{"id":12935,"date":"2015-04-13T14:44:58","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T14:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jenrossity.net\/blog\/?p=12935"},"modified":"2022-10-06T17:21:55","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T17:21:55","slug":"not-yetness-research-and-teaching-at-the-edges-of-digital-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jenrossity.net\/blog\/?p=12935","title":{"rendered":"‘Not-yetness’ – research and teaching at the edges of digital education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last spring,  Amy Collier and I gave a talk at the Emerging Technologies for Online Learning conference in Dallas, called ‘Mess in Online Education<\/a>‘. We were delighted to then be invited by George Veletsianos<\/a> to contribute a chapter on a related theme to the second edition of his ‘Emerging Technologies in Distance Education’ <\/em>edited collection, currently in press (due late 2015). <\/em>In the first edition, George defined emerging technologies as being, amongst other things, \u2018not yet fully understood\u2019 and \u2018not yet fully researched, or researched in a mature way\u2019 (Veletsianos 2010, p.15). In writing our chapter, Amy & I landed on the idea of ‘not-yetness’, and this has turned out to be a fantastically useful and generative concept for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Amy<\/a>
Amy and Jen want YOU to think about not-yetness<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our chapter focuses on not-yetness as it relates to complexity and mess in teaching online:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

digital practices contribute to the fruitful mess that characterises education, casting new light on issues of power, responsibility, sustainability, reach and contact. …a key element of emerging technology is its not-yetness: there is so much we do not know when we engage with these technologies. We must therefore choose to dwell as teachers in [a] state of radical and enduring uncertainty …We need practices that acknowledge and work with complexity to help us stay open to what may be genuinely surprising about what happens when online learning and teaching meets emerging technologies. (Collier & Ross, in press)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We’ve since separately been talking about not-yetness at conferences and events, and for each of us the concept has begun to send out new roots and shoots. Amy blogged eloquently about her take a few days ago:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not-yetness is not<\/strong> satisfying every condition, not<\/strong> fully understanding something, not<\/strong> check-listing everything, not <\/strong>tidying everything, not<\/strong> trying to solve every problem\u2026but creating space for emergence to take us to new and unpredictable places, to help us better understand the problems we are trying to solve.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

– http:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/teaching-and-learning\/not-yetness\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She describes ‘the play, the fun, the opportunity in complexity and not-yetness’, and argues that ‘the ill-defined, the un-prescribed, the messy can lead to the unexpected, the joyful’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not-yetness has become an important part of my thinking this year about digital education practice and research. As I’ve moved towards the end of my time as programme director of the MSc in Digital Education, I’ve been inspired by the idea of the ‘edges’ of digital education: where I think we need to stay to make sure that what we do remains distinctive and relevant as the educational ground continually shifts. At our MSc away day last year, we grappled with the edges of digital education in a team session which went on to generate the Online Professional Learning Incubator<\/a>, a ‘micro credits’ course called Open Themes in Digital Education<\/em> which is currently working its way through the university approval process, and new collaborations and projects on playful analytics and MOOC reuse. These edges require<\/em> not-yetness, and the openness to uncertainty and surprise it brings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I was invited to give a plenary talk at a seminar in Limerick, Ireland called ‘Building an evidence base for enhanced digital pedagogy for online learning<\/a>‘, and in thinking about evidence-based practice and the nature of evidence more generally, I found not-yetness a useful critical tool for considering what happens at the edges of digital education research.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n