April 2008 Archives

This final posting in my CI 597 synthesis is the most important in my opinion.  The course readings and  discussions were great starting points for discussing Web 2.0 technologies.  Cole and Scott allowed us to form  opinions and discuss and negotiate our meaning with our peers.  But, how will we transfer this new knowledge to the creation of our own online learning environments, communities, and lesson plans?  What we may not realize is that we have already started to transfer this knowledge.  In our group projects in class, every group designed a module of instruction around a Web 2.0 technology that incorporated the ideas of community and identity.  For instance, our TeamTweet group designed our instruction with identity having two roles.  Our instruction incorporated everyone’s in-person identity and also online identity in Twitter. 

How do we get started in design as we move past this semester?  Wenger provides a starting point in the last two Chapters of his book, Communities of Practice.  Wenger discusses four dimensions of instructional design: participation vs. reification, designed vs. emergent, local vs. global, and identification vs. negotiability.  These dimensions task the designer with answering the following questions: How much reification is appropriate and necessary in learning?  How can we minimize teaching and maximize learning?  How can we link educational experiences to real world experiences and other content areas? How is success and failure negotiated in the design?  I discuss these ideas in a posting from April 15, 2008 entitled “Designing Learning vs. Designing for Learning.”   The main argument that Wenger states and I reiterate is that “learning cannot be designed, it can only be designed for”  (Wenger 1998).

We must design environments and lesson plans that facilitate (i.e. allow for) learning to occur.  We do this by creating environments where participants feel like they are part of a Community of Practice.  They can experience, do, belong, and become.  They can negotiate, develop, and share theories and ways of understanding the world.  This is accomplished through mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire.  In creating our environment and lesson plans, we must allow for collaboration and group work, discussion, and shared goals.  By providing collaboration and group work, we are facilitating social interaction and identity creation.

For anyone that is relatively new at instructional design, it is important to start with design models.  One design model that I use is Bielaczyc and Collins’ learning community framework.  The framework requires community growth, emergent goals, articulation-of-goals, metacognitive activity, respect for others, fail safe measures, structural dependence, depth over breadth, diverse expertise, multiple ways to participate, sharing, negotiation and a good quality of products.  More on this can be found in a previous post from February 4, 2008. 

The take-home point from all my posts regarding CI 597 is the following.  In instruction, you must constantly look at community, identity, and design.  Even with new Web 2.0 technologies, you still must go back to community, identity, and design.  By accommodating for all three, you WILL design for learning and WILL create environments that allow for learning to occur.

Thank you for reading my posts this semester!

All links included in this post:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/04/designing-learning-vs-designin.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/04/revisiting-cops.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/creating-communities-of-practi.html

In a Community of Practice (COP), there are many different levels of participation.  People can be engaged members, periphery members, non-participants, etc.  Participation is directly linked to identity and belonging to a community.  We choose to participate and belong in certain ways and that belonging helps to create our identity in that community.  Wenger's three modes of belonging further explain identity.  1. Engagement or active involvement.  2. Imagination or seeing connections in our lives through past experiences. 3. Alignment or choosing where to use our energy.

Do we have an influence on our identity?  Yes!  Sherry Turle describes identity as the sameness between a person and his/her persona.  More on Turle's ideas can be found in the post "Neo's Internet Identity Crisis" from February 4, 2008.    Etienne Wenger describes identity as negotiated through social interaction and that by yourself, you don't have an identity.  More thoughts on Wenger's discussion of identity can be found in the post AND comment in "After class Identity Discussion" from April 17, 2008.  We have an influence on every social interaction we are involved in, whether it be our demeanor, appearance, words, or creations.

I feel that the biggest question from CI 597 this semester dealt with one's online identity.  Is it really your identity if someone is unable to see your demeanor and appearance?  The answer is yes.  No matter how little of a presence it is, you DO have an online presence that people associate with you.  This creates your identity.  More on this is found in the post and comment in "After class Identity Discussion" from April 17, 2008.   

If we have a good grasp on what makes up a COP and how identity is created and formed, can we design a COP?  The answer will come in my next posting, "designing a COP."

All links used in this post:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/04/finding-identity-and-networkin.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/neos-internet-identity-crisis.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/04/after-class-identity-discussio.html 

For my final synthesis of the three themes in CI 597, I want to revisit my first thoughts of Communities of Practice.  This final synthesis is broken into three posts, entitled "re-Visiting COPs," "a COPs Identity," and "designing a COP."  All posts are related to Communities of Practice (COPs).

This post starts with an analysis of a previous post from February 4, 2008.  In this post "creating Communities of Practice," I explain that learning in COPs is broken into meaning, practice, community, and identity.  Learning occurs through experience, doing, belonging, and becoming.  These Communities of Practice exist because we are able to negotiate, develop, and share our theories and ways of understanding the world.   Etienne Wenger explains that these communities include both participation and reification.  These ideas can be found on a previous post from February 11, 2008 entitled "Community of Practice revisited." 

Participation and reification contribute to the discontinuity of a boundary or help to create a boundary.  The boundary allows for negotiation of meaning through community interconnectedness with other COPs.  In the Web 2.0 world, you can easily negotiate meaning with users anywhere in the world through boundaries.  More on this can be found on a previous post from February 18, 2008 entitled "Whatcha gonna do when they come for you? An analysis of COPs in the Web 2.0 world" 

Constellations of Practice are the combination of many different Communities of Practice.  Every time we join a new COP, we are adding an addition to our Constellation.  We ARE drawing our own constellations (of practice) throughout our lives. 

What does this all mean in context with Web 2.0 technology?  The answer is simple.  We can create COPs using Web 2.0 technologies as reification objects or as boundary objects.  However, in order to create these COPs, we must know and understand the identity of the participants.  Thus, my next posting will be "a COPs Identity."

All links used in this post:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/creating-communities-of-practi.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/community-of-practice-revisite.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/whatcha-gonna-do-when-they-com.html
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mdm392/blogs/ci597/2008/02/wengers-constellations.html

After class today, a few of us hung around for an hour and discussed ci597 and Wenger.  We ended class by saying that according to Wenger, identity is negotiated through social interaction and that by yourself, you don't have an identity. 

However...
1. What if you never interact with anyone?  The extreme case:  What if you grow up in the jungle and your only social interaction is with animals.  Do you not have an identity?  Is interacting with animals considered social interaction?

Another idea...
2. The point was made that even if you choose not to engage in a community, your identity is still changed because of that choice.  I can see how in some cases your identity would in fact change by making that choice.  But I don't agree that it always changes.   If I act a certain way before I am introduced to a community and choose not to engage in that community because of those actions, then my Identity has not changed.  What has changed is the community's perception of myself.  They label me for choosing not to engage in the community but that label has not changed my identity and who I am.  The only thing that's changes is their perception of me.

Feel free to respond with pros or cons to our/my ideas.  Thanks to those that hung around after class; it was a great conversation.

"Learning cannot be designed, it can only be designed for." ~E. Wenger

Over the last few weeks we have talked about learning with respect to communities of practice, trajectories of participation, emergent structures, boundaries, social power, engagement, alignment, and identity.   We have tied in online communities, online identities, and Web 2.0 technologies to our discussions. 

As we start the final Chapters of Wenger's Communities of Practice, we have one last piece of the puzzle to ponder and discuss: design.  Learning can and should also be discussed with design. 

Although, "one cannot design the practices that will emerge.. the identities that will be constructed.... the alignment of energies.. or even the meaning and/or learning," one can design for instruction that will lead to the occurrence of these practices in some form (Wenger 1998).   

Wenger states that there are four dimensions in instructional design.  Participation vs. reification, designed vs. emergent, local vs. global, and identification vs. negotiability.  These dimensions present a give and take relationship where the following questions arise: How much reification is appropriate and necessary in learning?  How can we minimize teaching and maximize learning?  How can we link educational experiences to real world experiences and other content areas? How is success and failure negotiated in the design?

There are so many different questions that we can answer and prepare for in our instructional design, and yet, we will never be able to completely design the learning.  For example, in our CI 597C: Disruptive Technologies course this semester, we never could have guessed that Twitter would be one of the most used technologies.  In fact, the other members of the Twitter group and I (teamtweet) thought that Twitter was a bad choice of topic at first.  Twitter soon became THE technology of use in CI 597C and learning did occur.  The key was that our instructors Scott and Cole designed the course FOR learning.  They did not know what would be learned or the alignment of energies to certain technologies.

At the end of the day, an instructional designer must be able to answer the question, Did I try to design the learning or instead, did I design for learning?  If the answer was FOR learning, then the instructional designer can sleep well that night knowing that authentic (i.e. real) learning will occur. 

As the semester draws to an end and my peers (from CI597) and I go our separate ways, I find that our identity is forever changed.  Throughout this semester, we have actively been involved in discussion and group work.  We have taken past experiences and related them to concepts and theories from class.  We have decided how and when to use our energy to enhance class discussion and group projects.  We have participated in all three of Wenger’s modes of belonging.  In "Communities of Practice", Etienne Wenger discusses three modes of belonging that form one's identity.  1. Engagement or active involvement.  2. Imagination or seeing connections in our lives through past experiences. 3. Alignment or choosing where to use our energy (1998).  

Before I get to my conjecture that identity and networking are the same thing, I want to side step and talk about alignment:

Alignment is the mode that most interests me.  How do I choose to use my energy?  For the past 48 hours I have spent about 20 of them making a project for a workshop I am giving this Wednesday.   The project was not for any of my classes, however, it still was high on my priority list.  Why?  Well, I wanted to create a database web-application that would help my peers learn about databases and want to invest their energy in the same way.  Also, it was fun and challenging.  I find that these two qualities of a project often provide for the best learning environments.  If the project was not as fun as I thought it was, I am certain I instead would have only spent half the amount of time on it.  Also, if it was not at first challenging, there would not have been as much personal satisfaction at the end of completing it.  A sample of the project is available at http://workshop.msw-is.com/teacherSiteOnLine.html.  A few of the qualities of alignment that Wenger discusses are finding one's view or common ground, being a boundary for communities, and developing a focus (1998).  When I present my workshop on Wednesday on Databases, I will become a boundary between the technical side of computer databases and the educational goals and knowledge of the participants.  BTW, Anyone reading this is welcome to attend:  Keller 313, 4/9/2008, @ 1-3 P.M.  Email me at mrook@psu.edu to RSVP.

Wenger says that identity is formed through identification (choice) and negotiability (adoption).   We choose to engage ourselves with and meet certain people but we also negotiate our identities in many different communities.  Others choose to interact with us and help us form an identity in our communities.  This sounds a lot like networking.  I will define networking as engaging others to advance our career.  Finding an identity is not much different.  Wenger points out that power is a part of finding identity.  Identity is in a way social empowerment.  By choosing to engage others in conversation and brokering and being boundaries across learning communities, we are forming our identity AND networking. 

Why is my identity forever changed after leaving CI597?  I have formed relationships with others involved in CI597 that will lead to my involvement in other communities (Gaming Commons with Bart Pursel), social events (enjoying trivia night at Otto's with my group), and research projects (PSU's ePortfolio). 

Although I initially joined the CI597 learning communities for acquisiition of knowledge, I find that with an open mind and alignment of energy, I have found opportunities for creation of knowledge that have far exceeded my expectations.  Thank you CI597 teachers, peers.