CIRTA 2009 Keynote: Re-Thinking Research to Re-Engage Practice

Posted on November 25, 2009 by friesenn

CIRTA 2009

[slideshare id=2541865&doc=cirta2009-091119201747-phpapp01]

View more presentations from Norm Friesen.

Audio and .ppt of a presentation based on my book.

The relationship between theory and practice is complex and multifaceted: Classic studies in software engineering and interface design (e.g. Suchman, 2007), for example, have shown that practice is not the direct implementation of theory, and that theory is not simply the codification of practice. Instead, practice, as Bourdieu says, brings with it “a logic which is not that of the logician.” In this presentation, Dr. Norm Friesen, Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices, will look at the issue of practice in its relation to often theoretical concerns of research, drawing practical examples from the contents of his recent monograph Re-Thinking E-Learning Research: Foundations, Methods and Practices (Peter Lang, 2009). These examples include a narrative study of one instructor¹s integration of technology into an ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom, and a conversational analysis of exchanges between learners and an intelligent pedagogical agent.

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Learning Object Metadata is…? Long live Learning Object Metadata!

Posted on November 9, 2009 by friesenn

I have been looking into the current status of the Learning Object Metadata, an IEEE standard that was a central focus of my professional life –at least while the CanCore initiative was active.

Projects and writing on the LOM seem to drop off precipitously after around 2006 –right around the time that the term “Open Educational Resources” was coined at a OECD meeting. (See this survey of LOM projects and of the rise of OER/CC licensing in the special OER issue of IRRODL). But this is not based on objective measures; it has much more to do with what one can glean based on the last time a site was updated, or an article was posted or published.

At the same time, though, I say a tiny note at the bottom of a page at the IEEE site (and had this confirmed by Erik Duval) that the IEEE LOM has been reaffirmed by the IEEE –in May of 2009. It will be an international standard for at least 5 more years.

This left me wondering: If this describes the de jure status of the IEEE LOM as a standard, is there information –other than musing and gleanings– about its status as a de facto standard?

So I decided to look up a few search terms on Google insights, and the results are illuminating.

The flash graph below shows I got when I keyed in “learning object metadata,” “cancore” and “open educational resources.”

While hardly definitive of “interest” (as Google might lead one to believe) –and while OER and the LOM are obviously not mutually exclusive– the trendlines represented in this chart provide some grounds for speculation…

This is a screen capture (due to variations in Google’s data). See “live” Google insight data here.

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Silence in the Classroom and on the Screen: Slidecast and Paper

Posted on October 16, 2009 by friesenn

Silence in the Classroom and on the Screen

[slideshare id=2193934&doc=silenceintheclassroomandonthescreen-091011185907-phpapp02]

View more presentations from Norm Friesen.  Download the paper as a .pdf.

The question of the differences separating online from face-to-face educational contexts has been raised repeatedly in the research literature of education and design over the last 15 years. It has been posed and framed in a variety of ways: through media comparison studies, in surveys of student experience, and even via in-depth ontological analyses (e.g., Dreyfus, 2001). In this presentation, Dr. Norm Friesen takes a somewhat different approach, using both hermeneutic phenomenology as well as phenomenologically-informed understandings of pedagogy as ways of first defining and then analyzing what separates online from face-to-face.

The presentation focuses first on the role of the body in mediated and unmediated communications: it is not simply a source of gestural and other “signals” that are lost in mediated communications, as much research insists (e.g. Walther, 1996). Instead, the body brings with it what Merleau-Ponty describes as “an ambiguous mode of existing” –an ambiguity that cannot be entirely separated from the context around it, and that is inextricably intertwined with issues of identity, emotion, sensitivity and agency. Building on this understanding, Dr. Friesen articulates an expanded recognition of the body in pedagogy, especially as pedagogy is understood in experientially and relationally. The presentation concludes by exploring the  pedagogically-significant phenomenon of silence in offline educational contexts and in online teaching and learning. Only offline is silence capable of communicating what Løgstrup (1997) has identified as the “silent demand.” This demand can be described as event of communication that involves a kind of “yielding” which “opens me to meet the other” (Dauenhauer, 1980), and which is an integral part of pedagogical encounters.

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Marshall McLuhan's Education of the Senses: Slideshare & Paper

Posted on October 13, 2009 by friesenn

[slideshare id=2193935&doc=mcluhan-senses-091011185905-phpapp01]
McLuhan & the Education of the Senses

View more presentations from Norm Friesen.

Check out this slideshare for a presentation I recently gave at the annual conference of the German Society for Media Studies. You can also download the full-text version as well.

Abstract: Next to media themselves, pedagogy or education –configured specifically as a “training the senses” (McLuhan & Leonard, 1967) or “sensuous education” (McLuhan, 1964)– is one of the most prominent themes in McLuhan’s corpus. It is the focus of numerous articles published throughout his career and of two significant albeit relatively obscure monographs that effectively book-end his work on electronic media. As Janine Marchessault says, McLuhan articulates “a specifi cally argued pedagogical enterprise” that is central to his “aesthetically-based, highly performative and historically grounded..contribution to the study of media” (xi, 10, 34). In this paper, I focus on McLuhan’s pedagogical enterprise specifically as it develops from his highly original understanding of the senses. In doing so, I also show how McLuhan’s contribution to media is indeed aesthetically, historically and performatively charged, and make the case for the ongoing currency of his pedagogical enterprise today.

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Instruction, Didaktik and Lesson Planning

Posted on September 30, 2009 by friesenn

Two days ago, I participated in a really interesting panel session that compared something as “simple” and “basic” as lesson planning in different national contexts.

This occurred in the context of the European Conference on Educational Research in Vienna. Here’s the panel description: http://tinyurl.com/yb42572

See the description for my presentation in this panel, below; and download my .ppt slides here: http://learningspaces.org/files/NAlessonplanning.pdf. It’s especially interesting to compare them to the description of German lesson planning (http://tinyurl.com/ybvzsqd)

Lesson planning is indispensible to research and teaching in American and other English-speaking contexts, and is defined largely in terms of psychological theories of learning and instruction. Popular lesson planning models such as Hunter (1982) and Chatel (2002) make frequent reference to taxonomies and heuristics employing behaviorist, cognitivist and constructivist vocabularies. The most prominent of these heuristics are Benjamin Bloom’s hierarchy of cognitive objectives, and Robert Gagne’s nine “events of instruction.” Bloom’s categorization of educational objectives begins with factual knowledge and ends with synthesis and evaluation, bringing to mind Piagetian and other psychological-developmental hierarchies. Gagne’s sequence of instructional events begins with attentional stimuli and ends with long-term storage and retrieval, bringing together behaviouristic and information-processing lexica. Accordingly, more recent developments in the theory and practice of lesson planning reflect the continuing evolution of normative psychological theories of learning and instruction, including social-constructivist and explicitly eclectic approaches.

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On the Mediatization of Education

Posted on September 30, 2009 by friesenn

Theo Hug and I just gave the presentation described below at the Euro. Conference forEducational Research in Vienna. The conference SIG or network on media has been great:http://tinyurl.com/yc28e5m

The powerpoint for the presentation is available as a .pdf: http://learningspaces.org/ECER09.pdf

A draft and citation for the book chapter used as a basis for this presentation is here:

Friesen, N. & Hug, T.  (2009). The Mediatic Turn: Exploring Consequences for Media Pedagogy. In K. Lundby (Ed.). Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences. New York: Peter Lang. Pp. 64-81. Online version available at: http://learningspaces.org/papers/Media_Pedagogy_&_Mediatic_Turn.pdf

Abstract
:
Media are in many ways presumed as important factors for educational processes. This applies to media use in everyday life as well as to institutions of learning and also to various forms of the creation of knowledge scapes by knowledge workers using knowledge media. Furthermore, media education has been promoted in diverse domains of practice, and it has become an established field in many universities. Today it is mostly seen as a branch of educational sciences and less as a specific concretisation of general pedagogy or educational theory. As for its foundations, tasks and aims, the dynamics of its development have been characterized by processes of extension and differentiation. New questions and research topics have been added, many new approaches and conceptions in different paradigmatic directions are being developed, some areas having a socio-pedagogic focus, some being directed towards learning sciences or being infiltrated by teaching psychology and some – due to didactic or technology-oriented reasons – addressing the topic of “e-activities.” Unsurprisingly, terms like ‘educational media,’ ‘knowledge media,’ or ‘learning space’ are used with different meanings and often in metaphorical ways which sometimes suggest questionable forms of reification of knowledge dynamics or ontologized media. Some of the corresponding problems can be clarified on a terminological level. The mediation of knowledge, for example, can be described in the sense of changing knowledge structures as a consequence of media use or as knowledge transmission in educational terms. But what do processes and results of the mediation of knowledge entail more explicitly? How can other concepts like mediality, mediatization, or medialization contribute to a better understanding of current educational dynamics? It is noticeable that some frequently employed patterns of thought and argumentation present the relationship between reality and media reality in such a way as if the media could be added to “actual” reality or not. The media open up many new rooms of reflection, creation and action but they also provide the material for discussing the relationship between the real world or “reality” and medialised realities including their consequential problems. This calls for more reflection in media education by reverting to elements from media theory. The paper seeks to elucidate the relationship between of education, knowledge, and media on a conceptual level. It refers to relevant debates on the mediatic turn as they have been led in English and German speaking countries recently. Furthermore, some consequences for education are considered.

Method
The contribution focuses on the importance of (1) mediatisation, medialization, and mediation as theoretical objects of inquiry and conceptual elaboration, and (2) the application of these concepts in theory of education and its relation to media education. The paper seeks to make progress in these investigations through reflecting recent debates on the mediatic turn and considering them in educational contexts.

Expected Outcomes
The contribution aims at conceptual clarifications of the key terms at stake and their relevance for media education and educational theory. As a result, programmatic options for (media) education after the mediatic turn are described. Furthermore, the contribution shows exemplary innovative options for argumentations in media education and educational theory on that basis.

References
Bauer, Walter u. a. (Eds.) (1998): Weltzugänge: Virtualität – Realität – Sozialität. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Binsbergen, Wim van / Mul, Jos de (Eds.) (n. d.): The mediatic turn: Aspects of the ontology of mediation. (book announcement at http://www.shikanda.net/general/gen3/index_page/philosop.htm [Accessed: 2007-05-15]). Hug, Theo (ed.): Media, Knowledge & Education. Exploring new Spaces, Relations and Dynamics in Digital Media Ecologies. Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press, 2008. Hug, Theo & Perger Josef (eds.). Instantwissen, Bricolage und Tacit Knowledge … Wissensformen in der westlichen Medienkultur. (Instant Knowledge, Bricolage and Tacit Knowledge… Knowledge Forms in Western Media Culture.) Innsbruck (Studia) 2003. Hug, Theo (2007): Medienpädagogik unter den Auspizien des mediatic turn – eine explorative Skizze in programmatischer Absicht. (Media Pedagogy under the Auspices of the Mediatic Turn — an exploratory Sketch with programmatic Intention) In: Sesink, Werner u. a. (eds.): Jahrbuch Medienpädagogik 6: Medienpädagogik – Standortbestimmung einer erziehungswissenschaftlichen Disziplin. (Orienting within an Educational Discipline) Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 10-32. Hug, Theo (ed.). Didactics of Microlearning. Münster u. a. (Waxmann) 2007. Hug, Theo: Medienphilosophie und Bildungsphilosophie – Schnittstellenerkundungen. In: Hrachovec, Herbert & Pichler, Alois (eds): Philosophy of the Information Society. Proceedings of the 30. International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria 2007, Volume 2. Frankfurt u.a.: Ontos, 2008, pp. 43-73. Hug, Theo (ed.): Mediatic turn – Claims, Concepts and Discourses / Mediale Wende – Ansprüche, Konzepte und Diskurse. (= special issue SPIEL, 25 (2006), H. 1), Frankfurt a. M. u .a.: Lang, 2009. Krotz, Friedrich (2007): Mediatisierung: Fallstudien zum Wandel von Kommunikation. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Lundby, Knut (Ed.) (2009): Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences. a. M. u .a.: Lang, 2009 (forthcoming). Margreiter, Reinhard (1999): „Realität und Medialität: Zur Philosophie des ‚Medial Turn’“. In: Medien Journal 23, Nr. 1, pp. 9-18. Rusch, Gebhard (2007). Mediendynamik. Explorationen zur Theorie des Medienwandels. Navigationen. Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften, 7(1), pp. 13–93. Schulz, Winfried (2004). Medialisierung. Eine medientheoretische Rekonstruktion des Begriffs. Beitrag zur Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Erfurt, 19. bis 21. Mai 2004, URL: http://www.kowi.wiso.unierlangen.de/pdf_dateien/DGPuK_Medialisierung_end… [Accessed on 2006-08-01]. Sesink, Werner, 2004. In-formatio. Die Einbildung des Computers. Beiträge zur Theorie der Bildung in der Informationsgesellschaft. Münster: Lit. Sonesson, Göran (1997). “The multimediation of the lifeworld.” In: Nöth, Winfried (Ed.): Semiotics of the Media. State of the Art, Projects, and Perspectives. Proceedings of an international congress, Kassel, March 1995, pp. 61–78. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Re-Thinking Competency through Media

Posted on September 19, 2009 by friesenn

Here’s the PowerPoint file for a presentation I just gave in Umea, Sweden.

As new mediatic forms –from Blogs through mashups to YouTube– penetrate everyday life and reshape youth culture, it is imperative to re-think the status and significance of media in education. Media are no longer simply mass phenomena to which the competencies of an earlier mediatic age –the “literacy” of print—can be figuratively or retroactively applied.
In this presentation, Dr. Norm Friesen, Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices at Thompson Rivers University, argues that there is good cause to re-think the relationship of media and competences. Media—whether new digital technologies or older broadcast and print
forms—do not so much require discrete sets of competencies as they are the means through which competencies, especially social competencies, are framed and understood. And while media can serve as the basis for identifying and enumerating formal competencies (e.g. critical competencies for broadcast media), some of these same media can also undermine the separation of formal competencies from more informal kinds: Programmers can develop expert skills in open source work, while gamers can develop the eye-hand coordination of surgeons in first-person shooters. In this presentation, Dr. Friesen will explore some of these contradictions and sketch out the possibility of an expanded understanding of the relationship between media and competency.

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The Young McLuhan on New Media in Arts Education

Posted on September 11, 2009 by friesenn

While at St. Michael’s College at the U of T, I came across this 1956 article in the rare book collection. It is a great piece from a young McLuhan, from his Mechanical Bride, and before he had switched his focus from “mechanical” print media to “electronic” media.

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Seminar on Pedagogical Theory & Learning Sciences at Oulu University, Finland

Posted on August 31, 2009 by friesenn

Presentation: Back in May, I taught a seminar on continental pedagogical theory and the North American learning sciencesat Oulu University in Finland. I’ve recently found the time to put the description and corresponding PointPoint materials online. See: http://learningspaces.org/oulu/index.html

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Open Ed 09 Conference: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Posted on August 30, 2009 by friesenn

I recently gave a presentation at the Open Ed 2009 Conference in nearby Vancouver.

The session descriptionfor the presentation is below.

Please also check out a video of the presentation and the corresponding PowerPoint file.

Open Education, defined as “forms of education in which knowledge, ideas or important aspects of teaching methodology or infrastructure are shared freely over the internet” is a relatively new coinage. It juxtaposes understandings of the nature and potential of pedagogy, technology and populist politics (”openness” or “freedom”) into relatively novel and potent interrelationship. As such, its history and intellectual heritage has been most frequently associated with recent commentators, such as Thomas Friedman’s arguments in The World is Flat (2007), and the libertarian politics of the open source movement. In this presentation, Dr. Norm Friesen argues that this intellectual heritage can be seen as being much broader and diverse. He highlights four precursors, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Paulo Freire, and the popular education movement, and describes how learning and its relationship to politics and/or technology is understood by each. Each one of these precursors is able to shed light on certain aspects of the existing and potential interrelationships of these three components (pedagogy, technology, politics) constitutive of open learning. Gramsci shows how knowledge and thus education itself is inherently political, with the potential to either reinforce or undermine the “spontaneous consent” that arises in the context of “hegemonic” political and economic conditions. Benjamin shows how technology can cultivate politically-charged awareness, emphasizing its potential to “emancipate the work of art” (and content more generally) from its “parasitical dependence on ritual”, whether that be the ritual of the museum or the lecture hall. Friere, for his part, combined understandings of the political potential of technology with an open and politicized pedagogy to provide a powerful example of a technology-supported program bringing together literacy education “with lessons in self-reflection, cultural identity and political agency.” Popular education, finally, is a broad and diverse movement that provides many important precedents and valuable lessons for open education. All of these precedents and precursors powerfully illustrate that open education should not be understood principally in terms of new forms of software development or economic competition. Education and its ?opening-up? can be much more than a “mad dash,” as Friedman puts it, to compete with “the flat-world field…of 1.5 billion new workers in the global economic labor force.” Instead of focusing on competition in a world or a game whose parameters are already set, education has the chance to be much more about recognizing and even changing those parameters.

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