Children with Learning Disabilities and Challenging Behaviour: Relationship between Parents and Professionals

This multi-perspectival Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study explored how people in the ‘networks of concern’ talked about how they tried to make sense of the challenging behaviours of four children with severe learning disabilities. The study also aimed to explore what affected relationships between people. The study focussed on 4 children through interviewing their mothers, their teachers and the Camhs Learning Disability team members who were working with them. Two fathers also joined part of the interviews. All interviews were conducted separately using a semi-structured approach. IPA allowed both a consideration of the participant’s lived experiences and ‘objects of concern’ and a deconstruction of the multiple contexts of people’s lives, with a particular focus on disability. The analysis rendered five themes: the importance of love and affection, the difficulties, and the differences of living with a challenging child, the importance of being able to make sense of the challenges and the value of good relationships between people. Findings were interpreted through the lens of CMM (Coordinated Management of Meaning), which facilitated a systemic deconstruction and reconstruction of the findings. The research found that making sense of the challenges was a key concern for parents. Sharing meanings were important for people’s relationships with each other, including employing diagnostic and behavioural narratives. The importance of context is also highlighted including a consideration of how societal views of disability have an influence on people in the ‘network of concern’ around the child. A range of systemic approaches, methods and techniques are suggested as one way of improving services to these children and their families. It is suggested that adopting a ‘both/and’ position is important in such work - both applying evidence based approaches and being alert to and exploring the different ways people try and make sense of the children’s challenges. Implications for practice included helping professionals be alert to their constructions and professional narratives, slowing the pace with families, staying close to the concerns of families and addressing network issues.

Learning Physics with the Unreal Tournament Engine

Computer games such as Unreal Tournament (UT2004 and UT3) contain a 'physics engine' responsible for producing believable dynamic interactions between players and objects in the three-dimensional (3D) virtual world of a game. Through a series of probing experiments we have evaluated the fidelity and internal consistency of the UT2004 physics engine. These experiments have then led to the production of resources which may be used by learners and teachers of secondary-school physics. We also suggest an approach to learning, where both teachers and pupils may produce learning materials using the Unreal Tournament editor 'UnrealEd'.

Applications of a Collaborative Open Object Oriented Learning Environment to Electronics, Computing and Mathematics Education

A lightweight Java application suite has been developed and deployed allowing collaborative learning between students and tutors at remote locations. Students can engage in group activities online and also collaborate with tutors. A generic Java framework has been developed and applied to electronics, computing and mathematics education. The applications are respectively: (a) a digital circuit simulator, which allows students to collaborate in building simple or complex electronic circuits; (b) a Java programming environment where the paradigm is behavioural-based robotics, and (c) a differential equation solver useful in modelling of any complex and nonlinear dynamic system. Each student sees a common shared window on which may be added text or graphical objects and which can then be shared online. A built-in chat room supports collaborative dialogue. Students can work either in collaborative groups or else in teams as directed by the tutor. This paper summarises the technical architecture of the system as well as the pedagogical implications of the suite. A report of student evaluation is also presented distilled from use over a period of twelve months. We intend this suite to facilitate learning between groups at one or many institutions and to facilitate international collaboration. We also intend to use the suite as a tool to research the establishment and behaviour of collaborative learning groups. We shall make our software freely available to interested researchers.

SMILE: Simulator for Maryland Imitation Learning Environment

As robot imitation learning is beginning to replace conventional hand-coded approaches in programming robot behaviors, much work is focusing on learning from the actions of demonstrators. We hypothesize that in many situations, procedural tasks can be learned more effectively by observing object behaviors while completely ignoring the demonstrator's motions. To support studying this hypothesis and robot imitation learning in general, we built a software system named SMILE that is a simulated 3D environment. In this virtual environment, both a simulated robot and a user-controlled demonstrator can manipulate various objects on a tabletop. The demonstrator is not embodied in SMILE, and therefore a recorded demonstration appears as if the objects move on their own. In addition to recording demonstrations, SMILE also allows programing the simulated robot via Matlab scripts, as well as creating highly customizable objects for task scenarios via XML. This report describes the features and usages of SMILE.

Creating Common Ground: Architecture For Tactical Learning and Creative Convergence

Certain environments can inhibit learning and stifle enthusiasm, while others enhance learning or stimulate curiosity. Furthermore, in a world where technological change is accelerating we could ask how might architecture connect resource abundant and resource scarce innovation environments? Innovation environments developed out of necessity within urban villages and those developed with high intention and expectation within more institutionalized settings share a framework of opportunity for addressing change through learning and education. This thesis investigates formal and informal learning environments and how architecture can stimulate curiosity, enrich learning, create common ground, and expand access to education. The reason for this thesis exploration is to better understand how architects might design inclusive environments that bring people together to build sustainable infrastructure encouraging innovation and adaptation to change for years to come. The context of this thesis is largely based on Colin McFarlane’s theory that the “city is an assemblage for learning” The socio-spatial perspective in urbanism, considers how built infrastructure and society interact. Through the urban realm, inhabitants learn to negotiate people, space, politics, and resources affecting their daily lives. The city is therefore a dynamic field of emergent possibility. This thesis uses the city as a lens through which the boundaries between informal and formal logics as well as the public and private might be blurred. Through analytical processes I have examined the environmental devices and assemblage of factors that consistently provide conditions through which learning may thrive. These parameters that make a creative space significant can help suggest the design of common ground environments through which innovation is catalyzed.

Scaling up online learning strategic and operational checklist

This checklist highlights key questions for institutions that are considering their online learning provision and relates to the Jisc Scaling up online learning (strategic and operational) guide.

Scaling up online learning Curriculum design and support for online learning checklist

This checklist highlights key questions for institutions that are considering their online learning provision and relates to the Jisc Scaling up online learning Curriculum design and support for online learning guide.

Scaling up online learning technology and tools for online learning checklist

This checklist highlights key questions for institutions that are considering their online learning provision and relates to the Jisc Scaling up online learning technology and tools for online learning guide.

Activate Learning: Interview with Cheryl Pennington

Activate Learning. Thought leader interview with Cheryl Pennington, group executive director and head of the City of Oxford campus (May 2016)

Leicestershire Adult Learning Service: Improving students' experience by increasing independent study

Leicestershire Adult Learning Service’s lead tutor Sarabjit Borrill has been using blended learning effectively in apprentice training for several years. Building on what she has learned in that time, she made 2015/ 16 the year to explore similar approaches with Skills for life students studying GCSE English.

Barnsley College: Rethinking assessment of work-based learning

Barnsley College’s level 3 and 4 diplomas in digital learning design are delivered in one year, enabling apprentices to be employed alongside their studies in the college’s innovative learning design company, Elephant Learning Designs. The limited time this allows for delivery and assessment has prompted course leaders to rethink their approach to course structure, assessment and feedback design, and the role of technology in evidence collection.

South West College: A whole-college approach to online learning and assessment

In 2013, South West College created a virtual college running synchronously alongside the physical college. Three years later, significant progress has been made towards offering online learning and assessment to learners based at home and abroad.

EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF TEACHER PRACTICE ON STUDENT LEARNING IN INTERACTIVE RADIO INSTRUCTION (IRI) CLASSROOMS: LESSONS FROM NEW DELHI AND RAJASTHAN (INDIA)

This quantitative study examines the impact of teacher practices on student achievement in classrooms where the English is Fun Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) programs were being used. A contemporary IRI design using a dual-audience approach, the English is Fun IRI programs delivered daily English language instruction to students in grades 1 and 2 in Delhi and Rajasthan through 120 30-minute programs via broadcast radio (the first audience) while modeling pedagogical techniques and behaviors for their teachers (the second audience). Few studies have examined how the dual-audience approach influences student learning. Using existing data from 32 teachers and 696 students, this study utilizes a multivariate multilevel model to examine the role of the primary expectations for teachers (e.g., setting up the IRI classroom, following instructions from the radio characters and ensuring students are participating) and the role of secondary expectations for teachers (e.g., modeling pedagogies and facilitating learning beyond the instructions) in promoting students’ learning in English listening skills, knowledge of vocabulary and use of sentences. The study finds that teacher practice on both sets of expectations mattered, but that practice in the secondary expectations mattered more. As expected, students made the smallest gains in the most difficult linguistic task (sentence use). The extent to which teachers satisfied the primary and secondary expectations was associated with gains in all three skills – confirming the relationship between students’ English proficiency and teacher practice in a dual-audience program. When it came to gains in students’ scores in sentence use, a teacher whose focus was greater on primary expectations had a negative effect on student performance in both states. In all, teacher practice clearly mattered but not in the same way for all three skills. An optimal scenario for teacher practice is presented in which gains in all three skills are maximized. These findings have important implications for the way the classroom teacher is cast in IRI programs that utilize a dual-audience approach and in the way IRI programs are contracted insofar as the role of the teacher in instruction is minimized and access is limited to instructional support from the IRI lessons alone.

Scaling up online learning checklist: master version

This checklist highlights key questions for institutions that are considering their online learning provision and relates to all three of the Jisc Scaling up online learning guides.

Derby Adult Learning Service case study

Case study on how peer support tutor service leads to embedded use of technology in curriculum activities