Real World Learning

Abstract

This chapter focuses on limitations in our knowledge of learning, learning design, and the design of information and computer technology (ICT)-based learning support systems. We need to overcome these limitations in order to enable us to improve our own learning, the design of other people’s learning, and the design of learning support systems that will work effectively in the real world. The chapter starts by focusing on some of the problems besetting research into humans, and the need to recognise the serious limitations of knowledge derived from such research when it comes to practical application in real world teaching and learning. It explores, as a mini case study, a notion that is central to much educational informatics research and development, namely personalisation, and within this, a construct that a number of researchers and developers have used and are using as a driver of adaptive behaviour—learning style. The chapter goes on to present another mini case study in which the applicability of a well established and influential theoretical framework for learning design in higher education—Laurillard’s conversational. framework—is evaluated in a real world blended learning context.