International Research Conference, Lancaster UK, 10-12th April 2006
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Professor Peter Goodyear

Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Computer-Supported Learning and
Cognition (CoCo) University of Sydney

In July 2003 Peter Goodyear joined Professor Peter Reimann as co-director of the CoCo Research Centre at the University of Sydney in Australia. CoCo acts as a focus for research on learning and teaching with technology at the University of Sydney and has its own program of research on computer-supported collaborative learning. Peter Goodyear is currently a Chief Investigator on four research projects funded by the Australian Research Council. ‘Learning through online and co-present discussion in higher education: expectations, experiences and outcomes' and ‘Blended learning in schools, TAFE and universities: experience, principles, patterns and practices' are collaborations with Rob Ellis and Mike Prosser (UK Higher Education Academy). They aim to provide a better understanding of learners' and teachers' intentions and experiences, in the area of networked learning, and to represent aspects of successful educational design through the use of pedagogical design patterns.

‘Analyzing and supporting cooperation management in online learning communities' is a project with Peter Reimann, Judy Kay and Kalina Yacef and involves detailed modelling of collaboration behaviours, and their representation in visual form as a resource enabling groups to monitor and improve aspects of their collaborative activity. The fourth ARC project, ‘Interactive distance e-learning for isolated communities: opening our eyes' is led by Steve Crump and also involves Brian Devlin (Charles Darwin University) and Dr Juhani Tuovinen (Batchelor Institute). It is primarily a study of emerging learning and teaching practices and policy implementation issues arising in the context of a satellite-based interactive distance learning system in outback Australia. Peter Goodyear's keynote will draw on these experiences, as well as his experience as a networked learning researcher in the UK.

Peter's work in the field of learning technology has been published in five books and some 70 journal articles and book chapters. He led the editing team for Kluwer's 2004 volume ‘Advances in Research on Networked Learning' .

For more information: http://coco.edfac.usyd.edu.au/

Discussion: collaborative knowledge work and epistemic fluency

Summary of Keynote Address

Collaborative activity is central to most conceptions of networked learning and engaging students in discussion is a common goal - though one whose pedagogical purpose is rarely examined in any depth, or made explicit. One could say that discussion is taken-for-granted as inherently virtuous in the Networked Learning community.

In this presentation, I want to examine some of the claims that can be made for learning through discussion and then to summarise the outcomes of our recent studies of learning through discussion, in which we have focussed on 'blended' learning situations and on students' conceptions, intentions and experiences. In coming to some conclusions about the special value of discussion, I will try to locate it as a special kind of collaborative knowledge construction activity, arguing that a reticence about the power of knowledge is a weakness - perhaps even a moral weakness - in some of the discourse about networked learning. Once we agree to become more serious about knowledge, we can find approaches to educational design that will help our students become more skilful and self-aware as knowledge workers. I draw upon some ideas about epistemic forms, epistemic games and epistemic fluency in illustrating what I mean.

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