This practitioner conference brought to life the full breadth and diversity of the inquiry-based ‘movement’. From problem based learning in a medical context through to action research in the workplace there was an invigorating feeling of university staff striving to make learning more relevant for their students and of students responding to the challenge of complexity and uncertainty, but with the reward of authentic learning that these approaches tend to bring.

David’s keynote was a highlight for me as a compelling vision and strategy of how a learning experience for students can be transformed at an institutional level. Informed by Kegan’s personal development theory (1994) - a sequential process through which individuals can move over time from the first to the fifth order of consciousness over their lifetime, and the the ‘liberal arts’ tradition from US undergraduate education that encourages us to focus not simply on the subject but the broader development of the individual’s intellectual skills: criticality; ethical judgement; civic responsibility; collaborative problem solvng, etc.

Student as Scholar Model represents the far end of the educational spectrum, specifically progressing from an instructional paradigm that emphasizes telling students what they need to know, to a learning paradigm that emphasizes inquiry in shaping how students learn what they need to know within the traditional academic context, and culminating in a discovery paradigm that encourages students to seek and discover new knowledge, emphasizing inquiry with no boundaries.

David’s rigid application of Kegan’s theory overlaying a four year undergraduate experience from age 18 to 22 made me feel uncomfortable, coming as I do from a belief that individuals develop at different rates not necessarily correlating to their age. However, the BIG idea that learners can be “authorities and creators of knowledge” is something I believe to be true as demonstrated by the action research undertaken by undergraduate student researchers on the Ultraversity project.

When I lead the Ultraversity project at Anglia Ruskin University and in particular the development of the highly successful BA, Learning, Technology and Research, it was always our intention to validate a Masters level programme using the same approaches (work-focussed learning, online community, action-inquiry, patchwork-text assessment, etc.). However, politics got in the way of that particular development so it is with great satisfaction that this is now achieved as a part of the idibl framework.

Researchers will join the IEC community of 20 plus technologists, programmers and pedagogy specialists. It is this in-depth experience and community that students will be joining to help them through their studies.

This may be the course for you if:
* you want to design your own Masters
* you need to combine study with work
* you value learning with experts
* you prefer assessment by portfolio

The course is designed for students who are working full-time and want to study using an inquiry-based approach. This programme can complete in 15 months.

This works by researchers identifying opportunities or issues in the workplace and constructing inquiries around them, that require the taking of an action to improve the situation.

This course is delivered and supported entirely online and will suit people working in schools, colleges, FE, HE, as well as companies, charities, etc. where the role of the researcher is to develop the use of learning technologies in their organisation.

Anyone interested in studying with the IEC can email me at s.j.powell@bolton.ac.uk or stephenp.powell@gmail.com

This the idibl-framework-academic-proposal-revised.doc behind programmes using the IDIBL framework.

Two aspects in particular:

1. The discussion around the meaning of the word competence - always a thorny one as it carries so much baggage and means quite different things for different people, cultures and contexts. As pointed out by Sebastien and Väljataga’s paper:

“In general what used to be emphasized was the role of well trained, standardized, and largely
automated procedural skills and of factual knowledge for successful problem solving and coping.”

however a contemporary explanation might be…

“A competent actor is thus understood as an individual who has acquired factual knowledge and a set of procedural skills in a certain area, but in addition also holds orientations, values and attitudes for coping with open-ended and complex problem situations”

2. The discussion around the terms ’self-organised vs self-directed learning’. This has puzzled me for a while and two explanations seem plausible to me. The first is that self-directed is a subset of self-organised. The second, explained by Sebastien, is that self-directed is most usefully applied to formal learning where there is pre-determined end point whereas self-organised is best used in non-formal contexts.

Below: self-organised eating for eight month old Lily :^)

Approach 1
In the North West of England, the Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance is aiming to address this issue through a scheme called ModCAT that “supports institutions in their attempts to provide employer-led, flexible, work-related higher education.”

The logic runs a bit like this… If an online catalogue of modules rich in subject and discipline content can be established across HE providers, then individuals and businesses will be able to ‘pick and mix’ those that best suit their needs regardless of the institution offering them. Theoretically, this should allow individuals to create programme of study by collecting modules together that build towards an award.

Approach 2
By contrast, the IDIBL Framework at the University of Bolton (the project I work on) has created a handful of modules that instead specify the processes of action inquiry for learning where students identify their own subject and discipline content informed by their practice.

Both would claim to be attempts to personalise the learner experience and one way of explaining the difference is that of the concept of Variety which is an important aspect of the Cybernetic Viable System Model. Variety is explained by Ross Ashby (1964) as “Only variety can absorb variety”.

Both approaches are attempting to match the variety of hundreds of thousands of learners with their own particular work-informed needs with modules and programmes of study offered by universities.

The first approach does this by offering thousands of different modules at different locations, from different institutions with differing subject content attenuating (reducing/filtering) this potentially overwhelming choice through the use of technology so that there is a balance.

Approach 2 matches the variety by trusting the learner to identify what it is they need to learn, based on real issues and opportunities encountered in the work-place. From this starting point they are supported in the development of an inquiry plan and learning contract that will enable them to meet the module requirements and their identified learning needs.

In this second case, it is the student who contributes significantly to the attenuation of the complexity of their work-led learning needs with the modules on offer. On their own this would be a tall order, so an online community of inquiry with fellow learners and course tutors helps with this process.

Arguably, approach 1 (ModCAT) is really about offering choice, whilst approach 2 (IDIBL Framework) has the real potential to offer a truly personalised experience.

The challenge for the IDIBL project is trying to implement a learning technology solution that takes advantage of this thinking, but that also contributes to the development of the University of Bolton’s strategic development of e-learning provision. In this exercise, we are not concerned with information systems and processes that contribute to wider management of learning activities such as recording of results, admissions, collection of fees, etc. There is an argument that these two dimensions cannot be separated, but for now we want to focus on the learning experience and not allow other factors to restrict choices.

In my mind we face a three way conundrum of trying to enact the CETIS analysis of the likely developments of learning technology in HE, the practical issues facing the ‘real world’ position of the University of Bolton, and an approach that will provided a great learning experience for students based on past experience, but with little or no chance of being widely replicated elsewhere.

What is certain is that our approach will be informed by the overarching principle of personalisation and choice wherever possible within the constraints we find ourselves under. Possibly the three positions can be characterised as:

1. Are we inquiring into the extremes of what may be possible? Web2.0 zealots might argue that we shouldn’t be using and university hosted software at all, paid for services, or proprietary software of any kind. Internet services that are readily available can provide all that is required; all it takes is a movement in mind-set to achieve this;
2. Are we plotting a possible route forward for the University of Bolton? Current Bolton learning and teaching provision is based around WebCT with supporting technology such as SITS. Although few would argue for this to be the only approach, there is a strong support for platforms such as Moodle which offer some of the advantages of a Web2.0 in that it empowers staff and learners, but could be characterised as a development or second generation VLE rather than a new approach;
3. Are we developing a low risk approach that we are confident best supports the learners? This would be based on the successful experience of the Ultraversity project and would use ‘free’ web services, open source, as well as proprietary software – this blueprint already exists!

Our difficulty in plotting a way forward has, I think, being compounded by not agreeing our primary purpose to start with. Once we do this, then the technological choices will be constrained by that choice and our key requirements are pretty simple:

• hold community discussions between staff and students
• have collaborative, private and public work-spaces
• provide course resources – published to the www is good
• submit work that can be verified for date and completeness
• monitor participation and ‘attendance’ – for the purpose of making interventions for those experiencing difficulties

In developing our inter-disciplinary approaches we have arrived a position of identifying thematic areas of work activity as a potentially useful approach.

For example, the government Every Child Matters strategy requires that organisations that impact upon children, hospitals, schools, police, voluntary groups, etc. to work together in the best interests of the children they serve.

Given the above, a work-based degree that uses an inquiry-led approach to learning requiring the learner to identify the issues and opportunities in their work as a focus for their inquiry and then draw upon relevant subject discipline content would seem to be a strong candidate for the idibl framework approach.

This is just one such themed example, others that we are pursuing energetically with our work on the IDIBL project include Regeneration, and Learning with Technology.

The notion of themes comes from a recognition that however much we value inter-disciplinary learning we need an articulated rationale of why a group of students would chose to learn together through the medium of an online community.

Although benefiting from exposure to fellow students from different work contexts, focus of study, etc. community models of learning and arguably networked learning approaches have a greater chance of success when stronger ties or bonds can be developed between learners. I would argue that having a common theme of study helps with this.

In practical terms, our open module framework will allow us to readily develop new courses with different themes as demand is identified.

Hefce scheme encourages businesses to co-fund students:Higher Education Funding Council for England to support government policy of getting businesses to co-fund students with up to £105m over the next three years

(Via Education Guardian).

At the same time Hefce confirm that the “controversial proposals to withdraw £100m of funding for people studying equivalent or lower degrees (ELQs) over the next three years will go ahead.”

For idibl, this might be an opportunity to help fund deliver of our online, inquiry-led, work-based degrees around themes rather than subject discipline. The hot themes at the moment being around regeneration and the Every Child Matters agenda.

He developed the idea of a structured template where “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.” (Alexander et al., 1977).

Combined together, individual patterns produce a Pattern Language. For Alexander, this approach was a way of capturing what it was that we used to do well in urban design (some time in the distant past) and at the same time empower those who live in the spaces to influence their development.

More recently, other professions, particularly developers and programmers have adopted a patterns approach - this is a good introduction from Alexander.

Taking this a little further, Richard Millwood, Ian Tindall and myself have attempted to develop a pattern language for Online Communities of Inquiry. It is our intention that the patterns should be readily understood by all who participate in the community of inquiry or support its development in some way - learners, teaching and support staff as well as invited guests to the community. We believe that full potential of pattern languages may be unrealised if there is a dislocation between different groups of users. They are designed to open up the debate between the different interested parties as to how tools and approaches could be further developed and improved.

This diagram shows our ‘high order’ Pattern Language and these are a couple of example patterns - ‘Nurture Online Community’ and a loweer level pattern of ‘Working Together’. Other patterns still to be constructed will include those for, retention, hotseats, asynchronous, conversations, learning sets. etc.

The trick is to find the right balance between too many patterns so that the language will be over-complicated, and too few patterns at an abstract level so that there is not sufficient detail for them to be implemented and understood.

Try this out - send yourself a mail message inviting you to a meeting. In the body of message in the middle of some text include the meeting time and date something like ‘Thursday 12th February 12pm – 2pm. On receipt of the message you will find that Mac Mail recognises the pattern as one that might be a date that you wish to add to iCal. Even better, someone might invite you to a real meeting:^)

Similarly, if there us a contact information such as an mail and phone numbers it offer the opportunity to add this to your Mac Address Book.

Rather than simply say ‘I am impressed about this new feature in Mac Mail for Leopard’, it strikes me that these small technological innovations make a real contribution to our productivity, as well as making life that little bit easier…