Heutagogy, Emergent, Ambient (2)
This is the second of three posts looking at developing the heutagogic qualities of the Open Context Model of Learning (OCM) into the Emergent Learning Model and from that examining the possibilities of building an Ambient Learning City in Manchester (with MOSI-ALONG). The OCM is an attempt to re-conceptualise learning post web 2.0, with a concern to rethink roles and responsibilities for learning as suggested by the LGC Manifesto. An earlier blog post, the first of a sequence of three of which this is number two, used the concept of the PAH Continuum to look at how teachers might develop a craft of teaching that would enable and support the self-organisation of learners. Sugata Mitra, who works on similar ideas, is now talking about Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLE). However what we are discussing here is perhaps the conceptual follow on, what I call an Emergent Learning Model (ELM), for reasons that I hope will become clear.
Emergent Learning Model
The ELM is an attempt to take forward the Open Context Model of Learning, which essentially are fresh ideas about how to re-conceptualise the processes of learning by taking account of the affordances of web 2.0 technologies. The Open Context Model of Learning is a way of thinking about the relationships of learning such that a (teacher) develops both a subject understanding as well as an ability in the (learner) to take forward their learning in that subject. That is often taken to mean through classroom interactions, but it doesn’t have to mean only that, it could start with learner interactions; conversations, interests and collaboration.
ELM was also stimulated by an attempt to address the requirement of the EU’s i2015 for countries to integrate informal, non-formal and formal learning, an extension of the Bologna Process of educational ‘harmonisation’. However I have tried to do this NOT by subsuming all modes of learning under rules set by a University, as i2015 might imply, BUT by re-thinking what we mean by each of these modes of learning; informal, non-formal and formal. What I hoped to do below with the ELM is to show how all learning can be complementary and, given that everyone wants to learn, how we can design learner-responsive resources, institutions and networks.
It is from this latter point, which is reflected in Sugata Mitra’s work, recently described by his article in the Guardian on 10 year-olds teaching themselves O-levels, that the description Emergent Learning Model comes from. This model could have been called an Organic Model (after Ken Robinson’s discussion in The Element about the nature of creative learning) or a Discovery Model of Learning (after the affordances of Google’s tools for learning) but both Mitra’s description of his work as being about emergent behaviour, and Steven Johnson’s description of innovation coming from emergent behaviour evolving out of new ‘open platforms’, encourage me to think that what is being modelled here is the emergent behaviour of learning in any context. Perhaps because it is self-organising and uses resources as needed in the learning process, not to reflect the structure in which they are provided.
As a method of engaging with these ideas you might prefer to look at the ELM itself first (presented as a table on Slideshare) and then pose me, or yourself some questions as to how it might work in practice; or what it’s flaws might be; comments gratefully received and answered. For the rest of this post I will elaborate on the three part structure of ELM and what this re-conceptualisation of learning as a system then allows us to do with learning and educational systems design.
Rethinking Informal, non-formal and Formal Learning
Firstly I will examine how we might most usefully think about learning, by trying to tease out how we might best describe its informal, non-formal and formal characteristics.
Informal Learning has often been seen as learning we do in our free time outside of institutions. What we choose to learn informally usually comes from our own interests. Historically this has often been located in libraries, sometimes described as ‘street-corner Universities’ because of the ready availability of reference books for fact-checking, of text-books, for subject-based understanding, of non-fiction books, for a broader understanding of the world, and of novels, for descriptions of the lives of others. But it has also been seen as a key part of community or adult learning, that is as long as managerial targets related to formal assessment processes aren’t added to that learning process.
For the purposes of Emergent Learning Model I want to focus more on the aspect of the interests of individuals and also to foreground the social process of learning. I think Mitra’s work is so successful with learners because he cleverly foregrounds the social process of learning by using access to learning resources as a framing device (resources are how we scaffold learners as I put it in the ELM table). He designs the pre-condition for social processes to emerge, which is the essence of informal learning. It has been said that you cant design for informal learning, but I think we actually do that much of the time, as the social processes of informal learning are in many ways the pre-condition for formal learning outcomes to emerge. So for the Emergent Learning Model I will define informal learning as;
Informal Learning is the social processes that support self-organised learning in any context
When I was working on the Metadata for Community Content project, partly looking at how we might create ‘digital divide’ (or socially inclusive) content for informal, or ‘community’ e-learning, we concluded that we were working on a project concerning non-formal learning, which we defined as ‘structured learning opportunities without formal learning outcomes’. Arguably this was because we were working in the context of what became named as Adult & Community Learning (ACL), and we were concerned to identify learning content that would better engage disaffected learners. Based on an adaptive model of resource creation we termed the informal model of e-learning, which was a dynamic co-creation model of learning, we identified a process of resource creation that responded to learners interests whilst removing the institutional power relationships of educators from the learning process.
We developed a learning model in which content creation toolkits would be the primary tool needed by teachers, and which the website aclearn.net was originally predicated upon, and such learning content, supported by a range of resources such as people, was capable of brokering learning processes. Consequently I have come to see the structuring of learning opportunities through resources, something I don’t think OERs do, as the key process in non-formal learning. (The co-creation dimension of this suggests that learner-generated content can have as much value as educator-generated content, for certain aspects of learning – as suggested by the concept of obuchenie)
Non-formal learning is structured learning resources without formal learning outcomes.
For me Formal Learning means education as a system, rather than learning as a process, whether it be academic or vocational, which is about the institutionalisation of processes surrounding learning. This may be a process that prepares people for University, those secular storehouses of knowledge;
- Primary school prepares us to be learners as defined by formal education,
- Secondary school assesses if we have become good enough learners to become students,
- University is where fully accredited learning finally takes place.
People who ‘fail’ this academic sifting process are offered vocational education so they can acquire a socially useful set of skills,
People who also ‘fail’ vocationally are expected to be sufficiently ‘literate’ to converse with the system that failed them.
People who succeed in this process obtain various forms of accreditation and qualifications that prove they have ‘learnt.’ In many cases enough learning goes on for this system to be able to replicate itself successfully, even adapting to new social norms that are laid on top of it (academies, free schools, etc). The most significant part of institutionalised formal education system are the institutions themselves. What formal learning, or education, has really become specialised in is maintaining itself as a set of institutions and buildings. But this is done to enable them to offer accredited qualifications to students and this is the essence of formal learning, rather than their buildings and location.
Formal learning is the process of administering and quality assuring the accreditation of learning and the qualifications
Emergent Learning Model
So what ELM aims to do is to replace the notion of learning as being a process of accreditation, that occurs within an institutionally constrained and hierarchical system, with a series of processes that better matches how people actually learn, following interests, collaborating and finding resources. It is far less about serving the needs of academia and more about meeting the needs and interests of human beings because we can actually Trust Us.
ELM also tries to take account of, and respond to, much of the new thinking about learning and much else, done by many in the last twenty years; emergent properties, network effects, systems design, etc., in response to the permanent beta which is everyday life, what happens whilst you are making plans as John Lennon put it. Which is not to deny that the requirements of studying different subjects vary and that people have different capabilities, which present a range of issues that need to be addressed within an education system. Nor that a Ph.D isn’t much harder than a GCSE (although at the time I found A-levels the hardest level of education, Masters degrees are a whole lot easier when you rise to that stage), or that devising modes of assessment and accreditation that reflect the quality of learning undertaken isn’t tricky and requires experience, sense and tact. But we have learnt a lot about the practical concerns of recognising learning and we are smart enough to reflect on what we have learnt, and even perhaps devise new systems of learning; which is what I am, like many others, trying to do here.
So the underpinning idea of the Emergent Learning Model is that we should start with the social processes of everyday life, and design a system that enables learning to naturally emerge, rather than respond to the hierarchical status-frenzy of large academic organizations. We should value the professionalism of the teacher and the desire of the learner, and create resources that enable those interests to merge. Because people should be the resource with which we scaffold institutions;
Reading the Emergent Learning Model table;
The table is designed as a heuristic, an aide memoire, to capture as much of learning and education within a single table in order to facilitate reflection and discussion on how we might design, support and implement models of learning rather than simply reproducing the traditional structures of institutionalised education; which do have good qualities for administering paper-based record-keeping systems.
a) education; is a process organized by institutions who offer qualifications based on set texts to be used by learning groups in classes to meet accreditation criteria. Teachers provide resources and broker these educational processes.
b) learning; is a process of problem-solving carried out by people individually or collaboratively by finding resources and discussing the emerging issues with trusted intermediaries.
An underpinning value of each is the contrasting views of the learner, in an education system the processes are designed with the belief that learners don’t want to learn and need extrinsic motivations; the currently popular social capital model of education embodied in the Browne Report and education fees and graduate tax models is based on an extrinsic model. A learning system is designed around the belief that learners are interested in their learning and only need intrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivations may be needed to create engagment in learning that isn’t interesting which trusted intermediaries are capable of addressing.
So the ELM can be described as;
People + Resources = Learning
But asks the question do we present this institutionally or adaptively. New approaches to learning like SOLE, new theories such as the Open Context Model of Learning (and many others such as Connectionism, Netagogy, mobigogy, etc.) show that we can foreground learning rather than the institution and design FOR emergence.
The table is designed to show that Education and Learning overlap at all points, but a difference in emphasis, values and design can enable learning to drive institutional behaviours rather than institutional priorities to constrain what can be recognized as learning.
A simple reference model;
Another way of looking at this using books as a reference could be that;
We can design learning systems that are inclusive, high-value and also enable everyone to reach their potential. New tools and approaches are emerging that challenge us to do that; this is my take on how to address that challenge.