(Page 6 of 7) - A Taxonomy of Generative Activity Design Supported by Next-Generation Classroom Networks authored by Stroup, Walter., Ares, Nancy. and Hurford, Andrew.

When these types of lessons are approached in a more generative way structural issues of design, esthetics and even
aesthetics are engaged. This kind of task is closest to what the researchers at Vanderbilt refer to as generative
teaching and learning. As noted earlier, teaching comes to be seen as being about “anchoring or situating instruction
in meaningful, problem-solving contexts that allow one to simulate in the classroom some of the advantages of
apprenticeship learning” (1992, p. 78). As with modeling, network supported design task can make the design
artifacts and representations public and even interactive. Cross design analyses related to what makes a “good”
design is more readily supported and apprenticeship begins to be seen as a shared, group, activity.

4.5 Emergent Group Activity

Participatory simulations (cf., Wilensky & Stroup, 1999) and other forms of mathematical and scientific role

playing are examples of emergent group activities. Learners assume iconic (like-the-thing) roles in a system and
through their interactions create emergent behaviors of that system. Using individual devices learners assume the
roles of predators or prey in an ecology simulation or control individual traffic lights in a simulated city and then
work towards improving traffic flow (Stroup & Wilensky, in review). The idea is that the emergent behavior created
by these activities

assuming roles

emergent
behavior

emergent activity

modeling

design

Figure 6. A range of role-playing activities, including participatory simulations, are fully generative.

becomes the object of attention and analysis as modeling or design tasks (see 4.3 or 4.4 above). As with problems
raised above, if the sole outcome of participating in an emergent activity is that a certain behavior emerges – and
there is no subsequent analysis of how the behavior might have developed, how it might be different in another
iteration or under different conditions, or how it might be like or unlike other systems and so on – then little learning
of a generative or structural nature is likely to occur. However if thoughtfully utilized, next-generation networking
can play a particularly significant role relative to emergent group activities and learning about emergent systems in
general.

4.6 Explorations of Kinds and Quality of Pathways

This is possibly the most challenging of the generative forms to describe. Using the pathways and endpoints

depiction, the focus here is not so much on getting to an endpoint as exploring the “quality” of possible pathways
(Figure 7). Not only would this kind of exploration involve the many ways, for example, to prove the Pythagorean
Theorem, but it would also include broad issues related to how reasoning moves forward, what the nature of
development or improvement is, establishing cross-context similarity in the structure of a given system, structural
reasoning proper, generalization, reflective abstraction (as it appears in Piaget’s writings), and how situated-ness
helps to determine the nature of reason and belief. Even the notions of domain and systems theory – as it includes
complexity theory – exist as kinds of explorations into the nature of structural reasoning. This attention to forms

Focus on
efficacy
of paths

Endpoint

and/or forms
of reasoning,
knowing or
belief.

Figure 7. Exploring the kinds and quality of pathways is generative.