Media and the Design of Social Learning Environments

(Communication: COMT115; Human Development: HDP115)

Fall 2009

For the WINTER 2010 Syllabus follow this link

Discussion: Monday & Wednesday 1:30 - 2:50

Location: Social Sciences Research Bldg #308

Site Visits: Mon thru Thurs 3:30 – 5:30 (Mon & Wed or Tue & Thurs shifts)

Location: Town and Country Learning Center

4066 Messina Dr., San Diego, CA 92113 (map)

Instructor: Robert Lecusay (email)

Reader: Rachel Cody-Pfister (email)

Office hours: Mondays, 11:00am - 12:00pm (or by appointment)

Seqouyah Room 201

Course websites:

Syllabus: http://communication.ucsd.edu/rlecusay/comt115fa09/index.html

Field note database: http://fieldnotes.ucsd.edu

Learning Center: http://www.tclearninglounge.org

Requirements Schedule Course Materials Research Partners

Media and the Design of Social Learning Environments is a practicum course uniquely designed to help you learn and apply theories of human development and communication. You will be introduced to these theories in a seminar setting and asked to draw on them outside the classroom as you engage in field research in an afterschool learning center. A key objective of the course is to teach you how to critically study human cognitive and communicative development as it unfolds in environments and situations that people commonly experience in their day to day lives (work, school, after school vs. controlled laboratory settings). A large part of your training will involve learning by doing. You will visit the after-school center to work, play, teach and learn with the resident youth. It is through your participation at the center that you will be socialized into the culture of the center. As you do this you will also learn to carefully observe and document your own and other’s participation in the ongoing activities at the center. These qualitative research skills will help you evaluate theories of learning, communication, and development. Furthermore, your participation in this practicum will enhance your interpersonal teaching skills as well as skills necessary for conducting qualitative research (e.g. expository & narrative writing, data analysis). The aim of this course is not only to teach you how to conduct social science field research in a skillful and ethical way, but also to connect you with the local community in a way that helps you realize that this community and the communities to which you belong are interdependent.

Course Requirements (back to top)

Attendance

1. Class discussion: Mondays & Wednesdays, 1:30 – 2:50 pm, SSRB #308.

a. Mondays: discussions will generally focus on student experiences at site and organizational work including conference call with the Learning Center site coordinator to plan ongoing activities.

b. Wednesdays: discussion of assigned readings.

c. Mondays & Wednesdays: During the first thirty minutes of discussion we will take the time to experiment with and talk about some of the computer activities available at the learning center. We will also discuss some of the routines at the center. The objective of this portion of the discussion is to familiarize you with the culture of and varieties of activities at the Learning Center.

2. Site Visits: Monday - Thursday, 2 day shifts, 3:30 – 5:30, 4 hours total per week. During site visits your priority is to learn, play and work with the resident youth. At times you will also work with the friends and families of the resident youth as well as the staff of the Learning Center, participating in activities designed to contribute to and sustain some of the basic functions of the Center. We will discuss the rules and routines of the Learning Center in class. You can get a head start on your Learning Center education by checking out this list of rules from November, 2008.

Field Notes: You are required to write field notes that document your experiences at the Learning Center. Your notes should be written and submitted within 24 hrs. of your visit to the Learning Center. A guide for how to write your field notes (including a description of how field notes are graded) is available here and one for uploading your field notes is available here. You will receive hard copies of these guides on the first day of class.

This course forms an integral part of an ongoing collaborative research project for studying human development from the individual to the institutional level. The project brings together a wide variety of people and organizations from the university and local community. As a student in this course, you are now part of this research collaborative both as researcher and participant. The field notes you write are data critical to this research project. They are one of the primary sources of information used by our research collaborative to study changes in the people and organizations that together make up the Learning Center. Furthermore, you will be asked to use these field notes, as well as your classmates’, as evidence to support the claims you make in your final paper. It is therefore vital that you take care to write detailed, comprehensive field notes in a timely manner.

Collaborative reading-discussion: Students will be divided into small groups. Twice during the quarter each group will be asked to lead discussion about the assigned readings. Guidelines for how to critically read can be found here. On the days you are asked to lead discussion, please turn in (hard copy) the answer to two of the 10 questions included in these guidelines. You will be assigned your “presentation” dates as well as the questions you need to answer during the first week of classes.

Quizzes: Class discussions are more worthwhile for you and your classmates when everyone comes to class having read the assigned texts. In order to encourage students to read these texts, five unannounced quizzes will be given throughout the quarter. Each quiz will consist of one question designed to assess your basic understanding of the concepts, arguments, or methods presented in the text. These will be simple quizzes. If you read the text, you have a 99.99999% chance of getting full marks.

Final project preparation assignments: In order to help you prepare for your final project, two project organization tasks will be assigned. The first (DUE in class Wednesday, October 21^th) is designed to get you to think about what you have been doing at the center, who you have been doing it with and what you find interesting (or not) about the activities you’ve engaged in so far (see assignment here). The second task (DUE in class Wednesday, November 4^th) is designed to help you come up with your research question(s) and the methods you will use to address it (see assignment here).

Final Assignments

******ALL FINAL ASSIGNMENTS DUE December 9, 2009 – 12 noon, SSRB rm. 308 *********

Final Reflection Paper (3-4 pages): At the end of the quarter you will be asked to review your field notes and use them to create an account of your experiences in the class. This account should include your honest impressions about what you think you learned and if and how you changed. Draw on your field notes (and, if necessary, those of others in the class) to compare your impressions at the beginning, middle, and end of the quarter.

Final project (5-7 pages): In addition to your reflection paper you will also write a final research paper. The purpose of this paper is to critically present and analyze the research you conducted during your visit at the Learning Center. You will be expected to draw on the theories and methods introduced to you in class as means for organizing and interpreting your work. We ask that you use your field notes and those of others in the class to support the claims you make in your paper.

As noted above, you will be given two preliminary assignments to help you organize this project. In addition, we will discuss the ins and outs of developing and completing your project throughout the quarter. Final papers from previous quarters are available for your review (ask the instructor or TA). Some sample paper topics from previous quarters include:

How much help is too much help?

Children’s listening skills. Is ignoring an important part of communication?
            Teens’ interpretations of politics in the news.
            More than reading 101: a look at one child’s reading progress
            Interactive tutoring: using the internet to help with homework
            Positive effects of new experiences and activities
           To discover others one must discover himself
            The impact of individual ideas on group projects
            I thought the whole program was disorganized and frustrating
            A new plan for the media center
            The Tea Party Extravaganza
            When playing WITs age matters
            Parent involvement at Town and Country
            The challenges facing the healthy snack program
            More than plants grow in our garden
            The teens at T&C: special challenges
            Trash Talk
            Cultural differences between the kids and the buddies at T & C
            Little girls and sexualized play
            Open Mic Night
            Getting kids involved: Why (rewards/punishment/nagging…) does/does not work.

Mixed Media Option: In the past some students have pursued performance and/or digital media projects (e.g. video documentaries, art projects) created for or in collaboration with the youth at the Learning Center. When done thoughtfully, these projects can offer powerful insights into the activities that they represent, and by extension, into the life of the Learning Center and its members. If you think you would like to turn in a mixed media project instead of a traditional research paper, see the instructor or TA early in the quarter to discuss your plans. Your media must be accompanied with a brief written description that explains the purpose of the project, how it was developed and completed, and what you think the project contributed to the Learning Center community.

Final Portfolio: The final portfolio is simply a binder or folder in which you will collect the work you did throughout the quarter (your field notes, notes you prepared when you were ask to lead discussion in class) in addition to your reflection paper and your research paper. ADVICE: Print your field notes as you submit them to the database, then insert them in chronological order in the binder or folder you will be using as your portfolio. This way you don’t have to rush at the end of the quarter to try to print everything at once.

Grading:

Participation 15%

Field Notes 25%

Quizzes 10%

Reflection Paper 15%

Final Project 35%

Email

For questions, appointments, or anything related to the course, please email me. Due to time constraints, please only email emergency questions: save other questions for class or office hours. Please allow 48 hours for me to respond to your emails. If I don’t respond within 48 hrs., you may email me again to remind me.

Finals week: Although I will try my best to answer all your questions about the final portfolio before it is due, I reserve the right not to answer questions 24 hours before the portfolio is due. Time your work on the final portfolio accordingly. (I do this in order to discourage students to wait until the last minute to complete their final portfolio).

Course Schedule

(back to top)

WEEK 1: Monday, September 28

Discussion: Course introduction.

WEEK 1: Wednesday, September 30

Discussion: History and intellectual foundations of LCHC-inspired afterschool research; how to write field notes Pt 1.

Read: 1. Cole, M. & the Distributed Literacy Consortium (2006). Introduction. In M. Cole & the Distributed Literacy Consortium (Eds.) The fifth dimension: An after-school program built on diversity (pp.1 - 13). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

2. Field note writing guide (including two sample field notes: sample 1, sample 2)

WEEK 2: Monday, October 5^th

Discussion: Impressions from Week1; how to write field notes Pt 2 (review of field notes and feedback in the field note database); Organizing for the week and quarter ahead.

Read: Olt, A., Cole, M., and Woodbridge, S. (1994). Documenting children's problem solving behaviors during computer based game playing by using field notes of participant observers. Paper presented at the 75th Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. April. (pdf)

WEEK 2: Wednesday, October 7^th

Discussion: Rationale for the design of after-school programs and activities. Ethics of short-term collaborative ethnographic research.

Read: 1. Cole, M. & the Distributed Literacy Consortium (2006). The intellectual foundations of the fifth dimension. In M. Cole & the Distributed Literacy Consortium (Eds.) The fifth dimension: An after-school program built on diversity (pp.15 - 33). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

2. Conquergood, D. (1985). Performing as a moral act: Ethical dimensions of the ethnography of performance. Literature in Performance 5: 1-13.

WEEK 3: Monday, October 12^th

Discussion: Preliminary ideas for group projects; more discussion of field notes; general impressions; organizational work.

Listen to: How to Talk to Kids. WBEZ radio, This American Life Podcast, October 5, 2007.

WEEK 3: Wednesday, October 14^th

Discussion: Participationist theories of learning and development. Mediation as a concept for thinking about thinking.

Read: 1. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. In L.S. Vygotsky Mind in Society (pp. 79 – 91). Cambridge, NA: Harvard University Press

2. Excerpt from “Commognition: Thinking as communicating” chapter in Sfard, A. (2008). Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing (pp.76 – 80). New York: Cambridge University Press.

WEEK 4: Monday, October 19^th

Discussion: Preparing for your final project pt. I; general impressions; organizational work.

Wednesday, October 21^th

*********ASSIGNMENT DUE IN CLASS: Organizing your paper, Pt. I********

Discussion:The role of culture in learning and development. Focus: digital media as a mediational (cultural) tool in the lives of contemporary youth.

Read: 1. Rogoff, Barbara. (2003). Chapter 2, Development as Transformation of Participation in Cultural Activities. In B. Rogoff The Cultural Nature of Human Development. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

2. Growing up online. Frontline documentary on youth’s different uses of digital media.

Access at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/.

WEEK 5: Monday, October 26^th

Discussion: General impressions; organizational work.

WEEK 5: Wednesday, October 28^th

Discussion: Graduate student research presentations. Camille Campion, Tamara Powell and Ivan Rosero

Read: 1. Grad student summaries of research projects (to be distributed).

2. Paley, V. & Glass, I. (1996). Human Nature: The view from kindergarten. School teacher and researcher Vivian Paley discusses how children relate to one another in a kindergarten classroom.

WEEK 6: Monday, November 2^nd

Discussion: Preparing for your final project pt. II; general impressions; organizational work.

WEEK 6: Wednesday, November 4^th

Discussion: Demography and education.

Read: 1. Macleod, Jay. (1987). Ain’t no makin’ it: Leveled aspirations in a low income neighborhood. In David B Grusky (Ed.) Social Stratification: Race Class and Gender in Social Perspective, 2^nd Ed (p.421-434). Cornell, Westview Press.

2. Davies, K. (producer) (2009). Getting out. This audio documentary chronicles the life of an African-American boy who wins a scholarship to boarding school and has to deal with the complexities of navigating between life at the school and life in the inner-city neighborhood he has left behind.

WEEK 7: Monday, November 9^th

*********ASSIGNMENT DUE IN CLASS: Organizing your paper, Pt. II********

Discussion: General impressions; organizational work.

WEEK 7: Wednesday, November 11^th – NO CLASS (VETERAN'S DAY) , MAKE UP SITE VISIT DAY

WEEK 8: Monday, November 16^th

Discussion: General impressions; organizational work.

WEEK 8: Wednesday, November 18^th

Discussion: The concepts of culture and activity in qualitative education research. Informal learning environments: Research methods and topics (social science), Pt. I

Read: 1. Trueba, H. T. (1988). Culturally based explanations of minority students' academic achievement. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 19(3), 270-287.

WEEK 9: Monday, November 23^th

Discussion: Preparing for the block party, pt. I; general impressions; organizational work.

WEEK 9: Wednesday, November 25^th

Discussion: Informal learning environments: Research methods and topics (social and physical sciences), Pt. II

Read: 1. Polman, J. L. (2006). Mastery and appropriation as means to understand the interplay of history learning and identity trajectories. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(2), 221-259.

WEEK 10: Monday, November 30^th

Discussion: Preparing for the block party, pt. II; general impressions; organizational work.

WEEK 10: Wednesday, December 2^nd

Discussion: Research methods and topics for studying learning and development in informal learning environments, Pt. III.

Read: 1. Pea, R. D. (1993). Learning scientific concepts through material and social activities: Conversational analysis meets conceptual change. Educational Psychologist, 28(3), 265-277.

2. Finkelstein, N., Gallego, M. (2004). When the classroom isn't in school: The construction of scientific knowledge in an after-school setting. In Randy Yerrick and Wolff-Michael Roth (Eds.) Establishing scientific classroom discourse communities: Multiple voices of research on teaching and learning. Lawrence Erlbaum

WEEK 11 - FINALS WEEK:

*********FINAL PORTFOLIO DUE WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 12 noon at SSRB, room 308

FINAL PORTFOLIO:

1. Reflection paper

2. Final Project

3. Field notes