When group work leaves the classroom does group skills development also go out the window?

In moving towards what Lemke (1996) terms the ‘interactive learning paradigm’, higher education has adopted two key principles consistent with group learning technologies:

• ? learning is always mediated by and occurs through language ( Falk, 1997 ; Gee, 1997 ); and
• ? learning is distributed across a range of other people, sites, objects, technologies and time ( Gee, 1997 ).

A third and relatively recent principle to emerge on the higher education scene that seems to ‘contradict’ accepted views of group learning technologies is that:

• ? many universities now choose to offer ‘learning resources’ online.

This paper asks whether Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are ‘robust’ enough to support, sustain and address industry, employer and government calls for greater attention to group skills development in university graduates. Data features an examination of respondent feedback (n = 171) in an ‘ICT‐rich’ group work setting, and the subsequent ratings of group skills development over a 13‐week period. This discussion offers an account of learner outcomes by adopting Kirkpatrick's (1996) four levels of evaluation of learning as a classification scheme for determining learner satisfaction (Level One), the effectiveness of learning transfer (Level Two), its impact on practice (Level Three) and the appropriation of learning behaviours by participants (Level Four). The contrasting patterns of ICT use between female and male users in the data are discussed in relation to building social presence and producing social categories online. Differences reported here indicate that ICT group work is moving forward, but opportunities to challenge rather than reproduce existing learning relations and differences, remain largely unresolved.     

For Science and Self: Youth Interactions with Data in Community and Citizen Science

In youth-focused community and citizen (YCCS) youth in classrooms and community-based programs produce data that scientists, resource managers and community members will use. This “nested” data situates learners’ scientific activity within larger datasets, projects, and communities, with consequences for youth agency. To document opportunities for agentive learning with data in YCCS, we report on how youth interact with data across eight school and community-based project sites and how youth talk about their data and work. From analysis of 54 participant interviews, we found that youth perceived the data they produced as being used for: (1) broader scientific work, (2) their own learning, and (3) community endeavors. Nested uses of data were most meaningful when youth interacted with end users, were exposed to the larger datasets to which they contributed, or took action linked to data. Not all youth saw, believed, or valued that data would be used by others. Framing of task and purpose, nature of engagement with community users, data production protocols, and level of emphasis on youth-identified questions may contribute to youth perceptions and can foster or undermine conditions for learner agency. The results shed light on when and how conditions for expansive learning and agency get established.     

An Holistic View of Quality of Service

The growing presence of digital multimedia in everyday life, as evidenced by the continuing increase in Internet usage, is expected to augment or replace traditional modes of social and economic interaction. Face-to-face meetings, paperwork, and office-space are all expected to diminish in importance as cyberspace provides new facilities and interaction modes. In the higher education sector, distributed learning environments (DLEs) are being cited as solutions to the ambitious political goals of better education, wider access and lower costs. DLEs are still in their infancy however, and if they are to succeed in transforming conventional educational practice, they must become quality of service (QoS) aware. The notion of QoS originated in computer networking, but if it is not addressed appropriately in all a system's components then there may be little or no benefit for that system's users, regardless of the network quality. There is a real danger that policy makers in the educational sphere will simply equate the needs of the end users, namely teachers and students, with network-level QoS. Our experience with the TAGS framework for constructing DLEs has shown that QoS must be taken into account from many perspectives before traditional educational processes can be satisfactorily transformed. This paper contributes towards an holistic view of QoS in DLEs by reviewing the network perspective and augmenting it with other, equally important, concerns.     

Curriculum and pedagogy in Key Stage 2: a survey of policy and practice in small rural primary schools

ABSTRACT

Small primary schools have often been criticized for their staff's inevitably limited cur‐ ricular expertise and consequent difficulty in providing a full National Curriculum for their pupils. Yet in terms of standards of attainment and quality of teaching such schools are rated rather more favourably than larger ones in OFSTED inspections. Based on an investigation of policy and practice in thirteen small primary schools this article attempts to examine the reality of small schools’ planning and implementation of National Curriculum requirements at Key Stage 2 and suggests possible reasons for their ‘better’ performance, at least as judged by OFSTED inspectors.     

Servicing Small Communities by the Use of Technology,and Opening the Internet

Abstract

This article describes the way the Internet has been introduced to a small community in South Australia, by means of a business system originally provided for the Council's use. Internet, while heard about, had never been used to any great extent, and is a good example of introducing the ‘young’ of our subject to this facility ‐‐ those young being council workers and the general public.