Abstract: Participatory research with disabled students led us to identify a lack of means to represent experiences of study over time, and the diverse personal events, goals, challenges and contexts that influenced these. Prompted by this, a novel platform ‘Our Journey’ was designed with input from a wider group of students and staff. This has provided a basis to consider the various types of activities that educators and students could undertake around representing study journeys, and the potential value of creating, sharing and analysing these self-narratives as a means for communication and reflection. As well as describing some of the pilots and activities that have used Our Journey, this talk will explore existing literature about self-narrative and the connections between this and learning.
Speaker’s bio:
Tim Coughlan is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Technology at the Open University. His research crosses the areas of Education and Human-Computer Interaction, and is particularly focused on the design and evaluation of systems that support inclusion, creativity, and openness in learning. Tim is Accessibility Lead for the Quality Enhancement and Innovation (QEI) strand of IET’s work, and chairs the pan-university Securing Greater Accessibility (SeGA) Coordination Group, and the microcredential HZFM884 Accessibility and Inclusive Learning. As well as Our Journey, he leads ADMINS, a project to design and trial a virtual assistant for disabled students to access support. https://iet.open.ac.uk/people/tim.coughlan