Notes from TERG meeting 19th May
We had a visitor at our May meeting – Ebba Ossiannilsson from Lund University in Sweden. Ebba is visiting the Open University for a short period in connection with her research on quality in e-learning. We hope Ebba is enjoying her time here.
Several group members were away, so there were only a few of us: Jon, Andy, Mirabelle, Karen and Ebba.
We started with the usual news and updates. In brief:
Mirabelle, has submitted a journal paper on peer feedback. She is also working on a second paper with a colleague in the Department of Languages. She will now be moving on to write a book chapter.
Jon has started work on his two projects within the MCT and Science ‘Esteem’ initiative: computer-marked exams; and confidence-based assessment. He is pursuing ethics and student research clearance, and is due to present a poster at an assessment conference.
Andy’s SusTEACH project is underway. This project, funded by JISC, will investigate the environmental impact of teaching and learning using technology. Data will be gathered from students and teachers at several universities, including the OU.
Karen has submitted a journal paper, co-authored with Judith, Frances and Helen, on tutors’ experiences of using Elluminate audioconferencing for teaching.
We moved on to discuss some administrative business related to the group budget, the department student research day (June 14th) and a possible TERG research day some time in the summer.
We then spent some time discussing two papers related to the concept of ’digital natives’:
- Mark Prensky (2009) H. sapiens digital: From digital immigrants and digital natives to digital wisdom. Innovate 5 (3).
- Chris Jones, Ruslan Ramanau, Simon Cross, Graham Healing (2010) Net generation or Digital Natives: Is there a distinct new generation
entering university? Computers & Education 54 722–732.
Mirabelle also pointed us to a paper by Bullen et al. which investigated the digital natives idea in Canadian universities.
Our discussion largely focused on the idea of ‘digital wisdom’, as introduced in the article by Prensky. We considered what ‘wisdom’ might mean in the context of education. Ebba introduced us to the German term bildung, which seemed related, and expressed the broad ideas of learning, teaching and personal development.