Associate Professor, Ph.D., Jeppe Bundsgaard,

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PracSIPPractice Scaffolding Interactive platform

• Associate Professor, Ph.D., Jeppe Bundsgaard,
• School of Education
• University of Aarhus
• jebu_at_dpu.dk www.jeppe.bundsgaard.net

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PracSIP

• A ground-breaking concept of Computer Supported
  Collaborative Learning
• A Practice Scaffolding Interactive Platform

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What is the problem of traditional education?

• I dont want to!
• Motivation
• Whats the use?
• Meaningfulness
• How shall I use it?
• Transfer
• I forgot what I learned yesterday!
• Retention

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Solution Community of practice?

• Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger
• A group of individuals participating in communal
  activity, continuously
• creating their shared identity through
• engaging in and contributing to the practices of
  their communities and thereby
• developing a shared repertoire
• Experts guide novices who are legitimate
  peripheral participants

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Why? Epistemic Frames!

• Communities of practice develop epistemic frames
  (Shaffer 2006)
• Different ways of knowing, of deciding what is
  worth knowing, and of adding to the collective
  body of knowledge and understanding of community
• Epistemic frames are competences in practice
• Eases transfer retention
• Meaningfulness is inherent in practice
• To learn to think like professionals of many
  kinds promotes pluralism

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Challenges of Communities of practice in school

• There are no experts to guide the novices
• The practice might be to difficult
• The repertoire of the practice isnt always at
  hand
• The goals of the community of practice are not
  necessarily compliant with the educational goals

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Further Challenges Lesson learned from Project
Based Learning

• Chaos
• The teacher spends to much time organizing
• Structure
• Students has a hard time knowing what to do next
• Inclusion or exclusion?
• Students who dont know how to perform project
  based learning, are easily lost
• Educational goals
• Often end up subsumed the product goals

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Proposed solution

• PracSIP
• Practice
• Scaffolding
• Interactive platform

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What a PracSIP does

• Scaffold practice by
• Organizing the collaboration
• Structuring the processes
• Putting relevant tools of the shared repertoire
  at the participants disposal.
• Reduce complexity of the practice

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Making it relevant for school

• Focusing on the aspects of the community of
  practice which actualizes learning-appropriate
  goals
• Supporting knowledge and skills from the
  curriculum

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A PracSIP Ekstra Bladet The Editorial Office

• Support a journalistic community of practice from
  decision of the newspaper profile to the deadline
• Newspaper production online
• Product printed in 1000 copies in colors on real
  newsprint

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Glimpses from practice
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Structuring students work

• Phases
• profile
• planning
• research
• photo
• focus
• writing
• Layout
• Deadline

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Organizing collaboration

• Organizes the process from start to finish
• Students create articles,
• divide tasks among them and
• set deadlines
• The students know what to do
• The teacher has an overview and can take action
  when and where it is needed

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Supporting development of skills and knowledge
Interactive assistants

• An interactive assistant
• Has a specific task as it's starting point
• Leads the student through the task

• The computer structures the student thinks
• The computer doesnt have all the answers no
  multiple choice

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Interactive assistants II

• The computer asks carefully thought out
  questions, and the student carry on the thinking
  on this basis
• Integrates the students response in the next
  question
• Presents subject related concepts and methods
  integrated in the work with the task

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Other tools from the journalistic shared
repertoire
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PracSIP

• Scaffolds the practice by
• Organizing collaboration
• Structuring students working process
• Putting tools from the repertoire of the
  community of practice at the disposal of the
  students
• Integrates educational content
• Tear down school wallsAuthentic communication
  situations

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Does it work?
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Ethnographical study

• Ethnographical study of four classes working with
  The Editorial Office.
• Conclusion When working with The Editorial
  Office teachers and students acquire access to a
  journalist practice, and both students and
  teachers can function as mediators and bring,
  re-negotiate and integrate authentic border
  objects from this practice to their own
  classroom practice. This makes possible
  peripheral and stand in experiences of what it
  will say to participate in a journalist practice,
  and it creates the opportunity for new
  experiences of what it means to participate in a
  journalist practice, and understanding of what is
  valued competencies.
• (Henderson 2008, p.95, my translation)

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Study of Interactive assistants

• Qualitative study Interactive assistants
  scaffold (in some cases) an IDRE (Initiation,
  Discussion (cf. Wegerif 2004), Response,
  Evaluation) structure of students interaction
• Quantitative study Students perform above
  average (3 teachers assess students work),
  students regards Interactive assistants as a help
  (44.1 yes, 36.5 yes and no, 19.4 no, n299).
• Fougt 2009

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Ongoing work Framework for Evaluation of Design
for learning

• Potential learning potential
• Which competences (or skills and knowledge) can
  ideally be developed working with a giving
  platform (design for learning)?
• Actual learning potential
• How is the platform used, how does it participate
  in the classroom context?
• Actual learning
• What is the learning outcome
• (Bundsgaard Hansen, work in progress)

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Next PracSIP project

• Future City
• Students acting as city planners to solve the
  problems of Slam City (and of the climate change)
• Organization of collaboration and structuring of
  the processes
• Students play Sim City to get inspired and to
  simulate the complexity of city planning

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Investigating problems and learning science with
interactive assistants
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Producing a presentation of Future City to be
presented in the showroom
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City Slam

• Cup tournament where the participating classes
  compete one on one with two other classes acting
  as judges (online).
• 6-8 classes participate in the final competition
  to be Future City of the year.

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Future City

• Scaffolding simulated authentic activities
• Socially motivating
• Knowledge and skills from the science curriculum
  developed in context
• That is, Future City is
• a Practice Scaffolding Interactive Platform

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References

• Bundsgaard, J. (2009) Practice Scaffolding
  Interactive Platform. In Proceedings from CSCL
  2009.
• Bundsgaard, J. (2005) Bidrag til danskfagets
  it-didaktik Contributions to the Educational
  Theory and Practice of IT in the Danish Subject.
  PhD dissertation. Odense Forlaget Ark.
  www.did2.bundsgaard.net
• Fougt, S. (2009). Didaktisk design af Interaktive
  assistenter. Master Thesis. Copenhagen DPU.
• Henderson, L. (2008). Praksisfællesskaber i
  undervisningen. Master Thesis. Copenhagen DPU.
• Lave, J., Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning
  Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press.
• Schnack, Karsten (2000) Faglighed, undervisning
  og almen dannelse, in Hans Jørgen Kristensen og
  Karsten Schnack (eds.) Faglighed og
  undervisning. Copenhagen Gyldendal.
• Shaffer, D. W. (2006). Epistemic frames for
  epistemic games. Computers Education 46(3), 223
  - 234.
• Wegerif, R. (2004). The role of educational
  software as a support for teaching and learning
  conversations. In Computers and Education 43, p.
  179-191.

www.ekstrabladet.dk/skole www.futurecity.dk
jebu_at_dpu.dk www.jeppe.bundsgaard.net