In broad terms, Learning in Networks of Knowledge fuses together ideas from / about higher education pedagogy with ideas that work to explain or analyse the current state of the Internet in society.
While the site is designed principally to be a practical resource for educators – light on theory, heavy on applications and useful ideas – it is important to provide some background on the knowledge networking idea within which that practical resource has been constructed. This section, divided into two areas (Networks and Pedagogy) attempts to provide this grounding in an accessible manner.
It may prove more useful for you to read these ideas in a more scholarly presentation form, in the following papers and presentations (and my thanks to co-authors).
Presentations
Visit http://slideshare.net/netcrit; most relevant presentations appear throughout the LINK site.
Papers
Risks and Opportunities in Authentic Learning via the Internet (Allen, 2010)
Authentic learning is a powerful approach for educators because it motivates students to attend closely to their studies and improves the application of skills and knowledge beyond the classroom. The internet is a particularly important tool for such learning; it not only can make authentic learning practical in many cases but also prompts students to develop awareness of the public, networked form that knowledge work now takes. I will, in this keynote paper, (a) summarise approaches to authentic learning in the BA (Internet Communications) at Curtin University; (b) identify the key benefits in using a public knowledge networking approach to authentic learning; and (c) highlight risks and strategies for managing those approaches in the pursuit of authentic learning online
The pragmatic portfolio: An assessment approach for distributed learning (Allen and Tay, 2010)
Portfolios, especially where they involve some use of or link to online technologies, are currently a popular focus for learning innovation in universities, drawing on a tradition of using portfolios in some areas of higher education and attempting to extend and broaden this practice. In some cases this focus has led to ambitious plans for whole-of-institution approaches, often involving significant technological development. However, the term portfolio can also cover a wider variety of possible learning and assessment activities and there are ways of using portfolios which, while quite traditional in their own form and approach, enable teachers to approach other aspects of their curriculum and pedagogy in far more innovative ways. This paper explores the conceptual basis on which the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University of Technology is utilising a pragmatic approach to portfolio assessment within individual units of study, so as to enable a more thorough implementation of distributed learning. In this form of learning, where students regularly contribute to their own and others’ learning through short tasks and conversations, the evidence of achievement is widely distributed and not easily accessible for either formative or summative assessment. As explained in the paper, students are required to collate, select, and then contextualise a sample of these numerous productive moments of their ongoing study. The paper concludes that while other goals for portfolio assessment (such as encouraging reflection) can also be used with this approach, its primary value is in unleashing the potential of social media creativity in a manner that motivates students via the requirement of assessment, enables feedback to be provided to guide learning, and which promotes shared responsibility between teachers and students in determining the kind and extent of their learning activities
Learning as knowledge networking: conceptual foundations for revised uses of the Internet in higher education (Allen and Long, 2009)
This paper argues that the inherent characteristics of knowledge work, when combined with the operation of the Internet in contemporary society, produce a change in the dominant paradigm of what constitutes knowledge work. Since learning is a form of knowledge work, therefore this change will affect university education. The paper further argues that, because of the way in which online learning initially developed in universities, in most cases, the current approach to the Internet and higher education does not account for the changed conditions of knowledge in a network society. It concludes that new directions are needed which will allow us to make technology and pedagogy choices for future education better suited to a network society
Authentic Assessment and the Internet (Allen, 2009)
This paper identifies the importance of assessment for student learning, especially ‘authentic assessment’. While recognising that authenticity can be judged against the alignment of assessment with learning goals, and of assessment with real-life activities, the paper asserts a new element: the degree to which the Internet is part of the everyday lives of most university students. Thus, a third form of authenticity emerges when assessment is aligned with students’ use of the Internet for simultaneous informal and formal learning, and the nature of the Internet as a place of active knowledge networking, involving co-creation of information and knowledgeable content (a consequence of the emergence of Web 2.0). The paper argues that developments in assessment using the Internet will only be authentic if they take account of the way the Internet functions outside of higher education, rather than seeing it as an educational technology divorced from its own authenticity.
Education and the Internet: Web 2.0 and renewed innovation in online learning (Allen, 2009)
Paper outlining the basic ideas behind my ALTC project – focusing on web presence and knowledge networking
Web Presence:Understanding persistent and interlinked content as the basis of identity formation … (Allen, 2009)
In this paper I will outline the concept of ‘web presence’ to aid in understanding the relationship between online identity, knowledge networking, and user-generated content. I am developing this term beyond its current, relatively superficial, understanding as ‘a place’ on the web, or as marketing jargon (see for example the Wikipedia entry for the term). Web presence refers to the sum total of all interlinked content that World Wide Web users create, making for themselves a persistent and visible ‘presence’ online. I will detail, in particular, the way we might divide this ‘total’ web presence into a series of categories – core, extended, and linked – that help us grasp the relationship between individual authoring and publishing location. I will also suggest several ways in which the concept might be used to develop new research approaches to understand how individuals contribute through dispersed knowledge ‘events’ to the overall sum of online content, but also to specific networks of knowledge that emerge from the interlinking of various people’s web presences. The term web presence has particular significance in the context of user-generated content through Web 2.0-style activities, sites and services. What this concept suggests is that we must also think about content-generated users: users whose presence online is the sum of their contributions to the web in many different places. Such content-generated users are both real people or certain aspects of them, but also serve the same kind of purpose as the imagined ‘audiences’ which form a key part of the economics of television programming. In conclusion, this paper proposes a new way of thinking about how we might conduct research into online activity both exploiting, but also recognising how ‘who we are’ online depends on what we say, where we say it, and how it interconnects
Two other papers on Web 2.0 are also relevant:
Tim O’Reilly and Web 2.0: The economics of memetic liberty and control (Allen, 2009)
This article presents an account of the role of Tim O’Reilly, both as an individual and as a corporate entity (O’Reilly Group), in the creation, spread and use of the concept of Web 2.0. It demonstrates that, whatever Web 2.0′s current uses to describe variously the technologies, politics, commerce or social meaning of the Internet, it originates as a deliberately open signifier of novel and potential internet development in the mid-2000s. The article argues that O’Reilly has promoted the diversity of the term’s meanings and uses – celebrating textual liberties – but has also emphasised the special role that O’Reilly plays in providing the authoritative definition of that term. In essence, O’Reilly profits from this ‘control’ of the idea of Web 2.0 but that, to enjoy that control O’Reilly must also allow differences in meaning. The paper concludes by suggesting that Web 2.0 therefore signifies a new kind of economics that brings together freedom and control in a new way.
Web 2.0: an argument against convergence? (Allen, 2008)
My argument is, in brief, that Web 2.0 can be read as an attempt to assert that ‘the web’ is not like traditional media as a means to differentiate web development and investment from media development. Includes a brief discussion of how to conceptualise Web 2.0
