New Technology Supporting Informal Learning by Stephen Downes

An excellent paper by Stephen Downes who talks about the connectivism course experience, personal learning environments, and gRSShopper as a prototype PLE.

Double-Loop Learning

The concept of double-loop learning was introduced by Argyris and Schön in 1978. Argyris (1991) argues that most people define learning too narrowly as mere “problem solving”, so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment. This is what Argyris calls single-loop learning. But, in the words of Argyris: "If learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. They need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization’s problems, and then change how they act". This deeper form of learning is what Argyris terms “double-loop learning”. Argyris and Schön (1996, p20) define single-loop learning as "learning that changes strategies of actions or assumptions underlying strategies in ways that leave the values of a theory of action unchanged", and douple-loop learning as "learning that results in a change in the values of theory-in-use, as well as in its strategies and assumptions". In other words, Argyris and Schön differentiate between learning that does not change the underlying mental models of the learner but merely revises their application scenarios (single-loop), and learning which does affect such changes (double-loop). Double-loop learning starts from a learner's mental model defined by base norms, values, assumptions, and theories-in-use, and suggests critical reflection to challenge, invalidate, or confirm the used values and theories-of-use. The result of this reflection would be a reframing of one's norms and values, and a restructuring of one's theories-in-use, according to the new settings. Double-loop learning requires self-criticism, i.e. the capacity for questioning ones norms and theories-in-use and encourages inquiry into and testing of one's actions.

In my opinion, the ideas behind douple-loop learning hold several important implications for practice and research around learning and knowledge management.

First, double-loop learning explains the need for self-organized learning and personal knowledge management.

 Second, if the concepts behind double-loop learning are applied properly, the line between learning and KM disappears. Learning and KM become then a matter of creating a freeform environment conducive to inquiry and trial-and-error; that is, an environment in which we can make connections, see patterns, reflect, self-criticize, detect/correct errors, inquire, test, challenge and eventually change our theories-in-use.

Third, learning/KM cannot be achieved by a pre-determined process, such as teacher-driven learning design or linear SECI process. Pre-defined processes cannot work within increasingly complex and fast-changing environments. In complex environments, we're confronted with emerging opportunities and challenges that call for a rethinking of the theory or process-in-use in order to match the needs of the new setting.  

References:

Argyris, C., Schön, D. A. (1996) Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method and Practice, Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1996.

 Argyris, C. (1991) Teaching Smart People How to Learn.

EUAM 2009 - Deadline extended

CALL FOR PAPERS

Exploitation of Usage and Attention Metadata (EUAM 09)
euam.fit.fraunhofer.de

Workshop organised as part of Informatik 2009 (www.informatik2009.de),
Sep 28, 2009 in Lübeck, Germany

The Workshop Proceedings will be included in a volume of the Lecture
Notes in Informatics (LNI), published by the Gesellschaft für Informatik
(GI).



>>>>> The deadline for submissions has been extended until May, 6!



Workshop Purpose and Topics:
Information systems provide an almost unlimited number of information in
numerous environments. Users in diverse contexts need support to deal
with the new challenges in information acquisition and use. Today, such
support is rather limited as it does not take into account the user’s
tasks and goals. A promising way of dealing with this challenge is
provided by approaches that determine adequacy and relevance on the
basis of the user’s actual behaviour and attention as recorded in server
log files or on the individual user’s computers. Frameworks and data
formats – like the Contextualized Attention Metadata (CAM) format – have
been developed for capturing, storing, exchanging and analyzing metadata
on usage and attention. However, the effective exploitation of such
metadata is still a desideratum, specifically in the more life science
oriented research directions (medical staff, for example, can neither
afford a lack of information nor an overflow with irrelevant information
in emergency cases). Another example is the application of personal
learning environments in higher and lifelong education where individual
educational support is scarce. The workshop objective is to discuss new
ways of exploiting usage and attention metadata in different application
areas like technology enhanced learning, recommender systems,
collaborative systems, etc.

The workshop deals with the generation and exploitation of usage and
attention metadata for attention aware systems. Topics of interest
include (but are not limited to) the following:

   1. Capturing attention metadata
          * Secure exchange of usage and attention metadata
          * Attention metadata sources
   2. Representing attention metadata
   3. Frameworks for capturing, storing and analyzing usage and
attention metadata
   4. Analyzing attention metadata
          * Combining semantic metadata with usage/attention metadata
          * Contextualizing usage and attention metadata
          * Detection of users’ tasks, goals and intentions based on
their behaviour
          * Attention based task support
          * Identification of preferences
          * Identification of skills and competencies
          * Mental and emotional states recognition
          * Generation of usage-based document profiles
          * Attention and usage based recommender systems, determining
relevancy and informativity of data
          * Generation of user profiles and social network analysis

Keynote speaker: tba.

Addressees and Workshop Format:
The workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from
relevant disciplines (digital libraries, information systems,
personalization, attention aware systems, user modeling, social systems,
psychology, linguistic pragmatics, sociology, technology enhanced
learning etc.) who work on capturing and analyzing usage and attention
metadata. While focusing on the German research communities, which are
already rather fragmented, the workshop encourages submissions from all
world-wide relevant research communities. Therefore, the workshop
language will be English. The workshop will foster the
cross-fertilization between application areas and aid the technology
transfer from basic research into practice.

Submission Details:
Authors are invited to submit full papers not exceeding 6-8 pages until
April 26, 2009. Please use the ConfTool submission system at:
https://www.itm.uni-luebeck.de/conftool-gi09/ (English version
available). For questions regarding the submission procedure, please
contact Hans-Christian Schmitz
(hans-christian.schmitz@fit.fraunhofer.de). Submissions will be reviewed
by the workshop's program committee.

Participants must register for Informatik 2009 (only for the day of the
workshop).

Workshop Proceedings:
Accepted papers will be published in the Proceedings of Informatik 2009
which will appear as a volume of the 'Lecture Notes in Informatics
(LNI)'. Further information can be found at
www.gi-ev.de/service/publikationen/gi-edition-lecture-notes-in-informatics-lni-2005/autorenrichtlinien.html.

Important Dates:

    * May 6, 2009: Submission of full papers (extended deadline)
    * June 7, 2009: Notification of acceptance
    * July 1, 2009: Camera-ready papers
    * Sept 28, 2009: Workshop

Program Committee:

    * Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Brause, University of Frankfurt am Main
    * Mohamed Amine Chatti, RWTH Aachen
    * Prof. Dr. Erik Duval, KU Leuven
    * Dr. Eelco Herder, L3S Research Center
    * Prof. Dr. Thomas Kirste, University of Rostock
    * Dr. Stefanie Lindstädt, Know Center Graz
    * Dr. Jobst Löffler, Fraunhofer IAIS
    * Martin Memmel, DFKI
    * Dr. Jehad Najjar, Synergetics
    * Raluca Paiu, L3S Research Center
    * Prof. Dr. Claudia Roda, American University Paris
    * Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schade, FGAN FKIE
    * Dr. Hans-Christian Schmitz, Fraunhofer FIT
    * Sven Schwarz, DFKI
    * Prof. Dr. Marcus Specht, Open University Netherlands
    * Kai Eckert, University of Mannheim
    * Dr. Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT

Workshop Organisers:

    * Dr. Hans-Christian Schmitz
    * Dr. Martin Wolpers

The paradox of choice

In this video, Psychologist Barry explains how "choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied".

PLE - PKN

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a self-defined collection of services, tools, and devices that help learners build their Personal Knowledge Networks (PKN), encompassing tacit knowledge nodes (i.e. people) and explicit knowledge nodes (i.e. information).