Last week I had the chance to attend and present at the 9th European Conference on e-Learning (ECEL) 2010 in Porto.

I post the slides of my presentation here: “Students and Blogging: How to Map the Informal Learning Process?”, a paper produced in collaboration with my supervisors.

Besides the positive atmosphere and the nice contacts I made at the conference, Porto was …. WOW. What a extraordinary city.

PS: The conversion process in slideshare caused some visual distortions in some of the slides; however I think they give at least a basic idea…

Uuups… quite a while since the last post…
In fast motion, this is what happened and will happen shortly:

before 22.August – Writing up of thesis. Puuh.
22.August – Delivery of thesis draft
17.September – Mock viva
08. October – Delivery of revised thesis
22.October – Notification of viva date
29.November – Viva !!

5 things that have happened since my last blog post…

1 Presentation at the ICEL conference
Great experience, positive feedback, interested/-ing questions from the audience, feeling of doing something with at least a little bit of relevance in research, beautiful city.

2 Nomination of Paper for EJEL Publication
A great side effect of the conference. Some of the papers are going to be published in the Journal, among them also our (David Moore, Janet Finlay, Andrea Gorra, Reinhold Behringer, me) paper about Weblogs in Higher Education – Why Do Students (Not) Blog?

3 Writing up of Chapters
I had started to write up my research in 2008, but 2009 was the year where I seriously started to go through it chapter by chapter. I have collected experience in scientific writing, and in scientifically building up a chapter. Technically I am working with Open Office for text, Zotero for literature management, and (mostly) VUE for designing diagrams. I’ve written before about it.

4 Blogging Activity drastically reduced
A drawback. Through the writing of the chapters, all the “writing energy” is exhausted by that. All the time I have available, I want to put it into the chapters, because:

5 In 2010 I want to finish my dissertation.

In the last days I started to collect the empirical data still needed for my research project: 1-hour guided interviews with blogging students – on (possible) learning effects through blogging in informal contexts.

Similar to my former experience with interviewees 2 years ago, I had again some very interesting and insightful discussions with students. ( At this point I’d like to thank to all of you guys for your time, and your efforts to reflect on the issues and respond to the questions! It is your contributions that make this project possible…)

The interviews were preceded by a quite long time of preparation and research. I used it to prepare a “context of justification” about why I would concentrate on informal blogging, when there is so much research out there about blogs in course settings. Besides this, I needed to come to a definition of learning, and a model of learning on which to base the empirical research. (See also my presentation slides with some of the issues).

However, I finally think that the model of experiential learning, including a lot of questions for self-reflection, by Lloyd Davies (2008) comes close to my view on learning through blogging.

Where models of informal learning describe in my view a context for learning, models of experiential learning descirbe the process. In this sense, the go well hand in hand – and help to describe learning through blogging in informal contexts.

Based on Davies’ model and questions, I have developed my interviews. I do not agree with all points and elements of Davies’ model. I had many discussions with my supervisors when setting up the questionnaire, and found it sometimes difficult to stick with the use of terms by Davies (for instance, what is an event in comparison to an experience; or how does he confine informal learning from expereintial learning, etc). However, his mulit-dimensional view on learning, paired with suggestions for questions in all these dimensions, helped me a lot to get down from theory to a concrete view on the empirical study.

The homepage of Leeds Metropolitan University provides an area called “Daily Reflections”. In principle a nice idea: all members of the university are invited to contribute their reflections in various areas, for instance research reflections, assessment, learning and teaching, etc. – the chance for a glance into the institution and their people. Makes you think of blogs, right?

My study colleague has contributed a post as well as myself.

Unfortunately though, there is no RSS Feed (resp. just for the VC), and the rigid categories and day-by-day posting take away much of the spontaneity and instant.

Room for improvement, however i like the idea and effort taken.

Last week I visited Leeds Metropolitan University together with my study colleagues. Besides meeting our supervisors, we all had the chance to participate at the Mini Conference on March 24.

My presentation was about “How can Aspects of Informal Learning through Blogging be Measured?”. And is a work in progress on my recent struggling with the vast field of learning. Sorting ideas about informal and incidental learning (where definitions diverge a lot), their classification into the learning theories, models of learning to ground empirical research, limitations of learning models, etc.

The presentation is available as PDF.

…a wordpress update. From version 2.6 to 2.7, going along with a re-design.
I am surprised about the new admin interface, especially since it has just gone through a major change in the last version. Indeed, I found that last interface quite clear. This one doesn’t come across as well-arranged on the first sight.
On second sight, the overall logic seems more compact. Also, it has some very nice features, for instance the foldable menu on the left side, or the rollover-functions to edit or delete a post.
I need to play with the media functions some more. Those seem to date be the weekest part in every content management system, although much has been done by wordpress already. And at a certain point I’d be interested in how far the widget-concept can be driven.

Theories, Models and Investigations on Learning are an immensely deep field – Where to put the focus, what to measure, and HOW?

The basic learning theories were relatively clear: constructivist vs behaviourist and cognitivist, even when the term connectivism appeared on the horizon and researchers started discussing whether this is a new theory on learning.

Then I read about the different dimensions of learning – cognitive, social, emotional, motivational. Each of them worth a deeper investigation (->how? the lame concept of grades definitely doesn’t work anymore), but each of them also interconnected to the others. While the cognitive dimension (“what have you learned in terms of acquiring new knowledge”) is relatively easy to understand for a newbie – having experienced knowledge based exams for a long time in school – social and emotional factors are much more difficult to frame, although their importance for learning can not be neglected.

When going further – focussing on research done in the field of learning with web 2.0 – a real avalange of terms and concepts breaks in:
formal, non-formal and informal learning (and a bunch of definitions about the terms);
intentional and incidental-implicit-en passant learning (differences, commonalities?);
collaborative learning, cooperative learning, social learning (?);
self directed-regulated-organised learning (differences and commonalities explained for instance by Reinmann 2009);
lifelong learning;
…

Is it possible to create a model of learning which incorporates all of these facettes – dimensions – concepts?
And, even more important: when empirically investigating learning, what do we want to make explicit? Does the description of a (learning) process imply that something is learned? Or can we measure learning just through ‘products’?
The more I read about learning, the more question marks raise in front of me.

… everywhere, everything is re-structured everytime (all the time).
At the end of my PhD study nothing will be as it was in the beginning.

Alles bleibt anders.

It is now official:
“I am pleased to be able to tell you that your paper has been accepted for presentation and for publication in the conference proceedings.”

After the abstract acceptance, now our conference paper submission (co-authored by my supervisors David Moore, Janet Finlay, Andrea Gorra, Reinhold Behringer) with the title “Weblogs in Higher Education – Why Do Students (Not) Blog?” has been accepted for the 4th International Conference on e-Learning ICEL 2009, taking place 16-17 July 2009 in Toronto.

More info’s on conference and content will follow…