Session Information
06 SES 05, Personal Learning Environments
Paper Session
Contribution
In many ways we can currently witness how more and more areas of human activity, including education, get gradually augmented and transformed by the digital realm. Digital media offers a possibility to explore a variety of new configurations of instruments, in which new affordances (potentials for action) emerge through a co-evolutionary development of the dominant medium and human dispositions. Lievrouw (2009) sees two particular modes of engagement that are emerging with digital media: reconfiguration of media technologies referring to the need for modifying and adapting technologies to suit one’s purposes; and the remediation of content and forms referring to the possibility to adapt, remix, reuse to create new understandings, expressions and content. This development invites adult learners to explore and test various technological solutions for supporting and (re)mediating their studies.
However, learners often find it challenging to choose suitable technological means for achieving their particular objective unaided. The authors of the paper have implemented and adapted the concept of Personal Learning Contract and its conversational use (Harri-Augstein & Cameron-Webb, 1996; Harri-Augstein & Thomas, 1991; Thomas & Harri-Augstein, 1985) to support the modeling and explication of intended learning activities (their general object, intended actions, intended outcomes, and criteria of evaluation) and the potential environment for a particular activity that is made of all the resources “that an individual is aware of and has access to…at a given point in time” (Fiedler & Pata, 2009, p.151).
Any initial understanding and conception of what resources might be successfully drawn into a particular learning activity as instruments needs be to tested against its actual execution. Through the run-time of a learning activity a whole variety of adjustments to what makes up its environment are normally required. It is apparent that his type of exercise can produce descriptions of activities and environments that are completely disconnected from the use of digital media, computational hard- and software. However, digital media and computational hard- and software that can be drawn into intentional learning activities as possible instruments should be promoted in higher education as they hold a considerable potential for the advancement of dispositions for successfully operate and function within the digital realm. Individual personal (adult) learners need to be put in a position where they can actualize and execute such dispositions that help them modeling and actively shaping their own learning activity and its specific environment complemented with digital media and various computational hard- and software.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Fiedler, S., & Pata, K. (2009). Distributed learning environments and social software: In search for a framework of design. In S. Hatzipanagos & S. Warburton (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies (pp. 145-158). Hershey, PA, USA: IGI Global. Harri-Augstein, S., & Cameron-Webb, I. M. (1996). Learning to change. A resource for trainers, managers and learners based on self organised learning. London: McGraw-Hill. Harri-Augstein, S., & Thomas, L. (1991). Learning Conversations: The self-organised way to personal and organisational growth. London: Routledge. Lievrouw, L.A. (2009). The uses of disenchantment in new media pedagogy. Teaching for remediation and reconfiguration. In R. Hammer & D. Kellner (Eds.), Media/cultural studies: Critical approaches (pp. 560-575). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Thomas, L., & Harri-Augstein, S. (1985). Self-organised learning. Foundations of a conversational science for psychology. London: Routledge. Wolcott, H. (1994). Transforming qualitative data: Description, analysis, and interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
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