Learning Across Sites in Undergraduate Education

• In Event: Structured Poster Session: Understanding Future Learning Spaces Across Multiple Architectures

Abstract

Objective
Learning in higher education implies students becoming knowledgeable across a variety of contexts, developing abilities to (employ tools in order to) connect to remote knowledge resources or communities and sites no longer bound to one particular physical context (Carvalho & Goodyear, 2015). They regularly enter into new knowledge, social and material configurations that require deliberate engagement to construct their own learning spaces or ecologies (Barron, 2003). This contribution examines learning activities that extend beyond the set boundaries of a course and aims to shed light on how undergraduate students in software engineering learn when using digital resources spanning physical and virtual contexts.

Theoretical Perspectives
We adopt an ecological perspective (Damşa & Jornet, 2016) to learning that views knowledge resources accessed and mobilized across sites as meaning-making resources (see Säljö, 2010). Accordingly, at a micro-level, intellectual, physical, digital resources come to form an integral part of thinking and doing in the activities. But it is not, as often is implied, that resources and technology ‘mediate’ between learners and the world. Rather, learners orient towards materials, which organize the participants’ perceptions and actions; and these actions transform the very materials that shaped them in the first place.

Methods
This qualitative research study was conducted in a Norwegian Software Engineering undergraduate program. Activities were extensively documented by collecting various types of data to ensure data-triangulation (see Table 4). We employed analytic techniques building on interaction and thematic analyses, allowing relevant aspects to emerge from the data. Three lines of analysis were followed: a) resources and developing artifacts were mobilized and used by the students, b) the students perceived the need to operate across contexts, and c) the interaction with resources across sites shaped learning processes. Data were interpreted with a focus on knowledge objects as sources but also objects of inquiry (see Rheinberger, 1997).

Results
The software engineering students engaged constantly with knowledge and resources available online, mixing learning experiences based on input from the formal context and creating additional (or parallel ones) supported by the expert programming community. These resources supported their solving programming problems, finding alternatives, and improving the quality of their product. They displayed high levels of awareness of the programming domain and developed their own strategies to access and select sources in these emerging learning ecologies. The interview excerpt (Table 5) illustrates the students’ understanding that the online resources reflect the dynamics of software programming, where working with up-to-date knowledge is essential and there is a need to engage in learning that capitalizes on these resources. This indicates how students engaged in creating their own learning space wherein formal context elements blended with those available outside it, and how the latter shaped the learning activities.

Significance
The findings in this study are relevant to and indicative of an emergence of learning activities beyond the boundaries of the envisioned course design; but also of the challenges appearing when providing pedagogical support. This highlights the need for educational research to further explore opportunities and challenges within extended learning environments.

Author

• Crina Damsa, University of Oslo