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“Situating” the learning in an online course can mean the difference between success and failure, and can be the key to enthusiasm, high rates of participation and completion, substantive comments in the interactive elements of the course, and engaged interaction. Situated learning is also critical for deep learning and transformative thinking.

“Situated learning” is a term popularized by Lave and Wenger (1991), and it refers to the kind of cognitive activity and knowledge acquisition that takes place in an apprenticeship-type setting. It emphasizes the following elements: content, real life, and mentoring. It involves developing an awareness of both tacit and explicit knowledge. Situated learning is on the other end of a continuum of learning that would place rote memorization on one end and team projects on the other, and it requires the application of concepts to solve problems, provide explanations, and to develop action steps and strategies. An important element in situated learning is social interaction.

To practice a situated learning instructional strategy in face-to-face instruction may be fairly easy to bring about by means of group or team projects which emphasize the production of an outcome that can be displayed or presented. For example, in a recent course entitled Creative Problem-Solving, the students self-selected and formed teams.

The teams were then charged with the goal of developing a strategic marketing plan for a Japanese department store as if they were, in actuality, a group hired to be a “turn-around” management team, to generate new revenue streams by increasing sales to American customers (while not alienating their loyal Japanese clientele).

To be successful, the students needed to apply techniques for creative problem-solving within a context that needed to be analyzed in terms of cultural, psychological, economic, sociological, and geographical contributing factors. Ethnography, human relations, marketing, and strategic planning were the various disciplines. However, they quickly situated themselves within the limits of the task at hand. By negotiating the desired outcome, the individual learners situated themselves within the complex task at hand. Some conducted market surveys, others looked at store layouts, advertising strategies, and merchandising decisions. Others looked the plan in terms of organized steps that fell into a sequence. The details, action steps, and outcomes were negotiated in a social, dynamic manner which encouraged individuals to draw upon individual as well as collective experience.

Teams formed, and individual roles emerged as strengths and weaknesses were identified and place within the context of the problem at hand, and the desired learning outcome. The data that was collected and presented to team members was “read” in a new way — through the lens of the tasks at hand and the achievement of goals.

The results were stunning — not only in the outcomes (complex, high-quality plans, first-rate presentations, outstanding self-awareness and meta-cognitive gains in terms of applying the approach to other similar intellectual problems) but also in terms of student satisfaction. Process elements were also positive. Students posted substantive and thought-provoking responses on the discussion board, responded in respectful and meaningful ways to each other, did additional research (self-guided and motivated), and processed their information. Process elements were also positive: substantive discussions, annotated bibliographies done by the participants, building an annotated bibliography.

On the surface, it would seem fairly simple to replicate this approach in the entire online environment. The “practical” or “project” approaches can be done through collaboration.

A Failure to Situate

However, in the online environment, learning is often not situated well for three main reasons:

1. Incomplete understanding of the nature of the needs, goals, and expectations of the e-learners in a particular group;
2. Failure to select learning activities that respond to the actual context or setting, or a recycling of old, non-updated
   content);
3. Poor sequencing of tasks or activities, and thus a failure to provide scaffolding.

A Strategy for Situating Learning in an Online Course

Effective situated e-learning requires the following elements:

1. Needs Assessment. This is vital in order to understand how to motivate e-learners and to select content and activities that connect to experiences.
2. Alignment of content. Make sure that the content is relevant to the tasks, and that it provides scaffolding.
3. Experience-Based Learning. Encourage connections with current, past, or collective experience through”
   1. Reflective writing
   2. Discussion topics that make connections between course content and experience
   3. Discussion topics that encourage sharing of experience
   4. Guided discussion responses that reward appropriate sharing of experience
   5. In-depth looks at specific examples ( Barton etal, 2000)
   6. Meta-analysis of the particular in order to get at the general, or universal
4. Readings / Texts
   1. Provide conceptual frameworks
   2. Provide theoretical underpinnings
   3. Discuss how to apply concepts to case studies
5. Virtual Teams. Develop projects or group activities that require that individual members of teams prepare components of a report, then share.
6. Encourage social identity production through the team activities.
   1. Build a narrative about a problem that encourages role-playing
   2. Encourage teams to be flexible and let identities or roles emerge
   3. Role-playing is agreed-upon and mutually understood by team members
7. Build in a sense of relevancy and urgency
   1. Choose topics that mean something to the team members
   2. Develop a solution-centered approach
   3. Allow new topics to be proposed that connect to e-learners’ real-life issues and challenges
8. Embed theory and/or conceptual tools (statistics, etc.) in the experiential activities so that they are a part of the problem-solving or thinking process, not something outside and unrelated.
9. Encourage self-awareness of the fact that a specialized language is being developed in the groups as learning activities are centering around experience and experience-based tasks.
   1. Lists of terms and definitions that connect to the tasks
   2. Specialized uses and applications of terms
   3. An awareness of the new way that signs, symbols, activities are being “read” — through the lenses of the context and goals (rather than the other way around) (Gee 2004).

As e-learners engage in a focused, situated type learning in their courses, new internal practices will emerge, and knowledge transfers will take place, not only in the “nuts and bolts” content areas, but in the way that individuals solve problems, think about themselves in relation to a group or a task, and shift their ideas about themselves and others. It is often a subtle shift of orientation and thinking, and yet the outcomes are vastly different in a course that has incorporated situated e-learning.

CITED WORKS

Barton , D., Hamilton , M, and Ivanic, R. (2000). Situated Literacies: Reading and writing in context. New York : Routledge.

Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated Language and Learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New York : Routledge.

Lave, J. (1996). Teaching, as learning, in practice. Mind, Culture, and Activity 3: 149-64.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York : Cambridge University Press.