5. Advanced Pedagogical Models

One aim of the Calibrate project is to explore to what extent IMS Learning Design is able to model collaborative learning processes and scenarios in order to support the collaborative use of learning resources accessed via the Learning Resource Exchange. In Work Package 3, the Toolbox development team have stated that they want to develop an environment that contains templates for pedagogy. In particular they were thinking of creating “Progressive Inquiry Learning Object Templates” (PILOTs) that is within the perspective of social constructivism (Põldoja et. al., 2004). This issue was also discussed in the CELEBRATE project where Lakkala et. al. (2003) suggested templates for three types of social constructivist learning:

• Problem-based learning,

• Discovery learning, and

• Progressive inquiry model.

Roughly, these types of learning emphasize an object (e.g. a video, image, a discussion in the newspapers or a symptom of disease) that is the starting point of an inquiry process together with peer students and a teacher. These learning types may conduct the inquiry differently as they have been developed from different research areas. The main assumption underlying these learning types is that, challenging students to construct their own solutions to authentic problems or learn complex knowledge in information rich settings, leads to the most effective learning experience (Kirschner, Sweller and Clark, 2004).

Problem-based learning (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980) is practically oriented as students work with cases and problems that represent real life situations. The method typically starts with a problem that occurs in real life situations and is described authentically with all the information of the situation. These problem descriptions usually follow a path from easy problems within a subject domain towards more difficult problem descriptions as the students’ understanding increases. The process of problem solving is organised in groups. Together students learn to divide the problem into sub-problems, to formulate hypotheses, to activate their previous knowledge, to reflect on their work and discuss their understanding with peer-students. Working in groups helps students to share understanding and thus construct a common knowledge base. They also get guidance in their study meetings from a real tutor, who supports their study activities in the various phases of the process (Lakkala et. al., 2003).

Discovery learning (Bruner, 1961) emphasizes active students that ask questions, formulate hypotheses and carry out experiments. The idea is that students have to find and apply methods to achieve some predefined goals and in doing so they achieve knowledge of the object of inquiry as well as skills in applying inquiry based methods.

The last type of learning Lakkala et. al. (2003) suggest is the creation of templates to support the model of progressive inquiry. It has been developed by the Centre for Research on Networked Learning and Knowledge Building at University of Helsinki, Finland. The basis of progressive inquiry is found in Kai Hakkarainen's doctoral thesis (1998) closely associated with Bereiter and Scardamalia's (1993) knowledge building approach. Progressive inquiry entails that new knowledge is not simply assimilated but jointly constructed through solving problems and building mutual understanding (Muukkonen, Hakkarainen & Leinonen, 2000). Characteristic of progressive inquiry is that students treat new information as something problematic that needs to be explained. By imitating practices of scientific research communities, students can be guided in an inquiry-based process of asking questions and answering them by an explanation. An essential aspect of this kind of process is to engage students to collaboratively improve the understanding of shared knowledge objects, i.e., problems, hypotheses, theories, explanations or interpretations. Through intensive collaboration and peer-to-peer interaction, resources of the whole learning community may be used to facilitate advancement of the inquiry process.

Problem-based learning, discovery learning and progressive inquiry all take a particular, but quite similar view of learning activities, the role of teacher and students, and how knowledge is created. To transform such conceptual ideas to a virtual learning environment, a designer will have to encapsulate the essential elements of these learning types into a data model of education. This was also addressed in the CELEBRATE project where Ilomäki et al. (2003) suggested learning principles and guidelines that the producers could use when creating LOs. The following learning principles are suggested and elaborated:

• Activate prior knowledge emphasize the importance of waking up the learners’ motivation toward learned issues, in addition to activating their thinking.

• Support conceptual change deals with how to restructure and reformulate pre-instructional conceptual structures of learners have in order to allow understanding of the intended knowledge.

• Give expert models and guidance is a suggestion of how expert guidance and scaffolding during the learning process can enable learners to deal with more challenging tasks than they could do alone.

• Give the possibility to deal with the complexity of the content emphasize how a learning process and its content, activities and tools represent knowledge and understanding in real-life situations.

• Give multiple representations deals with how the same phenomena can be represented in different contexts to foster externalization of the relationships between different models to facilitate students’ thinking.

• Support collaboration that is directed to thinking and explaining is a suggestion on how we can guide students to pose questions or problems that direct their work.

• Visualization of thinking suggests how we can help to facilitate students to better focus on the task in hand by providing graphical representation.

• Analogical reasoning deals with how we can provide example problems/contexts, which are authentic-like and relevant to the learners.

• Skill training emphasizes how we can support the repetition and re-enforcement for adaptation of new skills.

The suggestions made by Ilomäki et al. (ibid.) are only guidelines for the creation of new LOs and it is not expected that all the principles will be apart of each new LO. Rather, they are meant as a “wake up call” for LO producers and are so detailed that they would serve the template work in WP3 well.

At the University of Oslo we have conceptualized and implemented advanced pedagogical ideas in an approach that is labeled “Digital Case Methodology”. It is currently an important contribution in a technology driven reform that since 2000 has been a part of the final year of the practical pedagogical teacher education program in Norway (Hauge, 2005). Digital Case Methodology draws its intellectual heritage from Case Based Learning (Shulman, 1992), writing to learn (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987) and problem based learning (Koschman, Kelson, Feltovich & Barrows, 1996) where important aims are to foster reflective and critical thinking; challenge technical-skill oriented teaching and stimulate situated learning. In such a methodology authentic every day problems and dilemmas form the primary starting point. Another important heritage comes from the research field of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), which is “concerned with meaning and practices of meaning-making in the context of joint activity and the ways in which these practices are mediated through designed artifacts” (Koschmann, 2002). CSCL incorporates the pedagogical ideas found in the mentioned learning types, but adds the aspect of tools such as computers. Digital Case Methodology provides in this report the empirical case that represents the advanced pedagogical method. The case was labeled “Case 9c - Classroom Management and Leadership” and its pedagogical scenario and different implementations will be presented in the next chapter.