Learning with SHARP: the pedagogy

1. Learning with SHARP: the pedagogy Pedagogy excursion Slide 1 of 7 The SHARP approach is designed to meet a particular learning need: to enable people to acquire and improve their ‘working knowledge. This is a short excursion into what we mean by ‘working knowledge’, and how the SHARP approach can facilitate the learning process.

2. The problem of ‘inert knowledge’ Pedadogy excursion Slide 2 of 7 Much of what is learned in formal educational systems – schools, universities, training classrooms – proves not to be accessible outside the context in which it was learned. It is described as ‘inert knowledge’. Three possible explanations have been given: • The relevant knowledge is (potentially) available, but the learner cannot access it at the time they need it. • The relevant knowledge is structured in the wrong way (for example for recall in an examination, but not for use in solving an unfamiliar problem). • The knowledge is fundamentally situated: that is, it is unreasonable to expect it to ‘transfer’ because situations are unique, problem solving is specific and the very idea of transfer is questionable.

3. Developing ‘working knowledge’ Technology excursion Slide 3 of 7 We use the term ‘working knowledge’ to mean the opposite of inert knowledge. It is knowledge that students have acquired and which they can use in unfamiliar, real world, problem-solving situations. ‘Working knowledge’ also connotes knowledge that is characteristic of real-world workplaces: situated, job-specific knowledge as well as more general vocationally-relevant knowledge. The SHARP approach uses asynchronous multimedia conferencing (AMC) as a way of helping: • students to develop working knowledge by giving them insights into how work is actually carried out, and • practitioners to improve their working knowledge by examining their ‘tacit’ knowledge (knowledge they use in their jobs but which is difficult to put into words).

4. Learning in communities of practice Pedagogy excursion Slide 4 of 7 SHARP adopts an idea first put forward by JITOL (Lewis, Goodyear & Boder, 1992; Goodyear, 1995): if you are working on a programme of continuing professional development with experienced practitioners, you need to organise the programme for a distributed community of practice and provide it by telematics-based ODL methods. This requires that groups of university staff cluster around a community of practice (rather than around an academic discipline) and use telematics-based ODL methods to build and sustain the community. Goodyear, P. (1995) Situated action and distributed knowledge: a JITOL perspective on electronic performance support systems, Educational and Training Technology International (32,1) 45-55. Lewis, R., Goodyear, P., and Boder, A. Just in Time Open Learning, Neuropelab Occasional Paper NL/1/92, Archamps, France: Neuropelab 1992.

5. The ‘evolving knowledge base’ Pedagogy excursion Slide 5 of 7 JITOL developed the idea of an ‘evolving knowledge base’, created from a library of the interactions between practitioners. This evolving knowledge base is seen as a way of capturing much that is topical and innovative in the working practices of the community. Although the ‘evolving knowledge base’ idea was never fully worked out in JITOL, it remains a powerful way of conceptualising how a community of practice might begin to share its working knowledge. JITOL was limited to text-based representations of working practices and working knowledge. SHARP provides an opportunity to add multimedia to the toolkit, to allow practitioners more natural and vivid ways of representing what they do and some of what they know.

6. Representations of practice Pedagogy excursion Slide 6 of 7 In setting up a SHARP style AMC you will be asking practitioners to make representations of their working practices. The key medium for this is the video clip. Video clips are short pieces of video, typically between 5 seconds and 5 minutes long, which represent some relevant aspect of a practitioner’s work.

7. Using video clips to good effect Pedagogy excursion Slide 7 of 7 Video is a vivid medium that, if used appropriately, can be closely tied to the actuality of what practitioners do. By making good use of video clips you will be able to enable your AMC to remain focused on the actuality of real world working practices. It is an idea that relates strongly to an approach presented by Bransford et al. (1990), called ‘anchored instruction’. Bransford, J. et al. (1990) anchored instruction: why we need it and how technology can help, in Nix, D. and Spiro, R., eds, Cognition, education and multimedia, Erlbaum, 115-141. ‘At the heart of the model is an emphasis on the importance of creating an anchor or focus that generates interest and enables students to identify and define problems and to pay attention to their own perception and comprehension of those problems. They can then be introduced to information that is relevant to their anchored perceptions. The major goal of anchored instruction is to enable students to notice critical features of problem situations and to experience the changes in their perception and understanding of the anchor as they view the situation from new points of view.’

8. Where to now? You have completed the core part of the SHARP tour. Please choose any of the following excursions : Technology Pedagogy End the tour Making video clips Making annotations

9. On from here Thank you for taking the SHARP tour. Please go on now to explore the rest of the SHARP web site. You can: • Sign our [Guestbook] • Contribute to the [Discussion area] • Go to the [Project Office] for more details of the SHARP project. • Look at [Events] for information on upcoming dissemination events. • Experiment with [WebOrama], a prototype AMC tool.