Richard Sandford presentatie

​Out of the box learning refers to a trend to revalue informal learning. Informal learning is learning that takes place outside the school. When combined with another key trend – the changing mediascape – it becomes clear that there are currently more opportunties for learning with new technology outside school than in it.

Richard began his presentation with some background information about the Futurelab approach. Futurelab is a not for profit body, operating between education practitoners, policy and academia, and is one of the few groups who bridge this divide. For more information on Futurelab see an interview with Richard on the Virtueel Platform website.

What is informal learning?
In the UK informal learning is a very broad term including such activities as going to a museum, playing a sport or having a conversation with your family. Watching how children do these things is very valuable and is not always recognised. Richard illustrates how 'messy' the whole area of informal learning can be with reference to a series of workshops done by Futurelab in conjunction with the UK broadcaster Channel 4.

The broader social practice around learning to play football, debating skills learned from family social interaction that help a law student, were mentioned as examples. The big question remains: How can you recognise what contributes to learning? Informal learning tends to be spontaneous, unstructured, self-directed (with its own goals and methods) and diverse (with multiple locations, approaches). It is very hard to plan informal learning, and to capture it. Another key difference is the teacher /learner relationship. And one important issue is how do you know when you’re learning? A quick answer is to look at the outcomes, and the results are often found in the sphere of new skills such as interpersonal skills or self-belief. Such skills are hard to measure (the results might take a while to come to the fore) and they are often anecdotal. A buzzword at the moment is 'authenticity' in relation to such learning.

Technology and informal learning
These two issues are closely linked. Mobile technology is all about being anytime anywhere. Embedded technology means that it is part of everyday life. However the aim is not that learning should keep up with technology, but that it should keep up with what happens outside the classroom, not lag behind what's going on in the world outside school. New technology is also often about being social, ie creating and sharing two- way interaction. It is also often about simulation, ie it gives us the chance to rehearse and fail without real- world penalties, for example in games. Over the past few years Richard has researched the role of games for learning. Games are designed to be learned, involve structured engagement with complex and dynamic systems, with casual relationships and they also exercise agency to test and hypothesize. They are at the heart of social and collaborative practices. Technology is all about people, and is already a massive part of young people’s lives.

Doing the research
Futurelab put this in to practice with a project about teaching with games. It involved teachers from four UK schools, with childred aged 11-16. The project used commercial, off-the-shelf games to support curriculum learning, and involved a year-long research programme. Some examples were using SIMS 2 to learn French and personal, social and health education (examining relationships and morals) and English in year 7. This game also taught skills outside the curriculum such as collaboration skills, generating content, social relationships and so on. Another example was the game Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, which taught curriculum skills such as physics, but also economics (how to run a theme park). It could also be seen as a design and technology project, involving project management. Some games are board games translated to the computer, such as the Knights of Honour game. This is most obviously related to the subject of history, but can also teach skills such as decision making and strategy.

Importantly, Futurelab noted that games tend to be used by schools as part of the curriculum but in the same way as traditional texts would be used, and not in relation to its intrinsic game qualities. That is to say that games are often 'crowbarred' in to the curriculum for the sake of the research, but that the teachers were often more interested in the skills that fall outside the curriculum.

In addition to the research in schools in 2006 Futurelab set up a national poll to contextualise the research. The key outcome was the generational divide. Other outcomes of the research were that institutional factors tended to outweigh any qualities of the games themselves and that the accuracy of games was not as crucial as expected. Teachers were often unable to recognise whether students were learning, and that learning was supported if the activity was reconceptualised. The research challenged the idea that you can just pick up an outside school activity and use it in the class, whereas the result was that games had to be subordinate to the rest of the programme and how school works.

Futures work
In the last part of his lecture Richard focused on his research for the project Beyond Current Horizons, foresight work for the UK Ministry of Education on what the world will look like in the year 2030, and in particular what learning and schools will look like. The report can be found at beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk . The project was very large in scope, coming up with six different scenarios for the future. Among the interesting issues are real world relevance: Do schools prepare learners for life and above all for work? Is informal learning better for other kinds of skills, in a society where qualifications are increasingly not useful to school leavers? It addressed changing work patterns, greater mobility, the focus on adaptability and self reliance, as well as the challenges of technology and how learners can be able to make the most of the opportunties it offers.

Current projects
Among some of Futurelab's current projects are Shoutbox, a mobile phone based protottype for 11-16 year-olds. An avatar in a phone prompts you to choose a theme, then collect examples from your own life, then share it on existing social networks. The aim is to promote reflection and achievement, having conversations in a mode that is familiar.

Another project, Dream Catcher, aims to capture young children’s dreams by recording their creative play and imaginary worlds, opening up powerful channels of shared communication and learning with parents, other children, and early years professionals. It involves wearable technology similar to a watch, with AV recording and memory, that prompts children to record dreams, ideas or thoughts at a given moment. They can then beam the dream to other devices as the basis for a conversation, or capture something ephemeral to share. The aim is reflective dialogue.

The future of informal learning
We have a choice between three approaches. We can either ignore formal learning, adopt informal learning approaches in schools, or work to recognise the value of each. But what does it mean for teaching? To make it work we need to recognise the social context: you cannot simply transplant an informal learning activity to the school context.

A more radical approach is to argue that there is no real divide between formal and informal learning. We all learn through life, and the distinction between these two types of learning is based on the past. We need to examine learning and school models. It is inevitable that schools will change, and there needs to be a wider recognition of the value of learning as essential for society. Schools can legitmise informal learning and informal learning approaches can help schools adapt to changing world we live in. To do this schools need to free up time for informal learning, for example by extending play time.