Category Archives: Emotions

Rumpus research

Research question: ‘In what ways is the Covid-19 pandemic changing understandings of the relationships between learning and fun?’

A limited case study of a research group in a UK university. We expect our findings to have implications beyond that group.

Data collection using epistolary interviews (via email – one question per email, enabling thoughtful responses that can build over time) with everyone in the research group who wants to take part. Participation is voluntary and participants can drop out at any time.

Questions for epistolary interviews:

  • What have been your main experiences of learning and teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic?
  • What have been your main experiences of fun during the Covid-19 pandemic?
  • How has learning and teaching changed (if at all) during the Covid-19 pandemic? In your answer, please take into account your own perspective and the wider perspective.
  • How have you experienced fun changing (if at all) during the Covid-19 pandemic? In your answer, please take into account your own perspective and the wider perspective.
  • How has your understanding of the relationship between fun and learning/teaching changed (if at all) during the Covid-19 pandemic?
  • In what ways (if any) do you think the relationship between learning and fun will change after the Covid-19 pandemic?

Method:

According to Yin (who I like following for case study research because he has a clear structure to work to) there are five important components of case study design.

  1. Five components of a case-study research design are particularly important
  2. Its questions (see above)
  3. Its propositions, if any (Prop 1- there is a relationship between learning and fun. Prop 2 – this relationship will be highlighted during the pandemic Prop 3- this relationship may be changed by the pandemic and some of these changes can be foreseen)
  4. Its unit(s) of analysis (individual members of the research group)
  5. The logic linking the data to the propositions (data are collected from people who have reflected on the relationship between learning and fun and who have thought deeply by what is meant by fun and by learning. Also we engage in fun and learning. Also we are influenced by the pandemic)
  6. The criteria for interpreting the findings (thematic analysis to support explanation building, themes drawn from the data but also compared with existing frameworks of fun that were covered in our frameworks of fun paper. Interpretations are originally drawn together by one or two of us but are checked against the understandings of all participants. This is a reflexive case study and this phase of comparing understandings will enrich the analysis)

 

Catwalk technologies

Notes on ‘You heard it here first’ seminar at the OU from Anne Adams.

When considering research about innovation, is it catwalk or ready-to-wear? Is it ready to use off the shelf, an innovation that people can take up and use, or is it a catwalk approach, testing and showcasing what is possible without suggesting that this will be taken up as it is? A catwalk approach may bring together elements from many different approaches and disciplines. Participants need to know which you are aiming for, so they don’t expect something they can take away and use if the project is about experimentation and high-tech solutions.

A ‘boundary creature inhabits more than one world’. They may move between practice domains and can be seen as a deviant from the norm, a form of monster (Donna Haraway, 1991).

Wenger’s view is that distance learning locates learning closer to the learner because it goes to people in their space rather than expecting learners to shift into the academic space.

Technology can act as a boundary object, crossing knowledge domains and structures. It can support communication and collaboration by acting as a shared interface. However, it can form a barrier if it is too associated with jargon or with specific practices.

Researchers bring:

spatial acuity – sensitivity to spatial issues in the environment such as weather and use in space and spatial triggers

temporal acuity – perception and reality of time in relation to the environment including time taken to learn systems, flow of time in the lab

socio-political astuteness – perceptions and interactions of a variety of stakeholders, around inhibitions, safety, expectations and ideologies

Intelligent games

Picking up the theme of gaming, Marian Petre found teenagers using readily available Internet resources to engage in playful navigation and reuse of the information space. Examples:

  • Pseudo-Friend – create a person in Facebook and see how many friends they can attract
  • Brimstone Rhetoric – justify any position of argument using biblical quotes
  • Degrees of Separation – How many links it takes to get from one concept or another
  • Way Finding – Navigate to a designated destination using only the most-zoomed view on Google Maps
  • Tower of Babel – Use online translators in order to hold conversations in a language you don’t know.

Such games are creative inventive or imaginative. They require, or help develop critical thinking, problem solving or some computational nous. They tend to be mischievous, mildly rebellious or satirical.

Can we bring mischief to the aid of education? Part of intelligent play is that it crossed boundaries and breaks a few rules. Is there a way to bring this into education and still make it compelling?

Petre, M. (2011) Intelligent games. ACM Inroads, (ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education), 2 (2).  ISSN 2153-2184.

Gaming and learning

Games are important when building communities. They help to develop trust and an understanding of each other’s skills and personalities.

In terms of language, wordplay helps us to establish register – to work out what we mean and double mean when we use language. Can we create online community without the use of word games?

Note to self – this begins to pull together work on humour within Schome Park and the work on cohesive ties and register in the same setting. Humour is a way of testing out meanings, and of establishing shared reference points.

Boxes of learning delight and cabinets of curiosities

Matthew McFall of Nottingham University spoke at ALT-C 2009 about learning with wonder for wonderful learning.

His key words for ways into wonder included mirrors, puzzles, magic, clews (the thread Perseus used to help him through the Minotaur’s labyrinth), interest, mercury and enchantment.

His boxes of delight are used to collect conceptions of wonder, to collect wondrous things, to share wonder with others, to support a quest for wonder and to help to build a wonder wall.

cabinet-of-curiosities.png

Comfort zone

When I was studying English, or history, I could curl up in bed with a textbook and feel relaxed and cheerful. It’s never been like that in IET. Apart from the odd easy read – like Howard Rheingold on virtual communities – it all feels like work. Interesting, but work.

I’ve just read Walter Ong’s 1982 book ‘Orality and literacy’ and reclaimed that lost sense of comfort. Yes, there are pages of references and the text swings across 4000 years and several continents. But they’re references I’m happy with. Been there, done that, struggled with that, understood that. I know why Jaynes felt that there was a significant gap between the writing of the Iliad and the Odyssey, how Robinson Crusoe relates to Tom Jones, why Anansi is important, why Ong is wrong in his references to Hebrew and why Sterne’s use of typography was significant.
I think this is why I struggle so much more with the psychological literature. I feel adrift with so few points of reference. Even my points of reference I only know sketchily. No matter how diligently I read the literature of pedagogy and education, my grasp of it never feels more than superficial when compared with my grasp of English literature.

My pilot – yet again

I’ve done three or four really serious versions of my pilot for my supervisors over the last 18 months, and it’s STILL not right 🙁

I know when I’ve rewritten it another couple of times there’ll be a time when it’ll be fab and I’ll be really pleased with it and it will make utter and complete sense in terms of my PhD – but I wish that time was NOW :-/

Feeling very angry

I just logged in to FirstClass to see what was going on and in the vague hope that I would have received a message from my unhelpful gatekeeper. No such luck. However, logging on reminded me that while the gatekeeper claimed to have had no time in the past three months to OK a couple of letters I had written, they had found time to exclude me from a whole series of relevant FirstClass conferences.

It’s bad enough to have a gatekeeper who is wasting hours of my time, disrupting my research and stressing me out. That’s their prerogative. They’re not paid to help me. But being deliberately obstructive? hat sort of educator does that? My opinion of this gatekeeper has fallen very, very low.