Situation, learning and design: contexts for educational use of computer networks

The design of educational environments is potentially more difficult in networked environments when the experience of the learner may be more varied. This paper examines two approaches to educational design that can be applied to networked learning that approach design indirectly through the design of learning contexts. The approaches accept a situated view of learning in which learners constitute their own learning situation from the available resources but go on to suggest that the resources themselves remain open to design. This paper uses interviews and observations of practitioners and students in higher education to illuminate the practice of design and the limits to which design may be subject in a networked environment. It suggests that networked environments are indeed highly contingent but that this contingency may not be open to an easy solution based on the design of contexts for learning. Practitioners don’t have common ‘rules of thumb’ to apply and the flexibility inherent in networked learning brings greater contingency to the student’s experience. In these circumstances it would seem that we are some distance away from being able to claim a resolution to the tension between a recognition of situated learning and the needs of design.