Student Agency, Peer Authority and Participatory Learning

Keith Kirkwood School of Language and Learning Victoria University 14 July 2011 Student agency, peer authority and participatory learning

My paper according to Wordle www.wordle.net

Presentation outline
Student engagement and learning
Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency
The locus of control and authority
Participatory learning, immersion and co-design

1. Student engagement and learning

What is student engagement?
“ The concept of student engagement is based on the premise that learning is influenced by how an individual participates in educationally purposeful activities.”
(ACER, 2011, p. 4)

Active learning and engagement
“… active learning is defined as the extent to which students are involved in experiences that involve actively constructing new knowledge and understanding. Engaging students in these forms of learning is at the heart of effective educational practice.”
(ACER, 2011, p. 17)

Why active learning?
It is a time of unprecedented change: socially, economically, environmentally, informationally.
The sage on the stage is antiquated and irrelevant.
Universities have reached a ‘crisis of significance’.

… and so this happens 1. Student engagement and learning

Or this… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Strategies for generating active learning and engagement
Let students:
Become knowledge creators
Produce work for a wider audience
Employ both formal and informal learning
Employ a variety of alternative venues of expression
See how what they learn will serve them elsewhere and is transferable to other contexts
Develop a sense of a learning community
Help steer the ship
(after Brown et. al., 2010, pp. 54-55)

2. Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency

Social constructivist learning Brown, J. S., & Adler, R. P. (2008) 2. Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency

Pedagogy 2.0
“ There is a need to expand our vision of pedagogy so that learners become active participants and co-producers rather than passive consumers of content, and learning processes are participatory and social, supportive of personal life goals and needs.”
“ increasing the level of socialization and collaboration with experts, community, and peer groups ”
“ fostering connections that are often global in reach”
(McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M., 2008, pp 11, 17) 2. Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency

Pedagogy and the read/write web
The read/write web enables ‘Pedagogy 2.0’ and active learning strategies in e-learning environments through:
User-created content
Online community and visible social capital
Collaborative exchange
2. Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency

Pedagogies for active learning 2. Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency
Constructivism and social constructivism (Vygotsky)
Communities of practice (Lave & Wenger)
Connectivism (Siemens), Rhizomatic education (Cormier)
Collaborative learning (Bruffee)
Pedagogy 2.0 (McLoughlin & Lee)

A popular example of socially-constructed knowledge 2. Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency

Socially media creates active learning communities 2. Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency

3. The locus of control and authority

Peer authority
“ Students who engaged in learning activities with their peers were more likely to participate in other effective educational practices and had more positive views of the campus learning environment. ”
( National Survey of Student Engagement, 2010, p. 9 )
3. The locus of control and authority

Social Learning Environments (SLEs) 2. Pedagogies and ICTs of learner agency

Cloud-based SLEs 3. The locus of control and authority
OpenStudy (Emory University and Georgia Tech)
GradeGuru (McGraw-Hill)
Mixable (Purdue University)
FinalsClub (Harvard) (Parry & Young, 2010)

OpenStudy http://openstudy.com 3. The locus of control and authority

OpenStudy – logged in 3. The locus of control and authority

GradeGuru http://www.gradeguru.com 3. The locus of control and authority

Mixable http://www.itap.purdue.edu/studio/mixable/ 3. The locus of control and authority

FinalsClub http://finalsclub.org/ 3. The locus of control and authority

SLE pedagogies
The 3 peas:
Peer learning
Personalized learning
Participatory learning

4. Participatory learning, immersion, and co-design

Participatory learning – SLE agents
‘ Transactional control’ – group dynamics on SLEs develop an emergent structure; collective participation shapes the learning process, so that the group becomes a class of actor in the system: student, teacher, content, group . Dron (2007a, b):
4. Participatory learning, immersion, and co-design Image: Dron 2007, p. 239

3D Learning Environments (3DLE) – Virtual Worlds
“ Within the possibility space afforded by virtual worlds, residents become engines of creation themselves, working as the producers of content in the world, designing and reshaping the space around their own ideas and interests. Developers no longer produce all of the content; instead, this task is given over to the residents of the world. ”
(Ondrejka, 2008, p. 229)

3DLE co-development: UWVW class of 2011 4. Participatory learning, immersion, and co-design

3DLE Co-development: Maya Island http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Washington/114/139/27 4. Participatory learning, immersion, and design

Student participation in course and curriculum design
Elon University: ‘Course design teams,’ consisting of faculty members, undergraduate students and academic developers
University College, Dubin: ‘3 rd year students develop a VLE for 1 st year students
“ We’re all learning through engagement with the subject and with each other” – Elon University professor .
(Bovill, Bulley & Moss, 2011; Bovill, Cook-Sather & Felton, 2011; Mihans, Long and Felton, 2008)

References 1
ACER. (2011). Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE) (Vol. 2011). Camberwell, VIC: Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER),.
Bovill, C., Bulley, C. J., & Morss, K. (2011). Engaging and empowering first-year students through curriculum design: perspectives from the literature. Teaching in Higher Education, 16 (2), 197-209.
Bovill, C., Cook-Sather, A., & Felten, P. (2011). Students as co-creators of teaching approaches, course design, and curricula: implications for academic developers. International Journal for Academic Development, 16 (2), 133-145.
Brown, J. S., & Adler, R. P. (2008). Minds on fire: Open education, the long tail, and learning 2.0. Educause Review, 43 (1), 16-32.
Brown, M., Auslander, M., Gredone, K., Green, D., Hull, B., & Jacobs, W. (2010). A dialogue for engagement. EDUCAUSE Review, 45 (5), 39-56.
Bruffee, K. A. (1999). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.
Cormier, D. (2008). Rhizomatic education: Community as curriculum. Innovate, 4(5). Retrieved from http://www.innovateonline.info/
Dron, J. (2007a). Control and constraint in e-learning: Choosing when to choose . Hersey, PA and London: Idea Group Publishing.
Dron, J. (2007b). Designing the undesignable: Social software and control. Educational Technology & Society, 10 (3), 60-71.

References 2
Kirkwood, K. (2010). The SNAP Platform: Social networking for academic purposes. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 27 (3), 118-126. doi: 10.1108/10650741011054429
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. (2008b). Future learning landscapes: Transforming pedagogy through social software. Innovate, 4 (5). Retrieved from http://www.innovateonline.info/
Mihans, R., Long, D., & Felton, P. (2008). Power and expertise: Student-faculty collaboration in course design and the scholarship of teaching and learning. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2 (2), 1-9.
National Survey of Student Engagement. (2010). Major differences: Examining student engagement by field of study—annual results 2010. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research.
NSSE. (2011). National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Retrieved 8 June, 2011, from http://nsse.iub.edu/
Ondrejka, C. (2008). Education unleashed: Participatory culture, education, and innovation in Second Life. In K. Salen (Ed.), The Ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 229–252). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Parry, M., & Young, J. R. (2010, November 28). New social software tries to make studying feel like Facebook. The Chronicle of Higher Education .

Keith Kirkwood
Student Learning Unit / Students Supporting Student Learning
School of Language and Learning
Victoria University
PHONE +61 3 9919 4015
EMAIL [email_address]
www.snap.vu.edu.au
Contact details

Student Agency, Peer Authority and Participatory Learning

by Keith Kirkwood

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 21

Statistics

Student Agency, Peer Authority and Participatory Learning Presentation Transcript