Hi Maria, On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 07:29 -0500, Maria Droujkova wrote:
> Wayne, > > What are more names to look up on the subject, especially metalearning > and teaching/learning in communities of practice including "community > objects" in relationships? This is extremely useful, and I need to > educate myself better. From all I know, separating instructional > design from curriculum development is a dangerous idea originating in > the "assembly line" mentality. Intuitively, content and activity > developers (in the plural) should work together in a coherent > community of practice which includes learners as active participants. It's never easy to suggest a list of readings that adequately cover an area of research interest like open distance learning. What to include? -- inevitably the readings you leave off the list are more important than those included ;-). Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive or authoritative list -- I think, that there are two aspects for WikiEducator to consider as we work towards building a sustainable model for OER instructional texts using a peer collaboration model. 1. There is a lot we can learn from the distance education experience regarding the design and incorporation of integrated learning activities This thread is about instructional texts and the relationship between content and form as expressed in the process of learning design. Much of the research on instructional text was pre-Web (gee hard to believe that most of us actually lived in that time --- the Web is only 5000 days old! see: Kevin Kelly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J132shgIiuY&feature=related ). In the pre web days the dominant mass communication technology used by distance educators / learners was the printed text. The challenge for distance educators was how do you teach effectively when the learner is separated from the teaching in time, place and pace. I've already mentioned the work of Derek Rowntree and Fred Lockwood but would also consider taking a look at Borje Holmberg's postulates around guided didactic conversation and the relationships between simulated and real lecturer-student interactions. Michael Moore's work on transactional distance provides an insightful analysis of the relationships between structure and dialogue regarding teaching-learning interactions in asynchronous learning environments. Peter Johansson has done a lot of work on instructional texts from a Psychology perspective. With regards to the Metalearning research of the 1980s and 1990s the work of John B Biggs is a good starting point. Biggs' work provides a research base confirming that the design of appropriate learning activities and assessment strategies can promote deep learning. What's interesting with this research is the evidence that "low ability" learners using deep learning strategies can achieve learning outputs which compare favourably with "high ability" learners -- hence making a strong case for the incorporation of well-designed and engaging learning activities in asynchronous materials. You make a very good point regarding the risks of separating learning design from content development -- referencing communities of practice. In the distance education world -- the large single-mode distance education providers pioneered and implemented what we call the "Course Team" approach. These DE institutions constituted professional development teams comprising subject matter experts, learning designers, multimedia professionals, graphic designers and editors who worked collaboratively in developing the learning materials. The wiki environment provides us with the opportunity to constitute distributed course development teams --- and I'm hope that the WikiEducator community can develop and refine processes to replicate this model for OER using social software. We piloted the approach with the development of the OER Handbook. The primary author was based in the US, we commissioned a critical content reviewer who was based in South Africa, our graphic designer we located in New Zealand and I tried to assist with some learning design here in Vancouver. We learned about processes for managing a distributed course team -- and we will use these experiences to refine and develop wiki specific tools for more effective collaboration. Sure -- in many respects this is dated research -- but the advantage is that we're not starting from scratch :-) 2. It is both plausible and conceivable that OER peer collaboration might result in emergent pedagogies that are structurally different from what has gone before In this regard, I'd recommend that you consult the work of Otto Peters on the industrialisation of teaching. Using a pedagogical, historical and sociological analysis, Peter's has argued that the pedagogy of distance education (DE) is structurally different from the pedagogy associated with face-to-face teaching. He suggests that DE is a consequence of the industrialisation of society. If the knowledge society is structurally different from industrialised society -- the open question we could ask is whether we will see a "new" pedagogy emerging which is structurally different from both agrarian and industrial approaches? Fascinating stuff .... Cheers Wayne --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. 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