SMEDIA: Designing to create a social and dynamic learning framework

This article discusses the design of social networking sites created through a PhD action research study. Social and participatory media was used as an active, flexible and motivating learning management system. The study investigated ways in which a social learning framework could be designed for students aged 13 to 16 and aimed to encourage student knowledge growth through peer-to-peer interaction while supporting both formal and informal learning. New literacies and multimodality were infused into the design. It was found that the practitioner-researcher’s cycles of planning, acting, observing and reflecting, action research, provided a mechanism for scaffolding the redesign of curriculum content and instruction. Social media in education can be dynamic, interactive and appreciated (SMEDIA) by the students.

Exploring observational learning in leadership development for managers

Purpose: Observational learning within the leadership development of managers is under-theorized thus far. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical argument that builds out from a relational leadership perspective to center on processes affecting observational learning. Design/methodology/approach: The contribution is to draw together research to build a holistic model of observational learning. A further contribution is to apply this model to the context of leadership development. Findings: The paper examines processes associated with attention, availability, access, attainability, motivation and social comparison with significant others in particular contexts. The paper takes a temporal perspective to examine the ways that such interaction appears to be most prominent at particular times. Research limitations/implications: The paper concludes by outlining the opportunities for applying this understanding of observational leadership learning within management development arenas and explore future directions for research. Originality/value: Observational learning has been relatively overlooked. Though the authors often "know" that leaders develop through experience, the role of observational learning in this experience is not well understood. This paper is intended to provide a stimulus for exploring this important area in terms of shaping thinking and designs for management development interventions. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

When is it OK to learn at work? The learning work of organisational practices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of “learning” through what we have termed “integrated development practices”. These are common organisational practices that both enhance organisational effectiveness and contribute to organisational and employee learning.Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyses the ways in which learning and being a learner were talked about and enacted with regard to one of the integrated development practices identified in a study of four different organisations – safety practices, and how learning and being a learner regarding safety were legitimate in one of the organisations. Data are drawn from semi‐structured interviews with members of a variety of workgroups in one major division of the organisation.Findings – Interviewees' responses reflected that learning was fully embedded as an accepted part of a necessary function of the organisation. This use of a learning discourse is discussed in the light of findings from an earlier study on informal learning at work that suggested that learning and the identity of being a learner were sometimes resisted in the everyday culture of work.Originality/value – Using the theorisations of practice of Schatzki and the lifelong education framework of Delors the paper discusses the implications of these findings to examine when it is acceptable to articulate learning as part of work and be identified as a learner at work.

Digitech, remix and design research for course /program-wide thinking and enhancement

This paper describes the initial stage of an exploratory investigation in which the authors aim to build course/program-wide thinking into a process aimed at supporting, documenting and sharing technology-rich practices, innovative teaching and active student learning. The investigation uses a remix lens, in an attempt to creatively consider the manipulation of resources and approaches for reuse, while supporting consistency across subjects/units within a course. The authors are working within Deakin University’s Course Enhancement Process, which is a major university-wide initiative that includes a framework of collaborative teams comprising academic and resourcing specialists working with faculty academic leaders. The Course Enhancement Process is flexible in its implementation and the authors aim to use the process to build a sustainable course-wide sharing and thinking approach within the Business and Law faculty at Deakin University, Australia.

E-Learning praktisch erlebbar machen

Dieser Projektbericht beschreibt eine Lehrveranstaltung, die den Studierenden in der Theorie genau das vermittelte, was sie direkt in der Praxis erfahren konnten: E-Learning. Die enge Koppelung von Wissensvermittlung und praktischer Umsetzung setzte auf ein ungewöhnliches Modell der Lernzeitorganisation. Von den Lernenden wie vom Lehrenden verlangte das Blended-Learning-Seminar die Bereitschaft, das übliche Selbstverständnis in Lehr-Lern-Kontexten an Hochschulen zu überdenken. Dieser Bericht stellt die inhaltliche und strukturelle Ausgangssituation dar, beschreibt die Organisation der Veranstaltung sowie die eingesetzten Methoden und Mittel und reflektiert die Lernerfolge.

Language Learning in 3D Virtual World

Second Life (SL) is an ideal platform for language learning. It is called a Multi-User Virtual Environment, where users can have varieties of learning experiences in life-like environments. Numerous attempts have been made to use SL as a platform for language teaching and the possibility of SL as a means to promote conversational interactions has been reported. However, the research so far has largely focused on simply using SL without further augmentations for communication between learners or between teachers and learners in a school-like environment. Conversely, not enough attention has been paid to its controllability which builds on the embedded functions in SL. This study, based on the latest theories of second language acquisition, especially on the Task Based Language Teaching and the Interaction Hypothesis, proposes to design and implement an automatized interactive task space (AITS) where robotic agents work as interlocutors of learners. This paper presents a design that incorporates the SLA theories into SL and the implementation method of the design to construct AITS, fulfilling the controllability of SL. It also presents the result of the evaluation experiment conducted on the constructed AITS.

E-Learning Systems, Environments and Approaches

The volume consists of twenty-five chapters selected from among peer-reviewed papers presented at the CELDA (Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age) 2013 Conference held in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, in October 2013 and also from world class scholars in e-learning systems, environments and approaches. The following sub-topics are included: Exploratory Learning Technologies (Part I), e-Learning social web design (Part II), Learner communities through e-Learning implementations (Part III), Collaborative and student-centered e-Learning design (Part IV). E-Learning has been, since its initial stages, a synonym for flexibility. While this dynamic nature has mainly been associated with time and space it is safe to argue that currently it embraces other aspects such as the learners’ profile, the scope of subjects that can be taught electronically and the technology it employs. New technologies also widen the range of activities and skills developed in e-Learning. Electronic learning environments have evolved past the exclusive delivery of knowledge. Technology has endowed e-Learning with the possibility of remotely fomenting problem solving skills, critical thinking and team work, by investing in information exchange, collaboration, personalisation and community building.

The importance of power dynamics in the development of asynchronous online learning communities

This research explored how a more student-directed learning design can support the creation of togetherness and belonging in a community of distance learners in formal higher education. Postgraduate students in a New Zealand School of Education experienced two different learning tasks as part of their online distance learning studies. The tasks centered around two online asynchronous discussions each for the same period of time and with the same group of students, but following two different learning design principles. All messages were analyzed using a twostep analysis process, content analysis and social network analysis. Although the findings showed a balance of power between the tutor and the students in the first high e-moderated activity, a better pattern of group interaction and community feeling was found in the low e-moderated activity. The paper will discuss the findings in terms of the implications for learning design and the role of the tutor.

Digital anthropology and educational eGames: learning through behavioural patterns in digital, game-based contexts

The selected publications are focused on the relations between users, eGames and the educational context, and how they interact together, so that both learning and user performance are improved through feedback provision. A key part of this analysis is the identification of behavioural, anthropological patterns, so that users can be clustered based on their actions, and the steps taken in the system (e.g. social network, online community, or virtual campus). In doing so, we can analyse large data sets of information made by a broad user sample,which will provide more accurate statistical reports and readings. Furthermore, this research is focused on how users can be clustered based on individual and group behaviour, so that a personalized support through feedback is provided, and the personal learning process is improved as well as the group interaction. We take inputs from every person and from the group they belong to, cluster the contributions, find behavioural patterns and provide personalized feedback to the individual and the group, based on personal and group findings. And we do all this in the context of educational games integrated in learning communities and learning management systems. To carry out this research we design a set of research questions along the 10-year published work presented in this thesis. We ask if the users can be clustered together based on the inputs provided by them and their groups; if and how these data are useful to improve the learner performance and the group interaction; if and how feedback becomes a useful tool for such pedagogical goal; if and how eGames become a powerful context to deploy the pedagogical methodology and the various research methods and activities that make use of that feedback to encourage learning and interaction; if and how a game design and a learning design must be defined and implemented to achieve these objectives, and to facilitate the productive authoring and integration of eGames in pedagogical contexts and frameworks. We conclude that educational games are a resourceful tool to provide a user experience towards a better personalized learning performance and an enhance group interaction along the way. To do so, eGames, while integrated in an educational context, must follow a specific set of user and technical requirements, so that the playful context supports the pedagogical model underneath. We also conclude that, while playing, users can be clustered based on their personal behaviour and interaction with others, thanks to the pattern identification. Based on this information, a set of recommendations are provided Digital Anthropology and educational eGames 6 /216 to the user and the group in the form of personalized feedback, timely managed for an optimum impact on learning performance and group interaction level. In this research, Digital Anthropology is introduced as a concept at a late stage to provide a backbone across various academic fields including: Social Science, Cognitive Science, Behavioural Science, Educational games and, of course, Technology-enhance learning. Although just recently described as an evolution of traditional anthropology, this approach to digital behaviour and social structure facilitates the understanding amongst fields and a comprehensive view towards a combined approach. This research takes forward the already existing work and published research onusers and eGames for learning, and turns the focus onto the next step — the clustering of users based on their behaviour and offering proper, personalized feedback to the user based on that clustering, rather than just on isolated inputs from every user. Indeed, this pattern recognition in the described context of eGames in educational contexts, and towards the presented aim of personalized counselling to the user and the group through feedback, is something that has not been accomplished before.

Game Learning Analytics: Learning Analytics for Serious Games

Video games have become one of the largest entertainment industries, and their power to capture the attention of players worldwide soon prompted the idea of using games to improve education. However, these educational games, commonly referred to as serious games, face different challenges when brought into the classroom, ranging from pragmatic issues (e.g. a high development cost) to deeper educational issues, including a lack of understanding of how the students interact with the games and how the learning process actually occurs. This chapter explores the potential of data-driven approaches to improve the practical applicability of serious games. Existing work done by the entertainment and learning industries helps to build a conceptual model of the tasks required to analyze player interactions in serious games (gaming learning analytics or GLA). The chapter also describes the main ongoing initiatives to create reference GLA infrastructures and their connection to new emerging specifications from the educational technology field. Finally, it explores how this data-driven GLA will help in the development of a new generation of more effective educational games and new business models that will support their expansion. This results in additional ethical implications, which are discussed at the end of the chapter.

Creating New Design-Build-Test Experiences as Outputs of Undergraduate Design-Build-Test Projects

This paper describes a methodology of using individual engineering undergraduate student projects as a means of effectively and efficiently developing new Design-Build-Test (DBT) learning experiences and challenges.
A key aspect of the rationale for this approach is that it benefits all parties. The student undertaking the individual project gets an authentic experience of producing a functional artefact, which has been the result of a design process that addresses conception, design, implementation and operation. The supervising faculty member benefits from live prototyping of new curriculum content and resources with a student who is at a similar level of knowledge and experience as the intended end users of the DBT outputs. The multiple students who ultimately undertake the DBT experiences / challenges benefit from the enhanced nature of a learning experience which has been “road tested” and optimised.
To demonstrate the methodology the paper will describe a case study example of an individual project completed in 2015. This resulted in a DBT design challenge with a theme of designing a catapult for throwing table tennis balls, the device being made from components laser cut from medium density fibreboard (MDF). Further three different modes of operation will be described which use the same resource materials but operate over different timescales and with different learning outcomes, from an icebreaker exercise focused on developing team dynamics through to full DBT where students get an opportunity to experience the full impact of their design decisions by competing against other students with a catapult they have designed and built themselves.

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.

Design de comunicação aplicado à educação musical

Dissertação de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Design de Comunicação, apresentada na Universidade de Lisboa - Faculdade de Arquitectura.

A perspective on supporting STEM academics with blended learning at an Australian university

Design-based educational research can aid in providing a lens into understanding the complexities around imaginative methods, while also creating an avenue to share personal insights to support the solving of teaching and learning problems to direct future efforts. In this study, the ‘I’ narrative was extensively utilised in the form of an autoethnography perspective. This was achieved by incorporating three self-report methods within a design experiment, in order to explore the messiness associated with showcasing the creation and modification of a faculty-wide blended learning framework for STEM teachers. Data generation procedures from three sources provided the evidential basis for investigating this process: (1) self-reflection, (2) key literature findings, and (3) critical discussions from a community of inquiry. The findings identified three particular features of the process of change that were challenging, for which STEM academics required support: educators’ professional context; finding models to support change in practice; and identifying the change agent. The paper argues for the program of a personal and complex methodology to inform practice, providing insights into the change process, because process is just as important as product.

An evaluation of group work in first-year engineering design education

It is argued that ‘design' is an essential characteristic of engineering practice, and hence, an essential theme of engineering education. It is suggested that first-year design courses enhance commencing student motivation and retention, and introduce engineering application content and basic design experience early in the curriculum. The research literature indicates that engineering design practice is a deeply social process, with collaboration and group interactions required at almost every stage. This chapter documents the evaluation of the initial and subsequent second offerings of a first-year engineering design unit at Griffith University in Australia. The unit 1006ENG Design and Professional Skills aims to provide an introduction to engineering design and professional practice through a project-based approach to problem solving. The unit learning design incorporates student group work, and uses self-and-peer-assessment to incorporate aspects of the design process into the unit assessment and to provide a mechanism for individualization of student marks.