Learning 2.0 : concepts and experiences

E-learning arises in all educative contexts and levels with the use of information and communication technologies and massive access to internet connected computers. On the other hand, the fast development of social networking tools and web 2.0 technologies are producing an evolution of e-learning towards what is called a learning 2.0 paradigm. In this short paper weshall present the main technologies and pedagogical issues related to that new way of learning and how we can use them to improve the acquisition of competences and new knowledge.

Learning 2.0 : concepts and experiences with social networks and software

Peer-reviewed

Inter organizational learning within and by innovation networks

The thesis deals with the phenomenon of learning between organizations in innovation networks that develop new products, services or processes. Inter organizational learning is studied especially at the level of the network. The role of the network can be seen as twofold: either the network is a context for inter organizational learning, if the learner is something else than the network (organization, group, individual), or the network itself is the learner. Innovations are regarded as a primary source of competitiveness and renewal in organizations. Networking has become increasingly common particularly because of the possibility to extend the resource base of the organization through partnerships and to concentrate on core competencies. Especially in innovation activities, networks provide the possibility to answer the complex needs of the customers faster and to share the costs and risks of the development work. Networked innovation activities are often organized in practice as distributed virtual teams, either within one organization or as cross organizational co operation. The role of technology is considered in the research mainly as an enabling tool for collaboration and learning. Learning has been recognized as one important collaborative process in networks or as a motivation for networking. It is even more important in the innovation context as an enabler of renewal, since the essence of the innovation process is creating new knowledge, processes, products and services. The thesis aims at providing enhanced understanding about the inter organizational learning phenomenon in and by innovation networks, especially concentrating on the network level. The perspectives used in the research are the theoretical viewpoints and concepts, challenges, and solutions for learning. The methods used in the study are literature reviews and empirical research carried out with semi structured interviews analyzed with qualitative content analysis. The empirical research concentrates on two different areas, firstly on the theoretical approaches to learning that are relevant to innovation networks, secondly on learning in virtual innovation teams. As a result, the research identifies insights and implications for learning in innovation networks from several viewpoints on organizational learning. Using multiple perspectives allows drawing a many sided picture of the learning phenomenon that is valuable because of the versatility and complexity of situations and challenges of learning in the context of innovation and networks. The research results also show some of the challenges of learning and possible solutions for supporting especially network level learning.

Show me your brain! Stories of interdisciplinary knowledge creation in practice. Experiences and observations from Aalto Design Factory, Finland.

This dissertation centres on the themes of knowledge creation, interdisciplinarity and knowledge work. My research approaches interdisciplinary knowledge creation (IKC) as practical situated activity. I argue that by approaching IKC from the practice-based perspective makes it possible to “deconstruct” how knowledge creation actually happens, and demystify its strong intellectual, mentalistic and expertise-based connotations. I have rendered the work of the observed knowledge workers into something ordinary, accessible and routinized. Consequently this has made it possible to grasp the pragmatic challenges as well the concrete drivers of such activity. Thus the effective way of organizing such activities becomes a question of organizing and leading effective everyday practices. To achieve that end, I have conducted ethnographic research of one explicitly interdisciplinary space within higher education, Aalto Design Factory in Helsinki, Finland, where I observed how students from different disciplines collaborated in new product development projects. I argue that IKC is a multi-dimensional construct that intertwines a particular way of doing; a way of experiencing; a way of embodied being; and a way of reflecting on the very doing itself. This places emphasis not only the practices themselves, but also on the way the individual experiences the practices, as this directly affects how the individual practices. My findings suggest that in order to effectively organize and execute knowledge creation activities organizations need to better accept and manage the emergent diversity and complexity inherent in such activities. In order to accomplish this, I highlight the importance of understanding and using a variety of (material) objects, the centrality of mundane everyday practices, the acceptance of contradictions and negotiations well as the role of management that is involved and engaged. To succeed in interdisciplinary knowledge creation is to lead not only by example, but also by being very much present in the very everyday practices that make it happen.

Spreading my wings : how can I improve my practice and contribute to the professional knowledge base through narrative-autobiographical self-study?

"How can I improve my practice and contribute to the professional knowledge base through narrative-autobiographical self-study?" Through the use of Whitehead's (1989) living educational theory and examination of my stories, I identify the values and critical events that have helped me come to know my own learning and shape my professional self. Building on the premise that educational knowledge/theory is created, recreated, and lived through educational inquiry; I strive to make meaning of this data archive, collected over 7 years of teaching. I chart my journey to reexamine my beliefs and practices, to find a balance between traditional and progressive practices and to align my theory and practice. I retell, and, thus, in some way relive, my own "living contradictions." A reconceptualization of the KNOW, DO, BE model (Drake & Burns, 2004) is used to develop strategies to align my practice, including a six-step model of curriculum design that combines the backwards design process of Wiggins and McTighe (1998), the KNOW, DO, BE model (Drake & Burns) and Curry and Samara's (1995) differentiation planner.

Analyzing the learning of the taking personal and social responsibility model within a new physical education undergraduate degree program in El Salvador

EI Salvador presents an unfortunate history that includes a military regime and a civil war that together created a legacy of violence in which the country still struggle nowadays. Salud Escolar Integral (SEI) was created in 2005 as a program to combat youth violence throughout the re-formulation of physical education (PE) classes in public schools, promoting life skills learning that supports the resolution of conflicts with nonviolent ways. In 2007, SEI supported the creation of a physical e~ucation teacher education (PETE) degree at the Universidad Pedag6gica de EI Salvador (UPES), having the goal to assist pre-service teachers with a better understanding of humanistic principles. The present research analyzed if after attending all three years ofUPES PETE program, students presented high self-perception levels of competence and confidence related to attitude, skills and knowledge to teach PE within humanistic principles. Taking Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) was the theoretical framework used to analyze the development of humanistic principles. The study had a mixed-method longitudinal design that included questionnaires, reflection templates and interviews. In conclusion, although it is suggested that UPES should provide better support for the development of the teaching principles of empowering students and transfer learning, most of the humanistic principles were highly promoted by the program. At last, it is suggested that future research should track teachers' progress while teaching in schools, in order to analyze if the theory of promoting humanistic principles have also become a daily practice.

Adult Learning in the Transformational Environments of the Digital Revolution: Connecting Theory and Practice

The purpose of this study was to investigate the learning preferences and the post-secondary educational experiences of a group of Net-Gen adult learners, aged between 18 and 35, currently working in the knowledge economy workplace, and their assessment of how adequately they were prepared to meet the requirements of the knowledge economy workplace. This study utilized an explanatory mixed-method research design. Participants completed a questionnaire providing information on their self-reported learning style preferences, their use of digital tools for formal and informal learning, their use of digital technologies in postsecondary educational experiences, and their use of digital technologies in their workplace. Four volunteers from the questionnaire respondents were selected to participate in interviews based on the diversity of their experiences in higher education, including digital environments, and the diversity of their knowledge economy workplaces. Data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed for descriptive and demographic statistics, and categorized so that common patterns could be identified from information gathered from the online questionnaire and interviews. Findings based on this study indicated that these Net-Gen adult learners were fluent with all types of digital technologies in collaborative environments, expecting their educational experiences to provide a similar experience. Participants clearly expressed an understanding that digital/collaborative aptitudes are essential to successful employment in the knowledge economy workplace. The findings of this study indicated that the majority of participants felt that their post-secondary educational experiences did not adequately prepare them to meet the expectations of this type of working environment.

Working Together: Librarian and Student Collaboration Through Active Learning in a Library Eclassroom

Active learning strategies based on several learning theories were incorporated during instruction sessions for second year Biological Sciences students. The instructional strategies described in this paper are based primarily on sociocultural and collaborative learning theory, with the goal being to expand the relatively small body of literature currently available that discusses the application of these learning theories to library instruction. The learning strategies employed successfully involved students in the learning process ensuring that the experiences were appropriate and effective. The researchers found that, as a result of these strategies (e.g. teaching moments based on the emerging needs of students) students’ interest in learning information literacy was increased and students interacted with information given to them as well as with their peers. Collaboration between the Librarians, Co-op Student and Senior Lab Instructor helped to enhance the learning experience for students and also revealed new aspects of the active learning experiences. The primary learning objective, which was to increase the students’ information skills in the Biological Sciences, was realized. The advantages of active learning were realized by both instructors and students. Advantages for students attained during these sessions include having their diverse learning styles addressed; increased interaction with and retention of information; increased responsibility for their own learning; the opportunity to value not only the instructors, but also themselves and their peers as sources of authority and knowledge; improved problem solving abilities; increased interest and opportunities for critical thinking, as a result of the actively exchanging information in a group. The primary advantage enjoyed by the instructors was the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues to reduce the preparation required to create effective library instruction sessions. Opportunities for further research were also discovered, including the degree to which “social loafing” plays a role in collaborative, active learning.

Recasts, uptake and learning : effects and relationships

L’uptake est la réponse immédiate de l’apprenant suite à la rétroaction de l’enseignant (Lyster & Ranta, 1997). Cette étude investigue la relation entre l’uptake et l’apprentissage des déterminants possessifs et des questions d’anglais L2. Elle examine aussi l’effet des reformulations implicites et explicites en termes d’uptake et d’apprentissage. Deux classes intensives (ESL) de sixième année du primaire (N=53) à Montréal ont participé à cette étude. Les deux classes ont été réparties en deux groupes : reformulations explicites et reformulations implicites. L’intervention comportait des activités communicatives. Les élèves ont été testés sur les formes cibles immédiatement avant et après le traitement pédagogique en utilisant des taches orales. Les résultats ont confirmé l’effet supérieur des reformulations explicites en termes d’uptake et d’apprentissage et que l’effet des reformulations dépend de la cible. Cette étude a montré aussi que l’uptake peut faciliter l’apprentissage et que son absence n’est pas signe de manque d’apprentissage.

Learning Commonsense Categorical Knowledge in a Thread Memory System

If we are to understand how we can build machines capable of broad purpose learning and reasoning, we must first aim to build systems that can represent, acquire, and reason about the kinds of commonsense knowledge that we humans have about the world. This endeavor suggests steps such as identifying the kinds of knowledge people commonly have about the world, constructing suitable knowledge representations, and exploring the mechanisms that people use to make judgments about the everyday world. In this work, I contribute to these goals by proposing an architecture for a system that can learn commonsense knowledge about the properties and behavior of objects in the world. The architecture described here augments previous machine learning systems in four ways: (1) it relies on a seven dimensional notion of context, built from information recently given to the system, to learn and reason about objects' properties; (2) it has multiple methods that it can use to reason about objects, so that when one method fails, it can fall back on others; (3) it illustrates the usefulness of reasoning about objects by thinking about their similarity to other, better known objects, and by inferring properties of objects from the categories that they belong to; and (4) it represents an attempt to build an autonomous learner and reasoner, that sets its own goals for learning about the world and deduces new facts by reflecting on its acquired knowledge. This thesis describes this architecture, as well as a first implementation, that can learn from sentences such as ``A blue bird flew to the tree'' and ``The small bird flew to the cage'' that birds can fly. One of the main contributions of this work lies in suggesting a further set of salient ideas about how we can build broader purpose commonsense artificial learners and reasoners.

The Minimum core for language and literacy : knowledge, understanding and personal skills.

Guía práctica sobre lenguaje y alfabetización para profesores en formación (nivel bachillerato). Les permite identificar y desarrollar sus propias habilidades lingüísticas y de alfabetización y al mismo tiempo apoyar la evolución de los alumnos. Contiene todas las áreas claves de conocimiento, compresión y habilidades personales, además de analizar en un contexto amplio cómo el lenguaje y la alfabetización se adquieren y se desarrollan a nivel personal, social y cultural. El contenido está adaptado para la obtención de los certificados QTLS (Qualified Teacher, Learning and Skills) y ATLS (Associate Teacher, Learning and Skills).

The Minimum core for information and communication technology : knowledge, understanding and personal skills.

Guía práctica sobre tecnologías de la información y la comunicación para profesores en formación (nivel bachillerato). Les permite identificar y desarrollar sus propias habilidades tecnológicas aplicadas a la enseñanza y al mismo tiempo apoyar la evolución de los alumnos. Contiene todas las áreas claves de conocimiento, compresión y habilidades personales, además de analizar en un contexto amplio cómo las habilidades tecnológicas en información y comunicación se adquieren y se desarrollan a nivel personal, social y cultural. El contenido está adaptado para la obtención de los certificados QTLS (Qualified Teacher, Learning and Skills) y ATLS (Associate Teacher, Learning and Skills).

Using problem-based learning for introducing producer theory and market structure in intermediate microeconomics

This paper shows how instructors can use the problem‐based learning method to introduce producer theory and market structure in intermediate microeconomics courses. The paper proposes a framework where different decision problems are presented to students, who are asked to imagine that they are the managers of a firm who need to solve a problem in a particular business setting. In this setting, the instructors’ role is to provide both guidance to facilitate student learning and content knowledge on a just‐in‐time basis

Integration of knowledge-based, qualitative and numeric tools for real time dynamic systems supervision

The proposal presented in this thesis is to provide designers of knowledge based supervisory systems of dynamic systems with a framework to facilitate their tasks avoiding interface problems among tools, data flow and management. The approach is thought to be useful to both control and process engineers in assisting their tasks. The use of AI technologies to diagnose and perform control loops and, of course, assist process supervisory tasks such as fault detection and diagnose, are in the scope of this work. Special effort has been put in integration of tools for assisting expert supervisory systems design. With this aim the experience of Computer Aided Control Systems Design (CACSD) frameworks have been analysed and used to design a Computer Aided Supervisory Systems (CASSD) framework. In this sense, some basic facilities are required to be available in this proposed framework: ·

Strategy clusters and sources of knowledge in French L2 listening comprehension

This article reports on an exploratory investigation into the listening strategies of lower-intermediate learners of French as an L2, including the sources of knowledge they employed in order to comprehend spoken French. Data from 14 learners were analysed to investigate whether employment of strategies in general and sources of knowledge in particular varied according to the underlying linguistic knowledge of the student. While low linguistic knowledge learners were less likely to deploy effectively certain strategies or strategy clusters, high linguistic knowledge levels were not always associated with effective strategy use. Similarly, while there was an association between linguistic knowledge and learners’ ability to draw on more than one source of knowledge in a facilitative manner, there was also evidence that learners tended to over-rely on linguistic knowledge where other sources, such as world knowledge, would have proved facilitative. We conclude by arguing for a fresh approach to listening pedagogy and research, including strategy instruction, bottom-up skill development and a consideration of the role of linguistic knowledge in strategy use.