Case Story: Architecture 4 Participatory Learning workshop, Singapore, Aug. 2008

Summary	On Aug. 8th, 2008 we ran a workshop in Singapore. This turned out to be very fruitful, and the format could help us shape future events
Group / workshop	Planet team	Status	seed
Project details...	The workshop was run by Yishay Mor from the Planet Team and Niall Winters from the LKL.It was commissioned and arranged by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

IDA Singapore had invited us to run a workshop in conjunction with the iCTLT conference. The workshop was intended for partners in Singapore's future schools programme: teachers and headmasters, curriculum designers, software developers and programme staff. We had around 40 participants. Since the workshop was run immediately after the conference, most participants did not have time to engage prior to the event on-site.

Task

What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

The aim of the workshop was to help educators, curriculum designers and software developers recognize ways for effectively utilising new technologies to support children's learning in the future schools project.

• Teachers are aware of the potential of new technologies, but do not know how to map them to their educational practices and concrete needs.
• Curriculum designers need to understand how technologies could support the curriculum, and how the curriculum needs to adapt to them.
• Software developers have a broad understanding of the technologies, and how they relate to an intuitive view of learning, but need a way to share knowledge with the other parties.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

Prior to the event

We set up a minimal workshop workspace on the wiki, including:

• call for participation (CFP)
• background reading (using Bibsonomy)

The CFP included a brief overview of the workshop, links to the case studies and patterns sections on the site, and practical information (e.g. agenda).

The background reading includes links to selected papers, intended for those who want to broaden their knowledge.

We set up a mailing list for all workshop participants, and used it to send out an introductory email:

Dear all,

Thank you for registering for the  IDA iLAB2015 Ideation Workshop: An Architecture for Participatory Learning, Singapore, 8 Aug 2008.
This workshop follows a model use successfully by the Learning Patterns and Planet project for over ten workshops. It is driven by participant's contributions, and uses a web-based collaborative editing system to extend the interaction before and after the day on site. In fact - the workshop starts now!

We will be using this mailing list for administrative announcements and general discussion, and the web-based system for structured elicitation of design knowledge (don't worry - we'll explain what that means in a minute). To send a message to all workshop participants, simply address it to: planet-apl@googlegroups.com. Note: if you respond to an email from the list, everyone sees your response - not just the author, so take care!

Our workshops are based two assumptions: everyone is an expert in what they do, and everyone involved in education is a designer. The first is almost obvious if you think about it - no one knows your job better than you! The second is based on Herbert Simon's view of design: "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones", which is what education is all about. If you're an expert, and a designer, you have valuable design knowledge. The problem is that you may not be aware of it, and not know how to share it with your peers. We hope this workshop will help you do that. We'll lead you through a process of describing case studies, identifying their critical elements, calibrating them with other cases, and framing the knowledge the emerges in a structured form.

But first, we need you to do two things: introduce yourself, and register on the site.

Introduction:
========
Please send a short mail to the list (planet-apl@googlegroups.com) and note

• where you're coming from
• what you bring to this workshop
• what you expect to take from it

Registration:

=========
Please register at:

http://patternlanguagenetwork.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/register/XWiki/Register

You can then log in at:

http://patternlanguagenetwork.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/login/XWiki/XWikiLogin

If you have any problems or questions, please contact us directly - "Niall Winters" n.winters@ioe.ac.uk, "Yishay Mor" yishaym@gmail.com.
Once you're in, do have a look around, especially at the existing case studies and design patterns:
http://patternlanguagenetwork.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Cases/

http://patternlanguagenetwork.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Patterns/

Looking forward to a most productive and enjoyable experience!

Niall Winters and Yishay Mor, London Knowledge Lab

We responded to our call for introductions, to provide an example:

Where I'm coming from
After an MSc in computer science and 6 years in the software industry, I made a career shift to educational research. My current work focuses on mathematics education, participatory technologies, and personal and community empowerment. I've previously worked with the WebLabs, Learning Patterns and CoMo projects (to name a few). Currently I'm one of the partners in the Pattern Language Network project.
See my full profile: http://www.lkl.ac.uk/people/mor.html

What I bring
Together with Niall, I developed the methodology which will be used in this workshop. We've used this methodology to examine the developement and use of games for learning mathematics, and more recently the use of social software and virtual worlds in higher education. I have extensive experience with various forms of social software as a designer, user, and researcher.

What I hope to take with me
Surprising new insights emerging from your experience, and a lot of new questions to think about.

Unfortunately, most of the participants were at a conference prior to the workshop, and could not respond. We received about 4 introduction emails.  

On the day

Introductions

We opened the day with a short (20 min) talk about the pattern network network project, its aims and methodology, and the structure of the day. We kept the theory to a minimum, but provided participants with the link to the presentation.

Sketching game

We thought the group was too big for an elaborate round of introductions. Instead, as a warm-up exersice for the case study part, we asked participants to sketch a "formative learning experience". The brief was to think of a memorable incident where they learnt something, and describe it in a drawing. They could use text as part of the drawing (e.g. text bubbles) but not as a form of description.

We then asked a sample of the participants to present their sketch and tell the story behind it, and discussed the essential message about learning which emerges.

usingD

During the coffee break, we hung the sketches on the walls, and asked participants to use post-it notes to comment on them. The response was close to zero.

Case sharing

Working in groups, participants were asked to share case studies from their experience in using technology to support learning. We set the following the three-role-rule:

In each group, one person contributes a case study, another posts it on the system, and a third will use the posted item to present the case to the whole workshop.

In general, the three-role-rule worked well. However, due to technical glitches, some of the cases were recorded as word files etc. This resulted in them not being available post-event.

Pattern elicitation

Each group presented their case study, and together with participants we identified similarities between cases and noted seed patterns. We then assigned each group with one pattern to post on the system and elaborate. 

Our plan was to present and discuss these patterns in the full group. However, due to time constraints, we reduced this to a brief highlighting of key points.

Summary, reflections and planning ahead

To conclude, we reviewed the process we had underwent. We asked participants to note one thing they gained, and one thing they're confused about. We noted the points of confusion as the issues we need to address after the workshop.

Post-workshop

Developing the group space

We added three pages to the group space:

• Case studies from the workshop
• Patterns from the workshop
• Reflections

Case and Pattern refinement (planned)

We plan to continue working with participants, to elaborate and refine their case studies and patterns.

Scenario-based pattern-supported collaborative design (planned)

We plan to work with interdisciplinary groups of workshop participants on designing and developing solutions to challenges they face in their work, by framing these as scenarios, comparing them to case studies and applying relevant patterns.

(all images from http://www.flickr.com/photos/yish/sets/72157606683487038/)

Results

What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?

Apart from the 8 case studies and 6 patterns, the workshop generated some excellent questions. See:

http://patternlanguagenetwork.org/2008/08/19/singapore-what-our-users-want/

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

• The sketching game was a very good means of establishing trust and getting participants "in the flow". It also appears to have value in its own right and should be developed further.
• The three-role-rule worked quite well to encourage participation and engender a sense of joint enterprise.
• Getting participants to post their contributions on the system is critical:
  • In terms of the dynamics on the day, having the contirbutions in the system allowed us to monitor the group work unintrousivly, and made streamlined presentations.
  • In terms of post-event followup, it is very hard to get hold participants' contributions if they are not posted under their name on the day.
• We need to think hard about sustaining the workshop community and ensuring that participants will continue their work post-event. In particular, we need to understand how the practices and tools introduced at the workshop can fit into participants' daily work environment.

Licensing

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.