Précis:
The overarching goal of the "Learning Spaces" research project is to contribute to understandings of "real" versus "virtual" interactions, and to explore their pedagogical implications. This will be achieved through comparative, phenomenological study of students' lived experience of engagement in both mediated and simulated e-learning environments in which various objects, software programs and other people are encountered.
The specific objectives of this research are:
- To investigate the experiential dimensions of time, space, embodiment and relation as these are revealed in both simulated and mediated networked environments.
- To understand how these virtual and mediated experiences may create conditions, situations, and relations of significance for teaching and learning.
This study makes use of a "phenomenology of practice" as described by van Manen, as carried out by the principal investigator in SSHRC-funded PhD research (2003). Through techniques such as reduction, eidetic variation and analytic/synthetic writing, this project examines a number of interrelated but qualitatively different "experiential worlds" and "encounters" that come into being through computers and Internet networks:
Encounters with Objects Encounters with "Interlocutors" Simulated Worlds Simulated experiments (e.g. MERLOT collection) Educational chatbots (e.g. Freudbot) Mediated Worlds Remote experimentation (e.g. Online experiments) Remote reference service or support via chat (e.g. reference desk chat service) This study understands each of these worlds and encounters as presenting their own or existential properties, qualities or "ontologies." The study will explore the pedagogical implications of these properties in terms of "tactful action," "situational confidence," "lived topographies" and other "environmental characteristics" significant to the manifestation of pedagogical meaning and significance. The examination of the suitability of virtual and mediated worlds for pedagogical purposes will help to answer questions that will be important to a variety of practitioners in a wide range of circumstances. These include researchers, designers, teachers, administrators and developers working with or planning for the use of instructional technologies. Examples of these questions are:
- Does the authenticity of the learning situation matter: Is the experience of learning different in communication or interaction with real objects and interlocutors versus simulated ones?
- Do students experience the feedback or guidance of a computer system differently than of a teacher who is also online? If so, how does this experiential difference appear if it can be captured and variously interpreted?
- Based on the identified qualitative differences in experience, how can simulated and mediated environments be designed to address difficulties, breakdowns, and other, often unanticipated aspects arising from engagement with them?