PracSIP Practice Scaffolding Interactive platform

1. PracSIPPractice Scaffolding Interactive platform Associate Professor, Ph.D., Jeppe Bundsgaard, School of Education University of Aarhus jebu@dpu.dk ∙ www.jeppe.bundsgaard.net

2. PracSIP • A ground-breaking concept of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning • A Practice Scaffolding Interactive Platform

3. What is the problem of traditional education? • I don’t want to! • Motivation • What’s the use? • Meaningfulness • How shall I use it? • Transfer • I forgot what I learned yesterday! • Retention

4. Solution: Community of practice? • Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger • A group of individuals participating in communal activity, continuously • creating their shared identity through • engaging in and contributing to the practices of their communities and thereby • developing a shared repertoire • Experts guide novices who are legitimate peripheral participants

5. Why? Epistemic Frames! • Communities of practice develop epistemic frames (Shaffer 2006): • Different ways of knowing, of deciding what is worth knowing, and of adding to the collective body of knowledge and understanding of community • Epistemic frames are competences in practice • Eases transfer & retention • Meaningfulness is inherent in practice • To learn to think like professionals of many kinds promotes pluralism

6. Challenges of Communities of practice in school • There are no experts to guide the novices • The practice might be to difficult • The repertoire of the practice isn’t always at hand • The goals of the community of practice are not necessarily compliant with the educational goals

7. Further Challenges: Lesson learned from Project Based Learning • Chaos • The teacher spends to much time organizing • Structure • Students has a hard time knowing what to do next • Inclusion or exclusion? • Students who don’t know how to perform project based learning, are easily lost • Educational goals • Often end up subsumed the product goals

8. Proposed solution • PracSIP: • Practice • Scaffolding • Interactive platform

9. What a PracSIP does • Scaffold practice by • Organizing the collaboration • Structuring the processes • Putting relevant tools of the shared repertoire at the participants disposal. • Reduce complexity of the practice

10. Making it relevant for school • Focusing on the aspects of the community of practice which actualizes learning-appropriate goals • Supporting knowledge and skills from the curriculum

11. A PracSIP Ekstra Bladet: The Editorial Office • Support a journalistic community of practice from decision of the newspaper profile to the deadline • Newspaper production online • Product printed in 1000 copies in colors on real newsprint

12. Glimpses from practice

13. Structuring students’ work • Phases: • profile • planning • research • photo • focus • writing • Layout • Deadline

14. Organizing collaboration • Organizes the process from start to finish • Students create articles, • divide tasks among them … and • set deadlines … • The students know what to do • The teacher has an overview and can take action when and where it is needed

15. Supporting development of skills and knowledge: Interactive assistants • An interactive assistant • Has a specific task as it's starting point • Leads the student through the task • The computer structures – the student thinks • The computer doesn’t have all the answers – no ”multiple choice”

16. Interactiveassistants II • The computer asks carefully thought out questions, and the student carry on the thinking on this basis • Integrates the student’s response in the next question • Presents subject related concepts and methods integrated in the work with the task

17. Other tools from the journalistic shared repertoire

18. PracSIP • Scaffolds the practice by: • Organizing collaboration • Structuring students’ working process • Putting tools from the repertoire of the community of practice at the disposal of the students • Integrates educational content • Tear down school walls:Authentic communication situations

19. Does it work?

20. Ethnographical study • Ethnographical study of four classes working with The Editorial Office. • Conclusion: When working with The Editorial Office teachers and students acquire access to a journalist practice, and both students and teachers can function as mediatorsand bring, re-negotiate and integrate authentic border objects from this practice to their own [classroom] practice. This makes possible peripheral and stand in experiences of what it will say to participate in a journalist practice, and it creates the opportunity for new experiences of what it means to participate in a journalist practice, and understanding of what is valued competencies. (Henderson 2008, p.95, my translation)

21. Study of Interactive assistants • Qualitative study: Interactive assistants scaffold (in some cases) an IDRE (Initiation, Discussion (cf. Wegerif 2004), Response, Evaluation) structure of students interaction • Quantitative study: Students perform above average (3 teachers assess students work), students regards Interactive assistants as a help (44.1% yes, 36.5% yes and no, 19.4% no, n=299). Fougt 2009

22. Ongoing work: Framework for Evaluation of Design for learning • Potential learning potential • Which competences (or skills and knowledge) can ideally be developed working with a giving platform (design for learning)? • Actual learning potential • How is the platform used, how does it participate in the classroom context? • Actual learning • What is the learning outcome (Bundsgaard & Hansen, work in progress)

23. Next PracSIP project • Future City • Students acting as city planners to solve the problems of Slam City (and of the climate change) • Organization of collaboration and structuring of the processes • Students play Sim City to get inspired and to simulate the complexity of city planning

24. Investigating problems and learning science with interactive assistants

25. Producing a presentation of Future City to be presented in the showroom

26. City Slam • Cup tournament where the participating classes compete one on one with two other classes acting as judges (online). • 6-8 classes participate in the final competition to be Future City of the year.

27. Future City • Scaffolding simulatedauthentic activities • Socially motivating • Knowledge and skills from the science curriculum developed in context • That is, Future City is • a Practice Scaffolding Interactive Platform

28. References www.ekstrabladet.dk/skole ∙ www.futurecity.dk jebu@dpu.dk ∙ www.jeppe.bundsgaard.net Bundsgaard, J. (2009): Practice Scaffolding Interactive Platform. In: Proceedings from CSCL 2009. Bundsgaard, J. (2005): Bidrag til danskfagets it-didaktik [Contributions to the Educational Theory and Practice of IT in the Danish Subject]. PhD dissertation. Odense: Forlaget Ark. www.did2.bundsgaard.net Fougt, S. (2009). Didaktisk design af Interaktive assistenter. Master Thesis. Copenhagen: DPU. Henderson, L. (2008). Praksisfællesskaber i undervisningen. Master Thesis. Copenhagen: DPU. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schnack, Karsten (2000): Faglighed, undervisning og almen dannelse, in: Hans Jørgen Kristensen og Karsten Schnack (eds.): Faglighed og undervisning. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Shaffer, D. W. (2006). Epistemic frames for epistemic games. Computers & Education 46(3), 223 - 234. Wegerif, R. (2004). The role of educational software as a support for teaching and learning conversations. In: Computers and Education 43, p. 179-191.