Vlog by Dr. Peter Scott, Centre for New Media, Knowledge Media Institute, Open University, UK

In the near future, you will know when a worker is ‘powerful’ when you can measure more “knowledge work” than “information work” in the work they are doing. Indeed, from this perspective, learning is knowledge work, and knowledge work is learning. Similarly, you will know that a technology is ‘powerful’ when it becomes invisible, perhaps even so embedded in your world that it can be considered to be ‘ambient’. And finally, the future will show that formal and informal models of learning will start to combine powerfully into a joint strand which is some way between both; something like “non-formal” learning.

In one recent study of peer-to-peer learning, we examined a naturalistic, live, online-set of video meetings, in which an international group of students attended a hundred or so live, online ‘study group’ events. The one study included over 120 hours of live meeting time. And some of the meetings were very large, with up to 34 participants! But all these events were entirely self-organized, and self-managed by the student community itself. They shared work together and supported each other in their learning. All this work happened in a non-formal context. This means that the work was not wholly ‘formal’ in that the students were not meeting in a ‘sanctioned’ or ‘managed’ working context directly connected to an accredited programme of study. On the other hand it was not ‘informal’ in that there were a clear set of formal drivers behind each student giving them very good (and formal) reasons for being there, and working hard!

Many students and workers can now interact online with learning content and working materials that are provided openly on the internet and not clearly tied either to their working organization or to their learning programmes of study. And yet they can still interact with this material and with other non-formal workers/learners in a very rich variety of ways. What is interesting is that, when they are released from the formal setting, many learners and workers of all ages and in all sorts of different roles are now able to use sophisticated new tools to interact with content and with others without that formal supervision or support. What is terribly interesting is that these workers seem to be capable of substantial ‘epistemic agency’ in that they can manage and direct their work and learning very effectively, and that they are very good at supporting the work of others using such systems. Indeed, they seem to be very effective knowledge workers.

In our studied communities, our new tools can start to get a tantalizingly rich glimpse of the nature of the knowledge work and learning that is now possible in the new non-formal web world. It is almost banal now to talk about the power of e-learning and e-working, so pervasive are these technologies! They are becoming (almost) invisible and in some places (almost) ambient. This is not a new wave that we need to control, rather we need to ride it and understand it.

By Peter Scott, Centre for New Media, Knowledge Media Institute, Open University, UK

Some of Peter’s recent URLs:

http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/scott

http://labspace.open.ac.uk/

http://hexagon.open.ac.uk/

http://flashmeeting.com/

http://flashvlog.com/

http://prolearn.tv/

References

Scardamalia, M. (2002) Collective Cognitive Responsibility for the Advancement of Knowledge. In B. Smith (Ed.), Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society (pp. 67–98). Chicago: Open Court.

 

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