The embodied hybrid space : designing social and digital interventions to facilitate connected learning in coworking spaces

This thesis developed and evaluated strategies for social and ubiquitous computing designs that can enhance connected learning and networking opportunities for users in coworking spaces. Based on a social and a technical design intervention deployed at the State Library of Queensland, the research findings illustrate the potential of combining social, spatial and digital affordances in order to nourish peer-to-peer learning, creativity, inspiration, and innovation. The study proposes a hybrid notion of placemaking as a new way of thinking about the design of coworking and interactive learning spaces.

A critical pedagogy of embodied education : learning to become an activist

Unlike any current publication on social purpose education, this book explores the differences and similarities between two groups of activists: lifelong activists who have been engaged in campaigns and socials movements over many years and circumstantial activists, those protestors who come to activism due to a series of life circumstances. Using empirical research conducted in Australia, Tracey Ollis outlines the pedagogy of activism and the process of learning to become an activist.

Learning approach and perception of learning context in economics education : a causality test

In the study of student learning literature, the traditional view holds that when students are faced with heavy workload, poor teaching, and content that they cannot relate to – important aspects of the learning context, they will more likely utilise the surface approach to learning due to stresses, lack of understanding and lack of perceived relevance of the content (Kreber, 2003; Lizzio, Wilson, & Simons, 2002; Ramdsen, 1989; Ramsden, 1992; Trigwell & Prosser, 1991; Vermunt, 2005). For example, in studies involving health and medical sciences students, courses that utilised student-centred, problem-based approaches to teaching and learning were found to elicit a deeper approach to learning than the teacher-centred, transmissive approach (Patel, Groen, & Norman, 1991; Sadlo & Richardson, 2003). It is generally accepted that the line of causation runs from the learning context (or rather students’ self reported data on the learning context) to students’ learning approaches. That is, it is the learning context as revealed by students’ self-reported data that elicit the associated learning behaviour. However, other research studies also found that the same teaching and learning environment can be perceived differently by different students. In a study of students’ perceptions of assessment requirements, Sambell and McDowell (1998) found that students “are active in the reconstruction of the messages and meanings of assessment” (p. 391), and their interpretations are greatly influenced by their past experiences and motivations. In a qualitative study of Hong Kong tertiary students, Kember (2004) found that students using the surface learning approach reported heavier workload than students using the deep learning approach. According to Kember if students learn by extracting meanings from the content and making connections, they will more likely see the higher order intentions embodied in the content and the high cognitive abilities being assessed. On the other hand, if they rote-learn for the graded task, they fail to see the hierarchical relationship in the content and to connect the information. These rote-learners will tend to see the assessment as requiring memorising and regurgitation of a large amount of unconnected knowledge, which explains why they experience a high workload. Kember (2004) thus postulate that it is the learning approach that influences how students perceive workload. Campbell and her colleagues made a similar observation in their interview study of secondary students’ perceptions of teaching in the same classroom (Campbell et al., 2001). The above discussions suggest that students’ learning approaches can influence their perceptions of assessment demands and other aspects of the learning context such as relevance of content and teaching effectiveness. In other words, perceptions of elements in the teaching and learning context are endogenously determined. This study attempted to investigate the causal relationships at the individual level between learning approaches and perceptions of the learning context in economics education. In this study, students’ learning approaches and their perceptions of the learning context were measured. The elements of the learning context investigated include: teaching effectiveness, workload and content. The authors are aware of existence of other elements of the learning context, such as generic skills, goal clarity and career preparation. These aspects, however, were not within the scope of this present study and were therefore not investigated.

Artful inquiry : an arts-based facilitation approach for individual and organisational learning and development

The research undertaken in these two major doctoral studies investigates the field of artsbased learning, a pedagogical approach to individual and organisational learning and development, my professional creative facilitation practice and development as a researcher. While the studies are stand-alone projects they are intended to build on each other in order to tell the evolving story of my research and professional practice. The first study combines The Role of Arts-based Learning in a Creative Economy; The Need for Artistry in Professional Education the art of knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do and Lines of Inquiry: Making Sense of Research and Professional Practice. The Role of Arts-based Learning in a Creative Economy provides an overview of the field of arts-based learning in business. The study focuses on the relevant literature and interviews with people working in the field. The paper argues that arts-based learning is a valuable addition to organisations for building a culture of creativity and innovation. The Need for Artistry in Professional Education continues that investigation. It explores the way artists approach their work and considers what skills and capabilities from artistic practice can be applied to other professions’ practices. From this research the Sphere of Professional Artistry model is developed and depicts the process of moving toward professional artistry. Lines of Inquiry: making sense of research and professional practice through artful inquiry is a self-reflective study. It explores my method of inquiry as a researcher and as a creative facilitation practitioner using arts-based learning processes to facilitate groups of people for learning, development and change. It discusses how my research and professional practice influence and inspire the other and draws on cased studies. The second major research study Artful Inquiry: Arts-based Learning for Inquiry, Reflection and Action in Professional Practice is a one year practice-led inquiry. It continues the research into arts-based and aesthetic learning experiences and my arts-based facilitation practice. The research is conducted with members of a Women’s Network in a large government service agency. It develops the concept of ‘Artful Inquiry’’ a creative, holistic, and embodied approach for facilitation, inquiry, learning, reflection, and action. Storytelling as Inquiry is used as a methodology for understanding participants’ experiences of being involved in arts-based learning experiences. The study reveals the complex and emergent nature of practice and research. It demonstrates what it can mean to do practice-led research with others, within an organisational context, and to what effect.

Learning beyond books : strategies for ambient media to improve libraries and collaboration spaces as interfaces for social learning

With the advent of digital media and online information resources, public libraries as physical destinations for information access are being increasingly challenged. As a response, many libraries follow the trend of removing bookshelves in order to provide more floorspace for social interaction and collaboration. Such spaces follow a Commons 2.0 model: they are designed to support collaborative work and social learning. The acquisition of skills and knowledge is facilitated as a result of being surrounded by and interacting with a community of likeminded others. Based on the results of a case study on a Commons 2.0 library space, this paper describes several issues of collaboration and social learning in public library settings. Acknowledging the significance of the architectural characteristics of the physical space, we discuss opportunities for ambient media to better reflect the social attributes of the library as a place; i.e. amplify the sense of other co-present library visitors and provide opportunities for shared encounters and conversations, which would remain invisible otherwise. We present the design of a user check-in system for improving the library as a physical destination for social learning, sharing, and inspiration for and by the community.

Long summer days : grounded learning of words for the uneven cycles of real world events

Time and space are fundamental to human language and embodied cognition. In our early work we investigated how Lingodroids, robots with the ability to build their own maps, could evolve their own geopersonal spatial language. In subsequent studies we extended the framework developed for learning spatial concepts and words to learning temporal intervals. This paper considers a new aspect of time, the naming of concepts like morning, afternoon, dawn, and dusk, which are events that are part of day-night cycles, but are not defined by specific time points on a clock. Grounding of such terms refers to events and features of the diurnal cycle, such as light levels. We studied event-based time in which robots experienced day-night cycles that varied with the seasons throughout a year. Then we used meet-at tasks to demonstrate that the words learned were grounded, where the times to meet were morning and afternoon, rather than specific clock times. The studies show how words and concepts for a novel aspect of cyclic time can be grounded through experience with events rather than by times as measured by clocks or calendars

Developing media production skills for literacy in a primary school classroom : digital materials, embodied knowledge and material contexts

This chapter investigates the relationship between technical and operational skills and the development of conceptual knowledge and literacy in Media Arts learning. It argues that there is a relationship between the stories, expressions and ideas that students aim to produce with communications media, and their ability to realise these in material form through technical processes in specific material contexts. Our claim is that there is a relationship between the technical and the operational, along with material relations and the development of conceptual knowledge and literacy in media arts learning. We place more emphasis on the material aspects of literacy than is usually the case in socio-cultural accounts of media literacy. We provide examples from a current project to demonstrate that it is just as important to address the material as it is the discursive and conceptual when considering how students develop media literacy in classroom spaces.

Dance literacy: An embodied phenomenon

Literacy in dance involves conscious awareness of cognitive, aesthetic and physical activity along with the skills to articulate these activities as required in any given context. Dance literacy, perhaps uniquely, also entails unconscious, tacit, embodied knowledge within the holistic body, a corporeality: knowledge which is physically experienced but only articulated in the dance. The essence of this corporeality has a transcendent quality which contributes to the universality of dance. The degrees to which a dancer’s awareness is refined, the physical activity articulated and the embodied knowledge universal, will define the level of development of the dancer’s literacy. This literacy can be learned, though not every body and mind has equal capacity for development. If we wish to develop dance literacy, qualitatively encompassing more than dance technique, the art of learning must be carefully cultivated to allow the art of dance to flourish. The pathways of learning dance are individuated; transcendence is realised through the common experience that what we are learning is coming from within.

Talk about a YouTube video in preschool : the mutual production of shared understanding for learning with digital technology

Much of what is written about digital technologies in preschool contexts focuses on young children’s acquisition of skills rather than their meaning-making during use of technologies. In this paper, we consider how the viewing of a YouTube video was used by a teacher and children to produce shared understandings about it. Conversation analysis of talk and interaction during the viewing of the video establishes some of the ways that individual accounts of events were produced for others and then endorsed as shared understandings. The analysis establishes how adults and children made use of verbal and embodied actions during interactions to produce shared understandings of the YouTube video, the events it recorded and written commentary about those events

Teaching Reflective Learning in Higher Education : A Systematic Approach Using Pedagogic Patterns

This book is about understanding the nature and application of reflection in higher education. It provides a theoretical model to guide the implementation of reflective learning and reflective practice across multiple disciplines and international contexts in higher education. The book presents research into the ways in which reflection is both considered and implemented in different ways across different professional disciplines, while maintaining a common purpose to transform and improve learning and/or practice. Readers will find this book innovative and new in three key ways. First, in its holistic theorisation of reflection within the pedagogic field of higher education; Secondly, in conceptualising reflection in different modes to achieve specific purposes in different disciplines; and finally, in providing conceptual guidance for embedding reflective learning and reflective practice in a systematic way across whole programmes, faculties or institutions in higher education. The book considers important contextual factors that influence the teaching of forms and methods of reflection. It provides a functional analysis of multiple modes of reflection, including written, oral, visual, auditory, and embodied forms. Empirical chapters analyse the application of these modes across disciplines and at different stages of a programme. The theoretical model accounts for students’ stage of development in the disciplinary field, along with progressive and cyclical levels of higher order thinking, and learning and professional practice that are expected within different disciplines and professional fields. The book provides: • A conceptual model for the application of reflection across disciplines in a variety of contexts. • Empirical examples of different modes and pedagogic patterns for reflection. • Guidance and support for embedding systemic pedagogical and curriculum change.

Curiosity driven reinforcement learning for motion planning on humanoids

Most previous work on artificial curiosity (AC) and intrinsic motivation focuses on basic concepts and theory. Experimental results are generally limited to toy scenarios, such as navigation in a simulated maze, or control of a simple mechanical system with one or two degrees of freedom. To study AC in a more realistic setting, we embody a curious agent in the complex iCub humanoid robot. Our novel reinforcement learning (RL) framework consists of a state-of-the-art, low-level, reactive control layer, which controls the iCub while respecting constraints, and a high-level curious agent, which explores the iCub's state-action space through information gain maximization, learning a world model from experience, controlling the actual iCub hardware in real-time. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ever embodied, curious agent for real-time motion planning on a humanoid. We demonstrate that it can learn compact Markov models to represent large regions of the iCub's configuration space, and that the iCub explores intelligently, showing interest in its physical constraints as well as in objects it finds in its environment.