URL for project website/blog
The project website is at http://www.juxtalearn.eu/
What research questions the project addresses, aims & themes
School and University students studying science and technology often encounter barriers to their understanding of complex concepts. However, unlike in the arts, students are frequently poorly motivated to overcome these barriers. Focusing on 'performance' JuxtaLearn will provoke student curiosity in science and technology through creative film making and editing activities. Computational identification of students' barriers to conceptual understanding will be overcome by scaffolded creative application of concepts in activities juxtaposed to traditional understanding. State of the art technologies will support students' transferable reflections focusing on two pedagogical approaches: juxtaposition performance and reflective performance.
SUMMARY: The main goals of JuxtaLearn are to research, develop and evaluate a pedagogical and technological framework that exploits performance to enhance science and technology learning. The framework is based on:
- computer based identification of personal barriers to understanding,
- technical facilitated understanding of the identified 'threshold concepts' through juxtapositioned performances
- consolidation of new understanding through personal and shared reflective performances tied to formal education processes
Juxtaposition performance: JuxtaLearn iCMAs (Interactive Computer Marked Assessments) will support students' identification of threshold concepts that are their own personal barriers to understanding. Students' understanding will be enhanced by them creating personal performances through application of a theory in a formal activity and then again in a creative juxtaposed activity (e.g. physics used in music DJ-ing, chemistry occurring in kitchens, possible evolution of an alien race). New media and learning analytics of public video resources will facilitate student creative inspiration and further conceptual insight and understanding.
Reflective performance: State of the art systems for automated and personalised film making and editing will support curiosity and creative expression. A deeper understanding will be reinforced through scaffolding reflections on essential elements in applying the theory. Students will, for example, be supported in instigating reflective decisions on what to film, how to film it and what and where to edit. Public displays will enable sharing and commenting of these performances thus encouraging public curiosity and a 'buzz' around specific complex concepts.
How the research questions are addressed by the project (methodology and activity/environment)
Based on exploratory studies that unpack the Juxtalearn platform, implementation is progressed according to system specification, enabling and key technologies. The following scenarios present how these would work in practice to support the learning aims of the project. For illustrative purposes, we focus on the secondary school system, although the same principles will be adopted in the higher education platform. The 4 Scenarios are presented and explained in the sequence of the work packages and the flow between them.
These new learning tools will form two technological platforms for science and computing. The first learning platform will be targeted to young people between the ages of 16 and 18 in secondary education focusing on scientific threshold concepts such as evidence for genetic drift, the application of Darwinian Theory today. The second learning platform will be targeted to University students partaking in distributed learning at a higher education level and will focus on computing threshold concepts such as programming concepts for ubiquitous devices. The consortium has already secured the participation for initial developmental testing at two schools in Sweden and Portugal and full testing at three schools in the UK. Initial schools testing for milestone 2 (reflective understanding) will start at the beginning of the project at pilot site 1. This site will also be used as a central pilot site for milestone 3 (performance systems), 4 (field trials) and 5 (evaluation). The second phase of pilot sites will be set-up during milestone 3 and be used to establish the scalability, EU spread and sustainability of findings from the central pilot site.
School based central pilot site: Radcliffe School http://radcliffeschool.org.uk/
HE based Central Pilot site : The Open University
Follow on pilot sites: Katedralskolan in Växjö, Sweden; Portugal schools, secondary MK and Birmingham schools
Scenario 1: Seventeen-year old Lucy is attending her weekly course in Biology. The learning objective this week is to understand the concept of evolutionary origins. Ms. Brown knows too well that this concept provides a doorway to many other concepts in the subject but that it contains parts that are often difficult for many students to understand (thus it is a threshold concept). Ms. Brown has constructed a common activity that all students must complete. While Lucy has already understood the concept of evolutionary origins, Chris is unable to progress through the activity by focusing on animals' habitats and appearance without consulting the evolutionary tree that demonstrates the mapping of sequences in evolution. In a class of twenty young people, it is a challenging task for Ms. Brown to identify which learner has problems with solving the activity and to guide their understanding. While juggling overlapping discussions with learners of different levels, she is reminded of the Juxtalearn tool, an initiative her school was recently supporting. Using the Juxtalearn teacher management interface, Ms Brown inputs five threshold concepts, which in her experience have been challenging to students' conceptual understanding. She defines the components that in her view are barriers to learning (e.g. in the case of evolutionary origins, focusing on physical animal features) and enablers to learning (e.g. evolutionary trees and fossil maps) and is supported by the system to report on a more creative and unusually relevant learning activities (e.g. physics in music DJing, Evolution of an alien species) that she could use to support the same threshold concept. Ms. Brown remembers a successful activity in which she asked learners to map out the future evolution of an existing creature that in the future could complete one of the learner's favourite activities better than themselves. She remembers with a smile one student's pictures of how cats with thumbs evolved to play the piano. Ms. Brown, is then supported by the system and colleagues to generate an 'Interactive Computer Marked Assessment' for her students, the responses of which are used to build personal profiles for each learner.
Scenario 2: In the classroom both Chris and Lucy click on their completed Juxtalearn profile and choose a concept which the system identified is problematic for both of them. The system then produces two activities for them both to complete individually: 'evolutionary origins' and 'evolutionary development'. Both Lucy and Chris work through the first activity on paper using their Juxtalearn pens [these data pens digitally collect information filled out and once the pen is docked translate these into image files that are linked into a video] . Lucy writes her ideas out in sequence, line by line and she tells Chris she is happy she understands this. Chris looks over Lucy's shoulder to get some ideas, he feels lost but he throws together a mind map which he always enjoys doing. Chris knows he hasn't understood it all but hopes the teacher will be happy with the mind map he's put together with key words he knows apply to this concept, but he doesn't really understand. The two share their understanding with the teacher through automated pencasts of their drawings. They quickly look over their frames and discuss with each other and the teacher their understanding. The tabletop system now asks them to draw out a storyboard in the frames provided for the next activity. Chris gets very excited about the idea of an animal that could play football better than him and chats to Sarah and Peter who are also completing their activities on the tabletop. Lucy is worried she doesn't have any ideas of what a genetic tree should look like in a film. She notices that above her section on the tabletop screen it says 'are you stuck? Look at these videos to help'. Both Lucy and Chris look at the genetic trees to help them work out how their animals would evolve. Lucy copies the genetic tree carefully and adds on the extra branches in the same style. Chris adds on lots of frames which show the animals changing into other animals as they evolve. Lucy carefully puts together a simple story mapping out a similar description to what she did in the first activity. Once they have finished they both go off to film their storyboards which have been transferred to their tablets. Lucy takes clips of diagrams whilst Chris takes lots of clips of plasticine adaptations to the plastic animals they have in class. He gets very involved in showing how each animal still can't play football. They both come back to the table with their tablets which automatically downloads their images. The system then asks them to connect up with their fingers the concept component frames from the first activity to similar frames in the second activity. As Chris does this he suddenly says 'ahhhhh, I get it,' Lucy says 'What' Chris answers 'why we used those trees, how the animals change'.
Scenario 3: Chris, Lucy and their classmates have completed their STEM and Juxtaposition activities. The teacher asks them if they want to share them with the school and other people in their town, and other schools across Europe. Lucy says no but Chris says yes. Chris, Sarah and Peter say yes. The videos they produced are now saved in a repository of exemplars. Pierre, a teacher in Switzerland, uses them as inspiration for his evolution class. George, a student in Greece, decides he is going to try and add his own videos in the repository. Later that day the videos are shown on a large screen display at the school entrance, and at the local library. Learners of all ages who did not participate in the Juxtalearn activities are presented with a stream of the videos. Using their mobile phones Chris's school friends comment on the videos and several of them stop Chris in the corridors to say they liked his video.
Scenario 4: Pablo, a unemployed 20 year old in Portugal, notices these videos when he is in the library filling in an online form for a job. He never really understood or cared about science at school but he finds these videos fun, so watches them. He is intriguided by the idea that other animals could evolve to do some things better than us and after he finishes his application form he wanders into the biology section at the Library.
Findings and outputs
Inspired science and technology teachers often view teaching and learning as a performance, both by themselves and by their students, that must be crafted and supported. These charismatic individuals often teach with a strong focus on performance. In an attempt to spark young people's curiosity and creativity in science and technology, these teachers sometimes try to make learning more relevant to everyday problems by juxtaposing threshold concepts in creative examples and comparing these to traditional examinable illustrations. For example, juxtaposing could bring to life the physics of sound waves and acoustics through DJ-ing in nightclub settings, or play out the bindings between chemical elements through dramatic and dance performances (for example see scenarios 1.3.2). But how does a student learn from these activities rather than simply have fun in a way that is disconnected from formal learning outcomes? JuxtaLearn proposes that it is through reflecting on these creative juxtaposed performances directly in comparison with the more traditional examinable examples that student's progress from a surface to a deeper understanding. To achieve this the system will be developed and evaluated in schools and on OU courses by the project.
Project impact
There is no impact to report yet as the project has only just started.
Publications
There are no publications yet as the project has only just started.
Keywords
Threshold Concepts, Video film making, Reflective Performance, Juxtapose Learning, Feedback mechanisms, mobile learning, public displays, tabletops
People involved
Anne Adams (lead PI), IET, Open University
Eileen Scanlon, IET, Open University
Mike Sharples, IET, Open University
Steve Swithenby, Science, Open University
Marcello Milrad and Nuno Otero, Linnaeus University, Sweden
Ulrich Hoppe, Rhein-Ruhr Institute, Germany
Russel Beale and Asmina Vasalou, Univeresity of Birmingham
Estefania Martin and Pablo Haya, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Rui Jose, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Rick Goldsmith, CatcherMedia
Project partners
Advisory Board Members:
Professor Yvonne Rogers (UCL)
Professor Roy Pea (US Standford)
Dr Simon Buckingham Shum (OU)
Associate Professor Alvaro Ortigosa (Spain)
Dr Sriram Subramanian (Bristol)
Professor Lizbeth Goodman (Ireland)
Mr Stuart Liggins (MK Radcliffe school)
Professor Marc Langheinrich (Switzerland)
Funder(s)
EU framework 7 (funding for 2.1 million)
Start Date and duration
1st October 2012 - 30th September 2015 (3 years)