Heli connecting ideas

Human learning has been my favorite topic in this blog from the  beginning. Now I meet this topic on edcmooc, which recommends a lecture of Campbell Gardner: Ecologies of Yearning. I studied psychology at a university since 1964- and know the learning theories, first behaviorism and then its critics. In the 1970′ies we Finnish university students learned to know Bateson and his levels of action/consciousness. We wanted be revolutionary and change the old frames and build up something new, our own perspectives. So does every generation and believes that it is the very first time. That’s life and so it must be, I suppose.

It was nice to meet Bateson again. The challenge is the same and the goal to think differently, is it nearer now? In my eyes, it was most convincing that the lecturer spoke at his edges, he was after something new, he was teaching himself via the many text slides. I loved the sayings: we don’t see things how they are – we see them how we are. Human learning is very limited without self- awareness. I do not like the way how Bateson’s double binds are transferred to education in a simple way. People were laughing at paranoids and other fool people, oh no. If a child meets these impossible double bind situations, its is not a right place to laugh at. It could be better to speak about stacked loops only: how many levels of one’s learning the student is aware.

The next phase in this way is in 1980′ies reflection-in-action and on-action (Schön). Kitchener and King built a Reflective Judgement Model, which opened my eyes again. They used concepts as Quasi-reflective reasoning and reflective reasoning. They described the continuous development from one frame to another, from narrow to broad, from concrete to abstract and so on.

What is the learning that is going on during this edcmooc? is not a question which can be easily answered. Many people have been thinking about it since the first moocs and I participated in a research meeting in autumn 2009 for the first time. One of the best research articles, I think;  are written by Roy Williams and Jenny Mackness. They are developing a dynamic description about learning and I was happy to meet Roy in one of our edcmooc discussion forums ‘metaphors for opening education’. I put one image here, this describes learning in CCK08 and I can recognize some parts of it.

The dimensions are explained in their publications in IRRODL (March 2011 and October 2012). Trust and Risk can be seen here, also Campbell Gardner spoke about ‘feeling homely enough’. Both are needed, fear and safety.

I have printed the articles of Roy and Jenny in order to read them well, but the moment has not yet come. Actually. it is not a lack of time, it is lack of my understanding – how on earth do they build up this map of learning landscapes?

I am sure that during edcmooc many great descriptions about learning will appear and become published in different ways. This course has the right atmosphere, climate for supporting creativity. I am surprised how well this course is working. We have people enough so that diversity does not turn to like-mindedness. We can listen to each other and be curious about the differences we have. It is great to participate on this course.

At last I want to refer to one of my older posts: Dreaming about deeper learning, Apr 22nd 2012. There is a seven minutes video where Otto Scharmer says the words which I wrote to the heading of this post: Learning from the future as it emerges. Stop downloading the same stuff, observe, explore the future by doing something. Open mind, open heart, open will – a road less traveled. Please listen to Otto Scharmer.

I have to add here a link to another digital viking, Asbjörn. I have a feeling that his blog Digimatik deals with same questions as I try tto handle here. Actually, we schould explore how Bateson and Scharmer connect with digital viking lifestyle or mindset?

One of my basic dreams is to understand human learning. I am not sure if I have to define learning in digital environment as a separate form of learning. That way leads to listing tools (blogs, tweets, RSS etc) and seeing PLE only as a collection of devices. I am tired to use that way, I have tried it here too many times. It is better to speak about learning in human systems. People are communicating with each other and computers help to do it.

I needed the words of Otto Scharmer at the beginning of the video I embed here: there are two sources of learning but most theories are interested only in that part which has already happened, experiental learning, how we organize and use our knowledge. The other source of learning is to focus on the future as it emerges just now. I suppose I have lived this moment many times but now I went deeper. I had to stop to ponder about it. Is it possible to stop downloading the old stuff and observe, live in this moment? Scharmer described the psychological inner voices that limit us: fear, cynisicm and judgment. Open mind, open heart and open will are only dreams. We have lost our ability to live in the presence, only children can do it (if they live in safe conditions). I like the simple way Scharmer presents these basic phenomena. I recognize it to be true but so what? What is the next step, my step to real emergent learning? Time will tell and networks help..

I didn’t participate the Digital Storytelling course - ds106 but I followed it via Twitter. I love this blog post in which the facilitators describe the process during that open online course. I can feel the inspiring spirit during studies, how participants appreciate each other. They loved the assignments and wanted to comment and develop further, build and mash up. The participants opened new ways (web radio, web TV). The facilitators ate own dog food = did the same assignments as everyone and that made them understand the studies deeply. I can feel the enthusiasm while listening to the video.

Another interesting blog post came from Rita Kop. She has continued the research about the PLENK course with Helene Fournier. I am eager to follow how they capture our learning. I participated myself and have blogged about my experiences earlier here – and followed their first presentation in LAK11. The background factors about PLENk are still the same, of course. We participants were adults, 27% over 55 and 10% in age group 49-54. I like those numbers. Activity in the basic tools remained low (Moodle, Elluminate),  but blogs were written and Twitter was most popular. It is easy to show beautiful images about tweet networks but I believe that they were only information about what was happening. Tweets remind everything, no need to plan or remember.Everything muts bee easy to us nowadays

What can be said about learning during the PLENK studies, it is interesting. Active participation is important, of course. It made students to reflect, involved them in a creative process and it was fun. Participants wanted to give something back to each other. We produced blogs and what ever (see the slides 31-32). But why some people chose to lurk? They were tactical lurkers who wanted to pick up what they wanted or they had always been self-directive learners and didn’t want to share their experiences.  It is not easy to describe learning in open studies.  Some participants assessed that active participation is not at all important (20%!) and 10% said it was somewhat important. How this should be understood? I do not know.

The motivational issues were easy to understand: we wanted to learn something new, to find a real gem of information, others recommended something really interesting,  to get  involved in an online community, see something amazing done by others, to produce something that can be proud of.

I am wondering if anything new about learning is found here. Learning is true in open online courses but some diversity can be seen, lurking is normal as well as active participation and learning with others. Finding something new and co-working increase motivation. These principles are the oldest ones found in learning theories, I think. The research continues and opens new ways in the future I hope. Until this, we have got only new tools for our global online interaction and learning new applications is the main product – is it so? Only new tools or should I say amazing tools? I don’t know.

I noticed some discussion in Elluminate about cliches: someone asked if there are more cliches in open courses than institutional courses. Could it be so? Rita wanted to describe open courses as learning events. Temporary center around the course content, said someone.

Here comes the slide presentation of Rita and Helene, so you can see what they really said. My intention was to draw my own description but I need more time to do it. Don’t know what I am thinking today..

Today I was inspired to write this after answering Jenny Mackness’s post about attacks on connectivism. She has gathered links to various critical opinions and articles. I continue my pondering here. I don’t want to attack , it is fine to be interested in learning and try to build up theories about it. People try it in CCK-courses or is it better to say that Stephen Downes does with the help of George Siemens. I do not want to write about this, I appreciate their trying. I have worked as a teacher educator and action researcher etc and I am still interested in these questions. It is great to try to understand human learning.

Is it possible to handle a topic like ‘learning theory’ in an open course without former knowledge? I can’t see much sense in it, the theme is too challenging. Everyone has experience about learning, OK but it is not enough. And Experiental learning has already invented, no need to do it again. BUT networking could be a great topic to explore by networking and it could be enough. It is not a piece of cake either but it is more possible and useful. The final project in our first CCK course dealt with networking. It was a good assignment, an opportunity to become conscious about own doings.

My next question is about exploration, which methods we should use? How can we discuss about events in open courses? It takes time to understand basic concepts and theories. What is the level of  speaking: words, concepts, models. I said in my comment to Jenny’s post that openness is not working in CCK-courses and I meant that there is much obscure speaking. Participants are obliged to follow Stephen’s way to think, he takes a privilege to give content to words in his own way. For instance, he says what the word group means – he doesn’t care what others have said after their  research. It took time to understand this.

Now I see that connectivism is something that those two active men have developed based on their own experiences. It is their theory-in-use. This concept comes from Schön’s ideas about reflective practice (theory-on-practice). Networking is the main content, how it becomes possible with new technology. They have succeeded to implement open courses and offered the opportunity to anyone to participate. That is fine but should we focus on the method how we conceptualize and interpret and create new models. Should we re-invent science  ? Grounded theory has already developed, no need to re-invent it either. It helps to build up models from participative practice.

Learning theories are under development in many universities and research institutes, I see no sense in passing this fact. There are communities like EARLI who have excellent networks. It is not wise to deny all knowledge that exists. Open courses and networks may do whatever – and participants can choose what they want. Everyone is happy then?

You know the book (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) La Petit Prince:  Misunderstandings always become from words.. the fox said these words to Little Prince and he was right, yeah?

It is Christmas Day and – in Finland – we spend it at home thinking about the purpose of life or other important issues. In order to be in line I ponder about the quality of connection. We always speak about quantities, numbers of followers and so on and external factors of courses. There is a lot of conversation about open courses going on. Dave has made some nice videos to illustrate the difference between formal and open courses. I believe those help some people but…

What is the real question of a learner at the beginning of the studies. The learner wants to be accepted, be seen, be heard and find real connections to other people. It is difficult in massive open courses but it can happen inside formal curriculum. I have much experience about creating the atmosphere such that authentic learning becomes possible.

Developmental psychology has always known the meaning of basic trust, the enormous power of it through the life. We all know how difficult it is to live a happy life nowadays in spite of material richness. We try to be perfect, we numb emotions and only perform cognitively. We want easy and quick answers to questions which cannot be answered or solved. We have to hide our feelings of shame and fear if we want to be accepted. The quality of human connection has turned to opposite, it is continuous disconnection. I have a lot of experiences about lonely studying in open course.

We need some people to tell us how we have distorted everything. We believe in TEDX Talk, so let us listen to Brene Brown.

Is there any New Learning of this digital age? -this  has become an interesting question. Perhaps it is still open and waits for answers. The attitude towards technology has been bipolar since the 1960′s: a struggle between technophiles and technophobes. Some wait for better, more effective new learning and some are afraid of these changes. Both have grown during last decades and we have got more technological tools.

My history of working as an online facilitator began from the insight that I needed constructive, humanistic and critical didactics in adult education. It was important to understand that technology did not give any theory, I could use all my knowledge about learning theories. I appreciated a book (Matikainen & Manninen) Online education for Adults, 2001 (in Finnish only). They had five orientations to describe the possibilities between learning and online didactics: technological, cognitive, constructive, humanistic and critical. The last one was needed in transformative learning by expanding.I did not read the book first and then go and teach – I began to use our new learning platform and then noticed what I did and why. I became conscious about my pedagogical principles by answering the questions of my colleagues.

This week Finnish teachers had a conference about online teaching, and I could follow it at home by following a typepad notebook some participants wrote there. I refer here two expert’s lectures: Roger Säljö and Kai Hakkarainen.

All technology has been “sold” to the educational sector with unrealistic promises. Social media is not different in that regard. None of these new technologies have actually revolutionized education, said Säljö. But simultaneously:  “Technology does not improve learning – it changes learning.” For instance by building up of a social memory and new representations and documentary practises: in the stone age iconic representations were not sufficient for a versatile culture to develop – but nowadays iconic methods are taking a more central position again.  All representational tools rely on interpretive practices & interpretive communities.  Learning is in the performative recontextualization of knowledge. – I think I should read more about Säljö, has been in my mind some years. I thought he is Finnish but now I know he is Swedish

Kai Hakkarainen is a researcher and has written about three generations of technology-enhanced learning. The first generation focused on examining computer-supported collaborative learning from the cognitive perspective. The main focus was to examine to what extent knowledge-seeking inquiry elicited conceptual change. Problems of transferring inquiry learning culture from one country to another pushed us to examine social practices and other participatory aspects of learning that had been invisible to cognitive researchers.

The second-generation research focused on analyzing patterns of participation in computer-supported collaborative learning.  The emerging third generation research aims at overcoming the dichotomy between the cognitive (knowledge acquisition) perspective and socio-cultural (participation) perspective by means of long-standing and deliberate efforts of knowledge-creation, involving what is called objects of activity.

He recommended the dissertation of Minna Lakkala, see my earlier post. We have many new artifacts that help collaboration, for instance the etherpad was necessary to me to follow. Social media is a normal part of working if you are open-minded and have courage to prove new tools. We are living in an iterative process where individual skills become social property of the whole community and so on.

I have lived in that process about ten years – and in the same process with smaller amount of technologies many decades, but what is the quality of learning: we have called it transformative, emansipatory, empowerment .. The dear child has many names, we say in Finnish. Shared knowledge building and networked learning are enough to me just now.

It seems I’ll have to take a long journey – this time I am going to refer to some discussions in the blogosphere I remember, probably meaning they have made an influence on me.

First I take Teemu Leinonen, who has lived globally much longer than me and knows about wikipedia and -media and many international projects. His blog is named Flosse Posse and he wrote about learning theories recently. He needed  behaviorism, constructivism and social constructivism. (edited 11.10, read Teemu’s comment) I like the way he tells about these theories, he convinces me about his expertise. Then he tells about Sugata Mitra’s experiments Hole in the Wall, which we have been discussing about in PLENK2010: Learning by doing, socially, in small groups. To give affordances for poor children is the way forward.

Another source was in Pontydysqu web pages and it took a time to find. They have much knowledge there and I was not familiar with those pages, but I succeeded and here it is: Connectivism vs. constructivism by Jenny Hughes. She tells about some projects (Mitra + ..) and lists the learning theories needed for interpretation. I feel empathy when she becomes confused with theories. One new concept can be found: social connectivism (it was lacking, really ). We have to know the theories of Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, Papert, Bruner, Engeström – perhaps it is best to speak about their work and their development instead of putting them to one category of learning theories. I liked the style in comments to Jenny Hughes’ blog post, but I feel I am tired of listing theories. It does not help.

My last link goes to Jenny Mackness, her blog post after our Elluminate session yesterday. Jenny writes about the relevance of learning theories to teaching practice and reflects her own experiences as an educator. Theories matter, but not directly, they are tools which must be assessed and developed to different purposes. Jenny proceeds to George’s presentation about connectivism as networked learning.

What have I learned while summarizing my personal history, my work in the teacher education and these three discussions? Actually, I am not any more interested in this level of listing and shortly referring to main sources. What does it help? My question is: where is thinking, pondering and real discussion. I see Jenny M. gives an example of combining theories to one’s practice and professional development. But we don’t have time and interest to do it throughout in PLENK, I suppose.  I cannot grasp this theme even I know everything. How can I find my way forward? What is the level of our working, discussion, collaboration? How should I participate in order to make sense in this chaos in my mind?  

I was admiring Barbara Fillip’s choices in her blog: we live in a global world and we try to catch it with our brain, our genes and all the connections we have formed during our life. This time I try to present the history of my learning theories: what I have learnt and why. Let’s try, is this possible at all. I name the decades in order to get some order to my thinking.

1964- I began to study psychology and had my first courses about learning. We had a book written by Skinner, we could get the answer page by page, the book was reinforcing us. So I learned basic concepts about learning: conditioned and unconditioned reflexes, reinforcement, punishment, transfer. We made experiments about accidental learning, transfer, memory. This was a time of the positivistic paradigma of science: I learned to be accurate (or I should to ..) I learned the basics of working brain (Luria) and the concepts (neurons synopsis dendrites..) I understood the flexibility and complexity of the brains and the cortex.

1970- was the time of wonderful student movement in the world: I learned to participate and change the world better together and globally. I was empowerment in practice. In our university we criticized teaching and studied marxism, we wanted equal opportunities to everyone. It was the first time when children from working classes came to universities. Materialistic dialectics has been a part of my thinking since then: all is moving and changes happen through contradictions: thesis – antithesis – synthesis (Hegel). The richness of societal interactions was the key of development.

1980 Developmental psychology became my expertise and I understood human interaction as a source of all development. I also saw my two children to grow, what a excellent program in every individual .. I enjoyed. Constructivism arouse in learning psychology and criticism toward Finnish school life was large. We knew the results and lectured about them but did not see the possibility to change anything.

1988 was a revolution in my mind when I saw that theory and practice can meet each other. I worked in teacher education for adults coming from work, all kinds of vocations. The educators had courage to renew teacher education in an excellent way: newest scientific knowledge and best practice. Networked learning became true.

1990 I worked as a researcher and tried to catch the richness of reality but it was not easy. Concept maps came to the institution were I worked, Novak visited there some months.1994 back to teacher education and I was obliged to be the head of teacher education. Administrative work, I learned how slow is development in institutions and hard is to be a leader.

2000 I was happy to work as a teacher educator again. Perhaps I was more realistic than earlier, did not wait for miracles but was not cynical either. Online teaching interested me, we got a learning platform in 2002 and I began to use it. I could use our great pedagogical principles in online facilitating. In 2005 I participated in OnLine Educa Berlin. In 2006 was my first international course Inquiry oriented teaching online, I got feedback from facilitators about my own teaching, and began to use English language.

2007 I began blogging in Finnish as an online teacher. A community for social media was grounded in Finland and I participated in it. In 2008 I heard about the first CCK course – and here I am I was wondering what connectivism is. I have found the importance of connections so many times but I had not been a part of global blogosphere. Am I now? Have to write another post about my learning in CCK  studies,  some day.

Learning theories have been a part of my life always, many decades. This week I have a good opportunity to find my thoughts and questions about learning. I decided to write step by step: first I checked my last work place’s presentation about learning theories. This  picture has been collaborated in the University of Applied Sciences, Teacher Education, in Jyväskylä, Finland.

The purpose of teacher education is to help student to build up -or find – their own teachership. They have to know all learning theories in order to choose those which work best for their purposes.  The picture illustrates the pedagogy in teacher education: it does not give ready-made answers but gathers frames for decision making.

The image was copied from this page about approaches to learning. You can find other assigments and materials in the web pages, they are open learning objects. This is the way I am used to think: every theory gives something to teaching practice. I cannot say that behaviouristic theories are old because they seem to work very well. Feedback and reinforcement are essential factors in everyday life, even in internet. Perhaps serendipity is an example of random reinforcement: you try again if you succeed only sometimes. I read tweets which I follow and hope some day to get insights

Piaget was a remarkable researcher many decades. His research is older than constructivism, I think, so Piaget is called a cognitivist. Engeström belonged to this line at the beginning, he wrote a book in Finnish Perustietoa opetuksesta which had large influences in practice. It was a scientific book that could be read and was interesting. Piaget was very conscious about the near mutual dependence between emotion and cognition, he was a real scientist.

Constructivism and experiental paradigms were the most important in teacher education. Kolb tried to gather all about learning and I loved his book Experiental Learning but it was only in English and not easy to read. Experience as the source of all learning  and the orientations: reflection, conceptualization, experimentation as a spiral. It was something, it helped to understand and interpret learning happenings.

You can find same theories in this link given for week 4: learning theories and models in web.

Reflective practice was one of our main concepts, Schön and Argyris helped to explore it. Practice was the criteria for theory, theory-in-use must become recognized. Teach as you preach. Then became research about expertise in 1990′ies we had good connections with researchers. Oh, those were the days.. I cannot tell everything shortly.

I am not sure if this belong to PLENK2010 but I give that tag anyway. Next I will write my own history since studying psychology and working in the department of psychology. One post I have to gather the newest discussions about learning. And what else?

I still have a need to understand expertise, mine and others’. This time I will use a Finnish Dr dissertation of Minna Lakkala: How to design educational settings to promote collaborative inquiry: Pedagogical infrastructures for technologyenhanced progressive inquiry. It is published in Helsinki University and you can read it here.

The study begins: Educational practices should pay special attention to improving the skills necessary for collaboration and knowledge work, in order to address current societal changes. Strategies of scientific, question-driven inquiry are stated to be important cultural practices that should be educated and promoted. – Easy to agree with these thoughts.

The study did not clearly follow any learning-theoretical paradigm, but it can be characterized as falling between socio-cognitive and socio-cultural approaches to learning: Bereiter and Scardamalia in Toronto, Canada. The model of Progressive Inquiry is developed by Kai Hakkarainen and his colleagues, Lakkala is one of them.

Lakkala’s study focused on investigating multiple efforts to implement a research-based pedagogical model of Progressive Inquiry and related Web-based tools, to develop guidelines for educators in promoting students’ collaborative inquiry practices with technology. The Progressive Inquiry model explicates epistemic activities that are generally important in academic and scientific inquiry; i.e., in collaborative activity that aims at improved solving of ill-structured problems, utilization of knowledge sources, and explication and elaboration of ideas, explanations and theories.

The results indicated that appropriate teacher support for students’ collaborative inquiry efforts appears to include interplay between spontaneity and structure. Consideration should be given to content mastery, critical working strategies or essential knowledge practices that the inquiry approach is intended to promote. In particular, those elements in students’ activities should be structured and directed, which are central to the aim of Progressive Inquiry, but which the students do not recognize or demonstrate spontaneously without explicit modeling or promotion, and which are usually not taken into account in existing pedagogical methods or educational conventions. Such elements are, among others:

• productive co-construction activities;
• sustained engagement in improving produced ideas and explanations;
• critical reflection of the adopted inquiry practices, and
• sophisticated use of modern technology for knowledge work.

The developed Pedagogical Infrastructure Framework enabled recognizing and examining some central features and their interplay in the designs of examined inquiry units. The framework helped to recognize and critically evaluate the invisible learning-cultural conventions in various educational settings and could mediate discussions about how to overcome or change them.

The concept engagement was used to delineate the quality of students’ inquiry activity in order to evaluate the success of the pedagogical intervention: a central aim was that students demonstrate sustained engagement in an active and deepening process of improving ideas and explanations as well as in critical reflection of inquiry practices.

Most of the explicit process guidance in the tutors’ postings concentrated on rather practical issues, such as using information sources or organizing the threads in the discourse forums. The guidance did not draw the students’ attention to higher-order metacognitive inquiry strategies, the promotion of which is one principal idea in the Progressive Inquiry model and should be a central focus in the tutors’ scaffolding efforts.

The analysis of social aspects of the inquiry designs revealed that the threaded discourse areas in the web-based system were experienced as a valuable new possibility to promote collective working practices, and teachers reported how eagerly the students participated in the technology-mediated interaction by reading and commenting on each other’s ideas. The most difficult objective appears to have been to induce the students to enter into “serious” efforts for advancing collective understanding and elaborating common knowledge objects, instead of just discussing or sharing ideas.

Educational settings should include elements that explicitly advance students’ metalevel awareness and understanding of inquiry strategies, which may support their self-regulative action. The analyzed features of the course designs, categorized according to the components of the Pedagogical Infrastructure Framework, were the following:

• Technical component: Access to technology and technical guidance, and Diversity of tools provided; 
• Social component: Structuring of collaboration, Sharing of the inquiry process, Individual or collective nature of the inquiry outcomes, and Integration of multiple social spaces;
• Epistemological component: The emphasis on question-driven inquiry, Main source of acquired information, and Concrete knowledge object as an outcome
• Cognitive component: Modeling of inquiry strategies, Human guidance provided, Scaffolding embedded in tools, and Promotion of meta-reflection.

The aim is to support epistemologically high-level and deepening inquiry activity in which students direct their efforts in elaborating questions, explanations and knowledge products, that the tasks and their achievement criteria are accordingly defined. A requirement for a concrete product (a report, a model or a presentation) as a goal and outcome of the inquiry process appeared to increase and focus students’ inquiry efforts. If there was an explicit assignment to produce a research report, the students were very engaged and productive in writing their contributions. It is important to set explicit high-level epistemological criteria for the quality of the outcome (systematic summing up of inquiry results with theory-based arguments), otherwise the external form of the end product easily starts to dominate as the object of the work, not the improvement of ideas or solving of knowledge problems.

Most students do not spontaneously take responsibility of the advancement of other students’ or the whole community’s inquiry. This is quite understandable because conventional learning culture in schools and universities is strongly shaped by individual accountability and grading. So they hardly ever contributed to the work of others or other teams, if it was not explicitly demanded or built into the task criteria. Thus in progressive inquiry, the common goals of the process across individual students and groups should be explicitly defined, and the practical ways of contributing to the common outcomes should be modeled and explicated; for instance, by directing students to together produce a common summary.

It still is an apparent difficulty to have students openly share the entire process-progression (including original ideas, drafts and intermediate knowledge products) for commenting and co-construction through a Web-based learning environment.

The Progressive Inquiry model aims at simulating expert-like and authentic cultural practices of collaborative inquiry and knowledge creation. One problem is, that students do not necessarily benefit from the guidance style where the teacher demonstrates too advanced expert behavior. In progressive inquiry, it apparently is not enough that the tutor models the high-level, expert-like inquiry practices by demonstrating them in his or her own on-line performance; there should be other ways to scaffold students themselves to recognize and perform intended high-level inquiry practices and cognitively demanding strategies. Teachers and tutors should not do the critical cognitive tasks on behalf of the student.

One finding of the studies is that a typical feature of progressive inquiry practices appears to be that the engagement in open-ended inquiry is experienced as challenging, particularly, at the beginning. Students complained that the level of guidance was insufficient. Teachers were surprised about the feedback because they thought that they had provided clear models and guidelines for the process. These results may relate to the parallel increase in the cognitive challenge of the inquiry task together with the increased authenticity that to give special attention to encouraging students to struggle at the beginning of the process; by helping them realize that the phases of confusion and chaos are elementary characteristics of open-ended inquiry; assuring that it is acceptable and, indeed, probable that inquiry efforts do not always succeed.

Teachers should pay more attention to designing the educational units so that the tasks and other arrangements, especially, stimulate students’ engagement in epistemologically highlevel, deepening inquiry and true collaboration around shared knowledge objects and products. Students’ own metalevel awareness of or intentional efforts for effective collaboration and appropriate inquiry strategies may be more deliberately and explicitly promoted through modeling and self-reflection activities. These conclusions led to define the cognitive or metacognitive support for students’ inquiry engagement as a separate pedagogical design component that requires special attention from the teacher, in addition to technical, social and epistemological components.

Lakkala’s study ended, Heli Nurmi begins to analyse her experiences. I can’t help thinking about our CritLit2010 course which had same ideology than progressive inquiry, and voluntary adult students, but same difficulties as well. Much talking and less serious problematizing, was it so? I remember some comments from Alan and Maria that helped me. I remember deep misunderstandings with Stephen and I am still wondering why. We are experts both but cannot follow each other’s thoughts. Sometimes it goes that way: inquiry efforts do not succeed.

Many discourses about open courses deal with same themas. Educause and many analyses about CCK08 learnings have been interesting to read.  A new course PLENK2010 with these principles will begin next week – we already know mistakes that will happen during next weeks .