Learning, spaces and technology: exploring the concept
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Learning Spaces, Pedagogy, Technology
The “Learning, spaces and technology: exploring the concept“ is a publication aimed at anyone who has, or may be, engaged in creating, managing or supporting a large-scale learning space. It is not simply an account of the jointly funded JISC/CCCU iBorrow Project or the Augustine House Programme at Canterbury Christ Church University. Rather, it draws on our experience within the project to look and reflect on the issues surrounding the phenomenon of large-scale learning centres which have been a feature of estate development within UK Higher Education for more than a decade. Chapter 14 of the book draws upon my MSc in e-Learning dissertation: “Towards aligning pedagogy, space and technology inside a large-scale learning environment“.
The beautiful photographs that feature throughout the book are by Rebecca Douglas with design and production by Tristram Arris.
This book is freely available as a series of downloadable PDFs or a single PDF from: http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/iborrow/book/.
Tags: learning spaces, pedagogy, planning, policy, technology
Much Ado About Twitter
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Learning, Software, Teaching, Technology, Virtual Spaces
Twitter is an example of a microblogging service, the above video, Twitter in Plain English by the excellent Common Craft, gives a succinct overview of its features and functionality. Other microblogging services like Yammer, Identi.ca and Jaiku have been around too, but have not garnered the high-profile “celebrity status” that their most illustrious competitor has achieved.
I got started on Twitter around 2007 as I was starting to get fed up with the various pokes, bites and invites that was emanating from Facebook account. My Facebook page was starting to get uncontrollable as other people were urging me to respond to their various online requests and activities. Twitter presented a simpler, less cluttered variation of the “My Status” feature on Facebook which I liked very much. However, it would be a year later when I got my “aha!” moment and realised that instead of following celebrities like Stephen Fry or Jamie Oliver, I could follow people who were in my field of interest and what’s more they were sharing ideas, resources and publicising up-and-coming conferences. All this within a 140 character limit! The power of URL shortening services like TinyURL, is.gd, ow.ly and bit.ly were designed for the likes of Twitter to make every character that you typed in count.
The growth of Twitter has given rise to a number of spin-off applications like creating “back channels” during a lecture or a conference using such tools as:
The ability to schedule the releasing of your tweets with such tools as:
Twitter clients have proven popular to manage not only your Twitter statuses, but the statuses of other social networking services like Facebook and LinkedIn, these include:
Other tools include audience response software like Poll Everywhere; the ability to embed Twitter feeds into your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations; and the ability to search and then follow people within your chosen field who use Twitter with tools like Twellow and TweepML.
Like a lot of technology, attention is drawn towards its suitability to support and sustain learning and teaching, and Twitter is no exception. Various individuals have blogged about teaching with Twitter; encouraging teachers to use Twitter for resource sharing; or have presented a top 100 list of things to do with Twitter. The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has compiled an extensive list of articles and resources on using Twitter for social learning. Others have used Twitter as part of research projects and experiments (see Aspden & Thorpe, 2009; Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2009; McNeill, 2010b and Smith, 2009).
Whilst the likes of me and other educationalists enthuse about the opportunities and potentials offered by the likes of Twitter, most of our undergraduates are rather underwhelmed by it and just don’t get it (see McNeill, 2010b), finding it boring compared to something that is more visually arresting and highly customisable like Facebook – and there is the rub, Twitter does not have the range of add-ons, games and applications that can be found in Facebook. What’s more, you are limited to just 140 characters to describe “what’s on your mind”.
From previous research, we know students are not comfortable using social networking services to support learning activities (Ipsos MORI, 2008) and feel that their tutors should not be invading their digital social spaces (Green & Hannon, 2007). To further reinforce the students need to compartmentalise their “learning lives” from their “social lives”, Salmon & Edirisingha (2008) provide a number of case studies where tutors were developing podcasts for their students to use. The lecturers assumed, quite wrongly as it turns out, that their students would download these MP3 podcasts into their personal MP3 devices. Most students (70% in one sample) did not want any learning related podcasts to be downloaded onto their iPods, preferring to listen to them from a desktop computer – thus negating the flexible and mobile affordances offered by MP3 technology.
However, before I am quick to shake my head in disbelief, I remind myself that not too long ago, I didn’t want to use my personal mobile phone for work purposes, preferring to use a secondary mobile phone for that very purpose. Do we therefore suggest to students that they might want to invest in a secondary portable device, albeit a much cheaper one, for learning-related activities?
Not only do most students seem to compartmentalise their “learning lives” from their “social lives”, there also seems to be a “fear and loathing” on their part for publishing their course-related work within the public domain via an external Web 2.0 service (like WordPress, PB Works, Flickr or YouTube), whereas they are happy to post snaps of their holidays, pets and friends on Facebook for all of the world and their dog to see. Whilst the “walled garden” of a virtual learning environment (VLE) offers a viable and trusted solution, some of our students are just not that enamoured with University VLEs finding them “clunky” and “unfriendly” and wanting the University VLEs to be “a bit like Facebook”.
Such contradictory attitudes and practices make it difficult for educationalists to guess the best way to engage their students in using a range of technologies to support their studies. One approach is to seek out visually appealing, safe and secure “neutral zones” which are neither the monolithic University VLE, nor the very public and social digital spaces that are inhabited by our students. Furthermore, our students need to know why we are using certain technologies to support learning outcomes and why these technologies are important and beneficial to the student’s overall satisfaction, which (hopefully) in turn lead towards the transferability of employable skills of a digital literate and competent citizen for the 21st Century marketplace.
References
Aspden, E.J. & Thorpe, L.P. (2009). “’Where Do You Learn?’: Tweeting to Inform Learning Space Development.” EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 32(1). Available from: http://www.educause.edu/library/EQM0915 (Accessed 31.5.2011).
Dunlap, J.C. & Lowenthal, P.R. (2009). “Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social Presence”. Journal of Information Systems Education, 20(2), pp. 129-136. Available at: http://patricklowenthal.com/publications/Using_Twitter_to_Enhance_Social_Presence.pdf (Accessed 31.5.2011).
Green, H. & Hannon, C. (2007). Their Space. London: Demos. Available at: http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/theirspace (Accessed 31.5.2011).
Ipsos MORI. (2008). Great Expectations of ICT. Bristol: Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/greatexpectationsbp.aspx (Accessed 31.5.2011).
McNeill, T. (2009). “Twitter for reflective learning activities”. SlideShare.net. Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/amcneill/twitter-for-reflection-jan-2020-2889151 (Accessed 31.5.2011).
McNeill, T. (2010a). Twitter in Higher Education. Kingston: University of Kingston. Available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20025500/Twitter-in-Higher-Education (Accessed 31.5.2011).
McNeill, T. (2010b). Twitter in Higher Education: Social media, academic literacies and online learning communities. Unpublished MA thesis. University of Sheffield. Available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36851742/Anthony-McNeill-MANL-Twitter-Dissertation (Accessed 31.5.2011).
Morgan Stanley Research. (2009). Media & Internet: How Teenagers Consume Media. London: Morgan Stanley. Available at: http://media.ft.com/cms/c3852b2e-6f9a-11de-bfc5-00144feabdc0.pdf (Accessed 31.5.2011).
Ramsden, A. (2009). Using micro-blogging (Twitter) in your teaching and learning: An introductory guide. Discussion Paper. Bath: University of Bath. Available at: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/15319/1/intro_to_microblogging_09.pdf (Accessed 31.5.2011).
Salmon, G. & Edirisingha. P. (Eds). (2008). Podcasting for Learning in Universities. Berkshire: Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE).
Smith, A. (2011). Twitter Update 2011. Washington: Pew Research Centre. Available at: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Twitter-Update-2011.aspx (Accessed 1.6.2011).
Smith, K. (2009). The Twitter Experiment. Dallas: University of Texas at Dallas. Available at: http://youtu.be/6WPVWDkF7U8 (Accessed 31.5.2011).
Wheeler, S. (2011). “Twitter: it’s still about the connections”. Learning with ‘e’s. Available at: http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2011/04/twitter-its-still-about-connections.html (1.6.2011).
Tags: Higher Education, learning, microblogging, social media, Social Networking, students, teaching, Twitter, Web 2.0
Digital Networking for Researchers
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Digital Literacy, Research, Virtual Spaces
Today, I attended a workshop called “Digital Networking for Researchers” which was facilitated by Dr Darren Ambrose, who divides his time between the Graduate School and teaching for the Department of Media at Canterbury Christ Church University. He ran a short session we will provide some practical information for researchers who want to find out more about digital networking resources for academics such as Academia.edu. The workshop blurb sums up nicely what Darren was hoping to achieve:
Many academics and researchers are becoming increasingly interested in building their digital identity. Whether you have given it much thought or not, you will already have a digital presence and identity. Everyone is on the internet (just Google yourself…) and you are able to shape the content of such searches. By being proactive about where and how you appear, you can ensure that a potential employer/collaborator sees the right information when they search for you – and they will search. It may also bring opportunities for collaboration and valuable contributions to your teaching and research work, as well as to your career.
You can use social networking tools for your research, to find out what is going on, to build your profile, to form collaborative partnerships with other researchers, and to ask and answer questions. One of the biggest academic online networking sites is Academia.edu, and in this session we will provide some practical information for people who want to find out about Academia.edu and then sign up and set themselves up.
There are many other academic social networking sites, e.g. ResearchGate, SciSpace, Epernicus, Graduate Junction, and Higher Ed Space (formerly EduSpaces.org), that have tried to jump on the “social networking” gravy train – but in many ways Academia.edu has matured enough and has grown to a critical mass that it has become THE social networking tool for academics, postgraduate students and researchers.
I personally use a range of social networking sites for very subtle purposes: Facebook is really used to keeping in contact with friends and family. Twitter is used largely for professional development purposes – Tony McNeill (2009) (of Kingston University) describes it as ambient collegiality:
…being able to know what my peers are reading, writing about, reflecting on in nearly-now, almost real-time. They can share conference calls for papers, invitations for project funding, jobs, new software, relevant news. It’s a distributed senior common room without coffee. (McNeill, 2009).
I also have a LinkedIn profile for professional purposes and an an Academia.edu one for academic purposes. Not only are these profiles being used for very different purposes, they are used to depict my many digital identities. What McNeill (2009) describes as “ambient collegiality”, Dalsgaard (2008) refers to as “transparency”:
…social networking may be utilized within university education by students sharing information and resources that are originally developed for themselves, but made available to others – for instance bookmarks, references, links, and notes … the pedagogical potential of social networking lies within transparency and the ability to create awareness between students – potentially across institutions and nations. (Dalsgaard, 2008).
However, the JISC study: In Their Own Words, uncovered that:
Peer support provided by informal networks of friends and family, using email, texting, MSN Messenger, chat or Skype, provides an underworld of communication and information-sharing invisible to tutors. (JISC, 2007:11)
This was something that I picked up in my own researches into learning spaces, except that students used these technologies to communicate with their peers for support, not with their family or friends (external to the University). Whilst this “transparency” may well generate “awareness among students”, I am not entirely sure that tutors are privy to these – which is a shame as there is an opportunity to see some interesting learning processes at work here. It was quite clear from last week when we were running a series of VLE Review presentations to students and staff. Students were not keen on using the extended profile capabilities of Moodle as they preferred to keep their “social networking” separate from their studies.
An interesting point was raised in Darren’s workshop: What were the risks to the University’s reputation if staff were to represent themselves professionally via an external social networking site, like Academia.edu or LinkedIn? Both QA Focus (2008) and the University of Edinburgh Information Services (2007) have provided advice to staff wishing to use third-party external Web 2.0 services on how best to minimise the risks. Furthermore, other Universities (and organisations like the BBC) have created social media policies and guidance to help staff avoid those embarrassing pitfalls and pratfalls which has a way of bedevilling them.
Whilst I can see enormous benefits for academic staff using such sites as Academia.edu to reach out to a much wider audience that share their academic and research interests, which would do wonders for their professional profile and that of their University, I am not so sure that our undergraduate students have realised these benefits as yet.
References
boyd, d. m. & Ellison, N. B. (2007). “Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). Available at: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html [Accessed 12.5.2011].
Dalsgaard, C. (2008). “Social Networking Sites: Transparency in Online Education”. Proceedings from EUNIS 2008 VISION IT, June 24-27, 2008. Available at: http://eunis.dk/papers/p41.pdf [Accessed 12.5.2011].
Green, H. & Hannon, C. (2007). Their Space. London: Demos. Available at: http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/theirspace [Accessed 12.5.2011].
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). (2007). In Their Own Words. Bristol: JISC. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/intheirownwords [Accessed 12.5.2011].
McNeill, T. (2009). “Ambient collegiality?”. e-Learning and Digital Cultures blog. Available at: http://digitalculture-ed.net/tonym/2009/10/11/ambient-collegiality/ [Accessed 12.5.2011].
Oradini, F. & Saunders, G. (2008). “The Use of Social Networking by Students and Staff in Higher Education”. Eife-l – Proceedings from the iLearning Forum 2008. Paris, France, 4-5 February 2008. Available at: http://www.eife-l.org/publications/proceedings/ilf08/contributions/improving-quality-of-learning-with-technologies/Oradini_Saunders.pdf/view [Accessed 12.5.2011].
QA Focus. (2008). Risk Assessment For Making Use Of Third Party Web 2.0 Services. Bath: UKOLN. Available at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/documents/briefings/briefing-98/html/ [Accessed 12.5.2011].
University of Edinburgh Information Services. (2007). Guidelines for using External Services. University of Edinburgh. Available at: https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/Web2wiki/Web+2.0+Guidelines [Accessed 12.5.2011].
Tags: Academia, Higher Education, reputation, risk, social media, Social Networking
Towards aligning pedagogy, space and technology
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Learning, Learning Spaces, Mobile Learning, Pedagogy, Spaces, Technology
As part of my MSc dissertation, entitled “Towards aligning pedagogy, space and technology inside a large-scale learning environment“, I did some research on how academic staff and students used the “learning spaces” and the mobile technologies with Canterbury Christ Church University‘s new library and student services centre called Augustine House. I have accumulated a lot of supporting material and journal articles that I would like to present in a wiki, but as an appetizer for things to come, please have a read of the dissertation abstract:
Over the last decade, there has been considerable interest and investment in learning spaces, both nationally and internationally. In 2008/09, Canterbury Christ Church University invested £35m in building a technology-rich library and student support centre called Augustine House. This present study, following on from previous studies conducted by the researcher and others, aims to investigate the extent to which we are able to align pedagogy, space and technology effectively to offer innovative models and approaches to learning and teaching that would enhance the student experience.
A multi-method design was followed involving a semi-structured staff interview; a student online questionnaire; and a student narrative inquiry. Five academic staff from across four faculties was interviewed about their experiences; three hundred and twenty-five students answered the online questionnaire; and thirty-five students took part in the narrative inquiries. The three data collection methods were triangulated and provided perspectives from both staff and students on their adoption of the spaces and technologies available in Augustine House; eliciting any opportunities, challenges and issues they experienced as a consequence.
It was evident academic staff perceived ‘learning spaces’ as being distinctive to ‘teaching spaces’ because of the potential to provide innovative opportunities for a rich and diverse array of learning experiences, which students had found to be extremely satisfying. However, if staff were not prepared to take risks, lacked a detailed ‘mental map’ of Augustine House, or did not plan their sessions carefully, these gave rise to ‘troublesome space’ that challenged their teaching practices and philosophies. Students experienced ‘troublesome space’ where it was not clear what they could or could not do in particular areas. Evidence suggests that influencing students’ attitudes could engage them in using a large-scale, technology-rich learning environment. Furthermore, they placed a high premium on ‘silent spaces’; suggesting that policy makers and planners may need to consider the right balance between social and private spaces.
A conceptual model is proposed which attempts to align pedagogy, space and technology to create an ‘elusive triangle’ placing the learner at its heart. The model attempts to explain how the learner influences and is influenced by pedagogy, space and technology.
Tags: alignment, Augustine House, cccu, elusive triangle, iborrow, learning spaces, library, mobile technology, pedagogy, space, technology, troublesome space
New Beginnings…again!
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Uncategorized
This will be the third incarnation of The Accidental Technologist blog which started life on the now-defunct EduSpaces.org social networking site (now called Higher Ed Space). This blog was created as part of my MSc in e-Learning studies with the University of Edinburgh. First off, the blog was designed to help the student to become more critical and reflective practitioners, and secondly, for some of the e-Learning modules, the blog posts would form the basis of a major (i.e. “high stakes”) piece of assessment.
Around 2008, EduSpaces.org had announced that they were going to close down the service. This prompted the University of Edinburgh to quickly find a replacement for this service. The Edinburgh team downloaded, installed and “reskinned” their blogging/social networking tool which used Elgg (like EduSpaces.org), a leading open source social networking engine which can be used to power social networks and/or e-portfolio tools, as its core platform. All of the MSc students’ blog posts and files had to be exported from the old EduSpaces site and imported into the new Holyrood Park site, which led towards the second incarnation of this blog.
I was also keeping a personal blog called Behind the Green Door which was hosted by TypePad – this has now been discontinued. The blog posts between September 2007 to February 2010 have been writted as part of my MSc in e-Learning obligations. I have now completed the MSc in e-Learning and wanted to ensure that the “intellectual capital” from these blog posts were “preserved” as a form of memento mori, hence creating this WordPress blog under my website, thus offering it a third lease of life.
From today, the posts on this blog will launch my continuing adventures in learning and teaching and how technology can be used to empower or encumber the learning process. This blog will represent a “space” where I can offer my musings, reflections and opinions on all things learning, teaching, assessment and research that is mediated through technology. I will also take the opportunity to report back from conferences, symposiums and other scholarly activities.
Today is the start of a new beginning for The Accidental Technologist…again!
Tags: assessment, blog, edinburgh, new beginnings
Ponderings on Space, Learning, Technology and Choice
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Innovation, Learning, Mobile Learning, Project, Research, Technology
We have been given a couple of research papers for critically evaluation. One of them is by Dunleavy et al (2007) which looks at the “value addedness” of the one child per laptop (OLPC) project. What struck me here is that there are similarities between the OLPC initiaive and that of our partly JISC funded project, iBorrow. Whilst the OLPC project is ensuring that there is a “laptop per child” and iBorrow is about “borrowing a laptop” – the similarities here are one of transformation (or at least potentially).
Our students have a choice of using one of the 200 netbook devices or one of the 120 fixed desktop PCs – which ones are they drawn to and under what circumstances? They have relatively free reign in a large learning space (incorporating library, cafes and student services) the size of a football pitch across three floors – which means they have a choice as to where to work, learn and play with these netbooks – and again, which zones are they drawn to and under what circumstances?
Which leads us to another set of interesting questions:
- What kind of affordances do these devices bring?
- Are they indeed “value added” or something else?
- Does the combination of group work and mobile devices differ from that of group work and fixed devices?
- Does an “underworld” of virtualised peer support exist in these groupings?
I have a lot to think about and mull over before I finally hand in my project proposal in April 2010 – the trick here is to keep the research question(s) tightly focused.
If you are interesting in delving deeper into the OLPC project, Nicholas Negroponte, author of “Being Digital“, founder of MIT Media Labs and founder of the OLPC initiative provides a nice summary of what the initiative is and the some of the issues of getting the project off the ground. James O’Hagan’s blog “1 Laptop : 1 Student” offers some “stories” and case studies taken from practitioners of the initiatives.
References
Dunleavy, M., Dexter, S. & Heinecke, W.F. (2007). “What added value does a 1:1 student to laptop ratio bring to technology-supported teaching and learning?”. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23, pp. 440-452.
Tags: choice, iborrow, institutional innovation programme, jisc, mobile technology, one laptop per child, project, questions, research methods, rmel2010
Design Personas and UCD
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Innovation, Learning, Project, Research, Technology
My University is involved in phase two of JISC‘s Institutional Innovation Programme:
This programme represents a £13.08m investment aimed at supporting existing institutional strategies by providing solutions to institution-wide problems, based upon proven practices, technologies, standards and services. The solutions will act as exemplars to other institutions by demonstrating innovation and good practice, and building knowledge and experience, which can be shared across institutions.
One of those projects is the Academic Social Networking project which is being developed by the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) at the University of Cambridge. The project itself “aims to bring some of the affordances of consumer social networks to teaching and learning“.
What is interesting to me, and possibly to other students on the research methods module is that CARET collaborated with Flow Interactive, an external company, to investigate whether commercial user-centric design (UCD) techniques could be transferable and be used within a Higher Education context.
As the research team suggest, user-centric design is different because:
…it explicitly, constructively and actively includes users in the design process from a very early stage.
One of the key features of their particular methodology is the notion of “design personas” and how it enabled them to:
…identified trends or patterns in user behaviours, expectations and motivations, through conducting a combination of diary studies and interviews, and how this formed the basis of our personas. Having these personas enabled us to focus the design effort on supporting user goals. Also, where traditionally a designer might have lists and lists of requirements, personas allow one to prioritize these requirements to the degree these personas would find them important, offering more clarity.
Moreover, the research team at CARET have published their UCD methodology into a rather useful and compelling handbook for us lucky reseachers to peruse and may even offer a new approach to conducting research with our key stakeholders.
Tags: academic social networking, caret, design persona, flow interactive, institutional innovation programme, jisc, project, research methods, rmel2010, ucd, user-centric design
The Relationship between People, Space, Activities and Artefacts
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Innovation, Learning Spaces, Physical Spaces, Project, Research, Virtual Spaces
I have been thinking more about my intended research project as well as bouncing ideas and talking to colleagues about it as well. One of the recurring themes was a person or a groups relationship to and between space (physical, virtual or both?). These relationships could occur between:
- Student to Student
- Student to Peer Group
- Student to Tutor
- Peer Group to Peer Group
- Peer Group to Tutor
It reminded me of some journal articles that I read as part of my “Space, Place and Technology” wiki articles for the “Psychological and Social Contexts of e-Learning” module. Specifically, this regards Nova (2005, p. 119) who proposes that when “dealing with the concept of space in collective situations“, it should be considered through the lens of a number of dimensions:
- Person to Person
- Person to Artefact
- Person to Place
- Space, Place and Activity
- Space and Artefacts
- Space and Time
The “Space, Place and Technology” wiki articles are now converted into an “as is” electronic paper version on Issuu, if you wish to find out more about these dimensions. We can represent these dimension using the following illustration.
What we are looking at are fixed physical spaces are depicted as solid circles whereas transient physical spaces are denoted with dashed circles. Each circle is inhabited by people with some form of information and communication device like a desktop computer, laptop, mobile phone or PDA; also present are a number of “artefacts” represented by the orange star and the green diamond – these “artefacts” could be a chair, table, books, or Interactive White Boards. As depicted in the diagram, some “spaces” can overlap and be shared. Each information and communication device is connected to one or more virtual spaces as depicted by the computer servers inside a blue dashed cloud formation. These virtual spaces could be blogs, wikis, virtual environments, web pages and such like.
In terms of thinking about methodology, some ethnographic approach could be considered, but as Cousin (2009, p. 109) warns us:
At first sight, it might seem that anyone can do ethnography but doing it well requires familiarity with a theoretical field, a set of research skills and perhaps, above all, … an ‘enlightened eye’
Cousin (ibid) goes to say that “ethnography is not so much about studying people as learning from them“. In their joint Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL)?in Creativity project called inQbate, the Universities of Sussex and Brighton have created “two creativity zones” which offers “exciting opportunities for students to work in spaces that foster collaborative, self-directed and experiential learning“.
The methodology for capturing how students reacted to and interacted within the space and with eachother was to use Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).This is a relatively recent qualitative approach developed specifically within psychology by Jonathan A. Smith, a Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. IPA concerns itself by:
…trying to understand lived experience and with how participants themselves make sense of their experiences. Therefore it is centrally concerned with the meanings which those experiences hold for the participants.
I am not really considering IPA but it does demonstrate some of the deep and rich approaches to data collection and analysis. What has caught my eye, however, is something called Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) which is a theory about the link between attitudes and behaviour. TPB is a quantitative approach developed by Icek Ajzen, a Professor of Psychology at Amherst, University of Massachusetts. It was Siragusa & Dixon (2009) paper for the Ascilite 2009 conference where they were using questionnaire items related to components of the TPB to determine students’ attitudes and planned use of ICT-based instruction. Like any methodology, TPB has its’ advocates and detractors.
It has been suggested to me that I could develop a case study. But in the meantime, I think I will look into TPB to see if it has any real value.
References
Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2007). Research Methods in Education (6th Edition). New York, London: Routledge.
Cousin, G. (2009). Researching Learning in Higher Education. New York, London: Routledge.
Norton, L.S. (2009). Action Research in Teaching & Learning. New York, London: Routledge.
Nova, N. (2005). “A Review of How Space Affords Socio-Cognitive Processes during Collaboration”. PsychNology Journal, 3(2): 118-148.
Robson, C. (2002). Real World Research (2nd Edition). Malden, MA; Oxford; Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing.
Siragusa, L. & Dixon, K.C. (2009). “Theory of planned behaviour: Higher education students’
attitudes towards ICT-based learning interactions”. In Same places, different spaces. Proceedings ascilite Auckland 2009. Available at: http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/siragusa.pdf [Accessed 02.02.2010].
Tags: case study, ethnography, interpretative phenomenological analysis, learning spaces, physical spaces, research methods, rmel2010, theory of planned behaviour, virtual spaces
Mapping the Learning Space
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Innovation, Learning, Learning Spaces, Mobile Learning, Project, Research, Technology
So here we are at last, the sixth and final module that is “research methods”. I know that I would like to do my dissertation on learning spaces as my institution has just opened it’s doors to a new Library and Student Services centre called Augustine House. If you want a feel for the place, there’s an interactive floorplan that you can view and there is also a special Flickr set (compare these against the previous library provision). Incidently, anyone wanting to look at different examples of learning spaces that are situated across the UK can view JISC Infonet’s Flickr pages.
JISC (2006) informs us that learning spaces:
…should be able to motivate learners and promote learning as an activity, support collaborative as well as formal practice, provide a personalised and inclusive environment, and be flexible in the face of changing needs. (p. 3)
However, as the JELS (2009) report found out, there is very little by way of evaluating the effectiveness of learning spaces and a fair bit of research would be needed to begin to understand what is going on. Temple (2007), in his literature review, is particularly scathing on how little we understand such spaces:
…if the curriculum in higher education is a set of experiences, that a student inhabits, experiences that that arise from a student’s interaction with his or her ‘learning environment’, then any attempt to trace the influence of one particular thread of experience may well be doomed… (p. 69)
So, over the last 18 months I have been involved in a part JISC-funded project that is part of their Institutional Innovation Programme, which:
…represents a £13.08m investment aimed at supporting existing institutional strategies by providing solutions to institution-wide problems, based upon proven practices, technologies, standards and services. The solutions will act as exemplars to other institutions by demonstrating innovation and good practice, and building knowledge and experience, which can be shared across institutions.
Our project, which we called iBorrow, has deployed 200 location-aware (re: wireless) netbooks within Augustine House which students and staff can “borrow” just by taking them out of the recharging cabinets as if they were picking up a book from off a shelf. One of the many things that we want to see is if it can provide a large-scale demonstration of how thin-client notebooks with location-aware technology can enable us to not only provide “no fuss” access to a full range of software and learning resources but also effectively manage the configuration of the facilities within the large flexible learning spaces of Augustine House.
As part of my preparation and understanding of learning spaces, I have managed to fill three A4 box folders of papers on the subject as well as looking at the notions of “place” and “space” under the auspices of environmental psychology. To help me make sense of all of this information, I have devised a mind map (click on the image below to enlarge) that covers a large number of themes (and I suspect that I have only scratched the surface).
References
JELS. (2009). A Study of Effective Evaluation Models and Practices for Technology Supported Physical Learning Spaces. Bristol: JISC. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/projects/learningspaces08.aspx [Accessed 21 January 2010].
JISC. (2006). Designing Spaces For Effective Learning – A Guide To 21st Century Learning Space Design. Bristol: JISC. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2006/pub_spaces.aspx [Accessed 21 January 2010].
Temple, P. (2007). Learning Spaces for the 21st Century: A review of the literature. York: The Higher Education Academy. Available at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/lr_2007_temple [Accessed 21 January 2010].
Tags: Augustine House, e-learning, iborrow, learning spaces, mind map, research methods, rmel2010
Digital Game-based Learning: A Retrospective
Posted by HeyWayne | Filed under Learning
Tempus fugit – Doesn’t time fly when you are having fun? After a 12 week tournament that is the “Digital Game-based Learning” module. All good things must eventually come to a full stop. Whilst we have been reading, writing and debating about the “serious” business of games, gaming and play; more importantly, we have also have had a lot of fun doing it and learning a little more about ourselves along the way.
I started the course by reflecting upon my previous experience and engagement with games, gaming and play (see “Flashbacks of a Fool“) that had largely seen me leave videogames and computer games back in the 1990s preferring the more traditional games that had a largely social element to them, i.e. playing games with family or friends. The course had literally thrust me back into the digital gamesphere (see “All work and no play?” and “The Agony and Ectasy of Social Gaming“) using a range of game consoles like the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox, Apple’s iPod Touch as well as my own PC.
I had reflected that some of the games currently on the market and online had “enchanted me and brought out a child-like wonder in me (not seen since 1999)“. This “enchantment” extended to the papers written by Pat Kane and Brian Sutton-Smith on their notions of play (see “The Language of Play“) which can be a catalyst for creativity, originality and new developments and should actually be incorporated in each and every one of our lives as normal as it is eating, breathing and sleeping. However, this “enchantment” is a little offset by the “moral panic” that sets in whenever the popular press or eminent scholars and thinker have their tu’penny worth to say on the subject (see “Videogames: A moral panic?“).
Inevitably, the course would eventually touch upon my favourite hobby horse (my thanks goes to the course leaders of the “Digital Environments” modules and my colleagues at work for introducing me to it) that being Marc Prensky and the “Digital Natives” / “Digital Immigrant” dichotomy (see “Digital Natives Revisited“). Given that Prensky works in the games industry and feels passionately that learning and games can go hand-in-hand. No arguments there, it’s just the grand rhetorical statements backed up by hardly any empirical research that has turn this issue into something of a pathological obsession for me – I should learn to take Michael Winner‘s esure advice, though James Newman’s paper riled me more than Prensky’s papers (see “Videogames: A tug of war“).
One of my interests is identity and the course has given me ample to think about and experience. From Second Life, using the voice activated feature within it with Iris Bosa had raised questions about voice modification, personalisation and identity (see “The Curious Case of Voice Identity“); to J.P. Gee’s concept of the “tripartite” of identities and the notion of the “other” in games, was presented in a very compelling and original way (see “The Learner with a Thousand Identities“) that is an interesting addition to the Identity literature.
The module also called for group collaboration to design a Google Earth game (see “The New Seven World Wonders Quiz – A Team 2 Production“); solve a WebQuest (see “WebQuest DSV“); and devise a role playing game for Second Life (see “Dragons’ Lair RPG – A Team 2 Production“) that saw some fantastic online collaborations using Skype and a Wiki which led me to comment that it was the “most amazing brain-storming, project management session ever conducted virtually. We went from an idea to a fully-realised project plan in 1.5 hours“. I have rarely seen online collaborations work at this frenetic speed and intensity before, so thank you Team 2 for an exhilarating experience. The group tasks themselves could also have been?envisaged as a “game” that involved overcoming a number of obstacles and difficulties to arrive at the finish line in time with a fully realised product.
J.P. Gee presents some rather interesting concepts of “affinity groups” and “affinity spaces” (see “The Affinity towards Groups, Spaces and Learning“) which I could use in relation to my insitution’s new £35m library and learning centre, Augustine House, in terms of how learning spaces are been used physically as well as virtually by the student corpus and the academic community; and would such learning spaces present opportunities for real learning to take place (see “The Four Horsemen“)?
So for now, I bid Hamish, Fiona and the challenging “Digital Game-based Learning” course a fond and affectionate adieu.
Until next time gamers, until next time …
Tags: digital, game-based learning, games, gaming, IDGBL2009, play, retrospective, videogames
