JISC

Over the past two years staff from the University of Hull have developed an innovative framework to enable practitioners to maximise their use of digital archives in teaching and learning. The framework (Digital Artefacts for Learner Engagement – DiAL-e) is at the heart of several projects developed for the JISC to illustrate how these media rich resources can be most effectively utilised. Projects include the Newsfilm Online Assisted Take Up materials (due to be launched on 3rd October 2008: URL to follow) and the Enhancing Teaching and Learning with Digital Resources project (part of the e-learning: RePRODUCE strand: http://www.hull.ac.uk/dial/ ). In addition the framework has been used in a project developed for the Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) which is available through the Excellence Gateway (URL to follow). In all of these examples, the DiAL-e framework is used to challenge practitioners thinking and to encourage them to use digital archive resources from the perspective of engaging learners in challenging activities.

This video presentation (available through Blip.TV) will review the framework, including its development, through the experience of these projects, and will focus on the significance of this tool for future work connected to the utilisation of such resources. It will feature the principal authors of the framework (Kevin Burden: The University of Hull & Simon Atkinson, Massey University, NZ) talking about their experiences in using the framework, illustrated with exemplars from practitioner involved in the various projects. Links to academic papers and other materials will be made available in the video.

Supporting Staff – Transforming culture

Grainne Conole and Allan Masson

This session will discuss the innovative work of the CETL (NI) Centre for the Utilisation of Institutional e-Learning Services to enhance the Learning experience and The Open University in working with staff to transform their approaches to curriculum design.

Listening to learners

E. A. Draffan and Malcolm Ryan

The LexDis participatory project looking at the strategies developed by disabled students when working online, has provided an enormous range of resources, yet still issues tend to have arisen when the importance of personalisation has been overlooked, along with the need for more time to access and work on materials. Where access to materials occurs in different environments, students have had to become agile users of a range of technologies. Usually these technologies are well known and not necessarily specialist although, as one student remarked; "With that [Blackboard], I would tend to use Magnifier or ZoomText. That's where the three environments come from. My laptop has Supernova, ATS (The Assistive Technology Service) has ZoomText and Jaws, and the university's computers have Magnifier.

Coping with instructions to make materials accessible can also take time - Adobe Acrobat PDF accessibility guidance covers 86 pages! There are usually alternatives available and often with the innovative use of other applications access for all is possible. If e-learning materials and resources are not easy to use, there are cost and time implications when seeking human support. As another student said "I'm more likely to pick essay questions and assignments where the reading material is on Blackboard and already available electronically. It takes time for me to adapt things into electronic format myself. So I often choose questions not just based on interest, but on the ease of accessing the material.

Are immersive learning experiences changing how we learn?

Sara de Freitas 

The presentation traces the advent of immersive learning experiences from serious games to virtual worlds. The presentation draws from some of the research findings from the new JISC Serious Virtual Worlds report being launched at the JISC online conference. The presentation will also bring together some of the research around the efficacy of immersive learning.

Second Life: orientation and tours

The Emerge Team (led by Steven Warburton and Josie Fraser)

Second Life Orientation Sessions – Finding your Feet in a Virtual World

Not sure what a virtual world is? Heard the buzz about Second Life and want to find out more? Then come along to one of the orientation sessions we are organizing for Second Life (http://secondlife.com). We will be providing full instructions and plenty of in-world help in the shape of friendly avatars (our human representations in Second Life). We will lead you from getting your Second Life account to the basics of navigating in-world, including useful skills such as running, jumping, flying and teleporting. We will also be exploring style, and ways to personalise your avatar appearance, as well as finding useful stuff and making best use of your inventory. To finish you will also have the opportunity to pick up a few basic building skills, enough we hope to stimulate those creative juices.

No prior skills are needed for the orientation sessions but participants must have downloaded and installed the Second Life client themselves, have a broadband Internet connection and a higher-end graphics card (see http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php).

Second Life – the In-World Tour

Come and challenge your perceptions of what virtual worlds can offer by joining us on a tour of some of the most interesting locations that Second Life has to offer. We will be traveling to ten different places that exemplify how people have appropriated what is currently the most popular 3D social environment. These will range from teaching spaces, institutional campuses and architectural builds to immersive environments that are being used for role-play and simulation activities. There will also be a chance to try out some of the different tools and scripts that have been built in-world to help educators make the best of the learning and teaching opportunities that exist.

To participate you will need to have a Second Life avatar and have mastered the basic skills outlined in the orientation sessions that we are offering.

If you want to participate or have any questions then please contact: steven.warburton@kcl.ac.uk

Learning space design for 21st century learning and teaching

Tom Hamilton and Richard Everett

Richard's abstract:  Building a world class college for the future - Intelligent buildings and an innovation culture

"Ask not what you can do for your technology, ask what can your technology do for you!"

Richard Everett, Director of eLearning at Oaklands College in Hertfordshire, has been actively involved in the planning of an innovative ‘intelligent’ new college build in St Albans costing £120M, with a planned hand over date of September 2011.

The building is designed as a hub and spoke model and embraces the Cisco Connected Real Estate concept of an ‘intelligent’ integrated building. It is able to draw on an innovative e-learning culture already established at Oaklands and preparation is currently being undertaken to ensure that changes in practice will be effected smoothly.

Richard presentation consists of four sets of PowerPoint slides with links to an ‘intelligent builders’ channel on YouTube and the Oaklands College new build Masterplan and Flythroughs. Richard will be discussing how intelligent buildings need to go hand in hand with an innovation culture to create a college for the future.

Tom's abstract:  The holistic learning context: Effective use of digital, physical and operational design to support rich learning environments and experiences

“It ain’t what you use, it’s the way that you use it”

Tom Hamilton is the Director of InQbate: The CETL in Creativity - a joint project between the Universities of Sussex and Brighton that supports the teaching of creativity and creativity in teaching. Tom was responsible for the design, build and operation of the Sussex Creativity Zone; a technologically rich, flexible learning space. Both the physical and technological design of this space are embedded in an holistic approach to the use of technology to support learning.

Tom’s presentation consists of three elements; a PowerPoint presentation telling the story behind the design, a Second Life manifestation of the Sussex creativity zone where participants can explore the space for themselves and (during the conference) interact with other InQbate team members, and finally a set of narrated slide shows illustrating some of the activities and emergent findings of the project.

Moving forward with e-portfolios: Challenges, tensions and inspirations

Julie Hughes and Geoff Rebbeck

Julie's abstract:  The pleasures and problems associated with being an innovator or early adopter (Rogers 1983) of a new technology as a teacher don’t seem to have changed much since Bohlen and Beal (1957) categorised their technology adoption lifecycle at Iowa State College in 1957. Although their context was farmers’ seed purchases, their findings resonate with me as an eportfolio teacher and researcher – I too have been rejected by ‘conservative neighbors’ and I have, at times, had to travel many miles to find like-minded practitioners.

I am now beginning my 5th year as an eportfolio teacher and the movement forward within my institution has at times been spectacular but also at times quite slow. My presentation, by eportfolio, will explore the lessons learnt through sometimes moving forward slowly and sometimes taking high-stakes risks.

Geoff's abstract:  The debate over ‘which VLE?’ is over. The big issue now is what we make of personal learning space and its derivatives, individual learning plans and e-portfolios. The debate is complicated by issues of ownership over these spaces and how each relates to the others. Some see them as extensions of VLEs, others as distinct but complimentary, others as replacing the VLE completely. This presentation gives a personal perspective on each element from a behaviourist stance, suggesting that it starts with changing staff behaviour. How might they fit together to accommodate employer engagement, personalisation and help colleges account for themselves?

Can we achieve active, social and lifelong learning through the promotion and support of personal learning environments in Higher Education?

Alice Jones 

This poster aims to demonstrate some of the issues (technical and pedagogical) that we envisage and have encountered on the project so far in trying to integrate user owned technologies with institutionally owned systems at the University of Chester. However; it's not all doom and gloom; as we've also tried to highlight some of the positive developments that we envisage possibly developing from the integration of user owned technologies. The poster also attempts to summarize the progression of the project so far. To conclude, the poster aims to express our desire to stimulate an active, social and lifelong culture within the University.

Does Web2 fundamentally alter the learner-teacher relationship?

Victor Lally, Richard Noss

Naturally there is keen interest among educators, academics and researchers about the possibilities for transformation in learning designs created by rapid developments in Web2, and related immersive technologies. In this presentation Vic and Richard will engage in an illustrated ‘quick-fire’ debate about whether this takes us into a ‘new paradigm’ of learning design that re-asserts the centrality of the learner and, if it does, what does this mean for learning and teaching, and our understandings of the relationship between them.

In this rapidly developing and contested area many fascinating questions arise. The answers are at the very core of our need to adapt, develop and creatively shape these technologies for the 21st century. Vic and Richard will explore them in a lively and fast moving discussion:

• Can these technologies really hand back control of learning to the learner?
• Does this improve the quality of learning?
• What is the role of the teacher in these new learning spaces?
• How does learning design fit into the picture?
• What is the role of institutions (schools and universities) in this new learning?
• What constitutes evidence of learning?
• How do we integrate evidence from research with evidence from practice?
• Can research and practice keep up with the pace of technical innovation?
• Who are the winners and losers in this new paradigm?

We will refer to the existing literature, and to exciting new work being undertaken by the ESRC/EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) programme.

Reusing & Repurposing Materials for Learning in a Digital Age: An Example from Psychology 

Jon Loose

Who will drive the learning process? What is the future of the relationship between learners, their tutors and institutions?

Rose Luckin

The way in which digital technology is integrated into the daily lives of young people is well documented in recent reviews and research. In parallel with this increasing learner activity there is also an increase in the availability of mobile, ubiquitous and pervasive technologies that offer multiple choices for staying in touch, and capturing and storing information about learners’ interactions in and with their environment. These developments offer enormous potential for technology to support learners as they interact with the multiple locations, tools, people and knowledge that make up their personal learning context. However, along with this potential come several challenges. One of these challenges is to develop a clearer understanding of the nature of the relationship between learners and tutors that can help us to fulfil this potential. Learners may be able to drive their interactions with technology, but evidence suggests that without support these interactions are still relatively unsophisticated.

In this presentation I will consider how a focus on understanding more about a learner's context, as defined through their interactions in and with the world, might help in the development of a negotiated learning and teaching process. A process in which tutors who know more than learners about learning and about the subject or skill to be learnt can support learners who may know more than their tutors about some aspects of the technological tools that might help them to learn. Such an approach emphasizes the need to help both learner and tutor to adapt the resources available to them at any particular place and time to best support their learning needs. I will also explore how this approach might support learners to be more active in the construction of their own contexts for learning and the implications this has for institutions.

PREVIEW: Without vision, we perish

Gemma McLean

The aim of the PREVIEW project is to deliver problem-based learning for healthcare students within the Multi User Virtual Environment, Second Life.

PBL scenarios have been developed at St George’s University London for foundation year paramedic students and at Coventry University for MA Health and Social Care students. The paramedic scenarios are based on widely used resources known as virtual patients - online, narrative-driven cases that test students’ decision-making skills and their ability to apply their knowledge to realistic scenarios. The Health and Social Care scenarios are based on face to face PBL scenarios, which have been specifically designed for use in Second Life.

The scenarios take advantage of the interactive technology that Second Life offers. The paramedic scenarios allow avatars to use virtual equipment to treat virtual patients, which are actually intelligent mannequins with touch sensitive sensors, while the Health and Social Care scenarios feature machinima videos and artificially intelligent non-player characters.

The benefits of using a MUVE over traditional text based scenarios include:

• An increased level of collaboration available between students. This is particularly useful for distant learners, as is the case with the Health and Social Care students, who otherwise would not have had this level of collaboration.
• An improved level of interaction. Scenarios adapts dynamically to reflect the decisions the students have made, thereby providing a much more realistic and interactive level of learning.
• Second Life also provides a greater context to the scenarios, by immersing the user in a virtual environment that is relevant to the situation. For example a busy London street and a countryside care complex have been built within Second Life as an interactive stage for scenarios.

This presentation will demonstrate the implementation of problem-based learning scenarios in Second Life and will illustrate how the technology has enhanced the learning experience. It will also offer the opportunity to discuss and critique the scenarios, development and implementation in to Second Life.

 

The Life Cycle of a Re-usable Learning Object

Peter Reed

This animated presentation will aim to demonstrate the layers of complexity that the ReForm Project has experienced around locating, re-using and re-purposing material for online teaching and learning . We have found that easy re-use or repurposing of teaching and learning material depends upon deliberate actions in the original design of those resources. Our presentation will therefore illustrate the life cycle of a reusable learning object and the key questions that must be addressed including: location of suitable material, copyright and Intellectual Property Rights, software issues, accessibility, adaptation a view to future re-use or repurposing, metatagging and records management, and finally, where and how the object is stored to enable opportunities for wider re-use.

 

Future Learning: Desire or Fate?

Gilly Salmon

In my view we have a small window of opportunity of unprecedented freedom in which to create a fantastic future for learning in Higher Education.

Einstein told us that we cannot solve the significant problems of today at the same level of thinking that caused them to occur in the first place. As we move away from technologically determined views of learning futures, fresh perspectives are creeping into curriculum design- from social, cultural and knowledge innovations. As Diana Laurillard points out: we 'do not lack ambition'. However, the transformation pathways that we seek are as yet still muddy tracks, unacknowledged by our GPS devices.

I will explore the growth, the trends, the discontinuities and the challenges... and invite your thoughts and signposts.

 

Achieving transformational change - making it happen

Mark Stiles and Peter Bullen

Peter's abstract:  CABLE - a process to support and implement change - experiences at the University of Hertfordshire.

Blended learning is at the heart of the University’s teaching and learning strategy. We describe blended learning as “harnessing technology to enhance learning, teaching and assessment” . Our experience has been that academic staff have developed an extensive use of our managed learning Environment and other technologies, though very often as an addition to traditional face to face teaching, rather than fully in a fully integrated curriculum. We wanted to develop a more integrated and sustainable approach and developed CABLE (Change academy for blended learning enhancement) as a process to help support and achieve transformational change in learning and teaching. The presentation will describe the thinking behind CABLE, provide greater detail of the CABLE process and supporting tools, discuss critical success factors and provide some very brief examples of outcomes and deliverables.

Mark's abstract:  The term "eLearning" has been deprecated...

Staffordshire University was an early adopter of eLearning on an institutional scale and had been very successful both in terms of "penetration" and in embedding eLearning into the policies and business processes of the University. However a couple of years or so back it became apparent that: the rate of change was slowing, the use of the VLE-based eLearning provision was becoming if anything less, rather than more innovative, and the the very act of embedding had become a barrier to innovation. This lead to research into the "tensions between innovation and control" culminating, following considerable internal consultation in the development of a new five-year "Technology Supported Learning Strategic Plan" focused on meeting the University's business goals via a process of diversification of the tools and systems used and an approach focused on sustaining innovation and meeting the needs of an institution delivering offerings covering flexible, work-based and negotiated learning as well as more conventional courses. This talk will cover the background, genesis and adoption of this new approach, and describe the various approaches, many focused on communities of practice, and others designed specfically to diversify delivery and support, which are being used and developed. The "whole" is now being drawn together in the new JISC ENABLE project, funded under the Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design programme.

 

Listening to learners: interactive case studies

Gemma Towle and Rob Howe

The JISC/HEFCE funded E4L project (E-learning for Learners) has been investigating learners' opinions and experiences about e-learning from adult and community learning, further and higher education; particularly three core themes of their transitional periods, use of shadow technologies and light bulb moments. Through recorded semi-structured interviews and careful analysis of the data the project would like to present their interactive case studies (ICSs) produced from the interview footage and covering themes including design and delivery of e-learning and transitions. The ICSs allow the user to not only view the themed and categorised clips but allow interaction through the use of reflections and recommendation of clips to others. With introduction through the use of a presentation and links to the ICS themselves, delegates can explore, reflect and recommend in the ICS web site itself or discuss with the project team in the conference’s discussion area.

 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (an avatar): Three Principles to Guide Teaching in MUVEs.

David White

The Open Habitat project is piloting the use of MUVEs for teaching and learning with two groups: First year undergraduate art and design students based at Leeds Metropolitan University and distance life-long learners studying philosophy at Oxford University. Using an appreciative enquiry methodology the project has extracted a number of headline ‘principles’ that can be used as underpinning guides when teaching in MUVEs. This presentation discusses three of these principles and the associated social and practical implications for teaching practitioners and their students:

Socialization before Collaboration What does the term ‘collaboration’ really mean in these environments? How does it differ from f2f situations?

Control the Flow The speed and multimodal nature of communication in the predominantly synchronous MUVE needs to be managed without killing the potential flexibility and agility of teaching sessions.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (an avatar): Your avatar becomes an anthropomorphised envoy for your mood and state (physical and mental). What steps can be taken to ensure that your avatar is in sync with the message you wish to project?

 

Mobile technologies – disruptive or enabling?

Andrew Williams and Alistair McNaught

Andrew's abstract: This presentation will examine the outcomes emerging from the KASTANET Project, managed by Kingston College, with respect to the enabling and disruptive impact of mobile learning. The project, which is funded by JISC’s HE in FE E-Learning Programme, has explored the role of SMS services and podcasting in the context of a large access to science programme managed by Kingston University and taught at Kingston College. Clear benefits in using mobile platforms for accessing content, communicating and processing administrative data have emerged. However, the introduction of new mobile-based approaches has also disrupted traditional patterns of learning and teaching, lead to resistance in some areas amongst both tutors and students and created a range of issues and problems for technical support staff.

Alistair's abstract:Mobile learning is disruptive to the extent it is institutionalised.  Big projects requiring big investments and big bureaucracies are more likely to result in disruption and less likely to result in genuine enabling - the focus of control is in the wrong place with the wrong people.  Real enabling takes place primarily at learner level when the learner realises the independence they can gain from timely and effective use of mobile learning.  To facilitate this learning, tutors and teaching staff need to adapt practices. This is not necessarily disruptive (indeed it could be enabling). Disruption is caused by a poor match between expectation and reality. In this context, Small is Beautiful remains the passport to sanity. But there is another kind of disruption where learner independence threatens traditional transactions of teaching and learning. Where learners - particularly those with support needs - are empowered the very paradigm of learner support is challenged and undermined. Enhancing or disrupting? For whom?