Technology and Education Research Group

Yesterday we had a meeting of the group. There were a few apologies (people who were ill or tied up with other work). The members there were: Karen, Judith, Mirabelle, Nicky, Andrew, Ian & Wendy. 

We spent the first part of the meeting updating each other on our research. Here’s a quick summary:

Wendy is writing a journal paper about using Tablet PCs for marking, based on her COLMSCT project work. She’s also working with a colleague on a couple of other conference papers.

Mirabelle’s paper on feedback is now in print – congratulations to her! She also has another under review. She hopes to collaborate with colleagues in the Modern Languages Dept to apply the work further.

Judith and Ian have some work on plagiarism to carry forward. They already have a conference paper on this (with Nick Heap) and now want to write a journal paper.

Nicky and Andrew have plans for research on work-based learning focused on the Cisco Academy programme. They already have a conference paper about using synchronous communication technology to support learners carrying out practical work online.

Karen has been researching students’ use of wikis in two courses, together with John, Judith and Helen. She is now going to move on to look at use of synchronous conferencing (Elluminate). 

For the second part of the meeting we discussed the following paper:

‘Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning’

by John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, Paul Duguid

Educational Researcher, Vol. 18 No. 1 (Jan-Feb, 1989) pp. 32-42.

This paper discusses the idea of ‘cognitive apprenticeship’ and the benefits of learning activities that are grounded in authentic activity.  We discussed whether learning is always better if it is situated or whether there is a role for more abstracted learning and teaching.

We focused particularly on the concept of enculturation into a community, and how this might apply (or not) in our courses.  Is it possible to take our students into the authentic culture of their subject domain, or are we enculturating them into academia, or just into the OU culture?

We also discussed apprenticeship, and how this might apply in work-based learning courses – and other courses. For example, can learning via some kind of ‘apprenticeship’ take place in a student discussion forum? Might a synchronous technology be more suited – because of the to-and-fro interaction that is needed?

For the future we hope to have peer support sessions where group members can gain supportive critical feedback on drafts of papers that they are developing. We also plan to have a joint meeting with the Society and Information Research Group. We thought that possible readings for a future joint meeting might be something by Wenger on Communities of Practice and/or an article by Rob Kling about social aspects of Technology. Suggestions welcome – do add a comment to this post!

The faculty will have some studentships available to departments and research groups.  So it would be great to come up with:

- interesting project ideas

- good potential students

The studentships could be collaborations with other research groups within the faculty, or elsewhere in the university.

Next deadline for the process is 1st March!

I am beginning to wonder if one can contract an inverse blogophobia instead of the fear of blogs themselves, the fear that you are going to miss something, somewhere from someones blog. Been tapping away with iGoogle and have managed to create a browser home page which is starting to collect together various feeds via Google Reader, GMail, Google Docs etc.

In this information rich age I feel that I need to be able to corall my information sources into one locale (will be directing this site into the same portal) and take a lesiurely meta-view of what occurs.

With different VLEs, Cisco, Cisco Research, Packet Tracer development, Firstclass (it is a sort of VLE) and our many organisational sites as well as fave blogs, social networking (the facebook life means a need to get a life), the idea of RSS/Atom syndication may be noble, but the reality is considerably more challenging.

Ah well, i am sure it will all come together one day … isn’t human nature like that, or not.

The next EATING talk will take place on Thursday 19th February at 2.30 in the David Gorham Library (Venables N1015):

‘Quality Assurance methodology applicable to e-learning in Universities’

Keith Williams

Keith has been working with OUVS colleagues on the EADTU managed E-xcellence project to develop a Quality Assurance methodology applicable to e-learning in Universities.

The project has developed Quality Criteria, an associated manual and Guidelines for Assessors. An online survey tool provides a Quickscan level of assessment and the materials will also support a peer review assessment methodology.

In the initial funding period the project team developed the methodology and trialled it in three institutions. In the current second phase of funding the trials have been extended to cover institutions in twelve countries in the EU more broadly.

Keith will introduce the methodology and tools, discuss the differing quality cultures encountered in the project and reflect on the experience of participating in a multi national project. If time permits, there may be an opportunity to ‘play’ with the Quickscan online. Please bring your laptop if you are interested in doing this.

All welcome. Refreshments provided.

Here is a selection of recent publications by members of the group:

Bissell, C C and Williams, J P (2008). Coping with a changing world: the UK Open University approach to teaching ICT. In: International Technology, Education and Development Conference: INTED2008, 3-4 March 2008, Valencia, Spain.

Fisher, Wendy A. (2008). Digital Ink Technology for e-assessment. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications (EISTA 2008), 29th June – 2nd July 2008, Orlando, Florida, USA.

Herman, Clem and Kirkup, Gill (2008). Learners in transition: the use of ePortfolios for women returners to science, engineering and technology. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 45(1), pp. 67–76.

Smith, Andrew and Moss, Nicky (2008). Cisco networking: using Skype and Netlab+ for distance practical learning. In: IADIS e-Learning 2008 conference, 22-25 July 2008, Amsterdam.

Walker, Mirabelle (2008). Feedback, assessment and skills development. In: Rust, Chris ed. Improving Student Learning – For What? Oxford, UK: The Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, pp. 228–240.

Donelan, Helen, Herman, Clem, Kear, Karen, Kirkup, Gill and Whitelegg, Liz (2007). Women’s experiences of online networking for career progression in science, engineering and technology. In: 3rd Christina Conference on Women’s Studies, 8-10 March 2007, Helsinki, Finland.

Ferreira, Giselle M. d. S. (2007). Crossing borders: issues in music technology education. Journal of Music, Technology and Education, 1(1), pp. 23–36. 

Kear, K.L. and Heap, N.W. (2007). ‘Sorting the wheat from the chaff’: investigating overload in educational discussion systems. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23(3), pp. 235–247.

Martin, Ian (2007). Options for authoring curriculum content. JISC, UK.

There will be a meeting of the group on Thursday February 26th, 2.30 – 4.30 pm in the David Gorham Library (Venables N1015).

The first hour will be for discussing research plans and activities.

The second hour will be discussion of the following paper:

Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning

by John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, Paul Duguid

Source: Educational Researcher, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jan – Feb, 1989), pp. 32-42