Networked Learnings Conference 2018

As blended learning and digitisation increasingly characterise emergent forms of teaching and learning provision in higher education, the sector is also being shaped by changing relationships, unbundling in multiple forms and marketization. This talk will describe the confluence of these trends, consider whose interests are being served as rebundled forms come into being and focus on the implications for addressing access and equity in an age of inequality.

In response to networked learning community members’ calls for theorizing the underpinning causes of “othering,” this paper examines the concepts of transculturalism, boundary crossing, and third spaces to provide insights into cultural issues that can occur within networked learning environments. Suggestions are made for working from a transcultural perspective, working within and across boundaries, and teaching and learning in Third Space. We begin by examining challenges posed by increasing cultural diversities among learners in universities and then focus on how these challenges play out for both learners and tutors. In particular, we focus on issues that impact international learners who remain in their home contexts, but engage in university learning via networked learning opportunities. In the introduction, we discuss the complexities learners face when they are simultaneously “land-locked” within their own cultural and educational settings and being acculturated into new learning opportunities in a foreign university. We then draw upon transcultural scholarship to examine instances of encountering vulnerability and instability and possibilities for shifting conversations within teaching and learning contexts first to celebrating difference and then to negotiating potential academic consequences of acknowledgements of differences. We move on to discuss tensions that arise from boundary crossings that evoke discontinuities. In particular, we examine points of exclusion and inclusion where decisions are made about whose voice is heard and whose knowledge is deemed valid and relevant. Within our discussion of the complexities and tensions of boundary crossings, we draw upon the concepts of identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation. At this point, we introduce Third Space theory as a meeting point for recognizing tensions, but also problematize provision of a restrictive definition of a Third Space with a view to maintaining an open approach to theorizing spatiality that retains sufficient flexibility to propose practices that can lead to overcoming otherness. Within this context, we examine dialogical collaborative spaces where individuals share values, meanings and priorities, but also acknowledge Third Spaces as spaces as potential sites for encountering antagonism, conflict and incommensurability: tension-filled messy sites of seemingly insurmountable cultural difference and competing powers. We conclude with implications for theorizing otherness in networked learning practices.

In keeping with its theme, this paper has a light touch and a serious point. It arose from a concern that networked learning may not be recognisable enough to be parodied. Parody is a pervasive and ubiquitous cultural practice that entails imitation and laughter – features which could perhaps contribute to making networked learning knowable to a wider community. Despite parody’s potential for serious damage, its broadest use supports the recognition, consolidation, development and renewal of a genre or movement. Drawing on Bakhtinian notions of the dialogic and carnival, as well as the light thrown on contemporary discourse through Bakhtin’s literary insights, the paper explores the extent to which networked learning artefacts and practices engage in parody and have been parodied. A thought experiment to parody a networked learning conference paper led to the current paper’s structure. This attempt to parody highlights the difficulties of departing from conventional academic genres even in a field of study that challenges those genres. The study identifies how themes of genre, intertextuality and multimodality combine in papers and events about networked learning to produce texts and practices that are open to renewal, hacking and augmentation, but without the need for the laughter that comes with parody that might have the same results. In papers and book chapters, although there are lively forms of writing, heavy use of citation is the main source of intertextuality. Evidence of parody was found in a symposium, including (self) parody of networked learning conference practices, suggesting that we are more likely to find parody during synchronous events than in peer reviewed academic texts. An almost accidental result of the parodied structure of the paper suggests that networked learning could be developing in a way that parallels Bakhtin’s understanding of the novel, yet without the cultural work that parody has contributed to the novel. This line of reasoning brings into sharper focus one of the key features of this author’s own initial parody of networked learning: its emphasis on boundaries and boundary crossing. It seems that networked learning, like the novel, cannot be parodied as a ‘complete’ form: like the novel it is constantly changing to reflect its contemporary world.

Building on a continued interest in boundaries and boundary practice in relation to ICT-based networked learning (Ryberg & Sinclair, 2016), this paper addresses the issue of knowledgeability and identification through (dis)embodiment in design for boundary practice in networked learning. According to Goodyear (2015) teaching is about designing opportunities for people to learn, and from a learning perspective, how participants respond to design through their practices and through their use of boundary objects is interesting. Inspired by Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner’s (2015) concepts of knowledgeability and modes of identification, we analyse how two different case studies conducted at the Danish online Master programme on ICT and Learning (MIL) differ with regard to potential boundary practice and use of boundary objects.
In study I, the design for learning was based on a 2D virtual learning environment (Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2006), whereas the design for learning in study II was based on a 3D virtual world (Riis, 2016). Carlile (2002; 2004) proposed a hierarchical typology for boundary objects aiming at transfer, translation and transformation, and in our analysis, we identify examples of such boundary objects in the two learning arenas. Our findings show that all identified categories of boundary objects can mediate knowledge according to the typology. Nonetheless, certain boundary objects in the 3D learning arena (study II), in particular the avatar, seem to promote a different kind of embodied transformation, which has implications for identity formation of the participants. Furthermore, the 3D virtual space affords a concrete materialised, albeit virtual, opportunity for reification, which is different to that of the 2D environment.
In the paper, we will elaborate on these differences, and based on the two case studies we propose that boundaries in networked learning should not only be regarded as socio-cultural differences, but as socio-material differences and dependencies as well. In particular, the materiality of a 3D virtual arena and avatars provides new relational and performative opportunities in networked learning.

Abstract
This paper revisits the 21st-century learning skills (21CLS) and discusses the need to leave 'gaps' in the curriculum while pursuing chosen topics more in-depth. The paper suggests ways to choose both 'gaps' and in-depth topics; furthermore, the paper investigates relevant technologies for bridging the gaps and for going deep. The paper discusses the connection between 'Das Exemplarische Prinzip' (exemplary teaching) and what may be interpreted to be the initial thoughts behind the formulation of the 21CLS presented in the document 'A Nation at Risk'. The two concepts are separated by three decades (1951 'Tübinger resolution -1981 'A Nation at Risk'). However, they share the same conviction that not every bit of knowledge available can be taught/learned and, furthermore, that some knowledge is more important than other. We wish to revisit this notion because we believe that the advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the automation of increasingly complex processes in our everyday lives will influence education. This indicates that we may need to adjust the topic- and activity-selection principles that teachers and curriculum developers deploy to select what to teach and what to outsource to networked learning and digital learning materials. The discourse of the 21CLS seems to have materialised into a specific practice in Denmark, a practice that embraces programming exercises (Dot/Dash, LEGO Mindstorms, Scratch, Python etc.), tinkering with electronics, playing computer games, 3D printing and Laser cutting in workshops called 'Maker spaces'. The 21CLS, in a Danish context, are distilled into; Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication (the 4Cs). In our research and in the development projects in schools we have taken part in, we have the positive experience that the way the 21CLS are practiced in a Danish context gave some pupils a sense of pride in their products and that some pupils acted more as designers of solutions for real problems than as pupils doing school work. On a more negative note, the 21CLS activities may come across as isolated events with little connection to curriculum or exams. Finally, we raise the discussion of how Teacher Education can develop a practice that incorporates the convictions of the 21CLS in other ways. We suggest a focus on technology that supports dialogue and reflection and bridges both knowledge 'gaps' and time and space 'gaps'. Furthermore, we suggest learning designs that revisit 21CLS as a framework for learning to learn.

This contribution reports on findings from a study on firefighters’ grades obtained in technology-supported training courses in Catalonia. The role of firefighters has changed dramatically over the past few years and will continue to do so as modernization progresses. This will have implications for everything associated with the service and in particular in relation to the type and delivery of basic training. The wider role of rescue work and the demands of community fire prevention require skills that need to be taught in a different manner. A review of current research concerning distance learning (Holmgren, 2015) and the use of digital technologies shows that there are few studies on firefighter training. This paper aims to describe and analyse the relationships between the firefighters’ age, the intention to use technology to learn and the grades obtained obtained in online training courses. To explain the influence of digital literacy on individuals’ intention to pursue online learning, we integrate the concept of digital literacy with the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (measured using the TAM2 questionnaire). Technology-supported distance learning is an increasingly common mode in practical professional training courses. In line with this development, campus-based firefighter training in Catalonia is implemented using a distance mode and blended courses. Data has been analysed from two courses carried out in a Moodle environment, one of which was delivered in a blended learning mode for aspiring firefighters and another was presented in e-learning mode for active firefighters with different levels of experience. The total number of participants was 247. The results obtained when analysing the variables of age, grade obtained and TAM2 scores show that there is no significant relationship between them. However, we have found a relationship in the case of the intention to use technology for learning and the grade obtained in the course. The results suggest that the acceptance and, therefore, the use of technology does not depend on the student’s age. We have found a positive relationship in the case of students on the Basic Training Course for Firefighters in the Intention to Use (IU), Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Voluntariness (V) scales referring to the grades they obtained.

This paper considers cognitive load theory (CLT) in the context of networked learning (NL).  It aligns with NL practitioners' efforts to understand and eliminate barriers to learning in NL situations.  The ideas presented are based on the premise that by recognising and either minimising or eliminating instances of unnecessary cognitive load in NL situations educators can improve learners’ abilities to acquire and develop schema and, in doing so, educators can support learning in NL situations.  The presentation brings together current thinking in cognitive load theory and descriptions of key aspects of NL to identify and describe of potential instances of cognitive load experienced by networked learners.
The paper is structured in three main sections: The first section provides the background to our exploration of CLT in the context of NL.  It includes an overview of CLT and its development; an overview of NL; and a definition of the problem this paper seeks to address, namely, that NL situations include a number of instances of cognitive load which may not be present in other (e.g., face-to-face; on-campus) learning situations.  The second section explores common features of NL and identifies potential sources of cognitive load in NL situations.  It is organised according to key features of the 'architecture' of NL:  the learning environment; learning tasks and learner activity.  By identifying potential instances of cognitive load, the presentation provides a basis for, firstly, understanding cognitive load in NL; and, secondly, addressing it. Key sources of cognitive load referenced in this paper include the presentation of information in NL situations; the use of mediating technologies; the demands of managing information in connected environments; the load associated with technology-mediated social activity, including computer-mediated communication; the presentation of learning tasks; and the demands of 'learning to learn' in NL situations.  The third section of the paper identifies a potential research agenda to guide further explorations of CLT in NL including: research into technical aspects of NL to improve the presentation of information and computer interfaces; research into the use of instructional design techniques sympathetic to CLT and specifically targeting NL and engagement tasks; research to understand learning to learn online in NL from a CLT perspective.

Traditional assessment in higher education often measures performance in controlled conditions, isolating students from the people and many of the resources they have interacted with in the process of learning. While a desire to maximise reliability and standardise the measurement of ability is understandable, there is a danger that such practices privilege internal, individual and abstract forms of knowledge at the expense of contextualised, collective and adaptive practices. Most university graduates will need to be effective networked learners, using social and material resources to adapt to changing and complex workplace settings and, increasingly, digital networks. If we accept that assessment is an important driver of learning, then it follows that assessments in which students are able to make use of available resources and networks, may afford a more appropriate preparation for future employment, particularly in light of an increasing need to adapt to technological change.
In this paper, we draw on ideas from distributed cognition, in which processes of thinking are shared across people, tools and objects, to question traditional assessment practices. To ground our discussion, we present findings from a thematic analysis of blog posts of MSc Clinical Education students (made up of clinical educators from a variety of nationalities and disciplines) about the process of learning a novel motor skill. While these students tended to consider mastery of the skill to involve the ability to perform it without the help of people or supporting resources (instructions, images, video demonstrations, etc.), our analysis shows that there was often no clear boundary between supported and unsupported performance and that a requirement to reduce dependency on supportive networks and materials could be a barrier to development. Further, the acknowledgement by many students that learning and performance are contextual leads us to the conclusion that, while reducing reliance on resources may help to stabilise some forms of knowledge, it may also reduce opportunities to develop effective practices and the adaptive capacity to integrate into complex social and technological environments. In conclusion, we call for the development of assessments in which students are not only allowed but encouraged to make effective use of networks, technologies, environments and artefacts in ways that test both understanding and the ability to operate as components of distributed systems.

Programming is a subject that many students find difficult and it may be particularly challenging for distance learning students working largely on their own. Many ideas have been put forward in the literature to explain why students struggle with programming, including: the relative unfamiliarity of computer programming or ‘radical novelty’ (Dijkstra, 1989), cognitive load (Shaffer, 2004) and that the whole learning environment may be influential (Scott & Ghinea, 2013).
This paper reports on the first phase of a project, ‘Visualising the code’, which is investigating the impact of using a visual programming language on student engagement with programming. We used as our case-study, TU100 ‘My digital life’ which is a level 1 undergraduate Computer Science module in the Open University (UK). The rationale for this work stems from the necessity of developing an introductory undergraduate module that will engage students of widely differing prior levels of experience in terms of programming and of education generally. In TU100, the module team introduced a visual programming environment, based on Scratch (MIT, 2007), called ‘Sense’ which is used in conjunction with an electronic device, the SenseBoard.
We analysed the grades of 6,159 students in the final assessment across six presentations of the module to identify student performance in the programming task, as distinct from their overall performance on the module. The aim was to explore whether there was any difference between student engagement with the programming task in comparison with non-programming tasks. Early results suggest that there is no significant difference in levels of engagement between these tasks, and it appears that success, or otherwise, in one type of task is a good predictor of engagement with the other task.
There are implications for networked learning of this work, given that the learning environment encompasses: the student’s own home or other space, both printed books and digital learning materials, a programming environment linked to a physical device (i.e. the SenseBoard) and communications networks that link students to their peers and to their tutors. The learning environment also includes support through face-to-face and online tutorials and other online resources, such as forums.
In the next phase of the project we will analyse the textual comments made by TU100 students in the end of module survey to evaluate their views on the visual programming environment.

This paper explains and reflects on two methods used as part of a doctoral research project to investigate mobile phone use by healthcare students for academic work._x000D_ Theoretical moves were made to retain some of the complexities of researching technology use, drawing upon ideas from ethnography, phenomenology, actor network theory (ANT) and the networked learning literature. Informants and their devices were conceived of as a 'mobilage'; a blend word that incorporates 'mobile assemblage' from ANT with theories of informal learning, ie. bricolage. A focus on the mobile phone helped to circumscribe mobilage but it was important to avoid excluding other information technologies in use._x000D_ The two methods featured in this paper are 'encounters', a particular framing of one-to-one interviews, and an online focus group (OFG) which drew upon the 'Day Experience' cultural probe method, seeking to prompt informants to giving 'in the moment' detail of their mobilage._x000D_ Encounters were primed with a learn-place list/map drawing activity which, in some cases, dominated the early time spent with informants. In spite of this threat to gaining useful data about mobilage, it became apparent that the list/map drawing itself made the encounter a site of epistemic performance closely related to the practice of academic work. This realisation occurred whilst listening to the audio recording rather than attending to verbatim transcription._x000D_ The online focus group ran for three months. Seven informants were invited to react to triggers sent by the researcher but they were also free to post their own messages, including hyperlinks, and other media. Response traffic varied over time but at its nadir was sustained by a couple of informants. Informants who contributed to both the encounters and the online focus group helped provide a more rounded picture of mobilage as manifest for them. Although the OFG was never intended as an 'online ethnography', scholars from that field confirm the usefulness of meeting informants in person. OFG data was carefully transferred from the Yammer platform to the ATLAS.ti analysis tool so as to anonymise contributions but retain the 'look and feel' of Yammer._x000D_ It is hoped to take the corpus forward into representation through a series of vignettes which, as part of analysis, are being developed as phenomenological texts.

The capacity of individuals or systems to generate or learn how to generate a metastability, a state of navigating the largely unmanageable aspects of complexity, “cannot be reduced either to the actions of individual actors or to persisting social structures” (Urry, 2016: 59). Complexity largely resists proportionality or linearity; small changes can generate large structural consequences, and individuals will, intellectually or dispositionally, exert considerable resources towards navigating this metastability._x000D_ This paper explores complexity through Amira, an imagined composite of characteristics gleaned from the author’s research. Amira is a Nepalese woman studying in a postgraduate programme in Europe. The habitus of Bourdieu is repurposed as disposition; a tendency of an individual to act, react, or think in a particular way based on the social systems through which they move. Disposition is advanced in as a necessary addition to the theorizing of mobilities and mobile learning respectively, one that countenances Amira’s navigational practices and learning. It is a fluid process of engagement across multiple contexts, some being materially, deliberately, and dispositionally mobile. Ultimately, it is one that Amira must negotiate to maintain the mobility on which she depends._x000D_ Mobile technology is positioned as a critical factor in managing Amira’s mobility across her communities. Mobile learning, as an attendant learning position designed to bolster Amira’s capacity for managing her mobility, needs to account for the wider range of this activity: across multiple interactional contexts, amongst people and interactive technologies, encapsulating public and private processes; activity that moves between individual Amira’s) and structural (those “immanent to the material conditions of global interdependence”) systems. _x000D_ Mobile learning, if it to be of use to Amira, needs to account for the wider range of this activity: across multiple interactional contexts, amongst people and interactive technologies, encapsulating public and private processes; activity that moves between micro (Amira’s) and macro (those “immanent to the material conditions of global interdependence”) systems. Mobile learning needs to be accounting for Amira’s capacity for material capacity, intellectual capacity, and, as this paper is attempting to suggest, a dispositional capacity. Disposition is advanced in this paper as a means of expanding her capacity to navigate the complexity of her own mobility, and as a means of expanding research practice towards identifying such complexity.

Students studying at a distance are situated at a location remote from the campus, connecting to the institution via learning networks such as virtual learning environments, and communicating through a range of synchronous and asynchronous tools. While students may perceive a link between their physical learning environment and the institutional campus, their physical location may not be explicitly acknowledged or included in the learning activities of distance programmes beyond opportunities to participate in summer schools._x000D_ As place is defined as a location which has meaning for an individual, I propose that further research is required to explore the role that these meaningful locations can play in the learning experience of students studying at a distance from the institution. I question whether it is possible to develop a form of emotional connection to place at a distance, through artefacts and stories shared digitally by someone who feels closely connected, or related, to a place. I consider what the benefits may be of developing a more place-aware approach to teaching and learning in this context._x000D_ This paper outlines the early stages of a PhD research project investigating the importance of place for distance learners studying online. I will briefly describe methods previously used in outdoor education which may provide a way of capturing a sense of place at a distance. These methods include storytelling and walking interviews, with both options making use of mobile technologies. The use of these methods may also foster a stronger connection between students, the locality where they are based while studying, and the institution. Through this process, it may help to reduce the sense of social distance which can affect students studying at distance._x000D_ Incorporating activities traditionally used in conservation and outdoor education may demonstrate how education for sustainable development principles and practices can be integrated into distance education. If successful, this may help to address the missing element of teaching "in" the environment, providing a route to facilitate experiential place-based learning for distance students. This may also encourage a sense of care for the environment, as part of an affective approach to learning._x000D_

What does it mean to learn in a network? What does it mean to be a particular kind of learner? To develop and work towards a particular kind of being? Does every instantiation of a network lead to a different form of being? If networks are, as Jones (2016: 486) says “interactive processes that co-constructively shape persons”, then how contingent are these? How much does the social and material elements of the network contribute to the learner’s understanding of their own personhood?_x000D_ This paper is an exploration of Ian Hacking’s work on ‘making up people’ (e.g. Hacking 1986, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2006a, 2006b). Hacking posits that the possibilities for people are bounded, determined by what is imaginable and articulable, what is named and described. This naming of people, or classification, is part of an iterative, dynamic process in which the names and the named emerge simultaneously and in interaction with each other, changing the “space of possibilities for personhood”. In this paper, I link that concept to notions of ‘becoming’ in networked learning and suggest Hacking provides a useful frame to think about how learners come to know about and enact particular ways of being._x000D_ I start by briefly summarising Hacking’s key concepts of kinds, dynamic nominalism and the looping effect, and outline Hacking’s framework. I argue that Hacking is offering a useful onto-epistemology for thinking about 'becoming' as part of a sociocultural network of humans, institutions and social processes. I then briefly describe posthumanism and explore how a posthuman and sociomaterial approach can help round out the important missing element in Hacking’s theory – the materials and technologies that are crucial in understanding any learning assemblage. In bringing together these approaches, seemingly inoperable binaries collapse and ‘becoming’ becomes a matter of constant process and persistent re-workings. This offers productive ways to think about learning as an emergent entanglement of social, the material and the technological processes that are constantly re-working and re-creating what it means to be ‘made up’.

Key dimensions of digital education practices are shaped by instrumental goals such as quality, efficiency and transparency. These goalsare often addressed through high-level technology decisions which should be understood in terms of visibility and surveillance. Monitoring technology is deployed for multiple purposes in the contemporary university, in contexts from learning analytics to attendance tracking. This paper is a theoretical exploration of how the technologically-mediated practice of plagiarism detection, in the context of surveillance and distrust, might affect relationships amongst teachers, students and institutions. Drawing on Lyon's (2017) concept of 'surveillanceculture', it examines the types of participation that are enacted in relation to managing studentwriting. It critiques the assumption that automated plagiarism detection is a neutral technology which can be used benevolently (guiding students gently towards'good academic practice'). Instead, it suggests that this technology acts with and on already problematic conditions of digital visibility which are also seen in the wider digital culture beyond the university, and which require critical and thoughtful responses from within the academy. Logics of surveillance are strongly at work in practices which attempt to regulate student behaviour through the exposure of their writing to algorithmic scanning and monitoring. These logics frame students as in need of careful monitoring to ensure learning and teaching runs smoothly, and framing academic writing as a space of dishonesty which is both rampant and solvable through technology. Routines of plagiarism detection intervene negatively in one of the central facets of student-teacher relationships: the production and assessment of student work. Where these relationships become risk-averse and mutually suspicious, trust is blocked or lost and not easily regained. Effective strategies of resistance require finding ways to re-sensitise ourselves and our students to the values we want to prioritise in our classrooms, and offering means by which students can voice their responses to surveillance cultures in higher education; and addressing issues at strategic levels within our institutions and the sector more widely by developing robust mechanisms for engaging in critical debate, discussion about and review of technology platforms and practices.

There are some forms of feedback in daily life that, though generated and delivered via a machine, we may welcome, because they help us to function with ease. For example, being provided with explicit directional instructions from a Sat Nav can save time and embarrassment from being late. Automatic tills in supermarkets mean we can empty loose change into these to pay for things, and the amount is calculated on our behalf, with change efficiently dispensed. Feedback on our bank balances from cash machines may not always be welcome…, but there are advantages in terms of practicality. In this article we challenge however, the uncritical application of similar algorithmic processes for providing automatically generated feedback for students in Higher Education (HE). We contest this on the basis that the human side of feedback appears to be giving way to the non-human, as e-technologies and their algorithmic affordances are expected to meet the demands that emerge from within a neoliberal framing of contemporary HE. Initially we examine developments of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the e-marking platform Turnitin to question where we might locate a student voice? We point to the way that networked learning intersects across developments in technology and radical pedagogies to support this concern. We then draw on our own relational, and lived, experience which produces feedback that emerges from within an illicit exploration of our own vulnerabilities as academics, as students, and friends, in a demonstration of performing radically reflexive feedback. Finally, we advocate for the creative potential of an autoethnographic research method and exploration of mindfulness practices aligned with teaching and learning journeys. These cannot and should not be reduced to the ‘sat-nav experience’ in terms of feedback. We suggest that, as technology becomes ever more intimately embedded into our everyday lives, generic (but power-laden) maps are incorporated into both student and staff ‘perceived’ space. A radically reflexive form of feedback may not follow a pre-defined route or map, but it does offer a vehicle to restore student voices and critical self-navigation that is absent, but very much needed, in the ongoing shaping of contemporary HE.

The role of artificial intelligence for learning is again attracting attention in policy and academic fields; a renaissance fuelled in part by the proliferation and availability of big data, alongside advances in computational techniques and the need for a new ‘technical fix’ for Education (Robins and Webster, 1989). In the public domain, dramatic headlines abound proclaiming the end of education as we know it in utopian and dystopian terms. Yet, in the academic sphere important advances are being made that educators need to pay attention to in order to have a more nuanced and ‘responsible response’ (Biesta, 2013) to the role that artificial intelligence can and should play in Education._x000D_ This presentation aims to contribute to that goal through reporting findings from an ongoing study that aims to identify and explore academic studies that are concerned with artificial intelligence and Education. Through the use of a number of machine learning techniques we aim to map and visualise the current areas of research in this area and identify the underlying philosophies of learning and education embedded within these activities, drawing on Anna Sfard’s acquisition and participation metaphors for learning (Sfard, 1998)._x000D_ Through primarily computational analysis (including network analysis and natural language processing) of the citations, titles and abstracts (where available) of around 8500 books, chapters, papers and conference presentations alongside small scale qualitative coding of a sample of papers we highlight the different ways that people define and talk about AI in Education and demonstrate how the vast majority of work in this area is primarily promoting an ‘acquisition’ based view of learning, promoting individual cognition over collaborative, networked forms of participation. We argue that while this is not necessarily a problem as acquisition is an important aspect of learning; discussions of the use of artificial intelligence in Education would be significantly advanced if far more attention was placed on ways of thinking about learning and Education that promote a broader social-cultural view. This would enable more discussion of if, and how, the use of artificial intelligence in Education could advance knowledge in a Network Society alongside the use of artificial intelligence to make knowledge transfer more efficient; and further advance theoretical debates in Networked Learning.

The emergence of makerspaces is an outgrowth of our current educational and technological era. While making is not new, networking capabilities has made it relatively easy to locate materials, knowledge, procedures, and expertise. Through technologies that are now affordable to consumers, there is a folding of human activity, digital, and material; that is, these practices, previously viewed as separate phenomena or separate regions of activity, blend (Mol & Law, 1994). Physical computing and 3D printing are becoming part of our practice. We can combine electronic, programmable circuitry into traditional crafts such as sewing or origami. Makerspaces are difficult to define because each one is unique, fitting on a continuum of formal to informal and offering different levels of learner/participant control. For example, in some makerspaces facilitators explicitly guide projects; other makerspaces may be gatherings of individuals working on different projects without any discernible leadership. Gatherings may be physical, virtual, or both. The projects, people, and problems may lead to differing degrees of collaboration, sharing and problem solving. We argue that the activities that occur at a given makerspace emerge from the unique characteristics of the space, participants, materials, and networking practices. From a sociomaterial perspective, makerspaces may be viewed as complex assemblages in which the human, digital, and physical are highly entangled. In this paper, we describe a single phase of a larger research project examining the experiences of makerspace facilitators. Our main goal in this phase of the research was to examine the extent to which curating, creating, relating, and networking, as per the makerspace activity (MAP) diagram (Figure 1), are part of the makerspace assemblages described to us by our study participants. For this research, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 makerspace facilitators. The participants included teachers, librarians, school technology consultants, and makerspace club members. Our first pass at coding the transcripts resulted in a significant number of codes emerging in the relate category in comparison to the create, curate, and networking categories. This result led us to question the centrality of networking and whether or not relating should be considered the central characteristic of makerspace assemblages. We conclude that networking, while less prevalent in the transcripts (i.e., less salient to our interview participants), remains a significant characteristic. However, we offer a revised version of the MAP diagram in order to recognize the significance of relational learning.

This short paper describes a research project which aims to co-design prototype Internet of Things (IoT) technologies with staff and students at a higher education institution in the UK. However, rather than adopting a technical approach, which would perceive devices simply as ‘problem solving’ instruments, this project seeks to engage with critical approaches to IoT through the use of speculative methods (Ross 2016), such as ‘design fictions’ and ‘objects-to-think-with’. This approach is intended to surface crucial conceptual and ethical issues for education, such as the radical intensification of digital networks potentially engendered by this technology, and the prospect of increasing surveillance and diminishing privacy in an era of ubiquitous connection. These are questions too often overlooked in the habitual forecasting and advocacy of ‘new’ educational technology, but also in the engrained approaches to ‘solutionist’ (Morozov 2013) technology design. This paper will outline the two initial stages of this ongoing project: firstly, the development of preliminary IoT provocations; and secondly, the outcomes from co-design workshops with staff and students. The preliminary IoT devices include: campus motion and sound-level sensors; live public PC login feeds from across the campus; collated social media feeds from distance students; wearable smart watches configured to receive feed data; a smart phone app with interactive functions that can respond to feed notifications; and a web-based interface to visualise the range of data feeds. These devices were produced to demonstrate specific, and provocative, educational applications of IoT technologies, and to encourage responses from workshop participants. The second stage will describe outcomes from two co-design workshops: the first with campus-based and distance students; and the second with teaching staff at the institution in question (scheduled for November 2017). Grounded in the themes of ‘presence’, ‘community’, and ‘surveillance’, these workshops are designed to elicit critical responses to IoT technologies in higher education through the development of speculative designs that 1) enact key issues for students and teachers by modelling practice, and 2) offer creative alternatives to established design cultures by resisting, and obfuscating (Brunton & Nissenbaum 2013) the drive for ‘big data’ collection and its promoted efficiency gains. Drawing on these designs, this paper will conclude with, not only the key challenges that students and teachers perceive in the networked futures of higher education, but also creative visions for alternative technologies that can approximate new ways of connecting the humans and ‘things’ involved in education.

In my presentation I introduce the concept of wikilearning as a means of self-directed and collectively organized mass communication and the idea of the communist Internet as an end of postdigital critical pedagogy. I argue that by using digital tools such as wikis, crowd-sourced and editable platforms in the Internet, people are becoming critically aware of the possibilities of autonomous horizontal communication and learning in the digital networks, and are able to use those possibilities effectively for the common good, and eventually overcoming the exploitative capitalist condition of life.

A study is conducted of twenty groups, of 5-7 learners each, who are studying on a postgraduate course unit oriented toward development of professional practice in the field of educational technology. On the unit, students are assessed through their contributions to online discussion boards in which their groups are engaged in learning tasks that increase in complexity over the course and require them to make critical judgments about a range of informational and technological resources that can help the group meet its shared learning needs. Through the accumulation of these judgments, the group stewards its own digital habitat (Wenger et al 2009), modifying and enhancing the set of resources that the tutor provides to each group at the start of the course unit. The study investigates how this process draws on the power that flows in different ways through the course environment. Students discipline themselves and each other to conform to practices that they perceive as being those rewarded by the tutor, but they also resist this institutional power and authority when they introduce new resources and practices. The study shows how practices form at the very earliest stages of the formation of a community of practce, and bring with them a proto-hierarchy that supports the more complex information tasks but also introduces differentiation into the community. Visibility and scrutiny of the emerging practices and proto-hierarchy are what help the environment meet its learning needs and give students an experience of variation in power and authority that helps them develop informational practices in ways that are relevant to later work in professional settings.

Networked Learning Communities (NLCs) comprise individuals from different schools or organisations collaborating with one another in purposeful and sustained professional development (Jackson & Temperley, 2007).  Knowledge construction is central to the work of NLCs as networked learning entails the construction of new knowledge by tapping members’ personal practitioner knowledge and the public knowledge base.  In Singapore, some NLCs sustain their professional learning through online interactions in collaboration groups within "One Portal All Learners (OPAL)", a learning and content management system developed by the Ministry of Education (MOE).  This paper outlines a project that studied knowledge construction within 10 OPAL collaboration groups created by NLCs (“ONLCs”), the roles adopted by the members, and the factors that influenced members' participation in knowledge construction within the ONLCs.  According to the Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) by Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson (1997), knowledge construction in online collaborative environments progresses over five levels: (a) sharing and comparing of information; (b) discovery and exploration of dissonance or inconsistency among ideas; (c) negotiation of meaning; (d) testing and modification; and (e) application of newly-constructed meaning.  Findings revealed that the majority of the online knowledge constructions were at the level of sharing and comparing of information.  Six possible factors that influenced members' engagement in knowledge construction in the ONLCs were identified through focus group discussions.  The factors identified were (a) a structured approach for enacting NLCs, (b) organisational support, (c) a conducive environment that enables trust to be built among members, (d) shared ownership among members, (e) a culture of sharing that prioritises higher levels of knowledge construction, and (f) OPAL as an enabler.  Using findings from the study and from literature, an implementation framework was developed to promote knowledge construction in ONLCs.  The implementation framework was field-tested by four NLCs and then refined based on feedback gathered.  The feedback gathered on the implementation framework was generally positive and participants found it to be comprehensive, although many felt that the efficacy of the implementation framework to support online knowledge construction may be limited by the affordances of the online collaborative workspace being used.  However, the key to raising the level of knowledge construction could lie in nurturing a conducive environment and a culture of sharing, and fostering shared ownership.  These three factors can work together to shape the dynamics within the NLC, to help members recognise the importance of co-owning and co-leading the NLC's professional learning.

Under a prominent recent regime of online education, often represented in the scholarship as a “social constructive learning paradigm”, learning is defined as a social practice that involves a group of students actively participating in collaborative knowledge construction processes. Pedagogical theories and strategies developed and utilised in that regime focus extensively on enabling student-to-student interaction and building communities of learners in online learning environments. In this context, where the notions of “collaborative” learning and learning “community” have gained substantial legitimacy from relevant theoretical traditions, other beliefs about meaningful learning are likely to be harshly criticised or, at best, simply neglected. However, it is not at all difficult to notice a gap between the accepted theoretical ideas of effective online learning and actual pedagogical practices in most online education institutions. Here, I aim to reduce that theory-practice gap by reconceptualising online learning using a double-layered Community of Practice (CoP) model. That module conceptualises online learning as interlinked processes of participation and socialisation in multiple communities across internal and external or online and offline “layers” of learners’ lives. The model helps online course designers and instructors to expand the boundaries of their course environments or designs to reach out to students’ personal and professional lives and to make sense of online learning experiences that are shaped by their interactions with other members of different communities outside the course environments. Using data, three students’ narratives, collected from a series of case studies on learners’ learning experiences in three different types of online courses (or programmes), this article effectively demonstrates how difficult it is to develop a strong CoP nested and sustained within online learning environments, which usually have a close finish. The article further argues that it may be useful for instructional designers to expend their view on learning environment to include distance learners’ life situations beyond their computer screens. Everyone has their own community in which they naturally learn, develop, and live with other members outside the courses. Thus, rather than putting so much effort to form a community inside our learning environment, we may want to think about more effectively support our students to form a stronger and more sustainable community in their lives through being engaged in learning activities in our course.

_x000D_ _x000D_ For several decades educational institutions and their educational designers have waited for a significant innovation and pedagogical breakthrough in digitally based teaching and learning (Bates, 2015; Bruce, 2016; Conole, 2013; Tait, 2013; Sorensen & Brooks, 2017). New innovative approaches and pedagogies were expected in design of teaching and learning; approaches which, methodologically, would acknowledge basic human qualities and inter-human co-existential virtues and functionalities. Such approaches, as e.g. dialogue, collaboration, communication, creativity, improvisation, may be viewed to be relevant to any topic addressed, as pertinent values for developing and empowering robust identities. However, as it stands, new and innovative pedagogical paradigms for teaching and learning seem to have stagnated. The authors of this paper make a plea for the use of fundamental human concepts, features and inter-human functionalities - such as e.g. a focus on concepts of relational agency, dialogue and dialogic, identity, which may produce very fruitful teaching and learning processes through restoring, implementing and operationalizing fundamental motivating principles ofdevelopment processes of the human nature._x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ This paper reports on an explorative study of the learning dialogue in an online module, one module of an online master’s part-time program in Ict and Learning. The philosophy behind the design and organization of the program is inspired from the Project Oriented Project Pedagogy (POPP) approach, introduced at Aalborg University (AAU) at its very birth in 1974. The paper focuses on the use, role, potential and implications for teaching and learning when using a digital dialogic learning pedagogy built on the basic principles of POPP and unfolding in virtual learning environments. Through the analytical lenses of the theoretical concepts such as “identity” and “agency”, the authors set out to explore the extent to which online dialogues and potentially identified signs of developed identity, and agency in learners, may promote inclusion and contribute as very important meta learning values for the cultivation of awareness in citizens in our future global society._x000D_ The analytical optic is formed from a perspective of some key concepts of theorists, such as the notion of “relational agency” by Edwards (2006 & 2007), the notion of “dialogic” by Wegerif (2007) and the idea of “co-creation” (Sanders, 2008). The methodological approach is inspired by the principles of Netnography[1] and is a continuation of the authors’ serious of earlier studies on inclusive online learning dialogues and their implications for learning in digital environments (e.g. Sorensen & Brooks, 2017)._x000D_ The findings of this study suggest that for networked learning of including quality, co-creation, identity and relational agency are important elements for learners to obtain and be exposed to. All of these concepts appear very close to the essential aspects of human nature._x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ [1] Netnography uses these conversations as data. It is an interpretive research method that adapts the traditional, in-personparticipant observationtechniques ofanthropologyto the study of interactions and experiences manifesting throughdigital communications(Kozinets, R. V, 2010)_x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_

The focus of the argument in this paper is first situated in an allegory based on Van Gogh’s Expressionist masterpiece, The Yellow House, in that, our argument shares Van Gogh’s theme of looking for a home for a diverse community, engaged in a shared social movement, imagined/acted upon to evoke change. Our argument is fraught with commitments, investments, hopes, debates, rifts, and conflicts involved in the tentative, emergent nature associated with social movements. Within this diverse and contested context, networked learning praxis is set apart from mainstream e-learning and educational technology theories and practices. The problem of designing learning, in general, and designing for networked learning, in particular, is critically examined through a comparison of the projects, histories, and tenets of instructional design (ID) and learning design (LD). Associated notions of teacher-centred, learner-centred, and community/context-centred approaches to design are compared. Contrasts are drawn and commonalities are identified. The shared LD/ID claims that their projects are pedagogically neutral is interrogated. We then introduce Third Space theory as a way to open a dialogue between ID/LD proponents/researcher-practitioners. Third Space theory begins with abandoning aspirations for emergence of consensus from difference, arguably a practical stance to take when dealing with wide-ranging diversities across multicultural, interdisciplinary, international contexts. Having abandoned consensus, Third Space theory is directed toward ‘multilogues’ that promote boundary crossings and hybridisations, which can result in the emergence new “presences”: newly co-constructed ways to identify and accomplish shared goals. If we conceptualise The Third Space as, (Dare we suggest, an Expressionist social movement?), then based on historical examples of earlier social movements, it is relatively safe to suggest that this space too will likely be marked by misunderstandings and incommensurabilities. Third space ‘multilogues’ will involve participants sometimes talking ‘past each other’ rather than ‘with each other.’ We can expect substantive disagreements and retreats to previously held positions prior to arriving at places of mutual recognition, and perhaps even one or more forms of reconciliation. The paper concludes with an invitation for LDs and IDs to enter The Third Space with a view to finding varied, but sustainable, hybridised conceptualisations of design theories and practices that can contribute to designing future opportunities for networked learning across multicultural, multilinguistic, international, interdisciplinary context.

The aim of the paper is to revisit the concepts of knowledge and learning in virtual communities of practice (VCoPs). Despite a great variety of approaches and successful examples of deployment of VCoPs, little research attention is paid to developing models or frameworks conceptualizing knowledge and learning in VCoPs. The review of the selected literature has enabled to propose a multi metaphorical framework of knowledge and a conceptual model of learning in VCoPs. The author uses a metaphoric approach to address the idea of paradigm shift and suggests a non-linear perspective on knowledge evolution affected by technological innovations. The multi metaphorical framework under consideration shows the shifts from behavioral learning to networked learning where VCoPs are located. The definition of VCoPs and their features are paid special attention to in the research. VCoPs are viewed from three overlapping dimensions: Community of practice, virtual domain of technology enhanced learning and discipline-based learning community of practice. Such a view represents a conceptual idea of discipline-based VCoPs which arises when three main components interplay: domain (virtual environment where teacher-student social interaction takes place); the community (the principles of apprenticeship as a learning model); the practice (developing the repertoire to solve problems within the discipline context). Also, the suggested multi metaphorical framework enables viewing learning within VCoP from knowledge- creation metaphor which leads to examination of learning from the perspectives of activity theory. Activity theory is used not as an analytical tool in the research but mainly as a descriptive approach to delineate learning within VCops as a technology mediated activity. The knowledge is constructed within the community, but the interaction and learning are mediated via digital artifacts. Applying principles of activity theory, VCoPs can be analyzed as complex systems where subjects interact with the community using technologies. Systems approach is applied to work out a logical model of learning activity in VCoPs consisting of axiological, cognitive, professional-educational, technological, communicative, reflexive components. The proposed model should be considered as a schematically descriptive model of learning within VCoPs because complex systems cannot be perceived using one approach due to their multidimensional and complex nature._x000D_ The paper concludes by the discussion of the findings and recommendations for further research. The topic is of interest because better understanding of the concepts of knowledge and subsystems of learning concept in the era of technologies is sure to enhance teaching practice._x000D_  

Our aim in this paper is to analyse a set of well-known pedagogical approaches based on 'learning through practice' by viewing them as forms of networked learning. Following earlier work by the second author, we understand networked learning as learners' connecting of contexts in which they participate and as their resituation of knowledge, perspectives, and ways of acting across these contexts (Dohn, 2014). Learning designs of 'learning through practice' are distinguished by engaging practices outside the formal educational system as ways of developing curricular understanding and, reciprocally, as providing grounds for concretisation of curricular content through its enactment in practice. By viewing these learning designs as networked learning we highlight their potential for supporting certain connection forms between learners' experiences in target practice and educational practice. In particular, we look at the learning designs of 1) case-based learning, 2) design-based learning, and 3) simulation-based learning. We understand a learning design in accordance with Mor, Mellar, Warburton, & Winters (2014) as an educational pattern that supports specific actions in typical situations and, in compact form, collects the central part of a practice that can be communicated to others (2014). We understand a learning design to have four primary dimensions: 1) purpose, 2) content, 3) methods, and 4) underlying learning-theoretical basis. The four dimensions reflect basic functions of an educational practice: its purpose (its why), its content (its what), its method (its how), and its theoretical basis (its reason for the why, what and how). We argue that case-based learning establishes a relationship of inquiry between learner and target practice with the aim to support the learners in gaining understanding through participating in a sense-making process. The relationship established in design-based learning is one of innovation with the aim to support learners in developing understanding of practice through changing it. Finally, in simulation-based learning, relationships of imitation of target practice and engagement in ‘as-if’ practice are established with the aim of supporting learners in developing situated skills and knowledge.

This paper has two aims; first to understand how networked learning has developed as a field and educational approach in the last 20 years; and second to consider the contribution the Networked Learning Conference has had to the development of the field. To achieve this we conducted a survey of people who have regularly presented or published papers from the Networked Learning Conference (NLC) since its inception in 1998.  The purpose of the survey was to understand the role the conference has played for them in the development of their thinking and ideas over time, and what this means for the theory, pedagogy and practice of networked learning._x000D_ In order to provide a context in which to examine respondents’ experiences of networked learning, we situate the paper in the current definition of the term. Since the first conference in 1998, the definition of networked learning has come to be defined as involving the key characteristics of learning community; connections; reflexivity; criticality; collaboration; and relational dialogue._x000D_ Our survey involved sending an email to 30 NLC participants in which we asked them to respond to five questions about their experience of the conference. 21 responses were returned. In general, many people felt that networked learning gives a frame of reference where the conference enacts the values of networked learning as a research community. We thus argue in the paper that a closer examination of the NLC offers an interesting opportunity to re-evaluate key characteristics and values associated with networked learning, which informs us of networked learning as a social practice._x000D_ To achieve this, we focus in depth on four areas that figured particularly strongly in the analysis and which we believe are worthy of further discussion. They are critical space, community, scholarship, and developing practice. We found there was a degree of overlap and interaction between these areas, and that together these four areas constitute key aspects to the way way the networked learning conference 'institutionalises' networked learning as a practical accomplishment.