Jim Alexiades, Head of Senior School /Deputy Head, St. Michael’s Grammar School, 20 Redan Street, St. Kilda, Victoria, 3182. jalexiades@stmichaels.vic.edu.au
Dr Graham Morey-Nase, General Manager, QUESTech, 27 Chapel Street, St. Kilda, 3182. grahammn@questech.com.au
Situated Learning; Authentic Activities, Enculturation, Cognitive Apprenticeship; Collaborative Learning; WWW-enabled situated learning.
Proponents of Situated Learning, such as Brown, Collins & Duguid, argue that meaningful learning only takes place if it is embedded in the social and physical context within which it will be used. Associated with this concept are the associated elements of Enculturation, Authentic Activities, Cognitive Apprenticeship and Collaborative Learning. These elements are too often missing from current learning environments, where learners are required to acquire facts and rules that have no direct relevance or meaning to them. Others argue that computer-based environments overcome this deficiency by representing a ‘community of practice’ through simulations of real-world contexts and by employing a case-based and/or problem-solving approach to create ‘authentic activities’. The integrity and authenticity of such an approach, however, has been contested, with the conclusion that "we gain knowledge of the world by being in the world" (Engestrom, 1994)
This paper argues that limitations of computer-based content delivery and communication are reduced if learners are physically situated in the ‘unfamiliar’ world with reliance on the Web to communicate with, and receive learning materials from, the ‘familiar’ institutional environment. A combination of laptop computers, communication via the Web and physical location in an ‘unfamiliar’ environment enables enhanced learning in situ without disrupting other institution-based learning programs.
St. Michael’s Grammar School (Melbourne), in conjunction with James Cook University, has piloted an exemplar of this model of learning by situating a group of 22 students on remote Orpheus Island in the Great Barrier Reef to undertake and complete in 4 weeks a full VCE unit on Ecosystems. Central to the project was access to JCU Marine Biology staff, the use of a laptop computer by each student, and satellite technology to maintain study in their other subjects and communicate with teachers and students
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