Ubiquitous Learning

4. Participatory Transformations

4 Participatory transformations caroline haythornthwaite Learning, in its many forms, from the classroom to independent study, is being transformed by new practices emerging around Internet use. “Conversation ,” “participation,” and “community” have become watchwords for the processes of learning promised by the Internet and accomplished via technologies such as bulletin boards; wikis; blogs; social software; shared Internet-based repositories; devices such as laptops, PDAs, cell phones, and digital cameras; and infrastructures of Internet connection—telephone, wireless, and broadband. Early discussion of the Internet extolled its transformative potential for democracy , perhaps best demonstrated by the U.S. presidential nomination campaign that developed around Howard Dean in 2000 and contemporary political blogging . This kind of inclusive, participatory action has now spread to many other aspects of daily life, demonstrated by e-mail lists and discussion groups; recommender systems (Resnick and Varian 1997); cooperative classification systems (folksonomies) (Mathes 2004); collaboratively built, wiki-based encyclopedias (Wikipedia), dictionaries (Wiktionary), and local resources; and citizen journalism in blogs and photoblogs. These emergent, participatory trends are often brought together under the rubrics of research and ideas about social software, collective intelligence, distributed cognition, and collaboration. They are also brought together in the commercial sector under the label Web 2.0 (O’Reilly 2005), in the economic sphere under discussion of peer production (Benkler 2002, 2004, 2005), and most recently in education under the idea of participatory culture (H. Jenkins et al. 2006). In education—in learning and teaching—participatory trends herald a radical transformation in who learns from whom, where, under what circumstances, 32 . haythornthwaite and for what and whose purpose. They bring changes in where we find information , who we learn from, how learning progresses, and how we contribute to our learning and the learning of others. These transformations are captured in ideas such as computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) (Koschmann 1996), community-embedded learners (Kazmer 2007), braided learning (C. Jenkins 2004; Preston 2008), online learning communities (Jorbring and Kommers 2008), and wherever terms such as “e-learning” and “networked learning” signify a transformation in learning rather than simply a transition from offline to online (Andrews and Haythornthwaite 2007; Steeples and Jones 2002). In their impact on learning inside and outside the classroom, these trends indicate a transformation to ubiquitous learning—a continuous anytime, anywhere, anyone contribution and retrieval of learning materials and advice on and through the Internet and its technologies, communities, niches, and social spaces. While there are great benefits to be obtained from online action and interaction , it is also important to consider what is being overlooked in this process, as these unexpected outcomes may become barriers to successful learning experiences . Many transformations act at the periphery of the general movement to ubiquitous learning. Trends that accompany distributed practices include outsourcing, offshoring, disintermediation, networked individualism (Wellman 2001), and the downstreaming of processes and responsibilities to individuals. Autonomous learners become responsible for, and are often alone in creating, their own learning context and content as they search the Internet for materials to support their needs. Although writers such as Jenkins extol the virtues of students learning to engage in “collective intelligence” in a “community that knows everything and individuals who know how to tap the community to acquire knowledge on a just-in-time basis” (H. Jenkins et al. 2006, 42), such an ideal can overstate the knowledge that may be present in such communities, the imbalance in who does the work and who benefits, and the actualities of altruistic contribution necessary to maintain critical mass and to support working knowledge communities. It understates the work needed to sustain useful and usable resources and ignores the efforts and techniques embodied in certain roles and practices, now swept away as every individual is his or her own teacher, journalist, librarian, writer, and publisher. There are two sides to participatory transformations that need attention: retrieval and contribution. On the retrieval side, there are issues of user responsibilities for critical evaluation of retrieved information, online authors, online sites, and search engine algorithms. While passing reference is made to the use of traditional information gatekeepers—professional editors and librarians— little is mentioned of the work that devolves to the user when such gatekeepers are absent. Without these roles, individuals are left on their own to vet sources, participatory transformations · 33 sort fact from fiction, and distinguish commentary from original data. These are skills that can be addressed through education in critical media literacy for those still in...