We have been given a couple of research papers for critically evaluation. One of them is by Dunleavy et al (2007) which looks at the "value addedness" of the one child per laptop (OLPC) project. What struck me here is that there are similarities between the OLPC initiaive and that of our partly JISC funded project, iBorrow. Whilst the OLPC project is ensuring that there is a "laptop per child" and iBorrow is about "borrowing a laptop" - the similarities here are one of transformation (or at least potentially).

Our students have a choice of using one of the 200 netbook devices or one of the 120 fixed desktop PCs - which ones are they drawn to and under what circumstances? They have relatively free reign in a large learning space (incorporating library, cafes and student services) the size of a football pitch across three floors - which means they have a choice as to where to work, learn and play with these netbooks - and again, which zones are they drawn to and under what circumstances?

Which leads us to another set of interesting questions:

• What kind of affordances do these devices bring?
• Are they indeed "value added" or something else?
• Does the combination of group work and mobile devices differ from that of group work and fixed devices?
• Does an "underworld" of virtualised peer support exist in these groupings?

I have a lot to think about and mull over before I finally hand in my project proposal in April 2010 - the trick here is to keep the research question(s) tightly focused.

If you are interesting in delving deeper into the OLPC project, Nicholas Negroponte, author of "Being Digital", founder of MIT Media Labs and founder of the OLPC initiative provides a nice summary of what the initiative is and the some of the issues of getting the project off the ground. James O'Hagan's blog "1 Laptop : 1 Student" offers some "stories" and case studies taken from practitioners of the initiatives.

References

Dunleavy, M., Dexter, S. & Heinecke, W.F. (2007). "What added value does a 1:1 student to laptop ratio bring to technology-supported teaching and learning?". Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23, pp. 440-452.

My University is involved in phase two of JISC's Institutional Innovation Programme:

"This programme represents a £13.08m investment aimed at supporting existing institutional strategies by providing solutions to institution-wide problems, based upon proven practices, technologies, standards and services. The solutions will act as exemplars to other institutions by demonstrating innovation and good practice, and building knowledge and experience, which can be shared across institutions."

One of those projects is the Academic Social Networking project which is being developed by the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) at the University of Cambridge. The project itself "aims to bring some of the affordances of consumer social networks to teaching and learning".

What is interesting to me, and possibly to other students on the research methods module is that CARET collaborated with Flow Interactive, an external company, to investigate whether commercial user-centric design (UCD) techniques could be transferable and be used within a Higher Education context.

As the research team suggest, user-centric design is different because:

"...it explicitly, constructively and actively includes users in the design process from a very early stage."

One of the key features of their particular methodology is the notion of "design personas" and how it enabled them to:

"...identified trends or patterns in user behaviours, expectations and motivations, through conducting a combination of diary studies and interviews, and how this formed the basis of our personas. Having these personas enabled us to focus the design effort on supporting user goals. Also, where traditionally a designer might have lists and lists of requirements, personas allow one to prioritize these requirements to the degree these personas would find them important, offering more clarity."

Moreover, the research team at CARET have published their UCD methodology into a rather useful and compelling handbook for us lucky reseachers to peruse and may even offer a new approach to conducting research with our key stakeholders.

I have been thinking more about my intended research project as well as bouncing ideas and talking to colleagues about it as well. One of the recurring themes was a person or a groups relationship to and between space (physical, virtual or both?). These relationships could occur between:

• Student to Student
• Student to Peer Group
• Student to Tutor
• Peer Group to Peer Group
• Peer Group to Tutor

It reminded me of some journal articles that I read as part of my "Space, Place and Technology" wiki articles for the "Psychological and Social Contexts of e-Learning" module. Specifically, this regards Nova (2005, p. 119) who proposes that when "dealing with the concept of space in collective situations", it should be considered through the lens of a number of dimensions:

• Person to Person
• Person to Artefact
• Person to Place
• Space, Place and Activity
• Space and Artefacts
• Space and Time

The "Space, Place and Technology" wiki articles are now converted into an "as is" electronic paper version on Issuu, if you wish to find out more about these dimensions. We can represent these dimension using the following illustration.

What we are looking at are fixed physical spaces are depicted as solid circles whereas transient physical spaces are denoted with dashed circles. Each circle is inhabited by people with some form of information and communication device like a desktop computer, laptop, mobile phone or PDA; also present are a number of "artefacts" represented by the orange star and the green diamond - these "artefacts" could be a chair, table, books, or Interactive White Boards. As depicted in the diagram, some "spaces" can overlap and be shared. Each information and communication device is connected to one or more virtual spaces as depicted by the computer servers inside a blue dashed cloud formation. These virtual spaces could be blogs, wikis, virtual environments, web pages and such like.

In terms of thinking about methodology, some ethnographic approach could be considered, but as Cousin (2009, p. 109) warns us:

"At first sight, it might seem that anyone can do ethnography but doing it well requires familiarity with a theoretical field, a set of research skills and perhaps, above all, ... an 'enlightened eye'"

Cousin (ibid) goes to say that "ethnography is not so much about studying people as learning from them". In their joint Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in Creativity project called inQbate, the Universities of Sussex and Brighton have created "two creativity zones" which offers "exciting opportunities for students to work in spaces that foster collaborative, self-directed and experiential learning".

The methodology for capturing how students reacted to and interacted within the space and with eachother was to use Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). This is a relatively recent qualitative approach developed specifically within psychology by Jonathan A. Smith, a Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. IPA concerns itself by:

"...trying to understand lived experience and with how participants themselves make sense of their experiences. Therefore it is centrally concerned with the meanings which those experiences hold for the participants."

I am not really considering IPA but it does demonstrate some of the deep and rich approaches to data collection and analysis. What has caught my eye, however, is something called Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) which is a theory about the link between attitudes and behaviour. TPB is a quantitative approach developed by Icek Ajzen, a Professor of Psychology at Amherst, University of Massachusetts. It was Siragusa & Dixon (2009) paper for the Ascilite 2009 conference where they were using questionnaire items related to components of the TPB to determine students’ attitudes and planned use of ICT-based instruction. Like any methodology, TPB has its' advocates and detractors.

It has been suggested to me that I could develop a case study. But in the meantime, I think I will look into TPB to see if it has any real value.

References

Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2007). Research Methods in Education (6th Edition). New York, London: Routledge.

Cousin, G. (2009). Researching Learning in Higher Education. New York, London: Routledge.

Norton, L.S. (2009). Action Research in Teaching & Learning. New York, London: Routledge.

Nova, N. (2005). "A Review of How Space Affords Socio-Cognitive Processes during Collaboration". PsychNology Journal, 3(2): 118-148.

Robson, C. (2002). Real World Research (2nd Edition). Malden, MA; Oxford; Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing.

Siragusa, L. & Dixon, K.C. (2009). "Theory of planned behaviour: Higher education students'
attitudes towards ICT-based learning interactions". In Same places, different spaces. Proceedings ascilite Auckland 2009. Available at: http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/siragusa.pdf [Accessed 02.02.2010].

So here we are at last, the sixth and final module that is "research methods". I know that I would like to do my dissertation on learning spaces as my institution has just opened it's doors to a new Library and Student Services centre called Augustine House. If you want a feel for the place, there's an interactive floorplan that you can view and there is also a special Flickr set (compare these against the previous library provision). Incidently, anyone wanting to look at different examples of learning spaces that are situated across the UK can view JISC Infonet's Flickr pages.

JISC (2006) informs us that learning spaces:

"...should be able to motivate learners and promote learning as an activity, support collaborative as well as formal practice, provide a personalised and inclusive environment, and be flexible in the face of changing needs." (p. 3)

However, as the JELS (2009) report found out, there is very little by way of evaluating the effectiveness of learning spaces and a fair bit of research would be needed to begin to understand what is going on. Temple (2007), in his literature review, is particularly scathing on how little we understand such spaces:

"...if the curriculum in higher education is a set of experiences, that a student inhabits, experiences that that arise from a student’s interaction with his or her ‘learning environment’, then any attempt to trace the influence of one particular thread of experience may well be doomed..." (p. 69)

So, over the last 18 months I have been involved in a part JISC-funded project that is part of their Institutional Innovation Programme, which:

"...represents a £13.08m investment aimed at supporting existing institutional strategies by providing solutions to institution-wide problems, based upon proven practices, technologies, standards and services. The solutions will act as exemplars to other institutions by demonstrating innovation and good practice, and building knowledge and experience, which can be shared across institutions."

Our project, which we called iBorrow, has deployed 200 location-aware (re: wireless) netbooks within Augustine House which students and staff can "borrow" just by taking them out of the recharging cabinets as if they were picking up a book from off a shelf. One of the many things that we want to see is if it can provide a large-scale demonstration of how thin-client notebooks with location-aware technology can enable us to not only provide "no fuss" access to a full range of software and learning resources but also effectively manage the configuration of the facilities within the large flexible learning spaces of Augustine House.

As part of my preparation and understanding of learning spaces, I have managed to fill three A4 box folders of papers on the subject as well as looking at the notions of "place" and "space" under the auspices of environmental psychology. To help me make sense of all of this information, I have devised a mind map (click on the image below to enlarge) that covers a large number of themes (and I suspect that I have only scratched the surface).

References

JELS. (2009). A Study of Effective Evaluation Models and Practices for Technology Supported Physical Learning Spaces. Bristol: JISC. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/projects/learningspaces08.aspx [Accessed 21 January 2010].

JISC. (2006). Designing Spaces For Effective Learning - A Guide To 21st Century Learning Space Design. Bristol: JISC. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2006/pub_spaces.aspx [Accessed 21 January 2010].

Temple, P. (2007). Learning Spaces for the 21st Century: A review of the literature. York: The Higher Education Academy. Available at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/lr_2007_temple [Accessed 21 January 2010].

Well week 1 is over and we’re into week 2 and the first reflection is how I’ve failed to keep the planned blog, which I know will help me with the studying (I used one in my first module and not in the second and noticed the difference).   I could link this to work being really busy too but that’s just me making excuses so here’s an attempt at encapsulating the starting points for my thinking.

• The way in which the course is structured to give us (as students) ownership of both content and direction of the course – and what this means we have to recognise as our responsibilities to ensure a successful programme
  • And to a lesser extent the tutor’s role in supporting/facilitating this work
• The way in which technology is portrayed in films and books and how this might influence the way in which we perceive it in reality
  • Do we see truths in the films or do we question and disagree with them?
  • What are the implications of films portraying the negative/challenging sides of the relationship between humans and technology?
• Why we chose to adopt particular technologies
  • What of our choice is linked to design?
  • How are we influenced by our peers?
  • How is Apple influencing the spectrum of early adopters? How do their design choices represent a consideration of the market?
• The way in which our use of social media develops
  • Rise and fall of facebook
  • Does the use of social software ebb and flow – and if so what’s causing the tide to change? Is it all just linked to popularity and fashion or is there something more fundamentally linked to function?

Cet article est aussi disponible en français

First of all, I would like to thank all those who took part in this study by providing me with data without which this dissertation wouldn't have been possible.

Abstract

Jumping straight to the results, here's an adapted version of the project's abstract, which also sums up how the study was conducted (you can also jump straight to the paragraph about playfulness and happiness if you wish to):

The present study investigates the existence of a theoretical link between individuals' general level of playfulness and their “academic playfulness”, that is their learning motivational orientation in higher education.
A non-experimental fixed design was followed which involved an online questionnaire adapted from previous instruments as well as online semi-structured interviews in order to quantify that link and to try to identify mechanisms helping to explain it. Seventy undergraduate and Master's level students enrolled in one British and
several French universities answered the questionnaire and 5 students were interviewed.
A small correlation between playfulness and intrinsic motivation to learn was found (r=0.324; p=0.006). This correlation was stronger for males and learners enrolled in more qualitative courses (e.g. liberal arts and management are deemed more qualitative than economics and finance), even though the latter result is not statistically significant. Evidence suggests that playfulness is not related to either gender or age and that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation could be best understood as two separate but related constructs. Likely mechanisms playing a role in the influence of playfulness on intrinsic motivation to learn include the need for social relationships, creativity, active engagement and achievement. Evidence suggests that playfulness influences people's studies and occupations and that the reverse effect sometimes also occurs.
As a result, educators should consider encouraging playful approaches to learning for highly playful students because this can be seen as potentially supportive to their intrinsic motivation. This suggestion could be particularly relevant for male learners and students enrolled in qualitative courses, even though more research is needed to support these results.

Playfulness

Given that play and therefore playfulness are elusive concepts, it's important to note that the latter was understood in terms of Barnett's definition (2007):

"Playfulness is the predisposition to frame (or reframe) a situation in such a way as to provide oneself (and possibly others) with amusement, humor, and/or entertainment.
Individuals who have such a heightened predisposition are typically funny, humorous, spontaneous, unpredictable, impulsive, active, energetic, adventurous, sociable, outgoing, cheerful, and happy, and are likely to manifest playful behaviour by joking, teasing, clowning, and acting silly."

If you wish to learn more about this dissertation, please find it here. In particular, the Discussion (pp. 50-55) Interview results (pp. 45-49) sections are worthy of interest.

Beyond this study - Playfulness and happiness

I would like to say a few words about play, which is a fascinating and not well understood topic yet.

Play has many intrinsic benefits, including learning (this dissertation, among other works, proves it) and preparing us for the unexpected events of our world (Kane 2005).

Traditionally, play has been understood as the opposite of work but it is my belief (and that of many scholars) that play and work are much closer than we may think. In fact, according to the definition above, play can be brought to bear on any activity. For example, Gee has shown that play and formal learning can be extremely related (2003).

The misconception according to which play and work (or learning) are opposite is related to the fact that from primary school onwards, learning is formalised and compartmentalised from play (Barab et al 2005, p. 15) and thereby, an activity called "work" appears. But that doesn't mean one cannot learn in a playful way.

As Kane states, "play is an attitude before it is anything else" (2005, p. 48). Indeed, different people have different degrees of playfulness. And different people "play" in different ways. But I believe that playfulness is something that one can cultivate: I think that dedicating more time to our pastimes (reading, doing arts, sports, etc.) is one way of doing this. For instance, on a personal level, I have always found that my sense of humour was much better when I dedicated some of my free time to reading novels than when I did not.

We can all try to become more playful on our leisure time or at work. For example, writers who write books about "serious" and apparently not so fun topics (like statistics or programming for instance) can do so in a very dry and boring way or they can try and make it fun (to themselves and to their readers) by adding humour into it. I think Anglo-Americans are very good at doing that (by contrast with many French authors for instance). Playfulness really is an attitude and it can take multiple forms (not only the one cited in this example).

And beyond the scope of the study, I think we can all be much happier in life if we try hard to reframe any situations (especially our jobs) so as to make them more interesting to us (the definition of playfulness given above).

Thank you again for taking part in this study (and for having made it through to the end of this long speech )!

References:

Barab, S., A. Arici and C. Jackson (2005). Eat your vegetables and do your homework: A design-based investigation of enjoyment and meaning in learning. Educational Technology 45 (1): 15-20

Barnett, L.A. (2007). The nature of playfulness in young adults. Personality and Individual Differences 43(4): 949–958. 

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York,
Palgrave Macmillan.

Kane, P. (2005). A general theory of play. In The play ethic: a manifesto for a different way of living. London, Pan

For a few days, I've realised that when I was using a few words English in France with some of my friends, I was talking like old women. Actually, it was more like those cartoon style of voices, especially those I that enculturated me when I was developing the Lapin Malin educational CD-RM.

This is because I fear that my accent might not be good enough and, more likely, that others may find me a pretentious person by so doing. If French people enjoyed foreign languages and everyone was proud of their abilities, I would probably feel differently though.

Very interestingly, on the Understanding Learning in the Online Environment module, Hugh reported similar reactions about their own mother tongue, with his students being “extremely reluctant to pronounce clearly and properly” because “in the West Coast of Scotland, proper articulation - ie. beyond grunting - is viewed as effeminate”!

My cartooning moments and the role-playing they involve help me reduce my fear of others' judgement: indeed, the playful nature of the activity and the pleasure it gives me even prompts me into speaking.

That reminds me of the Ensemble c'est tout movie in which one of the characters has a speech impediment due to anxiety. Thanks to some form of music (singing) therapy, he gradually overcomes his impediment, through sessions where he speaks slowly and clearly in a slightly melodious fashion. Acting out (a form of play) this way probably shares similarities with theatre.

Likewise, it could be that to overcome the “taboos” (Papert 1996) involved in speaking a foreign language, students could be encouraged to act, by using voices like those of cartoon characters or real people. Such form of play which works very well with me out of the classroom could, hopefully, lead them to enjoy the lessons more and more.

Depending on their accent, the teacher may suggest them to take the role of a BBC reporter (for the good ones), Arsene Wenger (for the average students) or a French tourist not making much efforts to at least pronounce the “r” correctly (for the “worst” students). Perhaps this could even make up a curriculum in which learners would move through these various roles which would represent as many lessons. Theoretically, role-playing their own role may actually be quite effective.

I believe that having a good accent in a foreign language is correlated with being a good imitator (there comes the idea of the theatre again): the development of both skills involve admiration/attraction and identification and require observation and mimicry, which children are very good at whereas adults are much less so.

So, the problem is that I'm unsure whether those having a bad accent would easily enter the role-playing game.

But the good news is:

• I could be wrong

• Some may have found effective strategies to get students to actually play with that

References:

Papert, S. (1996). A word for learning. In Constructionism in practice : designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world. Y. B. Kafai and M. Resnick. Mahwah, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

In two of my previous posts (Emotions as a play ground and Play is part of any game), I tried to show how work always leaves room for play.

As Gee's Probing Principle suggests (2003), play and activity in general are also the processes through which learning occurs. Since the beginning of this course, I've always felt that happiness and pleasure played a part in this too as would suggest the title "Games, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness" (Yee 2004). In order to be happy, we would need to be active, that is, to work/play (which is the same anyway) and therefore, to learn. Let's now turn to a couple of quotes that seem to support that view:

"I remember feeling learning like seeing a huge mountain from its foothills when I was little (few years ago :P). Too chaotic to climb, with so many paths to begin from and follow later,but also exciting like having no choise but to start climbing and exploring immediately. It doesn't matter whether we like the path and decide to follow it without seeing the crown it leads to. Or whether we already see the crown we want to reach and decide which path to follow whether it is pleasant to climb, hard or even dangerous. Learning, like climbing, always provides surprises. Like a green valley full of flowers under the sun appearing in front of you right on time when you think you have taken the wrong path, or being exhausted from climbing, assuming that the climb didn't finally worth so much effort. The trip to the crown is often difficult, but it depents on how well prepared the climbing learner is and how proof against the weather the boots are. Reaching the crown is the best relief that a learner can get. Standing there with hands raised, seeing the difficult paths and gaps from top, smaller and insignificant that get quickly deleted from his head. Climbing never ends for a learner. There will always be crowns to reach the one after the other, each one with different kind of beauty, effort and glory."

Most of us found Flery's metaphor to be the best illustration of learning during the Understanding Learning in the Online Environment module. As I previously explained, MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft (2009) are interesting in that they make this metaphor explicit. However, given the importance of challenge in making a game successful (Malone 1980) and for which the mountain may again be the perfect metaphor, that idea may be extended to all kinds of games. So here we are with a likely link between learning and work/play. Let's now look at how this matches pleasure and happiness:

"Man did not invent play. But it is play and only play that makes man complete"

(Eigen and Winkler in Kane 2005, p. 57)

The idea of 'completeness' here seems to relate somehow to 'happiness'.

"The opposite of play isn't work, it's depression"

(Sutton-Smith in Kane 2005, p. 44)

"I think happiness is not to reach the top of the mountain but to climb it"

(Arthus-Bertrand 2009)

Picture: in the view linking playing/working and learning, we initially focus on the goal but we then realise that it's not reaching it that makes us happy but rather engaging in the climb to it. In short, the role of the goal is to motivate us.

Therefore, the mountain metaphor seems to represent a solid link between:

• learning
• activity, that is playing/learning (which seems to strengthen the link which I previously tried to show)
• pleasure and happiness

References:

Arthus-Bertrand, Y. (2009). Interview for his 6 Milliards D'Autres exhibition. In Tele Star, 1-8 May 2009 issue.

Gee, J. P. (2003). Situated meaning and learning. In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, Palgrave Macmillan: 73-112.

Kane, P. (2005). A general theory of play. The play ethic : a manifesto for a different way of living . London, Pan.
Introduction; Towards the Play Ethic

Malone, T.W. (1980). What makes things fun to learn? heuristics for designing instructional
computer games. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSMALL symposium and the first SIGPC
symposium on Small systems table of contents. Palo Alto, California, United States.

World of Warcraft (2009). MMORPG game. Blizzard Entertainment.

Yee, N. (2004). Games, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness. Daedalus Project.
Retrieved: 8 May 2009. http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000776.php