Mobile Experiences of Historical Place: A Multimodal Analysis of Emotional Engagement

This article explores how to research the opportunities for emotional engagement that mobile technologies provide for the design and enactment of learning environments. In the context of mobile technologies that foster location-based linking, we make the case for the centrality of in situ real-time observational research on how emotional engagement unfolds and for the inclusion of bodily aspects of interaction. We propose that multimodal methods offer tools for observing emotion as a central facet of person–environment interaction and provide an example of these methods put into practice for a study of emotional engagement in mobile history learning. A multimodal analysis of video data from 16 pairs of 9- to 10-year-olds learning about the World War II history of their local Common is used to illustrate how students’ emotional engagement was supported by their use of mobile devices through multimodal layering and linking of stimuli, the creation of digital artifacts, and changes in pace. These findings are significant for understanding the role of digital augmentation in fostering emotional engagement in history learning, informing how digital augmentation can be designed to effectively foster emotional engagement for learning, and providing insight into the benefits of multimodality as an analytical approach for examining emotion through bodily interaction.     

From chalk to keyboard in higher education classrooms: changes and coherence when integrating technological knowledge into pedagogical content knowledge

Abstract

The European Higher Education Area has promoted reconsidering the role played by teachers at universities. Faculties are expected to design learning activities that promote the acquisition of competencies among students. In this context, technologies have garnered prominence as they contribute to creating student-centred learning environments. This study answers these research questions: (1) To what extent has university teaching changed with the implementation of digital technologies in university classrooms? What technology-based learning activities are incorporated in instructional designs by the teachers? (2) How does the faculty describe the integration of technological knowledge into pedagogical content knowledge when designing and developing technology-based learning activities? (3) According to university teachers, which other factors (intrinsic or extrinsic) determine the use of digital technologies in their learning designs? To answer these questions, we have collected data from two differentiated samples of university teachers using the Inventory of Learning Activities with Technology at the University and semi-structured interviews. First, the results reveal that teachers use technologies to carry out learning activities focusing on the content and the teacher. Student-centred learning activities are only timidly being incorporated. Second, the extent to which such activities are implemented is linked to the teachers’ techno-pedagogical content knowledge. Third, the factors that facilitate or inhibit teachers from using technologies in the teaching–learning process respond to intrinsic aspects, such as teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, but also to extrinsic and contextual issues, such as the discipline taught or institutional policy at the university regarding the use of educational technologies.     

Using Interactive Digital Television to Support Basic Skills Learners

This paper outlines why television, and especially interactive digital television, is an effective medium for reaching people with basic skill learning needs. It describes the Upgrade2000 project, which developed a series of interactive television programmes for use in the home, workplace and training environments, together with a supportive learning surround. The programmes are being broadcast under the series title Give It A Go! The paper particularly focuses on: emerging digital television technologies; the project's framework for structuring learning content; the potential for using digital interactive television in education, highlighting opportunities and constraints     

Working the system: Development of a system model of technology integration to inform learning task design

There has been extensive investigation into factors affecting digital technology integration in learning and teaching, but the complexity of integration continues to elude understanding. Thus, questions about how digital technologies can be best used to support learning persist. This paper argues that methods designed to address complex systems are needed to understand the interplay between teaching, learning and digital technologies. Starting with a developing system model of teachers' technology integration, this study revises the model to include factors of students' experience using digital technologies and beliefs about learning. The revised model is then used to demonstrate possible effects of student experiences in a technologically integrated group learning task. Analysis draws on data from a large-scale Australian study of technology innovation (N = 7406). Data mining techniques are used to identify patterns of students' technology use and perceptions of group work. Findings inform revision of the model to include factors of students' experience and learning and their effects on teachers' practice. Implications for learning design and students' learning experiences are explored.     

Maker culture and Minecraft: implications for the future of learning

Collaborative learning environments found with gaming communities can provide excellent structures to study the way that learners act within informal learning environments. For example, many of these gaming communities encourage gamers to create videogames and virtual world walkthroughs and commentaries. Walkthroughs and commentaries provide gamers information that helps them in game play. We refer to this process of walkthrough creation as digital maker culture. This study explored the phenomena of digital maker culture through a multiple case study design by examining five Minecraft walkthrough creators who created walkthrough repositories on YouTube. Findings suggest multiple levels of experience are needed when players are involved in digital maker communities. These multiple levels of experience are (a) to engage in creating designs for immediate prototypes, (b) to belong to cultural environments that foster collaboration and sharing, and (c) use common design standards. This has implications that could inform innovative instructional practices with digital tools in school environments, in order to foster a more collaborative, participatory classroom experience.     

Cognitive learning styles and digital equity: searching for the middle way

This research is driven by a desire to understand the lifelong learner in the context of styles of learning and the emerging implications of technology enhanced learning for digital equity. Recognising cognitive learning styles is the first step educators need to take in order to be most effective in working with students of diversity and bridging across formal and informal settings. Learning environments as a characterising feature of learning styles have undergone unprecedented change over the past decade with learning environments now blending physical and virtual space. To support the increasing diversity of learners pedagogy has to be fair, culturally responsive, equitable and relevant to the ‘virtual generation’. This, in turn, will inform our understanding of the ‘middle way’ in recognising cognitive learning styles, associated cultural context, and the implications to digital pedagogy equity.     

Facilitating English-language learners' oral reading fluency with digital pen technology

Oral reading fluency is an indicator of overall reading competence. Many studies have claimed that repeated reading can promote oral reading fluency. Currently, novel Web- or computer-based reading technologies offer interactive digital materials that promote English oral reading fluency using the repeated reading strategy; however, paper-based English materials in physical classrooms are still used to train students in oral reading fluency because most students are used to learning environments with paper, pen, and face-to-face interaction. With the growth of digital pen technologies, developing an interactive learning environment that combines printed textbooks and a digital pen to support English-language classroom learning has become feasible. Thus, this work presents a digital pen and paper interaction platform (DPPIP) composed of a student-learning tier, course management tier, and teacher tutoring tier, in which digital pen technologies are integrated with printed textbooks and Moodle course management system, to support the repeated reading strategy for promoting English-language oral reading fluency, learning motivation, and learning satisfaction. Meanwhile, this work also examined whether the proposed DPPIP provides different benefits in terms of the promotion of the oral reading fluency to students with field-dependent and field-independent cognitive styles. Based on the non-equivalent control group design in the quasi-experimental research, this work recruited two junior high school classes from Taoyuan County, Taiwan, to participate in an instructional experiment. One class was randomly assigned to the experimental group, which used the DPPIP to perform the repeated reading strategy in order to enhance English-language oral reading fluency. By contrast, the other class was assigned to the control group, which adopted the traditional paired reading method to support the repeated reading strategy to improve English-language oral reading fluency. Analytical results show that applying the proposed DPPIP to support a regular English-language course in classrooms had significantly positive effects in promoting the English-language oral reading fluency, learning motivation, and learning satisfaction of junior high school students. Moreover, this DPPIP simultaneously helped the experimental group students with the field-independent and field-dependent cognitive styles accelerate their oral reading fluency. Importantly, the oral reading fluency of the experimental group students is positively correlated with the frequency which the digital pen was used.     

Empowering Student Voice through Interactive Design and Digital Making

Over the last two decades online technology and digital media have provided space for students to participate and express their voices. This paper further explores how new digital technologies, such as humanoid robots and wearable electronics, can be used to offer additional spaces where students' voices are heard. In these spaces, young students are invited to shape the design of digital tools and artifacts through the inclusion of their unique perspectives. The authors argue that involving youth in the design and use of tools contributes not only to the creation of meaningful learning experiences but also to the future potential of youth as producers of digital learning technologies.     

Delivering Higher Education to an Emerging Island State with an Emphasis on Instructional Technology

Mobile learning environments are human networks that afford the opportunity to participate in creative endeavors, social networking, organize/reorganize social contents, and manage social acts at anytime, anywhere through mobile technologies. Social acts that elicit identities, develop awareness, cement relationships, ensure connections, and promote interactions are necessary for interactive learning. This study was to understand mobile social presence and how it influences social interaction and relates to online and network social presences. It concluded that mobile social presence is similar to virtual social presence in a way; however, it is different from online and network social presences in the aspects of personalized control, and location-free digital interaction. Mobile social presence is defined as the degree of enriching social context-awareness, managing location-based communication, personalized multi-layered interactivity, and optimized digital and social identities to other intellectuals through digital mobile technologies.     

Experience,represent, apply (ERA): A heuristic for digital engagement in the early years

This paper presents an heuristic that underpinned the development of a range of early years applications (apps) as part of the Early Learning Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Australia (ELSA) project (2016–19). The heuristic was developed to address a range of challenges that accompany the use of digital technologies in the year before formal schooling. These include the role of digital technologies in play-based learning environments, screen time and the importance of agency when young children are using digital technologies. In an increasingly digital world, the issue of screen time looms large as a particularly contested aspect of technology use by young children. The ELSA project responded to this challenge by developing a pedagogical framework that embedded digital technologies into context-rich, play-based STEM learning. The Experience, Represent, Apply (ERA) heuristic discussed in this paper is a component of the project's overall pedagogical framework and provides early years educators with the opportunity, and the know-how, to integrate digital technologies into STEM activities through intentional teaching and play-based engagement. It was evident from educator feedback at the four days of workshops we delivered, and in other comments throughout the year long trial, that the educators were able to embrace the cyclic nature of the ERA heuristic and ensure that the time spent on the tablet (Represent) was connected to contextualised learning opportunities (Experience and Apply). Importantly, the tablets provided affordances for the children to utilise User Generated Content (UGC) to support active engagement when using the tablets.     

An Embodied Cyberlearning Platform for Gestural Interaction with Cross‐Cutting Science Concepts

Research from brain science and the learning sciences support the notion that human cognition is grounded in our sensorimotor engagement with the physical world and that processes of learning can be shaped by our movements and actions. Increasing recognition that effective educational interventions can be seeded with embodied actions is paralleled by recent and rapid advances in sensing and motion capture technologies. These advances allow for a new wave of cyberlearning environments that permit learners to use their bodies to create and manipulate digital representations of core ideas in a variety of learning domains. Drawing on the research literature on embodied cognition and design principles for creating effective embodied educational simulations, we present the design of a cyberlearning platform called ELASTIC³S. We describe the design rationale and preliminary data from a small empirical study of the ELASTIC³S platform that address the potential for enhancing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning and engagement through embodied interaction.     

Tolerable and inclusive learning spaces: an evaluation of policies and specifications for physical environments that promote inclusion in Turkish Primary Schools

Inclusive education (IE), which calls for equal opportunities for students with diverse abilities in the achievement of knowledge, has been developed as a central pedagogical strategy in primary schools worldwide, including those in Turkey. Besides educators, the issue of IE becomes an important discussion area among designers who question the provision of supportive learning environments in terms of inclusion. Equal opportunity, diversity, social justice and participation are necessary parameters for a comprehensive understanding of inclusion and the evaluation of the spatial character of inclusive learning environments. The lack of clarity of ideas about inclusion leads to limited implementation of IE in Turkey. Insufficient provision of school facilities that are necessary for IE and a lack of effective and comprehensive design approaches for physical learning environments further complicate this situation. Design specifications in Turkish regulations regarding inclusive learning environments in primary schools remain too technical, as they merely focus on the issue of disability and special education rather than inclusion. This paper focuses on assessing the conformity of these regulations to universal design (UD), a recent architectural design strategy that supports the idea of inclusion in physical environments through its mission of design for all and design for equity and social justice and seeks to make physical environments accessible, usable and tolerable for all students with diverse abilities.     

Creating next generation blended learning environments using mixed reality,Video Games and Simulations

Summary The goal of this article has been to discuss next generation learning environments and next generation training technologies as well as the learning and design challenges faced in using these. Specifically, we discuss theoretical and design principles of constructivist learning environments and how advanced technologies can potentially support meeting these principles as well as the challenges they may pose to various types of designers, instructional, game, graphic and programming. To address methods for designing complex environments, we also address the use of methodologies and authoring systems with various tools to support the design process. In this context, to illustrate how tools can be used to help instructional design teams manage the complexities of developing for these environments. As an example, we discuss one tool,IIPI CREATE, that supports this process and organizes the development process     

School leaders’ practices for innovative use of digital technologies in schools

School leaders’ practices to support the innovative use of digital technologies for teaching and learning and the conditions for technology-enhanced learning were studied in a 1:1 laptop initiative in two schools over a period of 3 years in Umeå, Sweden. The aim of this paper is to explore, analyze and discuss the possibilities and challenges in the final phase of this 1:1 initiative from the perspective of the school leader. The school leaders saw possibilities in new methods of working, sharing and collaboration, and created a beneficial environment for the use of digital technologies in teaching. The challenges were technical problems, supporting teachers in their work, and finding time to prioritize leadership for the use of digital technologies. How school organizers support school leaders’ practices in creating beneficial conditions for technology-enhanced learning will be important for how school leaders’ practices support, promote, and advance innovative and sustainable teaching and learning environments through the use of digital technologies.     

OECD Work on Technology and Education: innovative learning environments as an integrating framework

This article presents in summary a selection of the work conducted by OECD in the field of technology and education, which has been an on-going focus of OECD work since the 1980s. Recently, much of this has been under the heading of ‘New Millennium Learners’, but it has also included the widening of student achievement surveys towards digital literacy; reviews of e-learning in higher education, surveys on Open Education Resources (OER); technology as a source of innovation; and analyses of the digital resources market and educational technology patents. The article proposes the more holistic focus on ‘learning environments’ through which to analyse the very diverse ways in which technology can be integrated into education and as a design framework. This is drawn from a report of the OECD Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) project to be published in 2013, itself based on 40 case studies from different countries and regions. It suggests that contemporary learning environments should be: i) Innovating the ‘pedagogical core’; ii) Engaging the ‘Design/Redesign Leadership Circle’; iii) Widening connections and capacity through partnerships; and iv) Promoting 21st century effectiveness (based on the principles derived from the 2010 ILE learning research review). The article then applies this framework to show how technology shapes learning environments in many different ways. The article questions over-reliance on individuals navigating successfully to access non-formal learning opportunities and rejects the argument that learning institutions should simply adapt more adequately to available technologies. Instead, technology should be fully exploited in well-designed learning environments.     

Developing a Web 2.0-based system with user-authored content for community use and teacher education

We report on an investigation into the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of an informational and instructional Website in order to generate guidelines for instructional designers of read/write Web environments. We describe the process of design and development research, the problem addressed, the theory-based solution, and the evaluation and testing of that solution. Based on our experience, we then identify sixteen guidelines for future designers and developers of read/write Web-based learning environments. The study demonstrates how read/write Web technologies can be used to address general problems that have intrinsic societal importance; examines implementation of a read/write technology in a real-life context, thereby testing distributed cognitions learning theory; informs the design of similar environments; and provides grounded theory for the design and development of read/write Web learning environments.     

Identifying different registers of digital literacy in virtual learning environments

In this paper social semiotics, and systemic functional linguistics in particular, are used in order to identify registers of digital literacy in the use of virtual learning environments. The framework of social semiotics provides means to systemize and discuss digital literacy as a linguistic and semiotic issue. The following research question was investigated in the paper: What different registers of digital literacy could be identified when students and teachers communicate and interact in a VLE?The research question was answered by, initially, an application of social semiotics to virtual learning environments, and its relation to the knowledge domains of everyday, specialized and reflexive digital literacy. This application was then further developed, using an analysis of a course specific use of a virtual learning environment in a case study. The study identified discrepancies between the digital literacies of teachers, designers and students. These discrepancies mean that a shared semiotic register was sometimes difficult to maintain. The conclusion is that the designers and teachers as co-designers of virtual learning environments need a better understanding of everyday digital literacy in order to design more sufficient learning environments. The paper shows that digital literacy must be considered as a situated practice, and that it concerns functional and communicative competencies rather than acquiring a set of technical skills.     

Exercising older people´s brains in Costa Rica: Design principles for using information and communication technologies for cognitive activity and social interaction

This study is part of a design-based research project aimed at designing a learning intervention for enabling Costa Rican older people to use information and communication technologies for cognitive activity and social interaction. Data from relevant literature, a focus group with older adults, and interviews with professionals teaching older adults how to use information and communication technologies were analyzed, in order to create context-sensitive design principles that could guide the design of learning interventions that meet the needs of older learners. The analysis derived context-sensitive design principles that include wider topics that influence the learning process, such as emotions and stereotypes related to learning about and using information and communication technologies, as well as the social support to that learning. The resulting eight design principles argue for respectful learning environments, in-depth comprehension of changes related to aging, time and space to reflect on emotions related to the learning process, and acknowledgment of participants’ individuality.     

Tool-mediated authentic learning in an educational technology course: a designed-based innovation

This design-based research project is concerned with the design, development and deployment of interactive technological learning environments to support contemporary education. The use of technologies in education often replicates instructivist positions and practices. However, the use of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (C), authentic learning (A), and educational technologies as tools (T) to mediate learning provides an integrated CAT framework to design and use learning experiences that transform not only individuals but also their world view. The work reports on the design, redesign, and evaluation of an honors course on the use of information communication technologies in teaching and learning. Analyses identified a number of design principles useful in conceiving learning tasks to support the theoretical framework. The CAT framework fosters the use of learning mediation through the use of educational tools that support collective knowledge construction of individuals and their communities, rather than replicate the use of technology for instruction.