ParagogyPaper2Revisions

Paragogy by Joseph Corneli and Charles Jeffrey Danoff

Recorded since antiquity, peer learning has become ubiquitous in the present, particularly through the use of new communication tools. Paragogy is a theory of peer learning: we endeavor to say how it works, and how its done best. This paper outlines paragogy&rsquo;s contemporary relevance and expounds its principles, showing their connections to other theories. We present several examples of paragogy in practice, including an extended case study where we apply paragogy to critique our experiences working at the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). We close by describing some limitations of the theory and our vision for what lies ahead.

= INTRODUCTION =

We use the term paragogy to characterize the critical study and practice of peer learning (literally, "para-" along side, "-gogy" leadership, but here following the form of pedagogy and andragogy ). The fact that παραγωγή is an existing word in Greek (meaning "generation" or "production") does not dissuade us from this new usage in English, for, along with J. Philipp Schmidt (currently executive director at the Peer-2-Peer University (P2PU), a new nonprofit organization that aims to provide "Learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything." ), we recognize that learning is frequently at the heart of peer production processes.

In the case-study, we use paragogy to evaluate our experiences as course facilitators at P2PU. Although peer learning has been the subject of various studies from various approaches, peer learning has yet been considered as an alternative form of education. This definition from a book on cognitive psychology makes the point: "Peer learning is an educational practice in which students interact with other students to attain educational goals."

Although this definition is not unreasonable, we are fascinated by the growth and evolution of opportunities for learning outside of formal institutions. A recent article from Fast Company, an influential business magazine, illustrates the point: &ldquo;Just as more and more employees are expected to have basic multi-media skills&mdash;the ability to blog, for example, or to shoot images or videos on their smartphones&mdash;so will they be expected to have the basic ability to share knowledge with their peers.&rdquo; Paragogy need not be between students, and it can be about "educational" goals and/or productive ones.

The focus of this paper is timely in another sense: open, online spaces that serve the needs of learners are developing rapidly. Here we cite Cormac Lawler's recent work on Wikiversity. Lawler's work uses and advocates for an action research approach, with thematic questions "What does it take to change a given system? [...] and how does the process of changing a system develop our knowledge about that system?" Our work uses similar methods to examine the deep aspects of work in open, participatory, learning environments.

In terms of outcomes, our aim is to develop "good practices" around peer learning, suitable for everyone involved (individual learners, organizers, administrators). Two related works, dealing with "open software success" and "starting new online communities", from Crowston et al. and Resnick et al., respectively, provide a model, and, indeed, in some cases we can draw directly from these papers. Paragogy is, however, in a rather more preliminary state.

= THE CHALLENGE =

A. T. Ariyaratne&rsquo;s essay on Rural Self Help, one of the foundational writings of the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement in Sri Lanka , begins:

''Nobody needs to teach rural communities about &ldquo;group effort&rdquo; and &ldquo;self-help&rdquo;. [...] The real question, therefore, is to examine what are the constraints that exist inhibiting the expression of  their group effort and self-help qualities designed to  improve food and nutrition levels, clothing, shelter,  health, sanitation, education and cultural life?'' In a similar spirit we examine our experience with peer learning at P2PU later in this paper. Just as rural communities need to find the constraints inhibiting their group effort and self-help qualities, we seek what constrains peers from studying a subject together, outside a traditional classroom or without a teacher. Peer learning can be different from other forms of group effort, the proverbial &ldquo;barnraising&rdquo; for example, in which the persons involved can be presumed to know how to build barns -- or at least know someone who knows, and be ready to take orders. That can be the case in peer learning, e.g. someone who knows more about physics helping their peers in a study group, or peers may have to put knowledge about the subject together as they go.

= WHAT PARAGOGY HAS TO OFFER =

We have five principles, with which we endeavor to both describe the phenomenon of peer learning, and to prescribe the key aspects of its best practice.


 * 1) Changing context as a decentered center.
 * 2) Meta-learning as a font of knowledge.
 * 3) Peers provide feedback that wouldn&rsquo;t be there otherwise.
 * 4) Learning is distributed and nonlinear.
 * 5) Realize the dream if you can, then wake up!

Are the principles unique to paragogy? No, they are here to start a conversation (see "Key Message" section). We will try to ground each of them in previously existing literature.

1. Changing context as a decentered center. In paragogy, we recognize that we are not merely teachers or learners, but are actually co-creating the learning context as a whole. Context is always flexible and paragogy asks learners to cultivate a &ldquo;shared context in motion&rdquo; with their peer group to best support their learning. This central role of environment is not unfamiliar to constructivist thinking about education. : "Thinking of instruction as an environment gives emphasis to the ‘place’ or ‘space’ where learning occurs. At a minimum, a learning environment contains: (1) the learner; (2) a ‘setting’ or a ‘space’ wherein the learner acts, using tools and devices, collecting and interpreting information, interacting perhaps with others, etc." (Page 4, in Brent G. Wilson, "Introduction: What is a constructivist learning environment".) Nevertheless, in peer learning, learners have a central role in creating the environment (this could be taken as a definition of "peer learning").

2. Meta-learning as a font of knowledge.   Here we are concerned both with efforts to “learn how to learn” (and to support one another in these efforts). It's a good idea for any organization to learn it's business, but especially vital for people working in the field of learning. In peer learning, this is all of us.

3. Peers provide feedback that wouldn't be there otherwise.   Learners must not seek only confirmation of what they already know, they must confront and make sense of difference as part of the learning experience. Clearly, differences pose challenges, but these are worth grappling with. This is for psychological reasons (feedback is intensely useful, but often not available from the non-human environment; peer learning can even be relevant for rock climbing or computer programming with a nice debugging environment) as well as political or philosophical ones. A space like P2PU seems especially to benefit from an "understanding of social relations without domination in which persons live together in relations of mediation among strangers."

4. Learning is distributed and nonlinear. Learning does not go in a straight line. In particular, "people do not function alone in most learning and development." This does not imply that all social learning is "peer learning". Rather, as above, involvement in co-creating the learning context is a key strand in the paragogical understanding of peer learning.

5. Realize the dream if you can, then wake up! Without clear goals, there will be be nothing to realize. Without critical thinking about goals (leading to changing them), learning is a passive game. Paragogy doesn't assume that everyone will become an expert in the course of their peer learning activities, but nevertheless, it asks participants to do "deliberate practice" to a reasonable degree. Chances are, it will not be so easy; in which case, keep in mind these words from Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

= LITERATURE REVIEW =

The paragogical principles were conceived by turning Knowles's principles of andragogy on their edge. In succinct form, these principles are:


 * 1) That adult learners are self-directed.
 * 2) That they bring a wealth of experience to the educational setting.
 * 3) That they enter educational settings ready to learn.
 * 4) That they are problem-centered in their learning.
 * 5) That they are best motivated by internal  factors.

Blondy points out both uses and challenges to each of the Knowles principles, focusing on how they work in online learning environments. For instance, citing, with reference to the first principle, &ldquo;Cheren stated that while learners may express a desire to be self-directed in their learning, most lack the required understanding of learning necessary to be self-directed and thus need guidance and  encouragement in the learning process.&rdquo;

While our principles can be read as a critique of andragogy, it is largely a matter of point of view: thus, unlike andragogy (which takes the view of the adult educator) or pedagogy (which again studies teachers teaching learners), and unlike heutagogy (which focuses on self-directed learners), paragogy looks at the learning environment as a whole. For example, with our first principle, we draw on Nishida's notion of basho (&ldquo;shared context in motion&rdquo;), a concept that helps us look at how a context constrains or supports different types of (inter-)actions, and about how we can (re-)shape the contexts we find ourselves in. Thus, instead of asking whether or not learners are self-directed, we would prefer to follow Bingham, and assert that we can only develop, or exercise, self-directedness within a relational context. So much for the first principle, from which we can see the theme: paragogy looks at situations where for whatever reason the assumptions of andragogy don't carry so much weight, most typically due to the absence of a trained adult educator as focal point or facilitator for the group.

Paragogy is not the only framework looking at peer processes in education. We'll mention Scardamalia's 12-point framework for Knowledge Building and Mwanza's 8-step process coming from Activity Theory(, cf. ). Both provide alternative frames of analysis (in a related setting). Scardamalia's 12 "socio-cognitive and technological determinants of knowledge building" principles are framed relative to the idea of collective cognitive responsibility in the workplace. Collective responsibility for creating a suitable learning context would be another way to frame our first principle. This framework will in general provide a more detailed view, which is good for talking about details, but less immediately easy to grapple with. Mwanza's eight steps map a given situation to Engeström's activity triangle and are used to generate design requirements. This method is less normative than either Scardamalia or the present work.

= IMPLEMENTING PARAGOGY =

How to implement the principles? In this paper we will incorporate a strategy used in the US Army's training programmes: the After Action Review (AAR). The AAR is a way to formally review training exercises. While one person may play the role of an evaluator in such a review (and despite the fact that soldiers are differently ranked), the review itself happens among peers, and critiques the operations of the unit as a whole. The four steps in an AAR are:


 * 1) Review what was supposed to happen (training plans).
 * 2) Establish what happened.
 * 3) Determine what was right or wrong with what happened.
 * 4) Determine how the task should be done differently the next time.

The purpose of the AAR is to "identify strengths and shortcomings in unit planning, preparation, and execution, and guide leaders to accept responsibility for shortcomings and produce a fix." The developers of the method state that AAR is not a critique. Indeed, it seems most useful to us as a way to explore the ramifications of a set of possible objectives. Introducing paragogy in this way we are interested in a system that will allow a large number of people to participate in learning from our interactions on many levels. The move in this paper is to consider high-level activities as things to be learned from.

= A CASE STUDY IN PARAGOGICAL EVALUATION =

The paragogy principles provide guidelines on best practices for building successful peer learning experiences. In this section we will apply these principles to evaluate the lessons learned from our work at P2PU as facilitators in 2010-2011. For each of the principles we run through the steps of an After Action Review to look at how well the principle was implemented.

Changing context as a decentered center: mapping system dynamics and semantics
1. Review what was supposed to happen.

"We both organized multiple courses where participants were supposed to interact and learn about the subject matter: Collaborative Lesson Planning Fall 2010 and Winter 2011 (co-organized with Dr. Majorie King); DIY Math; Math for Game Designers; Open Governance and Learning (co-organized with Marisa Ponti); and Shaping P2PU." 2. Establish what happened.

"Due to critically low participation, the mathematics courses did not run to completion. Participation in the other courses was minimal, but sufficient for them to run the entire 6 week session. The theory of paragogy was born in an effort to understand what had happened in the math course and in Collaborative Lesson Planning." 3. Determine what was right or wrong with what happened.

"In the more active courses, there were nice examples of learning by course participants. This was common across P2PU, as exemplified in Dan Diebolt's graphical analysis of course participation, which showed that participation was generally uneven and falling." 4. Determine how the task should be done differently the next time.

"Our best experiences as course organizers happened when we were committed to working through the material ourselves. Combining this with gentle prompting peers to follow through on their commitments could go a long way towards keeping engagement at a reasonable level. The first step is to make it easier for participants to say explicitly what their commitments are. Looking at this another way, the P2PU ecology contains an implicit rubric for learning and engagement: from member signs-up for a course to its completion, peers go through a cycle. As we understand this cycle better, it should be possible to evaluate it for quality. For example, P2PU could help participants by implementing more formal check points throughout the cycle."

Metalearning is a font of knowledge: transparency, accountability, and tone
1. Review what was supposed to happen.

"Support for community members was offered as a P2PU course, in mailing lists, via weekly phone calls, in a Q&amp;A issue tracker, and via a few other channels. Participants in courses were hoped to learn how to contribute in a useful fashion if they did not know already." 2. Establish what happened.

"Core members do hold themselves accountable, but this behavior is not necessarily transferred or communicated to new members, for whom accountability is low." 3. Determine what was right or wrong with what happened.

"Core members are doing a lot of work, and the project is moving forward (with grant funding, incorporation, and several new staff positions). To date, however, community members have no &ldquo;formal&rdquo; accountability to one another (i.e. outside of the organization). Publicly, governance follows a 'rough consensus' model (after David Clark's 'We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.' ) As implemented at P2PU, the rough consensus model has its strengths, in particular, it helps avoid tyrannies of the minority in the mailing lists.  However, given that there is a central organization, rough consensus alone is not a particularly complete governance model." 4. Determine how the task should be done differently the next time.

"It is typical for online communities to have strictly enforced community norms. A nice goal for P2PU would be to create and distribute some well-defined OER that discusses these, along with other &ldquo;best practices&rdquo; information for organizers and participants. The current Course Design Handbook is one starting point, but it falls short of being a complete guide to P2PU. This is one example: there is much else besides to be gained from an authority model that will help the organization and community 'learn'."

Peers provide feedback that wouldn&rsquo;t be there otherwise: dealing with problems in a respectful way
1. Review what was supposed to happen.

"Discussions about P2PU happen in the community mailing list and other places mentioned above. Bug reports are supposed to go into the Lighthouse tracker." 2. Establish what happened.

"Discussions about P2PU happen in many places (e.g. in courses). Even within the mailing list, it is difficult to keep track of the full range of ideas circulating at any given time. There has been some talk about using the Lighthouse tracker for organizational matters, but this hasn't taken off. Earlier experiments (e.g. using a shared spreadsheet) to keep track of organization-level tasks were undersubscribed." 3. Determine what was right or wrong with what happened.

"Apart from development work, it is hard to tell what&rsquo;s happening around P2PU. Presumably participants who have identified critical and unsolvable problems simply leave." 4. Determine how the task should be done differently the next time.

"In a traditional university, there are typically a lot of ways to resolve problems without dropping out. P2PU is working on a new peer support model, which will should help with this issue. This will also function as a light-weight way to build organizational knowledge. However, issues related to the involvement of volunteers in organizational matters needs further attention."

Learning is distributed and nonlinear: design considerations
1. Review what was supposed to happen.

"People are supposed to choose and assemble suitable learning resources (blogs, OER, etc.) for their courses, in which everyone is supposed to learn something." 2. Establish what happened.

"This is essentially what happened, but it is hard to measure when and whether knowledge was gained." 3. Determine what was right or wrong with what happened.

"The organization is striving to handle the complexity of life online. The system is explicitly in an experimental &ldquo;beta&rdquo; stage, and people who participate in betas are guinea pigs (and should know this). Quality control has a somewhat precarious meaning in a beta or &ldquo;eternal beta&rdquo;, but this makes life interesting." 4. Determine how the task should be done differently the next time.

"In terms of measuring learning, P2PU would have to work hard to use anything but &ldquo;participation&rdquo; as a proxy value. In terms of broader issues of quality control, one thought is for P2PU core members (including staff members) to use the platform to organize their activities. Indeed, everyone involved with the project could, in theory, use the platform to help measure their &ldquo;strtch/churn&rdquo; as they document what they&rsquo;re learning."

Realize the dream if you can, then wake up: high level roadmap
1. Review what was supposed to happen.

"At one time, the high-level vision was arguably a Declaration of Independence from Formal Education. But perhaps each participant has their own vision." 2. Establish what happened.

"P2PU recently had its first board meeting, but documentation about the organization's vision and roadmap have not been presented to or affirmed by the user community (or vice versa)." 3. Determine what was right or wrong with what happened.

"P2PU has made considerable progress (e.g. in the form of successful grant applications), but without more transparency, the ability of non-core members to learn from these successes is very limited. This, of course, limits the ability of non-core members to contribute to further successes of this sort, and, ironically, also limits the ability of users to meaningfully pursue alternative goals as 'unassimilated otherness'." 4. Determine how the task should be done differently the next time.

"P2PU should build a public roadmap that leads from now up to the point where the vision is achieved. They should do regular or ongoing open/public assessments of quality, and refine or adjust the vision and roadmap as needed."

= CONCLUSION =

Reflecting on education-relevant potential of new media, Martin Weller writes: &ldquo;It is [...] no easy task to adopt a decentralised model, since it will require massive  procedural, economic and professional change in higher  education&rdquo;. We would argue that what&rsquo;s new here is not simply a disruptive force in the traditional educational landscape: there is also a compelling chance to understand learning better. We hope that ongoing developments in paragogy can contribute to this process in a practical way.

"The polarization between the impure, inauthentic society we live in, and the pure, authentic society we seek to institute, detemporalizes the process of change, because it fails to articulate how we hove from one to the other. If institutional change is possible at all, it must begin from intervening in the contradictions and tensions of existing society.  No telos of the final society exists, moreover; society understood as a moving and contradictory process implies that change for the better is always possible and always necessary."

=Notes=

=References=