Designing informal learning experiences for early career academics using a knowledge ecosystem model

This article presents a ‘knowledge ecosystem’ model of how early career academics experience using information to learn while building their social networks for developmental purposes. Developed using grounded theory methodology, the model offers a way of conceptualising how to empower early career academics through (1) agency (individual and relational) and (2) facilitation of personalised informal learning (design of physical and virtual systems and environments) in spaces where developmental relationships are formed, including programmes, courses, events, community, home and social media. It is suggested that the knowledge ecosystem model is suitable for use in designing informal learning experiences for early career academics.     

Making sense of learner and learning Big Data: reviewing five years of Data Wrangling at the Open University UK

Most distance learning institutions collect vast amounts of learning data. Making sense of this ‘Big Data’ can be a challenge, in particular when data are stored at different data warehouses and require advanced statistical skills to interpret complex patterns of data. As a leading institute on learning analytics, the Open University UK instigated in 2012 a Data Wrangling initiative. This provided every Faculty with a dedicated academic with expertise data analysis and whose task is to provide strategic, pedagogical and sense-making advice to staff and senior management. Given substantial changes within the OU (e.g. new Faculty structure, real-time dashboards, two large-scale adoptions of predictive analytics approaches, increased reliance on analytics), this embedded case study provides an in-depth review of lessons learned of five years of data wrangling. We will elaborate on the design of the new structure, its strengths and potential weaknesses, and affordances to be adopted by other institutions.     

Parent question use during shared reading time: How does training affect question type and frequency?

This study was designed to examine whether participation in a shared reading workshop alters the frequency with which parents ask their children questions during book reading sessions, particularly questions designed to strengthen component reading skills that they may not have known about before training. Participants in the reading workshop series (N = 57) were taught strategies for asking questions about story content and word structure to build children's language and literacy skills. Findings suggest that parents may be somewhat familiar with traditional dialogic reading strategies focused on story content and utilize them without instruction, whereas parents may be less knowledgeable about sound or print‐focused skills and do not employ strategies focused on word structure until instructed to do so. It is also notable that parents do not use all story content prompts equally. This information can be used by school psychologists to refine the messages educators share with parents about how to best support their children's reading development.     

Constituting information technology research: the experience of IT researchers

The collective consciousness of effective groups of researchers is characterized by shared understandings of their research object or territory. In this study, we adopted a phenomenographic approach to investigate information technology (IT) research, and its objects and territories, as they are constituted in the experience of IT researchers. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with researchers representing different sub‐disciplines. Analysis revealed the variation in meaning associated with the idea of IT research; and the awareness structures through which participants experience variation in ways of seeing the object and territories of IT research. Eight ways of seeing IT research were found. The outcomes of our project appear to make visible the changes and developments that are an essential part of the character and experience of contemporary IT research.     

What makes a skilled writer? Working memory and audience awareness during text composition

This study investigated the role of working memory capacity as a factor for individual differences in the ability to compose a text with communicative efficiency based on audience awareness. We analyzed its differential effects on the dynamics of the writing processes, as well as on the content of the finished product. Twenty-five graduate students composed a procedural text explaining how to assemble a model turbine. They were free to consult a documentary source, featuring captioned pictures of turbine parts and assembly steps, at any time. Graphomotor and eye movements were recorded using ‘Eye and Pen’ software with an eye-tracker and digitizing tablet. Results showed that high WM capacity writers used a different strategy to explore the visual source, making longer writing pauses and producing more detailed procedures, and achieved the communicative goal more efficiently, by introducing more reader supports. In conclusion, we discuss the feasibility of audience awareness training.     

FIRST YEAR IMPLEMENTATION OF A PROJECT-BASED LEARNING APPROACH: THE NEED FOR ADDRESSING TEACHERS�� ORIENTATIONS IN THE ERA OF REFORM

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which three teachers’ professional experience and existing orientations toward teaching and learning mathematics and science influenced their implementation of a project-based curriculum (i.e. project-based learning (PBL)). Data sources included interviews, videotapes of classroom activity, and a teaching philosophy questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted using an iterative coding technique. We found coherency between the teachers’ perceived orientations and their emergent ideas about PBL, their sense of PBL as being compatible with their goals, and the specific challenges with which they struggled. All the teachers wanted their students to be successful; however, different definitions of success led to quite different approaches toward teaching, and for the most part, these differences appeared to have occurred because of existing orientations the teachers held for teaching their discipline. Implications for professional development taking into account teachers’ orientations and thus their professional experience are discussed, as well as disciplinary challenges to using PBL.     

ROLF—an open learning delivery system

The Resourced Open Learning Facility (ROLF) has been developed by the UK Skills Training Agency (STA) as a means of delivering off-the-job skill training in the national network of 60 skillcentres. STA introduced ROLF as a pilot scheme in six skillcentres at a time when the government was introducing a new programme for the long-term unemployed (Employment Training). The authors evaluated the pilot scheme and concluded that ROLF was working well for low achieving adults. ROLF is also important because it is a systematic approach to open learning delivery in a chain of centres under the same management. Most educational technology literature about open learning features materials, rather than delivery.