Learning, Part 1: The learning comes first

It's a curious thing, the acronym TEL. The 'Technology' part comes first. I much prefer "Learning Enhanced by Technology" for the subtle reason that it puts the horse in the right place.

Anyway. In this blog, it's the 'Learning' bit that leads. So, an orientation to learning as I consider it.

Learning is one of those terms used rather too casually, a word with such broad and everyday use it can describe almost anything. I recall the most memorable learning experience of my MA: defining the term "interactive", in the context of e-learning. Is merely clicking on something interacting with it? From a certain perspective, yes... but true interactivity implies reciprocation. The thing being clicked should be able to also interact with the one clicking. Once you think about "interactive" in this term you become that much more critical of claims related to it.

How we define terms ultimately reveals our assumptions about them. For the term learning, the range of meaning can go from 'knowing more stuff' to 'developing more complex views'. Metaphors across these two might be 'adding more bricks' to 'being able to build different things'. I'm firmly in the latter camp. My favourite definition of learning is that provided by Ellsworth, cited in Kamler & Thompson (2014, p.20):
Learning is a smudge between a self that knows to a self that knows more.
Learning is therefore "a moving self, in a dynamic relation with knowledge" (ibid). I like the concept of 'smudge' because it places learning in the context of a schemata (Wikipedia entry recommended). When we learn it's not like we add new files to our mental storage folders. Rather, learning adjusts the overall mental picture we have about something. We don't think in terms of facts and figures; instead, we think in terms of mental patterns. Learning as an activity seeks to enrich those mental patterns. Sometimes those patterns are improved slightly; other times they are directly challenged and fundamentally altered. Of course, it's also possible that a learning activity might fail to alter a mental pattern to any real significance.

Placing the term learning in the category of 'smudging schemata' rather than 'adding bricks' is vital to TEL practice.

  • Learning is the exercise of schematic development.
  • Knowledge is the substance that learning wrestles with, 
  • Information is the raw material of knowledge. 

Now, sometimes developing a schemata does require the memorisation of key facts, names, and a discipline's vocabulary. All of this however is performed in the context of the development of schemata; if you like, information provide the colour and direction for the smudge!

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