The Studio Experience and Aspects of Self-Organized Learning

"Learning by experience involves the complete person. How a person's learning is organized and where the locus of control resides need to be carefully considered. Self-organized learners are better able to control their individual destinies; other-organized learners are victims of their faith. We are all both." (Harri-Augstein and Thomas, 1991)

In the Fall semester of 1998, "The Studio Experience" was introduced by the Department of Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. It entails a group of inter-linked courses related to design and development of instructional programs and materials that are compulsory for students of the Masters Degree program in Instructional Technology. The design of The Studio is based on a "constructivist perspective" on learning that is largely shared among the faculty of the department. Rieber et al. (1999) characterize the core ideas of this perspective as:"1) learning is an active process in which meaning is constructed by each individual; 2) learning is a social activity founded on a collaboration and mutual respect of different viewpoints; 3) learning is embedded in the building of artifacts that are shared and critiqued by one's peers (p.7)."

While the whole structure of The Studio Experience is described in detail elsewhere (Rieber, Orey, & King, 1999). I want to limit this paper to the role that beginning students are expected to take on in the Studio, their course requirements, and the issues, problems, and tasks they have to cope with.

The purpose of the paper is the exploration of the "psychological" tasks that the self-organized learning aspects of the Studio entail, how the structure of the Studio supports the learners in their attempt to cope with the demands of such an environment, and what could be done to improve the learning process and the structure of this particular learning environment.

For various reasons, I will focus on the beginning learners who are required to start with the course EDIT 6190 "Design and Development Tools." First, the beginning learners are confronted with a course structure that requires a very different role for students than traditional forms of instruction usually demand. Second, we can assume that the first experience of a new learning environment sets the stage for remaining learning projects within that particular environment and influences strongly how students will approach more advanced courses in the future. Therefore, it seems a crucial task to analyze how well the existing learning environment supports the processes of adaptation and enculturation of these new participants in The Studio.

This paper is written on the basis of reflections on my own experiences as a learner in the context of the Studio, a small number of explorative interviews with other participants, and countless informal conversations that took place during the last two semesters. As I have mentioned above, my objective is not an account of individual experiences, but rather a structural analysis of tasks of self-organized learning that emerge in the context of the Studio environment. Detailed ethnographic research could enhance and the results of this analysis considerably. Thus, this paper is meant as a starting point for action research, evaluation, and gradual redesign of important aspects of the Studio learning environment.

EDIT 6190: A very different course

The course EDIT 6190 "Design and Development Tools" is the first of a series of production oriented courses, that students in the Master program of Instructional Technology are required to take. Students are expected to retake this course for a second time in their program. Rieber at al. (1999) state: "The goal of this course is to master a collection of tools, most of which will be computer-based, to be used eventually in the design and development of learning environments (p. 17)." The central instructional approach of the course is an independent project that needs to be completed by each student. The students need to master a variety of tools in the context of their project. The projects need to demonstrate the learners' competency with these tools by the end of the semester.

The core instrument for the negotiation, monitoring, and subsequent evaluation of the individual learning projects is a set of learning contracts that needs to be approved by the responsible faculty. Since this is a very important part of the course design it is important for this analysis to provide a more detailed description of the contractual procedure.

Every student has to sign a contract for a minimum of one authoring software or programming language. Students who take the course for the first time are strongly recommended to contract Authorware as their authoring tool. Besides one or more authoring tools, students need to sign a contract for a set of multimedia tools. The recommendation of the faculty includes Photoshop, SoundEdit, and Premiere. These strong recommendations were introduced in the spring semester of 1999 after various students had complained about a lack of guidance. In addition the faculty had recognized that skills in particular tools were necessary for the majority of students who wanted to continue on more advanced team projects. On the basis of these experiences the faculty decided to provide more guidance and to ensure that a critical mass of people is learning the same tools during a semester. Nevertheless, students can negotiate even their first set of contracts if they can provide a strong argumentation for the need to learn an alternative set of tools. Students who retake EDIT 6190 are entirely free to select tools according to their personal needs and preferences.

In addition to choosing a set of tools, students also have to specify to what level of competency they want to learn a particular tool. So far, students attempt to indicate the level of proficiency they want to reach by assigning a numeric indicator of percentage to a particular tool (for example, Photoshop 75%).

Furthermore, students need to choose a method for learning the tool. The purchase of step-by-step books is recommended by the faculty, though other instructional materials or methods are possible.

The last step of the contractual agreement is the description of the product (or products) that will demonstrate the level of competency of the contracted tools. The students in EDIT 6190 are free to set their products in a context of another project (either a Team project within the Studio environment, a project for some external client, and so forth) or simply follow their own ideas or needs. Artifacts can be integrated into one single product or can be presented as stand alone examples of work. It is important to note that students of EDIT 6190 are not expected to create products according to instructional design criteria. They are only accountable for demonstrating their competency with the tools they had contracted, which gives them a great freedom to design projects according to their own preferences, interests, and needs.

Students are required to create a first set of contracts by the end of the second week of classes. The completed contracts need to be signed off by the Studio faculty. Contracts can be revised and adjusted during the semester. Revisions must be approved by a faculty member and the final version of all contracts is due at the end of week 10.

Beyond the contractual procedure that course requires students also to explore issues of design and instruction. A list of required and optional readings forms the basis of Web based discussions that make use of the WebCT groupware that is widely used on the campus of the University of Georgia for online extensions of courses. Students have to lead discussions and participate on a regular basis. The discussions focus on selected chapters of the reading material, and on some general topics on Studio culture, design, and so forth. Students can also open and lead forums that are of interest to the whole learning community. It is important to mention that the WebCT environment is used by the whole Studio community and is not restricted to students of EDIT 6190. Thus there are many more experienced students and faculty members taking part in discussions, who are also generally available for questions of other members of the community. Students of EDIT 6190 are also required to write a 10 page reflection paper that should integrate the readings and offer their own interpretation and critique.

To get acquainted with the team projects of the more advanced Studio courses and their requirements, students of EDIT 6190 need to attend two team meetings where they do not have any responsibilities and remain in the role of a participant observer.

Students have to present their projects various times to other members of the learning community who provide critical feedback for the designer. Each student also needs to provide such critical feedback to other students' projects. At the end of the semester the final projects get presented and shared during the Studio Showcase, a public display of all the projects that is open to the public.

There are a small number of compulsory class sessions. These sessions are mainly set up to inform the learning community about events, progress of projects, and requirements. They are also a forum to share concerns and thoughts regarding the various Studio courses and Studio aspects in general. Besides these sessions the attendance of any other class session is only on a voluntary basis. Workshops and seminars are offered on a regular basis. Faculty and more experienced students conduct these sessions. Students are welcome to articulate their interests and needs. The schedule of events does get adjusted accordingly at three points in time over the semester.

Finally, all students of Studio courses are also expected to provide service to the community. This can be done in numerous ways, but it cannot be fulfilled by work that is done on an individual or team project. Students need to give only an oral report of the fulfillment of this requirement at the end of the semester.

Another important part of the Studio environment is the Studio Web site (URL: http://it.coe.uga.edu/studio). This is the major platform of communication besides email and face-to-face meetings for the Studio community. Students can access information about all the members of the Studio community, ongoing projects, scheduled seminars or workshops, and other resources.

Tasks of "self-organized learning" in the context of the Studio environment

The description of the EDIT 6190 course design and its requirements points to the fact that the traditional instructional format of courses in higher education is transcended in various ways. In general, the roles and the responsibilities of students and faculty have shifted quite dramatically, thus creating opportunities for new learning experiences and more personalized programs of studies. On the other hand such a dramatic change also entails the potential of tensions, stress, and even failure among the participants. As stated above, the main purpose of this analysis is to highlight psychological tasks that learners have to master in a learning environment that requires a high level of self-organized learning. The merit of greater personal freedom always involves more responsibility on the part of the individual who has to make a great number of decisions, set goals, plan her or his actions, evaluate, monitor, and so forth. It cannot be expected that students who were socialized to an educational system in which instructors are usually held responsible to carry out these tasks, are prepared for successful operation in a learning environment that functions on a set of very different variables.

Thus, I want to argue that the psychological tasks of self-organized learning need to be studied and carefully examined in the context of any learning environment that intends to foster such a mode of learning. Furthermore, we need to analyze the structural and functional characteristics of the learning environment to evaluate if the environment has the potential to support and guide the learners towards a successful adjustment to the new context. Only if the environment ensures an appropriate support for the learners is it likely that the majority of them will experience a comfortable, satisfying, and successful learning experience. If the support structure of the learning environment does not match the learners' needs for mastering the psychological tasks, negative experiences are bound to occur and individual learners will not be able to fully enjoy the freedom of self-organized learning projects.

So what is it that a learner who enrolls in the EDIT 6190 course needs to master to experience a pleasant and successful learning process? What "psychological" tasks are entailed in the requirements that I have described above?

First of all, the individuals must accept responsibility for their own learning rather than being dependent on the directives of others. This seems obvious and inevitable in a learning environment of the kind that the Studio provides, but it is a "meta-task" that is not easily achieved. In fact, the "face validity" of this requirement leads to a quick acceptance of the notion without any further reflection on the difficulty and scope of the task.

The facilitators of a learning environment that is designed to foster self-organized learning often underestimate how challenging this shift is for the personal "learning myths" that the learners have constructed on the basis of their past experiences in formal and informal learning environments, and life in general. Among others, Harri-Augstein and Thomas (1991) have documented the complexity and elaboration of "...learners' own beliefs, values and prejudices, or what we have come to term the deeply held robot-like personal myths about one's own learning (p. 11)." They also state that: "Our finding is that most people are disabled learners. Their myths disable them; but being largely unaware of how they learn they do not know how slowly or how badly they do it (p. 11)."

Based on their own studies Harri-Augstein and Thomas have developed a category system for aspects of learning myths that shows the wide scope of limiting (or enabling) beliefs that learners hold. The scope and nature of what may be learned, opportunities for learning, internal (in the learner) and external (in the outside world) conditions that influence learning, personal processes and activities involved in learning, and the personal capacity (often ideas about innate traits) for learning, can all be part of an individual learning myth. It appears that the transformation and adaptation of the long held and repeatedly "validated" learning myths according to the new demands of a radically different learning environment is a rather difficult process of change.

Learners, on the other hand, might not be aware of the radical differences of their role in a learning environment of the kind they encounter in The Studio. They might readily accept the notion of taking responsibility of their learning without the awareness of their own learning myths and the expectations of how learning based on these myths takes place that are based on them. It takes some reflection to raise awareness of the demands that are entailed in a largely self-organized learning project.

One prominent example of these demands is the recognition of personal needs and the translation of such needs into clearly expressed purposes. In the context of EDIT 6190 the learners are given some degree of pre-defined structure that defines default choices of tools that should be learned during the semester. Nevertheless, the content and the final product and even the choice of additional tools are left to the learner. If the learner does not set his/her product in the context of some larger project for an external client or a Studio team, s/he has to define the purpose of his/her work on the basis of her own needs, interests, and preferences. This sounds marvelous and mostly enjoyable for the majority of learners, but is rather contrary to the normal procedures in formal educational settings where one rarely has to take responsibility for defining the content, depth, and scope of one's learning.

Furthermore, one has to initiate his/her learning strategies, recruiting appropriate resources for reaching the purposes that were identified and expressed. This is a very central aspect of self-organized learning and a major aspect of the Studio environment. The contractual procedure that I have described above requires the learners to state their intended method of learning and the material they want to use. It is quite clear that this only partially covers the overall task of initiating flexible learning strategies to achieve one's purposes. The Studio environment offers a great and almost overwhelming variety of potential resources for the personal learning projects of the learners. It is the responsibility of the individual learner to select appropriate resources and to gradually design her or his own "curriculum."

First of all, the offer of potential resources begins with people. Faculty members, experienced students, fellow students on the same level, and knowledgeable others, such as experts, friends, user groups, and so forth, are all part of the learning community or can easily be incorporated within the community if the need occurs. Then, instructional events such as workshops, seminars, and presentations, can be another resource for learning. Finally, there is an almost unlimited array of materials that can be used in the context of a learning project. Web resources, print materials, audio and video recordings, interactive tutorials, and so forth, are also easily accessible.

If we limit our view to the developed countries of this world, accessibility of resources is mostly not a problem anymore. Learners have to master the task of selecting and assembling resources that enable them to carry out learning strategies that help them to achieve their goals and purposes efficiently and comfortably. Nevertheless, many learners have not developed appropriate learning myths and skills for this kind of self-organization. To say the least, individual "curriculum" design does not seem to be the strength of the vast majority of learners.

Part of flexible learning strategies is also time-planning and managing. Again, traditional instructional settings place the responsibility almost exclusively into the hands of the instructor. Learners are expected to follow the rhythm of instruction, practice, and evaluation, that is provided by the educational "authority" who is in charge. If this external guidance is taken away, it is likely that many learners will not be able to carry out adequate time planning and management on the spot. The multiple requirements of the Studio courses contribute to the difficulty of the task. There is not a definite line of events and only a few marked points on the time line indicate where certain requirements are due. This, of course, allows more flexibility for the individual learner, but also requires a much higher skill level in terms of planning and managing time and resources.

In addition, learners are responsible for accessing relevant information about events, meetings, schedules, and requirements on their own. They cannot rely on being presented with every piece of information in a timely manner. To keep track and stay informed, learners need to make use of communication and information platforms like WebCT or the Studio Website.

An additional and rather demanding task is the need to define criteria for self- and external evaluation of the quality of the product and the achieved learning outcomes in general. This is where the design of the Studio environment partly contradicts the overall requirements of the larger educational system, in our case the College of Education at the University of Georgia. Though external evaluation and grading is required by the larger system, it makes more sense in the Studio environment to tie evaluation to criteria that are expressed by the individual learner and that have been negotiated with a faculty member. This awkward situation leaves the learners with the task of defining criteria of quality that should enable them to evaluate their own learning outcomes. On the other hand they are aware of the fact that external evaluation will be carried out by somebody else and that grades eventually depend on the judgment of the evaluator. As a result, tension is experienced by many learners who feel uneasy about the compatibility of the criteria they have tried to express and the evaluators' understanding of these criteria. The only current solution seems to be a repeated conversation with the responsible faculty about criteria of quality to reach a certain compatible understanding of the matter.

Regardless of these difficulties, it seems quite clear to me that the expression of criteria of quality and evaluation is one of the most "alien" tasks for the large majority of learners. In industrialized countries, we are generally socialized over many years in all kinds of social settings to base the evaluation of our products and general learning outcomes almost exclusively on the judgment of significant others. In fact, many learners have internalized this process to a degree that they mainly focus on identifying the criteria of evaluation that are held by such significant others (be it a teacher, boss, parent, and so forth). Their learning activities and strategies are merely tied to meet these external criteria while sacrificing their own needs, interests, and purposes. The large majority of learners are used to acting according to this model - some of them more, and some less. The task of identifying their own criteria and standards of quality and achievement leaves many people with a very uneasy and often helpless feeling. This task requires a great deal of reflection and abstraction from past experiences, a task that cannot be called "simple" in terms of its psychological demands. It seems reasonable to assume that many learners who have not yet experienced this part of self-organized learning will not be able to go through this process successfully if they remain completely unaided.

Altogether, learners need to monitor and critically review their decisions and the whole cycle of activities while they are moving on with their projects. The dynamic nature of the learning process makes it necessary to review and adjust purposes, learning strategies, resources, and evaluation criteria at various points in time. One cannot simply expect to be able to anticipate precisely all details of a learning project. Needs and challenges emerge while one tries to carry out one's planned learning activities. Frequently, unexpected problems need to be solved and learners have to adapt the components of their learning projects accordingly.

This adaptation requires the monitoring of time, resources and the progress of the project. In the light of the new learning experiences, expectations and criteria of quality might also need to be reviewed. The challenge for the individual learner is to decide which components of her learning project need to be adjusted and which should be kept stable. This has to be done largely without reference to the performance of the peer group. In the Studio environment there is no common norm available that would make a direct comparison possible. This is another potential source of tension for learners who are used to this external source of information for the monitoring of their own performance. Monitoring and evaluating according to one's own standards and criteria is a very challenging task that requires reflection and the willingness to open one's products and processes for critical review.

This brings us to another aspect of the Studio environment. Learners are expected to provide and receive critical feedback on their products and their design process. This disclosure of ideas and products to a larger community of learners presupposes a certain level of "trust" among its members. Values of competitiveness that are deeply ingrained in traditional educational settings might hinder learners to engage in a free exchange of opinions with great comfort. Ideas and products are often conceived as the intellectual property of an individual and therefore are expected to be emotionally "loaded."

It requires a drastic shift of attitude for many learners to experience a degree of comfort with providing and receiving direct feedback on the performance of other learners or themselves. The psychological demands of such a task should not be underestimated. Artifacts that we have created are often perceived as "extensions" of our selves. Only learners who can emotionally distance themselves from their products and who consider external feedback as a valuable and somehow necessary source of information will be able to benefit from this procedure. They will be able to use the feedback to evaluate the progress of their learning projects and the compatibility of their own criteria of quality with the criteria that other members of the learning community hold. The whole learning community needs to contribute to the establishment of such a shared "culture" which enables its members to freely express professional critique and to welcome such critique from other members.

There is one aspect of the learning environment of the Studio that has the potential to make the establishment of such a shared culture more difficult. It is the lack of a stable community of learners that spends a considerable amount of time together. The open and flexible nature of the Studio environment leads largely to asynchronous communication and exchange via Web based platforms or email. Furthermore, the learners are free to set up their own schedules and to choose their preferred location for carrying out their learning activities.

As I pointed out frequently, there is a great freedom of designing one's own "curriculum" and learning strategies. Individual solutions of learners do not necessarily have to result in a great overlap of schedules and locations. Thus, community-building activities are naturally limited and often pushed to computer-mediated forms of communication and exchange. The benefit of greater individual flexibility carries the cost of lacking face-to-face encounters that are so important to establish trust and understanding in human social systems. Learners have to find their own strategies to compensate for these limitations of the learning environment.

Harri-Augstein and Thomas (1991) provide a projection of the ideal capacity of a self-organized learner that sums up some of the main tasks learners have to master: "Self-Organised Learners act as complex adaptive systems in a constant state of revision. They are constantly anticipating events, based on their experience and how they model the world. These models are revised in the light of feedback from actions on the world.... Self-Organised Learners will test this, generate feedback from the results of actions, and revise the model. They will also remain watchful of processes of change and adapt accordingly (p. 11)."

No doubt that this is a somewhat exaggerated description of an ideal state but it nevertheless stresses core issues that a learner has to address in the context of a learning project that entails many aspects of self-organization.

I will now proceed to an analysis of structural components of the Studio environment that have the potential to support the learners in their attempt to master the variety of tasks that I have described above.

Structural support provided by the Studio environment

Now that I have explored a variety of tasks that the learners have to master within the Studio environment, it is time to take a look at the structural components of this learning environment. Which parts of the design of the Studio have the potential to support and guide the learner who is new to the environment and its requirements?

I have stated earlier that the meta-task for the learners is the acceptance of responsibility for their own learning and how this shift of perspective might be challenging for the learning myths students have developed over the years. Two components of the Studio play a major role of setting the stage for the intended and required shift of roles. First of all there is a "kick-off" event, titled the Studio Orientation, which is "largely informational in nature covering topics such as the following: 1) introduction of faculty and students; 2) general studio procedures; 3) general computer lab procedures; 4) consideration of course projects and kick-off of the "Studio Job Fair"; and 5) general questions and answers (Rieber et al. 1999, p. 12)." This general orientation provides basic information about the procedures and requirements of the Studio courses. It also introduces the Studio Handbook which is a major source of information for all the students though out the semester.

The Studio Handbook places the Studio courses in the larger context of the M.Ed. degree in Instructional Technology. The Studio Approach is described and offers a description of the "learning myth" that is shared among the faculty of the department and that guided the design of the Studio learning environment. Furthermore, general procedures of the Studio Experience are explained in detail, followed by a description of the particular Studio courses and their requirements. The Handbook also informs about Web resources, Software options, course objectives, and provides forms for the contractual procedure.

In terms of detailed information and transparency of procedures and requirements, the learners within the Studio environments have no reason to complain. They have access to a great amount of information right from the beginning of their courses. A glimpse of the learning myth of the faculty is also shared and the Studio design is set in the larger context of the program of studies. Indeed, transparency and information are a necessary ingredient in a learning environment that intends to foster aspects of self-organized learning. What is left largely untapped in the Studio environment are the personal learning myths of the learners. While everybody is provided with a high degree of informational material, personal experiences, beliefs, preferences, and expectations, remain unknown or, at least, unexpressed. There is no structural guidance built in the learning environment that would stimulate and support the reflection process on the side of the learners that would be necessary to raise their full awareness of the challenges and demands of the new learning environment. This is not to mean that such awareness is not possible on the basis of the information that is provided. There is just not any systematic support available that would help the individual learner to activate the rich source of her own experience to get prepared for a learning process that departs in many respects from the traditional format of instruction and learning in higher education. Information and transparency can be seen as prerequisites for the acceptance of one's own responsibility for learning, but it is most likely that they are not sufficient for a deep and personally meaningful shift of perspective that is required for operating successfully within the Studio environment. Currently the Studio environment does not provide any structural support for the process of reflection and abstraction that would enable the learners to be fully aware of the demands that largely self-organized learning projects entail.

The contractual procedure of the EDIT 6190 tool choices offers a large degree of structural support for the learner. It forces the learners to formulate clear purposes for tool learning. Learners need to describe the project they intend to carry out and the final products they want to produce. Again, it is assumed that learners are aware of their own needs and interests, thus being in the happy position of selecting the tools and projects accordingly. This might be the case for a number of learners, but there is some evidence that many struggle with identifying their own needs and translating them into clear purposes for a learning project. While the general possibility exists that an individual learner seeks tutoring from a faculty member or a more experienced student, it seems to be the general practice that learners try to define their own projects without any tutorial support. A more systematic support during this initial phase of the learning process might hold the potential to enable more students to successfully connect their learning projects with their overall needs and interests. Undoubtedly, there will always be a group of students that does not need any tutoring or guidance on that matter. Others, however, might be able to set a personally more meaningful stage for their projects if they can find a way to locate them in a context that reaches beyond the boundaries of the Studio course. So far, there is no support built into the Studio environment for mastering this task.

Initiating learning strategies is again partially supported by the contractual procedure. As described above, learners have to state their intended method of learning and the material they want to use. The tool contract raises the issue, but beyond that only little additional structural support is provided. Though a whole variety of learning resources are introduced in the Studio environment, the contractual requirements is usually limited and fulfilled if a resource of print material is stated. WebCT, desk crits, workshops, and so forth are stable components of the learning environments, but never get explicitly identified as resources for the personal learning processes of the learners. It is assumed that learners will be comfortable with selecting and assembling resources that are adequate for the own purposes. Learners do not receive any systematic support in identifying and locating resources that are appropriate for their individual learning strategies. Though it can be assumed that informal exchanges between the different members of the Studio community help to highlight exceptionally useful resources, a more structured support might prove to be beneficial for some students. Some learners are simply not aware of the scope of potential resources and tend to limit their learning activities exclusively to print materials, regardless of their own learning strategies and learning styles. Nevertheless, the Studio environment offers some valuable informational material that can support carrying out the task of selecting learning resources. The Studio Handbook, for example, provides an overview of some categories of learning resources. Software options are described and some selected Web resources are listed. The Studio Web site offers a database of all the members of the learning community. There, contact information and information about interests and current projects of each member can be found.

Furthermore, the WebCT platform can be easily used to approach other learners for help and support. User forums on the WebCT platform can provide the space for focused discussions that can be a very valuable resource for the learning process. Over all, the Studio offers the possibility to either access or create a whole array of potential resources with very little effort. What is missing is a systematic support for the individual learner who needs to select resources that are adequate for the demands of her own learning project. Learning strategies and methods are almost exclusively left in the hands of the learners. Some might feel very comfortable with that, others most probably cry for more structure and support.

Time planning and time management are supported by a variety of means. Some major compulsory meetings mark the various phases of the learning process. Expected accomplishments are made very explicit by the faculty, and students are required to open their design and their product prototypes for discussion and critical feedback during some compulsory "desk crit" sessions. Frequent email reminders sent by the faculty help the learners to keep track of their time line and certain requirements that still have to be met. In addition, the Studio Web site holds a calendar of the whole semester where major events are marked. Though learners are not directly guided in their own time planning efforts, this aspect of the Studio environment is strongly supported by a wealth of informational material, feedback loops, and continued reminders. There might be learners who struggle to manage their time and meet all the distributed requirements, but the necessary information for planning and monitoring this precious resource is easily accessible within the Studio environment. The components of the learning environment appear to be sufficient for mastering this task. Learners who experience problems might benefit from some individual introduction and demonstration of the various tools and resources.

The structural support for defining and formulating criteria of quality and evaluation is again limited to the contractual procedure. In their tool contracts students are required to specify criteria for the evaluation of their final products. Besides some examples of possible criteria in the handbook, learners have to master this task on their own. Only if a faculty member is not satisfied with the specifications that the learner had submitted will he require a revision of this part of the contract. Though the various parts of the tool contract remain open for revision until week number 10 of the semester, criteria of evaluation are never discussed explicitly. It is assumed that the criteria that the learners have specified are compatible to and comprehensible for the Studio faculty and other people who want to evaluate the final products of the learning projects. So far, there is no procedure that would support the process of defining, formulating, and finally negotiating criteria of quality and evaluation.

Monitoring and reviewing of the progress of the learning projects is supported structurally in various ways. First of all, learners are encouraged to submit refined versions of their tool contracts at various points in time. Faculty members can point out weaknesses and require elaboration of certain parts of the contract. Second, the compulsory desk crits require students to obtain critical feedback on their prototyped products or design outlines. This valuable source of information does allow the learners to monitor where they are in their learning and design process and what is left to do in the remaining time. Emerging needs or problems might require the adjustment of the chosen learning strategy, elements of the tool contract, and time planning. The sooner this cycle of design, review, and adjustment is initiated, the more time and resources are left to the learner to gear her learning process towards the successful completion of the intended goals and objectives of the project. While the Studio environment quite nicely supports a product oriented review, a review and monitoring of the learning process is left to the individual learner. Reflection on the process of carrying out various learning activities and selecting material and resources is not structurally supported by the Studio environment. What is also missing is the explicit attempt to tie the review, monitoring, and adjustment cycle to the criteria of evaluation that had been formulated earlier on. Thus an opportunity is missed to negotiate these criteria in the light of a progressive learning and design process. Furthermore, it may well be that these criteria need to be adjusted in the light of the results that have been produced so far. It could simply turn out that the initial criteria were not appropriate for the nature and scope of the project, or that unexpected complications have altered what can be achieved in the given time frame. Since the Studio environment cannot easily provide norms, especially criteria of evaluation need to be included into the review cycle of each learner. The continuous reflection on and argumentation for certain criteria of quality and evaluation is currently not well supported in the Studio.

I have already commented above that the desk crit system that is part of the Studio environment provides a good structural support for the exchange of critical feedback among the learners. I have also stated that these sessions are a great source of information for the review and monitoring task that learners have to accomplish during their learning and design process. Beyond this exchange of critical feedback a shift towards collaborative values is partly supported via the community service requirement that I have explained during the description of the EDIT 6190 course. Furthermore, user groups foster the notion of learning with each other and from another collaboratively. If EDIT 6190 students choose to place their project in the context of a team project they experience a high level of collaboration anyway. The team meetings that every student of EDIT 6190 has to attend lead into the same direction by allowing the students to experience collaborative team work from the sheltered position of a participatory observer who is free from any responsibilities and obligations. On WebCT information is shared with the whole learning community and questions usually find a quick answer on this platform. Altogether, the Studio provides a wealth of structural support for collaboration and the required shift of attitude. Model behavior is present in many forms and direct competition is minimized by the particular characteristics of the Studio procedures such as tool contracts, desk crits, Web based discussions, and so forth.

One structural aspect of the Studio environment that had led to vivid discussions among the participants after its introduction in the Fall Semester 1998 was the lack of community that was experienced by the large majority. Structural support has been designed and incorporated since then. The data base of people that is part of the Studio Web site now holds photos of each participant. User groups are set up that meet face to face to discuss specific issues related to particular software tools, and compulsory meetings and desk crit sessions bring the learning community together on a more regular basis. Furthermore, there is the first group of students now who have already gone through one semester of Studio courses and who know each other and the general procedures. This has added much support for learners who are new to the environment. Still, the overall flexibility of the Studio environment does make it difficult to ensure enough face to face contact between the learners, but structural support seems to work much better than it did at the beginning. Recent initiatives to pay more attention to the physical and material aspects of the Studio Lab point to another area where much can be done to further support the building of a learning community. The hardware upgrade that was accomplished during the second semester of the Studio Experience has already resulted in many more learners actually choosing the Lab as their work location on a regular basis.

A "conversational" framework for self-organized learning and implications for redesign

Over almost two decades of conceptual work and action research in various settings a group of researchers around the psychologists Laurie Thomas and Sheila Harri-Augstein at the Centre for the Study of Human Learning (CSHL) , Brunel University of West London, has constructed a conversational framework for self-organized learning. This framework and a variety of reflective tools for learning have been successfully applied in many different contexts ranging from military to educational settings. I want to show that part of their work could guide the redesign of some of the components of the Studio environment. The depth and elaboration of the "Learning Conversation" approach of the CSHL goes well beyond the limits of the aspects that I want to include in this exploration. Nevertheless, I will try to make clear where I perceive possible points of connection between areas of weaknesses in the support structure of the Studio environment and conceptual and practical solutions offered by the Learning Conversation approach.

Before I present the conversational framework for self-organized learning, let me summarize the main points of weaknesses within the support structure of the Studio that emerged during the analysis of the matter that I have presented above. I concluded that learning myths of the learners remain largely unknown and untapped and that there is no structural support that would guide the learners through a process of reflection and abstraction necessary for gaining full awareness of the demands and requirements of the new learning environment. Furthermore, it appeared that the translation of interests and needs into purposes and clearly defined learning projects is simply assumed and left to the learners. Only little support is also available for selecting and assembling adequate resources and the initiation of learning strategies and methods. Criteria of quality and evaluation proved to be another difficult topic where more structural support seems to be necessary. Finally, I have stressed the fact that while the cycle of monitoring, review, and adjustment is well supported on the product level, the process level of the learning project remains without such a guided cycle of activities. The following exploration of the conversational framework of self-organized learning will mainly focus on aspects that can be tied to these areas of weaknesses.

The conversational framework of self-organized learning was designed mainly with the purpose of raising the level of self-organization of learners and enabling them to take responsibility for their own learning. The long-term goal is to develop the awareness and skills that are needed for successfully carrying out self-defined learning projects. A variety of practices and reflective tools are applied to guide the learners through a developmental process towards greater autonomy in learning. The basis of the approach is a departure from a philosophy of science that is mainly based on the natural sciences. Thus a "conversational science" of human learning was conceptualized which is strongly influenced by the work of George A. Kelly (1955) and other constructivist and cybernetic theories of learning and knowing. Needless to say that this paper is clearly not the place for a detailed description of the approach. The interested reader will find a wealth of the information on the matter in the comprehensive book "Learning Conversations" (1992) by Harri-Augstein and Thomas.

Considering the limitations of this paper, I will need to provide a short cut that enables me to focus on the aspects of the conversational framework that appear to be of interest in the context of my exploration. The following citation might provide an adequate bridge: "Our progress has involved discarding our earlier "physical science" stance in which our subjects' explanations were treated merely as data of our "psychological" theory building, and also discarding the "personal science" stance which assumes that people must explain themselves to themselves, and that the role of the experimenter is merely that of creating the conditions in which this may happen. We have contributed to the development of a "conversational science" based on the premise that no one can explain themselves unaided, nor can they exploit their infinite (almost) potential by being facilitated by an exclusively non-directive practitioner. The unique attribute of humans is that they "converse". Separate nodes of meaning construction (namely, people) can pool their experiences, identify needs and purposes, critically evaluate performance strategies and develop a language for enhanced awareness of this very process. The role of the psychologist (experimenter, teacher, manager) becomes that of a tool maker and provider, observer and joint interpreter of the evolving conversational experiment in which both subject and psychologist are full but different participants. Whilst meaning is shared, each participant remains free to reconstruct new meanings and these augment the potential of the conversation. The conditions of a conversational experiment require that the content and process is controlled according to a developing recognition of the nature of what each can contribute. This cannot be totally specified before the experiment, but there are priorities. Only the subject/learner can tap his or her personal experience, but the experimenter can observe behavior and recruit methodological skills to drive the experiment forward. Underpinning this methodology is our definition of learning as: the conversational construction of personally significant, relevant and viable meaning; and meaning as: purposeful patterns of thoughts and feelings which are the basis of our anticipations and actions. Thus behavior and experience are seen as indicators of: a coherent personal process which is itself conversational (Harri-Augstein and Thomas, 1992, p. 6-7)."

In this conceptual and methodological context the Learning Conversation becomes the main frame of a variety of activities that are designed to raise awareness of the learning process and to gradually build up more efficient learning skills.

The Learning Conversation is characterized by three modes of interaction. The central activity is the tutorial mode. In the "tutorial" mode the learner is led to the formulation of a series of Personal Learning Contracts (PLCs). Systematic review follows the attempt of carrying out each contract and learners are supported in reflecting upon their learning competence. Inadequate learning performance and dissatisfaction about the obtained results may come about in various ways. If the learners were not able to achieve their PLC because they did not have the skills and competencies necessary to formulate and carry it out successfully, the Learning Conversation switches into the "learning to learn" mode. This leads them to the review of their skills, their strengths and weaknesses, and intends to identify skills that need be developed. Another source of dissatisfaction may occur because of a lack of motivation to achieve the PLC. In this case, the "life or relevance" mode of the Learning Conversation leads the learners to identify long-term needs and interests and helps them to translate these into purposes. Thus learners are enabled to recognize the short-term relevance or inappropriateness of their current PLC.

The learning coach or tutor monitors the whole process and brings in specific techniques and tools for awareness-raising and skill building. The Learning conversation is primarily concerned with the process of learning. Content can be used to illustrate and emphasize aspects of the learning process that are carried out. A major objective is to help the learner to derive a language in which to reflect upon learning processes from her own experience. The Learning Conversation should create a "meta-language" that can be used between the learning coach and the learner.

A Learning Conversation can be conducted around any learning event. It is concerned with helping the learners to regain controlled awareness of their own learning process which have often become so habituated that they have dropped completely out of consciousness. The purpose of a learning event can only be fully defined when it has been achieved. Though the learner follows certain purposes she cannot know exactly what it is she is going to learn. Ideally any learning event follows a cycle of phases. First, needs get negotiated and purposes are defined. Next, a strategy and tactics are developed and used. Then, the learning outcome gets evaluated. And finally, the whole process is evaluated. Effective learning almost always requires a series of this cycle. The purposes become more and more clearly articulated and the outcomes get tied closer to these purposes. Any learning event is composed of a number of sub-events and is part of a long-term event. The Learning Conversation should be conducted around a learning event of a scope that is adequate for the level of self-organization that has already been achieved by a learner.

The ultra-stable and often unconscious learning skills that learners carry out on the task level require reflective techniques to be challenged. Bringing a skill back into awareness makes it available for revision and development. But an intervention of this kind usually produces a drop in effective performance. Learners often get frustrated, hostile, and anxious in such a period of change. The learners need to be supported during this learning through phase to achieve new levels of competence.

Thus the Learning Conversation incorporated three dialogues. The "process dialogue" challenges deeply rooted unconscious habits. This dialogue is guided by talking learner through behavioral records (display of time and structure) of their learning activities and by the reconstruction of personal experiences (this is achieved via the application of various tools of reflection: See Harri-Augstein and Thomas, 1992, for an explanation of the tools. These researchers favor an adaptation of the Repertory Grid method that was introduced by Kelly (1955) and that has mainly been used in clinical settings; for a detailed description of modern adaptations of the method see for example Fromm, 1995). The "support dialogue" enables the learner to go successfully through the process of change. Techniques out of counseling and therapy approaches are used in this stage.

The "referent dialogue" helps the learners to identify relevant types of referents and criteria which can be used as a basis for comparison and self-evaluation. Outstanding performers or the learners' own measures of quality can be sources to derive adequate criteria. In the end, learners come to use their previous performance as the basis for evaluating their improvement.

In summary, the Learning Conversation entails three dialogues. One is a commentary on process, the other is meant to be a support during reflection, and the third helps the learners to identify referents and criteria for evaluating one's own learning competence.

The learning coach is enabling the learner to build a model of the whole conversational process. With experience and support, learners should be able to internalize the three dialogues and take over the management of the Learning Conversation. Harri-Augstein and Thomas (1992) see applications of the three dialogues in all different modes of interaction that I have described above. "Thus, the three dialogues are fundamental to all three modes of the Learning Conversation and take on a different form in each; the PLC at the tutorial level, the negotiation cycle at the life level, and the self-directed debrief at the learning to learn level (p.136)."

After this brief exploration of the conceptual and methodological framework of the Learning Conversation I will now focus on the practical side of the approach. Specifically, the tutorial level of the Learning Conversation and the application of the Personal Learning Contracts seem to be of interest for this study.

A Learning Conversation starts mostly from the life mode, which provides the context within which learners initially orientate and define their expectations. From there it quickly moves to the tutorial mode of conversation which is formulated in terms of the Personal Learning Contract. Several cycles of PLCs are necessary to gain sufficient awareness of the processes of learning. The first two or three PLCs should be rather open and provisional. Subsequent PLCs need to become more specific and precisely defined. The rhythmic pattern of more provisional and more precise PLCs can be expected within any given topic or task. Only gradually can learners manage to formulate and carry out PLCs that are of a growing relevance to their larger goals and needs. Several cycles of task focused PLCs enable the learner to get aware of how they go about learning. Only then should learners move on to learning focused PLCs. If during the various cycles of task or learning focused contracts learners start to seriously question the relevance of the tasks and topics the conversation moves back to the life mode. Either this leads to a revitalized motivation or the learner will recognize the inappropriateness of them and redirects her activities. The learning coach has to react sensitively to the needs of the learners and adjust the Learning Conversation accordingly.

The Personal Learning Contract is used as a procedure to implement the tutorial conversation in a systematic way. Specific "conversational heuristics" help the learner to plan, implement, and review her learning activities. These heuristics have been tested and elaborated in various contexts and have been built in both paper and pencil procedures and computer programs at the Center for the Study of Human Learning. "The PCL is the core mechanism for driving the tutorial conversation which focuses on the operational aspects of learning (Harri-Augstein and Thomas, 1992, p. 153)."

There are five activities within the PLC. First, a learning activity has to be negotiated before the event takes place. Second, the activity is carried out in an actual situation. Third, a self-debrief of the actions taken is conducted. Fourth, the PLC has to be reviewed by retrospective comparison with the learning activity that had been negotiated. Finally, learning strengths and weaknesses are self-diagnosed and a new cycle of PLC is planned.

The main components of PLC are purpose, strategy, outcome, and review. There are infinite possible purposes for learning. To be able to assess the effectiveness of our operating in the world, we have to have some referent. In human learning this referent has to be purpose. "Thus a reflection on process requires a clarification of purpose. This is the way to specificity, but it is not a once-and-for-all activity; it is in the very nature of learning that purposes can not be fully declared in advance. Reflecting on purpose therefore has elements of provisionally and will need updating during the reconstruction, reflection and reviewing process (Harri-Augstein and Thomas, 1992, p. 155)."

What actions shall I take? This is the question that leads to the formulation of learning strategies and tactics that depend on our purposes, prior knowledge, and experiences. Strategies need to get adjusted appropriately. Learners need to acquire a repertoire of flexible strategies to meet their needs and purposes as they arise.

How shall I judge my success? Learning outcomes can be defined as changes which take place in our thinking, feeling, and acting. It is the intended learning outcome that provides the criteria for evaluating the effectiveness and the quality of one's learning.

The whole process of defining a purpose, carrying out a strategy that produces outcomes, and the evaluation of the outcome in relation to the purpose is reviewed and delivers the key components for conversing about the process.

Harri-Augstein and Thomas (1992) believe that much of what is most useful happens in the conversational process itself. Beyond what is recorded during a PLC driven conversation the inner psychological processes provoked by the structured procedures remain unrevealed. The ultimate goal is the internalization of the Learning Conversation which results in a conversation with oneself.

How can this approach be linked to the areas of weaknesses that the analysis of the Studio environment has revealed? While all the procedures of the Learning Conversation are tied to the overall objective of raising the awareness of personal learning myths and ultra-stable skills and behaviors, explicit activities could be designed and implemented in the Studio. A workshop that focuses on the exploration and sharing of personal learning myths might enable learners to engage more deeply into a process of reflection. This in turn could help the learners to gain a much better awareness and understanding of the demands and requirements that the Studio environment entails. Certain reflective tools and techniques that are used within the Learning Conversation framework could be easily adapted to aid such an explorative workshop.

The application of the Personal Learning Contracts within a conversational framework points into an interesting direction for a possible redesign of the Studio. Instead of applying the current and rather static form of the tool contract, the contractual procedures could be redesigned to drive a more conversational approach, which seems much more appropriate for the needs and requirements that self-organized learning projects carry along. It seems quite clear that all the weak parts of the structural support that is currently offered by the Studio environment could be addressed and improved. This, of course, requires the creation and implementation of a contractual procedure that incorporates a "learning coach" who provides the conversational tools that are needed to achieve the dynamic features of a learning conversation.

The contractual procedure and the forms that are currently used could be easily redesigned to aid the conversational procedures that are part of the Learning Conversation framework. The main change would necessarily take place on the procedural level. The translation of interests and needs into purposes and clearly defined projects, the selection of resources and the formulation of learning strategies, and the identification and formulation of intended outcomes and criteria of quality and evaluation, are all main components of the Personal Learning Contracts as I have described them above. The unique feature of the conversational approach is the dynamic use of these conversational heuristics. The cyclic application of the various activities within the PLCs ensures the monitoring, review, and adjustment process that is needed to gradually gear a learning project towards personally relevant objectives. The learning coach that also makes use of the process, support, and referent dialogues in different modes of the Learning Conversation can provide valuable support for learners who are just beginning to develop their skills for self-organized learning. Since novice learners in the Studio environment have to deal with a whole array of tasks of self-organized learning, a redesign of the contractual procedure towards a conversational tool seems to be a very beneficial direction for improvement.

The Learning Conversation approach appears to address the main areas of weaknesses of the Studio environment in a rather elaborate way. With a few changes of the current materials and the procedures, the tool contract could be turned into a powerful reflective tool that could drive an ongoing Learning Conversation during the semester. Furthermore, it could also be turned into a tool of data collection for self- and external review and evaluation. In combination with a Learning Biography that actually records the learning activities and their outcomes, a rich basis for the review of the whole learning process could be found. Maybe the reflection paper that is required at the end of the semester could be merged with these activities. Learners could mainly focus on the review and evaluation of their own Personal Learning Contracts. Thus, not only the visible end product of the learning projects, but also the process would be turned into a source of evaluation and reflection. The role of a Learning Coach could either be taken by faculty members or experienced students who would need to be familiar with the necessary materials and procedures. Considering the nature and direction of the Studio approach which clearly emphasizes aspects of self-organized learning, the adaptation of a more conversational and dynamic procedure of Personal Learning Contracts promises to result in a viable support structure for novice learners. An action research study that attempts to incorporate and test a redesigned set of materials and procedures could provide the necessary data to prove the effectiveness of such an approach. If a conversational framework proves to enhance the learners' level of competence achievement and overall enjoyment of their learning projects, this effort could greatly increase the effectiveness of the Studio learning environment.

Beyond the acquisition of task bound skills, learners could be enabled to develop learning skills that can be applied to any kind of topic and task. Helping students to proceed towards an rather autonomous level of self-organized learning fits nicely into the constructivist philosophy of education that guided the design and implementation of the Studio approach in the M.Ed. program of the Department of Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. It is necessary to constantly review and improve the support structure of the Studio environment to enable students who have mainly been socialized in educational settings that operate on a very different set of variables, to adapt successfully to the new learning environment. I assume that only then will the innovative format of the Studio will be able to survive within the larger context of an educational system that does not yet place great importance on self-organized learning and the acquisition of skills that ensure an increased autonomy of the individual. An exploration of the implicit and explicit political aspects of this charge is well outside the scope of this paper. I hope that my analysis can contribute to the development and further improvement of the Studio - a learning environment that I had the chance and pleasure to experience twice from within. It has been a sometimes difficult, often challenging, but also rewarding struggle to achieve my personal goals. I think, I have learned a lot more than software tools!

References

Fromm, M. (1995). Repertory Grid Methodik. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag.

Glasersfeld, E. von (1995). Radical constructivism. A way of knowing and learning. Washington, D.C.: Falmer Press.

Harri-Augstein, S. and Webb, M. (1995). Learning to change. London: McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc.

Harri-Augstein, S. and Thomas, L. (1991). Learning conversations. London: Routledge.

Kelly, G. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs. New York: W. W. Norton & Comapy Inc.

Rieber, L., Orey, M., and King, J. (1999). Handbook for the studio experience. Athens, GA: Department of Instructional Technology, The University of Georgia.

Thomas, L. and Harri-Augstein, S. (1985). Self-organised learning. London: Routledge.