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Greeno, J., Eckert, P., Stucky, S., Sachs, P., Wenger, E. (1999,
September). Learning in and for Participation in Work and
Society. Retrieved November 26, 2001 from
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/HowAdultsLearn/Greeno.html
An analysis of adult learning as a process of becoming, not just of
learning to do. Learning in this sense is deeply about being an
individualized member of a community. This article discusses the
learning implications of communities of practice in the workplace.
Because learning is a process of becoming the standard workplace
method of segmenting functions and tasks leads to a limited
understanding of the community because learning is most effective when
the most context is available. Effective adult learning is
characterized by multiple perspectives and open access to information.
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I found this article while searching for information about learning,
categories, communities of practice, guilds and craftsmanship. A
community of practice is effectively an informal guild. Learning to
become is concept adaptation.
I like this quote:
Studies of learning at work show over and over again that the
formal organization of workplaces can stymie workers' attempts to make
their work meaningful. Much work today is still based on the
segmentation of functions and tasks and as a result inhibits a broader
understanding of the overall organization and how one fits into it.
People can contribute to the success of an organization in different
ways, and an important aspect of an individual's sense of meaning and
significance comes from being able to recognize and appreciate the way
that her or his activity contributes to the larger system of activity
in the organization.
In 501 today, we discussed the highly political aspect of knowledge
management. It's something a of a revolution: let people know stuff,
it's good for them. The old school quakes.
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Roschelle, J. (1995). Learning in Interactive Environments: Prior
Knowledge and New Experience. _Public Institutions for Personal
Learning: Establishing a Research Agenda_. John Falk and Lynn
Dierking, Editors. Washington: American Association of Museums.
Retrieved November 26, 2001 from
http://www.astc.org/resource/educator/priorknw.htm
An extensive review of the impact of prior learning on new learning
experiences from the perspective of Piaget, Dewey and Vygotsky. In
this review prior learning, often viewed as a challenge to be
overcome, is seen as a crucial part of the process forcing a shift
away from viewing learning as the accumulation of information to a
process of conceptual change. For the author this implies change for
designers:
First, designers should seek to refine prior knowledge, and not
attempt to replace learners' understanding with their own. Second,
designers must anticipate a long-term learning process, of which the
short-term experience will form an incremental part. Third, designers
must remember that learning depends on social interaction;
conversations shape the form and content of the concepts that learners
construct. Only part of specialized knowledge can exist explicitly as
information; the rest must come from engagement in the practice of
discourse of the community.
These changes are supported by Piaget, Dewey and Vygotsky:
Piaget emphasizes psychological changes to schemata, Dewey
emphasizes the transformative possibilities in experience, and
Vygotsky emphasizes the role of social interaction in reconstructing
the relationship of structures to experience.
Piaget's thoughts are reminescent of Zerubavel's fine lines:
encountering conceptual boundaries leads to learning.
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Landauer, T. (1995). _The trouble with computers_. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
_The trouble with computers_ is one of the classics of HCI literature.
It makes a compelling economic argument for user centered design,
development and deployment. This has been important for it is
frequently difficult to make the arugment for a user based approach
when developing technology because it appears expensive.
Landauer is important in the context of the Norman readings done for
597 in a few different ways:
- Norman whines alot and expects people to do better but doesn't
really say much in a practical way of what to do or how to
justifying the doing.
- Norman talks about computers as a compositional medium for working
with representations. This corresponds with Landauer's view of phase
two computing applications: augmenting machines.
- Both make the same conclusion: the need for a human centered
approach.
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Dent, C. (2001). The computer as tool: from interaction to
augmentation. Retrieved December 8, 2001 from
http://www.burningchrome.com/~cdent/slis/l542/useTools.htm.
My paper for 542. This work is effectively a synthesis of the first
third of half of 597 where the cognitive underpinnings of
classification and categorization were discussed. The paper makes a
case for considering the computer as a tool instead of an intentional
interactive artifact. The primary argument is focused on the
difference between classification and categorization (as I defined
them earlier in the class) and how computers, at this time, can only
achieve classification.
The paper is not as good as it should be because there are _far_
too many references to pursue. This paper was limited to 3000-5000
words. A further review would include more evaluation of Winograd and
Flores; chasing the sources that Norman uses (and doesn't do a good
job of crediting) in _Things that make us smart_; reading up on
Vygotsky, Bhaktin, Piaget; more Zerubavel, Wenger, Barsalou. On and
on. But there wasn't time.
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