Thinking Skills and Creativity 10 (2013) 13–22
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Using technology to open up learning and teaching through improvisation: Case studies with micro-blogs and short message service communications Patrick Dillon a,∗ , RuoLan Wang b , Mikko Vesisenaho a,1 , Teemu Valtonen a , Sari Havu-Nuutinen a a b
Philosophical Faculty, University of Eastern Finland, PO Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland Visual Learning Lab, Dearing Building, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 9 November 2012 Received in revised form 4 June 2013 Accepted 11 June 2013 Available online 20 June 2013 Keywords: Improvisation Learning Teaching Social software SMS Cultural ecology
a b s t r a c t This paper models learning environments as cultural ecologies and reports two case studies where technological resources are introduced into the cultural ecology to investigate the extent to which improvisation in learning arises out of the processes of collaboration facilitated by the technology. A student-oriented study investigated how 34 Master’s students shared lecture notes in an online educational community. A lecturer-orientated study investigated the use of short message service communications in a lecture. Data were collected through the respective technological resources and through interviews. Results from both studies suggest that little improvisation occurs of its own accord; rather it requires interventions in the cultural ecology that promote an awareness of possibilities and develop the conditions to support them. Organisational, technological and pedagogical conditions that might support improvisation are discussed. Crown Copyright © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Improvisation is commonly associated with jazz and theatre performance (King, 1997; Martin, Leberman, & Neill, 2002) but is also widely applied in the fields of management and business (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Crossan & Sorrenti, 1997; Pasmore, 1998) and also in music and drama education (e.g. Bolton, 1979; Dickinson, Neelands, & School, 2006; Heathcote & Bolton, 1995; Jackson, 1993; Robinson, 1980). Improvisation is generally taken to be the coincidence of creative, emergent and collaborative activities but a more formal definition is ‘the ability to combine new experiences with existing elements and put them together in new combinations for a purpose’ (Coker, 1964). In this paper we are working broadly within the frame of Coker (1964), focusing on processes of ‘opening up’ learning and teaching to make them more amenable to improvisation and on how the processes are facilitated. Space does not permit an exploration of the relationships between improvisation and creativity generally, nor the links between improvisations and for example self-regulated learning. ‘Opening up’ learning through improvisation allows for questioning and challenging existing ideas and practically applying knowledge in new and innovative combinations. By this we mean arriving at outcomes that are additional to meeting the objectives of a given task, or allowing objectives to be met in unconventional ways. There is intellectual value in thinking
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 01395 232522; fax: +44 01395 232522. E-mail addresses: patrick.dillon@uef.fi,
[email protected] (P. Dillon),
[email protected] (R. Wang), mikko.vesisenaho@jyu.fi (M. Vesisenaho), teemu.valtonen@uef.fi (T. Valtonen), sari.havu-nuutinen@uef.fi (S. Havu-Nuutinen). 1 Present Address: Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä, P.O.Box 35, 40014 Jyväskylä, Finland. 1871-1871/$ – see front matter. Crown Copyright © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2013.06.001
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about tasks and problems in different ways: new ways of doing things often may offer more user-orientated or logistically effective solutions. Examples of opening up learning through improvisation include ways of provoking improvisations, i.e. moving out of set piece routines, opening up new beginnings and new possibilities, drawing out difference from within the same, capturing interconnections between ideas, and comparing and contrasting possibilities. These characteristics are derived from the detailed philosophical analysis of improvisation offered by Peters (2009). Collaboration in learning and teaching is important if improvisation is to happen. In the jazz analogy, although individual moments of ‘shining’ in a performance are most commonly associated with improvisation, the collective endeavour drawn from the simultaneous imaginings of all the musicians (and the audience) is equally important, so too in learning and teaching where ‘simultaneous imaginings’ equate with ‘in the moment’ ideas which emerge out of the collective activity. The emergent possibilities of improvisation may be represented though learning modelled as ‘cultural ecology’, the dynamic interactions between learners and learning environments (Dillon & Loi, 2008; Loi & Dillon, 2006). Through these interactions there is a constant interplay between an individual’s immediate experiences and how he/she knows the world. The moment an individual experiences something he/she makes connections with what he/she already knows and feels, i.e. the relational constructs and emotions that define the individual’s personal history. Immediate, ‘in the moment’ experiences and the understanding developed from prior learning are constantly reconstructing each other. In most structured learning situations – schools, universities, museums, workplaces etc., experiences are managed in favour of particular outcomes e.g. through curricula, pedagogies, curatorial strategies, workplace routines. Typically these objective-orientated managerial processes ‘select’ certain ‘in the moment’ experiences and consolidate them in pursuit of educational or workplace goals. This is both a strength of education as a managed process and a weakness. The weakness is in the lost creative and imaginative potential of experiences not pursued. In Fig. 1 below, the symbol with a star in an oval represents the relational constructs that characterise learning in formal situations. The inverted triangle symbol represents ‘in the moment’ experiences. The central arrow represents a learning trajectory. The left hand diagram represents a typical learning trajectory in a formal situation: ‘in the moment’ experiences are consolidated within the relational constructs that define the goals of the learning activity. This is goal-directed or objectiveorientated learning. It is essentially a ‘closed’ system. The right hand diagram shows a similar learning trajectory but in this case some of the ‘in the moment’ experiences are allowed to break away from the main trajectory and open up the system to new possibilities. These break away experiences equate with improvisations; they typically involve nonlinear and nonstandard thinking, developing new associations between existing ideas or concepts and the exploration and generation of new knowledge, ideas and concepts. By ‘new’ we mean associations, ideas and concepts that are additional to or alternative to the content offered through the goals of the learning activity.
Fig. 1. Learning trajectories: left hand side objective orientated closed system; right hand side trajectory open to the possibilities of improvisation. Adapted from Dillon, 2012
Cultural ecology describes human social activities generally in relation to the environments in which they are a part. Activities within those environments are mediated by technologies. In learning environments, ‘technology’ can be any resource or tool that mediates learning and thus all learning situations are in some way mediated by technologies. The introduction of a new resource to the technological mix in a learning environment provides new possibilities for social action, including both collaboration and improvisation. In this paper, we use the term ‘technology’ to mean information and communication technologies such as social software and short message service (SMS) systems. In the research described below, social software and SMS were technological additions to the learning situations under investigation. We recognise that these technologies may be used by students in different contexts, although a survey of existing practices did not form part of the research reported.
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Social software aligns well with the ideas of collaborative learning practices (Ferdig, 2007) but its introduction into educational situations may cause tensions (Crook, 2012). There are hundreds of different social software available. A common feature is their emphasis on interaction and creating content, both necessary conditions for improvisation. Given that improvisation implies the possibility of active involvement with content, it is necessary for participants to have access to the means to achieve this. Mobile devices have an important part to play in connecting participants and in capturing the creative and emergent outcomes of collaborative activities. This paper reports two case studies where additional technological resources have been introduced to the cultural ecology of learning. Both studies are concerned with the extent to which improvisation in learning and teaching is an activity that occurs out of the processes of collaboration facilitated by the technology. The first study, conducted at the Information and Communication Technology Research Group (Tietotekniikanopetuskäytöntutkimus-jakehittämisyksikkö) (ToTY) at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), concerns the sharing of lecture notes in an online educational community. The second, conducted at the Visual Learning Lab, University of Nottingham, UK, concerns the use of short message service (SMS) communications in a lecture. The research questions are: 1. What types of improvisation arise when additional technologies are introduced to cultural ecologies of learning? 2. What are the conditions under which the improvisations arise? The two questions are explored from the perspectives of learners (case study 1) and a lecturer (case study 2). 2. Case study 1 2.1. Research setting and method The context of this case study was the traditional face-to-face lecture. A problem with face-to-face lectures is that students often are in rather passive roles (Young, Robinson, & Alberts, 2010). The aim of this case study was to support students’ participation by encouraging them to share their ideas and interpretations about lectures and to use the shared interpretations as resources for developing new ideas and avenues of enquiry. The improvisational potential of sharing was facilitated by making available a shared lecture note facility. The advantage that this facility offers over for example discussion groups is that the notes containing the students’ ideas are not just shared but also stored online. The expectation was that the shared lecture note facility would provide an ‘additional layer’ (or cloud) to supplement face-to-face learning. Our assumption was that students may have unique and interesting ways to interpret lecture content but that the conventional lecture setting does not provide much scope for sharing these ideas. In this case study the sharing of lecture notes and using them later was made possible through the mediation of social software. The shared lecture notes were produced in Qaiku (www.qaiku.com), a so called micro-blog. Qaiku provides possibilities for making notes with an individual maximum of 140 characters per note. There is no limit to the number of notes an individual participant can write. All the students had mini-laptop computers provided by the university for the duration of the course. They could see each others’ notes through the online environment screened on their computers during and after the lectures. Notes form a list, updating when a participant posts a note or clicks the refresh button. Qaiku provides also a facility for participants to save their own and/or the group notes. The lecturer has access to Qaiku during and after the lectures offering the possibility of seeing students’ anonymous notes. There were no financial costs to the students in using the technology and accessing the online environment. The study was conducted with primary and special education teacher students studying optional minor studies in Early Childhood Education. A total of 34 students participated in the Early Childhood Science Education course that included lectures (12 h) and practical demonstrations (18 h) during the first semester of 2011. The course was a component of the Masters Degree programme at the UEF. Two types of research data were collected. First, the lecture notes produced by the students in the Qaiku environment. These were analysed by the lecturer (one of the authors) through open coding based on how the notes related to the original lecture content and the extent to which new ideas were developed collaboratively. Four categories emerged from this analysis (Table 1), two of them reflecting ways in which students reproduced lecture content, and two of them reflecting collaborative development of ideas.
Table 1 Frequency of lecture notes in four categories. Categories:
n:
Information taken directly from lecturer’s presentation Information from lecturer’s presentation reproduced by students in their own words Collaborative notes Making connections and developing ideas
61 160 9 49
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To investigate the improvisational characteristics of the collaborative development of ideas, a second set of data were collected. This involved interviewing nine students (seven women and two men) after the course. The students were selected for interview based on their level of activity in Qaiku: three from the most active group, three from a ‘middle’ activity group and three from the least active group. Interviews focussed on students’ experiences about writing shared lectures notes, how they saw the possibilities of sharing the notes, and the effects that sharing notes had on the learning process. Interview transcripts were analysed using open coding (Gibbs, 2007). The coding was undertaken by two researchers separately. The results were compared and discussed. The differences between the coding of the two researchers were small and consensus was achieved easily.
2.2. Outcomes Altogether 279 notes were produced. The content analysis yielded four categories of notes (Table 1). The category ‘information taken directly from lecturer’s presentation’ was notes that used the same words, definitions and concepts as the lecturer. The category ‘information from lecturer’s presentation reproduced by students in their own words’ was notes drawn from the lecturer’s presentation but reworked by the students in their own words in making summaries of the topic. The category ‘collaborative note chains’ contained exchanges between students about the topics of the lecture. The category ‘making connections and developing ideas’ was notes where students made their own conclusions connecting lecture topics to situations and experiences outside the lecture content. These notes showed students’ own thinking and their use of lecture content as a source of further developing the topics (cf. Starkey, 2011). Of the four categories revealed through open coding, the first offers no possibilities for improvisation because it is simply reproduction. The second offers minimal possibilities unless the student reproduces content using words that provoke a change of direction in thinking. The third and fourth categories have the most possibilities for improvisation because they are collaborative and offer the potential for new combinations of ideas. In the following sections, quotations are largely verbatim; grammatical corrections have been made only to clarify meaning.
2.2.1. Content reproduction In the interviews students reiterated the tendency to copy the lecturer’s speech directly into Qaiku. For some students this helped if they had missed some point of the lecture: “The problem was that the notes usually contained the same information as in the lecturer’s slides, and many students wrote down the same things.” “I think that students noticed that the notes contained the same information, students had written down the same notes many times. And after that I thought more about do they post the same thing or not.” “If you have missed some topic then you can read other students’ notes they have written and you get back to lecturers pace. In this kind of situation you often notice that they have thought about this from totally different perspective than you did.”
2.2.2. Collaborative processes Even though there are relatively few notes indicating collaboration, the interviews with students provided some insight into the processes involved, e.g. students asking for advice or help with difficult topics; students benefiting from seeing how their peers express lecture content in different ways: “One student posted a question to Qaiku after the lecture about one thing that she could not understand. So that if someone could help her with that, to better understand what the lecturer meant. I then answered to her question in a way that I had understood the topic. And after me other students answered to the same question and these students had understood the topic quite differently than I had.” “The notes are useful for your own thinking. . . you can find other students own ideas, things said in different ways or someone can bring their earlier experiences.”
2.2.3. Asynchronous aspects Asynchronous benefits attributed to the use of Qaiku were typically concerned with routine revisiting of content, e.g. for revision for examinations. However, although improvisation is typically associated with ‘in the moment’ responses, the use of social software raises the intriguing possibility of asynchronous improvisation: “Using Qaiku supported collaboration in learning; especially when being able to pick out some notes from Qaiku which I had missed. I intend to make use of the joint Qaiku notes, when reading for the exam – I might get more new ideas” “When I read for the course exam, I wrote a summary which also included relevant comments from Qaiku. Actually, during the course I went through the Qaiku comments not only during the last couple of weeks but throughout the whole course. The shared lecture notes supported me, at least in my own learning.”
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2.2.4. Improvisational potential Students suggested that by being able to read each other’s notes they were able to develop new ideas and ways of thinking and get a deeper understanding of the topic. Also they were able to develop further the ideas of their peers, to continue each other’s thinking. “The notes are useful for your own thinking. I think it was a good idea. With shared notes you can share your experiences and that way there may come up totally new ideas. . . you can find other students own ideas, things said in different ways or someone can bring their earlier experiences.” “When other students had posted their notes, then in a way I continued their thinking. . . when someone had some idea then you might get also new ideas based on that other students note. . . and when several people think about the same topic it becomes much more diverse and profound” “Other students ways to see and interpret the topic kind of extended and opened my own understanding of the topic.” 3. Case study 2 3.1. Research setting and method The second case study was set in The University of Nottingham. The short message service (SMS) system was used in a first year module Introduction to Geographical Information Science (GIS). The subject of GIS is new to most incoming students and has earlier been perceived as overly technical and ‘dry’. Engaging the students with the subject has proved difficult for the lecturers. The idea of adopting SMS was to provide a lightweight and immediate communication platform between lecturer and students in a larger group lecture setting. The lecturer who participated in the trial was keen to see first year students with low confidence levels better engage with the lecture. SMS was chosen as a means to facilitate this because it allows anonymous in-lecture questioning and communication. The SMS system has a web-based interface and can be used from any computing device that allows internet access. The user connects online and can then interact with the system to send, receive, schedule and update contacts. It is very similar to an email client, but sends SMS messages rather than email. As it is web-based it can be used in any lecture theatre without the need to install dedicated software. Students send their SMS to a dedicated number saved in ‘contacts’ on their own mobile phone at the beginning of the year. The SMS messages then appear on the resident PC whilst the lecturer is delivering the lecture. The lecturer can choose to make verbal responses immediately or hold them over to a later date. The case study reported here is derived from a systematic evaluation of the use of the SMS in year one cohorts in September 2009. The study aimed to investigate a lecturer’s perspectives of using improvisation techniques together with SMS communication in lectures. It also explored whether the use of SMS and mobile phones have changed conventional teaching practices and encouraged learning beyond the formal lecture setting. A mixed research method combining teaching observations and semi-structured interviews was applied. A number of teaching observations were carried out in order to enhance understanding of how the SMS services were being used in learning and teaching in the lecture hall. An in-depth semi-structured interview with the module lecturer was conducted at the end of the module. The interview took approximately 90 min and was recorded and transcribed. Information from the observations was used to support the interpretation of data from the interview. The teaching observations, interviewing and analysis of data were carried out by one of the authors; the lecturer who was the subject of this case study is not an author of the paper. 3.2. Outcomes The interview transcript constitutes a linear narrative from which five major themes can be identified. The first two themes report how SMS technology has increased engagement between the lecturer and the students and how an informal learner community was formed as a result of the interactions between them. The interplay between students and learning community was a pre-condition for improvisation. The third theme deals with the essential element of risk-taking and the lecturer being challenged when adapting the technology in lecture-based teaching. Both are important characteristics in opening up to the possibilities offered through improvisation. The fourth and fifth themes illustrate the interwoven relationships between teaching, performing and improvisation. 3.2.1. Student engagement During the interview, the lecturer explained that the advantage of using SMS technology is to increase learners’ engagement. In his view, engagement is a complex set of interactions between actors and resources: The area that I think is really important is how they engage with me. And that is a philosophy that I believe strongly. . . Speaking of using SMS in lectures, you have seen the technological side of what I do. . . there are different sorts of engagement. And they need different strategies. There is an engagement with the materials. There is an engagement with the actual learning. So there’s the pedagogic engagement. . . and then there’s an engagement with me as an individual. . . They interact strongly. . . If I am getting a strong engagement in the pedagogic aspects, I engage more with the students. Similarly if
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students are engaging with me, I can encourage them to engage further with pedagogic aspects. I am conscious of these things in the dynamic of a large lecture environment. The lecturer emphasised his proactive role with the technology as well as with content and performance if the conventional lecture hall dynamic is to be challenged: I was feeding back to the students ‘this is not just a dead technology, I actually listen to this, I watch this. . . and I want to use it to encourage them to interact with me and with each other. It’s stopped the lecture theatre about being the teacher at the front. I make a point of engaging people in the lecture the moment they walk in the door. . . walking up and down the aisles before a lecture saying ‘hello’ to people, ‘how was your weekend?’ ‘What have you been up to?’. . . I want them to know that I am pleased they are there.
3.2.2. An informal learner community The lecturer confirmed that spontaneous SMS communication seems to make students engage more with the subject. Interestingly, not all texts sent were relevant to the teaching topics; some were ‘very amusing’, even poking fun at the lecturer. However, the sense of humour the lecturer showed, when responding to those texts relaxed the atmosphere in the lecture hall. It helped to ease the formal relationship between lecturer and students and hence encouraged the development of a learning community amenable to risk-taking. After working with the SMS system in 2009, year one students took ownership of their learning much earlier than had been seen previously with first year groups, forming a social network on Facebook on one occasion and engaging in widespread peer support. Traditionally peer engagement and support at this level does not happen until they go on a field trip together around Easter time. The sense of community was instrumental in helping the new cohort settle and build confidence from the beginning of their course. The evidence shows that SMS mobile service established and supported a ‘learner community’ where collaborative learning in groups is fostered. “The first year I did this [SMS], I was amazed by the sort of texts that came in. The majority were asking about the colour of my shirt, should I get my hair cut this evening. . . all this sort of crazy stuff. For a while I was quite taken aback by it and I wondered is there really any value in this? And then the penny dropped: I had handed responsibility to the students and said ‘Hey guys, you are digital natives, use your technology as you do in your everyday life’. I didn’t give any constraints, I didn’t give any boundaries, and they started talking to me in the way they talk to their friends: having discussions, taking the Mick out of each other [making a joke]. . . Now there are some issues here, there are boundaries that need to be defined and not crossed, but what it does do very effectively is build learning communities very, very quickly. It is a community of learners of which I am a member, that’s vital. “Learners are rather intuitive and perceptive. With SMS they realise that it is not just about learning, it’s a technology for developing communication and communities for all sorts of things. . . One thing that’s evolved from this [using SMS] completely spontaneously is the students setting up a Facebook site. They chat; they take the Mick out of each other, out of what we’re talking about. They talk about the text book, they talk about things we’re doing. Different skills. . . as an academic in this system we have responsibility to recognise those as genuine learning outcomes.
3.2.3. Risk taking and being challenged in a ‘safe’ environment The SMS approach helped students to overcome their shyness and reservations in an otherwise intimidating environment and encouraged them to ask questions anytime under cover of anonymity. Teaching observations confirm that this approach was well received by the students although in formal educational systems it is typically perceived as being ‘risky’. The challenge is about re-conceptualising the conventional lecturer-student relationship and allowing ‘out of track’ activities in an otherwise controlled presentation. From the teaching point of view, lecturers need to be able to provide guidelines and set challenging tasks or questions and know how to respond to the unexpected: “I have a strategy associated with breaking down communication barriers in the large lecture theatre. I needed a method that was going to give a degree of controlled anonymity. . . where they can ask questions freely and people wouldn’t know who it was texting, their colleagues wouldn’t know. . . and importantly I don’t know as well at the point at which I deal with the incoming messages. I want the students to feel that they can surprise me. And take risks, it’s important that students can take risks. Both groups of people in the SMS environment have responsibilities, if one is going to open up the flexibility and encourage students to take risks, one of the responsibilities of the lecturer is to recognise there will be some students who will over step the mark and not be offended by that. To say to a bunch of students ‘I am going to encourage you to take risks, have fun, ask challenging questions’, and when they ask a question, you don’t like it, you have to be realistic about that and take it on the chin and then feedback to the students in a positive way. [I am utilising] the basic affordance of the technology: a semi confidential real time method of communication between two individuals using a device that is familiar to our digital native learners. I use it in such a way that it allows this notion of theatre to work in a different way. Others will use it for other things. “If you’re going to encourage students to take risks, they will take risks, and they may make mistakes. So, if you jump on them that’s not fair. If you want to be very structured about it and use it in a very defined way, that’s fine but you need to be clear about that. You need to set the boundaries and the rules. We have come full circle, there are two elements, pedagogic and personal, and you need to think about both. “One does not think critically if one is not able to ask and answer questions, and indeed take risks in their questioning, be challenging, be challenged. What I think it demonstrates very clearly is that this is the place where it is fine to challenge and to be
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challenged and to have fun, and to enjoy that process. That’s the starting point. . . it’s got to be safe. They [the students] won’t be critical if they’re not safe. 3.2.4. The lecturer as an improviser After expressing his view about providing a learning environment which encourages the students to challenge and be challenged, the lecturer immediately related this with opening up to improvisation. When learning and teaching becomes ‘out of track’ or un-planned, the lecturer needs to deal with the ‘in the moment’ scenarios without the benefit of prior preparation: “On average, in a lecture of two hundred people weekly, I would receive something between ten and fourteen messages per lecture. One or two might be sent before the lecture but the vast majority are sent in the lecture. . . I have two screens. I have a laptop that I am running my lecture on, and I have a console, and I can switch between the two. We stop at points in the lecture, usually in the middle and towards the end, to do the text messaging stuff, so that way I am not constantly being interrupted. I will have both screens visible to me all the way through the lecture and I am multi-tasking, I am giving a lecture but I’ve also got one eye on what’s coming in on the other screen. And I am making subconscious decisions then about how I am going to play those five minutes with the text messages. “SMS is facilitating technology; it is not a teaching methodology. However you have to accept that you cannot view a lecture as a nice linear event where you have control of what goes on in it, from start to finish. You have to hand over an element of control. There are some slots when I give periods of time to the SMS. I have no idea what’s coming in those slots, that’s the fun of it. So I have periods when I am very much in control and periods when I open things up. The clear benefit from me is that I am able to interact with my students in a way that the formalities of a hierarchical higher education system are removed. How does one police that zone? I am not their mates. I don’t have a formalised set of protocols. I do that on the fly. This is about opening oneself up to risk. . . It should be noted that texting was not obligatory and the texting participation rate of approximately 5% is for each one hour lecture and is not an overall statistic for student participation. Discussions with the students revealed that although many of them never sent a text, the act of viewing other students’ texts and the responses of the lecturer made them feel engaged more with the classroom teaching. 3.2.5. The lecturer as a performer Although the interview was aiming to investigate the use of SMS technology in large group teaching, the lecturer insisted that good teaching does not rely entirely on technology. The lecturer shared his teaching philosophy during the interview. For him, he sees the lecture hall as a theatre and teaching, as partly performing. “. . .We teach in a lecture theatre, and the lecture theatre should have an element of performance or theatre within it, because with the best intentions in the world, ten one hour slots with two hundred students watching me, they are not going to get deep learning, deep understanding from that process. They are going to gain access to some knowledge, hopefully conceptual understanding. But they’re not going to be able to amalgamate and synthesise all those into a deep understanding of the subject in the space of ten one hour sessions. So the bit that has to be there is a motivation for them to say ‘I really want to engage with and synthesise all this information together’. And there has to be someone who is going to encourage and support them and motivate them to do that, and that’s part of what I try to do. “I see myself as an informed performer. I am trying to communicate something to students. And one of the ways of doing that is through the performance medium. It’s not about acting. There is an element of acting within it, but it’s deeper than that because there is also a knowledge base there. You do the act, but at the same time change you’re acting according to the reaction from your audiences so you improvise throughout. And the way I respond to different groups of students changes. For example: One student sent a text message that was really quite cheeky. . . so I texted him back with a cryptic message that just said ‘you are the ring master’. . . he then had to come out the front and organise a whole bunch of students to physically perform an understanding of geometrical typology. 4. Discussion An educational community has some things in common with a jazz band. Both are collaborative endeavours with shared, collective goals. But within the shared structure there is scope for individual expression and the pursuit of personal objectives: drawing out differences in perspectives; awareness of relationships between immediate actions and overall shape and form; interconnecting the particular with the general; keeping the work ‘open’ and looking for new beginnings, moving into new, sometimes challenging, spaces. Lobman and Lundquist (2007) use the term ‘unscripted learning’ to describe scenarios of improvisational learning. They argue that both teachers and students are simultaneously improvisers and performers, a point made in case study two. In the UEF study, 79% of the shared notes made during the course reveal mainly ‘safe’ behaviours, i.e., collecting and consolidating course content from the teacher and from peers. 21% of the notes showed evidence of improvisation through collaborative notes and connecting and developing ideas. The Nottingham lecturer recognised that much of the learning in his course is routine ‘access to knowledge’, and that in order to move beyond this it is necessary for both lecturer and students to ‘take risks’. At this point it is worth reiterating Peters (2009) characteristics of improvisation and exploring the extent to which they occur in the transactions between the Nottingham lecturer and his students. For Peters (2009), improvisation involves
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moving out of set piece routines, opening up new beginnings and new possibilities, drawing out difference from within the same, capturing interconnections between ideas, and comparing and contrasting possibilities. The Nottingham lecturer’s strategy for using SMS is to ‘open up the flexibility’ and encourage students to ‘ask challenging questions’, to ‘surprise [him].’ He recognises that the questions may not take him in the direction he wants to go but by giving students the means to challenge he is obliged to go with the flow. Here we see the improvisational qualities of keeping the work open so that it can move into new unlabelled, unplanned spaces. Drawing out ‘difference’ within the ‘same’ depends, structurally, on not losing sight of the overall ‘song’. He does this by creating what may be termed ‘improvisational space’, SMS time, within the lecture. There are also rules about content: just as in a jazz performance improvisation must not destabilise the song, so in lectures SMS messages must not step beyond acceptable content; but humour is recognised as an important ingredient. Allowing students ‘controlled anonymity’ is different from the tradition of improvisation in jazz, but in the lecturer’s opinion offers greater scope for utilising the ‘affordances of the technology’ at an early stage of the students’ university careers. There is less evidence of risk taking in the UEF study, suggesting that opening up flexibility and drawing out difference are more likely to be initiated by lecturers than students. To return to the question of the extent to which improvisation in learning is a spontaneous activity that occurs out of the process of collaboration, the limited evidence from both studies suggests that very little improvisation occurs of its own accord. It seems that, like other creative activities, improvisation requires a supportive infrastructure and conditions that promote an awareness of possibilities. Given that the infrastructure is more under the control of the lecturer than the students, the implication is that the lead needs to be taken by the lecturer and this is borne out both by the two case studies reported here and in previous research. For example, Barrett (1998) gave the following characteristics that allow jazz bands to improvise coherently and manage social innovation in a coordinated fashion: • • • • • •
Deliberate efforts to interrupt habitual patterns. Embracing errors as sources of learning. Minimal structures that allow maximum flexibility. Continual negotiation and dialogue towards dynamic synchronisation. Retrospective sense making. ‘Hanging out’: informal membership of a community of practice.
More of these characteristics are evident in the Nottingham study than in the UEF study. The characteristics reported by Barrett (1998), have implications for improvisations in the cultural ecology of learning by: • • • • • • •
Boosting the processing of information before and after actions are implemented. Creating incremental disruptions as occasions for stretching out into unfamiliar territory. Ensuring that everyone has a chance to ‘solo’ from time to time. Encouraging supporting behaviours of participants. Creating organisational designs that generate redundant information. Valuing errors as a source of learning. Cultivating serious play: too much control inhibits ‘flow’.
Again, these are more evident in the Nottingham study. Developing a technological infrastructure that supports improvisation is challenging. On the one hand there has to be sufficient structure to realise the aims of the course. On the other hand some flexibility, or more precisely adaptability, is required to support breaking out of routines and established ways of doing things. To return to the jazz analogy, the song provides the essential form and structure and organises what the musicians play. Improvisations happen as the musicians try out harmonies and slip in and out of the melody (King, 1997). So, whereas there has to be a ‘song’, a course structure, there must also be the possibility of stepping in and out of it and of re-originating information, ideas, etc. Montuori (2003) calls this ‘a dance of constraints and possibilities’. In the Nottingham study, the SMS environment is ultimately under the control of the lecturer (in the sense that he decides when and how to make use of what the students are doing with it – he is the ‘lead musician’). In the UEF study, the Qaiku environment is under the control of the students. In improvisational use of Qaiku we might expect to see free movement between other websites, personal learning environments, and software tools. In practice there was very little free movement, (the self-established reading group mentioned by one of the UEF students being a notable exception) so this once again makes the point about differential power relationships in the generation of conditions for improvisation. Thus, providing adaptive technology is one thing, getting participants to see possibilities is another. Research has shown that whereas students can use educational technology imaginatively (e.g. in social networking) they seldom recognise its educational potential (Valtonen, Dillon, Hacklin, & Väisänen, 2010). There seems to be a ‘path dependency’ with much educational technology, in our jazz analogy this would correspond with a strict adherence to the song. In the Nottingham study, the lecturer addressed this problem by creating ‘improvisational space’. Another approach, more relevant to the UEF study, might be to allow a period of ‘free experimentation’ with different technological resources and different software prior to introducing the formalised structures of the course. Subsequent group reflection can focus on individuals’ perceptions of
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the resources, how they relate to the ways the participants have worked previously, and how the resources enable them to do things differently or to do entirely new things. Openness to ideas arising from individuals’ initial experiences of the technology is crucial. Ideally, these explorations and ideas should form a platform for collaborative pedagogical co-development as the resource is progressively applied and contextualised (Vesisenaho & Dillon, 2013). Co-development implies more than progressive integration of the technology into a learning situation. The deeper one takes this process, the more all individuals concerned have to understand the dynamics of the situation at both individual and group levels, in other words, an awareness of the cultural ecology. To some extent this is evident in both case studies: in the Nottingham study the lecturer was ‘performing’ and changing his ‘act’ in response to the reaction of the ‘audience’; in the UEF study the lecturer was able to review the Qaiku comments between lectures and make adjustments to content. A cultural ecological view of learning recognises both the development of conceptual understanding in formalised educational situations and the role of perceptual experience via improvised engagement with the environment physically, psychologically, socially, culturally and technologically (Dillon, 2008). Cultural ecology recognises that the behaviour of people and the environments in which that behaviour takes place exist in mutually transformative relationships. New or additional technological resources change the dynamics of a cultural ecology of learning but, as the Nottingham lecturer notes, SMS is a facilitating technology, it is not a teaching methodology. The changed dynamic requires accommodation elsewhere in the cultural ecology, through pedagogy, teacher-student power relationships and so on. It may also require temporal adjustments to accommodate the asynchronous possibilities offered by the technology although the question of the extent to which improvisation can be asynchronous is an open one. The Nottingham study demonstrates the importance of co-development of strategies between all the actors concerned with the cultural ecology. In the case of the UEF study, co-development might support blending of practices (including between physical and virtual situations) and community building. The vision is of pedagogy that stimulates rather than ‘directs’ improvisation. Initial familiarisation and experimentation that is free of association with formalised structures may open up possibilities not just for improvisations but also for learning across the boundaries of institutions (e.g. school, college, home the workplace etc.) and physical and virtual situations. These activities offer an avenue into the wider question of how lecturers and students see technologies relative to social action. Recognition that both ‘technologies’ and ‘learning’ are integral to cultural ecologies might lead to more seamless blending in the application of, for example, SMS systems between leisure and educational situations. To return to the research questions: 1. What types of improvisation arise when additional technologies are introduced to cultural ecologies of learning? 2. What are the conditions under which the improvisations arise? This study has endorsed the characteristics identified by Peters (2009) and the conditions identified by Barrett (1998), both reported elsewhere in this paper. The study has provided evidence of the following additional/supplementary characteristics: • • • • • • • • •
Connecting and developing ideas. Both lecturer and students taking risks. Getting students to ask challenging questions and the lecturer going with the flow. Creating ‘improvisational space’ within lectures. Allowing students ‘controlled anonymity’. A supportive infrastructure and conditions that promote an awareness of possibilities. Recognising humour as an important ingredient. Encouraging free experimentation with technological resources. Moving towards collaborative pedagogical co-development.
It is apparent from this list that ‘types’ of improvisation cannot meaningfully be separated from the conditions under which they take place, in other words, improvisation and context are inextricable linked in a cultural ecology of learning. It is also apparent that it may be very difficult to differentiate between improvisation, active learning and good teaching. The research reported here is limited by the different contexts, sample sizes and data of the two studies which make a detailed comparison inappropriate. It may be regarded as an exploratory study offering provisional insights into the conditions under which improvisations arise when additional technologies are introduced into cultural ecologies of learning and the nature of those improvisations. It is also the foundation for formulating more nuanced questions which may be pursued in further research and help differentiate between improvisation, active learning and good teaching (see also Sawyer, 2004). So, in the light of the work reported here, we would now ask: • What are the relationships between generalised characteristics of improvisation, ‘in the moment’ experiences, and realising under-utilised possibilities in learning situations? • How do the ubiquity, flexibility, interactivity, and multi-functionality of technological resources such as mobile devices and social software support the improvised moment of learning?
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• What is the added value of improvisation in education in terms of new knowledge, ideas and concepts and new associations between existing ideas or concepts? • How do we balance the ‘unplanned’ incidents, the so-called ‘intuitive reactions’ within a ‘structured’ and ‘deliberated’ learning framework? • How can we ensure that improvisation in learning, although free and extemporaneous, has a kind of logic and context that links with established elements of learning and teaching and makes them coherent? Acknowledgements Our thanks to the lecturers and many students who took part in this study and generously shared their perspectives on learning and improvisation. We are grateful to the anonymous referee for raising matters to do with the connections between improvisation, active learning and good teaching and of the place of technologies within cultural ecologies. References Barrett, F. J. (1998). Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organisations: Implications for organisational learning. Organisation Science, 9(5), 605–622. Bolton, G. (1979). Towards a theory of drama as education: An argument for placing drama at the centre of the curriculum. London: Longman. Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation. Organization Science, 2(1), 40–57. Coker, J. (1964). Improvising jazz. New York: Simon & Schuster. Crook, C. (2012). The ‘digital native’ in context: Tensions associated with importing Web 2.0 practices into the school setting. Oxford Review of Education, 38(1), 63–80. Crossan, M. M., & Sorrenti, M. (1997). Making sense of improvisation. Advances in Strategic Management, 14, 155–180. Dickinson, R., Neelands, J., & School, S. (2006). Improving your primary school through drama. London: David Fulton. Dillon, P. (2008). Creativity, wisdom and trusteeship – niches of cultural production. In A. Craft, H. Gardner, & G. Claxton (Eds.), Creativity and wisdom in education (pp. 105–118). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Dillon, P. (2012). Framing craft practice cultural ecologically: Tradition, change and emerging agendas. In M. Ferris (Ed.), Making Futures: The Crafts as Change-maker in Sustainably Aware Cultures (pp. 72–78). Plymouth, UK: Plymouth College of Arts. Available at: http://makingfutures. plymouthart.ac.uk/journalvol2/mf.php?pageID=3 Dillon, P., & Loi, D. (2008). Adaptive educational environments: Theoretical developments and educational applications. UNESCO Observatory Refereed E-Journal, 3. Ferdig, R. (2007). Examining social software in teacher education. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 15(1), 5–10. Gibbs, G. (2007). Analysing qualitative data. London: Sage Publications. Heathcote, D., & Bolton, G. M. (1995). Drama for learning: Dorothy Heathcote’s mantle of the expert approach to education. Portmouth, NH: Heinemann. Jackson, A. (1993). Learning through theatre. Manchester: Manchester University Press. King, J. (1997). What Jazz is? An insider’s guide to understanding and listening to jazz. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Group. Lobman, C., & Lundquist, M. (2007). Unscripted learning – using improved activities across the K-8 curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press. Loi, D., & Dillon, P. (2006). Adaptive educational environments as creative spaces. Cambridge Journal of Education, 36(3), 363–381. Martin, A., Leberman, S., & Neill, J. (2002). Dramaturgy as a method for experiential program design. The Journal of Experiential Education, 25(1), 196–206. Montuori, A. (2003). The complexity of improvisation and the improvisation of complexity: Social science, art and creativity. Human Relations, 56(2), 237–255. Pasmore, W. A. (1998). Organizing for jazz. Organization Science, 9(5), 562–564. Peters, G. (2009). The philosophy of improvisation. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Robinson, K. (1980). Exploring theatre and education. London: Heinemann. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). Creative teaching: Collaborative discussion as disciplined improvisation. Educational Researcher, 33(2), 12–20. Starkey, L. (2011). Evaluating learning in the 21st century: A digital age learning matrix. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 20(1), 19–39. Valtonen, T., Dillon, P., Hacklin, S., & Väisänen, P. (2010). Net generation at social software: Challenging assumptions, clarifying relationships and raising implications for learning. International Journal of Educational Research, 49(6), 210–219. Vesisenaho, M., & Dillon, P. (2013). Localizing and contextualizing information and communication technology in education: A cultural ecological framework. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2012.759130 Young, M., Robinson, S., & Alberts, P. (2010). Students pay attention! Combating the vigilance decrement to improve learning during lectures. Active Learning in Higher Education, 10(1), 41–55.
