It may not be possible to provide an absolute knowledge base that will provide students with all the Just in Time Support they need from the very beginning of the establishment of these channels.     None –the –less the scene is set for a collaborative venture where students and teachers from all over the world have the opportunity to contribute to a base of articles that can eventually provide the needed educational support on demand.  They will be contributing to the whole learning structure, providing a resource for the community and at the same time have the capacity to hone their skills and be paid to do so.

Understanding Colour: the Elements and Principles of Style   was created as w ay to provide students with a very broad knowledge base of colour theory as well as the capacity to drill down into specific essential knowledge about how to achieve certain colour effects and results.

Drilling Down into a Knowledge Base

The term drill down is often used when art students learn about the maintenance and sustainability of an Arts based practice.  When learning to operate the accounting software MYOB, students come to realise that they can “drill” further and further into a data base and obtain more and more detailed information.

This is similar to the way that data bases in the form of articles about colour will function.  The drilling down aspect of the articles are simple hyperlinks.  Because the channel gathers articles around topics, the student who already knows quite a deal about colour will be able to read the top surface article and absorb the material with no further ado.

Students who have little or no knowledge of colour will be able to click on the hyperlinked material for further explanation.  In this way students will be able to spiral through levels of knowing, some will finish the course very quickly.  The writers of the competency suggest that the student should be able to complete the material within a 20 hour study period. Some students would need much more time and effort if there knowledge of colour and artistic technique is scanty.

Other students may struggle with the mechanics of undertaking online study and may need support.  They can drill down in a different direction so that they learn to upload their own examples of colour experimentation.  In this case, the articles will drill down into “How To” articles, that tell them explicitly how to cut, crop and clean images and how to upload and present them onto discussion boards.

Equity Ensured as the Knowledge Base Increases

As students, teachers and artists write an upload articles the knowledge base increases.   The direction of this collection of articles could be guided by ‘wish lists’ of articles that students are requesting.  This wish list could be further channeled by specific requests made by students on the discussion boards.

If a student came onto the discussion boards and asked a question, such as  “How do I achieve the effect of contrasting shallow transparent water in the foreground and the deep cooler blues of the far away deeper sea?”  Another student might be inspired to write an article taken directly from his or her own experience.  To be professionally academic the student would then seek out validation and reference appropriate sources to ascertain the correctness of the information.   Over a period of time this article would be hyperlinked from other articles and the spirals of ‘drilled down’ instruction would be further enhanced.  In this way capacity of the community of learning to provide Just In Time support for members would increase.

Hyperlinking from Other Sources Adds to the Strength of the System

References such as How To Reference Using the Harvard System could be linked directly from the website of the institution to which the student is enrolled. But the finer details of grammar might be further explained from channels here on the Suite101.com

A Noösphere is a community of thought (and in this case learning inquiry and practice) that has as it defining perimeters the breadth of the community that accesses and contributes or receives from the educational pool of knowledge.   This means that an unlocked and ungated community can grow in depth and expand as communicative action increases its effectiveness exponentially.  As people realise the value of the resource, they will be more inclined to contribute and communicate within it.  Wikipedia is the most well-known example of the phenomenon nof collective inetlligence.

Resources:

• Arts Based Research Subjects Ideally Suited to Just in Time Video Reconstruction

Copyright Jo Murphy