In AI the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design. AI seeks, fundamentally, to build a constructive union between a whole people and the massive entirety of what people talk about as past and present capacities: achievements, assets, unexplored potentials, innovations, strengths, elevated thoughts, opportunities, benchmarks, high point moments, lived values, traditions, strategic competencies, stories, expressions of wisdom, insights into the deeper corporate spirit or soul-- and visions of valued and possible futures. Taking all of these together as a gestalt, AI deliberately, in everything it does, seeks to work from accounts of this “positive change core”—and it assumes that every living system has many untapped and rich and inspiring accounts of the positive. Link the energy of this core directly to any change agenda and changes never thought possible are suddenly and democratically mobilized.” (Excerpted from - A Positive Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry by David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney).

The AI ee-learning, in this article connects to several theories, such as Klob’s experientical learning (as we read in the early of this semester) and Gardner’s multiple intelligent learners as well as a little bit from Tapscott (1998) and Dede’s (2005) technology impact on the current generations. The following section provides the details of the main theme.

The concept of ee-Learning is defined by Steve Eskow (Trevitte and Eskow 2007), describing a hybrid approach to pedagogy that combines online learning with experiential, offline, hands-on learning. The electronic component was influenced by the learning platform provided by iCohere (see the note at the end of this section), the overarching design of the learning was informed by the experiential learning theory outlined by David Kolb, and a colleague of Cooperrider. Kolb's experiential learning theory proposes that "knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb 1984, 41). While many discussions on experiential learning focus only on the experience portion of the theory, Kolb's model suggests that learning actually takes place through a four-step process called the experiential learning cycle in creating an experiential learning in online environment. I transferred it to our current on-going project- Xtremejoomla.(Note: iCohere, it is an organization that provides web collaboration software tools for association, governmental organizations, and communities.)

The steps in the experiential learning cycle include

1. having a concrete experience- such as we are going through the Joomla learning process with real minds on and hands on concrete experience.

2. reflecting on that experience- we reflect on our blogging on the way through each step in our Joomla learning

3. conceptualizing abstractly about the experience- during the Joomla journey, we meta-cognitively construct concepts and the hands-on experience about our learning, such as reifying each step according to the 7 AL learning principles by adding theoretical foundation, pedagogical practice aligning with curriculum design with outlined lesson plans, using Internet, and media enhancement in the pedagogy and curriculum via collaborative processes in synched manner and so on.

4. actively experimenting with a new behavior- we are actively playing out various collaborative roles and learning different kinds of behavior in our learning process.

This workshop provides the following weekly learning agenda, some of which relate to our project:

1. A weekly "live meeting". We did a couple of times. But we did not set up a weekly agenda.

2. Learning activities. These offline activities required students to apply the concepts of AI to their organizational experiences and gain hands-on learning of AI as a philosophy and a methodology, either with other students or on their own. We do have our learning activities, but are in a semi-structured way – I think

3. Readings. Articles on the theory and application of appreciative inquiry, in conjunction with case studies and tools created by OD practitioners, illustrated how AI has been applied in various organizational contexts. We are focusing on AL principles. But AI is appropriate to blend into our current project. We could add a reading list for all of us to engage with.

4. Learning presentations. Prerecorded lectures from Cooperrider, along with video case studies from organizations, were available on demand to help students gain a deeper understanding of the concepts and applications of AI. In this case, we all can make a mini breeze presentation to showcase what and how we understand AL+AI in the XtremeJoomla project

5. Reflective prompts. These questions encouraged students to make links between the theory and their own experiences and invited them to share their reflections. I think our blog supposed to function in this way.

Blending Technology and Content to Support ee-Learning

In their designing the workshop, they realized that technology and content needed to work together to facilitate the range of learning experiences in the experiential learning cycle. The online iCohere environment, which includes discussion boards, live-chat tools, file-sharing options, and an expandable reference library, was designed specifically to support ee-learning. Participants began the workshop by reviewing a narrated presentation that introduced the workshop site's various features, including specific screenshots of the environment.

Bridging Online and Offline Environments

In addition to creating a virtual environment that supported a range of experiential activities, they also wanted to complement participants' online learning with offline applications. Each week students were required to engage in an offline, job-specific application project based on the weekly topic. In our case, we did it in a more less structured way of when online and when offline.

The Learning Cycle Transcends Virtual Boundaries

The question of how people learn in online environments has prompted energetic debate. Like Kolb's experiential learning theory, Gardner's (1993) multiple intelligences theory suggests that individuals have different preferences and aptitudes for different types of learning. Further, Tapscott (1998) and Dede (2005) have outlined the impact of increasingly ubiquitous technology on the current generation's learning styles and abilities. They have seen that age, cultural background, and geography (since some of our participants come from regions of the world where Internet connections are still rare or inconsistent) can all impact a student's confidence level with online tools and thus the learning experience itself.

It's Not Really About the Technology

They have found that successful ee-learning does not necessarily require the most sophisticated technologies available. Rather, the key factor in designing ee-learning environments is intention. Trainers and educators who use online pedagogies must create curricula purposely designed to include the various elements of experiential learning: reflection opportunities, active projects, and conceptual resources. Without such intention, technology features—rather than educational outcomes—can begin to drive content.

Virtual Connections are Real Connections

To help students make meaningful connections with each other, they began each workshop with a paired interview activity. This is similar to our peers to peers collaborative genre in our project.

Conclusion

Their workshop translated appreciative inquiry, an experiential approach to organizational change, into an online workshop, they see the potential for other theories and approaches that are typically delivered in a traditional face-to-face setting to be delivered effectively online. As long as theories and concepts are applied to specific real-life issues, there is potential for creating a vibrant ee-learning environment where participants engage in applied work offline and share their reflections online.

This article also concluded an important challenging confronting the ee-learning: the time commitment from both participants and facilitators. That is very true in our case too. Like in our XtremeJoomla project, we all have various roles to play and works to be done which sometimes make a gathering either synchronously or asynchronously both online and F2F very challenging, not to mention a group of 94 participants across 17 countries in their workshop!!!

Reflection:

The ee+AI learning as I call it, is another innovation added to the online learning environment. I appreciate the creative and pragmatic idea of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) searching for the best in people, organizations, and the relevant world around our daily lives. It involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. In this sense, I consider that AI tend to facilitate the high end of population and condition, because I have a tendency to look at an innovation that has the potential to narrow the disparity among human being's developmental possibility.

The AI concept also reminds of my reading through Reiser and Dempsey’s “Trends and Issues in Instructional design and Technology, 2nd ed.). One of the chapter details the framework of HPI/HPT tying to Shultz and Becker’s (the Nobel Economics winners) concept of Human Capitals. They proclaim that it is human or non-instructional factors that need to be well addressed, investigated as well improved in the performance. They explicate that knowledge and performance capabilities of population (more than the natural resources) correlate to the economic success of a country. I perceive the relevant idea in Cooperrider et al’s AI.

The Al and AL do focus on the zone of optimal performance of human capacity, but AI seems gearing toward one end of the spectrum.

I also observe some similarity to what we learned in class across AI and AL, such as learner-centered (i.e., based on Gardner’s multiple intelligence and learning style/preference in AI), collaborative and interactive learning, experiential leraning (Kolb), online synched environment (more in AL's GoNorth), pedagogy aligned with constructed curriculum with detailed outline lessen plan, media enhancement, which are also more articulated in the AL. AI also has adventure ingredient with online and offline features, depending on the aspect of adventuring. The other minor difference is that AI tends to focus on adult learning experience, for the reflective and inquiry components are more emphasized in the meta-cognitive or abstract/conceptual level.