The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Context is What We Take For Granted

Addressing Context in Design-Centric Teacher Training

Yishay Mor, ConTel Workshop, EC-TEL 2011

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Context of this talk

• A view of education as designed learning.• Ergo, educators as learning designers.

–Need to train educators in design practice and design discourse.

• Design as a conversation with context. –Need to train educators to articulate context.

Sounds good, but…“Engaging students in design [..] proved to be a productive

way for students to examine their own epistemological beliefs, negotiate them with peers and experts, and explore them in relation to theory.” (Fuhrmann,Kali & Hoadley, 2008)

But –

“there are as yet few signs that tertiary teachers are flocking to become more deeply engaged in design.” (Markauskaite & Goodyear, 2009)

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Participatory Pattern Workshops

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Engage practitioners in intense discussions about issues of technology & education. Discussions rooted in participants’ personal experiences, driven by the problems they have overcome, and aimed at collaborative articulation of their design knowledge.

Design Narratives Workshop

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Engender collaborative reflection among practitioners by a structured process of sharing stories.

“A design narrative describes the history and evolution of a design over time. [..] Narrative is only one way of making sense of design-based research. [..] To really convey what happened, though, requires a story” (Hoadley, 2002, p 454)

Force Mapping

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Forces: constraints or factors that influence the problem.

The difficulty of solving the problem arises from tensions between competing forces.

• Name the forces

• Give them icons

• Plot the links and mark + / -

The learning design studio

• Rooted in the traditions of design education (architecture, product design, software engineering)

• In a given thematic domain, students:–Work in groups– Identify an educational challenge–Research it–Devise a solution–Pilot, Evaluate, Reflect, Report

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Project Site Template

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Force Mapfrom ml4d workshop,Nairobi

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Force Mapfrom Planet workshop,Singapore

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Force Maps from gbl / mlearning courses

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Somewhat better…

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And better…

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Preliminary observations • Students designs were ill-fitted to the context of their

project.• Ad-hoc, opportunistic tweaking in lieu of premeditated

design.• Implementation relies on first-hand, tacit familiarity with

context – which remains undocumented.

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

What went wrong – the medium?

• P.P workshops: “Paper 2.0”

• Courses: collaborative drawing software

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What went wrong – the pedagogy?

• Courses: “describe your context”

• P.P. workshops: “ENCA”

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

The “other” frame problem – a possible way out?

• Narratise– Invoke the innate mechanism of selecting relevant

detail• Sketch

–Capture un-verbal features, relationships–Metaphor and abstraction

• Explain to distant peers–Challenge your assumptions

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Coffee break game..

1. Think of an interesting learning / teaching situation you were involved in.

2. Draw it. 1 minute

3. Turn the drawing over, turn to the person next to you, and tell them about it. 1 minute

4. Let them draw your story. 1 minute

5. Compare. 1 minute

The Open University's Institute of Educational Technology

Thank You!

Yishay Mor, yishaymor.org

Institute of Educational TechnologyThe Open UniversityWalton HallMilton KeynesMK7 6AA

www.open.ac.uk/iet