Philip C. Candy’s ‘Linking Thinking: Self-directed learning in the digital age’
This book-review has been written as an assignment to my reading seminar, for further context see Candy’s ‘Linking Thinking: Self-directed learning in the digital age’ — chapters 8 ‘Collaboration: Realising the Transformative Potential of Technologies’, 9 ‘Engaging with Learning in the Digital Environment’, 13 ‘Reconceptualising: Learning in the Digital Age’.
Reading through Candy’s book has been quite an interesting experience — knowing its age (it has been published in 2004) I was constantly questioning almost all of its technology-related terminology. If I shall take one slang expression from this book which we must — even nowadays — use more often, it would most definitely be ‘bathing in bits’.
The language issues aside, I have found this book to be rather interesting. Candy in his attempt to describe self-directed learning to be a technology-driven activity has been quite theoretically focusing on both learning and technology, which made this book to be quite a sly hybrid of information science and pedagogy.
Candy has been mainly focusing on aspects of cyberspace and its further impact on learning process, many of which has been focused on by information scientist for a while — namely information retrieval, accessibility and availability of information sources, issues of navigation through Internet, exclusion of users, effective technology-mediated communication, information literacy, information management, maintaining and planning etc. Marginally Candy has mentioned also an issue of financial barriers which limits access to proprietary databases.
The second gap which was mentioned is the technological one, especially the issue of accessibility of technology to users (even mentioning some people have their only experience with ICT in school). The technological gap might not be (on a personal level) such a pressing issue as it once was, because of the low cost of portable devices like mobile phones and other wearables it is currently very available to even general public and low-income people to operate with ICT. The area, where this gap is visible and pressing, is formal education and universities, where it might be essential for research to have the best possible technology for the best possible results.
Two things very closely related to this topic I would like to bring up from these chapters are: 1. ICT in schools might not reach the levels of best available technology on the market; 2. It was not teachers who first began to adapt ICT for learning, but learners themselves. It might be still visible in formal education that teachers might not be fully capable of creatively supporting their learning content with ICT, but sticking to those tools and services with which they are familiar.
What I would emphasise as an aspect of technology is the issue of unreliability of information (or learning content). I have not found almost any mention (except of a point about providers and advertisers with power of influence and money being able to spread their agenda and opinions) of desinformation, spreading hoaxes or lies (posing as facts) or lying about being professional or expert in some field (posing as a trustworthy and credible source). While talking about learning in the digital environment, we must think about other learning activities which may not occur on scientific forums and institutional websites, but also in more informal areas such as social media, where the truthfulness of information or learning content might be rather difficult to determine. One of the problematic aspects of accidentally learning desinformation instead of information is the presence of information bubbles and self-validating groups in the digital environment.
I believe Candy has been quite critical in his thoughts on cyberspace in comparison with some of his peers he mentioned; especially ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ by John Perry Barlow (1996). Barlow’s idea of self-governing Internet based upon social constructs with no formal laws has been supported by an argument of lack of consent by users with such governance, perceiving a digital environment as anarchical and boundaryless.
Nowadays, with country-restricted content and websites, GDPR and other legislative changing Internet in quite some way, existence of cybersecurity, main ICT infrastructure and on the other hand users being more or less aware abou how much they are closely watched and recognised by agents online with huge digital footprint which can identify them and AI analysing such footprint for patterns and behaviour, we can see Internet may not be such a happy place and utopia without some kind of formal restrictions.
The self-governing idea works on smaller scale — a community described by its interest or goal has usually its own rules, in case a user disobeys some of the rule, a punishment comes to their way more or less proportional to their actions (it can be anything on a scale from deleting a post to permanently ban an account). Bigger example of such behaviour may be cancel culture — no matter what your view on this phenomenon is you must agree it might be one of the most obvious case of self-regulation of the Internet.
I also found the idea of anonymity on the Internet quite outdated, as you can say by my stance on digital footprint and cybersecurity. Candy mentioned that in an anonymous online environment people are more likely to engage with those activities which are attached to some social stigma. Well I believe many educated people on the topic of fake anonymity on the internet may be feeling the same level of distress in online as well as offline environments while engaging in some information-seeking behaviour.
I can not agree with Candy’s stand on neutrality of technology. I personally hold a position of non-existence of neutrality, because it was made by a person with their own cultural, political and social values and beliefs, as well as it is used as a medium and creative tool for people who have got their own values — and any technology serve to user and his actions. Even Candy claimed that there is a gap between the wants of the creator/provider of technology and its user, but we can see that both of them are somehow biassed.
Of course technology-related examples might be visibly outdated, but if you are a fan of history you might see those as a probe into the past of technology-related behaviour.
On the other hand while exploring various topics of learning, such as motivation, deep or surface level of learning, connecting users etc. I have found this part of the book to be extraordinarily useful to me. I consider myself to be a huge fan of self-directed and personalised learning experiences, so the arguments for choosing one’s own path of learning seems very appealing to me. The argument of self-directed learning as a journey sounds to me that it might be influenced by a more eastern mindset (rather than seeking influence in western mindset which may focus purely on the goal of learning). To quote O’Donnell’s idea of ‘exploiting the new medium artfully’, I would find it quite interesting if Candy went into depth with the idea of personalisation of such a learning journey.
The two main categories of technology-driven learning Candy put a lot of emphasis on throughout chapter 8 and 9 have been access to a wide range of resources and ability to communicate with people. Candy emphasises both being able to connect with users with the same interests, field of study and niches, but he also mentioned how important it is to glimpse on issues from a variety of different perspectives and viewpoints (in context of deep level learning and therefore for knowledge and personal growth).
The next big issue touched here was the ability to participate in sharing knowledge and building a community of learners. Unfortunately Candy only mentioned a spontaneity of creation of online learning communities, or on the other hand some institutional creation, not really playing with some ideas about targeted creation of such community or further work with it (it would be interesting to see the engagement with such community both in digital and physical world). Candy also touched (only very cursorily) the question of social construction of knowledge.
There have been multiple mentions that even though ICT is fully capable of mediating human contact, it might lack the kind human warmth and other natural aspects of human communication. I have found it rather obscure, because on one hand Candy has been talking about experiences with technology in both positive and negative ways, and on the other hand he felt right in the category of overly personalising ICT. I have found it rather bizarre to call technology anything from comforting, patient, non-judgemental to alienating and dehumanising.
Candy also mentioned a practice of learning a language using technology, with one important limitation of such learning experience — a lack of face-to-face communication. Well first of all I would like to mention that learning languages through technology may open your palette of decisions about which language to learn.
I have a very recent experience with language learning apps and services, this limitation is partially filled with both hearing exercises and speaking exercises (also there are some videos or chats with spoken conversation). You can also meet a penpal, some apps provide instant messenger and there are many video call apps which allows you to have a distant face-to-face communication with them. I would rather call out different limitation of those language learning technologies — there are so many courses beyond english language barrier, for Czech speakers there are much more limited catalogue of both languages and courses and over-all language materials.
As well as Floridi in the last reading, Candy has also touched on the topic of identity, asking questions about relationship between user and their alter ego. Next Candy’s had some thoughts on determining the user’s gender, age etc. I would argue that it might open a world where biases and social constructs might be seen as they are — the social constructs, which may free people who are being misgendered/devalued/bullied in ‘offline world’. Opening once again the question about alter egos, personas and self-representation — we found ourselves asking a question of a curated identity.
Overall I really like this reading, I have found many aspects of technology-driven learning I might focus on way more while both engaging with digital learning content and creating it.