Learning Theories Wiki - Reflections

Reflections on a collaborative wiki this time.  Not that we weren't expressly forbidden to alter, add to or comment on other’s profiles in the Profile Wiki(!), but were not encouraged to do so.  This learning task specifically invited us to do so in this Learning Theories Wiki. We were to work together in pairs (or more) to choose, consider and write about a "learning theory" (LT) that interested us.  We were scaffolded into using the Profile Wiki to choose a learning partner that we resonated with and were further scaffolded to using a "Plus, Minus, Interesting" (PMI) method of analysing the material. 

Immediately we're moving into higher order thinking.  We're not just copying and pasting (identifying and retrieving), nor just comprehending (understanding, paraphrasing), but we're analysing, critiquing, judging and transforming knowledge.  I will use the PMI tool again.  I think most learners would appreciate its benefits, even if the lazy thinkers find it makes their brains tired.


The World's Largest Pavlova, 50 square metre meringue
capable of feeding 10,000 people., made with 10,000
egg whites and more than 600kg of sugar
in the shape of a rugby field, to coincide
with a Bledisloe Cup rugby match!

Our partnership-created PMIs were then to be posted to the Learning Theories Wiki to create an "Expert Jigsaw" (the words silk purse and pig's ear come to mind).  The jigsaw is an excellent idea to divide up a task too large for an individual into sizes manageable enough for a group, the idea being a bit like a BYO plate dinner party.  There are behavioural aspects at work here: everyone always raves over your Pavlova (excuse the pun), so that's what you bring each time.  Conscientious learners will wish to avoid letting down the team and will put 100% into their contribution.  Others might have just picked up a bucket of KFC on their way to the party.  The jigsaw in this particular task got a little large and unwieldy, partly due to technological restrictions (a bad workman always blames his tools) and partly due to the depth that some analyses went.

A great example of collaborative construction, IF people bought into it.  How many people read the whole 30-odd pages of PMIs?  How many of them trusted their cohorts to make a decent Pav and how many bought Sarah Lee's as a back-up ("deeply embedded and intractable...habits", Mezirow, 1990, “Fostering Critical Reflection In Adulthood”)?  The whole time-saving idea behind the jigsaw is to avoid the necessity of each learner reading all the LTs themselves.  But the what if the jigsaw had a piece missing, or put in upside down, or in the wrong place?  Taking this exercise a couple of steps further would, I submit, have allayed some of those fears and made the whole process more satisfactory and the result more valuable:-

To make the wiki more manageable, I would have scaffolded the PMIs further with a template to increase conformity of results.  Despite being a collaborative wiki, I would imagine many contributors would not have felt comfortable amending or replacing others' contributions (or even correcting their spelling of Marc/k Prensky ;o), either due to lack of confidence or, having the confidence but not wanting to seem arrogant (or think they might delete the whole wiki, without the requisite technical knowledge).  Moreover, people are often happier with their own language and phraseology than another’s.  Hence, an invigilator/moderator (or team) could have reduced the jigsaw by merging similar ideas where duplicated.  The final jigsaw could have been anonymous, to be more inclusive of those shy contributors, or alternatively, could have used colours to show each participant, if participation needed to be recorded/noted.  If one looks at the "final collaborations" of the participants on the wiki, there is clear evidence of the same points being made, but individually cited.  Is it down to ego?  To get the brownie points?  Or is it back to Mezirow again and the precious beliefs or behaviours that we don't like to drop?   There are few genuinely collaborative concluding postings in the wiki.

I would have prescribed that an overview or summary of the topic or reading was provided at the beginning of each contribution, to introduce us to the LT, before jumping straight in to the PMIs.  I would have encouraged the use of hyperlinks for quotes/citations.  The ICTs are there and would aid learning, so let's encourage their use.

The wiki itself is not easy to navigate or search.  I therefore copied and pasted all contributions into one searchable document, added an overview to each LT, and hyperlinks.  There is a lot of information in it, too much to take in but in this age of connectivism, I know where the information is and can now recall it.  I would have preferred to merge the similar arguments and delete repetition to reduce the size of the document, but haven't had sufficient time.  This could have been built into the learning task and divided up amongst the group.

Not only was the jigsaw an exercise in collaborative constructivism, the PMI exercise was too.  We were encouraged to work in partnership in whatever way we chose, depending on geographical distance, availability of ICTs and comfort/experience in using them (repeating the ICT diversity in classrooms as well as learning preferences/partner preferences i.e. do we choose someone with similar skills, ideas or learning styles and intelligences, or someone different?).  We read each other’s ideas and merged and developed them until the whole was greater than the sum of the parts (paraphrasing Vygotsky).  This was true too of the wiki as a whole (for those who read the jigsaw pieces), adding any points we'd missed individually, to our joint learning - particularly on those LTs that were repeated in the earlier course readings (e.g. Gardner, 21st Century Learning, Prensky).

By the design of this task, both the partnering PMI and the LT Wiki, there is a danger of group think and of the quieter partner being bulldozed by the more bombastic.  There is also the danger of the lazy just drifting along - the usual dangers of social collaboration (see Thirteen Ed Online, Workshop: Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning).

The wiki is obviously a useful tool for e-learning, allowing all learners to participate (and with the ability to identify those who did not) regardless of distance from a class.  Perhaps a tool such as VYEW would have been more conducive for the partnerships spread geographically, as a more fluid, instantaneous way of collaborating and combining their PMIs?  They needn't have been online at the same time either, bearing in mind the competing demands on learners' time, due to family, work, availability of computers, etc. But working together on an online document in "real time" is more flexible than working on paper and, perhaps with participants not being face to face, they might contribute more equally rather than bending to the stronger-willed partner, with the end result being a submission they more jointly created and therefore owned. 

Diversity and freedom of learning styles? Well, learners could have chosen YouTube videos, rather than written articles, but the vast majority of theories were text-based and, of course, the contributions to the wiki were taken as read to be written, although I was sorely tempted to post a video contribution, just to break it up.  The difficulty is how to achieve the balance between choice and freedom, but still scaffold and lead learners in the direction needed to achieve curriculum content, learning objectives, etc.

The final, rather personal, reflection regarding this task relates to timing.  I did not feel that I could approach a reading partner until I'd done the reading.  I didn't feel I could do the reading until I'd finished the other readings for the week.  Learners work at different speeds not solely due to their various intelligences, but also due to other obligations or distractions.  Those who posted their wiki contributions first were probably frustrated waiting for the rest of the class to contribute and, due to the heavy workload in the first week, they'd probably moved on to the next tasks before the wiki was complete (it's still not complete approaching the end of week 2...).  There is evidence that some people used this as an excuse not to partner up, but to submit their solo PMIs on the wiki and carry on with the course.  How likely is it that those early birds got the full benefit from the exercise at the time?  But that's the great thing about technology.  The wiki will be on the system (assuming it doesn't crash ;o) indefinitely enabling learners to dip back into LTs whenever it best suits them.