Examples from our practice
LGC could be about usefully linking all the Contexts of Learning at a time when there is both pressure to integrate informal, non-formal & formal learning and to widen participation and extend social inclusion.
Could LGC be a way of creating a framework for lifelong learning through a "perpetual beta"?
We decided to look at examples of our current practice which we felt demonstrated aspects of Learner-Generated Contexts:
1. Community Generated Contexts for Learning: Peter Day (CIRN) discussed how he works with communities to identify their learning needs in Participatory Learning Workshops. He builds rich picture narratives of both their individual and community needs and they mutually develop outcomes concerned with their development as individuals and as a community.
http://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/research/seake/cna/
2. The Creativity CETL at Sussex: has been designed as a flexible technology-saturated learning space in which practitioners can develop multi-media approaches to teaching and learners can interact with the learning space in novel and innovative ways.
3. Organise educational information with Web 2.0 tools: Hilda Kruger organises her academic work at Stellenbosch University WITHOUT using any of the resources provided by the University so that she able to use them in community settings around Cape Town. She defined her concerns as both an academic and a learner as being; Acquire data/information, organise & store data/information, utilise data/information to create knowledge, dissemination of the new information and knowledge. This is self-organised learning practice using Web 2.0 tools. This is also a model for self-organised practice for teaching and the organisation of learning resources and activities and there are parallels in such hackneyed phrases as "if you want to learn something properly, then you need to teach it to others". There is much more to it than this, but it will be interesting to explore the tensions in "learning to teach as a model for learning to learn" and how, in traditional contexts, this leads to the privileging of the "teacher" knowledge over the process by which they acquired the knowledge and the focus on imparting learning through the knowledge acquired rather than the process of learning. In learner generated contexts it will be about whether learners deal more effectively with information and knowledge in contexts generated by collaborative actions with peers and those with specialist or experiential knowledge.
