CALRG Annual Conference 16 June 2015
Day 2 Paper Presentations:
Jennie Lee Building, Meeting Room 1
This is a semi-live blog of Martyn Cooper’s notes from Day 2 of the OU’s Computer and Learning Research Group’s annual conference in 2015. |
9:30-9:45 |
Opening remarks Patrick McAndrew – IET Director (not blogged) |
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Session I – Chair: Rebecca Ferguson |
9:45-10:15 |
Eileen Scanlon
Collaboration and interdisciplinarity in Technology Enhanced Learning Research
- I am an educational technologist – what is that?
- – Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) (EU term)
- – eLearning (also widely used)
- Missionary zeal about working in TEL
- Educationalist think they are teaching computer scientists about the real world
- Computer scientists think they are teaching educationalists how to use computers “properly”
- The trials of interdisciplinary work! E.g. even a term like “scenario” means different things to different disciplines
- Need mediating artefacts – e.g. diagrams giving high level system view and function specification
- The challenge of where to publish when undertaking interdisciplinary work and still score points for the REF (UK National Research Assessment Exercise that takes place every 7 years or so)
- Are you really interdisciplinary? – It is hard to work this way however necessary and rewarding.
- Eileen – shows photo of an EU project team and highlights the range of disciplines represented
- Working with mutual respect even if have to suspend disbelief and work with the methods of another discipline
- What is the difference between interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary – suggests it is that new knowledge results from the collaboration specifically
- When you start to look at the complexity of the infrastructure around TEL – bricolage (a tinkerer who works with the tools)
- TEL is more than research informed products
- Strategic Research Investment (“OpenTEL”)
- The OU is investing in this area and in IET among other units – giving funding for additional PhD studentships.
- Working with colleagues in KMi, Science, NPL, ….
- Invitation for project ideas for interdisciplinary work to exploit this investment
- Eileen will be continuing work on interdisciplinarity working with Josie Taylor (former Director of IET) who is returning as a consultant
Brief question time |
10:15-10:40 |
Mark Gaved, Iestyn Jowers, Gary Elliott-Cirigottis
Makespaces: distributed design studios for distributed design students?
- A new project – it started yesterday!
- Interdisciplinary project
- Manufacturing is changing – globalisation – companies need to move quickly
- EPSRC – call for “Re-distributed manufacturing”
- Royal College of Art talks about “Makerspaces”
- Easier to ship “bits” (digital data) than wood of steel
- Project draws a network of involved parties together
- Makespaces – e.g. community workshops with 3D printers as well as traditional wood/metal working skills and tools, knitting and fabric work, …
- Work towards personal goals, towards employment, …
- The OU’s interest is that they teach design and need access to such facilities so that students can build prototypes
- Informal and formal learning
- Students have different objectives for their learning and therefore different objectives for accreditation
- Students very interested in soft-skills
- Design Dept. has small workshop where students can send in designs over the Internet and have prototypes manufactured
- Project conducting a feasibility study
- Working with workshops in Glasgow (MAKLAB) and Milton Keynes
- Project objectives; 1. Identify key challenges; 2. Investigating models of collaborative learning and 3. Exploring forms of accreditation
- 2 workshops this summer, the first at MAKLAB the second at the OU around accreditation
- Case Studies – Students will design a full-sized chair and get it manufactured
- Thinking about technical skills and communications skills
Brief question time |
10:40-11:05 |
Shailey Minocha, Steve Tilling, Tom Argles, Nick Braithwaite, David Burden and James Rock
Pedagogical advantages of 3D virtual field trips and the challenges for their adoption
[I am flagging as a live blogger so no notes made of this presentation] |
11:05-11:30 |
TEA/COFFEE |
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Session II – Chair:Beck Pit |
11:30-11:55 |
Annika Wolff
Smart tourists: Using mobile technology to close the gap between physical and conceptual neighbourhoods across cultural points of interest
- Or “Mobile Technology to Support Tourism”
- Museum narratives:
- – regions within the museum with a thematic coherence
- – temporal relationships
- – conceptual path based
- – notion of conceptual proximity
- City Narratives
- – things are more haphazard (cities have developed organically)
- – physical coherence (you visit the place that is closest but not necessarily thematically related)
- – e.g. Shakespeare and Stratford upon Avon but people also visit things not related to Shakespeare
- Mobile devices can support tourist by:
- – location services
- – personalised tours and advise
- (but people don’t necessarily want to be told where to go!)
- – propose conceptual tour guide
- how are things within the city related to each other (but no directive as to where to go)
- Studies:
- – 4 Square data – next venue checking data used to create
- Bath, York and Stratford upon Avon (finding walking distances from Google Maps)
- People have fairly predictable behaviour – usually nearest place next
- Next phase to investigate conceptual coherence
- – Control study (in Ambient Lab) investigating how guides effect behaviour
- Virtual tour guides using QR codes
- Preliminary results – 15/20 chose linear route; wanted to know how places were related; wish list for relationships
- Summary:
- – Physical and conceptual paths don’t align in city tours
- – Tourists want to know how places are related but don’t necessarily want (or benefit from) following a physical coherent route
- – Can be supported in discovering a city’s narratives through a conceptual tour guide
Brief question time |
11:55-12:20 |
Trevor Collins
Enabling innovation in technology-enhanced learning through co-research
[This presentation not noted because I had business elsewhere in the university] |
12:20-12:45 |
Andrew Brasher, Ann Jones, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Mark Gaved, Eileen Scanlon, Lucy Norris
Designing and evaluating incidental learning
[This presentation not noted because I had business elsewhere in the university] |
12:45-13:10 |
Mark Gaved, Richard Greenwood, Alice Peasgood
Location triggered language learning using beacons
[This presentation not noted because I had business elsewhere in the university] |
13:10-14:00 |
LUNCH |
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Session III – Chair:Liz Fitzgerald |
14:00-14:25 |
Bea de los Arcos, Rob Farrow, Beck Pitt, Martin Weller
Building Understanding of Open Education: An Overview of the Impact of OER on Teaching and Learning
- OER Hub – The Hewlett Foundation funded
- Do people use OER differently than other online materials?
- Data:
- – Quantitative and qualitative used is dialogue
- – 20+ surveys
- – 60+ interviews
- – Large-scale survey- 7498 respondents from 182 countries
- – 11% declare a disability
- Does OER improve student performance and satisfaction?
- – 40-50% respondents think yes
- To what extent does “open” make a difference?
- – 80% educators adapt OER to their needs
- – 38% create their own resources
- – but only 15% share them online with an open licence
- – 27% have added a resource to a repository
- Strong evidence that educators more reflective about their teaching when using OER
- 60-70% students and educators think OER saves students’ money
- and 45-50% think saves institutions money
- 89% students us OER because it is free
Brief question time |
14:25-14:50 |
Lucy Norris, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Andrew Brasher, Ann Jones, Mark Gaved,
Eileen Scanlon, Jan Jones
Conducting a field trial in Milton Keynes: Lessons from the MApp
[This presentation not noted – cigar break!] |
14:50-15:15 |
Chris Douce, Dave Mcintyre and Jon William
TT284 Web Technologies: The tutor’s experience
- Module teaches something of the “magic” behind the WWW
- 4 Blocks from basics of HTML to Web Architecture, Mobile Content and Applications, and Managing Web Development Projects
- Case studies based on running (as a sport)
- Objective – to understand the tutor’s experience
- – to identify their challenges
- – to understand the connections between the different module levels
- Methodology
- – interviews with 14 interviews – but the tutors wrote the interview questions
- – (had underestimated how hard qualitative research is!)
- Initial findings
- – “they would not shut up!”
- – two types of students – little experience and lots of experience
- – opportunity to develop skills in practice based computer programming – debugging, coding, algorithms,control structures, etc.
- Block 2:
- Javascript, PHP, SQL
- Regular expressions
- Not enough context about PHP (i.e. content management systems)
- Mobile app tool (AppInventor) “an unnecessary diversion”
- OU Live – differences of opinions and experience
- In Manchester there is a cluster of Tutors working together
- Using OU live to demonstrate code – shared screen
- Using OU Live to record videos (how tos)
- “Difficult to get students speaking” to each other – tactic stay silent or have an opener
- iCMAs could be helpful
- Generally like the tutor notes
- Module teams really responsive
Brief question time |
15:15-15:35 |
TEA/COFFEE |
15:35-16:00 |
Session IV – Chair: Canan Blake
Chris Edwards, Maria Luisa Perez Cavana
Improving language learning and transition into second language learning, through the Language Learning Support Dimensions (LLSD)
[This presentation not noted because I had business elsewhere in the university]
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