Learning in the Social Age

​We live in the Social Age which, thanks to the internet and the abundance of technologies that enable us to connect and communicate, has greater affordance for learning than in any other age. But it is sometimes difficult to connect the learning in the formalised world of education with learning in the informal social world. 

Whilst formal learning may talk about application, social learning happens where the application takes place. Whilst formal learning talks about how to make links to reality, social learning is already in the pub, finding a comfy sofa and getting the drinks in at the bar (1 and image right)

But, thanks to my participation in the #creativeHE (2) on-line course, I now have a better understanding of these relationships.

#creativeHE

#creativeHE is an open learning process (OLP) formed around the idea of 'creativity for learning in higher education'. It is underpinned by information and content within the P2PU platform and a google+ community space for interaction and conversation (1). The OLP is populated by open educational resources and practices (OER/OEP). It is facilitated and time bounded (6 weeks) and there is a weekly set of activities relating to the core theme that participants can, if they wish, participate in. But there is also an intentional openness for participants to share their own interests and topics of conversation with others who are interested.
 
In addition to the on-line community space and interaction, the organiser (@chrissinerantzi) is also facilitating face to face learning events in her university. Furthermore, there is also a group of educational masters students participating from a Greek university. These groups of people connect the enterprise to more formalised professional development and education in institutional settings. This is why #creativeHE bridges the formal, semi-formal and informal worlds of learning, education and professional development.

 Learning ecologies - the missing piece in the social learning jigsaw puzzle

Julian Stodd's model of scaffolded social learning offered me a way in to understanding the #creativeHE learning enterprise and it seems to explain most of what I observe. But it is deficient in one important respect: it takes no account of what participants are doing in the rest of their lives or how what they are doing in the social learning space, connects to their own learning projects - what I am calling learning ecologies (5). In my own learning ecology I am connecting what I am learning in the social learning space to the book I'm writing on learning ecologies and to the talk I am preparing for a seminar in Barcelona in ten days time. I will undoubtedly draw upon this personalised learning in the seminar when I talk to people who are far more knowledgeable than I am about on-line social learning practices.  

The point I'm making is that Julian's model is not holistic enough. It must also connect to participants' own learning ecologies. Our contemporary learning ecologies provide us with the living vehicle for applying our understandings and new capabilities as they emerge. They provide us with the opportunity to develop new relationships with potential for future learning and achievement.
 
Sources
1 Stodd J (2013) Social Learning from theory to practice
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/social-learning-from-theory-to-practice/
2 #creativeHE 'Creativity in learning for higher education'
https://courses.p2pu.org/en/courses/2615/creativity-for-learning-in-higher-education/
https://plus.google.com/communities/110898703741307769041
3 Stodd J (2014) Scaffolded Social Learning Blog post Nov 5 2104
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/scaffolded-social-learning/
4 Thomas D and Seeley Brown J (2011) A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change
5 Jackson N J (in prep) Exploring Learning Ecologies Draft chapters available for comment at http://www.normanjackson.co.uk/learning-ecology.html

Tell me a story - a conceptual exploration of storytelling in healthcare educatio
Carol Haigh and Pip Hardy

Stories are an important expression of our creativity and the world is full of story-based resources that can be used to communicate the learning and embodied wisdom of others. Over the years I have found that almost any story-based resource can be used to illuminate some aspect of creativity. I  would like to share this story of professional creativity and invite you to share what you learn about creativity from and how you felt while the story was being told.

Here is a story I wrote for my grandson Max, helped by my artist friend Kiboko.

This week the members of Group1 involved in last Sunday's hangout agreed we would keep a log of our activity and use this as a resource to reflect on our involvement. I provided some prompts to encourage development of particular perspectives..

 1) How have we engaged in the open learning experience? What sort of contributions have we made?
 2) What are we learning and how are we using this learning? Are we changing our understandings of creativity in learning  
    through this process?
 3) How have emotions influenced our engagement?
 4)  What sort of relationships are forming as a result of interaction? What does relationship mean in this context?
 5)  Our perceptions of what is creative about our own involvement, the involvement of others and the community as a whole?



From the way I have engaged with participants (and the way they are engaging with me and each other) I can see how three types of relationship are forming which I represent schematically in the illustration. I attach my reflections.

The idea of creativity can be very confusing - who exactly is creative and why are they creative? It's easy to recognise the creative giants whose contributions form the basis of our culture like  artists and musicians that we can all name, or people who provide a scientific discovery or technological explanation that enable us to understand ourselves, our world or the cosmos. But where do we fit into all this? How can our creativity be compared to that of the people who shaped our understanding and experience of the world. James Kaufman, Ronald Beghetto  (2009) provide us with a neat framework which they call the 4C model of creativity, that enable us to see that we are part of a continuum. These authors refer to 'Big-C' creativity that brings about significant change in a domain; 'Pro-c' creativity associated with the creative acts of professionals or other people with expertise who have mastered a field; 'little-c' creativity - the everyday creative acts of individuals who are not particularly expert in a situation and 'mini-c'  the novel and personally meaningful interpretation of experiences, actions and events made by individuals. Central to the definition of mini-c creativity is the dynamic, interpretative process of constructing personal knowledge and understanding within a particular socio-cultural context ie learning!

The Four-C model of creativity proposed by Kaufman and Beghetto (2009).

 Both mini-c and little-c forms of creativity are relevant to higher education learning and curriculum designs, teaching and learning strategies could usefully encourage and facilitate these. One might speculate that participation in these forms of creativity are pre-requisite for Pro-c and Big-C creativity in later life: if we want creative professionals then we should be encouraging students to be creative. It is however important to note that 'everyday creativity can extend from mini-c to little-c through Pro-c. It is only Big-C that remains eminent creativity (ibid:6) beyond the reach of most of us. From an educational perspective it might be reasoned that by encouraging and empowering students to use, develop and make claims for mini-c and little-c forms of creativity, we are better preparing them not only for using these forms in later life but for engaging in more expert-based forms of creativity that emerges through sustained engagement with a particular domain or field of activity.

Does this provide a useful way of visualising how you and your creativity fits into the creativity of humankind?
Using your own creativity? Can you enrich this model or propose an alternative one that makes sense to you?

Source:
Kaufman, J.C. and Beghetto, R.A. (2009) Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity. Review of General Psychology 13, 1, 1-12.

​Download their article

Our conversations in Group 1 have caused me to think about the relationships between emotions, creativity and participation.
 
The well established view in psychology is that positive emotions are conducive to creativity. In 'The Progress Principle', Amabile and Kramer's extensive research suggest that, ‘the single most important factor in igniting creativity, joy, trust, and productivity in workplace situations is simply a sense of making progress on meaningful work’.
 
Does the principle also apply to the #creativeHE community and if it does what does meaningful work mean in this context? Is it to do with a sense of contributing to the community and seeing that what is contributed is valued? Or is it to do with making progress in our own understanding? Or is it both of these things or something else? And does this situation of making progress on meaningful work also trigger emotions like joy that contribute positively to our motivation to put effort into and enjoy what we are doing?

Psychologists maintain that positive emotional states broaden and open the mind, whereas negative emotions are detrimental to creativity because they narrow our focus. A broad focus of attention is associated with divergent and associative ways of thinking where ideas and things can be connected that are not usually connected while a narrow scope of attention is more conducive to linear, step-by-step goal directed attainment.
 
However,  research also suggests that the positive vs. negative emotions distinction may not be the most important relationship for understanding attentional focus. Research conducted by psychologist Eddie Harmon-Jones and his colleagues suggests that the critical variable influencing our scope of attention is not positive vs. negative emotions but motivational intensity, or how strongly we feel compelled to either approach or avoid something. For example, pleasant or happy is a positive emotion, but it has low motivational intensity. In contrast, desire is a positive emotion with high motivational intensity. But negative emotions like fear and anxiety also have high motivational intensity.
 
Low motivational states facilitate the search for new goals to pursue, whereas high motivational states focus us on completing a specific goal. So keeping an open mind in order to explore or make sense of something complex by seeing the big picture is probably best undertaken when we are in a pleasant (or even sad) mood. But when we want to complete something we need high motivational intensity linked to desire, need or ambition... or even feelings of fear in some circumstances.
 
Returning to Amabile and Kramer's study of what made people more motivated, productive and creative in their work identified four factors that nourish a work culture in which people felt supported. They have a significant impact on the way people feel and on their creativity and productivity namely:
 
1 Respect - managerial actions determine whether people feel respected or disrespected and recognition is the most important of these actions.
 
2 Encouragement -  for example when managers or colleagues are enthusiastic about an individual's work and when managers express confidence in the capabilities of people doing the work increases their sense of self-efficacy. Simply by sharing a belief that someone can do something challenging and trusting them to get on with greatly increases the self-belief of the people who are engaging with the challenge.
 
3 Emotional support - people feel more connected to others at work when their emotions are validated. This goes for events at work, like frustrations when things are not going smoothly and little progress is being made, and for significant events in someone's personal life. Recognition of emotion and empathy can do much to alleviate negative and amplify positive feelings with beneficial results for all concerned.
 
4 Affiliation - people want to feel connected to their colleagues so actions that develop bonds of mutual trust, appreciation and affection are essential in nourishing the spirit of participation.
 
These factors must also be relevant to participation in on-line communities such as the  #creativeHE on-line course.
 
Sources:
Image credit Kari Wagner  http://www.kariwagner-artwork.com/about/voice/

 Amabile T and Kramer  S  (2012)  The Progress Principle
Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work
http://progressprinciple.com/books/single/the_progress_principle
 Harmon-Jones, E.,  Gable, P.A. Price, T.F (2013 ) Does Negative Affect Always Narrow and Positive Affect Always Broaden the Mind? Considering the Influence of Motivational Intensity on Cognitive Scope http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/22/4/301.short

​I love the way emergence happens - its my favourite feeling when I'm involved in something but it doesn't happen by accident. It requires people to be involved, to share their thoughts and feelings and to connect with other people. But I have always thought that when people come together because they care about something, new and interesting things will emerge.

Its 17 days since the start of the course and I have been waiting for emergence to happen. I am not disappointed as I have witnessed people sharing their experiences and perspectives in the community space and others have connected to them through  their responses. The trigger in my small group was the three way skype conversation Roger, Nikos and I we had on Sunday evening through which we identified an interest we shared and were willing to commit time and energy to exploring together. We thought we might explore together the connected ideas ideas of emotion-creativity-visualisation-collaboration and contribute our ideas and experiences to the community. Nikos started the ball rolling with an insightful post based on his experiences of working with children in a school. As a direct result of sharing his thoughts two members of the community, Scott and Rafaela, expressed an interest in joining the group. I also invited my friend Jenny who has a long standing interest in creativity and wellbeing. So we have a small group of at least six people who are interested in exploring these ideas together.

As a facilitator in the process perhaps my most important role is to encourage emergence. From my current experience of emergence I can see that it is relational  and emotional - without the formation of relationships it would not be happening. Relationships and the open honest conversations that emerge create feelings of trust and empathy, stimulate imagination and perspective change and motivate me to be more involved. The interesting thing is its happening in virtual communication spaces rather than face to face spaces.

In writing this I remembered and re-read an article written by my friend Richard Seel. He identified 10 conditions for emergence
This list of conditions provides a cognitive tool for evaluating the way emergence happens in any cultural space including our community space. 

1 connectivity
2 diversity of agents
3 rate of information flow
4 anxiety containment
5 proportionate power 
6 identity maintenance
7 good boundaries
8 intentionality
9 positive emotional space
10 watchful anticipation 

I include a link to Richards excellent article:  http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/emergence-2.htm

Emergence is a key property of complex systems. It is also, many believe, the key to fundamental change in human organisations. In this article I will propose that while emergence is neither predictable nor controllable there are some factors which predispose an organisation towards emergent change. I will also argue that these factors can be ‘tuned’ in such a way that not only is the emergence of new patterns made more likely but also that these patterns will be similar to the patterns which are desired by the members of the organisation.


I also include this wonderful drawing by the talented graphic facilitator Julian Burton 'Emergence in Organisations' and his article on Facilitating Emergence in Organisations.

Three members of our group - Nikos, Roger and myself met up for our first small group conversation - not really sure about what we would discuss. We had a bit of trouble making the hangout work and tried the webinar room but the video function wasn't working so we ended up using skype.. our persistence paid off.
 
We chatted for over an hour and around five themes.
 
1) The first was the idea that we are often at are most creative when we work closely with another person - which we visualised as a travelling companion.. Extending this idea to the group context perhaps if we travel together through the course we can be more creative than if we travelled alone.
 
2) Next we moved into the idea that physical spaces constrain or inhibit our creativity. In the context of HE environments there is a need to create spaces that are flexible enough to accommodate a range of pedagogies rather than constraining teachers to a particular pedagogy.. like a lecture room with fixed furniture.. There is a need for estates, technology people and teachers to work together to create the sorts of spaces that can be used in many different ways and therefore have greatest affordance for creativity.
 
3) The third theme came out of a question by N - what is the difference between creativity and innovation?.. we talked about this in terms of innovation being at the end of a developmental process which begins with an imaginative idea, progresses through a lot of activity to bring the idea into existence - eg research, design, experimenting, prototyping, refining... perhaps over and over again until the result of development, if accepted by others is viewed as innovation. Creativity doesn't just involve an imaginative and novel idea - ideas and their implementation occur throughout the development process. I explained that I had created a narrative picture to explain the idea of creativity in development (right) [I include the narrative below this blog as part of the introduction to the next issue of Creative Academic Magazine which will be on this theme.]
 
4) This led on to the fourth theme around the power of visualising words in pictures. We all had a story to tell that converged on the way in which pictures can give expression to people's voices and involve people in the creation of an image they can own.  One of the reasons pictures are so powerful is the way they engage us emotionally as well as cognitively.
 
5) From this grew the idea that emotional as well as intellectual engagement is necessary for people to get the most out of working together. People have to feel heard. They needs to know that their perspectives and contributions are respected and valued. We talked about occasions where with our groups or our communities, emotion had been a really good fuel for group work. We also talked about the power of telling stories as a means of engaging people emotionally and the value of images and pictures in the process of creating narratives.

Out of this came the proposition that our group might be proactive in encouraging greater involvement through a weekly intervention aimed at creating greater emotional engagement perhaps around a picture with a story illustrating a principle or some perspective about creativity and inviting members of the community to offer their stories.. We could monitor the success of our intervention through the number and quality of posts and see whether new people were drawn into the conversation. Each week we could have a short discussion about the success of our intervention as part of a regular (Sunday evening?) conversation..
 
It was agreed that Roger would make a post to invite other members of the group to consider and comment on the proposal and Nikos would offer the first picture and story if the group agreed that this was a useful thing to do.
 
Next group discussion on skype  Sunday 18th October.. 7.30pm???

​Nikos and Roger please add any points you want to make in comments box

​Explanation of the Creativity in Development picture

Its Sunday morning so I should be out cutting the grass but I thought I'd gather my first impressions of my experience of #creativeHE so far
 
Its two weeks since I began the Creativity for learning in higher education course - so what I have learned? I have to start by acknowledging that I am one of the facilitators so my primary task is to work out how to facilitate participants' involvement. I have never experienced what I think is a mooc before so I'm learning about what a mooc is and feels like as I try to work out how best to engage with it and perfrom my role as a facilitator. In one sense everyone who participates in a mooc has the potential to be a facilitator so I'm not really much different to everyone else but I guess if you are tagged as a facilitator participants expect more from you.
 
Firstly, I knew what a mooc was as words on paper but I didn't know what it was through the experience of being involved in one. So the most important thing I'm learning is about learning to be in a mooc and to interact with my fellow participants. Its experiential knowing rather than knowing that comes from reading. After Chrissi said she didn't think that this was a mooc I felt compelled to find out what others thought a mooc was and I'm pretty sure its characteristics are those of a cmooc in which participants essentially form the curriculum as the detail emerges within the fairly open and permissive structure that has been created by Chrissi.
 
The thing that immediately struck me is the different levels of participation. While there are 75 people registered I think only 25 people have posted and only a very small number of people have provided access to their own curations of personal learning (their portfolios or blogs). So the mooc is a community of variable interest and involvement rather than a 'collective' in the sense that John Seeley Brown talks about:  an enterprise in which everyone is actively  involved and membership requires active participation. I guess the main job of facilitator is to try to encourage more people to be involved and to share their personal learning and probably the old adage - what you get out is proportional to what you put in, holds true.
 
Even though I am designated a facilitator I also feel compelled to join in some but not necessarily all of the activities. I do this because I think I will learn what it's like to be a participant. It helps me to know what it feels like to be invited to engage in a certain way with certain ideas some of which I am attracted to and some I'm not. It helps me to know that I have a choice not to engage with something - unless I want recognition for it, in which case I have to.
 
What I believe - that some people can be highly creative with almost any prompt/idea, and can create meaning and significance from almost anything, has been confirmed. It is in the process of sharing personal positions that the new insights emerge.. For me the most useful insight I have gained so far was one of the participants saying 'I may be less creative than I think [I am]'. And the honesty struck a chord.. there are many times and situations when I think I am just not creative but I have to balance this with the occasions when I am. So thinking about our own creativity is a situational thing. I know I'm not much good at brain storming exercises because I can see the people around me have more agile and fertile minds in the moment. But give me a problem or challenge that interests me and I care about, and I am allowed to engage with it in my own way in my own time then I know my creativity is more likely to flourish. I keep reminding myself that personal creativity is about bringing new things into existence and everyday I can see this happening in small and incremental ways.
 
It seems to me that willingness to participate in a mooc involves personal risk. You have to declare what you think in a public way and this remains once it has been posted. Even though there might be many nuances on what you have said that in a normal face to face conversation there would be opportunity for these nuances and even entirely different perspectives to emerge. Posting has a sort of finality about it and but in reality posts can only be provisional and partial. So I can see why people don't want to commit themselves. Also posting involves making yourself vulnerable. You inevitably reveal something of yourself, your own ignorance, inadequacies and prejudices. It takes courage to make yourself vulnerable and I've seen some good examples during the last two weeks. I guess a good mooc fills people with courage to share their beliefs and feelings.
 
I have also learnt that the simplest prompt, like a picture, can lead to the most meaningful conversations as people use their imagination and critical thinking in an integrative way to create new meanings and convey their wisdom and insight. SW's post in response to the watering can and grass image -  'I thought of my allotment (and neighbouring plots) which celebrate individuality – no two plots are the same- and the fruit and veg are all different too :-) Gardening for me is about adapting to the environment (soil, weather, slugs etc) and being creative is about finding the best balance between my own ambitions for home grown food and the vagaries of nature', elicited attracted several people to develop conversation with meaning around the idea. This seemed to me to be one of the best examples of emergent meaning around creativity so far.

Another big area of my learning is understanding how the technology works to support our individual and collective learning ecology. One of the answers to the 'what's in it for me' question is that if I learn how to organise and facilitate like Chrissi is doing I can perhaps develop my own mooc. Knowing how the technology works is an experiential matter so this two weeks has been invaluable. For example I never knew what a google hangout was until I clicked the button and I could see and then tried it out with my son, and how could I imagine how the google community space worked until I have experienced it myself? I started off with a picture of the technology as it appeared to me at the start of the process. I have now added some new technologies but most importantly it is the technologies that participants use themselves - their own blogs, portfolios and other tools to curate and share their thoughts and feelings that I can now see are essential to making this work as an ecology for learning.

So looking back I can now see that I have learnt quite a lot. I now know about and can do things that I could not do two weeks ago and I look forward to the weeks ahead. Furthermore, I know that this personal knowledge will inform other aspects of my work.

Prompted by Bud Cadells slideshare presentation
 
We tend to think of creativity as something discrete and separate from aspects of ourselves that are not creative but its more valuable to appreciate our creativity as something that is integral to what we bring to a situation and how we deal with it.
 
Terrasa Amabile (1983), who studied people working in the professional domain, viewed a person's creativity as the integration of their expertise, their ability to think creatively about domain relevant problems and opportunities, and their motivation which drives their will to engage with a domain relevant problem or opportunity and persist until the job is done. This perspective on creativity emphasizes its integrative nature: it's integral and inseparable from our capability to think and act. She also recognised a set of character traits like being committed, ambitious, driven, energetic, enthusiastic, displaying integrity and honest, being open and confident with strong, self-belief, and having a positive and optimistic orientation, willing to take on risks and to engage with challenge, that are associated with creative acts.

Bud Cadell's presentation highlighted another aspect of integration namely the way we combine more divergent and analytical thinking processes when we are creative. I endorse this perspective and would like to develop it through the integrative thinking model proposed by Puccio, Murdock, and Mance (2005). Using a problem solving situation to illustrate the thinking process they consider that specific cognitive and affective domains are activated and emphasised as the problem solving task moves from start to finish. For instance, In step 1, the individual assessing the situation, uses their curiosity to drive exploration of the problem and diagnostic skills such as analyzing, describing, and selecting to define the problem. Puccio et al note that openness to novelty, tolerance for ambiguity, and tolerance for complexity underlie all stages of creative problem solving.

In life we are at our most creative when we are challenged or inspired by situations that enable us to think in an integrative way. The same is true for educational designs that invite learners to use their creativity.