Barefoot keynote

This week at the ICELF event at Unitec in Auckland I was given one of the highest honours I have ever received. My opening keynote at the conference was preceded by a Maori Powhiri (welcoming ceremony) in the Marae (Maori sacred meeting house) followed by the ceremonial welcome which included the pressing of noses and foreheads (Hongi) with several of the university staff and dignitaries. This was quite an amazing experience, because in effect, it made me a member of the extended family of the institution (Whanau). I have to admit it was quite a humbling and emotional experience, but what followed - an invitation to address the entire gathering of over 200 delegates inside the Marae, was just as great an honour because, I was informed, very few guests are ever allowed to do this. I imagine that now I am a member of the family, this was the reason. Everyone was required to enter the Marae barefoot, and I have to say this was the first time I delivered a keynote with no shoes on. Somehow though, it was very appropriate, in such a place rich with tradition.

The Marae on the Unitec campus in Auckland is an intricately carved structure which is used for social and sacred purposes - it's walls and pillars tell the story of the Maori people and their journey through history. The Mount Albert campus of Unitec is situated on a site that was once a part of the settlement area belonging to the Ngati Awa people. Later I had the pleasure to meet the designer and creator of the entire structure and discuss with him some of his wonderful creations. Unlike many of the more traditionally crafted Marae, the this meeting hall is a unique fusion of ancient craft and new technology. The centre post for example has been forged in metal with laser images engraved down its length. The fine carvings on each of the joists, central spine and walls of this very spacious building told a different story of the lives of the Maori people and included their first encounter with western seafarers who sailed into their harbour. Auckland is also known as the City of Sails, and this was clearly represented on the rear wall of the Marae. The front wall, in front of which I spoke, depicted a large white cloud (The Maori name for New Zealand - Aotearoa - means land of the Long White Cloud), and decending below the cloud are vast legions of people, emerging as created beings. The relevance of the cloud and the social throng was not lost on us as we discussed new forms of technology mediated learning and social media. The entire interior of the Marae is lit cleverly in a manner that enhances the spectacle, but the irony of the event was not lost on me. Here I was talking about the future, surrounded by a traditionally constructed space (not a single metal nail was used), and even with the evidence of technological influence, the stark contrasts between the past and the future somehow amplified the experience and made it even more poignant. A useful summary of my speech can be read here on this blog.

I am extremely grateful to the organisers of ICELF for inviting me to participate in such an excellent and inspirational event. Delegates travelled from more than 20 countries to attend, and they represented all sectors of education. Over the two days we heard a number of excellent presentations and attended some very engaging workshops on e-learning and technology supported learning. Outstanding sessions by Derek Wenmoth (Core Education, NZ), Thomas Cochrane (AUT, NZ), Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (OU, UK) and Judy Kay (University of Sydney, Australia) gave excellent value to the discourse. ICELF was the first event of its kind in New Zealand, but I strongly suspect that it will not be the last. As the organisers will no doubt agree, the impetus is now there for a strong movement for change in New Zealand education. The ICELF team deserves to be at the vanguard of that change.

Image source and ICELF


Barefoot keynote by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Global forces

Our society is becoming increasingly globalised; influenced by world events; as we connect into a worldwide web of content, networks, people, media and tools. Many of us do so willingly, but there is a very real underlying tension between the effects of the global and the desires of the individual. We all need to make choices, but how free are we to choose? This refers not only to what we buy (clothing, food, goods) but also how we learn, consume news, spend our leisure time as we are continually exposed to media. Ultimately, what is this exposure doing to our values, our beliefs, our wellbeing?

Globalization can be defined as 'the increasing interdependence of world society' (Giddens, 1991: 520). The effects of globalization are being felt around the world. It is a force that affects our economy, travel, exchange of goods and services, access to information, communication, health provision, education delivery and even the way we have begun to reconceptualise the world about us. According to some observers, we have in effect reached the idealism first suggested by Marshall McLuhan, who in mapping the effects of communication and the 'electric age', had suggested that we would all one day be living in a 'global village', where the concept of 'togetherness' would take on an entirely new set of meanings (See Toffler, 1971: 444). The key implication of this was that as a homogenous 'group' of consumer-actors, we would all adopt a common identity, as we were subsumed into an ever shrinking world.

To a certain extent this has happened as predicted. Wherever we travel in the world, transnational commodities are awaiting us. We can eat in the seemingly ubiquitous McDonalds restaurant (but only if we don't value our health), whilst wearing Nike trainers and drinking Coca-Cola (but only if we....etc). Microsoft has long been the killer software application for computer users worldwide, Google has become the prime search engine tool, and victims lie in the wake of progress: In the 1990s VHS trounced the higher quality Beta-Max format to become the established analogue videotape standard for home entertainment, but the digital versatile disk (DVD) format killed it and quickly replaced it. It's dog eat dog. Any self-respecting hotel chain guest room comes complete with TV news updates courtesy of CNN, SKY or BBC World Service, whilst 'the latest Ford car has probably been assembled in one or more than over a dozen countries' (Dicken, 1986: 304). OK, so open source software, rival news channels and other fast food chains are now vying for supremacy and Facebook is mopping up many of the other social networks, but you get the idea. This kind of 'Macdonaldisation' of society has reached every aspect of our world, especially our social lives.

Homogeneity, it seems, has a dominant influence on much of our lives. Yet the effects of globalization are by no means as clear cut as Toffler and McLuhan were predicting. Alain Touraine offers an alternative perspective on the effects of globalization when he states:

"Our world appears to be integrated as a world market, but the counterpart of this globalization is the more and more aggressive defense of personal and collective identity. Instead of living in a cosmopolitan world as some pretend we do, we live in a dualized world in which not only North and South are more and more distant from each other, but where rich and poor districts in cities are more and more separated universes and in which most individuals are split between their participation in a globalized world and their consciousness of individual and collective identity." (Touraine, 1995: 46)

Touraine is arguing that the sense of personal (and collective) identity is more robust than the seemingly all-powerful forces of globalisation, and that individuals and communities tend to resist these forces naturally. In this context, it is perhaps easier to understand how resistance to technological forces comes about. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Marvin Minsky, has argued that intelligence is to be found in the collective behaviour of large groups of interconnected machines (Minsky, 1987). Nicholas Negroponte, Minsky's MIT colleague, applies this connectivist analogy to human behaviour and argues that the process of 'decentralization' (also referred to as 'atomisation') is becoming the antithesis of globalisation. He concludes that it probably has a great deal more power (Negroponte, 1995: 157-159). More recent theorists such as George Siemens and Stephen Downes propose a version of connectivism that describes the many ways we can tap into the huge potential of distributed cognition as and when required through personal and professional learning networks. This is personalisation of content at an individual level within the vast social congregation of the web.

Using these frameworks in a contemporary context, two things become clear: Firstly resistance to technology in general, and technology supported education in particular, may be rooted in the collective and individual identity of those globalisation has the potential to affect. Secondly, individuals will continue to be self determined in their approaches to learning, more or less in spite of the pressures globalisation attempts to exert upon them.

Excerpt from The Death of Distance by Steve Wheeler and Shannon Amiotte

References

Dicken, P. (1986) Global Shift: Industrial Change in a Turbulent World. New York: Harper and Row.
Giddens, A. (1991) Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Minsky, M. (1987) The Society of Mind. Boston: MIT Press.
Negroponte, N. (1995) Being Digital. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Toffler, A. (1971) Future Shock. London: Pan Books.
Touraine, A. (1986) The Crisis of 'Progress' In M. Bauer (Ed.) Resistance to New Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Global forces by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Roadside assistance

Technology supported learning has long been a contested terrain, and there are at least two views about its effects. The first, a long established claim, is that all technology is neutral, and that 'media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction, but do not influence student achievement, any more than the van that delivers our groceries can cause change in nutrition'. This view, first propounded by Richard Clark (1994) was widely accepted, warning as it did of the dangers of failing to differentiate between methods and media. As a result of Clark's position, many researchers decided not to study differences between students whose learning was supported by technology and those who had none, because it was considered a waste of time.

Clark's view was strongly opposed by the likes of Robert Kozma (1994) who countered that media can never be neutral, and that it would be foolish to stop research into the differences that might exist. Kozma's argument was an echo of the work of Marshall McLuhan who was famously quoted as saying 'We shape our tools and thereafter, our tools shape us.'  Kozma considered that media and method were intimately linked and continued to call for more research into the effects of media and technology on learning. The question remains - what exactly does influence learning, and which side of the argument should we believe? Are some media better than others at supporting learning, or are they, as Clark argues, all completely neutral?

We can examine a long history of almost 70 years of studies into the differences between learning with, and without technology. Again there are two views here about the effects of media and technology on learning.  There is an argument that there is no significant difference (Merisotas and Phipps, 1999) and there are those who hold that there actually is a significant difference (both examples are collated on this website run by Thomas Russell). Recent work on the affordances of technology and other media factors by the likes of Koumi (1994) have cast doubt on Clark's position. Hastings and Tracey (2005) also challenge Clark's view by suggesting that new technologies such as networked computers can and do affect learning in a number of ways. They call for a reframing of the debate to ask not if, but how media influence learning.  So are we to conclude that the 'media is neutral' theory has been overhauled by new and richly interactive technologies? Was Clark's original argument framed against technology that has now advanced sufficiently to render his views obsolete? It certainly appears as though Richard Clark's delivery van has broken down... but what do you think?

References

Clark, R.E. (1994). Media will Never Influence Learning. Educational Technology Research and Development,42(2), 21-29.
Hastings, N. B. and Tracey, M. W. (2005) Does media affect learning? Where are we now? TechTrends, 49(2), 28-30.
Koumi, J. (1994). Media Comparison and Deployment: A Practitioner’s View. British Journal of Educational Technology, 25(1), 41-57.
Kozma, R. (1994). A Reply: Media and Methods. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(3), 11-14.
Merisotas, J. P. and Phipps, R. A. (1999) What's the difference? Outcomes of distance v. traditional classroom-based learning. Change. 31 (3): 13-17.

Image by Museum Wales


Roadside assistance by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Learning precincts

The notion of learning spaces is gaining traction across all sectors of education. Learning spaces are not only used to describe places we can learn, but can also be representative of the human mind. The only difference other than scale, is that physical learning spaces have their limits, whilst no-one has yet been able to define the boundaries of the human mind and its capabilities. And it is from our minds that the concept of learning spaces arises. 


The extent to which we model learning spaces on the metaphor of the human mind may indicate how close we can come to creating spaces that are conducive to good learning at a very personal level. There have been many other metaphors used to depict learning. The industrial revolution brought us the clock metaphor, and later the machine (for example the water mill or the steam engine) as a means of processing knowledge. The technological revolution suggested metaphors of learning that included the mind as a computer, and later as a network, which is probably the most aligned we have ever been to representing the neural connections the human brain makes when we learn something new. Another useful recent conceptualisation of learning involves horticultural metaphors - learning as the planting of a garden, and more recently, learning connections that can be mirrored in the chaotic forms of learning we see happening in hyper linked environments, without centre or boundaries - rhizomatic learning.

All of the above are of course merely shadow representations of our collective and clumsy struggle to try to illustrate and define what happens when we learn. It's not an easy task, because we all learn differently, and we all learn different things from the same stimuli. Perhaps that is why we employ metaphors that reflect what is happening at that moment in the world of innovation. We are all made of the same stuff, but somehow, we are all individuals and we all have our own preferences and strategies for learning.

Whether there is any commonality between learners remains to be seen, but a key question for universities is whether we can create learning spaces that are conducive to learning for all. Professor Rob Allen, Deputy Vice Chancellor at Auckland University of Technology believes we can. In an effort to transform the environs of AUT, he and his team have launched a grand design scheme that will transform the inner city campus of the former polytechnic dramatically over the next two years. Today at the Informa Tertiary Education Summit in Wellington, he unveiled his plans. The Learning Precinct is a structure that will join the entire AUT campus from one end to the other, so that students can wander between spaces, in one very large, continuous building complex. It will include multiple glass atria, a tower block, media studios and flexible lecture areas that feature rotatable seating to encourage collaborative work. Within the learning precinct some of the flexible shared spaces are able to be transformed into formal or informal community spaces for collaborative work, or individual places of self-study. The entire structure will be designed using sustainable materials to provide a comfortable, aesthetic and environmentally controlled space for learning of all types to be supported. Professor Allen promises that the new learning precinct will connect teaching, technology and spaces in an effective and stimulating manner. You can read more about this ambitious, multi-million dollar project here.

You can learn anywhere of course, but for me, the most important thing is to create spaces that are conducive to learning, that students come back to, time and time again, because they enjoy being there. We shall see by 2013 whether AUT has succeeded in its quest to provide a mega-campus under one roof. More importantly, we will find out if the learning spaces that are being created will achieve the goal Rob Allen and his team have set themselves - to provide physically attractive learning spaces that students want to populate because they are socially and culturally relevant to their needs.

Images courtesy of Auckland University of Technology


Learning precincts by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Attention to detail

If you are ever in New Zealand's capital Wellington, you should not miss the chance to explore one of the country's most important industries - movie making. New Zealand really is Middle Earth, and Wellington is at its epicentre. New Zealand is of course, where the classic movie trilogy Lord of the Rings was shot, and it is also where other movies including the Narnia saga and the forthcoming movie the Hobbit have originated. Weta Workshop is one of the most influential studios in movies today and provides a one stop shop for movie makers who flock there from around the world. They have been involved in the making of more than one hundred major movies. Recent films credits include the digital effects for The Adventures of Tin Tin, District 9, Master and Commander, The Lovely Bones, Avatar and King Kong.

Today I took a tour around the Miramar district, and visited Weta's showcase - the Weta Cave, adjoining the backlot of the Weta studio complex. Here and in nearby Stone Street Studios, there are rows of non-descript warehouses, some peeling paint and looking a little worse for wear. Just inside the fences lay many intriguing and mysterious discarded items, some of which may (or may not) have featured in famous scenes from the films you know and love. Frankly, in places it looks like a dumping ground. Yet behind the walls of these old buildings lies a fertile hive of imagineering. Here is where all the motion capture work was done on the movie King Kong, and here is where the infamous big screen animation of Gollum was created. Here is where the giant aliens were imagined into shape for the movie Avatar. Hundreds of very talented people work behind these doors, making miniature and 'bigature' models, digital effects, green screen rendering, costume, set and prop design, animation - you name it. If it is necessary for the making of a movie, Weta does it here. It's conceptual design and physical manufacturing capabilities are second to none and have earned them multiple awards. They employ a range of technologies, including computer controlled plasma cutters and 3D printing (additive manufacturing).

As we toured this extensive movie land, and visited the locations for some of the well known scenes of the Lord of the Rings our tour guide told us some of the secrets of how Sir Peter Jackson's masterpiece was made.

We heard that during the shooting of his epic trilogy, Director Jackson commissioned the building of a full set on the site of an abandoned military base just outside Wellington. He tasked his crew to create the village of Bree. It took the crew almost 3 months to construct the facades and sets that would be the backdrop for the dramatic arrival of the hobbits during a heavy downpour of rain. The film crew completed the Bree scenes in a single day, and then the set was demolished. In their entirety, the scenes filmed on the set take up only a few minutes on screen, but they are crucial to the story telling. Such attention to detail is a hallmark of Jackson's films, and have contributed to his raised status as one of the finest cinematographic directors of his generation. We can all learn a lot from Jackson and from the art of movie making, especially the painstaking attention to detail that is involved. How much better could learning environments be if more care was taken over the little things?

Photo taken by Ted Guise


Attention to detail by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

(re)Designing learning in a digital world

(re)Designing Learning Spaces for a Digital World

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler

My keynote speeches to academic staff at Massey University on the Palmerston North and Wellington campuses this week were accompanied by the slides above. I deliberately inserted a (re) in front of the Designing theme, because I wanted to make it clear that we need to redesign and re-engineer many of our current practices in higher education, including course design, assessment and student support. Things are changing, and so is the nature of knowledge. No longer is it enough for teachers to transmit knowledge to students - much of it quickly goes out of date. In order to prepare students for a coming world of work we cannot clearly describe, we need to instill a flexible set of transferrable skills that include adaptability, change management, creative problem solving, collaboration and a range of digital literacies that will enable them to meet any challenges head on.

In the keynote presentations I tackled some contentious topics, including the issuing of challenges to a number of long standing and widely accepted theories (or beliefs) about how learning occurs. Yesterday's post will give you some clues about my views of learning style theory, but I also challenged a number of 'digital age' theories, including Marc Prensky's notorious Digital Natives and Immigrants theory, Wim Veen and Ben Vrakking's rather more insidious Homo Zappiens model, and Don Tapscott and Anthony William's Net Generation theory. I also challenged Maslow's hierarchy model of motivational needs, and Neil Fleming's VAK modality model of learning approaches. Even Vygotsky's ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) was placed under the microscope as we travelled through a landscape of emerging pedagogies that are aligned to supporting learners in a digital age. Previous commentary by other more eloquent and eminent critics would be better to pursue than any I could possibly articulate here, but in the meantime, I hope these slides will serve in some small way to illustrate the key messages. If you were at either of the two presentations and wish to add your comments or questions you are most welcome to do so in the comments box below.


(re)Designing learning in a digital world by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A convenient untruth

What do you think is the teacher's worst enemy? Some would say lack of time. Others would say unsupportive leadership, or the dreaded government inspection. Rigid curriculum, lack of resources and bad student behaviour may also be high on the list for many educators. For me, the worst enemy is bad theory. Bad theory, when accepted without challenge, can lead to bad practice. It's insidious, because bad theory that is accepted as fact without a full understanding of its implications, results in bad teaching, and ultimately, learners will suffer.

One of the biggest myths known to teacherdom is learning styles. Time and time again, the belief that students can be placed into specific categories such as activist or theorist, or that they are predominantly inclined toward one modal category of learning (e.g. visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) is inserted into professional conversations as if the theories are fact. And time and again, such beliefs are the justification for placing students into a specific style of learning so that a class can be 'managed' more effectively. Such categorisation of students is an absolute nonsense and the practice of doing so should be challenged strongly. It is lazy pedagogy, and the only reason I see that such beliefs persist, is that it is a convenient untruth which allows some teachers to stay within their comfort zones.

In an excellent expose on learning styles, Riener and Willingham (2010) argue this:

"...learning-styles theory has succeeded in becoming “common knowledge.” Its widespread acceptance serves as an unfortunately compelling reason to believe it. This is accompanied by a well-known cognitive phenomenon called the confirmation bias. When evaluating our own beliefs, we tend to seek out information that confirms our beliefs and ignore contrary information, even when we encounter it repeatedly. When we see someone who professes to be a visual learner excel at geography and an auditory learner excel at music, we do not seek out the information which would disprove our interpretation of these events (can the auditory learner learn geography through hearing it? Can the visual learner become better at music by seeing it?)"

Clearly one of the problems that emerges when teachers administer a learning styles inventory or questionnaire to their students is that the result tends to become a 'self fulfilling prophecy' (See Rosethal and Jacobson, for more on this phenomenon). One of the most notorious (and vacuous) inventories is Honey and Mumford's LSI, which in essence is nothing more than a repurposing of David Kolb's earlier experiential learning cycle model. Another is Neil Fleming's VAK model (Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic) which is basically a reworking of 'tell me I forget, show me I remember, involve me I understand'. Such learning styles theories are based on little more than anecdotal observations, and are akin to folk medicine. But the student doesn't know this, and simply trusts the teacher's judgement. The student then sees the results of the questionnaire which informs them that they are for instance predominantly a 'reflector' or that they are an 'auditory learner'. They then actively seek to maximise their 'learning style' by engaging in reflective activities, or visually rich media. This all progresses to the detriment of the other learning modes, which become deficient and atrophied. Result - the learner fails to gain a holistic learning experience, and misses out on the many rich opportunities to expand and develop their other sensory or cognitive skills. Worse still, as Barbara Prashnig explains:

"....it remains a fact that every human being has a learning style which can consist of contradictory components, often leading to inner confusion and uneasiness. Style mismatches between teaching and learning, physical learning environments not conducive to information intake and unmet physical needs during the learning process can lead to frustration, stress, learning problems, underachievement, low self esteem, discipline problems among younger students, and dropoutism in high schools."

Do we really need to label people and brand them in this way? Riener and Willingham again:

"...learning-styles theory is sometimes offered as a reason to include digital media in the classroom. While including multimedia may be a good idea in general (variety in modes of presentation can hold students' attention and interest, for example), it is not necessary to tailor your media to different learning styles. We shouldn't congratulate ourselves for showing a video to engage the visual learners or offering podcasts to the auditory learners. Rather, we should realize that the value of the video or audio will be determined by how it suits the content that we are asking students to learn and the background knowledge, interests, and abilities that they bring to it. Instead of asking whether we engaged the right sense (or learning mode), we should be asking, what did students think about while they were in class?"

The final nail in the coffin on learning styles comes from a report by Frank Coffield and his colleagues (2004) who reported that not only was the concept of learning styles so ill defined as to be virtually useless in pedagogical terms, the instruments used to 'determine' student learning styles were flawed. They failed to measure accurately what they were purported to measure (validity construct) and they failed to measure learning styles consistently over time (reliability construct). Probably the only reason some teachers (and many training organisations) hang on to the idea of testing learning styles is that it is convenient to do so, and that to ditch the idea altogether would leave them having to work harder with students.

We can conclude that in the selection of digital media (and any other learning resource) teachers should not be dictated to by the fallacy of learning styles, nor should they attempt to measure what turns out to be a moving feast of approaches to learning that are actually dependent more on changing context than they ever will be on any deep-seated human propensity. Would it not be better to simply acknowledge that all learners are different, and that all can benefit from a range of varied experiences that ultimately leads to enriched personal experiences? It may mean more work, but it would certainly be a lot fairer.

References
Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., and Ecclestone, K. (2004) Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: A systematic and critical review. Learning and Skills Research Centre.
Riener, C. and Willingham, D. (2010) The Myth of Learning Styles. Change Magazine, Sept-Oct.
Rosenthal, R. and Jacobson, L. (1992) Pygmalion in the Classroom, New York, NY: Irvington.


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