My background is in the Humanities – Economics. I’ve always thought it a no-brainer that people and groups working together in networks achieved better results than individuals working alone. At work, my staff rooms have always included colleagues who readily shared and assisted each other – despite regular philosophic and political differences. Learning was truly about the ability to create and navigate networks (thanks George) – our working definition of Connectivism.
Recently, the Vocational Education sector in Australia has seen a seismic shift in the nature of its networks. Legislation and some managerial practices have encouraged a paradigm of competition and commercialisation between our Registered Training Organisations. One of the outcomes has been the dismantling and discouragement of many of the effective networks we relied upon and the subsequent need to re-create these in different formats for different purposes. Stephen’s outline of “Learning Networks – Theory and Practice” tells us this growth and change is essential, as networks can’t be controlled and the democratic processes need to take their course to allow the participants to learn how to tap into this distributed knowledge.
It’s intriguing to watch the range of networks in operation- those that are “officially” sanctioned and those which spring up as professionals see the need.
Another outcome has been the unwillingness of some to share their resources and ideas as this may give an advantage to a competitor and therefore lead to a loss of students. All of this at a time when the infrastructure and the tools exist to enhance and improve the sharing that we have used successfully for a long time.
Speaking of tools, in my readings and research this week I came across a paper from Macquarie University in Sydney. Gibbs and Gosper in “The Upside Down World of E-Learning” outline the way that e-learning and its implementation has been driven by the tools and not by the pedagogy. They assert that many of the early technologies “promote narrow pedagogies – the delivery of content – centric instruction via a transmission model of learning” (p47). Instead the technology needs to lead to “the creation of learning environments and sequences that provide opportunities for multi-user collaborative activities or the co-construction of knowledge – both representative of current learning theory” (p48).”
In one of my recent roles I facilitated a range of professional development activities with teachers outlining to them many of new Web 2.0 and other technology tools available to them. At one point a team of teachers concluded a session by saying “don’t give us choices, just tell what you want us to do”. Looking forward to exploring this further with some upcoming topics.
September 30, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Grant, interested as usual to read your posts and to see how much they reasonate with my own experiences.
You speak of the seismic shift in VET but yet we have the revised AQTF which has as a foundation stone the development of innovation and creativity as a way to build quality systems. Im not seeing much of that happening in my sphere.
I agree with your notion of networks springing up driven by educators need to learn however I feel that these two are being diminished by the competitive agendas.
I came across a great paper you might like to read
Carroll, J. (1990) The Nurnberg Funnel. A Paradox of Sense Making. J. Carroll. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: 73 -102
I think that until we move past the technology as toys period of TAFE history we will see little real change in our pedagogies and therefore no genuine difference in what we are offering learners. I think its going to be the learners that really drive a change. When they want Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, twitter and we can only offer them reliable access to SWSI wikispaces we are not even in the game.
The tools do exist for a rich sharing of resources but I dont believe that we have a culture that really knows how to share. We were doing something on TaLe and a diligent teacher asked would it be okay for them to use 10% of a web resource?
Harvesting information, sharing, building knowledge and creative commons is a whole new world that has yet to find the door into some sections of VET.
October 1, 2008 at 9:27 am
Thanks Liz, we will continue this conversation I hope. Do you have your own blog?
I wonder how much of what you say is tied up with our aging workforce. There seems to be another divide there as well. There are any number of fifty somethings jumping in, engaging with technology and starting to think how they might change their practices. Yet there is another larger group, sitting back, hoping this stuff will go away and if they keep very quiet maybe no-one will notice.
What is encouraging in my job is the increasing number of people who are putting their hands up and making their first steps. This stuff just won’t go away, so why not engage?