Workshop: Architecture for Participatory Learning

by Dr Niall Winters & Yishay Mor (London Knowledge Lab)
Part 2 of iLab2015 Ideation Workshop 2008

Objective of Workshop

• To engage in collaborative development of patterns to provide a framework for sharing their design knowledge.

To do this... we will inspect & reflect upon the practices of producing technology and activities for use in educational contexts... we take the perspective that to design technology-enhanced learning tols and activities an interdisciplinary approach is required, bring the expertise of educators, software developers, designers and researches together.

Outcome
Patterns and scenarios
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Some Useful Links

• MMORPGs, MUVEs, Web 2.0: What's that got to do with education?
• Pattern Language Network
  
• Slideshow for the workshop
• Learning Patterns - for the design & deployment of mathematical games
  

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2 (new) key terms we are introduced to... Case Studies and Patterns
For a while, it took us to reconcile our understanding of these terms with the new definition. After a while... It's Ah-ha... Oh I see :D

Overall Framework
Initially, could not quite understand what this diagram tries to say 'cos could not quite connect the "new" terms with what we know... however, after the workshop, it makes more sense... Perhaps, it would have been easier for us to connect if we had revisited this framework at various junctures of the workshop.




What are Case Studies?
...they are critical incidents of practice, highlighting key design challenges and possible solutions.

1. DigitalLanguageLearning
2. MoodleForum
3. podcastYI
4. FOP (Free Oral Portal)
5. SituationalSpeakingInVirtualWorlds
6. ChineseDigitalGames
7. DigitalLanguageLab
8. More case studies
   

What is a Scenario?
...is a description of a speculative event, describing a problem / issue / desired function in a well-defined context, and a possible manner of addressing it. It is similar to a case study, except that it is a-priori rather than a-posteriori, and should have a more detailed justification of the proposed solution.
Chim! Something that can't quite be understood easily... No wonder no task given on this component... Hm... also can't quite recall they talked about it...

What is a Pattern?
... (read more)

1. Media Production Team
2. leadingtoformalsetting
3. MilestonesManagement
4. facilitatedteammeetings
5. CommunityofTeacherDevelopers
6. SuitableDataCollectionProcedures
7. More patterns
   

What I learnt from this workshop...

• The workshop began with getting the individuals to share a 'formative learning experience'
  
• Here's the picture I drew...
• 
• Yeap, something I could recall very quickly... one of the recent experiences in learning how to use the collaborative tools. In fact, we heard about GoogleDoc sometime ago. Though have been blogging for a while and have learnt about the use of wiki, have not really dwell into collaborative tools like this, that allows 2 or more people to work together on the same piece of work synchronously. Exciting, isn't it? The exploration comes with both online and face-to-face interaction. Certainly being in close proxy allows the few of us to come together to discuss and troubleshoot, and experiment together.
• I thought this was a pretty good start for a workshop... (Like what I shared in the iCTLT) to connect participants' existing knowledge or experiences to the new content (that's coming soon!). In this way, we can better appreciate and possibly connect what we are going to learn to actual application (hence, translating our new knowledge to application).
  
• Unfortunately, this was not obvious to us... a few fellow participants... and the facilitate tried to draw out "commonalities"... somehow, still can't quite made out what the facilitators tried out draw out... so, this activity turned out to exist in silo.

• Talking about "Cases"... think our team dished out the example too fast, a solid example indeed... well, it once again shows the singaporean efficiency... a write-up that's published in the edu.MALL recently.
  
• While we were efficient, but I think, I think we missed that is valuable that a workshop provides... that is hearing, through the interaction and discussion from people of different background... and learning from each other's experience.
  
• More can be done to make the time passed more meaningful, in fact.
• I must confess too... that I've not paid attention to much of what's delivered at the beginning of this "Case Studies" segment... ok, blame it on technology! With the hyperlinks to the workshop-related resources coming in one after another... I'm totally distracted... yes, I was lost! That reaffirms one thing... I can only do one thing at a time when it comes to learning... and certainly, much better in a quieter environment... So, that's how I learn.

• What I understand about patterns... They are problems identified from numerous cases... and there's some commonalities among these problems... then we term them as a PATTERN. Hm... a little like the Induction Method for mathematical investigation... where we generalise to conclude a property/rule from the numerous cases dealt with earlier.
  
• The idea of this Pattern Design is to work on solution(s) to this 'general' problem so that this 'general' solution can be applied to the numerous cases where the problems were identified earlier.
• I thought, if this segment was linked to the previous segment using the case studies that we generated in the first half, then perhaps it would have helped us understand what patterns mean... and made our activity more meaningful... unfortunately, we started from scratch again...
  

Some after thoughts...

• Application - is it possible? Yes, it is... but how to make it practical without investing too much time and resources into building this pool of knowledge?
• It is a very novel idea to solve problems in a very efficient... theoretically, it works! However, as time goes by... it grows and become a huge monster that's difficult to manage! Apart from there, it's the complexity that has to be considered - while one pattern can result in many possible solutions (so, write each of them as a separate document?) and it's also possible to have several patterns that can be addressed by a common solution! Ah! The more you think of it in a network diagram, the more complex it can be... on the other hand, with a good tool (maybe not exist yet), this complexity can certainly be managed.
  
• The other consideration is how to make it friendly enough that it's the first database that people will refer to when encounter a problem? Only when people keep coming back to contribute and use the content, then the system has met its very original intent.
• All in all, I think the concept and idea behind is a solid one... more thoughts on how the key components can be delivered and connected perhaps would have made the learning a more effective one.

Other links:

• Review
• Photos