Enhancing foreign language learning through listening strategy delivered in L1: an experimental study

Listening used in language teaching refers to a complex process that allows us to understand spoken language. The current study, conducted in Iran with an experimental design, investigated the effectiveness of teaching listening strategies delivered in L1 (Persian) and its effect on listening comprehension in L2. Five listening strategies: Guessing, making inferences, identifying topics, repetition, and note-taking were taught over 14 weeks during a semester. Sixty lower intermediate female participants came from two EFL classrooms in an English language institute. The experimental class (n = 30) who listened to their classroom activities performed better (t value = 10.083) than the control class using a methodology that led learners through five listening strategies in Persian. The same teacher taught the students in the control class (n = 30), who listened to the same classroom listening activities without any of the above listening strategies. A pre and post listening test made by a group of experts in the language institute assessed the effect of teaching listening strategies delivered in L1. Results gathered on the post intervention listening test revealed that listening strategies delivered in L1 led to a statistically significant improvement in their discrete listening scores compared with the control group.

Teaching and assessing critical thinking : the interaction of student approaches to learning and teaching approaches

This study explored the relationship among student approaches to learning and teaching methods on critical thinking in two business units. Key findings included differences in critical thinking scores between student approaches to learning and some evidence of an interaction between student approaches to learning and critical thinking teach method (immersion vs. infusion). Possible explanations for the results are examined and implications for developing critical thinking skills across a degree discussed. What is apparent is that as Universities move towards program-wide level assessment of critical thinking, further work is required in terms of the design of critical thinking teaching interventions and assessment at the unit, school, and degree level. The session will discuss the challenges in developing critical thinking programs in individual units and at the Faculty level.

Meaningful musical engagement : the potential impact of generative music systems on learning experiences

In order to create music, the student must establish a relationship with the musical materials. In this thesis, I examine the capacity of a generative music system called jam2jam to offer individuals a virtual musical play-space to explore. I outline the development of an iteration of software development named jam2jam blue and the evolution of a games-like user interface in the research design that jointly revealed the nature of this musical exploration. The findings suggest that the jam2jam blue interface provided an expressive gestural instrument to jam and experience musicmaking. By using the computer as an instrument, participants in this study were given access to meaningful musical experiences in both solo and ensemble situations and the researcher is allowed a view of their development of a relationship with the musical materials from the perspective of the individual participants. Through an iterative software development methodology, pedagogy and experience design were created simultaneously. The research reveals the potential for the jam2jam software to be used as a reflective tool for feedback and assessment purposes. The power of access to ensemble music making is realised though the participants’ virtual experiences which are brought into their physical space by sharing their experience with others. It is suggested that this interaction creates an environment conducive to self-initiated learning in which music is the language of interaction. The research concludes that the development of a relationship between the explorer and the musical materials is subject to the collaborative nature of the interaction through which the music is experienced.

Towards local cultures of sustainability : facilitating community created environment education centres through design

Ecological sustainability has been proposed to address the problem of human impacts increasingly degrading planetary resources and ecosystems, threatening biodiversity, eco-services and human survival. Ecological sustainability is an imperative, with Australia having one of the highest eco-footprints per person worldwide. While significant progress has been made via implementation of ecologically sustainable design in urban communities, relatively little has been undertaken in small, disparate regional communities in Australia. Regional communities are disadvantaged by rural economic decline associated with structural change and inequities of resource transfer. The ecologically sustainable solution is holistic, so all settlements need to be globally wise, richly biodiverse yet locally specific. As a regional solution to this global problem, this research offers the practical means by which a small regional community can contribute. It focuses on the design and implementation of a community centre and the fostering of transformative community learning through an integrated ‘learning community’ awareness of ecologically sustainable best practice. Lessons learned are documented by the participant researcher who as a designer, facilitator, local resident and social narrator has been deeply connected with the Tweed-Caldera region over a period since 1980. The collective action of the local community of Chillingham has been diligently recorded over a decade of design and development. Over this period, several positive elements emerged in terms of improvements to the natural and built environment, greater social cohesion and co-operative learning along with a shift towards a greener local economy. Behavioural changes in the community were noted as residents strived to embrace ecological ideals and reduce fossil fuel dependency. They found attractive local solutions to sourcing of food and using local employment opportunities to up skill their residents via transformative learning as a community in transition. Finally, the catalytic impact of external partnering has also been documented. How well the region as a whole has achieved its ecologically sustainable objectives is measured in terms of the delivered success of private and public partnering with the community, the creation of a community centre cum environment education centre, the restoration of local heritage buildings, the repair of riparian forests and improved water conditions in local river systems, better roads and road safety, local skills and knowledge transfer, support of local food and local/regional growers markets to attract tourists via the integrated trails network. In aggregate, each and every element contributes to a measure of eco-positive development for the built environment, its social organisation and its economy that has guided the local community to find its own pathway to sustainability. Within the Tweed-Caldera bioregion in northern New South Wales, there has been a lack of strategic planning, ecologically sustainable knowledge and facilities in isolated communities that could support the development of a local sustained green economy, provide a hub for socio-cultural activities and ecology based education. The first challenge in this research was to model a whole systems approach to eco-positive development in Chillingham, NSW, a small community where Nature and humanity know no specific boundary. The net result was the creation of a community environment education centre featuring best-affordable ecological practice and regionally distinctive, educational building form from a disused heritage building (cow bale). This development, implemented over a decade, resonated with the later regional wide programs that were linked in the Caldera region by the common purpose of extending the reach of local and state government assistance to regional NSW in economic transition coupled with sustainability. The lessons learned from these linked projects reveal that subsequent programs have been significantly easier to initiate, manage, develop and deliver results. In particular, pursuing collaborative networks with all levels of government and external private partners has been economically effective. Each community’s uniqueness has been celebrated and through drawing out these distinctions, has highlighted local vision, strategic planning, sense of belonging and connection of people with place. This step has significantly reduced the level of friction between communities that comes from natural competition for the finite pool of funds. Following the pilot Tweed-Caldera study, several other NSW regional communities are now undertaking a Community Economic Transition Program based on the processes, trials and positive experiences witnessed in the Tweed-Caldera region where it has been demonstrated that regional community transition programs can provide an opportunity to plan and implement effective long term strategies for sustainability, empowering communities to participate in eco-governance. This thesis includes the design and development of a framework for community created environment education centres to provide an equal access place for community to participate to meet their essential needs locally. An environment centre that facilitates community transition based on easily accessible environmental education, skills and infrastructure is necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability. This research draws upon the literatures of ecologically sustainable development, environmental education and community development in the context of regional community transition towards ‘strong sustainability’. The research approach adapted is best described as a four stage collaborative action research cycle where the participant researcher (me) has a significant involvement in the process to foster local cultures of sustainability by empowering its citizens to act locally and in doing so, become more self reliant and socially resilient. This research also draws upon the many fine working exemplars, such as the resilience of the Cuban people, the transition town initiative in Totnes, U.K. and the models of Australian Community Gardens, such as CERES (Melbourne) and Northey Street (Brisbane). The objectives of this study are to research and evaluate exemplars of ecologically sustainable environment education centres, to facilitate the design and development of an environment education centre created by a small regional community as an ecologically sustainable learning environment; to facilitate a framework for community transition based on environmental education, skills and infrastructure necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability. The research was undertaken as action research in the Tweed Caldera in Northern NSW. This involved the author as participant researcher, designer and volunteer in two interconnected initiatives: the Chillingham Community Centre development and the Caldera Economic Transition Program (CETP). Both initiatives involved a series of design-led participatory community workshops that were externally facilitated with the support of government agency partnerships, steering committees and local volunteers. Together the Caldera research programs involved communities participating in developing their own strategic planning process and outcomes. The Chillingham Community Centre was developed as a sustainable community centre/hub using a participatory design process. The Caldera Economic Transition Program (CETP) prioritised Caldera region projects: the Caldera farmer’s market; community gardens and community kitchens; community renewable energy systems and an integrated trails network. The significant findings were: the CETP projects were capable of moving towards an eco-positive design benchmark through transformative learning. Community transition to sustainability programs need to be underpinned by sustainability and environmental education based frameworks and practical on ground experience in local needs based projects through transformative learning. The actioned projects were successfully undertaken through community participation and teamwork. Ecological footprint surveys were undertaken to guide and assess the ongoing community transition process, however the paucity of responses needs to be revisited. The concept of ecologically sustainable development has been adopted internationally, however existing design and planning strategies do not assure future generations continued access to healthy natural life support systems. Sustainable design research has usually been urban focussed, with little attention paid to regional communities. This study seeks to redress this paucity through the design of ecologically sustainable (deep green) learning environments for small regional communities. Through a design-led process of environmental education, this study investigates how regional communities can be facilitated to model the principles of eco-positive development to support transition to local cultures of sustainability. This research shows how community transition processes and projects can incorporate sustainable community development as transformative learning through design. Regional community transition programs can provide an opportunity to plan long term strategies for sustainability, empowering people to participate in eco-governance. A framework is developed for a community created environment education centre to provide an equal access place for the local community to participate in implementing ways to meet their essential needs locally. A community environment education centre that facilitates community transition based on holistic environmental education, skills and infrastructure is necessary to develop local cultures of sustainability.

Holistic blended design studio model : potential implication in education of Iran

Iran as a developing country faces many considerable shortages of both physical learning environment and inefficient budget to resolve this shortage. Today, Iran needs a $28 billion budget to add 23,000 schools to the existing 120,000 schools to be able to omit two shifts schools [1], [2]. Moreover, the standard learning space is 6-8 square meter per student, while this rate for big cities in Iran is about one square meter per student [1]. This decrease the time students spend in schools. In addition, the education approach in k-12 and higher education is still teacher-centered based and needs to be contemporized with educational, cultural, and technological changes.

Bending and blurring blended learning boundaries [Extended Abstract]

This presentation presents a blended learning model that provides greater opportunity for learning to be self-managed and personalized.

A Systems-level approach to building sustainable assessment cultures : moderation, quality task design and dependability of judgement

This paper considers the conditions that are necessary at system and local levels for teacher assessment to be valid, reliable and rigorous. With sustainable assessment cultures as a goal, the paper examines how education systems can support local level efforts for quality learning and dependable teacher assessment. This is achieved through discussion of relevant research and consideration of a case study involving an evaluation of a cross-sectoral approach to promoting confidence in school-based assessment in Queensland, Australia. Building on the reported case study, essential characteristics for developing sustainable assessment cultures are presented, including: leadership in learning; alignment of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; the design of quality assessment tasks and accompanying standards, and evidence-based judgement and moderation. Taken together, these elements constitute a new framework for building assessment capabilities and promoting quality assurance.

Managing distraction in 21st century learning environments

First year students attend face-to-face classes armed with an arsenal of internet enabled digital devices. The conundrum is that while these devices offer scope for enhancing opportunities for engagement in face-to-face learning, they may simultaneously distract students away from learning and compound isolation issues. This paper considers how to best to use these devices for maximum engagement in first year face-to-face learning so as to assist students in connecting with other learners and instructors within the learning environment

What is the role of design-led innovation and design-led prototyping in developing novel business models?

Recently, ‘business model’ and ‘business model innovation’ have gained substantial attention in management literature and practice. However, many firms lack the capability to develop a novel business model to capture the value from new technologies. Existing literature on business model innovation highlights the central role of ‘customer value’. Further, it suggests that firms need to experiment with different business models and engage in ‘trail-and-error’ learning when participating in business model innovation. Trial-and error processes and prototyping with tangible artifacts are a fundamental characteristic of design. This conceptual paper explores the role of design-led innovation in facilitating firms to conceive and prototype novel and meaningful business models. It provides a brief review of the conceptual discussion on business model innovation and highlights the opportunities for linking it with the research stream of design-led innovation. We propose design-led business model innovation as a future research area and highlight the role of design-led prototyping and new types of artifacts and prototypes play within it. We present six propositions in order to outline future research avenues.

Towards visualising people’s ecology of hybrid personal learning environments

Ambient media architecture can provide place-based collaborative learning experiences and pathways for social interactions that would not be otherwise possible. This paper is concerned with ways of enhancing peer-to-peer learning affordances in library spaces; how can the library facilitate the community of library users to learn from each other? We report on the findings of a study that employed a participatory design method where participants were asked to reflect and draw places, social networks, and activities that they use to work (be creative, productive), play (have fun, socialize, be entertained), and learn (acquire new information, knowledge, or skills). The results illustrate how informal learning – learning outside the formal education system – is facilitated by a personal selection of physical and socio-cultural environments, as well as online tools, platforms, and networks. This paper sheds light on participants’ individually curated ecologies of their work, play, and learning related networks and the hybrid (physical and digital) nature of these places. These insights reveal opportunities for ambient media architecture to increase awareness of and connections between people’s hybrid personal learning environments.

Researching doctoral pedagogy close up : design and action in two doctoral programs

With growing international interest in diversifying sites for pedagogical work within the doctorate, doctoral programs of different kinds are being developed in different disciplinary, institutional and national settings. However, little is known about how the pedagogical work of these programs is designed and enacted, and with what effects. In this paper, we present two cases of doctoral pedagogical work being undertaken within different disciplinary and institutional settings to describe how learning opportunities were designed and to theorise what it means to be engaged in doing doctoral pedagogy. Starting from the position that working from a design model supports systematic and rigorous documentation and development of pedagogy, we employ the twin concepts of design and action, drawing broadly on rhetorical and ethnomethodological understandings of pedagogy as social action. Of particular interest within the concept of design itself is the concept of enactment, the translation of designs into the practices of doctoral work. Together, the two cases become a resource for ‘slowing down’ and making visible the practices of doctoral pedagogy that often go unrecognised because they appear so ordinary and everyday. This call for examining close-up existing doctoral education practices and relationships is attending to the ‘next challenge for doctoral education’ (Green, 2009).

Reflection in Integrated Problem Based Learning : 20 years of continuing application to the teaching of architecture

In 1984 the School of Architecture and Built Environment within the University of Newcastle, Australia introduced an integrated program based on real design projects and using Integrated Problem Based Learning (IPBL) as the teaching method. Since 1984 there have been multiple changes arising from the expectations of the architectural fraternity, enrolling students, lecturers, available facilities, accreditation authorities and many others. These challenges have been successfully accommodated whilst maintaining the original purposes and principles of IPBL. The Architecture program has a combined two-degree structure consisting of a first degree, Bachelor of Science (Architecture), followed by a second degree, Bachelor of Architecture. The program is designed to simulate the problem-solving situations that face a working architect in every day practice. This paper will present the degree structure where each student is enrolled in a single course per semester incorporating design integration and study areas in design studies, professional studies, historical studies, technical studies, environmental studies and communication skills. Each year the design problems increase in complexity and duration set around an annual theme. With 20 years of successful delivery of any program there are highlights and challenges along the way and this paper will discuss some of the successes and barriers experienced within the School of Architecture and Built Environment in delivering IPBL. In addition, the reflective process investigates the currency of IPBL as an appropriate vehicle for delivering the curriculum in 2004 and any additional administrative or staff considerations required to enhance the continuing application of IPBL.

Collaboration and competition on a Wiki : the praxis of online social learning to improve academic writing and research in under-graduate students

The number of internet users in Australia has been steadily increasing, with over 10.9 million people currently subscribed to an internet provider (ABS, 2011). Over the past year, the most avid users of the Internet were 15 – 24 year olds, with approximately 95% accessing the internet on a regular basis (ABS, Social Trends, 2011). While the internet, in particularly Web 2.0, has been described as fundamental to higher education students, social and leisure internet tools are also increasingly being used by these students to generate and maintain their social and professional networks and interactions (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). Rapid technological advancements have enabled greater and faster access to information for learning and education (Hemmi et al, 2009; Glassman & Kang, 2011). As such, we sought to integrate interactive, online social media into the assessment profile of a Public Health undergraduate cohort at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The aim of this exercise was to engage undergraduate students to both develop and showcase their research on a range of complex, contemporary health issues within the online forum of Wikispaces for review and critique by their peers. We applied Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (SLT) to analyse the interactive processes from which students developed deeper and more sustained learning, and via which their overall academic writing standards were enriched. This paper outlines the assessment task, and the students’ feedback on their learning outcomes in relation to the Attentional, Retentional, Motor Reproduction, and Motivational Processes outlined by Bandura in SLT. We conceptualise the findings in a theoretical model, and discuss the implications for this approach within the broader tertiary environment.

Supporting the learning of rapid application development in a database environment

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are computer systems designed to provide individualised help to students, learning in a problem solving context. The difference between an ITS and a Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) system is that an ITS has a Student Model which allows it to provide a better educational environment. The Student Model contains information on what the student knows, and does not know, about the domain being learnt, as well as other personal characteristics such as preferred learning style. This research has resulted in the design and development of a new ITS: Personal Access Tutor (PAT). PAT is an ITS that helps students to learn Rapid Application Development in a database environment. More specifically, PAT focuses on helping students to learn how to create forms and reports in Microsoft Access. To provide an augmented learning environment, PAT’s architecture is different to most other ITSs. Instead of having a simulation, PAT uses a widelyused database development environment (Microsoft Access). This enables the students to ask for help, while developing real applications using real database software. As part of this research, I designed and created the knowledge base required for PAT. This contains four models: the domain, student, tutoring and exercises models. The Instructional Expert I created for PAT provides individualised help to the students to help them correctly finish each exercise, and also proposes the next exercise that a student should work on. PAT was evaluated by students enrolled in the Databases subject at QUT, and by staff members involved in teaching the subject. The results of the evaluation were positive and are discussed in the thesis.

Resilience by design: A participatory approach to designing an interactive digital application for promoting children's resilience

The promotion of resilience (the capacity of an individual or community to bounce back and recover from adversity) has become an important area of public health. In recent years it has expanded into the digital domain, and many online applications have been developed to promote children's resilience. In this study, it is argued that the majority of existing applications are limited because they take a didactic approach, and conceive of interaction as providing navigational choices. Because they simply provide information about resilience or replicate offline, scenario-based strategies, the understanding of resilience they provide is confined to a few, predetermined factors. In this study I propose a new, experiential approach to promoting resilience digitally. I define resilience as an emergent, situated and context-specific phenomenon. Using a Participatory Design model in combination with a salutogenic (strength-based) health methodology, this project has involved approximately 50 children as co-designers and co-researchers over two years. The children have contributed to the design of a new set of interactive resilience tools, which facilitate resilience promotion through dialogic and experiential learning. The major outcomes of this study include a new methodology for developing digital resilience tools, a new set of tools that have been developed and evaluated in collaboration with children and a set of design principles to guide future development. Beyond these initial and tangible outcomes, this study has also established that the benefits of introducing Participatory Design into a health promoting model rests primarily in the change of the role of children from "users" of technology and education to co-designers, where they assume a leadership role in both designing the tools and in directing their resilience learning.