{"id":1652,"date":"2015-12-03T16:57:27","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T15:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2015-12-03T16:57:27","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T15:57:27","slug":"new-teaching-and-learning-trends-revealed-in-ous-annual-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/education-languages-health\/education\/new-teaching-and-learning-trends-revealed-in-ous-annual-study\/","title":{"rendered":"New teaching and learning trends revealed in OU\u2019s annual study"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0OU\u2019s Innovating Pedagogy Report<\/a>\u00a0takes a look into the crystal ball to see how tomorrow\u2019s teaching and learning practices could change\u00a0education.<\/p>\n

It’s compiled annually by The Open University and this year was created in conjunction with SRI International<\/a>, the US-based research institute. The report highlights the top 10 trends which it predicts will have the most influence on how education. These include learning, teaching and assessment in the post-school sector and how they might change over the next decade.<\/p>\n

Professor Mike Sharples, Chair in Educational Technology at the OU\u2019s Institute of Educational Technology is the lead author of this year\u2019s report and he\u2019s picked out three emerging trends as:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Embodied learning<\/p>\n

This is the concept of the mind and body working together to support learning. The increase in wearable sensors which gather physical and biological data are starting to make this more of a reality. Professor Sharples says embodied learning could allow students to become their own research labs. This approach has been trialled on an OU project, xDelia, (Xcellence in Decision-making through Enhanced Learning in Immersive Applications). The project is developing and exploring the use of serious games linked to physiological sensors. These\u00a0detect and address the impact of people’s behaviours, habits and emotional states when they make financial decisions.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Analytics of emotions<\/p>\n

Here, the concept focuses on analysing students\u2019 emotions as they study and work through assignments. In the future, the report predicts devices like eye trackers and facial recognition software will analyse students\u2019 emotional states when they are learning. For example, they can track whether students find the content boring or frustrating, all of which can be fed back into course design. It means that understanding where students are struggling can help teachers and online learning systems offer more personalised responses.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Stealth assessment<\/p>\n

Through stealth assessment, data will be collected about students as they learn online in educational games to detect students\u2019 skills in problem solving and creativity. Concerns have been raised around collecting vast amounts of student learning data. The OU is the first university in the world to develop and put into practice a policy for the ethical use of student data. Universities around the world are looking at this work as a model as the ethics of this research were drawn up in conjunction with OU students.<\/p>\n

Innovating Pedagogy 2015 is for teachers, policy makers, academics and anyone interested in how education may change over the next 10 years. The OU takes the lead on this annually. The OU\u2019s Technology Enhanced Learning is a research priority area which generates ideas which shape the future of massive-scale learning.<\/p>\n