Category: Learning Ecology

Panic buttons, learning zones & transitional states of being

3/19/2016

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has the words Don’t Panic on its cover. Douglas Adams described the text as being in ‘large friendly letters’. This juxtaposition of panic and friendliness suggests being scared is nothing to be afraid of. Last week I was introduced to Senninger’s Learning Zone model. The bright red ring labelled Panic Zone caught my attention. I’ve been in transition between institutions and been asked by Lifewide Education to write about the impact of this on my learning and development, in particular from an ecological perspective (1) and with reference to Senninger's Learning Zone model (2).

The core of Senninger’s model is the Comfort Zone. Disrupting this shifts you into the Central Stretch Zone. The analogy is a good one. Change stretches you in all directions but like an aerobic workout, what’s tough at the time aims to make you feel better afterwards. Leaving Comfort Zones can have impact. There’s no going back. It’s like trying to recreate a fabulous holiday by returning the following year. People and places might appear the same but the moment has passed. As Heraclitus tells us, you can’t step in the same river twice.

Surrounding the comfort and the stretch circles is the Panic Zone. This gives the model a dystopian feel but I found the concept reassuring. However familiar you are with the symptoms of Imposter Syndrome, or have taken time out for meaningful self-reflection, it’s easy to take it personally if something doesn’t go quite as planned. Senninger gives us permission to feel a range of negative emotions and – more importantly – to contextualise them within the bigger picture of change.

Fear of change can keep us stuck in situations which are past their use-by date so we trade familiarity for comfortable security. It’s easy to see why. An essential element of dismantling an old world and accepting a new one is to invite temporary fear into your life. For a while you are the outsider, a stranger in the familiarity of others. Change can stretch you to the edges of what you know and this is a challenge. It’s good to remember being in transition is a process with stages. For me, the travel aspect is missing from the Learning Zone model. Norman Jackson’s Learning Ecology Model (2) gives a better sense of the journey and a combination of the two would best represent the change-route travelled.

Sources
1) Jackson N J (in press) Exploring Learning Ecologies Chalk Mountain https://www.lulu.com/
to be published March 2016. Also March Issue of Lifewide Magazine
2) 1 Senninger, T. (2000). Abenteuer leiten – in Abenteuern lernen. Münster/Germany: Ökotopia. Learning Zone Model. [on-line]
http://www.thempra.org.uk/social-pedagogy/key-concepts-in-social-pedagogy/the-learning-zone-model/

Image credits
Dont Panic http://www.tetchi.ca/dont-panic/
Imposter Syndrome https://www.sfu.ca/dean-gradstudies/events/impostersyndrome.html

Sue Watling is an Academic Technology Enganced Learning Advisor at the University of Hull. This post is adapted from her blog post
https://digitalacademicblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/panic-buttons-and-transitional-states-of-being/

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SEEK, SENSE, SHARE : UNDERSTANDING THE FLOW OF INFORMATION THROUGH A PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK

5/14/2015

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I'm working on the next issue of Lifewide Magazine which is exploring the idea of Personal Learning Networks (PLN's) which I take to mean the people we connect to in order to learn from, collaborate with or be inspired by. Bringing each issue of the Magazine into existence is a major driver for my own leaning and related development of ideas and practices. The Social Age (1) has created new affordances for networking and changed the way my own PLN works by enabling me to connect to the imaginations, writings, illustrations and conversations of a multitude of people through social media, RSS feeds, maillists and forums.

I wanted to connect and integrate my ideas on PLNs with the flow of information and knowledge through my own learning ecology. Using my PLN I discovered the Seek-Sense-Share model of information flow developed by Harold Jarche(2) to represent the way we set out to find information that is relevant to our learning and development projects, make sense and use that information then share with others our understandings.

According to Harold, Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) is a framework for individuals to take control of their professional development through a continuous process of seeking, sensing-making, and sharing.

Seeking is finding things out and keeping up to date. Building a network of colleagues is helpful in this regard. It not only allows us to “pull” information, but also have it “pushed” to us by trusted sources. Good curators are valued members of knowledge networks. I think that seeking can be passive - ie we connect to people, communities and organisations who share their knowledge freely and wait with 'watchful anticipation' for something to emerge that is of interest. And then there is the more deliberate mode where we invest lots of time and energy seeking out information that has the potential to be useful.

Sensing is how we personalize information and use it. Sensing includes reflection and putting into practice what we have learned. Often it requires experimentation, as we learn best by doing. Sensing is about trying to make sense of the information we receive or find. We try to connect it to our own understandings which we may need to alter in the process. It is all about creating meaning and then perhaps learning to use what we have learnt.

Sharing includes exchanging resources, ideas, and experiences with our networks as well as collaborating with our colleagues. Sharing involves gifting our understandings or personal sense making to the world either by making it accessible in publications like magazines, books, papers, blogs, twitter posts and any other open access publication vehicles. It's also about using it in work or other social practices.

SEEKING further information on PLNs through my own PLN led me to Jane Hart's excellent blog post(3) in which she described how she had applied the Seek-Sense-Share model to her own daily knowledge management routine. I like this representation as it converts an abstract model into something tangible and meaningful.

I decided to personalise Jane's approach and the result is shown in the illustration below. Unlike Jane's disciplined daily routine, my approach to accessing the information flow from my PLN is quite chaotic. But it becomes more disciplined and systematic when I want to learn something. I dedicate the time and resources to SEEKING information that might be relevant (such as what I'm doing now) for a particular purpose. In other words, while this model explains the ongoing information flows in my life, it only springs into action when I have created an ecology for learning or achieving something for which I have a need for new information and knowledge (4).

The illustration represents the flow of information and knowledge through my current learning ecology. While there is a lot of use of technological tools what is hidden from view are the people who make use of these technologies who create, curate and communicate the information which I receive or SEEK.

I use my PLN to SEEK information in two different ways. The first is to provide me with a continuous flow of information that might be of interest and which I might be able to make use of either now or in the future. The second mode becomes active when I engage with a problem and I actively begin to create an ecology within which I SEEK specific information, and individuals inside or outside my existing PLN, who can provide me with information, relevant to my learning project. This is a transactional relationship in which I commit to SHARING some of what I have learnt with the people who include me in their PLN or who in future engage in their own SEEKING for information that I have shared.

In accessing the information I make a judgement as to its relevance, validity and utility and then I either store it or put it to use by bringing it into my learning project. Through a process of trying to understand and apply the information SENSING, I create new meaning and change my own understandings which I can SHARE via my Twitter accounts or through my websites, connections to mail lists or through on-line publications, with other people will be interested. The value of CURATING as part of the infrastructure for sharing is that it provides a context to enable deeper understandings to be made. This in turn stimulates interest and new exchanges with people who I may then include in my PLN.

The SEEK SENSE SHARE model also works well for more dynamic learning ecologies such as a teacher working with her students might experience. For example, while writing this article I facilitated a workshop on the theme of Ecologies for Learning, Development and Achievement. I created a learning ecology in which SEEKING involved inviting them to complete an on-line survey the content of which was included in my presentation. Also during the workshop participants shared their narratives of learning ecologies that they had created and these were recorded for analysis after the workshop. SENSING involved processing the information and narratives I had been given and then the results of this process were SHARED with participants and the conversation continued.

I conclude that Harold Jarche's SEEK SENSE SHARE conceptual tool for visualising the flow of information to, through and from a learning ecology seems to work very well in these contexts.

References
1 Stodd J Exploring the Social Age and the New Culture of Learning Lifewide Magazine Issue 11 September 2014 http://www.lifewidemagazine.co.uk/2014.html
2 Jarche H, (2014) The Seek > Sense > Share Framework Inside Learning Technologies January 2014, Posted Monday, 10 February 22 014 http://jarche.com/2014/02/the-seek-sense-share-framework/
3 Hart J (2013) My daily PKM routine (practices and toolset)
http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2013/11/30/my-daily-pkm-routine-practices-and-toolset/
4 Jackson, N. J. (2013b) Learning Ecology Narratives, in N. J. Jackson and G. B. Cooper (eds) Lifewide Learning, Education and Personal Development E-book Chapter C4 available on line at: http://www.lifewideebook.co.uk/research.html

Norman Jackson
Founder Lifewide Education

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NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL LEARNING

11/6/2014

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This week I came across two blogs that provided me with new perspectives on social learning. The first was Julian Stodd's post on scaffolded social learning (1) in which he sets out to

balance the structure and defined outcomes of formal instructionally oriented learning with the collaborative, co-creative and 'sense making' functions of social contexts for learning in the manner depicted below.

Scaffolded social learning is built around two types of components: formal elements of learning shown as 'boxes' in which the learning is pre-planned and 'bubbles' of social activity in which learning is informal and emergent. At the boundary between each, there is a gateway.

The boxes embody experiences that are formally defined learning: maybe eLearning, classroom or open educational resources. The narrative in these spaces is defined by the designers and teachers who own the space. The bubbles are co-creative, community spaces, places where we can feed out questions, case studies, activities and exercises that are carried out over time and within communities or more participatory collectives(2). Here the narrative is created by the learner and co-created by the other active participants in the social space.

In scaffolded social learning the overall arrangement is defined by an overarching narrative developed and maintained by one or more social leaders who act as brokers and guides. They identify the need or interest and create the purpose, visualise and maintain the structure and facilitate the process through which learning emerges. They are the creators of the ecology for collaborative learning - another important concept in social learning (3).

I connected Julian's concept of scaffolded social learning to Jane Hart's idea of 'learning flows' (3). Jane argues that 'in the age of Facebook and Twitter, and Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) like Yammer and Jive (where at the heart lies an activity stream that is used for a continuous stream of knowledge exchange) – there is a place for a new learning framework; one that lies between the instructionally designed course and the unstructured knowledge sharing of teams, groups and communities. We call this a Learning Flow.'

A Learning Flow is a continuous steady stream of social micro-learning activities – accessible from the web and mobile devices. Its properties are:

·         continuous – ongoing (ie no end date)
·         steady – eg daily or weekly
·         micro-learning – short – ie taking no longer than 15-20 minutes to undertake
·         involve activity – like reading, watching or listening to something and doing something
·         social – that invite and encourage active participation and contribution
·         streams – that are organised and structured in the Flow in weekly themes
·         accessible from web and mobile devices – to ensure that learning can take place anywhere and at
anytime

For individuals, being present in a Learning Flow means having some help to navigate the turbulent waters of a fast flowing constant stream of (new) information and knowledge, retaining control over how and when they get involved, and how they fit it into their daily workload – autonomy is a key element of participation.

Learning Flows are suitable for:

Enterprise use – to provide ongoing updating of teams or groups
Educational use – to provide an extra dimension to academic subjects – probably alongside a

formal curriculum

Professional use - for generic topics of interest in areas like Marketing, Leadership, L&D, etc, where it is vital to keep up with new knowledge and practices.
Personal development use - topics of interest that are not directly related to work but are relevant to leading a more fulfilled and meaningful life and indirectly might enhance professional performance can be

Jane describes three types of Learning Flow to encourage short social learning experiences.

(1) NEWS FLOW provides a daily social-micro learning activity based on current news and resources from the Social Web. This is a useful way of encouraging a group of people to reflect on and discuss up-to-the-minute news. This type of Learning Flow is closest to the unstructured learning that takes place in activity streams, but it has the advantage that the participants are only subjected to one piece of news daily - so that the “signal has been separated from the noise” by the Learning Flow Guide.

(2) THEMED FLOW provides daily social micro-learning activities organized within weekly themes around a specific topic. This is a useful way for bringing together related activities in some logical sequence during the week, so that the Learning Guide can help the participants to “join the dots” between new ideas and resources.

(3) CIRCULAR FLOW is a rotating flow of a set of weekly themes (although activities within them may change). This Learning Flow is closest to the traditional course since it deals with a well defined body of knowledge, but it differs from a course in that content is used to support the social learning experience – rather than social interaction being added to content (as happens in many courses) there is a Guide rather than an Instructor, and there is more autonomy and choice for the user

It seems right that these ideas of scaffolded social learning and learning flows should be connected and integrated. What do you think?

Sources of ideas
1) Julian Stodd Scaffolded Social Learning posted 5 November 2014 http://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/scaffolded-social-learning/
2) Douglas Thomas and John Seeley Brown A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change
3) Norman Jackson 'The Concept of Learning Ecologies' in N. J. Jackson and G.B. Cooper (eds) Lifewide Learning, Education and Personal Development e-book Chapter A5 available on-line at http://www.lifewideebook.co.uk/conceptual.html
4) Jane Hart 'Beyond the Course: The Learning Flow – a new framework for the social learning era' posted 19 February 2014, http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2014/02/19/the-learning-flow/
5) Jane Hart 'Three Types of Learning Flow' posted 25 February 2014
http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2014/02/25/types-of-learning-flow/

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Panic buttons, learning zones & transitional states of being

SEEK, SENSE, SHARE : UNDERSTANDING THE FLOW OF INFORMATION THROUGH A PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL LEARNING

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