Why are learning ecologies relevant to creativity?
Creativity is about bringing entirely new ideas and/or things into existence. We often forget that in the world outside formal education, the most important thing we do to learn and achieve something new is to create the process through which we learn, develop and achieve. For anything that is significant or complicated this can be a messy and protracted business. I am calling this process of invention and adaptation a learning ecology to capture the organic nature of the way our process grows and interacts with the world we inhabit. For higher education, the most important and useful form of creativity and capability we need to help students' develop, is their ability to create their own processes to learn and achieve.
What is a learning ecology?
An individual's learning ecology comprises their processes and contexts, relationships, networks, interactions, tools, technologies, activities and experiences that provides them with opportunities and resources for learning, development and achievement. Embedded within the ecology are the opportunities to be creative in the situated contexts of whatever enterprise is being undertaken. The prompts in the figure can be used as a tool to help you describe and evaluate a learning ecology.
Creativity is about bringing entirely new ideas and/or things into existence. We often forget that in the world outside formal education, the most important thing we do to learn and achieve something new is to create the process through which we learn, develop and achieve. For anything that is significant or complicated this can be a messy and protracted business. I am calling this process of invention and adaptation a learning ecology to capture the organic nature of the way our process grows and interacts with the world we inhabit. For higher education, the most important and useful form of creativity and capability we need to help students' develop, is their ability to create their own processes to learn and achieve.
What is a learning ecology?
An individual's learning ecology comprises their processes and contexts, relationships, networks, interactions, tools, technologies, activities and experiences that provides them with opportunities and resources for learning, development and achievement. Embedded within the ecology are the opportunities to be creative in the situated contexts of whatever enterprise is being undertaken. The prompts in the figure can be used as a tool to help you describe and evaluate a learning ecology.
Example learning ecology
We can evaluate the idea of a learning ecology by applying it to our own developmental processes. Here is an example drawn from my own professional life.
1) Over a period of time (eg 4 to 8 weeks) keep a diary/blog of a process you are creating to develop or achieve something in your professional life. Identify the points at which you used your creativity and explain what creativity meant in these contexts and situations.
2) Using the components of a learning ecology 'tool' to guide you, create an annotated diagram to represent your learning ecology and a short narrative of the experience drawing out the ecological features you consider to be important.
3) Provide a short commentary on the value and relevance of the concept to understanding how we learn, develop and achieve new things.
We can evaluate the idea of a learning ecology by applying it to our own developmental processes. Here is an example drawn from my own professional life.
1) Over a period of time (eg 4 to 8 weeks) keep a diary/blog of a process you are creating to develop or achieve something in your professional life. Identify the points at which you used your creativity and explain what creativity meant in these contexts and situations.
2) Using the components of a learning ecology 'tool' to guide you, create an annotated diagram to represent your learning ecology and a short narrative of the experience drawing out the ecological features you consider to be important.
3) Provide a short commentary on the value and relevance of the concept to understanding how we learn, develop and achieve new things.
This is an example of a learning ecology I created to illustrate the concept of a learning ecology when I taught a new course on the Social Age of Learning in October 2014 at Beijing Normal University
To illustrate the concept of a learning ecology and show how a narrative might be created to reveal the nature of personal creativity and how it emerges through our interactions with materials, events, people and circumstances of our life, I offer an example below. The illustration shows my learning ecology for two connected projects I undertook between August and early October 2014. I produced it initially to show students I was teaching at Beijing Normal University what I meant by a learning ecology and how I had used the tools of the Social Age to learn something that was new to me.
My ecology contains two cycles of activity over about 10 weeks. The first involved learning in order to produce an issue of Lifewide Magazine dedicated to Exploring the Social Age of Learning. The second cycle was the learning process I created in order to prepare for teaching a short course on the Social Age at Beijing Normal University. At the end of this process I knew I had developed my understanding of the concept of learning in the Social Age and also developed new knowledge on the way social media is being used by young people in China.
FIRST CYCLE OF ACTIVITY
1 HISTORY - When we start any learning project we do not begin with a blank sheet of paper, rather we start with all sorts of background knowledge, assumptions and questions some of which is relevant much of which isn’t. Some of which is helpful but some is not. We also start with process knowledge - knowing how to learn and develop in this particular context. This is the most important knowledge we posses.
2 In May 2014 I was working on a learning project to develop understanding around the use of social media in learning and development and discovered Julian Stodd's blog and e-book. His ideas seemed relevant and significant to my mission to develop knowledge relating to lifewide learning (my professional interest). I decided to use the theme of Exploring the Social Age for the September issue of Lifewide Magazine - a curated collection of stories. I got in touch with Julian and invited him to be Guest Editor which he kindly accepted, and then I set about developing content and finding others to help me using my personal learning networks (PLN) and on-line searches which enabled me to expand my PLN. I came across a number of blogs that were relevant and got in touch with a number of authors. I made a number of useful contacts and relationships extending my own networks in the process and connecting their knowledge to the Magazine project.
3 Production of the Magazine through August and September 2014 involved organising and editing the articles and creating a commentary and structure that made sense to me and hopefully the readers. I also worked with our community artist to create illustrations that communicated ideas – I used these narratives not only in the Magazine but also in the blogs and other social media and later in my lecture materials. Following publication of Lifewide Magazine in September through our web 2.0 website and Paper Li and Academia.eu I posted blogs on several websites and social media platforms (Linked In, Facebook) and my own blog, and circulated notices via twitter.
SECOND CYCLE OF ACTIVITY
4 After publication of the Magazine in late September I began to prepare my lectures for BNU. Over a few days I engaged in further searching using google and discovered a wealth of materials much of it research-based on websites, blogs, YouTube. I also began researching the use of social media in China. I worked with a former BNU student who helped me develop questionnaires and posted them on Survey Monkey (Web 2.0 tech) to gain perspectives on the use of social media amongst Chinese students. During my week-long visit to BNU I worked with two Chinese students to help me engage their peers in the on-line surveys. The knowledge that was developed was then utilised in the teaching process. I created a new website ‘BNUlectures’ to host resources to support learning with BNU students and the new knowledge we had co-created.
5 I have now begun to codify what I have learnt about the Social Age in a chapter for our on-line e-book.
EVALUATING MY CREATIVITY IN THIS ECOLOGICAL PROCESS
Working with the proposition that personal creativity is 'the emergence in action of a novel relational product growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of his life' (Rogers 1961), how did my creativity manifest itself in these connected learning ecologies? Perhaps first and foremost is the idea that I invented a process to learn and achieve. Bringing an ecology for learning, development and achievement into existence that is unique to the circumstances must be considered a novel product. Through this process I was able to bring other novel (new to me and new to others) things into existence that reflected my uniqueness and circumstances of my life. Here are some of the ways in which my creativity was utilised to create novelty:
1 CREATION OF A UNIQUE ECOLOGY for learning, development and achievement in the particular contexts and circumstances of my life to fulfil the purposes I had determined
2 PRODUCTION of a NEW magazine including the CO-CREATION of content and illustrations
3 The NEW ways I used social media to disseminate the Magazine and its content
4 The way I connected and synthesised existing knowledge to CREATE a NEW STORY appropriate for my teaching context
5 The production of NEW resources for teaching – like the representation of my learning ecology
and the design and content of a NEW website to support the learning process
6 The design of a NEW questionnaire to facilitate sharing of students’ personal knowledge about their use of social media
7 The teaching performance – NEW TOPIC for a new student group
8 The NEW relationships that have been formed from which NEW things were grown and continue to grow
This story illustrates how our creative ideas are turned into actions that enable us to achieve the things we value and bring new material objects, processes and performances into existence, and enable us to learn and develop - probably our most important creative product since this impacts on the way we see things and our future learning.
Norman Jackson
@lifewider1 @academiccrerator
To illustrate the concept of a learning ecology and show how a narrative might be created to reveal the nature of personal creativity and how it emerges through our interactions with materials, events, people and circumstances of our life, I offer an example below. The illustration shows my learning ecology for two connected projects I undertook between August and early October 2014. I produced it initially to show students I was teaching at Beijing Normal University what I meant by a learning ecology and how I had used the tools of the Social Age to learn something that was new to me.
My ecology contains two cycles of activity over about 10 weeks. The first involved learning in order to produce an issue of Lifewide Magazine dedicated to Exploring the Social Age of Learning. The second cycle was the learning process I created in order to prepare for teaching a short course on the Social Age at Beijing Normal University. At the end of this process I knew I had developed my understanding of the concept of learning in the Social Age and also developed new knowledge on the way social media is being used by young people in China.
FIRST CYCLE OF ACTIVITY
1 HISTORY - When we start any learning project we do not begin with a blank sheet of paper, rather we start with all sorts of background knowledge, assumptions and questions some of which is relevant much of which isn’t. Some of which is helpful but some is not. We also start with process knowledge - knowing how to learn and develop in this particular context. This is the most important knowledge we posses.
2 In May 2014 I was working on a learning project to develop understanding around the use of social media in learning and development and discovered Julian Stodd's blog and e-book. His ideas seemed relevant and significant to my mission to develop knowledge relating to lifewide learning (my professional interest). I decided to use the theme of Exploring the Social Age for the September issue of Lifewide Magazine - a curated collection of stories. I got in touch with Julian and invited him to be Guest Editor which he kindly accepted, and then I set about developing content and finding others to help me using my personal learning networks (PLN) and on-line searches which enabled me to expand my PLN. I came across a number of blogs that were relevant and got in touch with a number of authors. I made a number of useful contacts and relationships extending my own networks in the process and connecting their knowledge to the Magazine project.
3 Production of the Magazine through August and September 2014 involved organising and editing the articles and creating a commentary and structure that made sense to me and hopefully the readers. I also worked with our community artist to create illustrations that communicated ideas – I used these narratives not only in the Magazine but also in the blogs and other social media and later in my lecture materials. Following publication of Lifewide Magazine in September through our web 2.0 website and Paper Li and Academia.eu I posted blogs on several websites and social media platforms (Linked In, Facebook) and my own blog, and circulated notices via twitter.
SECOND CYCLE OF ACTIVITY
4 After publication of the Magazine in late September I began to prepare my lectures for BNU. Over a few days I engaged in further searching using google and discovered a wealth of materials much of it research-based on websites, blogs, YouTube. I also began researching the use of social media in China. I worked with a former BNU student who helped me develop questionnaires and posted them on Survey Monkey (Web 2.0 tech) to gain perspectives on the use of social media amongst Chinese students. During my week-long visit to BNU I worked with two Chinese students to help me engage their peers in the on-line surveys. The knowledge that was developed was then utilised in the teaching process. I created a new website ‘BNUlectures’ to host resources to support learning with BNU students and the new knowledge we had co-created.
5 I have now begun to codify what I have learnt about the Social Age in a chapter for our on-line e-book.
EVALUATING MY CREATIVITY IN THIS ECOLOGICAL PROCESS
Working with the proposition that personal creativity is 'the emergence in action of a novel relational product growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of his life' (Rogers 1961), how did my creativity manifest itself in these connected learning ecologies? Perhaps first and foremost is the idea that I invented a process to learn and achieve. Bringing an ecology for learning, development and achievement into existence that is unique to the circumstances must be considered a novel product. Through this process I was able to bring other novel (new to me and new to others) things into existence that reflected my uniqueness and circumstances of my life. Here are some of the ways in which my creativity was utilised to create novelty:
1 CREATION OF A UNIQUE ECOLOGY for learning, development and achievement in the particular contexts and circumstances of my life to fulfil the purposes I had determined
2 PRODUCTION of a NEW magazine including the CO-CREATION of content and illustrations
3 The NEW ways I used social media to disseminate the Magazine and its content
4 The way I connected and synthesised existing knowledge to CREATE a NEW STORY appropriate for my teaching context
5 The production of NEW resources for teaching – like the representation of my learning ecology
and the design and content of a NEW website to support the learning process
6 The design of a NEW questionnaire to facilitate sharing of students’ personal knowledge about their use of social media
7 The teaching performance – NEW TOPIC for a new student group
8 The NEW relationships that have been formed from which NEW things were grown and continue to grow
This story illustrates how our creative ideas are turned into actions that enable us to achieve the things we value and bring new material objects, processes and performances into existence, and enable us to learn and develop - probably our most important creative product since this impacts on the way we see things and our future learning.
Norman Jackson
@lifewider1 @academiccrerator
