situated development
Situated Development | Catherine Buhler | June 29th, 2001
Pinkie,
I've had a look at the Aston website and I think what they are trying to get across is that before the development of IT, "distance learning" really did take place at a distance, whereas with Internet & Co you can actually learn at a distance if your school is next door to where you live. My husband works for the Dale Carnegie Training organisation whose flagship training teaches people how to speak freely in front of an audience. They are now discussing whether this course could be offered via Internet - an interesting thought!- In two weeks we are attending the DC convention in Palm Springs and I have registered to take part in a workshop about "Distance Learning" so I'll keep you posted on further developments.
I think we all tend to think that IT communication makes life simpler, but it can also mean we have to change a lot of our traditional views about communication.
Here's an attempt at your gap-filling exercise:
We use only the finest baby strawberries, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly sugared and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and generously frosted with glucose.
This is the opinion of a strawberry and chocolate-loving English woman living in sunny Switzerland.
Keep on posting - I find your ideas make me think (sometimes they terrify me, but they do make me think!).
Have a good weekend,
Catherine Buhler
Re: DL, Situated Development | Catherine Buhler | June 29th, 2001
"- developments in IT have problematised the concept of distance, which is now interpretable along different dimensions".
Haven't looked at that page, but at first glance I don't take this to mean "distance is no longer a problem". Rather, I take it to mean that whereas in the past the concept of distance from people and places implied limited access to information and delays in communication, these days this is no longer the case. In that sense the implications of the term now seem unclear (ie "problematic"). If I'm missing the point then perhaps the author could step forward and enlighten us?
Anyway, Pinkie, you're other posting encouraged me to think about brushing the dust off those CSD folders and actually starting to read them. Thanks!
2) General request to people who've done CSD or are doing their assignment. What were/are your assignments about, more or less?
I'd like to make a similar request to those who've done/ are doing GE.
James Hobbs
Re: Situated Development | Keith Richards | June 29th, 2001
Hi,
Thanks to Pinkie for his email and to Catherine and James for their responses. Guess I'd better heed James' prompt and "step forward".
Part of the problem is down to shifting a chunk of text from the DL module to the website with only minimal changes. This particular bit came at the end of the final unit in my DL file and actually refers back to the first unit, and the resolution of these issues in part depends on the reader's grasp of issues there. I can't send the whole module, but I've slapped the relevant section at the end of this message so that anyone who is interested can see what I was up to.
There's not much I can add to what James and Catherine say. Traditional views of distance education were based on a fairly straightforward view of distance in which various conditions obtained (eg exchanges were asynchronous) and this had implications for materials design, teaching, support, etc, but changes in IT have meant that - as James says - the implications of the term are no longer clear and - as Catherine says - we have to change our views of what constitutes "distance". The natural assumption is that IT developments have produced a situation where distance has in some way "collapsed", so (putting it crudely) what is far away has now moved closer, but Catherine provides a very telling example to show that this is not the only change - what is near may also be conceived of as "at a distance', at least in one sense of the term. Fundamental changes are taking place in our assumptions and ways of working as a result of changes in IT. For example, it may quicker to exchange an email with a colleague down the corridor than to go down and sort something out face-to-face, so that's what we often do. Interactionally, there's no difference between this and an exchange with a colleague working at home or on an overseas visit.
Thanks again for the exchanges.
Have a good weekend,
Keith Richards
Situated Learning
What I would like to do, by way of my own conclusion, is to ask whether distance education needs to be reconceptualised. Which is another way of saying I think it does. My approach to this will be to extend, very briefly, my discussion in the first unit on the subject of situated learning.
As I explained there, in the LSU we have moved away from thinking in terms of distance education and moved instead to conceptualising it as 'situated learning'. There are a number of reasons for this:
• the focus of our work in teacher development is on the context in which participants work and not on hypothetical or theoretical representations of that context;
• participants' development is realised in and through their local context;
• the important learning relationship is within the local context and we see ourselves as facilitators of this;
• the use of the term 'distance' highlights a feature which we seek to relegate, through active support and engagement, to the background, foregrounding 'local' elements instead;
• developments in IT have problematised the concept of distance, which is now interpretable along different dimensions.
Does this matter?
[Box for response].
We feel that this shift is important because it serves as a constant reminder of the focus of our work. If we concentrate on the contextual relevance of our work, the impetus to connect will naturally seek to overcome barriers of distance without elevating these to the status of primary concerns.
It would, in fact, be possible to extend this position in order to claim that in a postmodern world where old conceptions of the centre and satellites do not hold, it is precisely this local orientation which marks DL as a distinctive form of education and lends it particular appeal. Instead of working in the artificial environment of the classroom, it is possible to engage in "a dialogue of local interpretations":
"...those who have written about the postmodern condition tend to privilege, not the general and global, but the local dimension. We have seen this privileging clearly in Lyotard (1984), for whom the breakdowns of the metanarratives and the totalized system they suggest precipitates the proliferation of little narratives. It also exists in Rorty (1979), for whom the monolithic theory of knowledge, founded on optical metaphors and unfounded objectivity, needs to be replaced by a dialogue of local interpretations. It especially exists in Geertz, for whom all knowledge is local knowledge, shaped by the specific culture that generates and believes it." Freed (1993:203).
You might like to compare your response to the case for situated learning in Unit 1 with your feelings now. Has your position changed in the light of what you've encountered in the module?
[Box for response]
Okay, so we're really out on the skinny branches now, but can't you feel the breeze blowing?"
Hope that helps!
Re: DL- Replies and Thanks | Pinkie | June 30th, 2001
Thanks Catherine, James and Keith for the very stimulating comments on DL. My way of understanding this is that there are at least two threads here: distance versus on-campus education, and local versus global focus. And I certainly see that distance education favours local focus (because you stay local, and the "education" comes to you). And this ties in nicely (though not necessarily?) with the idea of multiple versus monolithic narratives. DL sounds like a fascinating module. As regards the changes in the concept of distance and distance communication brought about by IT: I take the point that these are not just straightforward distance-reduction changes, but rather more complex. Though can I just make another, very obvious, point: that nothing will ever replace face-to-face contact - think how different things would be if instead of this discussion group we had a chat every day at coffee-break!
Pinkie
with 
and 
