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Learning with SHARP:
the pedagogy
Pedagogy excursion
Slide 1 of 7
The SHARP approach is designed to meet a particular learning
need: to enable people to acquire and improve their ‘working
knowledge.
This is a short excursion into what we mean by ‘working
knowledge’, and how the SHARP approach can facilitate the
learning process.
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The problem of ‘inert knowledge’
Pedadogy excursion
Slide 2 of 7
Much of what is learned in formal educational systems – schools,
universities, training classrooms – proves not to be accessible
outside the context in which it was learned. It is described as ‘inert
knowledge’. Three possible explanations have been given:



The relevant knowledge is (potentially) available, but the learner
cannot access it at the time they need it.
The relevant knowledge is structured in the wrong way (for
example for recall in an examination, but not for use in solving
an unfamiliar problem).
The knowledge is fundamentally situated: that is, it is
unreasonable to expect it to ‘transfer’ because situations are
unique, problem solving is specific and the very idea of transfer
is questionable.
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Developing ‘working knowledge’
Technology excursion
Slide 3 of 7
We use the term ‘working knowledge’ to mean the opposite of inert
knowledge. It is knowledge that students have acquired and which
they can use in unfamiliar, real world, problem-solving situations.
‘Working knowledge’ also connotes knowledge that is characteristic
of real-world workplaces: situated, job-specific knowledge as well
as more general vocationally-relevant knowledge.
The SHARP approach uses asynchronous multimedia
conferencing (AMC) as a way of helping:
 students to develop working knowledge by giving them insights
into how work is actually carried out, and
 practitioners to improve their working knowledge by examining
their ‘tacit’ knowledge (knowledge they use in their jobs but
which is difficult to put into words).
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Learning in communities of practice
Pedagogy excursion
Slide 4 of 7
SHARP adopts an idea first put forward by JITOL (Lewis, Goodyear
& Boder, 1992; Goodyear, 1995): if you are working on a
programme of continuing professional development with
experienced practitioners, you need to organise the programme for
a distributed community of practice and provide it by telematicsbased ODL methods.
This requires that groups of university staff cluster around a
community of practice (rather than around an academic discipline)
and use telematics-based ODL methods to build and sustain the
community.
Goodyear, P. (1995) Situated action and distributed
knowledge: a JITOL perspective on electronic
performance support systems, Educational and
Training Technology International (32,1) 45-55.
Lewis, R., Goodyear, P., and Boder, A. Just in Time
Open Learning, Neuropelab Occasional Paper
NL/1/92, Archamps, France: Neuropelab 1992.
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The ‘evolving knowledge base’
Pedagogy excursion
Slide 5 of 7
JITOL developed the idea of an ‘evolving knowledge base’, created
from a library of the interactions between practitioners. This
evolving knowledge base is seen as a way of capturing much that
is topical and innovative in the working practices of the community.
Although the ‘evolving knowledge base’ idea was never fully
worked out in JITOL, it remains a powerful way of conceptualising
how a community of practice might begin to share its working
knowledge.
JITOL was limited to text-based representations of working
practices and working knowledge. SHARP provides an opportunity
to add multimedia to the toolkit, to allow practitioners more natural
and vivid ways of representing what they do and some of what they
know.
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Representations of practice
Pedagogy excursion
Slide 6 of 7
In setting up a SHARP style AMC you will be asking practitioners to
make representations of their working practices. The key medium
for this is the video clip.
Video clips are short pieces of video, typically between 5 seconds
and 5 minutes long, which represent some relevant aspect of a
practitioner’s work.
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Using video clips to good effect
Pedagogy excursion
Slide 7 of 7
Video is a vivid medium that, if used appropriately, can be closely
tied to the actuality of what practitioners do. By making good use of
video clips you will be able to enable your AMC to remain focused
on the actuality of real world working practices. It is an idea that
relates strongly to an approach presented by Bransford et al.
(1990), called ‘anchored instruction’.
Bransford, J.
et al. (1990)
anchored
instruction:
why we need
it and how
technology
can help, in
Nix, D. and
Spiro, R., eds,
Cognition,
education and
multimedia,
Erlbaum, 115141.
‘At the heart of the model is an emphasis on the importance of creating an
anchor or focus that generates interest and enables students to identify and
define problems and to pay attention to their own perception and comprehension
of those problems. They can then be introduced to information that is relevant to
their anchored perceptions. The major goal of anchored instruction is to enable
students to notice critical features of problem situations and to experience the
changes in their perception and understanding of the anchor as they view the
situation from new points of view.’
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Where to now?
You have completed the core part of the SHARP tour.
Please choose any of the following excursions :
Technology
Pedagogy
End the tour
Making video clips
Making annotations
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On from here
Thank you for taking the SHARP tour.
Please go on now to explore the rest of the SHARP web site. You
can:

Sign our [Guestbook]

Contribute to the [Discussion area]

Go to the [Project Office] for more details of the SHARP project.

Look at [Events] for information on upcoming dissemination
events.

Experiment with [WebOrama], a prototype AMC tool.
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