A Situated Learning Perspective on Learning Object Design Roderick - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005 1

A Situated Learning Perspective on Learning Object Design

Roderick A. Farmer and Baden Hughes

Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering The University of Melbourne

{raf, badenh}@cs.mu.oz.au

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005 2

Overview

• Background and Introduction
• Situated Learning Perspective
• The CASE Framework
• Discussion
• Future Work and Conclusions

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005 3

Introduction

• Learning object design inclusive of instructional design and

learning theories is seen as desirable (Daniel and Mohan, 2004;

Nabeth et al 2004)

–

Addressing the socio-technical gap between technical capacity and social valency (Ackerman, 2000)

• We argue for a shift towards holistic, socially-informed

approach to learning object design

–

using situated task analysis (CASE) (Farmer, to appear)

• Our motivation is primarily to explore the role of context and

situatedness in learning object design

–

proposing retention of context in contrast to other work (Parrish, 2004)

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005 4

A Situated Learning Perspective

• Grounded in social cognition (Brown et al, 1989) and social

learning theories (Vygotsky, 1986), learning is viewed as a process

• r function of an activity located within a community of practice
• We argue that situated learning applied to learning object

design is critical as it recognises that motivation, situational awareness, collaboration, conflict and negotiation, context, and learner-centeredness have an impact on learner environments (Farmer, to appear; Brown et al, 1989; Engeström, 1999)

• CASE framework (Farmer, to appear) allows the capture of social

and cognitive aspects within a learning paradigm

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005 5

The CASE Framework (1)

• Cognition, Activity, Social Organisation, Environment

–

each defining an investigative locus for situated learning

• Captures situational factors impacting the learning context
• Factors from each segment can interact summatively
• Interactions cannot be modelled in a purely linear fashion as

lower level events (eg error handling, information coherence) may impact higher level meta-cognitive functions

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005

The CASE Framework (2)

Environment Social Organisation Activity Cognition

Culture Conventions Work Practice Conditions Artefacts Tools Motivation Agency Roles goals complexity difficulty Control collaboration Negotiation Conflict

Analytical/Quantitative Situatedness Descriptive/Qualitative

• /+ Rate of Change

+ Relationships Affordances

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005

The CASE Framework (3)

• Cognition consists of 2 primary factors: task complexity and
• difficulty. These impact creation and maintenance of:

–

conscious subject goals

–

unconscious subject actions (habituated)

• Activity captures tool-mediated subject-motivated interaction

based on Activity Theory

• Social Organisation emphasises culture, conventions, agency
• Environment is concerned with affordances, artefacts and

conditions

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005 8

Discussion

• Integrated instructional design and social theory

considerations into learning object design through foundations in situated learning

–

in Component-Based Software Development (CBSD), elicitation of the functional properties of learning objects is a critical requirement

• A number of implicit assumptions and constraints within the

CASE framework

–

Formal properties and associated ontologies exist by which to constrain and describe learning objects

–

CASE is unable to describe sequencing impacts (Robinson, 2001)

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005 9

Future Work and Conclusions

• Static frameworks are commonly criticised for their failure to

capture all modes and aspects of interaction

–

The ability of CASE to model individual and collaborative aspects of cognition, interaction and sociocultural constraints offers new insight into learning object design and evaluation

• Further research required into evaluating the impact of

dynamic conditions during collaboration, despite CASE capacity to model spatio-temporal conditions

–

Tying historical context to present and future conditions (Vygotsky, 1986;

Engeström, 1999)

–

Socio-culturally- aware aggregation methods (Nabeth et al, 2004)

Farmer & Hughes, ICALT 2005

References

• Daniel and Mohan, 2004. A model for evaluating learning objects. Proceedings of ICALT 2004. IEEE

Computer Society Press.

• Nabeth et al, 2004. Integrating 'context' in e-learning systems design. Proceedings of ICALT 2004. IEEE

Computer Society Press.

• Ackerman, 2000. The intellectual challenge of CSCW: the gap between social requirements and technical
• feasibility. Human Computer Interaction 15(2-3).
• Farmer, to appear. Situated task analysis in learner-centred CALL. In P. Zaphiris (ed), User Centred

Computer Aided Language Learning. Idea Group Publishing.

• Parrish, 2004. The trouble with learning objects. Educational Technology, Research and Development 51(1).
• Brown et al, 1989. Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researchers 18 (1).
• Vygotsky, 1986. Thought and language. MIT Press.
• Engeström, 1999. Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engeström et al (eds),

Perspectives on Activity Theory. Cambridge University Press.

• Leont'ev, 1978. Activity, consciousness and personality. Prentice Hall.
• Robinson, 2001. Task complexity, cognitive resources and second language syllabus design. In P. Robinson

(ed), Cognition and Second Language Instruction. Cambridge University Press.