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PhD Note #1 - Initial thoughts - Designing for Epistemic Cognition

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  This first week of my PhD I've been exploring ideas around the tangible and intangible nature of designs for learning/education.  I examined two papers:   Explicating Affordances:  A conceptual framework for understanding affordances in Communication Research (2017)  by Sandra Evans and I attempt to get a clear definition of epistemic cognition from the Handbook of Epistemic Cognition (2016) , edited by Greene, Sandoval and Bråten.   I've decided to use the approach, initially at least, to iteratively develop an annotated bibliography to: a) define epistemic cognition b) explore the design concept of affordances instrumental in designing environments for engaging students with epistemic cognition The handbook's introduction is readable and begins with the observation that we need to know why knowledge as opposed to what knowledge and I immediately think, well you can't have the why without the what.  This might seem obvious, but as a learni...
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Trust, Assessment, Identity and all that stuff

Being a third space professional does your head in on some days. Working as I do in education I've been attempting to reconcile a bunch of different ideas around student experience, teacher experience and manager experience. As learning design is such a fluid space in the higher education sector, by fluid, I mean one needs to adapt to shifting circumstances and take into account a multitude of views and ideas. There are so many concepts to throw into the pot that it can be easy to become bogged in a morass.  Here are some of the placeholder tags that have been bubbling in my cauldron of late: trust (and cheating), shadow education, active social learning, authentic assessment, narrative identity, authenticity of assessment by supervisors on placement in work integrated learning, agreed values, ethics, academic honesty, feed forward and what does that mean anyway and how is that different from formative feedback?  Add to this action research, what is its purpose if the research...
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The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas (2008)

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The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas My rating: 5 of 5 stars I had to rewrite this review, since I stalled on the second last chapter gave the book 2 stars and vowed to leave it unfinished. Ater a couple of days of recovery and self reflection I pulled myself over the smelly, drab and suburban finish line. My first impression of this book was superficial, something I accused the book of initially. I recognized all the places and street names since I grew up in Melbourne and rolled around the northern and eastern suburbs area a bit in my 20s (I even played mixed netball a few times at the Northcote High gym) but upon reflection, I recognised myself and the people I have known growing up in Australia. The reason I hated the book so much, especially in the Aisha chapter, was because it exposes me, it exposes us, supposedly decent, nice, kind middle class Australians to our own selfishness, myopia and self-deceit. The character development is rich, every chapter fleshes out a new confronting a...
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