A Digital Learning Architecture of Participation
Our book is an attempt to rethink the future of education in the digital 21st century, based on a wide range of projects we have been involved in, with many other contributors working across several sectors of education and published in a number of peer-reviewed publications. Significantly for this post I want to highlight those aspects of our future-facing work that have emerged specifically from earlier innovative practice in UK Further Education.
The Open Context Model of Learning (2006); Our book opens with a discussion of our founding piece of work into digital learning which was developed collaboratively with 10 co-authors who had experience of digital projects and research across all sectors of the UK educational system. The Open Context Model of Learning was developed to be the “pedagogy” for an emerging learning practice where the learner used digital tools to access learning resources and designed their personal learning networks accessing social media using personal technologies as they co-created and determined their own learning goals (heutagogy). We (all) saw digital learning as representing a shift from a didactic, pedagogic subject-based education system, as it had been for 1000 years, to a collaborative, dynamic, open-ended process of inquiry, which will require a new digital learning infrastructure.
EMFFE (2007); This was the first project Nigel Ecclesfield and I worked on together and it was a national one designed to identify how to make Further Education institutions, colleges, more e-learning ready by creating an EMFFE (E-Maturity Framework for Further Education). Using the language of the book what we were concerned with was to examine how to design 21st century educational institutions in which digital learning would become the driver of educational outcomes. In partnership with 15 further education colleges from across England, representing the range of the sector, its educational practice and demographics, we created a sector-wide “e-maturity framework” and then gave each college some funding to do further developmental work across our 5 key areas; leadership, resources, technology, estates and human resources.
Architecture of Participation (2008) With our development work on the prototype of EMFFE completed (then handed to the Department of Education who passed it on to PWC for development into the Generator project) Nigel and I then wrote a paper for BJET in which we reflected on what we had learnt from the project and called it “Towards an organisational Architecture of Participation“. This was based on the O’Reilly term used in “What is Web 2.0?” (the participatory web) and was our first outline of how a digital learning infrastructure could be developed. We have continued to examine this question on the Architecture of Participation blog we describe an organisational Architecture of Participation as being “adaptive institutions working across collaborative networks” another way of describing 21st century digital institutions but also capturing how the EMFFE would work as sector-wide collaborative practice.
Digital Practitioner (2011); This is perhaps the most significant part of the book in terms of addressing how the process of digital transformation of traditional educational institutions might best be achieved. This was an open research project with original questions set by Geoff Rebbeck and a novel research process designed by Nigel where we interviewed 3 sets of FE lecturers on how they were using (any) technologies with their students. As we subtitled the research work it is about what happens when “digital natives grow up”, go to work and use the personal technologies that they grew up with in their professional work. Arguably it is about a digital “craft practice” where teachers develop their teaching expertise with technologies they are already comfortable with to create “artfully-crafted, student-centred, learning experiences”
Curiosity and Critical Thinking (reflection); What was most interesting about the Digital Practitioner research for Nigel and I, who had come from working on large-scale national projects built at the institutional level, was that the emerging practice of the digital practitioner came from the everyday practice of young entry-level professionals (1000 were interviewed) and this happened spontaneously and not from a top-down training programme. Teachers displayed professional curiosity and explored how new technologies could enhance their teaching practice. As humans we have always learnt from our curiosity and this applies equally to using new technology too as we found in the digital practitioner research..
FE Digital Transformation Projects (3) Following on from the EMFFE educational institutional modelling work a number of colleges developed unique innovative practice which we have built upon and used within the book. Each of these represent a dimension by which FE colleges, and other educational institutions in the 21st century, can promote, support and develop digital learning.
1 Eccles College – digital Quality Assurance. Eccles developed the webactions project where the recording of learning, its quality assurance and inspection preparation were made a part of the everyday MIS record keeping of all lecturers. It was a “real-time” educational MIS system with feedback loops to staff and executive summaries that the Principal could respond to on a daily basis.
2 Havering College – open access digital e-campus; Havering created a digital backbone for everyone, students, lecturers and management whether using dedicated terminals in classrooms, open-access terminals in public areas like canteens, or using their own devices (tablets and smart-phones) all authenticated to the same standard to access a learning intranet and the internet; exemplary digital learning infrastructure. So accessible that the Principal gave up his office so it could be turned into another classroom and became a roaming manager.
3 Thanet College – craft professional digital practice; using a central drop-in, digital learning hub all staff were both trained in digital tools and also supported to develop their own digital teaching practice and create new, shared learning resources, mostly hosted on Moodle.
FE Digital Transformation practice; What we saw, both in contributors to the EMFFE work, and also in many colleges demonstrating innovative practice in the AoC Beacon awards (2006, 2007) was a unique dimension of collaboration at the strategic executive level; it could be called digital leadership. Nearly always we found collaboration between a smart, strategic senior executive and a “technology steward” nerd who could create bespoke solutions to a specific college problem. Webactions at Eccles College, where the Vice-Principal was also an ALI/OFSTED inspector exemplified this; it was also sold as a technology solution to a number of other colleges.
Learning Objects with formative assessments. The FE National Learning Network, which built on the earlier FERL (FE Resources for Learning) model of localised vocational training resources, was building a national repository of FE learning resources. This platform has been maintained and developed by Xtensis as xtlearn.net. So these resources are still available for vocational digital learning and can be further modified by lecturers as new learning sequences. I call it “Pinterest with Pedagogy”
Summary; FE projects have shown how we can use pervasive new technologies creatively and effectively for learning and, perhaps more importantly, how we can build sector-wide “digital learning infrastructures” for both the Further Education sector and education as a whole.
Fred Garnett March 2021
This is part of our work commenting on the 2021 UK White Paper concerning FE. We are aggregating all those comments on the AoP blog page called #FE21 and we will be using the identifier #FE21 to discuss this on Twitter along with #FEWhitepaper.
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