Creative Improvisations with Information and Communication Technology to Support Learning : A Conceptual and Developmental Framework

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Creative Improvisations with Information and Communication Technology to Support Learning : A Conceptual and Developmental Framework Vesisenaho, Mikko; Dillon, Patrick; Havu-Nuutinen, Sari; Nousiainen, Tuula; Valtonen, Teemu; Wang, RuoLan Vesisenaho, M., Dillon, P., Havu-Nuutinen, S., Nousiainen, T., Valtonen, T., & Wang, R. (2017). Creative Improvisations with Information and Communication Technology to Support Learning : A Conceptual and Developmental Framework. Journal of Teacher Education and Educators, 6(3), 229-250. http://jtee.org/document/issue14/article1.pdf 2017 229 Creative Improvisations with Information and Communication Technology to Support Learning: A Conceptual and Developmental Framework ( Received January 3, 2017 - Approved November 28, 2017 ) Mikko Vesisenaho1, Patrick Dillon2, Sari Havu-Nuutinen3, Tuula Nousiainen4, Teemu Valtonen5 and RuoLan Wang6 Introduction The aim of this article is to introduce a conceptual and developmental framework for realising under-utilised potential in learning environments by facilitating creative improvisations with Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The ideas advanced in the article are a reinforcement and an extension of the empirical work presented by Dillon, Wang, Vesisenaho, Valtonen and Havu-Nuutinen (2013). The problem that the current article addresses is twofold and concerns some limitations of conventional learning situations: (i) they rarely allow enough opportunity for nonlinear thinking and establishing innovative connections between ideas and practices, and/or non-traditional ways of working, and (ii) the creative possibilities arising from non-linear, non-traditional, or integrative approaches typically are poorly developed. There are many reasons why creativity and improvisation are inhibited in conventional learning environments. For example, organisational structures and protocols often suppress spontaneity in making connections and developing new ideas, and the possibili1 Mikko Vesisenaho University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, E-mail: [email protected] 2 Patrick Dillon, University of Eastern Finland, E-mail: [email protected] 3 Sari Havu-Nuutinen, University of Eastern Finland, E-mail: [email protected] 4 Tuula Nousiainen, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, E-mail: [email protected] 5 Teemu Valtonen, University of Eastern Finland, E-mail: [email protected] 6 RuoLan Wang, University of Liverpool, UK, E-mail: [email protected] Abstract This article is about facilitating collaborative, creative improvisations in learning with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and in so doing enhancing under-utilised creative possibilities in education and development in schools, universities, workplaces and in every-day life. Improvisation is defined and earlier research on supporting creative improvisations with ICT is outlined. There follows a conceptual framing where improvisation is seen as a creative outcome of certain cultural ecological interactions in learning environments. It is proposed that these creative improvisational interactions can be facilitated by ICT, and developmental ideas are presented. The purpose of the article is to review current practice and integrate it within an appropriate conceptual framework and thus outline a research and development agenda for future innovative work in the field. Key Words: Improvisation, Learning, Education, Creativity, Innovation Journal of Teacher Education and Educators Volume 6, Number 3, 2017, 229-250 230 ties from learning that arise ‘in the moment’ are often lost in the overall experience. Improvisation is defined and earlier research on supporting creative improvisations with ICT is outlined. There follows a conceptual framing where improvisation is seen as a creative outcome of certain cultural ecological interactions in learning environments. It is proposed that these improvisational interactions can be facilitated by ICT and developmental ideas are outlined. The purpose of the article is to extensively review current practice and theory, integrate it within an appropriate conceptual framework, and thus outline a detailed research and development agenda for future work in the field. Improvisation Creative potential, and thus the possibilities for improvisation, varies from situation to situation. What is needed is some mechanism for selecting for possibilities with situations that offer good creative potential. Improvisation is one means through which possibilities might be selected as a basis for developing the under-utilised potential in learning environments. Improvisation is defined as the ability to make new combinations in a given situation whilst retaining the original goal or purpose (Coker, 1964). Improvisation involves the coincidence of creative, emergent and collaborative activities and correlates with bricolage, intuition, adaptation, and innovation (Moorman & Miner, 1998). Improvisation is thus a means through which new knowledge, ideas, and concepts may be generated and new associations made between existing ideas or concepts. Improvisation is commonly associated with jazz music (King, 1997) and theatre, although it has been applied in management and business (Crossan & Sorrenti, 1997). Although individual moments of creativity in a jazz performance are most commonly associated with improvisation, the collective endeavour drawn from the simultaneous involvement of all the musicians is equally important. Collaboration is thus an essential ingredient in learning how to improvise in jazz and it has parallels in the classroom and the workplace through the processes of both teaching and learning. Students and teachers, workers and managers, each with their unique ideas, perspectives, and ways of interpreting situations may be regarded as creative resources in learning environments. Collaborative activities provide possibilities for them to create new ideas and knowledge in ways that, for a single person, are challenging or even impossible. (Dillon et al., 2013). Barrett (1998) has outlined the following characteristics that allow jazz bands to improvise coherently and manage creative innovation in a coordinated fashion, they: Mikko Vesisenaho, Patrick Dillon, Sari Havu-Nuutinen, Tuula Nousiainen, Teemu Valtonen and RuoLan Wang • encourage deliberate efforts to interrupt habitual patterns; • embrace errors as sources of learning; • aim for minimal structures that allow maximum flexibility; • allow for continual negotiation and dialogue towards dynamic synchronization; 231 These characteristics, along with the implications they have for managing learning given below, provide a starting point for thinking about mechanisms for ‘filtering’ and supporting improvisations. Implications for managing learning (adapted from Barrett, 1998) are: Moorman and Milner (1998) have undertaken an extensive cross-tabulation of definitions of improvisation. They favoured a temporal definition: ‘the convergence in time of composition and execution’, and argued that different types of memory: organisational, procedural (skill memory) and declarative (fact memory) moderate the impact of improvisations in different ways. Of several different types of memory, Moorman and Miner (1998) recognize two as being particularly important to improvisation: procedural memory enhances the speed and effectiveness of improvisation but reduces its novelty; declarative memory enhances the effectiveness and novelty of improvisation but reduces its speed. The relationship between procedural and declarative modes is important in using ICT: tools may support spontaneity but there may be a skills threshold before it can be fully realised. Creative Improvisation with Information and Communication Technology There is a limited amount of research on how to enhance and support improvisational potential in the processes of learning and innovation. We argue that successfully addressing this topic necessitates building an approach that takes into account the interplay between: 1) the overall role of creativity and improvisation in learning; 2) different ways of capturing, consolidating and transferring ideas, including mechanisms for feedback and analytics; and 3) the cumulative building of context namely localisation, contextualisation, and personalisation (Figure 1). Jointly, these perspectives provide a new way of facilitating the creation of innovations and learning about the innovation process. Earlier research has addressed each of these dimensions separately, but few studies have made attempts at merging them together with the purpose Journal of Teacher Education and Educators • develop mechanisms that allow for making sense of situations retrospectively; • encourage ‘hanging out’, i.e. informal membership of a community of practice. • boosting the processing of information before and after actions are implemented; • creating incremental disruptions as occasions for stretching out into unfamiliar territory; • ensuring that everyone has a chance to ‘solo’ from time to time; • encouraging support for cumulative learning among participants; • valuing errors as sources of learning; • cultivating serious play because too much control inhibits ‘flow’. 232 of supporting the innovation process. Figure 1. The approach, bringing together three perspectives Improvisation in learning Attempts to develop ICT specifically for improvisation have been mainly in the field of music. For example, research has been directed at the relationship between fixed performance (i.e. following a musical score) and improvisation. Franklin (2001) developed a computational learning model for jazz based on identifying the best action for a given state in reinforcing learning and using uncertainty as a means of exploring new possibilities. Whereas the model had an element that allowed it to pursue improvisations ‘outside the chord changes’, it was limited by the extent to which it cumulatively built context. Keller, Jones, Thom and Wolin (2006) developed a computational tool to assist in composing solos of a type that could be improvised. The tool supported the process of improvisation rather than the end composition itself and allowed exploration within a rule-bound framework. There is also research related to promoting specific cognitive abilities in musical improvisation in young children, examining how a system is able to learn and configure itself according to its understanding of the learner’s behaviour (Addessi, 2013; Anagnostopoulou at al., 2012; Cardoso de Araujo et al., 2012). In addition to music, the concept of improvisation has been studied in business and management (Crossan & Sorrenti, 1997; Magni et al., 2013) and in education (Sawyer, 2004). In these settings, improvisation is usually examined in terms of flexibility in dealing with unexpected events (e.g. Holdhus et al., 2016; Magni & Maruping, 2013), Figure 1. The approach, bringing together three perspectives Figure 2. Learning trajectories: left hand side objective orientated closed system; right hand side trajectory open to the possibilities of improvisation (adapted from Dillon, 2012) Mikko Vesisenaho, Patrick Dillon, Sari Havu-Nuutinen, Tuula Nousiainen, Teemu Valtonen and RuoLan Wang 233 whereas our focus is more on the use of improvisation to harness hidden innovative potential, especially in education. This can be called creative improvisation. The vision is of pedagogies that stimulate rather than direct improvisation, as has been shown, for example, in the use of shared lecture notes in an online educational community as a means of opening up learning through improvisation (Dillon et al., 2013; Vesisenaho et al., 2011), and in the learning characteristics of the ‘net generation’ (Valtonen et al., 2010). The second of these studies focused particularly on educational conditions for creative improvisation, investigating: 1) relationships between how ideas are developed individually and collaboratively, and 2) how new ideas change understanding and how they are followed through (Valtonen et al., 2010). These themes offer a starting point for developing ideas and understandings of creative improvisation. Montuori (2003) has looked at the relationship between improvisation and creativity. He sees improvisation as an outcome of ‘the lived experience of complexity’ where the creative potential of ‘performative’ and ‘subjective’ aspects of undertaking a task can be incorporated into the formalised, ‘scripted’ aspects of the task without destabilising the task. Moreover, when it comes to applying creativity and improvisation to create solutions for practical, real-world problems, the concept of innovation comes into play. The distinction between creativity and innovation is that the process of innovation is inherently collective, and it entails both ‘creation’ and ‘implementation’ (Oddane, 2015). Capturing, consolidating and transferring ideas The development of technological tools for facilitating the creation, sharing, and elaboration of ideas is currently a topic of great interest. These themes are being studied in the context of different fields such as citizen science (e.g. Gould et al., 2014), creativity and design (Perteneder et al., 2013; Xu et al., 2014), creativity in learning through digital gaming (Karampiperis et al., 2014), and workplace-based feedback and assessment using learning analytics (WATCHME, 2014). The relationship between collaborative work and individual expression is one of the key elements in facilitating improvisational learning, especially with the aim of enabling people to build onto and further develop each other’s ideas and initiatives. The goal is to design mechanisms for capturing and consolidating ‘in the moment’ experiences so that potentially useful improvisations can be identified. A starting point is the set of characteristics of improvisation defined by Peters (2009): Journal of Teacher Education and Educators • drawing out differences in perspectives; • awareness of relationships between immediate actions and overall shape and form; • interconnecting the particular with the general; • keeping the work ‘open’ and looking for new beginnings; • moving into new, sometimes challenging, spaces. 234 For these purposes, research related to the use and sharing of both tacit and explicit knowledge is relevant, such as the re-use of knowledge and learning resources through communities of practice, being open to possibilities missed by one person but identified by another (e.g. Daele et al., 2006), as well as solutions that allow designers of innovative products to elaborate ideas and designs that have emerged through earlier work focusing especially on mechanisms for storing, reusing and reworking ideas (van Rosmalen et al., 2014). It has been shown that it is important for all actors to co-develop strategies in teaching and learning situations (Vesisenaho & Dillon, 2013; Vesisenaho et al., 2011). Co-development might involve blending practices (including between physical and virtual situations) and community building. Thus, research related to tools that support distributed, synchronous collaborations, for example, between students ‘in the field’ and students based in a stationary location (Adams et al. 2011; Coughlan et al., 2012), is also relevant here. Earlier studies have also explored infrastructures for collaboration and networking across systems, countries and disciplines, placing emphasis on self-organised learning, which is an implied characteristic of improvisation (Klobucar, 2008; Nguyen-Ngoc & Law, 2007). Research has been done on pedagogical frameworks for exploiting the potential of technologies to foster interaction and collaboration between pupils for the promotion of enquiry/discovery learning and autonomous learning (Limanauskiene & Stuikys, 2009). Learning analytics and tools for providing relevant feedback play an important role in the processes of capturing, consolidating and transferring ideas. Learning analytics are currently often used to address at-risk students, that is, identifying patterns of behaviour that indicate a potential problem and then implementing an appropriate intervention that can be either computer or human-based (Wolff & Zdenek, 2012). Such approaches seek to combine data from multiple sources, interpret this, determine key intervention points for the benefit of learners and to use analytics to determine patterns of behaviour and reward contributors (e.g. Ferguson, 2012; Siemens & Long, 2011). The same kind of approach of analysis, identification, and intervention could be applied to supporting creative improvisation, which would be a novel and innovative application of analytics. Localization, contextualization and personalization of learning It is evident from earlier research that the cumulative building of context is important in realising the creative potential of learning through improvisation. The characteristics of the location, situation, and the learners determine the best ways of approaching the creation, sharing, and further development of ideas. As the contexts in which improvisational learning processes take place can range from formal educational institutions (including all levels from pre-school to higher education) to the workplace and a wide spectrum of informal settings (e.g. museums, science centres, Mikko Vesisenaho, Patrick Dillon, Sari Havu-Nuutinen, Tuula Nousiainen, Teemu Valtonen and RuoLan Wang 235 clubs, other leisure activities), we cannot assume that identical mechanisms will be ideal for all of them (Dillon et al., 2013). Thus, contextualization refers to taking the local environment into account when planning and implementing educational activities. Contextual learning occurs only when learners connect information to their own, locally meaningful environments. (Vesisenaho, 2009; Holdhus et al., 2016) An opportunity to support localisation, contextualisation and personalisation of learning is through the use of mobile technologies (Stanton & Ophoff, 2013). Mobile learning involves processes that occur across multiple contexts, using personal interactive technologies (Sharples et al., 2007). This often happens individually or collaboratively in situated contexts (So et al., 2008). Such approaches offer potential for exploring and interacting with location-related information. This is also related to the act of ‘temporal sensing’, allowing flexible ‘time travel’ from the past to the future and vice versa (Coughlan et al., 2012). Personalisation may be facilitated through open educational resources, with pedagogical designs that allow learners to use open content to work collaboratively and to structure their own learning pathways in various formal and informal learning settings. Such approaches prepare the ground for enabling the elaboration of ideas (Conole et al., 2009; Sutinen & Vesisenaho, 2006; Vesisenaho & Dillon, 2013). A related question is that of accessibility to different learners: there has been research investigating how mobile technologies impact on the diffusion of a social model where learning and knowledge are accessible to all, regardless of social and economic background, age, gender, religion, ethnicity, or disability (Arrigo et al., 2010). Another matter of interest is how the technologies can be designed to support equitable colocated and remote learning collaboration (Adams et al., 2010). Realising Creative Improvisational Potential in Learning Situations If ICTs are to be effective in supporting creative improvisations they must become integral parts of the normal, everyday life, i.e. the ‘cultural ecology’ of the environments in which they will be used. Cultural ecology is taken to mean the dynamics of people’s interactions with and within their environments (Dillon, 2008; Dillon & Loi, 2008; Loi & Dillon, 2006; Vesisenaho & Dillon, 2009, 2013). These interactions embody a continual interplay between an individual’s immediate experiences and how he/she knows the world. The instant that some individual experiences something, he/ she connects the new experience with what he/she already knows and feels, i.e., the relational constructs and emotions that define the individual’s personal history. Therefore, the immediate, ‘in the moment’ experiences and the understanding developed from prior learning constantly reconstruct each other (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown et al., 1989). In most structured learning situations, for example schools, universities, museums, workplaces, etc., experiences are managed in favour of particular outcomes, e.g., through curricula, pedagogies, curatorial strategies, workplace routines. TypicalJournal of Teacher Education and Educators 236 ly, these objective-orientated managerial processes ‘select’ certain ‘in the moment’ experiences and consolidate them in the pursuit of educational or workplace goals. This represents both a strength of education as a managed process and a weakness. The weakness is in the loss of creative and imaginative potential of experiences not pursued (Dillon et al., 2013). In formal learning environments, such as schools, learning is typically objectiveorientated: learners are expected to build cumulatively on what they already know and can do. Alternatively, they are taught directly what to do and given limited latitude to take risks with the learning process or outcome. Either way, learners are unlikely to perform outside of the articulated or assumed norm, but rather repeat existing patterns of behaviour, playing out the roles they have already learned or to which they have been newly instructed (Dillon et al., 2013). By contrast, creative thinking emphasises the learning process generally and thus supports the ability to discover diverse functional and usable ideas in different situations. Creativity, therefore, can be characterized as the ability to uncover or formulate an outcome that is innovative and socially significant (Sternberg et al., 1999). In the cultural ecology of a learning environment, creative improvisation is a means by which students individually and collectively draw on experience, take risks, make connections, move into new learning spaces and, in so doing, open up new creative possibilities. Figure 2 is a diagrammatic representation of creative improvisation in a cultural ecology of learning and how it might be facilitated with technology. The central lines represent collaborative learning trajectories. The left-hand graphic is typical of trajectories of learning in formal situations: ‘in the moment’ experiences are consolidated within the relational constructs that define the goals of the learning activity. This is goal-directed or objective-orientated learning. It is essentially a closed system. However, although goal-directed learning in a closed system may be important educationally, there is much under-utilised potential in the process. The right-hand graphic in Figure 2 shows a similar collaborative learning trajectory but, in this case, some of the ‘in the moment’ experiences, facilitated by technology, are allowed to break away from the main trajectory and open up the system to new possibilities. These break away experiences are improvisations. Improvisations typically: (i) involve non-linear and non-standard thinking that challenges received knowledge; (ii) identify new associations between and among existing ideas or practices; and (iii) explore and generate new knowledge, ideas and practices (Dillon et al., 2013). Mikko Vesisenaho, Patrick Dillon, Sari Havu-Nuutinen, Tuula Nousiainen, Teemu Valtonen and RuoLan Wang 243 tion processes have similar features. When considering the role of creativity and ICT in early years’ education, both creative learning processes and inquiry-based learning have similar foundations. Creative improvisation has high value in effective knowledge construction processes and supports the individual learning process. When considering teachers’ attitudes, competencies, and readiness to adopt mobile learning approaches, Rikala, Hiltunen and Vesisenaho (2014) identified teacher’s pedagogical and technological beliefs and willingness to change as important factors. Lack of confidence reduced willingness to adopt mobile learning approaches. Similar results have been found in the context of game-based learning, but it was found that perceived educational ICT self-efficacy only predicted whether a teacher actually used game-based approaches, not whether he or she considered them valuable in general (Hamari & Nousiainen, 2015). The cultural ecology model/framework developed by Vesisenaho and Dillon (2013) offers a relevant basis for further research, but the data they had was limited. According to Erickson (2011), in order for creative improvisations to work in classroom settings, the teacher and the students need to share the same understanding of the pre-existing structures guiding the improvisation. This will allow ‘teachable moments’ - that is, unexpected events that reveal an opportunity for learning - to be built and expanded upon in a meaningful way (c.f. Watson et al., 2011). From our perspective, one especially interesting question pertains to the relationship between situational, ad hoc improvisation (Holdhus et al., 2016; Magni & Maruping, 2013) and more structured forms of creative improvisation (e.g. Dillon et al., 2013), and whether and how these could be supported with technological tools. In organizational contexts, Cunha, Neves, Clegg, and Rego (2015) refer to ad hoc improvisations as episodic; they respond to a certain unexpected event or episode, vanishing after the act. On the other hand, semi-structured improvisations are more formal and framed, closely related to an organisation’s strategy related to responding to spontaneous departures and unexpected opportunities. When looking at the interplay between these different forms of improvisation, technological tools could play a role when we aim to understand “how isolated micro-responses may eventually give rise to organisational, macro-learning, improvisatory capabilities” and to facilitate this transformation (Cunha et al., 2015, p. 12). Journal of Teacher Education and Educators 5. How might unplanned incidents, so-called ‘intuitive reactions’ be accommodated within a structured and deliberated learning framework? 6. How can it be ensured that creative improvisation in learning, although free and extemporaneous, has a kind of logic and context that links with established elements of teaching and learning and makes them coherent? 244 Future skills are not just subject-based, they include, for example, competences such as flexibility, adaptability, initiative, and self-direction (Partnership for 21st Century Learning, 2015); phenomenon-based new curricula (Lonka, 2015; cf. Kearney, 2014); and learning processes blending formal and informal elements (e.g. Vesisenaho & Dillon, 2013; Vesisenaho et al., 2010). For example, Voogt and Pareja Roblin (2012) have made an extensive summary of research on future learning and 21st century skills. The distinction between creativity and innovation is that the process of innovation is inherently collective, and it entails both ‘creation’ and ‘implementation’ (Oddane, 2015). Innovations are a final output of creative improvisation. There are several questions to be addressed related to the theme: What kind of environment is needed to move from creative improvisation to innovation? What is the role of data gathering and connection tools (i.e., technology) in boosting the processes and making them coherent? Learning analytics and tools for providing relevant feedback play an important role in the processes of capturing, consolidating and transferring ideas. Such approaches seek to combine data from multiple sources, interpret this and determine key intervention points for the benefit of learners and to use analytics to determine patterns of behaviour and link them in meaningful ways (see Ferguson, 2012; Siemens & Long, 2011). Havu-Nuutinen et al. (2014) studied local environments in early years’ science. The pupils took photos with iPads and had opportunities to use them creatively. The technology provided a new perspective for learning and increased creative improvisation among the children’s learning process. Earlier studies have also explored infrastructures for collaboration and networking across systems, countries and disciplines, placing emphasis on self-organised learning, which is an implied characteristic of creative improvisation (e.g. Klobucar, 2008; Nguyen-Ngoc & Law, 2007). It is possible to take into account the personal learning paths and contextualize and sustain them for local contexts. Mobile technologies that allow individual or collaborative processes to occur across many contexts provide opportunities for supporting localisation, contextualisation and personalisation of learning, for example, by making it possible to explore and interact with location-related information (c.f. Sharples et al., 2007; So et al., 2008; Stanton & Ophoff, 2013). Another matter of interest is how the technologies can be designed to support equitable co-located and remote learning collaboration (Adams et al., 2010). Personalisation may also be facilitated through open educational resources, with 7. How can (i) creative improvisation facilitated through ICT tools and (ii) networked mobile technology tools in support of creative improvisation be adapted to local contents and services to ensure localisation / contextual sensitivity in education and business? Mikko Vesisenaho, Patrick Dillon, Sari Havu-Nuutinen, Tuula Nousiainen, Teemu Valtonen and RuoLan Wang 245 pedagogical designs that allow learners to use open content to work collaboratively and to structure their own learning pathways in various formal and informal learning settings. Such approaches prepare the ground for enabling the elaboration of ideas. (cf. e.g. Conole et al., 2009; Green et al., 2005; Sutinen & Vesisenaho, 2006; Vesisenaho & Dillon, 2013). Creatively improvised, collaboratively elaborated, learning processes are a challenge, but they offer great opportunities for unexpected new openings. 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