If not the Virtual university then what? Co-producing e-learning and configuring its users

This paper reflects the changing notion of the Virtual University and its realization. We introduce an approach from the Sociology of Science and Technology (STS) which analyses the construction of the “student as a user” as seen through the “eyes of designers”. We ask how social relations are built into technological artefacts. In showing how socio-technical developments transcend sometimes contradict and various notions of “the student” we discuss difficulties and chances of bridging the gap between designers of e-learning-artefacts and its assumed addresses. (DIPF/Orig.)

Digital kids, analogue students : a mixed methods study of students' engagement with a school-based Web 2.0 learning innovation

The inquiry documented in this thesis is located at the nexus of technological innovation and traditional schooling. As we enter the second decade of a new century, few would argue against the increasingly urgent need to integrate digital literacies with traditional academic knowledge. Yet, despite substantial investments from governments and businesses, the adoption and diffusion of contemporary digital tools in formal schooling remain sluggish. To date, research on technology adoption in schools tends to take a deficit perspective of schools and teachers, with the lack of resources and teacher ‘technophobia’ most commonly cited as barriers to digital uptake. Corresponding interventions that focus on increasing funding and upskilling teachers, however, have made little difference to adoption trends in the last decade. Empirical evidence that explicates the cultural and pedagogical complexities of innovation diffusion within long-established conventions of mainstream schooling, particularly from the standpoint of students, is wanting. To address this knowledge gap, this thesis inquires into how students evaluate and account for the constraints and affordances of contemporary digital tools when they engage with them as part of their conventional schooling. It documents the attempted integration of a student-led Web 2.0 learning initiative, known as the Student Media Centre (SMC), into the schooling practices of a long-established, high-performing independent senior boys’ school in urban Australia. The study employed an ‘explanatory’ two-phase research design (Creswell, 2003) that combined complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve both breadth of measurement and richness of characterisation. In the initial quantitative phase, a self-reported questionnaire was administered to the senior school student population to determine adoption trends and predictors of SMC usage (N=481). Measurement constructs included individual learning dispositions (learning and performance goals, cognitive playfulness and personal innovativeness), as well as social and technological variables (peer support, perceived usefulness and ease of use). Incremental predictive models of SMC usage were conducted using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) modelling: (i) individual-level predictors, (ii) individual and social predictors, and (iii) individual, social and technological predictors. Peer support emerged as the best predictor of SMC usage. Other salient predictors include perceived ease of use and usefulness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals. On the whole, an overwhelming proportion of students reported low usage levels, low perceived usefulness and a lack of peer support for engaging with the digital learning initiative. The small minority of frequent users reported having high levels of peer support and robust learning goal orientations, rather than being predominantly driven by performance goals. These findings indicate that tensions around social validation, digital learning and academic performance pressures influence students’ engagement with the Web 2.0 learning initiative. The qualitative phase that followed provided insights into these tensions by shifting the analytics from individual attitudes and behaviours to shared social and cultural reasoning practices that explain students’ engagement with the innovation. Six indepth focus groups, comprising 60 students with different levels of SMC usage, were conducted, audio-recorded and transcribed. Textual data were analysed using Membership Categorisation Analysis. Students’ accounts converged around a key proposition. The Web 2.0 learning initiative was useful-in-principle but useless-in-practice. While students endorsed the usefulness of the SMC for enhancing multimodal engagement, extending peer-topeer networks and acquiring real-world skills, they also called attention to a number of constraints that obfuscated the realisation of these design affordances in practice. These constraints were cast in terms of three binary formulations of social and cultural imperatives at play within the school: (i) ‘cool/uncool’, (ii) ‘dominant staff/compliant student’, and (iii) ‘digital learning/academic performance’. The first formulation foregrounds the social stigma of the SMC among peers and its resultant lack of positive network benefits. The second relates to students’ perception of the school culture as authoritarian and punitive with adverse effects on the very student agency required to drive the innovation. The third points to academic performance pressures in a crowded curriculum with tight timelines. Taken together, findings from both phases of the study provide the following key insights. First, students endorsed the learning affordances of contemporary digital tools such as the SMC for enhancing their current schooling practices. For the majority of students, however, these learning affordances were overshadowed by the performative demands of schooling, both social and academic. The student participants saw engagement with the SMC in-school as distinct from, even oppositional to, the conventional social and academic performance indicators of schooling, namely (i) being ‘cool’ (or at least ‘not uncool’), (ii) sufficiently ‘compliant’, and (iii) achieving good academic grades. Their reasoned response therefore, was simply to resist engagement with the digital learning innovation. Second, a small minority of students seemed dispositionally inclined to negotiate the learning affordances and performance constraints of digital learning and traditional schooling more effectively than others. These students were able to engage more frequently and meaningfully with the SMC in school. Their ability to adapt and traverse seemingly incommensurate social and institutional identities and norms is theorised as cultural agility – a dispositional construct that comprises personal innovativeness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals orientation. The logic then is ‘both and’ rather than ‘either or’ for these individuals with a capacity to accommodate both learning and performance in school, whether in terms of digital engagement and academic excellence, or successful brokerage across multiple social identities and institutional affiliations within the school. In sum, this study takes us beyond the familiar terrain of deficit discourses that tend to blame institutional conservatism, lack of resourcing and teacher resistance for low uptake of digital technologies in schools. It does so by providing an empirical base for the development of a ‘third way’ of theorising technological and pedagogical innovation in schools, one which is more informed by students as critical stakeholders and thus more relevant to the lived culture within the school, and its complex relationship to students’ lives outside of school. It is in this relationship that we find an explanation for how these individuals can, at the one time, be digital kids and analogue students.

Design education online : learning delivery and evaluation

Online learning has been recognised as an effective pedagogical method and tool, and is broadly integrated into various types of teaching and learning strategies in higher education. In practice, the use of Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in higher education has become an integral strategy for quality education. The field of design education however has not been researched extensively in regard to online learning, delivery and evaluation. This paper discusses design education from an online learning perspective. It proposes an integrated framework with three key components for online learning via VLE including an interactive delivery structure, communication channels, and learning evaluation. Additionally, the paper describes and evaluates how VLE sites for two design units were built based on an integrated framework and student learning experiences. The results indicate that online design education should be integrated with various educational values and functional features in a systematic manner, and requires designing learning evaluation protocols as part of learning activities and communicative forms within online-based learning sites.

Facilitating student self-direction in a blended learning environment

Business postgraduate education is rapidly adopting virtual learning environments to facilitate the needs of a time-poor stakeholder community, where part-time students find it difficult to attend face-to-face classes. Creating engaged, flexible learning opportunities in the virtual world is therefore the current challenge for many business academics. However, in the blended learning environment there is also the added pressure of encouraging these students to develop soft managerial or generic skills such as self-reflection. The current paper provides an overview of an action-research activity exploring the experiences of students who were required to acquire the skills of self-reflection within a blended learning unit dominated by on-line learning delivery. We present the responses of students and the changes made to our teaching and learning activities to improve the facilitation of both our face-to-face delivery as well as the on-line learning environment.

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

Blended learning extension in a global collaborative learning environment

The advancement of technology and the internet have created global collaborative learning opportunities and changed learning and teaching in any discipline around the world, including in developing countries. The availability of web-based resources and high-speed internet infrastructure has extended the opportunities to conduct blended learning and new ways of distance learning beyond virtual class room webinars. The aim of this exploratory paper is to review the challenges and opportunities for increasing student engagement in virtual learning. A reflective analysis of international collaborative learning case studies, published articles and practices in virtual learning is used to explore the extension of blended learning organised and participated by institutions from multiple countries. The lessons learnt from flexible learning delivery in professional practice courses in Property Education are used to evaluate potential extensions of blended learning implementation in a global context.

Rethinking connectedness: improving access to professional learning for regional and remote teachers

Transformation of Australian education is occurring at a rapid rate through the implementation of a number of initiatives. These initiatives include the Digital Education Revolution, the move to a National Curriculum and the implementation of a National Framework for Professional Standards for Teachers and Principals. As these initiatives are rolled out to schools across Australia, the equitable access to professional learning to support all teachers, regardless of their geographical location, is in question. A number of studies have been conducted in Australia that highlight the importance of professional learning and the difficulty faced by regional and remote teachers with regard to access (Gerard Daniels, 2007; Lysons, Cooksey, Panizzon, Parnell & Pegg 2006; Ministerial Review of Schooling, 1994, Rural and Remote Education Advisory Council, 2000; Vinson, 2002). Along with access to professional learning, has been the discussion of effective modes of delivery. Face to face professional learning, in regional and metropolitan areas, is offered in isolation, or in some cases, is complimented with virtual learning environments. The need for a more sustainable approach to professional learning is highly necessary. A mixed method research approach was utilised in order to answer the primary research question "In what ways might technology be used to support professional learning of regional and remote teachers in Western Australia?" This research paper outlines the findings from the study including the significance of travel time; impact of limited relief teachers; implications for promotion and teacher registration; professional learning communities being valued but often limited by small staff numbers; professional learning conducted in the local context being preferred; professional learning established at the teacher and school level being desirable; teachers being confident in using technology and accessing PD online if required; and social cohesiveness being valued and often limited by isolation. Further, this research has culminated in the development of a "model of rethinking connectedness" that would facilitate improving the amount and variety of professional learning available to regional and remote teachers.

People and Business Development (PBD): Learning to deliver learning effectively

In October 2010, PBD introduced its eQual Learning VLE (virtual learning environment) to provide an online knowledge resource for its students. During the project, the company learnt many lessons about how to deliver learning effectively. In the course of a year researching VLE platforms, looking for material, and remapping NVQ courses for new QCF qualifications, the company realised that it was more important to deliver engaging and relevant content, rather than boasting the most innovative technology.

Action for Children – Introducing collaborative learning using Google Apps for Education

Paul Kendrick, Vocational Trainer for Action Training, has created a bespoke virtual learning environment (VLE) utilising Google Apps for Education. Learners and trainers are now more fulfilled as they have greater ownership of their learning environment and can pick which applications best suit their learning needs. They can also work more collaboratively as they are able to share documents with other learners and trainers between different locations.

Se(r) um leitor em um ambiente virtual e aprendizagem: a utilização do insólito como estratégia de leitura e escrita no ensino superior

Este trabalho relata as estratégias e atividades realizadas em disciplinas semipresenciais desenvolvidas durante os períodos letivos de 2008 a 2012 com alunos dos cursos de Administração e de Ciências Contábeis, no ambiente virtual de aprendizagem Moodle. As disciplinas foram desenvolvidas segundo os princípios das abordagens colaborativas de aprendizagem com o objetivo de examinar as possibilidades de uso dos insólitos como estratégia de leitura e escrita. Buscou-se ainda apontar a aplicabilidade das estratégias didáticas descritas como forma de aprimorar as competências de leitura e escrita em alunos ingressantes no ensino superior e fornecer subsídios para a continuação da pesquisa. O trabalho mantém uma relação interdiscursiva com a obra Se um Viajante numa Noite de Inverno, de ítalo Calvino (1982), o que lhe possibilita não somente a titulação dos capítulos, mas também a construção sutil de uma presença que os perpassa. Do autor, retira também seis propostas ( leveza, rapidez, exatidão, visibilidade, multiplicidade e consistência) capazes de aprimorar a qualidade da comunicação em ambientes informáticos. Busca, ainda, na produção teórica de Michael Serres, um conceito singular de comunicação, algo capaz de transcender a substancialidade e de compreender e estimular a construção da presencialidade por meio de trocas e relações em ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem. Em vista disso, a pesquisa apoia-se na construção -reflexão- reconstrução de oficinas on-line que utilizam o insólito - concebido como algo surpreendente e propiciador de desestabilização - na construção de estratégias propiciadoras de aprimoramento da leitura e da produção textual de estudantes universitários. Recorre também às pesquisas desenvolvidas por Mikhail Bakhtin, Ângela Kleiman, Carla Coscarelli e Vilson Leffa, contribuições decisivas tanto na elaboração das oficinas on-line, quanto na reflexão que se tece ao longo da pesquisa. Por fim, busca apoio nos estudos sobre Estilos de Aprendizagem e na aplicação do Teste de Cloze para o aprimoramento das reflexões construídas

Ambiente virtual de aprendizagem para letramento de alunos com deficiência intelectual

A presente pesquisa tem por objetivo analisar a interação de alunos com deficiência intelectual com a linguagem escrita num ambiente virtual de aprendizagem desenvolvido com a finalidade de implementar atividades de letramento. Baseando-se nos fundamentos da teoria sócio-histórica sobre cultura, aprendizagem e desenvolvimento, o presente estudo almeja trazer contribuições para os estudos sobre alfabetização e letramento de pessoas com deficiência intelectual, com a utilização de instrumentos culturais de aprendizagem da cibercultura. Foram seguidos os princípios da abordagem qualitativa, tendo em vista a necessidade de observar e reconhecer os sujeitos em sua individualidade, considerando-os em seu meio sócio-cultural. O referencial metodológico utilizado é a pesquisa-ação crítico-colaborativa. Os resultados do estudo foram organizados em quatro categorias: histórico escolar relatos de sobrevivência; a proteção das famílias; os professores e a construção de uma prática; o uso da tecnologia possibilidades de resgate cultural. As duas primeiras buscam analisar fatores relacionados ao histórico escolar e familiar, que forneçam indícios para a compreensão da constituição dos sujeitos (alunos) como adolescentes ou jovens que não sabem ler e as duas últimas discutem a construção das práticas de letramento, no que diz respeito ao envolvimento dos professores e às possibilidades de aproximação dos alunos com deficiência intelectual à cultura, proporcionadas pelo uso do computador. O ambiente virtual de aprendizagem possibilitou o desenvolvimento de uma prática pedagógica voltada para atender às necessidades educacionais especiais destes alunos e compreender as características de seu processo de internalização da escrita, a partir da mediação do instrumento cultural de aprendizagem e da ação do professor.

A significação da experiência de uso em um Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem: estudo de caso sobre a plataforma Moodle no CEDERJ

Essa pesquisa é um estudo de caso sobre a interação do aluno com a interface da plataforma Moodle. Para tal, foram utilizadas técnicas consolidadas de avaliação da usabilidade de interfaces digitais. Assim, com respaldo na Semiótica do americano Charles Sanders Peirce, verificou-se e discutiu-se questões subjetivas dos processos comunicativos envolvidos nos problemas interacionais identificados. Uma vez analisado o impacto desses problemas, desenhou-se um quadro geral, denominado experiência do usuário, no qual as interfaces avaliadas são arenas das frustrações e ações que esta proposta de inspeção foi capaz de descrever. A partir desse quadro, foram fundadas as bases para compreensão do modelo mental do usuário para propor soluções. Essas soluções são baseadas, principalmente, em prescrições de usabilidade de Jakob Nielsen, Donald Norman e Steve Krug Nesse cenário, é demonstrado como o design contribui para a elaboração de uma interface que convida à ação e reflexão, de forma a proporcionar um ambiente de interação satisfatório e consonante com as novas tendências educacionais e da cibercultura. Deste modo, também demonstra-se de que forma a Semiótica pode instrumentalizar o profissional de design a resolver situações de projeto. Por meio da documentação de metodologias e resultados, esta pesquisa apoia a boa comunicação entre projetistas, ressalta a importância da subjetividade no estudo interacional, além de propor soluções para os problemas encontrados. Em virtude dos fatos supracitados, essa pesquisa tem como produto final um acervo de informações relevantes para o histórico de projetos em design. Contemplados os requisitos de usabilidade propostos por essa pesquisa, espera-se que, no futuro, tais requisitos sejam validados, para que o impacto produzido pelas mudanças implementadas possam ser avaliados. Assim, poderá ser verificado como essas mudanças impactarão no processo comunicativo da nova proposta interacional e se elas se converteram realmente em satisfação na experiência do usuário. Com isso, pretende-se que o foco da interface passe a ser a associação da satisfação do uso ao processo de aprendizagem.

Experiences during three generations of web based learning. Six years of web based communication

This paper tells the story of how a set of university lectures developed during the last six years. The idea is to show how (1) content, (2) communication and (3) assessment have evolved in steps which are named “generations of web learning”. The reader is offered a stepwise description of both didactic foundations of university lectures and practical implementation on a widely available web platform. The relative weight of directive elements has gradually decreased through the “three generations”, whereas characteristics of self-responsibility and self-guided learning have gained in importance. -Content was in early times presented and expected to be learned but in later phases expected to be constructed for examples of case studies. -Communication meant in early phases to deliver assignments to the lecturer but later on to form teams, exchange standpoints and review mutually. -Assessment initially consisted in marks invented and added up by the lecturer but was later enriched by peer review, mutual grading and voting procedures. How much “added value” can the web provide for teaching, training and learning? Six years of experience suggest: mainly insofar as new (collaborative and selfdirected) didactic scenarios are implemented! (DIPF/Orig.)

Verstetigung und Verbreitung von E-Learning im Verbundstudium. Onlinebefragung als Promotor und Instrument zur Einbeziehung der Lehrenden bei der Entwicklung und Umsetzung

Das Verbundstudium der nordrhein-westfälischen Fachhochschulen bietet über 3000 Studierenden die Möglichkeit, in einer Kombination von Präsenz- und Selbststudium neben dem Beruf zu studieren. Das Institut für Verbundstudien koordiniert und organisiert die Kooperationsprozesse der Hochschulen und engagiert sich mit seinem Bereich Hochschuldidaktik und Fernstudienentwicklung als Entwicklungs- und Kompetenzzentrum im Bereich der Neuen Medien und des E-Learnings. Zur Verbreitung und Verstetigung der digitalen Lehr- und Lernangebote sowie der Optimierung der Kooperations- und Supportstrukturen hat das Institut eine Onlinebefragung von 200 Lehrenden zur Situation und den Perspektiven des E-Learnings im Verbundstudium durchgeführt. Die Studie zeigt, dass für die Lehrenden auch zukünftig die gedruckte Lerneinheit das zentrale Element der Lehre sein wird. Sie sehen Bedarf zur Ergänzung und Anreicherung des Studiums sowie des Lernens und wünschen sich zur Unterstützung der Lehre ergänzende digitale Elemente vor allem in folgenden Bereichen: Kommunikation, Ergänzungen zu Lerneinheiten (Linklisten, Übungen, ergänzende Medien und Materialien), übergreifendes Glossar. Die Ergebnisse der Onlinebefragung sind die Grundlage des von den Gremien des Verbundstudiums beschlossenen E-Learning-Konzepts. Die von den Lehrenden gewünschten digitalen Elemente und Funktionen sind im Rahmen der Entwicklung durch den Bereich Hochschuldidaktik und Fernstudienentwicklung in der E-Learning-Umgebung VS-online umgesetzt worden. Zurzeit werden die bereitgestellten Elemente und Funktionen von den einzelnen Verbundstudiengängen mit Beiträgen und Inhalten gefüllt. (DIPF/Orig.)