Insights into Mobile Telecoms in Africa: Predictions for mlearning and transactional economies of higher education
(The above is what mobile for higher education in disaggregated environments looks like at least in my head. A composite community of modularized units. Foundational African map here is by Giacomo Gastaldi from Venice in 1566. This map is from the wonderful Afriterra Foundation. It has been remixed a bit using MacOSaiX)
I have been making my way for the second or third time through "Insights into Mobile Telecoms in Africa" from Jon Hoehler and Andrew McHenry (presentation is below). As far as statistical based reports on the state of the industry type presentations are concerned, this is a real gem for what it states explicitly and what those statistics allows us to believe possible for Africa in the coming years. For those of us in elearning and mlearning, it brings quite a bit of optimism to the discussion of what the landscape will look like in Africa in the near future. For this post, I wanted to make a prediction based on what I see here; feel free to disagree if you think I am way off-base.
Prediction #1: Mobile penetration and particularly the rise of smartphones will accelerate the disintermediation of African (formal or informal) learning and African higher education. But there is real opportunity there.
I would like to believe this wouldn't be the case, but institutions of formal learning (in some African countries, mind you) are already marginalized. There are some exceptions: South Africa, Northern Africa, Kenya. Mobile, with its capacity to circumvent formal structures for learning engagement, will accelerate that process. I see informal learning groups on culturally appropriate structures, similar to what we have seen in mhealth and mfarming initiatives on the continent. I just envision these informal/formal learning groups happening for many other disciplines as well: literature, language, computer science and with accreditation mechanisms to boot.
One slide in particular led me to this conclusion (and this is admittedly a bit of a stretch). Slide 55, which outlines Africa's breakdown of Feature phone vs. Smartphone users and what they do. I have always proceeded with mlearning research in Africa under the auspices that it was bad form, even outlandish even, to discuss the potential of smartphones for development. That it was such a pipe dream and not specific to the realities of the vast majority of the user base. And this remains true. Smartphone penetration is still quite low and will remain so for quite some time, but this slide demonstrates what impact they will have should price points for both devices and connectivity continue to drop in the coming years (and assuming governments continue to deregulate).
By 2016 (from slide 56),
- 35% of all mobile connections will be smartphones in South Africa
- 20% for Egypt
- <15% for Kenya
- 15% for Nigeria
Those are still low numbers as compared to mobile access overall, but certainly nothing to scoff at. Why do smartphones matter? It is all about the transactional economies created. Monthly, the average smartphone user sends approximately 300 text messages (as opposed to 60 for non-smartphones), uses 1000 MB of data (as opposed to 10), and conducts 20 transactions via their mobile device (as opposed to 1). In this instance, it is the 20 transactions I am fascinated with as the starkest differential. 20 transactions vs. 1. How these transactions break down in terms of activity is important, certainly, and many of these would be financial (once again, mobile as a culturally appropriate technology for money transactions, like M-Pesa et al). But that is a hefty difference in terms of formalized activity.
What is more important is that many of these transactions represent a circumvention of (or even supplementary parallel to) traditional structures (banks, libraries, schools). There is no reason these transactions have to exist outside of these formal structures, but they do. Higher education should be looking towards establishing a transactional economy as well, of learning in doses based on transactional interactions in communities. There is no reason higher education in Africa (or anywhere) cannot establish a transactional economy via mobile, but they don't. There is no reason that we cannot encapsulate the ethos and process of higher education by modularizing learning and encouraging collaboraton via mobile, but we don't. Nobody does that last one, anywhere.
What is clear is that sub-Saharan's Africa's GDP rose by an average of 5.7% between 2000 and 2010 (slide 6) and is expected to rise by 7% annually over the next 20 years. That is ridiculous growth so the lessons being learned here are ingenuity combined with resourcefulness leads to growth. Good on them for this. However, this growth is not largely a result of the efficiency and impact of African higher education (apologies again for the sweeping statements), but rather a resourceful determination to do whatever it takes to see progress. Higher education could serve a valued need here, one of knowledge production and dissemination, of quality assurance and standards, or intellectual rigor and capitalizing on the abundance of innovation taking place on the continent. It doesn't now, but it could.
It will take a daring system/nation/region to disaggregate (or to optimally reconstruct) higher education for the purposes of serving mobile users. What is needed is a system that allows for learning communities to form, structure and self-regulate themselves, be acknowledged for the work they are doing, and disseminate their work. There is a cultural precedent already in place for this and there is no real technological deterministic solution necessary. Africa has made do and thrived to some degree with cheap SMS phone and multiple SIM cards. The energy is there, the innovation is there, and there is certainly persistence there. What is missing is a higher educational system that can capitalize on this innovation, systematize it to some degree (without killing the spark), perhaps even replicate successes for certain areas, disseminate this knowledge, and allow society to learn from it. What is missing is this transactional economy of mobile learning for higher education. Africa has real opportunity to be a leading light here (and I fully expect they will be), to demonstrate that institutional doesn't need to equate to immobile (or sluggish), that tradition doesn't need to perpetually trump efficiency and process.
A continent of collaboration and learning communities working towards localized information needs and supported through an accessible, highly mobile, even disaggregated organization of higher education. Yes, this is indeed pie in the sky thinking, but I have no doubt that the restless innovation we see in Africa currently will accelerate an evolving notion of utility. And a discretionary eye will eventually be turned towards the traditional structures of society, including higher education.
A truly excellent presentation precisely because it is so direct. Certainly had me thinking.
Seoul Hospital Noises and the orienting din of ambience
I was just today at the clinic (all is well) in Seoul at Severance Hospital and, arriving a bit early for my appointment, I sat in the main hall and watched people come and go for awhile, all hectic with purpose with charts and lab coats and IV trolleys. There was some structure there in their movement, but I wasn't able to see it. So I closed my eyes and just listened. I relaxed and breathed deeply and then listened and more structure revealed itself to me. My mind floated a bit through this noise and I heard the surface structure of phone chatter, squeaky linoleum and hospital shoes, and an elevator ding. It took a minute or two to dig past this. Then, I stumbled across the white noise, that din lingering beneath all sound.
din (dn) n. A jumble of loud, usually discordant sounds.
I find myself wanting to reclaim the word din as something else entirely. Not as discordant, loud, nor even a jumble of sound, but rather a pattern. A sequence that lurches away from chaos and random towards purpose, even if spontaneous. A network of sound. All of these sound agents, these squeaky shoes, elevators, IV trolleys, and phone conversations, are pursuing their own purpose as much they should. But they interact in structural patterns that a whimsical wisp away from melody. An ambient melody of our buildings and cities and purpose-built places. These purpose-built places (these schools, supermarkets, subways, hospitals, and homes) have an audible register and they speak, they breathe in sound. So, naturally I recorded it with my eyes closed.
It takes a bit of time to hear anything, except that ambient whoosh lingering beneath every surface register. A crackly whoosh of air meandering through the building like a persistent whisper. Sound is electric.
Being who I am, I try to relate everything to learning and it wouldn't be hard to make that stretch with this experience. By simply negating one sense (sight) was I able to isolate another (ambient sound). By removing the content from the context (recording the audio and posting it here), I allow you to imagine what a hospital means in this context. How laden it is with culture (Koreans hospitals are rarely quiet places), how naturally reflective these places are (with your body revolting on you), how encouraging or bewildering that can be in context.
So, listen for the din. Find that repetitive structure, that language. Let it speak in whispers and whooshes and let all of that infuse your imagination. Now compare that to one of my favorite work tracks (tracks I categorize as ideal for working with endless writing, music elastic enough to allow for meandering yet taught when it needs to be for mental structure and focus). The name of the track is "Handwritten Map to Sea" by Yuichiro Fujimoto, an artist determined to toy with ambience in ways that make sense to me. I love that the structure for this peace is that din I was referring to earlier.
mLearning and History in Higher Education in Tanzania (Part 6): History, national identity, and links between mlearning and ICT4D
This part of this series of posts on mobile learning in History in higher education in Tanzania explores, what I think are, the key benefits that this research could have for developmental purposes. Basically the links between mobile learning, higher education, and developing nations. There are a few open questions I have that will need to be reworked in this section, including:
- More evidence of mobile projects in higher education in East Africa (specifically for Humanities-based disciplines)- is there much going on in this realm?
- More evidence of Swahili-based projects
- Link between mobile learning in higher education and benefits for developing nations- besides the cost efficiency (mobile technology as ubiquitous=lower cost for technological overhead as opposed to face to face collaboration) and collaboration opportunities.
- Link between self-organizing mobile communities (medical, agricultural) and more dialogue-based communities of interest- how do we go from mobile as information dissemination tool to mobile as full-fledged collaborative environment?
Aside from those questions, away we go.
Mobile Learning and Development
Mobile learning offers nations classified as developing the opportunity to leapfrog a technological cycle by foregoing upgrading from a current computer based infrastructure of communications, the model most frequently employed in elearning. This leapfrogging process opens opportunities for developing nations to bypass stages of “technology development and to stimulate social and economic development” (Davison, Vogel, Harris, Jones, 2000). As the ICT of greatest penetration in both the developed and developing world, mobile offers the greatest advantage in terms of leapfrogging a technological cycle. While the need for computing infrastructure still remains, it is mitigated by the presence of mobile technology to lessen the digital access gap experienced in many developing nations.
Further to this technological penetration are the cultural elements of adoption. There are several instances of informal mobile learning communities appearing in developing nations related to agricultural, economic, medical conditions that establishes a cultural antecedent for a more systematic approach in higher education towards disciplinary practice in History. These generally involve informal learning communities engaging for the purposes of knowledge management and dissemination. Initiatives in this area are too numerous to mention, but include AED-SATELLIFE in Uganda, a particularly noteworthy example of mobile learning leading to expanded and efficient medical care.
Mobile technology, as the technology of greatest penetration throughout Africa, has routinely been appropriated as a learning platform for knowledge dissemination by self-organizing, self-sustaining communities. These communities are often informal, need-based networks (medical, agricultural); this appropriation and community formation represents an ingenuous and, this research believes, replicable phenomena for community building. My past experience with higher education in sub-Saharan Africa has led me to believe that Humanities-based practice, practice particularly focused on communication and collaboration, would be well served by the formation of such a community enabled through mobile technology. Mobile communities of practice would be efficient in terms of cost (particularly a Frontline SMS based solution requiring merely a laptop configured installation and server), and scalable in terms of scope (Tanzania and then the East African Community). Depending on the veracity of the community, there is no evidence to suggest that these types of makeshift solutions couldn’t scale on a national level, incorporating Tanzanian, for example, History departments throughout higher education. As such, mobile learning speaks to being inclusive, community focused, and aimed at mitigating the effects of the digital divide in higher education.
While a great deal of mobile learning in developing nations revolves around need (medical care, agricultural cooperatives, remote education), there is great application for developing nations striving to create higher education systems focused on knowledge production. This research focused on the practice of History in higher education might prove beneficial to developing nations looking to pool intellectual capital towards knowledge production. This can be done, I believe, by exploring mobile communities not at the institutional level, but rather at the disciplinary one. Calls for collaboration could and presumably would be amplified at a larger scale than the institution. Requests for peer review, discussion, dialogue, reflection, all these core facets of disciplinary practice could conceivably be served through a mobile community.
History, like most Humanities disciplines, does not provide clear linkage between expenditure (in terms of instructional overhead) and economic benefit (perceived or actual revenue) and as such is highly vulnerable to austerity measures and budget reductions in higher education. Therefore, it is imperative that mobile projects aimed at these disciplines come from within the academic community as generally no commercial alternative exists. These mobile environments need to be self-organizing, self-sustaining, and cost neutral. It is my belief that this research will begin to explore if that is indeed possible.
Further to these informal learning communities and mobile as technology of greatest penetration is the choice of location in regards to this study, Zanzibar, Tanzania. There are a variety of reasons for this choice of location, including the following:
- History as contested knowledge (relationship between Zanzibar and Tanzania; post-colonialism and national identity: What does it mean to be Tanzanian?
- Gap (economically, politically, and culturally) between Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania
- Tanzania’s presence within the East African Community (EAC).
It is my belief that mobile environments for disciplinary practice in higher education in Zanzibar and throughout Tanzania can serve to explore and potentially mitigate the gap between Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania through renewed dialogue and networking of practitioners of History; through this renewed dialogue, history as a contested subject will be explored leading, potentially, to a renewed focus on post-colonialism and national identity. National identity, in particular, represents a developmental need as both Zanzibar and Tanzania explore the efficiency and long-term future of their political union. This research explicitly attempts to network the community of practice for History in higher education in Zanzibar with that of the leading university on the Tanzanian mainland, the University of Dar es Salaam.
The East African Community (EAC) represents a strategic asset for exploring communities of practice for higher education in Tanzania as it allows for the following: dissemination of best practices in mobile learning and disciplinary practice from the more advanced efforts, successes and failures stemming from mobile learning in Kenya and, in regards to open access and networked resources, Rwanda. A mechanism for dissemination and promotion of Tanzanian project results, along with the Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA). This promotion represents a tool for securing funding for future efforts at mobile collaboration in higher education. A natural scaling mechanism. Should this community of practice for History in higher education in Zanzibar and Tanzania prove efficient and replicable within Tanzania, the East African Community would represent an efficient grid for exporting this model throughout the region.
This research explicitly looks to capitalize on potential assets that currently exist within Zanzibar and Tanzania, namely existing technology (mobile), existing collaborations (departmental or even across universities), disciplinary practice (History, a shared cultural environment), and national and regional organizations for dissemination. This research will look to explore these assets towards developmental ends, namely increased evidence of disciplinary collaboration and research dissemination for History in Tanzania.
The contradictions of ambient audio: flip sides of a protest in Mapo, Seoul from the 23rd floor
I posted a few weeks ago on the use of Audioboo for ambient cityscape audio, capturing and geolocating audio clips from various parts of the city. Specifically, I was posting about Seoul, the same landscape I am discussing here. When I first got here (1998-2006), I was enamored by the protest culture. Koreans take to the streets quite often and despite what my intuition was telling me, it never felt that threatening. I would walk close to these protests (even if they were directly protesting American involvement in this or that) and listen in. The sights perplexed me more than the sounds which were passionate, but orderly. I never recorded much back then, either in audio or photography, as I didn't have the technology.
So, how does one know anger from cohesion? Disruption from togetherness? When does an act of definace become an act of violence? What does a protest even sound like? How does hearing a protest orient the listener to the Seoul landscape? It does, in ways that sheer imagery cannot.
In Korea's case, protests are rarely conflated with violence, disruption (except traffic), but they are loud. Protests have occasionally involved the odd Molotov cocktail (at least they did much more when I first got here), but those times have faded. Much more common is the ubiquitous man standing on the truck with a loudspeaker leading deceptively aggressive chants in chorus with protestors. As he has been all day outside my window. Hence this post. First come the sounds of definace and then sounds of emotional camaraderie, of togetherness.
What this post does, in the next two audio clips, is establish that to know something is to embrace a contradiction, to understand that some things can be one thing and their opposite simultaneously. First, we have the protest; then we have the chorus singing, recorded mere seconds apart. The unifying audio element is the constancy of the traffic, a hum and occasional beep from the belly of this composition. A reminder that the city will win by simply never ceasing.
Defiance
Emotional Camaraderie
With that song, my knowing Korean protest culture was spun right around. The song is old, hokey even, but has an emotional, cultural resonance. It feels like what you sing when you protest. It harkens back to a Korea of the 1960s, unifying generations in resistance. It reminds everyone of the Saemaeul Movement (새마을) (yes, I know it is a protest and not a government sponsored agricultural betterment campaign, but this is cultural nostalgia, people). However much it is about resistance and overcoming great obstacles, it is soft, gentle even. It is a study in contrast to what they are protesting, yet fulfills the conditions of protest camaraderie quite well.
If this doesn't sound like all that much when you listen, please bear in mind that I am on the 23rd floor of a very large building and, as you can tell from the picture, the protestors were nowhere in sight. In fact, they were two blocks behind my building. So, loud indeed and organized and disruptive and together. And a whole sort of other contradictions. And that is Seoul to me, a cohesive host of contradictions that makes for one wonderful sensory mess. We first learn with our ears, not unlike a baby, which is exactly what we are when we enter a foreign environment. And this is Seoul for the ears.
#mLearning and History in Higher Education (Part 5): Partial Builds, Zanzibar, and Research Methods
Returning to this little research project I have going on in my head and on this blog exclusively, I am left with the actual research methods I will employ to establish a credible study of mobile environments for creating communities of practice in dialogue-based disciplines (particularly History, but really any of the Humanities) in East Africa (Tanzania). Towards that end, I think it is critical to establish a fairly robust participatory design process explicitly in this project. It needs to be designed, owned, used, and maintained by the very people it is intended to serve. If it is going to scale from there, that is fine, but I am very leery of top-down 'transformative' solutions imposed from afar with little input from the potential participants. Unfortunately, Africa has received more than their fair share of NGOs and others who have tried this manouver. So, let's cast that method out now. Whatever comes out of this research project will be localized in the extreme. Localized in language (Swahili), in respect to disciplinary practice, in respect to means of collaboration, localized even in respect to technology of greatest penetration (SMS-based). If this turns out to be a failure, it wont be because of a lack of a localized environment.
So, here we go. I see a 1-2 timeframe for all of this, from communication, to disciplinary practice mapping (from UK/US to an East African context), to survey/interviews, to participatory design, to partial build, and then whatever additional time is needed to write the research up. In the interim while I am writing this into a case study report, a working prototype will be available for the community it is intended to serve (if they decide to use it).
Research Methods
The research methods used for this exploration of mobile communities of practice for History in higher education in Tanzania will involve both some quantitative and qualitative elements. The research will begin with communication with select faculty and students at the two selected universities in Zanzibar to determine the validity of disciplinary assumptions put forth in this research proposal. This communication will be used to reconfigure disciplinary practice for History in Tanzania if necessary.
Based on this initial feedback, a participatory design process will be employed with participants to determine the needs, requirements, and cultural, emotional, or social variables that might affect participation in any mobile community of practice. This participatory design process will inform a conceptual design of a mobile environment for the practice of History in higher education. Subsequent assessment of this design will be tied to fulfilling the needs of disciplinary practice in History (epistemology, ontology, knowledge construction, collaboration, reflection, and dissemination) as well as the ability of the design to assist “in the process of coming to know, creating a human-technology system to communicate, to mediate agreements between learners and to aid recall and reflection” (Sharples, 2005). These research methods are separated into stages below:
Identification of and communication with select faculty and students in the discipline of History in higher education in Zanzibar, Tanzania.
Zanzibar represents a manageable, sample community having only three institutions of higher education, two of which offer degrees in History.
- Zanzibar University (Private)
- State University of Zanzibar-SUZA (Private).
A third university, the University of Dar es Salaam will be contacted and asked to join the discussion, research, and potentially participatory design process exploring mobile communities of practice for History in higher education in Tanzania. The University of Dar es Salaam represents the largest university in Tanzania both in terms of size and knowledge output (articles and monographs). However, the two Tanzanian universities will drive the research into these mobile communities. This communication will identify and commit participants to complete both a survey and interview.
The survey will be designed to establish a technological baseline (ie, that everyone has a mobile device) as well as demographic information (years with the institution, experience with academic publishing, academic presentation, etc.). The purposes of the interviews will be to gauge the validity of the disciplinary practices of History (as put forth in this research proposal) for a developing, East African national context. Assumptions of disciplinary practice will be evaluated based on the feedback received from these interviews. Time Frame: 3-6 months
Survey/Interview
A survey will be conducted via a mobile survey tool (Zoomerang, etc.) with faculty, graduate and undergraduate level students of History in Zanzibar universities to determine to investigate levels of mobile technology penetration, familiarity and comfort of use, and to gauge the validity of assumptions on the disciplinary practices of History (those stated previously in this research proposal). Survey respondents will be asked about their research and collaborative workflows as well as the levels of their experience with knowledge dissemination and academic publishing (monograph or journal article). Further to these points, questions will be asked to gauge receptiveness to participating in a mobile-based community of practice for History for higher education. The National Survey of Student Engagement: Conceptual Framework and Overview of Psychometric Properties will be consulted in the survey development stages (Kuh, 2001).
Interviews will follow the survey and will specifically target the same faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. The purposes of the interviews will be to assess the validity of the disciplinary practices of History (as put forth in this research proposal) for a developing, East African national context. Assumptions of disciplinary practice in History will be evaluated and redrafted based on the feedback received from these interviews.
The interview schedule will be constructed to avoid technologically deterministic definitions of mobile learning (or even mobile community). This stance was influenced by Sharples, Taylor, and Vavoula’s work positing mobile learning in terms of its affordance of mobility, its view of learning as a social process, and the role of situated activity mediated by technology (2007). Mobility, in this focus, is not limited to a particular technology, but rather incorporates environments that satisfy conditions of mobility, sociability, and situatedness, as well as the disciplinary practices of History as previously described. These interviews will be conduced via Skype or through the telephone at the researcher’s expense.
Participatory Design and Conceptual Prototyping
Following the data accumulated from the survey and interview stages, a SMS-based participatory design process will commence with survey and interview participants. This participatory design process will involve a weekly prompt via SMS (through a Frontline SMS networking installation) to investigate the requirements, feasibility, desirability, and perceived impact of an SMS-based community of practice for History in higher education in Zanzibar (and the University of Dar es Salaam).
This participatory design process will be community driven, technologically accessible (SMS-based), minimal in terms of time requirement (SMS responses, daily digest), and rapidly prototyped. The potential environment for a mobile-based community of practice for History in higher education will be used to network the participatory design process. In short, the prototype will be used to drive the discussion of the prototype for History in higher education.
A participatory design process is required to mitigate the implicit presence of the researcher’s ethical, social, and community agenda (Mor, Winters, 2007). As this research begins with a comparative study and normalization of the disciplinary practices of History in higher education in the US/UK and East Africa, specifically Tanzania, it is important to establish a participatory design process to insure those comparative and normalization activities were indeed valid. A participatory design process, by testing purported disciplinary practice against the backdrop of a mobile, SMS-based, collaborative environment, will mitigate the presence of researcher bias in the collection of requirements and suggestions.
The overall goal of this participatory design process, from brainstorming activities to requirements gathering to rapid prototyping, is “to develop a class of theories about both the process of learning and the means that are designed to support that learning”, in keeping with Cobb’s (et al) (2003) five characteristics of design (taken from Mor, Winters, 2007). In this instance, the process of learning relates both to the practices of History in higher education in East Africa (how historians learn and make knowledge statements) and the means of learning will relate to the technological environments, in this case a mobile SMS-based environment, that are used to support those processes of learning. Collaboratively, we will learn how we learn and what environments are most appropriate that learning. This model of generating process (disciplinary practice) and design patterns (how we can support that disciplinary practice) specific to an East African, Tanzanian higher education context is, this researcher believes, scalable to the higher education system of Tanzania (since it is localized, it can expand locally and nationally).
Ultimately, this participatory design process is intended to produce a community of practice for History in higher education in East Africa maximizing the technology of greatest penetration (SMS-based mobile phones) towards replicating the “Hawthorne effect”, an instance of improved cognitive productivity under the control of the learners, eventually with minimal expense, and with a theoretical rationale for why things work (Brown, 1992 as taken from Mor, Winters, 2007). The improved cognitive productivity relates to increased levels of participation within the practicing community of History in Zanzibar and at the University of Dar es Salaam towards scholarly collaboration and output, all of which will be directed by the community of practice itself (the learners). The minimal expense will be the technological implementation of a mobile-based environment, housed locally (Frontline SMS-based environment with a laptop server configuration-no ongoing costs aside from the maintenance of the laptop). The theoretical rationale for why this might work is based on its adherence to the disciplinary practices of History itself, mapping History to the evolving frameworks of mobility (Sharples, 2005).
Design patterns, analytic forms used to describe design situations and solutions used to highlight key issues and dictate a valuable method of resolving them, will be collected from this process and made available to the participating universities in Zanzibar and the University of Dar es Salaam for application with other disciplines. These design patterns, which Goodyear emphasises as a means of empowering practitioners to utilize accumulated design knowledge, will be succinct, localized into Swahili, and distributed widely (Goodyear, 2004).
Assessment and Build
Based on the survey results and any subsequent interviews conducted for clarification, an assessment will be conducted that will attempt to analyze the mapping of these processes, information and collaborative needs to mobile learning solutions. At this stage, the ability of mobile learning to fulfill these needs and processes will be analyzed according to the frameworks mentioned previously.
Included in this analysis will be a recommendation to higher education as to the pedagogical appropriateness of mobile learning in Humanities-based education and design considerations for mobile learning developers. These design considerations will attempt to marry the pedagogical directives of constructivism (and the related tenets of threshold learning and troublesome knowledge) with the potential afforded by mobile functionality, including augmented reality and more. This analysis represents a core deliverable of this research and will be drafted specifically for wider dissemination to the academic community.
The deliverables for this section of the research will be:
- accumulated discussions, requirements, and authenticated disciplinary practices for History in higher education in Tanzania
- accumulated, hosted, and distributed design patterns
- Prototype iteration(s): hosted, functional, and accessible by the learning community
(Stone Town, Zanzibar)
From Donegal to Derry to Philadelphia to Ohio to Seoul: Gallagher genealogy
History is personal. This is a quick narrative of my family's immigration to America from west of Ireland. This is the product of about 15 minutes worth of online research. This means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it speaks to why we have names, and not numbers attached to our first names. There is a narrative in each of those families and it generally isn't triumphant or heroic or dramatic even; it just is and that is good enough reason to remember for me.
My family name is Gallagher and it is about as common as can be in the west of Ireland, particularly the county of Donegal. I had known my grandfather, but knew little of his father, let alone further back than that. For years, the history seemed to hit a dead end there. I finally came around to doing a little online research via ancestry.com (not sure why I resisted, really; these services exist for a reason). In 15 minutes or so, I had traced everything back to Ireland. This morning, on Skype with my father and mother, we also traced her mother and father's families (the Allens and Erglers, respectively) and also my father's mother's family (the Taiclets) back to Austria and France.
This information doesn't mean much in the grand scheme, nor does it even inform my character at this stage in my life. But I take a quiet satisfaction in seeing it through to the young Patrick Gallagher, aged 16, who boarded a ship in Londonderry, Ireland and made his way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, most likely scared out of his wits. That journey, and all the subsequent ones since by my great grandfather, grandfather, and father, has led me here. Writing this from an apartment in Seoul, having seen a lot of the world, without a 'home' to speak of, with my wife as companion (in a good way). I now have a story of a journey underpinning that Gallagher of a last name and now, with this antecedent, I see no reason to slow down.
The ship's manifest from the Argentinus, the ship that carried my great great grandfather Patrick Gallagher (aged 16) and his brother (aged 18), both listed as laborers, from Londonderry to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Dialogue on a pedagogy of simultaneity/contradiction/complexity and serendipity with Pekka Ihanainen
I am having a wonderful discussion with Pekka Ihanainen regarding his article (citation below) on time in online education. We are discussing this primarily through the comments section of the original response to the article I drafted up. I was having difficulty with the size of the comments themselves (small type) so I wanted to bring it back here with a larger screen. I also posted to the comments section of the original response, but thought it deserved some more visibility. Pekka makes some fantastic points regarding the role of complexity and simultaneity in learning (often leading to serendipity), the role of presence, trust, authenticity, and more.
- Ihanainen, Pekka, & John Moravec. "Pointillist, cyclical, and overlapping: Multidimensional facets of time in online education." The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning [Online], 12.7 (2011): 27-39. Web. 27 Nov. 2011
I have put Pekka's comments as quotes to separate our dialogue.
I had mentioned that we should be attempting to capture dynamic learning complexity as a natural, organic process (humans are predisposed to complexity; doing multiple things simultaneously). Actions, even seemingly contradictory actions, occurring simultaneously.Pekka responded with:
´complexity of simultaneity lives in coexistence of intricacies"
Coexistence is really important here as yes, simultaneity requires things happening at the same time and those things might be contradictory. Coexistence implies a natural state of complexity, of being compatible with that state. I think this poses a unique view for the modern learner. Dealing with that contradiction and simultaneity and opting for coexistence. Sounds like an ideal paradigm for learning. With all that interaction some learning and innovative thought is bound to happen.
Let me break apart your next comments on PoS into parts so it is more manageable, but I wanted to say first that I think a pedagogy of simultaneity is something I would love to explore with you more.
“1) trust in learning and interaction that produces it even though you don´t see/understand it to happen (de-pedagogy?)”
Yes, a trust in pedagogically fertile scenarios even when complex thought processes have yet to be seen or understood fully. Searching for the optimal environment and then trusting in its transformative effects (even if it seems contradictory on glance).
“2) presence as equal human beings (personal/emotional, cognitive/in terms of content, active/functional presence) (re-pedagogy),”
Absolutely, presence is a big factor here. To be present (intellectually, emotionally, socially, functionally), to actively look for opportunities to be present in complex, challenging environments, there is some pedagogy there for sure. To view learning as process and this first step is trust (in the transformative effects of simultaneity and complexity) and the second step is presence (just jumping right into the madness!). I think presence is particularly important here when dealing with simultaneity, present in multiple viewpoints/activity structures at the same time, even if those produce contradictory results.
3) cyborgic attunement (routine capability to use (social) technology) (en-pedagogy). And when going forward, could PoS actually stand for a pedagogy of serendipities? If I look backwards to my own learning history and "pedagogical events" happened, it clearly seems that all the remarkable ones are serendipitous. And when I think of myself as a teacher educator, all successful settings (assessed by emotional intelligence/intuitively) have taken place serendipitously inside or outside of "the planned instructional pace" or when I´ve had courage to go according to immediate authentic process. So, is the next challenge to figure out more the pedagogy of simultaneity in serendipities/serendipity in simultaneities?”
This is really well written and good for thought. I love the line “when I’ve had the courage to go according to immediate authentic process”. Absolutely, and this speaks a bit to the presence part. To know this complex scenario will transform me, to trust in this transformation and be present in it, and then to allow it to carry me towards authenticity. This all makes perfect sense to me (and it helped clarify my thoughts as well). I do believe this is really the essence of modern learning, this repositioning of self in learning scenarios full of divergence and complexity. Trust in yourself, trust in your learning environments (once they are optimally tuned), and then trust in your compass (a call for serendipity). This process is learning defined.
“Yes, the mobile is the key, but I´m not sure if we should talk about "something mobile" any more. Nowadays (in digitally connected world) all learning is mobile (has it actually always been when examined from an informal point of view?) - i.e. smartphones, tablets, laptops (who is still using PC :) ). The immersive learning has become visible by immersive (mobile) technology. And because of mobility the learning takes place in those pointillist and cyclical etc. spaces, we´ve spoken. Ok, to be honest, it is wise to develop mobile learning and pedagogy contrasted with industrial stagnant (still existent) education :). “
Agreed, mobile is fast losing impact as a defining principle precisely because it is so ubiquitous, but it certainly helps to counter it against an old, industrial model of education. This is a great exchange; hopefully, we can continue to flesh this out more.
(yes, an obligatory Second Life photograph, but one that alludes to learning in complex systems. Trust, presence, acting upon the environment and being acted upon by the environment, a myriad of directions, possibilities, serendipity, even contradiction.)
A Day in the Life: Audio dispatches from Seoul on January 6, 2012; an ambient backbone of a city
As I mentioned in my previous post, I am relatively enamored with the transformative effects of audio on understanding and sensemaking in new environments. I had written about how you can know a place to a point through images and maps (Street View in particular), but audio transforms that knowledge, injects it with an urgency, a sublime, often tranquil sense of place. Audio floods every crevice, every nook of understanding.
I decided to test this out a bit yesterday. I traveled to the south of Seoul to meet with friends and climb a mountain (mostly hike) called Gwanaksan (관악산). Gwanaksan is a considerable hike (took us about 4 hours) and a wonderful way to get some exercise. Mountains are found throughout and around Seoul and it is a favorite pastime of many, generally older people who climb daily.
Along the way, from the subway to the mountain to the taxi I took home, I recorded audio using Audioboo using my iPhone in a general attempt to capture the space of Seoul aurally. I wanted to get at the ambient backbone of the city, the hustle and bustle of the subways transposed against the expansive mountain capped with the rhythmic serenity of the taxi ride home. Audio recordings allow me to tell this story in a way that activates imagination (with only audio and without imagery, you would attempt to fill in the physical visual domain almost reflexively) and refines understanding.
Stage 1: The Subway
This was the subway ride from my home in Mapo (마포) to Nakseongdae (낙성대). Fill in the story as you see fit, but for me these sounds paint an environment of structure and space, of being help held attentive collectively by a common journey, of signals and directions.
Stage 2: The Mountain
From Nakseongdae, we proceed to make our way up Gwanaksan over a course of 4 hours. We hiked, stopped, marveled at older Koreans who didn't seem to be struggling in the least. There is wonderful camaraderie up on a mountain with people connected by a familiar pastime. I say this as an absolute positive, but to me (and this is simplistic, granted), but Koreans are a mountain people and they seem comfortable there, at peace. The ambient sound I recorded from the mountain hopefully projects that a bit. The chanting you hear is from the Buddhist temple at the summit in the picture above.
Stage 3: The Taxi Home
After a long climb and a good meal of galbi (갈비), my friends and I parted and I jumped in a taxi for the 15 minute ride home. These taxi rides are wonderfully tranquil moments (if the driver is good), the warmth of the car transposed against the frigid cold outside, the gentle hum of the engine, the repetitive strips on the road zipping past in time. A language of sanctuary. I think a lot of that comes through in this recording.
I am going to record Seoul as often as possible with audio, video, and images, map it, and reuse it a bit. I also need to research more on the use of audio in elearning/mlearning as a contextualization agent as well as an emotive one. I think there is quite a bit of material to be mined there.
Elearning and the torrents of sound; some thoughts on sound in elearning
(this is my track of choice for online study, Jonsi & Alex's "Danell in the Sea". Comforting, inspiration, structure, and the crashing of the digital waves upon the shore. I can't prove it, but I think that structure becomes the pace of my learning rhythm-a kind of metronome)
Working on a research project at the University of Edinburgh that is meant to explore the notion of space for elearners, namely what does it mean to be at a university (in this case, the University of Edinburgh) without physically being there. How do we position ourselves, orient ourselves as elearners? Some fascinating research that is already producing some rich results. However, that is not why I am here.
My fellow research associate and I have thought about the role of sound in elearning and how sound, in particular, orients us towards 'work' or 'study', places us in the mindframe of academia much the same as walking through the iron gates of a physical university might orient the student towards intellectual pursuits. Physical campuses are intentionally designed with this mixture of awe and sanctuary, respect and veneration that accelerate intellectual pursuit and enhances learning.
We, as elearners, do much the same with our rituals and routines and we use sensory inputs to place us in a state of mind, a meditation of engagement if you will. Many of us do that with music and we were surprised to discover how rich a vein that was with our fellow elearners. A consistent mention of sound as orienting structure. Dealing with endless streams of information online, one might think that sound would serve as a distraction. Quite the contrary. Depending on the structure of the sound, it organizes chaos into pattern. It is a primer.
And it defines space in a way. Let's take an example. I go to Google Maps. I study the city of Manchester, UK. I walk the streets in Street View. I orient myself. I know this place as well as I can without traveling there. Then I visit favouritesounds.org and re-imagine the known with the slightly familiar, slightly peculiar sounds of the city. Some are known, but not known in this context. Some are unknown, but a hint of comforting familiarity looms behind them. Others are oblique and discomforting, disquiet lack of sanctuary. Sounds encompasses all like water on pavement. It is a torrent.
So, to contribute my own slice to an aural landscape, or for lack of a better option, I am going to use the iPhone app for Audioboo and record the ambient sounds of my city, my neighborhood, my bizarre sounding elevator. I want to geolocate these (using the RSS feed from Audioboo and running it through a filter of sorts before bringing it to Google Maps) and demonstrate my world of sound. Imagine doing this on scale, a community, national, or even global scale. Imagine the renewed sense of relearning place when confronted with sensory input as primordial as sound. Imagine the applications for elearning orientation and design.
These Audioboo recordings will make their way to this blog in one form or another. Just so you know what is coming.
Mobile Learning and History in Higher Education (Part 4): #mLearning Theory and History
Thanks all for your patience, understanding, patience, and feedback. This is all starting to take shape and a few of you have pointed me further down specific lines of inquiry that I was only giving some cursory attention to, so many thanks.
In this post, I am trying to link the previously discussed disciplinary practices of History with mobile learning frameworks and theory as well as to perform a cursory link from mobile learning to international development consistent with the higher education needs of East Africa (Tanzania specifically, most likely the area of focus). So, those assumptions and questions will come up again, the ones specifically dealing with SMS-based mobile environments as a prerequisite as well as can these disciplinary practices of History (which are certainly biased/established in developed nations' systems of education) be ported into a developing sphere. Other questions/assumptions/notes I have from this section are:
- Mentioning repeatedly 'expert level systems'- this is my codeword for disciplinary practice primarily at a graduate or faculty level. In short practitioners of History rather than merely students of it.
- I dumped parts I had in there about augmented reality (regardless of what it does for historical practice) as that is completely unrealistic in terms of East African mobile penetration right now. Although Kenya has introduced a modestly priced smartphone, we are years away from seeing smartphone penetration and bandwidth/networks capable of saturating communities of practice (History).
- I am realizing more and more that the solution I can loosely envision, of creating a dialogue based community of practice (History in higher education in Tanzania), might require a small build. I think my future will involve at some point learning how to configure Frontline SMS.
- How exactly can I use the work of Sharples, Taylor, and Vavoula (2007) as a framework for assessment of the efficiency of whatever solution is constructed from this research? Merely by seeing that it fulfills the "affordance for mobility, identification of learning as a constructive and social process, and the role of situated activity mediated by technology"?
- Anyone know of more Humanities-based experimentation in mobile learning occurring in higher education in Africa? I know of many (many) examples for medicial/agricultural/technological networks, but none for Humanities-based practice.
Mobility and Mobile Learning
“Towards a Theory of Mobile Learning” provides a useful mediation between learning and technology and will be used to analyze mobile learning for History (Sharples, 2005). Sharples builds on the work of Pask (Conversation Theory) and Engestrom (expansive activity model) by establishing the technological layer of mobile learning, which represents learning as an engagement with technology, “in which tools such as computers and mobile phones function as interactive agents in the process of coming to know, creating a human-technology system to communicate, to mediate agreements between learners and to aid recall and reflection” (Sharples, 2005, 7). The ability of mobile learning to facilitate understanding, mediate knowledge, and aid in reflection constitutes an intersect between mobile as technology and History as a community of practice.
Further, the work of Sharples, Taylor, and Vavoula offers insight into an evaluation of any potential mobile learning solution for expert level systems in these fields, an additional framework that can be applied to this research (2007). This work posits mobile learning in terms of its affordance for mobility, its identification of learning as a constructive and social process, and the role of situated activity mediated by technology (Sharples, Taylor, Vavoula, 2007, 225). Any potential mobile learning solution derived from this research into History will be gauged based on its ability to satisfy these facets of mobile learning. Sharples’ work will be used as an instrument to determine whether mobile learning for History creates control (both the community of learners and their association with higher education), context (in terms of the learning activities and objects) and communication (in mobile learning’s ability to allow for communication both within the learning community and the ability to disseminate communication to the greater academic community).
Adjacent to this analysis of context in mobile learning will be activity theory, the mediation of knowledge through tools, technology, and language. Mobile learning is especially suited to activity theory due to its focus on context and that learning objectives can be met through multiple contextual structures (Wali, Winters, Oliver, 2008, 46). Mobile learning demands flexibility in contextual approach, a flexibility well suited to activity theory. The potential of mobile learning applications to support learning in History will be examined in keeping with these pedagogical and technological frameworks. These frameworks for evaluating mobile learning will be specifically targeted towards their view of mobility itself as an active agent in constructing knowledge, as well as to their ability to satisfy the disciplinary processes of learning and knowledge construction in History in higher education.
Mobile Learning and Development
Mobile learning offers nations classified as developing the opportunity to leapfrog a technological cycle by foregoing upgrading from a current computer based infrastructure of communications. This leapfrogging process opens opportunities for developing nations to bypass stages of “technology development and to stimulate social and economic development” (Davison, Vogel, Harris, Jones, 2000). As the ICT of greatest penetration in both the developed and developing world, mobile offers the greatest advantage in terms of leapfrogging a technological cycle. While the need for computing infrastructure still remains, it is mitigated by the appearance of mobile technology to lessen the digital access gap experienced in many developing nations.
Further to this technological penetration are the cultural elements of adoption. There are several instances of informal mobile learning communities appearing in developing nations related to agricultural, economic, medical conditions that establishes a cultural antecedent for a more systematic approach in higher education towards expert level practice. These generally involve informal learning communities engaging for the purposes of knowledge management and dissemination. Generally, these mobile learning networks rely on data collection and dissemination, the same type of functionality required of many of the field sciences towards achieving their disciplinary goals of systematic identification and classification of biodiversity. Mobile learning for their liberal arts counterparts in higher education have few conceptual bridges in informal learning networks, something this research will attempt to address.
To move beyond mere data collection and dissemination and towards reflective and collaborative knowledge creation in these non-scientific disciplines will require an adherence to the pedagogical approaches found in constructivist learning, (Tetard, 2008) originating from the seminal work of Piaget (1982; Piaget and Inhälder 1975) and Vygotsky (1969) (Tetard, 2008). In this pedagogical approach, it is understood that knowledge is created through the interactions of experiences and ideas. This approach is well suited to mobile learning because mobile learning allows for experience-based learning in situ, an analysis of the object in learning in the context of the object itself. Context in formal mobile learning environments is a mediation between the agents involved. In short, the context is formed by the interplay of the tools (technology) employed, the tasks designed through institutional control, the community of practice (History), the location and level of expertise of the learner, and their proximity to the subject of learning itself. Higher education, in this sphere, can provide community, tools, and context.
By way of an example, university level students can use mobile devices to analyze cultural heritage sites on site. With mobile learning applications, they can record data, disseminate this data within their learning community, ground theories in collected data, debate theory, reflect, and disseminate reflected analysis all from their mobile devices, all within eyesight of the object under investigation. This constructivist approach marries the ideas and the experience and offers great potential for linking non-scientific disciplines with dynamic forms of communication and community, community unencumbered by geographical or technological limitations. The design guidelines for mobile learning objects and mobile learning in general are borrowed from Patokorpi et al. (2007), which by the way is in accord with the general constructivist learning theory.
