Abstract:

Introduction:
In our experience, ‘online learning process’ is about participating in and sustaining joint performances, in spite of differences in competence. It is a process that is fragile and subject to continual change, not unlike wikipedia or EDULEARN.
Our process of online learning took place in a community managed site, known as the Fishbowl [1].
Our paper is based on the premise that the process of online learning is a dynamic interaction that is continually in a state of “becoming” something else. We distinguish our learning between two kinds of becoming or, learning occurrences. One, the uniform ‘going-on’ of learning activities that prevailed among us, and two, the ‘coming-about’ of learning development. Our paper presents the ‘coming-about’ of online learning as “events” that are “ruptures” in one’s ‘going-on’ learning activities [2].

Literature and Method:
From the literature in Process Organization Studies [3] and notions of Competency Based Education, we identified fundamental aspects of the learning process as creativity, organic change over time, subjectivity and interdependence.
Our method for learning in the Fishbowl gives ontological primacy to individual self-reflection and self-realization [4], and records three sequential “events.”
The first event focuses on participation as providing context for the development of learning a particular competence.
The second “event” uses joint participation to bring about change in one’s subjective understanding of a competence.
The third “event” is sharing fragmentary reflections of felt-experiences regarding the competence.

Finding:
We present three instances for each of the three sequential “events.” A study of these sequences in the fishbowl establishes that as participants we were collaborating in a pattern of more or less alternating, non-overlaying vocalization, where we wrote pithy sentences in response to each other, together producing a brief joint performance similar to conversation.

Conclusion:
Our paper is a study of learning performances as events, events with several participants, communication in several modalities and a contextual structure, rather than the acquisition of a single competency. We found the process of online learning requires special theoretical efforts that undertake the double task of developing new explanatory concepts and providing arguments as to why these concepts better serves one’s online learning experience.

References:
[1] YouTube Student Video Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJX57VhQs_biMyT8lokULzQ/videos
[2] Badiou, Alain. Being and Event (1988)
[3] Ann Langley and Haridimos Tsoukas (2016). The SAGE Handbook of Process Organization Studies
[4] Mats Alvesson and Kaj Skoldberg, Reflexive Methodology (2001). Sage

Keywords:

Online learning process, event, rupture, competency learning, being, becoming.