I had a meeting with Gianni last mounth and showed him my latest idea. He said that I should do some more research on the Conversation Theory and try and figure out how I can tie it in within a mobile learning application effectively.

I did some research on this theory and came across a very interesting article by Usman Haque (2007) called The Architectural Relevance of Gordon Pask. (View PDF) This paper looks at Pask’s theories and projects. A particular project that got my attention was the Self-Adaptive Keyboard Instructor (SAKI), designed by
Pask and Robin McKinnon-Wood in 1956, which was essentially a system for teaching people how to increase speed and accuracy in typing alphabetic and numeric symbols using a 12-key keyboard.

Self-Adaptive Keyboard Instructor

SAKI is based on a concept of an adaptive teaching machine, mimics the possible relationship between a human teacher and student. A teacher is able to respond directly to a student’s apparent needs by focusing at times on particular aspects of the material to be studied if weaknesses are measured in these areas. This is achieved in Pask’s constructed system via the dynamic modulation of three variables.The machine responds not just to the student’s actual input, but also changes the way it responds on the basis
of past interactions. The student responds to the machine just as the machine is responding to the student, and the nature of their goals at any point in time is dependent on the particular history of response the other has provided.

Believed to be an instrumentation panel from the Eucrates project (1955), Gordon Pask developed the system with Robin McKinnon-Wood and CEG Bailey to simulate the relationship between teacher and student. His use of variables for concepts like ‘awareness’, ‘obstinacy’ and ‘oblivescence’ are core to the system.

Here are some other references that I came across on Pask’s theories:

Nakauchi Y., Naphattalung P., Takahashi T., Matsubara T. and Kashiwagi E. (2003) Proposal and Evaluation of Natural Language Human-Robot Interface System based on Conversation Theory [online] Available: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fstamp%2Fstamp.jsp%3Ftp%3D%26isnumber%3D27829%26arnumber%3D1241625&authDecision=-203

Feinberg W. and Odeshoo J. (2000) EDUCATIONAL THEORY IN THE FIFTIES: THE BEGINNING OF A CONVERSATION [online] Available: http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/Educational-Theory/2%20Feinberg-Odeshoo.pdf

Fernandez Maria (2008) Gordon Pask: Cybernetic Polymath [online] Available: http://aminima.net/wp/?p=858&language=en

Sharples Mike (2002) Disruptive Devices: Mobile Technology for Conversational Learning [online] Available: http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/sharplem/Papers/ijceell.pdf

Sharples Mike (2005) Learning As Conversation: Transforming Education in the Mobile Age [online] Available: http://www.fil.hu/mobil/2005/Sharples_final.pdf

De Rosnay M. and Hughes C. (2006) Conversation and theory of mind: Do children talk their way to socio-cognitive understanding? [online] Available: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17603398

Scott Bernard (2001) Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory: A Domain Independent Constructivist Model of Human Knowing. [online] Available: http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/pub/fos/pdf/scott.pdf