What are students' understandings of how digital tools contribute to learning in design disciplines?

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is evolving in the Construction Industry as a successor to CAD. CAD is mostly a technical tool that conforms to existing industry practices, however BIM has the capacity to revolutionise industry practice. Rather than producing representations of design intent, BIM produces an exact Virtual Prototype of any building that in an ideal situation is centrally stored and freely exchanged between the project team, facilitating collaboration and allowing experimentation in design. Exposing design students to this technology through their formal studies allows them to engage with cutting edge industry practices and to help shape the industry upon their graduation. Since this technology is relatively new to the construction industry, there are no accepted models for how to “teach” BIM effectively at university level. Developing learning models to enable students to make the most out of their learning with BIM presents significant challenges to those teaching in the field of design. To date there are also no studies of students experiences of using this technology. This research reports on the introduction of Building Information Modeling (BIM) software into a second year Bachelor of Design course. This software has the potential to change industry standards through its ability to revolutionise the work practices of those involved in large scale design projects. Students’ understandings and experiences of using the software in order to complete design projects as part of their assessment are reported here. In depth semi-structured interviews with 6 students revealed that students had views that ranged from novice to sophisticate about the software. They had variations in understanding of how the software could be used to complete course requirements, to assist with the design process and in the workplace. They had engaged in limited exploration of the collaborative potential of the software as a design tool. Their understanding of the significance of BIM for the workplace was also variable. The results indicate that students are beginning to develop an appreciation for how BIM could aid or constrain the work of designers, but that this appreciation is highly varied and likely to be dependent on the students’ previous experiences of working in a design studio environment. Their range of understandings of the significance of the technology is a reflection of their level of development as designers (they are “novice” designers). The results also indicate that there is a need for subjects in later years of the course that allow students to specialise in the area of digital design and to develop more sophisticated views of the role of technology in the design process. There is also a need to capitalise on the collaborative potential inherent in the software in order to realise its capability to streamline some aspects of the design process. As students become more sophisticated designers we should explore their understanding of the role of technology as a design tool in more depth in order to make recommendations for improvements to teaching and learning practice related to BIM and other digital design tools.

Towards an intelligent learning system for the natural born cyborg

We propose to design a Custom Learning System that responds to the unique needs and potentials of individual students, regardless of their location, abilities, attitudes, and circumstances. This project is intentionally provocative and future-looking but it is not unrealistic or unfeasible. We propose that by combining complex learning databases with a learner’s personal data, we could provide all students with a personal, customizable, and flexible education. This paper presents the initial research undertaken for this project of which the main challenges were to broadly map the complex web of data available, to identify what logic models are required to make the data meaningful for learning, and to translate this knowledge into simple and easy-to-use interfaces. The ultimate outcome of this research will be a series of candidate user interfaces and a broad system logic model for a new smart system for personalized learning. This project is student-centered, not techno-centric, aiming to deliver innovative solutions for learners and schools. It is deliberately future-looking, allowing us to ask questions that take us beyond the limitations of today to motivate new demands on technology.

The 10% rule. Maximising learning through collaborative game design

This paper presents a retrospective view of a game design practice that recently switched from the development of complex learning games to the development of simple authoring tools for students to design their own learning games for each other. We introduce how our ‘10% Rule’, a premise that only 10% of what is learnt during a game design process is ultimately appreciated by the player, became a major contributor to the evolving practice. We use this rule primarily as an analytical and illustrative tool to discuss the learning involved in designing and playing learning games rather than as a scientifically and empirically proven rule. The 10% rule was promoted by our experience as designers and allows us to explore the often overlooked and valuable learning processes involved in designing learning games and mobile games in particular. This discussion highlights that in designing mobile learning games, students are not only reflecting on their own learning processes through setting up structures for others to enquire and investigate, they are also engaging in high-levels of independent inquiry and critical analysis in authentic learning settings. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the importance of these types of learning processes and skills of enquiry in 21st Century learning.

Milk : students building mobile learning games in everyday places

This paper explores how mobile games can transform everyday places into dynamic learning spaces filled with information and inspiration. It discusses the motivation inherent in playing games and creating games for others, and how this stimulates an iterative process of creation and reflection and evokes a natural desire to engage in learning. The use of MiLK at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens is offered as a case in point. MiLK is an authoring tool that allows students and teachers to create and share SMS games for mobile phones. A group of South Australian high school students used MiLK to play a game, create their own games and play each other’s games during a day at the gardens. This paper details the learning processes involved in these activities and how the students reflected on their learning, conducted peer assessment, and engaged in a two-way discussion with their teacher about new technologies and their implications for learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the needs and requirements of 21st Century learners and how MiLK can support constructivist and connectivist teaching methods that engage learners and may produce an appropriately skilled future workforce.

How can we exploit mobile data to customise learning based on a student’s environmental surroundings?

User-Based intelligent systems are already commonplace in a student’s online digital life. Each time they browse, search, buy, join, comment, play, travel, upload, download, a system collects, analyses and processes data in an effort to customise content and further improve services. This panel session will explore how intelligent systems, particularly those that gather data from mobile devices, can offer new possibilities to assist in the delivery of customised, personal and engaging learning experiences. The value of intelligent systems for education lies in their ability to formulate authentic and complex learner profiles that bring together and systematically integrate a student’s personal world with a formal curriculum framework. As we well know, a mobile device can collect data relating to a student’s interests (gathered from search history, applications and communications), location, surroundings and proximity to others (GPS, Bluetooth). However, what has been less explored is the opportunity for a mobile device to map the movements and activities of a student from moment to moment and over time. This longitudinal data provides a holistic profile of a student, their state and surroundings. Analysing this data may allow us to identify patterns that reveal a student’s learning processes; when and where they work best and for how long. Through revealing a student’s state and surroundings outside of schools hour, this longitudinal data may also highlight opportunities to transform a student’s everyday world into an inventory for learning, punctuating their surroundings with learning recommendations. This would in turn lead to new ways to acknowledge and validate and foster informal learning, making it legitimate within a formal curriculum.

Mobile learning, social learning

Understanding the future development of interaction design as it applies to learning and training scenarios is crucial to effective development of curriculum and appropriate application of social and mobile communication technologies. As Attewell & Saville-Smith have recognised (2004), the use of mobile communication devices for improved literacy and numeracy is a desirable prospect among young people who represent the average age of undergraduate students. Further, with the growing penetration of broadband internet access, the ubiquity of wireless access in educational locations, the rise of ultra-mobile portable computers and the proliferation of social software applications in educational contexts, there are a growing number of channels for facilitation of learning. Nevertheless, there has been insufficient consideration of the interaction design issues that affect the effective facilitation of such learning. This paper contends that there is a clear need to design mobile and social learning to accommodate the benefits of these diverse channels for interaction. Additionally, there is a need to implement suitable testing processes to ensure participants in mobile and social learning are contributing effectively and maximising their learning. Through the presentation of case studies in mobile and social learning, the paper attempts to demonstrate how considered interaction design techniques can improve the effectiveness of new learning channels.

Location-based games : transforming everyday environments into dynamic learning spaces

Location based games (LBGs) provide an opportunity to look at how new technologies can support a reciprocal relationship between formal classroom learning and learning that can potentially occur in other everyday environments. Fundamentally many games are intensely engaging due to the resulting social interactions and technical challenges they provide to individual and group players. By introducing the use of mobile devices we can transport these characteristics of games into everyday spaces. LBGs are understood as a broad genre incorporating ideas and tools that provide many unique opportunities for us to to reveal, create and even subvert various social, cultural, technical, and scientific interpretations of place, in particular places where learning is sometimes problematic.--------- A team of Queensland game developers have learnt a great deal through designing a range of LBGs such as SCOOT for various user groups and places. While these LBGs were primarily designed as social events, we found that the players recognised and valued the game as an opportunity to learn about their environment, it's history, cultural significance, inhabitants, services etc. Since identifying the strong pedagogical outcomes of LBGs, the team has created a set of authoring tools for people to design and host their own LBGs. A particular version of this is known as MiLK the mobile learning kit for schools.---------- This presentation will include examples of how LBGs have been used to improve the teaching and learning outcomes in various contexts. Participants will be introduced to MiLK and invited to trial it in their own classrooms with students.

Videogames, learning, and the social context : approaches to an ethnographic case study

Focusing on the role-playing simulation game SCAPE (Sustainability, Community and Planning Education), this paper proposes that potential disparities between game design practice and the meaning-making process of the players need to be addressed in a wider ecology of learning. The cultural setting of the gameplay experience, and also the different levels of engagement of the players, can be seen to pose vital questions, which are in and of themselves objects of inquiry. This paper argues that ethnographic participant-observation, which is a recognized approach in game studies, allows taking the wider ecology of learning into account to explore the various relations that shape the gameplay.

Book review : "Community engagement in contemporary legal education : Pro Bono, Clinical legal education and services learning"

The result of a forum on community engagement held in November 2008 at Bond University, Community Engagement in Contemporary Legal Education is a compilation of papers presented at the forum by academics and professionals throughout Australia. Although found initially to be a topic of legal interest, it was not until the reviewer came across the Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD) “Standards for Australian Law Schools” (adopted 17 November 20093) then the full importance and potential of this book was revealed. Clause 2.2.4 of the CALD Standards recognises the importance of “experiential learning opportunities” for law students and cites examples such as clinical programs, internships, practical experience and pro-bono work. Clause 2.3.3 acknowledges the need to develop professional ethics and again cites pro-bono obligations as an example. Clause 9.6.2 encourages interaction of law schools with the profession and the community and again, pro-bono community service is identified as one method of doing so. Yet nowhere in the document are there any uniform standards or binding obligations that law schools must commit to. In the current climate where the importance of practical experience is continually emphasised and student numbers exceed the number of available paid legal positions, there should be more focus on the details of how these commitments should be converted to be included in a law school’s curriculum.

Individual differences in learning from worked examples by senior secondary mathematics students

The primary purpose of this research was to examine individual differences in learning from worked examples. By integrating cognitive style theory and cognitive load theory, it was hypothesised that an interaction existed between individual cognitive style and the structure and presentation of worked examples in their effect upon subsequent student problem solving. In particular, it was hypothesised that Analytic-Verbalisers, Analytic-Imagers, and Wholist-lmagers would perform better on a posttest after learning from structured-pictorial worked examples than after learning from unstructured worked examples. For Analytic-Verbalisers it was reasoned that the cognitive effort required to impose structure on unstructured worked examples would hinder learning. Alternatively, it was expected that Wholist-Verbalisers would display superior performances after learning from unstructured worked examples than after learning from structured-pictorial worked examples. The images of the structured-pictorial format, incongruent with the Wholist-Verbaliser style, would be expected to split attention between the text and the diagrams. The information contained in the images would also be a source of redundancy and not easily ignored in the integrated structured-pictorial format. Despite a number of authors having emphasised the need to include individual differences as a fundamental component of problem solving within domainspecific subjects such as mathematics, few studies have attempted to investigate a relationship between mathematical or science instructional method, cognitive style, and problem solving. Cognitive style theory proposes that the structure and presentation of learning material is likely to affect each of the four cognitive styles differently. No study could be found which has used Riding's (1997) model of cognitive style as a framework for examining the interaction between the structural presentation of worked examples and an individual's cognitive style. 269 Year 12 Mathematics B students from five urban and rural secondary schools in Queensland, Australia participated in the main study. A factorial (three treatments by four cognitive styles) between-subjects multivariate analysis of variance indicated a statistically significant interaction. As the difficulty of the posttest components increased, the empirical evidence supporting the research hypotheses became more pronounced. The rigour of the study's theoretical framework was further tested by the construction of a measure of instructional efficiency, based on an index of cognitive load, and the construction of a measure of problem-solving efficiency, based on problem-solving time. The consistent empirical evidence within this study that learning from worked examples is affected by an interaction of cognitive style and the structure and presentation of the worked examples emphasises the need to consider individual differences among senior secondary mathematics students to enhance educational opportunities. Implications for teaching and learning are discussed and recommendations for further research are outlined.

Beyond discovery : a case study of teacher interaction, young children and computer tasks

The integration of computer technologies into everyday classroom life continues to provide pedagogical challenges for school systems, teachers and administrators. Data from an exploratory case study of one teacher and a multiage class of children in the first years of schooling in Australia show that when young children are using computers for set tasks in small groups, they require ongoing support from teachers, and to engage in peer interactions that are meaningful and productive. Classroom organization and the nature of teacher-child talk are key factors in engaging children in set tasks and producing desirable learning and teaching outcomes.

Web searching interaction model based on user cognitive styles

As more and more information is available on the Web finding quality and reliable information is becoming harder. To help solve this problem, Web search models need to incorporate users’ cognitive styles. This paper reports the preliminary results from a user study exploring the relationships between Web users’ searching behavior and their cognitive style. The data was collected using a questionnaire, Web search logs and think-aloud strategy. The preliminary findings reveal a number of cognitive factors, such as information searching processes, results evaluations and cognitive style, having an influence on users’ Web searching behavior. Among these factors, the cognitive style of the user was observed to have a greater impact. Based on the key findings, a conceptual model of Web searching and cognitive styles is presented.

Developing reflective practitioners online: The business of blogs in work integrated learning

Reflective practice is widely considered across discussions around educational psychology, professional identity, employability of graduates, and generic or graduate capabilities. Critical reflection is essential for providing a bridge between the university and the workplace, and for ultimately preparing work ready graduates (Patrick et al, 2008). Work integrated learning, particularly through internships and work placements for students, is viewed as a valuable approach for students developing skills in reflective practice. Reflective journals are one of the tools often used to encourage and develop student reflection. Shifting the reflective journal to an online interface as a reflective blog presents opportunities for more meaningful, frequent and richer interaction between the key players in a work integrated learning experience. This paper examines the adoption, implementation and refinement of the use of reflective blogs in a work integrated learning unit for business students majoring in advertising, marketing and public relations disciplines. The reflective blog is discussed as a learning and assessment tool, including the approaches taken to integrate and scaffold the blog as part of the work integrated learning experience. Graduate capabilities were used as cornerstones for students to frame students’ thinking, experiences and reflection. These capabilities emphasise the value of coherent theoretical and practical knowledge, coupled with critical, creative and analytical thinking, problem solving skills, self reliance and resilience. Underlying these graduate capabilities is a focus on assessment for learning matched with assessment of learning. Using specific triggers and prompts as part of the reflective process, and incorporating ongoing feedback from academic supervisors, students moved from descriptive levels of reflection, to more meaningful and critical reflection. Students’ blogs are analysed to identify key themes, challenges and achievements in the work integrated learning experience. Suggestions for further development and improvement, together with a model of best practice, are proposed.

A tale of six fish: achieving social presence through discussion forums in an offline learning environment

It is widely held, through the Socratic tradition, that discussion is at the heart of learning. Moderated discussion forums have been shown to replicate the debate, argument and verbal defence of viewpoints that we have come to expect in face-to-face learning environments and that we generally accept to underpin learning. While much has been written about discussion forums in educational settings, particularly in how to moderate and promote effective interaction with students at a distance, this paper takes a different approach. It looks at how forums may be used to support face-to-face learning in the contemporary context of the massification of on-campus classes. Further to this, it will argue for discussion forums as an indicator of social presence in the learning environment. It will cautiously conclude that, through purposeful design, this form of asynchronous communication has a valuable role to play in creating a positive and supportive environment for students entering university. Discussion forums are tools with a versatility yet to be fully exploited.