The Potential Power of a Hashtag: #Twitter, #Positioningtheory, #Wittgenstein, #Lattesipping

I've been MIA for over a year working on my PhD. Needless to say I've written down plenty of ideas for future blog posts, however, an event this week has inspired me to write in this space.

The event sparked me thinking about analysis. I'm about to begin my data analysis on the deeply personal reflections shared to me by the participants in my research study. So, I'm using this space to have a go at analysing an event which began in jest yet took a very personal and professional turn for me on the eve of International Women's Day.

I work in a number of jobs that are complimentary to one another. It's important to note that the event I'm about to describe to you could have occurred in any one of these spaces. For our purposes the place this event occurred is irrelevant.

First, let me tell you about the context: I was sitting in a meeting. Around the table were members of the community who perform similar jobs to me, members who have just started working in this place and members in charge of overseeing our work. In other words, our job titles position us as having differing rights and duties.

The terms I use here come from positioning theory (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999). Consider the positioning triad:

                                                       Adapted from (Harré and Moghaddam, 2003) 

I'll focus on the term positions and speech acts. Consider the following dialogue as an example to understand the fluidity of positions:

At the end of a class, a teacher (T) and student (S) have this conversation:

                                             

                                              T: Jessica, please erase the whiteboard.

                                              S: Sure!

This short conversation illustrates that the teacher believes she has the right to ask Jessica to perform this task. By asking Jessica to do this, the teacher positions her as having the duty to comply. From the social constructionist perspective of positioning theory, Jessica is a thinking, feeling human being capable of accepting or rejecting the teacher's positioning. Here, Jessica has accepted the position as a person who should perform this duty. The social situation would have turned out differently had Jessica rejected this position. For example, Jessica could've complained, positioned another student as a person more able to erase the whiteboard or she could have completely ignored the teacher all together. These rejections suggest, from Jessica's perspective, that the teacher didn't have the right to ask her to perform such a banal task.

Back to the event in question: Remember who's sitting around the meeting table? I'll use the following titles, each adorned with implied rights and duties, for these different people:

• Seniors: members of the community who perform similar jobs to me

• Juniors: members who have just started working in this place

• Evaluators: members in charge of overseeing our work

So, we were sitting around the meeting table, all of us with our perceptions of our rights and duties in tow. One of the evaluators, referring to another senior and I, asked what we were doing. A junior explained that we were catching up on the last meeting's material because the 2 of us 'weren't here.' Looking up from my computer, I clarified that I was at the university working on my PhD. My negotiated work schedule allows for this flexibility. I was met with the comment: 'So, Emily was at the uni sipping lattés.' I cringed and curbed my annoyance for the time being. 

As I brooded over the matter with 2 fingers of single malt, I couldn't help think about my use of positioning theory in my research and also in the way I have come to understand unfolding social situations in life. I had been positioned as a latté sipping, work avoiding student, a position I vehemently reject.

The evaluator misread the social situation in a number of ways. Firstly, he/she assumed the right to position me in this way because of his/her misunderstanding of the professional relationship we ought to share. Secondly, the comment in itself was a rejection of the duties integral to his/her job title: contributing to the research-based practice of this working community. 

While doing some scholarly reading this morning, without a latté, I began reflecting on how people come to accept or reject positions that are assigned to them by others. Perhaps sparked by reading social media posts related to International Women's Day (#IWD2017) I logged on to Twitter to publicly reject the latté sipper position. I wrote the following posts with the hashtag #lattesipping in the text. 

https://twitter.com/EduScholar007/status/839613737908613120

https://twitter.com/EduScholar007/status/839614332027596800

So, to what extent did my #lattesipping hash tag rejection of being positioned have on the meeting conversation? Well, it's probably impossible to say because it was removed from the spacial and temporal context of the original conversation. Furthermore, there was only a slim chance of the evaluator searching the Twittersphere for hash tags derived from his/her discourse. But that's not necessarily the point. For me, part of this rejection of the latté sipper position involved a kind of digital catharsis I didn't believe was my right to have in the context of the workplace sitting with a person in a position of power.

One of my scholarly interests involves understanding how people assert their personal agency using digital technologies. While reflecting on this event through positioning theory, it struck me that hashtags could be used to understand something about the acceptance or rejections of positions assigned to people by others. Hashtags could also be used to reflect on the very public self-positioning of individuals in the digital space. This is something I'm toying with at the moment and wanted to put out there. I think it would be an interesting research endeavour that would certainly cross cultural and linguistic borders and part of me wonders what Wittgenstein (2009) would reflect on the language-games played out in conversations over Twitter.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! I'd love to hear some reflections on this post from a novice researcher. 

References: 

Harré, R., & van Langenhove, L. (Eds.). (1999). Positioning theory: moral contexts of intentional action. Malden, Mass: Blackwell.

Harré, R., & Moghaddam, F. M. (2003). The self and others: positioning individuals and groups in personal, political, and cultural contexts. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Wittgenstein, L., Anscombe, G. E. M., Hacker, P. M. S., & Schulte, J. (2009). Philosophical investigations (Rev. 4th ed.). Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Technology, Trust and Positioning Theory

This week Professor John Holman came to visit our school with some researchers working with the Gatsby Foundation. I was asked if he could come into my classroom to observe what the students were up to. At the time I was teaching some Year 7 students, we were exploring how to make observations in a series of practical lessons focussed on the 5 senses. In this lesson, the students were observing 3 chemical reactions.

When Professor Holman and his team came in, we were in the thick of it. Students were performing their reactions, filming and talking with excitement. At one point Hannah came up to me and said: 'Miss, look at this!' It was a slow motion video of her group performing the pop test for hydrogen. After reacting magnesium with acid, they collected the colourless gas in a test tube. A burning splint was placed in the test tube and... POP! An observation made with our ears. What was interesting about this video was that slow motion allowed us to see the hydrogen combusting. We saw the  length of the test tube ignite. This happens so fast that it can be missed when observing with our eyes.

As the lesson was coming to an end, the research team stayed to see how we'd conclude. After getting the class settled, I asked Hannah to hook up her phone to the projector - I've got all the connectors and any student with a device can display their work. We didn't watch the video with sound and when the hydrogen ignited there was a collective 'Wow!'

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to catch up with Hannah this week to ask if I could post her video. Below are some I've taken to help my classes unpack observations.

Later, the Science faculty was invited to talk with John Holman and his team. We spoke about the reasons teachers choose to do practical work and the subject turned to video. I love video in the classroom, but not video for the sake of it. At some point in my career I tried to order some chemicals to make nylon 66, I was asked if my class could just 'YouTube it' instead. In my opinion, video should never replace practical work or demonstrations teachers could do with students. Further, video can be a powerful tool to inspire curiosity.

For these reasons I allow my students to use their phones in class... The right to do this comes with an important duty: the videos and pictures must by shared to allow us greater focus on the science.

When the conversation turned to my use of Hannah's video, it didn't surprise me to hear that it was a risky pedagogical move. Considering the policies regarding mobile phone use some educational institutions implement, it seems that there exists a very real fear of how students use the powerful computers they carry with them.

This made me think about trust, rights and duties. Lately, I've been listening to some old BBC Reith Lectures: A Question of Trust by Onora O'Neill. Here's an interesting talk she gave not too long ago:

When I listen to O'Neill, I think about the level of trust that exists in my classroom. To establish trust the students and I have to display a level or trustworthiness; we are competent, reliable and honest. From the video above, being trustworthy means making your self vulnerable... taking a risk. So, yes, there were risks in my classroom. They were made by me pedagogically and by the students. 

Why is risk-taking important? Let's think about positioning theory (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999). The following is a very abridged explanation. In positioning theory, conversations consist of positions, speech-acts and story lines. Below is a modified version of the positioning theory triad:

Positions are adorned with distinct rights and duties, they arise from interactions and power imbalances connected to perceptions of agency, identity, values and beliefs. Positions are situation-specific and ephemeral; they may constrain, enable or be employed as coping mechanisms. The storyline reflects a person’s rights and duties but also individuals' interpretations of the rights and duties of others. Speech-acts or discursive practices mean what person says and does. Positions, story lines and speech-acts constitute the local moral order: the system of rights and duties within which private and public intentional acts are carried out (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999).

What does positioning theory have to do with this post? It's easy to socially position students based on what we as educators expect of them... I think about report card comments: 'Susan needs to work harder to meet the expectations of the course.' Whether Susan accepts or rejects this positioning depends on her interpretation of the social world around her. Does she understand this comment as calling on her own personal agency? Does she hear it from a storyline in which she is a victim? Susan might have an altogether different understanding about whether she needs or wants to meet the expectations of the course. 

In my classroom I actively work to position my students with the rights and duties associated with curious and responsible technology users and information communicators. I'm fortunate enough to have displayed a trustworthiness that allows me to do this in my school, but my students have also given evidence that they are responsible, competent and honest to be worthy of an extension of that trust. Together through our communication and actions we experience adventure story lines where there are twists, turns and surprises.  

What's more intriguing, I think, for both the student and the teacher is working to position students as cultural agents  (Redman & Rodrigues, 2008) which means possessing a self understanding of their capabilities and an agentive response to use those capabilities in some positive way: 'I'm allowed to explore with my phone and think I'll find something interesting to share with others.'

Can the risks in these lessons reveal enabling factors to shape the identity of self as a cultural agent? What has trust allowed you to find in your classroom? I'd love to hear your thoughts on these questions.

References

Harré, R., & van Langenhove, L. (Eds.). (1999). Positioning theory: moral contexts of intentional action. Malden, Mass: Blackwell.

Harré, R., & Moghaddam, F. M. (2003). The self and others: positioning individuals and groups in personal, political, and cultural contexts. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Redman, C., & Rodrigues, S. (2008). Researching the relationships in the Technologies of Self: Habitus and Capacities. Paper presented at the Australian Association of research in Education (AARE), Queensland Univeristy of Technology, Kelvin Grove Campus, Brisbane.

Example Videos 

In the video to the left, students were trying the answer the question: Are earthquakes predictable? You can also watch the video here. 

In the video below, I was exploring hydrophobic sand with the lab tech. You can watch the video here.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

BYOD Observations: Experience and Educational Theory

My biggest fans, my retired parents, have been hankering for something other than PhD chapters to read. They're avid Facebook users and recently posted something like this: 'You should really be working on your digital profile and do another blog post.' This week I got to thinking about what to write, most inspiration comes from my time working as a Science teacher in an all girls secondary school in Australia. 

Do you remember this computer game? 

When I was reminiscing with my colleague, Edwin the conversation touched on what it was like growing up with a computer in the house from a very young age. We were thinking about how the students in our school are continuing to adapt to a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program that's in the last phase of a 5 year implementation.

At our school, all students from years 7-12 are now expected to come with a device ready to use in the classroom. Unlike other schools in the area, there's no prescribed device and students can choose which programs to install. This means that in any classroom there could be students using laptops and tablets from any company. They might be using Pages or Word, Numbers or Excel and any other program or app. In anticipation, I've worked to become proficient across Mac and PC while exploring information sharing programs and social software. 

One of my favourite scholars is Elliot Eisner, in The Educational Imagination (2002) he reminds us:

'The improvement of educational practice is a process that is adaptive in character. In this adaptive process, both the classrooms and the materials undergo change (p. 41).'

My interest involves understanding how people, both students and teachers, are also changed in adaptive processes. I'm going to share an observation from a year 9 Science class working to design a group experiment testing whether people have better balance with their eyes open. 

These students have been exploring Edmodo and the Google Drive as tools for collaboration and information sharing in the classroom. They're new users to online educational software and may not understand the affordances offered. I try to guide them to make considered choices about how to use the software to meet their abilities and needs as learners. 

Earlier this week, the class gathered data to measure the speed of a nerve impulse. Together, we entered it into Google Sheets - the equivalent of Excel - and I tried to show the students the analytical power this software has. We discussed averages and how to calculate them with the computer. We looked at the =AVERAGE(...) function and others to explore which type of analysis would help us to find the answer to our experimental question. Here's an example of what was done.

I find it fascinating listening to students' conversations as they work. After investigating the speed of nerve impulses, it surprised me to hear Rosa say: 'I hate Google Docs!' She said this when she began working with Maria and Isobel on the balance experiment. 

I reminded the group that they didn't have to use Google at all. They could create spreadsheet and share it on Edmodo, they'd only be able to work on it one at a time, not simultaneously. They looked perplexed, so I offered to give them another tutorial but it was up to them to choose which solution would work.

We began signing into Google with our school accounts. 'Oh, we already have an account!' said Rosa. 'Yep! It's all been done for you. Just use your school email address and password!' We began on a more positive note and Rosa was already positioned as a user. After going through the basics, I showed them how to share the file: anyone with the link can...view/edit/comment. We discussed their needs and decided that 'edit' would be the best choice. 'You don't have to use this if you don't want to,' I said and left the group to check on the others. 

The bell rang and students packed up ready to start their weekend. I always say good bye and have a great day or something like this at the end of class. Most times, they respond with a 'thanks,' but not this group. They were leaving the room talking about how so-and-so would put something on the Google Sheet while someone else would be doing something else. What struck me was the language they were using, listening to their conversation you wouldn't have been able to tell they were novices with this technology.

I'm not claiming they are or will be expert users with it yet, remember this is an adaptive process...  

What I am interested in is how people are changed by these adaptive processes. This will be an ongoing narrative in the classroom, we're at the 'Once upon a time...' stage in the narrative. It will be interesting to see how Rosa and her group progress with this technology.  

I should also mention that despite these tutorials, other groups chose to upload individual files to their Edmodo small groups requiring each person to download the file, make changes and upload it again... Another question to explore is: How do these students adapt to the process of implementing technology in the classroom?

Mentioned earlier was that having the Google account already set up for Rosa positioned her as a user. My use of 'position' comes from Positioning Theory (Harre & van Langenhove, 1999). In short, positions are linked to the rights and duties of individuals in social situations. Positions inform speech and other acts while giving rise to plots in story lines. I'm not going to go into a PhD chapter on this, but it's a fascinating philosophy. 

It seems that creating an account for Rosa opened her up to a new set of rights and duties to others. The all-of-a-sudden positive and excited: 'Oh, we already have an account!' might suggest a cognitive shift from something the students were expected to do versus something they could opt to do. 

Perhaps having to set up an account is viewed by students as: 'Oh... another thing we have to do...' a denial of their personal agency. Maybe having the account already set up for them allows students to take control of their mental activity (Bruner, 1996, p. 87) as they interpret their local system of rights and duties (Harre & van Langenhove, 1999). Perhaps this offers students a greater sense of personal agency.

How does this relate to my childhood use of computers mentioned in the beginning of this post? By the time I was 10, we had a personal computer in our house. I was lucky, I could use the computer whenever I wanted. My dad worked with computers and he was one of my first teachers. I remember the day when he brought home the game Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? No one pushed me to play and explore, I was my own personal agent. BUT I wouldn't have known about the possibilities, though, if my dad didn't take an interest in introducing me to them.

We hear about the digital divide and what we need to think about as teachers is how to enact behaviours and pedagogic practices to directly address the divide when we scaffold students toward using digital technologies for educational purposes. I think of this part of my job as similar to my dad's way of teaching me: unassuming, growing up in the digital age doesn't mean being born with the skills to use technology for scholastic purposes, and willing to help students explore those possibilities. 

If you, readers, have any comments, I would love to hear them.

Individual to Community Shifts in the CE3 Curriculum using Google Earth

Thank you for reading! I haven't written anything in this space for a while and although I'm supposed to be working on chapters for the PhD, I thought it might be a good exercise to practice writing analytically... I don't want to fall into a hole of description.

This week, I'd like to:

• share some curriculum materials I've been trialling with my Year 9 Earth Science classes
• reflect on a problem and discussion we encountered
• connect this discussion to some educational theory  

So off we go...

In Year 9 we're studying the theory of plate tectonics and natural disasters. This is the first time we've approached the topic seriously. In previous years the National Curriculum was just beginning to be implemented and it was unclear whether we should focus on rocks and minerals and/or plate tectonics. With a better understanding of the National Curriculum as well as completing 2 MOOCs, researching the state of Earth Science education and perusing several textbooks and other resources, I think we've begun to teach Earth Science much more effectively and in a more engaging way that inspires curiosity!

One of the resources, a colleague and I have been exploring is the Cyber Enabled Earth Exploration Curriculum, CE3:

http://www.spatialsci.com/ce3/

This curriculum scaffolds students through some of the powerful features of Google Earth while encouraging them to make observations. Students draw conclusions about the structure of the Earth based on the skill of observation highly valued in Geology.

In our school, Year 9 students are expected to bring a device to class. It could be any brand of tablet or lap top computer. Needless to say, this sometimes makes teaching the content difficult. Some brands work differently than others and time is spent trouble shooting the technology. On the other hand, I think this can be a powerful learning opportunity for students' problem solving skills.

Problem: Students were supposed to click on a radio button to view an animation, but the animation was missing! This happens as newer versions of Google Earth are made available.

Teacher's solution: Search the Internet for another appropriate animation after emailing CE3 staff - who promptly responded with this solution of accessing the URL and putting it into a browser.
                 

The only problem is that the students said that it still didn't work! 

Here's what came up in get info:

                                                       <iframe

                                                       src="http://ge.spatialsci.com/html/ID/3380d6c1"
                                                       width="700"
                                                       height="500" style="border: 0px solid blue;"></iframe>

With a little prompting, it turned out that students were copying and pasting all the code and putting it into the browser. I sat with a student and explained that this is computer code, to which she excitedly said: 'Hey, Lynne knows about that! Look Lynne, code!' We discussed what 'src,' 'width' and 'height' were referring to and how to extract the website from the code. Another student who initially had little interest in solving the problem and opted to find the information on Wikipedia, turned to us and said: 'Yeah, just don't include the quotes!'

Alexander (in Exploring Talk in Schools edited by Mercer and Hodgkinson, 2008) writes about 3 versions of human relations when exploring the relationship between culture, dialogue and learning (p. 96):

• Individualism: the self is placed above others and personal rights come before collective responsibilities, characterised by unconstrained freedom of thought and action. 

• Community: human interdependence, caring for others, sharing and collaborating is emphasised

• Collectivism: also emphasises human interdependence but to serve the needs of society or the state as a whole 

When reading these descriptions of human relations, they sounded familiar to Bakhtin's three-part model of the self: I-for-myself, I-for-others and others-for-me. Individualism reminded me of I-for-myself whereas I-for-others and others-for-me reminded me of the community and collectivism human relations. 

What intrigued me about this classroom exchange, was the student who initially gave up on solving the problem as suggested - by using the get info tool - and opted to search using Wikipedia. Lisbeth didn't share this information with her peers and I suspect that Wikipedia wouldn't have provided the answers she sought. Through enacting individualism she was agentive in her learning and exhibited the I-for-myself identity. 

In my classroom I'm a believer in the constructivist approach and much of our explorations surround developing what Alexander would call community human relations, yet at which point do students' I-for-myself identities shift* to I-for-others or others-for-me? Before delving into sharing her solution using Wikipedia, was Lisbeth experimenting to see if it would meet the needs of her peers? At which point did she decide to abandon it and become part of the community deconstructing code? The answers to these questions were lost in this lesson, but provide interesting things to watch out for in future exchanges.  

To conclude, I want to return to the students in the class. Their willingness to solve these minor technical issues in whichever ways they thought appropriate - Some students only asked the people sitting next to them and when advised to venture further afield to the other side of the classroom, showed surprise that others may possess different solutions! - and the atmosphere of empowerment in the classroom illustrated something more tacit. Their determination indicated a curiosity in the content. Solving these technical issues allowed them to get back to the interesting tasks at hand illustrating that Earth Science is more than 'boring old rocks!'**

* I've avoided using terms like evolve as there exists the assumption that change is for the better. Our identities don't remain static and identity shifts can have positive and negative effects for us and others around us.

** Not my thoughts although I've heard this in a number of exchanges with teachers and students! 

Tutoring a MOOC? What's that like?

Something interesting happened this week! Upon waking up and peeking my head out of the covers to another cold and rainy Melbourne morning, I did the usual thing: Found my phone, tucked my head beneath the blankets and began trawling through social media and email updates. Being connected means living and working within different times zones. My supervisor is overseas and I have colleagues in America... when Australia sleeps the rest of my network is awake and communicating.

So, on this morning I woke up to an email asking me to tutor a MOOC. If you're a reader of this blog, you'll have heard about Planet Earth... and You! organised by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign through Coursera. I've been writing about my online learning journey which started off as a way to learn about the context in which I'm doing my PhD study. I'm interested in students' use of digital technologies in Earth Science, specifically Geology. Not knowing much about Geology and working full time, there was no way that I could audit a first year course in daylight hours. So I turned to the MOOC.

Just recently I've read Audrey Watters' The Monsters of Education Technology. Watters is critical of MOOCs, and I agree with many of her assertions. In discussing learning on the web, she brings up an interesting point that I'd like to explore here and connect with my recent invitation:

Learning on the Web means the intellectual relationship isn't restricted to student and content. The relationship isn't only among student, content and instructor. The exchange isn't about a student demonstrating to an instructor that content has been "successfully delivered" and processed. Learning on the Web opens that intellectual exchange up in new ways. Authority, expertise, participation, voice - these can be so different on the programmable web; not so with programmed instruction. (p. 104)

What is programmed instruction? Here's a video of B.F. Skinner who coined the phrase. He's explaining his teaching machines.

If we think about MOOCs in terms of programmed instruction, I think that we're denying the learner a sense of agency he or she can assert in the online learning environment. What does it mean to be a learner in the online environment and what identities do we bring to this environment that are distinct from those that might be exposed inside the walls of a classroom? How do our identities change as we engage - or disengage - with the content and the lived experience of the MOOC?

I don't think that presenting a lecture as a video and getting students to watch it on the tram as they travel to and from school will solve their problems. What I'm thinking about is the tacit learning that can happen that may not be primary intention for taking a MOOC. Over the course of 7 months, I've completed 2 and have just started a third. I set out to learn about Geology, but from the posts here and conversations with peers, I've learned more than content.

For the most part, I've reflected on what it means to be a learner in the MOOC environment and the affordances MOOCs offer the teacher as learner. I don't have the time or the space to go into all this here, but I want to go back to the Watters quote above in which online learning can open the exchange in new ways. I've had the experience of being a teacher and university lecturer/tutor what intrigued me about the email was that I had never done these things online. What does it mean to tutor online? How will this be different from my past experiences? And will there be unique affordances in this endeavour?

It was with these questions that I submitted my application to become a tutor in Planet Earth... and You! If all goes well, you can expect more of this journey in this space and if you've gotten this far in the post, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Harnessing Technology to Promote Growth

A couple of months ago, this started happening:

The numbness began in cold weather. At first, only 1 or 2 fingers were affected. Then it began happening more often and, at times, 4 fingers on one hand were as white as a ghost. Naturally, I posted it on Facebook and asked if any of my other 30-something friends had similar experiences.

Within an hour, a paediatric cardiologist in Taiwan had diagnosed it as something called Raynaud's phenomenon. A high school friend from Canada said she has it and offered her doctor's advice. Of course, I turned to Google to find out what I could and quickly forgot about it until the next time it happened.

My mum, also a Facebook friend, didn't forget about it. In her imagination, with the help of ill informed Google searches, the numbness was caused by something malignant... tiny chemical machines hijacking my circulatory system to do something more sinister in other parts of my body.

Slightly disturbed and mostly to get my mum to stop nagging me - Internet: a nagging enabler for mothers half way around the world - I went to the doctor. To make a long story short, I explained what was happening and what I thought it was. He agreed and when I asked him what I could do, he turned to the computer and Googled it. Here was the advice I received and my thoughts left unvoiced:

1. Get a warm pair of gloves. Thank you, Captain Obvious!
2. When you go home, Google Raynaud's phenomenon. Pick the first site from the list, that'll be the Mayo Clinic, and read about it. Actually, I already did that... AND NO, the Mayo Clinic probably won't be the first website that comes up. 

Why am I writing about a personal health issue on my Ed Tech blog? Haven't we all used the Internet to self diagnose or prepare us for a visit to the doctor or dentist? With Google regularly playing a part in our lives and in our students' homework regimes I feel it's important to think about teaching students to harness technology to promote growth.

Dewey (1938) writes about growth in Experience and Education. Growth can take different directions and not only develops us physically but intellectually and morally. Here, I'm going to focus on intellectual development. For Dewey, there are 3 types of experiences: educational, noneducational and miseducational. Eisner (2002, p.37) summarises these:

• Educational experiences increase ability to secure meaning and to act in ways that are instrumental to the achievement of inherently worthwhile ends

• Noneducational experiences are simply undergone and have no significant effect on the individual one way or another

• Miseducational experiences thwart or hamper our ability to have further experiences or to cope intelligently with problems                                                                  

If every experience influences in some degree the objective conditions under which further experiences are had' (Dewey, 1938, p. 37), I wonder what this means for the experiences students' have when using search engines to find information related to their school work, curiosities or problems.

Take, for example, the situation described above. Using Facebook to reach my network of professional friends I had an educational experience. My more knowledgable friends helped me understand what might be going on. My life experience working in a chemistry lab and being acquainted with the Mayo Clinic added to the educational experience while I was sifting through the sites Google brought to my attention. This history allowed me to navigate the web as someone who could be agentive in discussing my health concerns and developing a strategy to address the condition with the doctor. Had he been more adept at his job and I more vocal a more successful outcome would've resulted. Needless to say, I'm getting a second opinion.

That's my story and it was shaped by my 30-plus years and unique experiences. What if a high school student had a similar query? Sure, high school students aren't new to using search engines, but what kind of experiences do search engines lend them when they're told just Google it? When students aren't taught how to effectively use search engines or how the algorithms work to filter information that may or may not be personally relevant, the experiences they have can range from educational to miseducational. 

What if that young person didn't have the ability to navigate the networked public of the Internet like an informed, technologically savvy adult? What if that young person didn't have the support network of a concerned parent or guardian to follow up? The experiences young people have in schooling should be those that set them up for future educational experiences so they can make informed decisions. Watters (2014) says '... more often than not, we still lasso technology for the more traditional purposes and practices of education: for content delivery' (p. 99). With this in mind it is time for a reconceptualisation of the content that we're 'delivering.'

Vygotsky and MOOCs

Last week I was chatting with a colleague, Edwin, who was finishing an intense MOOC in Bioscience. Edwin is trained in IT and a veteran MOOC student who enrols in a variety of courses out of interest. We often have conversations surrounding students' use of ICT, including our own experiences. The conversations from last week became the inspiration for this post.

Over the 8-9 weeks Edwin was enrolled in Boiscience we discussed a number of questions about people's motivations to take MOOCs. Boiscience seemed like a university subject with journal articles to read, practical work to be completed, exams and formal reports to be written. 'Is this course part of a degree?' I asked. It seemed more full on than the MOOCs I had already taken.

Edwin is always an active participant. He trawls the discussion forums and tries to add to his classmates' experiences. When submitting a draft of an experimental report for feedback the tutor penalised him for not citing secondary sources properly. While perusing the discussion forum another classmate asked what citing in proper format entailed. Edwin reached out and tried to direct the sixty-something grandmother, Alice, to the citation guide provided. On the last day to submit, late at night Alice was still seeking help in this area. With a subject as intense as this, where was the tutor? Out of thousands of people taking the course, why didn't anyone else help out? What is the significance of Alice reaching out?

Vygotsky's Mind in Society (1978) begins with 3 questions the work attempts to analyse. In this post I'd like to unpack his 3rd question and apply my understanding of Vygotsky* to Alice's situation:

     What is the nature of the relationship between the use of tools and the development of speech?

Here, the use of tools refers to Alice's use of the MOOC platform. In this context speech is not verbal but written. I am concerned with the social interactions between Alice and Edwin and practical activity. Vygotsky says that the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development is when speech and practical activity converge (p. 24). Furthermore 'speech not only accompanies practical activity but also plays a specific role in carrying it out' (p. 25). In this sense, speech is agentive in that it enables the participant to act and to do so with varying levels of autonomy.

In this first chapter, Vygotsky writes about children, but I'm not suggesting that Alice and Edwin's interaction is childlike. Perhaps a better word to describe Alice might be 'novice' - she is new to MOOCs and is learning how to be in them. Edwin is the 'expert.' Vygotsky describes speech/act patterns:

• initially speech, used to address an adult [expert], follows actions; and
• at a later stage the child [novice] uses speech to plan for action (p. 28)

Relating to the former, Alice has probably tried to understand what proper citations look like. She has accessed and read the tutor's report. Perhaps, she has looked at other discussion forums to see if there were any threads related to her issue. Yet, at this stage she seeks the help of an expert.

On the surface, the purpose of Edwin's conversation with Alice seems obvious, to help her find the structure for correct citations. But at a deeper level, Edwin was acting to scaffold Alice's future use of the MOOC platform, one in which real time social speech is absent. 'Last time, I had to .... so that I could ...' is the kind of egocentric speech that any instructor seeking to develop students' application skills would hope to inspire.

What does this mean for MOOCs and the students who use them? In my work, social constructivist in its approach, I'm constantly playing a tug of war asking myself which is more important: students learning the tech or students learning the subject? Not all tech is created equally and sometimes learning the tech will provide students with the skills to assert their own agency to learn the subject material.

In our last conversation, Edwin shared Alice's final plea. Ten minutes before the assignment was due, 11:50pm, Alice confessed that she still hadn't found how to correctly cite her sources and may as well just hand in her assignment. If we didn't know anything about Alice, it would be easy to chide her for not finding the citation guide on the platform or 'just Googling it.' What's sad about this case is that for someone trying to be a part of a wider community of learners that community failed to address to her needs: communication in the form of non-verbal speech to direct her to successfully cite her sources and scaffold her for future successful learning experiences.

It would also be easy to label Alice as an older person who just doesn't get the technology, but research shows that younger people who've grown up in the digital age also need to be scaffolded to use technology in formal educational environments. When I was in Boston I learned about a school that gave extra credit to students who successfully completed MOOCs. I wonder how these students have faired in these communities.

With the pressure of MOOC platforms to produce profit, one has to wonder that if some students are isolated in introductory courses, how to they expect enrolments in fee paying students to rise?


*It should be noted that I'm a novice Vygotskian 'scholar' and any feedback would be much appreciated if you happen upon this post.