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001 1-7 Researcher Notes on Iterative Process

Page history last edited by Wilma Clark 13 years, 11 months ago

SELF-MANAGED LEARNING IN OUT-OF-SCHOOL CONTEXTS


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1.7 Iterations - Researcher Notes

 

This page contains some researcher reflections on the processes involved in achieving a ZAA, Focus of Attention and managing the iterative cycle through Steps 1-6 in Phase 1 of the EoR Model and EoR Design Framework.

 


 

What I'm finding is that when you start with an unspecified design need, your starting point, given the EoR definition, is likely to be ... designing an activity that identifies the ways in which technology, people and learner can best support learning. At this stage, none of these elements are specific, all are generic. This is the starting point for Phase 1.

 

What then happens is a series of iterations until you reach a point where it is possible to move on - but what I'm finding is that these initial iterations cycle through Steps 1 and 2 only until you reach a level of granularity where it's "worthwhile" moving on to Step 3.

 

Cycle of Iterations: Step 1 and Step 2 of Phase 1 - Developing an appropriate Focus of Attention

 

Steps 1 and 2 are inextricably interlinked and where there is no fixed starting point, it's likely that you will cycle through these iterations several times before you reach a sufficiently well-framed design need (DN). For example, in the present study, iterations cycled through 4 stages.

 

               DN1 - learning with technologies

               DN2 - making decisions about technologies

               DN3 - making decisions about technologies in relation to a particular learning context

               DN4 - making decisions about technologies in relation to a trip activity

 

In the generation of these contextual framings of learner activity and identification of learners' learning needs there is, effectively, a two-way dialogue between researcher/designer and participants/beneficiaries. This involves the researcher/designer learning how participants access/use/conceptualise available technologies in particular contexts and in participants learning how to relate their access/use/conceptualisation of technologies to particular contexts. The aim is to generate a metalevel understanding of technologies, learning and context as well as the relations between these elements.

 

It seems to be only when the desired form of learning/knowledge is revealed that it becomes appropriate to move on to Step 3. I mean, there's nothing to stop you going through all 6 steps each time, it just seems somehow illogical.... as the levels of complexity are very high in the preliminary stages where a design need is not yet apparent.

 

It seems that it is when a LINK between the category elements in Step 3 is made that the additional steps become relevant. That link is framed by the learner's specified learning need - i.e. the Focus of Attention. So, for example, in Iterations 1 and 2 - no specific knowledge was identified. Of course, multiple potential knowledge contexts could be identified but my instinct is that the specifics need to come later - once the design need is apparent, even in fuzzy form. This appears to relate to links between the design need and the learner's learning need. It appears that Step 3 need to identify a specific thing or set of things (e.g. knowledge/environment/resource) which serve to frame or situate the learner and her context. So, it may be that in the present example, it's more the specific environment of the Planetarium than the knowledge category of astronomy that is the focal factor as the Planetarium brings together relations between knowledge, people, tools and environment around the learner's learning need.

 

With the Planetarium example, it's then possible to move onto a first iteration of Steps 4 to 6. These steps allow further organisation of the ZAA to identify relevant relations between the learner and her context - in particular, resource elements, filter elements and potential MAPs.

 

What is particularly interesting is the notion that at Step 6 there's a possibility that there may be a lack of suitable MAPs, thus identifying a gap that may reflect a suitable role for technology. This is what happened in the present example. What emerged at the end of the full iteration of Phase 1 with the Planetarium as the Focus of Attention was an understanding of the learner's lack of awareness of the connections between technologies and their purposes/potentials, etc.

 

On a second iteration, I returned to Step 1 with a more fine-grained ZAA - the set of available resources (e.g. different kinds of knowledge, etc. were now able to be identified) and the Focus of Attention was able to be adjusted to accommodate the 'gap' identified in Step 6 of the preceding iteration. In this example, this meant shifting from a generic trip to the Planetarium to a specific focus on the links between Planetarium and available technologies with a particular focus on developing the learner's understanding of these things at a metalevel. This, in turn, served to generate a more prescriptive 'design motivation'. 

 

When I had achieved an appropriate Focus of Attention, I was able to proceed to Step 3 and to generate an EoR Model for the learner. This was now quite a simple process, building on the list of available resources (the ZAA) generated at Step 1 and focused in Step 2.

 

When it came to moving on to Step 4, however, I felt that I needed to construct a table. The reason I felt the need for a table for Step 4 was that I felt I needed some structure in order to fully grasp the framework, thinking about filters, constraints and affordances. This then made me wonder if, at Step 4 of Phase 1, these are somehow different from the treatment of filters in Phase 2. Looking at that, I felt there was a qualitative difference, somehow - perhaps in the sense that they are only potential filters at Step 4, whereas in Phase 2, by categorising filters as relationships, types, components, etc. they are more concrete. So, this led me to treat the identification of filters in Step 4 as a similar kind of 'listing' exercise to that in Step 1 where the potentially available resources are identified, i.e. the idea is that the elaboration of Step 4 involves a basic description of relevant filters - and that a simple table (filter, category, positive, negative) might be the easiest/best way to accommodate identification of these elements. 

 

In actual fact, this is a useful way of managing and categorising resource, filter and MAP elements in all of Steps 4, 5 and 6. These might all be considered at the level of identification rather than detailed elaboration per se - so, lists of things with brief descriptors rather than the generation of detailed connections around potential relationships, their impact or implications. The idea then, is that this deeper level of detail is foregrounded in Phase 2. Like the iterative nature of Steps 1 and 2, however, several iterative cycles through Steps 4 to 6 may be required in order to fully appreciate the relevance or influence of potential filters, resources and MAPs.    

 

It is important to emphasise that preliminary engagement with the iterative cycles of Phase 1 can feel overwhelming at first. Engagement with the learner's context involves the researcher/designer in a negotiation of complex layers of data and it may take some time to unpack all of this.

 

[1-7 Iterations]

 

 

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