talking the digital habitat into being
TRANSCRIPT
Talking the digital habitat into being
Andrew Whitworth (and Lee Webster), Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK
Al images in this presentation are © A. Whitworth unless stated.
Outline• Prologue: the nature of employability
• Bridging the gap: HE learning into workplace learning
• Digital habitats and information landscapes
• The research problem: how to see
• Our project: context and data
• Conclusions: how to embed digital and information literacy in broader pedagogical practices
What is ‘employability’?Skills and competencies?
Disciplinary knowledge?
‘Soft skills’?
Critical thinking?
My answer would be, all of these,and more….
Universities clearly have a responsibility toinstil each of these in their graduates, and employersare looking for these capacities
But it is not like students are toys that universities ‘fuel’ witha substance called employability,before letting them out into thebig wide world….
Bridging the gap between HE and work…
…requires not the possession of someobjective characteristic called ‘employability’…
Instead it is an outcome of learning — which seems obvious,but we should remember it
How are we helping students configure theirnetworks, resources, practices etc. in ways thatwill help them with the transition at the end oftheir programme?
Workplace learning v HE learning
HE: generally, more formal, more individual, regulatedlearning outcomes, stable,predictable
Work: more informal, more collaborative, fuzzier learningoutcomes, less stable, lesspredictable
These differences have led to criticismsof how universities help students developdigital and information literacy.
See , for example, the work of Annemaree Lloyd (e.g. 2010, 2012)
Lloyd sees IL as the ability to navigate an “information landscape”
These are context-specific practices…
Finding and making judgments aboutthe relevance of texts discovered in an academic library…
…requires a quite different set of judgments and community relationships than it does in professional or everyday settings
• Each workplace setting is a different information landscape, with different architectures and definitions of ‘literacy’
• We need to develop in graduates the ability to build practices — configure the informational environments of themselves and others
• This is employability as an outcome of learning…
• … so let us think about how we can develop it
Stewarding the digital habitat
Not‘natural’…
This environment (Borrowdale, Cumbria) is one that has beennurtured and optimised
Stewarding “is a creative process…. facilitating a community’semergence and growth” (WWS p. 25)
Etienne Wenger (pictured), Nancy White and John Smith (2009): Digital Habitats
What communities do to create an environmentthat supports their learning needs
Wenger et al describe the role of technology steward…
Stewards play various roles, including purchasing andconfiguring technological tools that the community uses to learn
But it is not just about managing the technological space and determining itsconfiguration….
Effective stewarding is also about developing thecapacity for stewarding in other community members
Ideally, a responsive digital habitat would evolve through collaborative learning processes. The community as a whole would be reflecting on its practices, and an environment created which would build the capacity for transforming the digital habitat - stewarding - in a broad range of stakeholders, something called for by Wenger et al (2009, p. 27). The digital habitat should therefore not just facilitate use of the habitat, but participation in the ongoing learning processes which continuously shape the resources available to the community.
(Whitworth 2012, p. 50)
The problem in understanding these processes lies with‘seeing’ and/or capturing them (Saracevic)
Information landscapes and digital habitats canbe seen as an accumulation of judgments
Why is this so difficult?
Problem 1: Hawthorne effect
Observation can change the dynamics of behaviour and socialinteractions.
Problem 2: post hoc judgments/self-
reportingVarious cognitive biases can come into play…
We are more likely to offer recollectionsto interviewers that cast us in a good light
We take credit for ‘success’ but blame others for ‘failure’ (there are others)
Essentially, the picture of past activity offered by aninterviewee is inevitably mediated and incomplete
Problem 3: artificial situations
Studies of informational (or any other) behaviourhave long struggled to capture it ‘in nature’ (cf. Saracevic 1975, 2007)
And can an HE environment provoke information practices that would carry over to the workplace?
‘Set piece’ information search tasks are easier to gather data on, but introduce artificiality
• Taught postgraduate course, approx 60 students/year
• Distance learners and on-campus learners collaborating in assessed online discussion activities
• There are communicative goals to the activities (learning course content)— but also instrumental goals (achieving a good grade)
Our research context
The activity focused on here follows a fieldtrip to the National Football Museum (NFM)
Students are tasked with discussing thedesign of some kind of technologicalenhancement to the museum environment
Distance learners design theirown field trip, however….
… & the group have todiscuss one of these alternate contexts as wellas the NFM
Thus, to succeed at this task (get a good grade), students have to:
• Communicate their experience of the different contexts to other group members (using a range of media)
• Make collective judgments about the relevance of particular technologies to the design task….
• both in terms of technological solutions for the museums…
• …and the creation of a digital habitat that will support their learning needs in this case
The dataset• Two years’ cohorts (2015-16, 2016-17)
• 20 discussion groups in total
• Around a million words!
• Consent secured from all participants (Interviews also completed with a sample)
The data are an on-the-spot record of how a series of informal, but collectively validated judgments were constantly generated by discussion and how these judgments shaped the technologies and informational resources each group drew on to fulfil its task.
For example, student W:
@A, nice suggestions for the first app! Let's hear a few more and come to a decision by when? Is Tuesday evening (6pm UK time) too soon?
I also suggestions for the second museum. I visited the origins centre in Johannesburg - you can view it at http://www.origins.org.za/ [15/orange/3 11/4/16 16:55]
• Suggests schedule for the decision• Validates prior suggestion for the design task• Suggests source of information where his colleagues can find outmore about his alternate museum
On the other hand, several students (like B) prefer to shareimage-based information.
As a on-site student, i can share my thoughts and the pictures i have took with distance learners(maybe in the next post). [15/orange/3 11/4/16 22:15]
Students use these different sources to make judgments, evenabout contexts they have not visited… and to validate thejudgments of others…. Here, student A:
I like [W]’s suggestion about Origins museum, so I vote to it with [C]. I have checked the website and it sounds interesting. I suggest the idea about VR to be to this museum and we will think more about it next week. It could move the museum to be virtual. the visitor can walk virtually inside the museum and be close to the exhibits and so on. [15/orange/3 12/4/16 23:16]
Example: the saga of the wiki [15/White/3]
BB discussion boards are seen as clunky, so J acts as steward:
“Being very pro-wiki I have created 4 wikis nowto help us with this project…” [12/4/16 23:34]
S (within 45 minutes) validates this judgment:
“I think the wikis are very reasonable and feasible. I think wikis just assist us finishing our designs, we may not need to put massive efforts on wikis, but it helps us to build ideas.” [13/4/16 00:15]
These judgments were, in turn, contained within the parameters of the design task, which constrained, but also gave direction to the learning.
S goes on to explain that:
“Because [lecturer] said on the [task] description 'One final point though — please remember, only what appears on this board can be graded. If you use any other discussion medium as a group, that's fine, but you'll need to post some kind of summary of that 'external' discussion here if it is to be allowed for in the grade.’ “ [13/4/16 00:15]
Constraint on digital habitat imposed — but not a limiting one as they are still free to (and do) use the wiki instead.
This is not a constraint on the learners’ generating their own context; but a call for the students to collectively develop information literate practice in this context. (Inclusivity — information management)
S has reminded his fellow group members of this call.
C says:
“Thanks for this J - you have made me smile as I nearly said in one of my earlier posts could we have a wiki (with your name next to it!). Not only do you like a good wiki....we all like a good wiki now.
Anyway they look good. However can I ask how you do the colour for the text, I tried last time and never succeeded and if I am going to be green, then I need to sort that out now.
Looking forward to hearing how to do this (I am sure it is really easy and I am just being stupid).” [13/4/16 05:56]
J replies:
“No worries C :) There is a button that has a 'T' on it with a small triangle indicating a dropdown menu on the top row of tools. If you click on that triangle the colour menu will appear andthe text colour can then be changed. “ [13/4/16 21:30]
Following the selection and validation of the wiki as a tool, here the stewarding role extends to technology coaching.
Conventional skills, yes, but it shows they are not neglected within the group as members help each other learn how to steward the environment they are configuring around them.
But it doesn’t end there.
Prompted by a reminder about the activity parameters (but not ademand to do things differently) J worries that the wiki postswill not ‘count’ in assessment….
if it comes to it I think it may have to be the case that each one of use will have re-post our wiki contributions on a thread. If we go back to the wikis we can actually track the edits we have each made and we can perhaps note at the top the date that it was posted on the wiki. How do we feel about that? I'm sorry, feel a bit guilty that I lead us down the wiki path without realising the fruits of our labour would not be seen but at the same time I feel it made the discussion a lot more effective that the threads would have done! [21/4/16 17:45]
By the following day (22/4/16) all the wiki posts have beencopied and pasted onto the BB board by student J, withcolour coding (the red colouring is theirs)…
Post:RE: Pasted from wiki - second museum choiceAuthor: [S]
I voted for National History Museum because there may have some points for us to design but I am also thinking about The Acropolis Museum which has a lot of advance technological applications. It is more modern than the NFM. Climate change exhibition hall also has some innovative applications as well. Maybe we can get some inspirations from Acropolis Museum and Climate change exhibition hall then apply some for the NFM.[24/4/16 19:33]
Wenger’s definition of a ‘community of practice’:negotiation of competence (in Lloyd’s terms — literacy)
The group areclearly assertingtheir freedom togenerate theirown digitalhabitat….
…but when their activityhits the ‘boundary’ thatis defined by the parameters of the task…
…they choose to conform to what they perceiveas the technological demands of the ‘external’ setting
In summary, these data reveal the very fine detail of how students select information technologies and resources as relevant and reject others, often regardless of institutional guidance on these matters.
The digital habitat is being stewarded, but in a ‘protective’ way? —the protection comes about to help it ‘fit properly’ withthe proscribed information practices [‘use the Board’]
Nevertheless, within these general boundaries the students arecollectively making judgments about what informational resourcesto draw on in order to fulfil their learning needs.
• Employability-wise….
• They are learning how to draw on a range of technological tools (the digital habitat) to take collective decisions…
• How to validate their own judgments, and the judgments of others…
• and how to give direction to their stewarding (as opposed to random activity, or closed and parochial concerns)
The data shed light on how HE institutions can enfold information and digital literacy into their teaching in a much broader sense than is usually considered.
It is about supporting the learningcommunity and its negotiation ofwhat it means to be competentor literate in the community context
…as opposed to the university contextand its definition of what ‘digital literacy’ and ‘information literacy’ mean
In fact it is that definition that constitutes a boundary object for thiscommunity — something which does not constrain, but facilitatestheir learning in this case.
