Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices: Brief Description of Research Program

Introduction

Over the last decade or more, information and communications technologies (ICTs) have developed and proliferated at a remarkable rate. The Internet, the Web, mobile telecommunica-tions, and most recently, mobile computing have all changed the way we keep in touch, shop, do business and engage in other everyday activities. However, our understanding of how the utility of these technologies is realized in everyday situations and acts --in common practice-- has struggled to keep up. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the case of teaching and learning: Technological innovations like the Internet and the Web provide a range of radically new possibilities for pedagogical practices, for the organization of educational institutions and contexts, and for the production and distribution of educational contents (to name but a few examples). These radical, even revolutionary possibilities are effectively captured in the term "e-learning," suggesting as it does the combination of the digital and the "e-lectronic" with learning and education. But the much-anticipated "e-learning revolution" has not occurred. Traditional practices, institutions and forms --classrooms, universities, lectures-- have not been abolished. Instead, e-learning now designates a complex amalgam of activities, technologies and configurations that continue to evolve in ways that elude reductive, predictive and functionalist accounts. It is through the development of new understandings more suited to this evolution, and through active participation in this evolutionary process, that my research program will impact e-learning theory and practice.

Overview

As Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices, I will address the complex and evolving combination of technologies, activities, conditions and contexts that have come to be associated with the term "e-learning." The range of phenomena captured in the word "practices," on the other hand, extends from the theory-driven work of experts and designers to the utilization, improvisation and innovation undertaken by technology users, students and teachers. Practice, in this sense, is understood as having manifold and reciprocal relationships with technology, simultaneously influencing and being influenced by it. My research in e-learning practices at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) and its Open Learning division (TRU-OL) will affirm and incorporate "practice," consciously embracing its ambiguous and sometimes conflicting meanings, specifically:

1. "the explicit and tacit dimensions of the rules, precepts, codes, principles, guides, commitments, affects, and behaviors that one observes or recommends within a domain of action;"
2. "the habitual doing or carrying on of something; usual, customary, or constant action; action as distinguished from profession, theory, know-ledge, etc;" and
3. "the carrying on or exercise of a profession or occupation" (OED, 1989).

Especially as characterized in the first two of these definitions, "practice" has already gained recognizable but notably qualified currency in e-learning research. This is indicated in the relatively frequent use of phrases such as "communities of practice" or "cognition in practice" (Wenger, 1998; Lave, 1989). However, the familiarity of these and associated phrases in e-learning literature has not been matched by a similarly widespread recognition or adoption of the methodological frameworks in which these terms have their origin: Anthropology, ethnomethodology, and ethnography (Lave, 1991). Obviously, these methodologies are much more closely associated with the study of human cultures and activities than are approaches more common in e-learning research, such as computational cognitivism, cybernetics or information theory (e.g., see Friesen & Feenberg, in press). My research program will restore to the study of e-learning the emphasis on human culture, action and meaning that is originally implied in the term "practice." It will do so by employing methodologies to which human interpretation, experience and everyday activity are central.

Integrating my own research program with the priorities identified in TRU’s strategic plan, these methodologies will be applied as follows:

1. to the study of existing and exemplary teaching practices incorporating new technologies as these are found both at TRU and in related institutions across Canada;
2. to e-learning technology design and technical standards development activities, as these have been practised both in my own work and in that of TRU-OL; and
3. more specifically, to my own internationally recognized work in the systematic description (or metadata) for modular e-learning resources (or learning objects), and TRU-OL’s corresponding work on the systematic creation and collection (via repositories) of such resources (e.g., see Friesen, 2004).

My intention, in other words, is to radicalize the term "practice" in relation to e-learning, in all of the senses or meanings listed earlier. I will explore practice using a range of methodologies emerging from the study of human meaning, experience, ideology, and dialogue. These methodologies include hermeneutics, phenomenology, critical theory, ethnomethodology, and discursive psychology --explicitly interdisciplinary forms of research more familiar to the theory and design of technology generally (e.g., Dahlbom & Mathiessen 1993; Dourish, 2001) than in e-learning in particular.

References

Dahlbom, D. and Mathiessen, L. (1993). Computers in Context. The Philosophy and Practice of Systems Design. Oxford: Blackwell.

Dourish, P. (2001). Where the Action is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Friesen, N. (2004). Editorial - A Gentle Introduction to Technical E-learning Standards. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 30(3).

Friesen, N. & Feenberg, A. (in press). "Ed Tech in Reverse": Information Technologies and the Cognitive Revolution. Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lave, J. (1991). "Situated Learning in Communities of Practice." In L. Resnick, J. Levine, & S. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp. 63-82). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

OED. (1989). The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). London: Oxford University Press.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.