Terry Mayes, Finbar Dineen, Jean McKendree and John Lee (2002)
Learning from Watching others Learn
In
Networked Learning: Perspectives and Issues
Christine Steeples and Chris Jones (Eds)
Springer, London
Vicarious learning cf Bandura
Study led them from FAQs and other specific subject matter to p214 ‘more generalized benefits, for the vicarious learner, of seeing how to engage in learning dialogues’
Mayes ‘learning as a by product of comprehension’
McKendree et al (1998) ‘dialogue central to the learners ‘enculturation’ as well as the learning itself. i.e. p215 ‘ a higher level of alignment. The learner acquires a new set of norms and procedures’ and has led to a model of how to behave as a successful learner.
The studies
P218
A study in the context of students preparing syntactic trees.
2 conditions
1. animated diagram
2. animated diagram together with a dialogue
Condition 2 gave the best results
KRO Is vicarious or imitation learning an appropriate tool for construction of understanding.
P223
A specifically designed study, students financially rewarded for outcome – ‘when students engage in discussions themselves, we find those who have seen vicarious resources have been modelling the tasks and language seen in them’ when listening to exemplar dialogues they are overhearers. (KRO lurkers in CMC)
Comment
P224
‘Stenning et al (2000) have provided an account about what aspects of educational dialogue make it particularly amenable to capture and re-use for overhearers e.g. show rather than just tell ( KRO another word for modelling)
led to a situation where ‘the authority of the tutor is largely abrogated in favour of the more abstract authority of ‘reasoning norms’ – KRO a method that could be used to engender all sorts of reasoning norms.
P225
‘in most educational settings the rules which govern overhearing are well understood and form part of the experience of learning as a member of the group.’
Why would new learners want to access previous dialogue? What motivates? ‘ will depend on the potency of the identification that the new learner can develop for the original participants and the extent to which the dialogue is considered relevant to the achievement of the learners goal …… success depends on ‘extent to which the original participants in the dialogue are seen as representative members of a target CoP’
Being a learner involves ‘ constructing an identity in relation to the community’
CoP ‘not a description of learning per se, or how people learn together. It provides a very high level design heuristic and in that sense it tells us where we should start looking for design principles which address the key question of motivation.
Look up Fowler and Mayes (1999) and ideas of learning relationships.
