Musings
Returning to Athens, Georgia
In July I managed to re-vist Athens, Georgia, where I worked and studied at The University of Georgia from August 1998 to May 2000. It was a great opportunity for an occasional “walk down memory lane”. I was able to spend a few days with Chad Galloway, one of my trusted sources of diversion and entertainment in and outside of the Learning Performance Support Lab… back in the days. It sometimes felt like I had never left.
The UGA campus was as beautifully landscaped and well maintained as ever. And the climate was as hot and sticky as it usually gets in the deep South in the middle of summer. For my Baltic travel companion, Terje, this was surely a new and somewhat challenging experience…
It is still amazing how much night-life is packed into the rather small downtown area of Athens, GA. This hasn’t changed a bit… as it seems. Though it was “slow season” right at the end of summer session the live music scene felt alive and kicking. That was always one of the best feature of nocturnal Athens for me.
ICALT2011 was hosted in the Georgia Center on South Campus. We presented our paper “Expanding the concept of learner control in higher education: consequences for intervention design” there and I managed to catch up with Lloyd Rieber and Janette Hill. I also got to know Ike Choi who had joined the Instructional Technology faculty at the UGA right after I had left. I also walked over to beloved Aderhold Hall (or Aderhold Hell… as it was sometimes called)… but offices looked pretty much deserted and I could not find anyone there.
Terje on the other hand managed to find two Estonian researchers at the conference: Mario Mäeots and Heilo Altin from the University of Tartu. They turned out to be a very enjoyable company on various tours in and around town during the conference days.
All and all it was really nice to touch base with the UGA folks… and float around campus and town after all these years.
Tallinn in winter
Kadriorg Park in Tallinn, shot last Saturday afternoon during a moment of slowing snowfall.
Is there a new (media-)historical type of learning emerging?
In my recent live presentation/session for PLENK2010 I was trying to argue that if we want to get any further with the notion of Personal Learning Environments (PLE), we need to stop staring exclusively at the current (and transient) level of technological (Web) development. Instead, we need to analyse the “personal learning” side more seriously.
One possible perspective to take here is a (socio-)historical one. What types of learning have emerged over time and coupled to what (media-)historical developments? Personally, I find it rather useless to talk about environments for personal learning (or Personal Learning Environments) without an exploration of the types of learning (or the types of learning activity) these, so called, environments are supposed to constitute, support, or facilitate (you name it).
In their recent book chapter “Lernkultur oder Lernkulturen – was ist neu an der ,Kultur des Lernens’?” Erdmann & Rückriem (2010) discuss, among other things, the emergence of new types of learning (Lernformen). In this context they provide a short and simplified overview of three central (media)-historical types of learning that they distinguish:
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Contextualised, experience-based learning
(kontextualisierts erfahrungsbasiertes Lernen)“Learning” is coupled to the body and (mostly local) social practice. Think: observation, co-ordinated action, apprenticeship, and so forth.
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De-contextualised, knowledge-based taught-learning
(dekontextualisiertes wissensbasiertes Lehr-Lernen)Book- & text-culture allow for the emergence of a new media-historical from of “knowledge”. The book (text) becomes the new leading medium. In this context “learning” emerges as “activity” (Lerntätigkeit). De-contextualised, systematic taucht-learning becomes the dominant format and gets institutionalised in “school”. Contextualised, experience-based learning is gradually de-valued in society and taught-learning is treated as “learning” par excellence.
- Re-contextualised, sense-constituting, reflexive learning
(rekontextualisiertes sinnkonstituierendes reflexives Lernen)what gets on centre-stage is the learning of sense-constituting. Erdmann & Rückriem acknowledge that the former (media-)historical types of learning were also “sense-based”, of course. However, sense was either coupled with the actual contextualised personal (and social) experience, or the de-contextualised (book-)knowledge. What the authors see emerging is the de-coupling of knowledge (generating?) system(s) and meaning (generating/constituting?) systems(s) in the information society. Learning how to constitute sense becomes thus an important individual and societal task. This new type of learning can be (should be?) characterised as net-worked (I spare me a more detailed description of the “networkedness” as it is understood by Erdmann & Rückriem).
Erdmann & Rückriem prosose that these historical types of learning have emerged and developed in a successive, irreversible manner. However, they co-exist largely unconnected (which is really to be expected in the early stage of the ongoing cultural transformation).
I am not trying to say that Erdmann & Rückriem (2010) are drawing the one and only meaningful distinctions here. Nevertheless, they point us in an increasingly important direction for analysis and discourse:
…if we want to theorise about “learning” what boundaries do we want to draw? … and why?
…do we want to model individuals, groups, networks, organisations, etc. as the agents (of learning)?
…if we choose to model “personal learning” … what types of learning (Lernform) do we want to (or should we) focus on in the light of the ongoing (digital) transformation?
…if there is really a new (media-historical) type of learning emerging, how would a “personal learning environment” for such type of learning have to look like?
… and so on…
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Reference:
Erdmann, J. W., & Rückriem, G. (2010). Lernkultur oder Lernkulturen – was ist neu an der ,Kultur des Lernens’? In G. Rückriem & H. Giest (Eds.), Tätitgkeitsteorie und (Wissens-)Gesellschaft (pp. 15-52). Berlin: Lehmans Media.
Starting my research sabbatical
I am finally out of project work and will dedicate the next 12 months to reading, thinking, and writing. Enough of EU funded R&D for a while!
It was really about time to re-focus on my personal educational and academic interests. Naturally the move forces me to go through yet another “transition” phase, requiring considerable adjustments of all kinds. Tiring.. and refreshing at the same time.
International ISO standards on human system interaction are changing
This is probably old news for the professional usability crowd. However, I have recently re-visited a number of ISO standards that I made use of within my earlier consulting work on human-centered design, Web (and Software) usability.
It appears that ISO 9241 that used to be titled “Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals” is being re-titled and re-organised.
It carries now the more generic title “Ergonomics of Human System Interaction” and ISO is renumbering the standard so that it can include many more topics:
- 100 series: Software ergonomics
- 200 series: Human system interaction processes
- 300 series: Displays and display related hardware
- 400 series: Physical input devices – ergonomics principles
- 500 series: Workplace ergonomics
- 600 series: Environment ergonomics
- 700 series: Application domains – Control rooms
- 900 series: Tactile and haptic interactions
The first part of ISO 9241 that has been renumbered seems to be the old part 10 that is now Part 110 “Dialogue principles”. However, the dialogue principles still seem to be the same.
For folks who are interested in Web usability and design issues there are two (relatively new) relevant parts already following the new numbering system:
- Part 151: Guidance on World Wide Web user interfaces
- Part 171: Guidance on software accessibility
What I also find noteworthy is the fact that good old ISO 13407 “Human-centred design processes for interactive systems” will be integrated into ISO 9421. The new draft version is titled “Human-centred design for interactive systems” and should become part 210 in the new numbering system of ISO 9241. I am not sure yet what is actually being changed (apart from the number…).
If you know more about it… shoot me a message.
