Supporting lifelong learning: Comparing an in-situ and a post hoc approach to support everyday question-asking

Abstract

Much of lifelong learning is driven by our curiosity to ask ourselves questions about the things around us in everyday life. Unfortunately, we often fail to pursue these questions to acquire new knowledge, resulting in missed opportunities for lifelong learning. We investigated two approaches to technological support for lifelong learning from question-asking in everyday life: an in-situ approach – reflecting and learning in the situatedness of the moment when a question is asked, and a post hoc approach – self-reflecting and learning after the question-asking moment when one is available to reflect. The in-situ approach may enable people to tap into their embodied experience to gain understanding, while a post hoc approach may allow people to allocate greater cognitive and material resources to explore and understand. We implemented two systems embodying each of the two approaches. A study was conducted to compare the use of the two learning support systems in an everyday virtual environment. Results showed that the post hoc approach produces more curiosity questions and reflection than the in-situ approach. We discuss the implications of our results for the design of systems to support lifelong learning.

Keywords

• lifelong learning
• question-asking
• situated learning
• reflection
• context