This is a presentation given by Jutta Treviranus at OpenEd 2010 “The Value of Imperfection: the Wabi-Sabi Principle in Aesthetics and Learning”:

1. The Value of Imperfection:
the Wabi-Sabi Principle
in Aesthetics and Learning
Jutta Treviranus
FLOE Project
Inclusive Design Institute
OCAD University
Toronto, Canada

2. “Crossing the Chasm” of adoption
• More participation
• implementing
• contributing
• Greater diversity of participation
• to meet law and policy
requirements regarding learners
• recruit a large untapped group of
participants

3. Virtuous Cycle
• greater diversity of contributors
• greater diversity of resources
• meeting the needs of a greater
diversity of learners

4. “Support Deep Learning”
• fundamental departure from
conventional or comfortable educational
practices
• complete retooling of habitual
educational quality judgments

5. Wabi-Sabi
• Japanese worldview and aesthetic
that recognizes the beauty in the
imperfect, impermanent and
incomplete
• “nurtures all that is authentic by
acknowledging three simple realities:
nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and
nothing is perfect”
• encompasses the beauty of things
modest, humble and unconventional

6. Wabi-Sabi and learning design
VS

7. We know that....
• incomplete invites completion,
• the broken invites fixing,
• mistakes invite correction,
• a partial collection of examples invites more examples,
• humans call forth the greatest resourcefulness and creativity when there is
an immediate and urgent unsolved problem
• the best arguments and explanations arise from disagreement and debate,
• cognitive dissonance and exposure to the counterintuitive spurs growth,
• the value of constructivist learning.

8. Learning using..
• The mistake
• The intended flaw
• The inaccurate

9. Learning using:
• The gap
• The incomplete
• The imperfect

10. Learning using..
• Antagonism
• Argument
• Dissent

11. Learning Using...
• Counter-factual
• Tension
• Contrast

12. We know...
• “The perils of like-mindedness”
• “Leave room for divergent thinking”
• “Photo-realism can hinder understanding”
• Provoking meaningful input in evaluations through the
intended flaws

13. And yet....
• “mom I don’t have to think about it, the textbook gives me the right
answer.”
• “I’ll never do it as perfectly as the teacher so why should I try”
• “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” for teachers

14. Most Current OER
• create the digital equivalent of the “sage on the stage,”
• focus our energy on polished delivery not learner engagement,
• use inflexible proprietary file formats that confound the creation of
derivatives,
• fail to support bidirectional communication,
• do not support peer learning,
• ignore the need for critical thinking, and
• fail to accommodate translation into other languages and other modalities
and delivery on diverse platforms.

15. Wabi-Sabi - Standards and Quality in Education
• recognize that everything is imperfect and everything changes, even our
notion of perfection
• benchmarks for perfection in our curriculum as impediments to continuous
improvement?
• “the perfect is the enemy of the good” (Voltaire)
• what is perceived as perfect repels efforts to improve and becomes
outdated and impoverished

16. Yes but...
• OER the “new kid on the block”
• must try harder to be perceived as worthy to overcome skepticism, inertia
and distrust
• but will mimicking the status quo advance education?

17. Learning in a Digital Economy..
a Knowledge Economy
• education even more critical
• prosperity of a society rests in
large part on the educational
development of its members
• major shift in learning and
education

18. We no longer need to produce:

19. We no longer need to produce:

20. We no longer need to produce:

21. We need...
• creativity, resourcefulness,
• flexibility,
• collaboration, communication,
• critical thinking and independent thought

22. Bigger problem...
Marginalized Learner
• feel disenfranchised,
• do not see education as relevant,
• see the system as too inflexible
and
• do not feel that their needs are
being recognized or met

23. Learners learn differently
• “Learning breakdown and drop out occurs when students face barriers to
learning, feel disadvantaged by the learning experience offered or feel that
their personal learning needs are ignored” ~2009 Report

24. OER and diverse learning
• OER “born digital”
• digital is plastic and mutable
• but we constrain this flexibility

25. More contributors...
• OER about pooling and sharing
educational resources, about cumulative
production and collaborative effort?
• invite participation or contributions
• encourage derivatives, tinkering or
refinement
• encourage sense of ownership and
inclusion in the process
• shared responsibility that only comes from
providing valued contributions

26. Accessibility, inclusive learning
• yes, it is the law, the policy, a right, an obligation...
• it’s at the core and the epitome of OER culture

27. Why not in OER now ...
• Accessibility seen to constrain creativity and innovation in both
technological and pedagogical approaches,
• counter to interactivity or more engaging learning experiences,
• “there aren’t any learners with disabilities using my resources”
• voluntary participation - less responsive to enforced standards
• guidelines for complying too complex and confusing or impossible to
achieve

28. The problem with One-Size-Fits-All and
Qualifying for Service
• excludes learners that do not fit the categories
• treats learners with disabilities as a homogeneous
group
• ignores the multiplicity of needs and skills that affect
learning,
• constrains the design of learning resources - less
leeway to address minority needs and non-normative
learning styles or approaches
• compromises the learning experience for many of the
learners the services are intended to serve
• ghettoizes education for students with disabilities -
less sustainable, more costly

29. Notion of Disability
• Disability = a mismatch
between the needs of the
learner and the educational
environment and experience
offered
• Not a personal trait
• A relative condition

30. Accessibility =
• Ability of the learning
environment to adjust to the
needs of all learners
• Flexibility of education
environment, curriculum and
delivery
• To optimize the learning
environment for each
individual learner
• A relative quality

31. Doubly-marginalized learner
• not served by mainstream education nor by service
enhancements and programs intended to serve learners with
disabilities
• without financial resources, administrative savvy or advocacy
skills to enable the child to qualify for special services
• do not fit the narrow classifications of disability
• only receive attention once it is too late, once they have
become a “disciplinary” or “behavior problem.”

32. One-Size-Fits-One Education
• optimizing learning for each learner
• Learning needs that affect learning include:
• sensory, motor, cognitive, emotional and social
constraints,
• individual learning styles and approaches,
• linguistic or cultural preferences,
• technical, financial or environmental
constraints.

33. Flexible Resources and Making the Match
• Large pool of diverse, flexible resources
• To make the match:
• transform the resource (e.g., through styling mechanisms),
• augment the resource (e.g., by adding captioning to video), or
• replace the resource with another resource that addresses the same
learning goals but matches the learner’s specific access needs.

34. Requires...
1. information about each learner’s access needs,
2. information about the learner needs addressed by each resource,
3. resources that are amenable to transformation, and a pool of alternative
equivalent resources, and
4. a method of matching learner needs with the appropriate learning
experience

35. FLOE Project
• Flexible Learning for Open Education
• AccessForAll standard
• designing for diversity
• make it possible to meet diverse learner needs
• http://floeproject.org

36. It’s good for you
It gets you where you want to go
• ease of internationalization and translation,
• OER portability across operating systems and browsers,
• ease of reuse, repurposing, and updating,
• improved discovery and selection of appropriate OER,
• and ease of delivery through a variety of mobile devices whether phones,
smart phones, tablets or laptops
• greater resilience

37. It’s easy to implement
• embedded in workflow
• automatic wherever possible

38. To a more inclusive Wabi-Sabi OER community...
• to cross the chasm
• create deep learners