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More notes from the OU Conference Learning in an open world, from the afternoon session of Tuesday 22 June 2010.
As for this morning, I’m posting the live notes straight in to the appropriate place in the Cloudscape for the conference, and gathering them together here to give a more linear view.
The OU is holding its annual internal Learning and Technology conference in the open this year. The theme is ‘Learning in an open world‘. It’s all entirely virtual, synchronously on Elluminate and asynchronously on Cloudworks. It’s been pretty lively the first morning, with around 125 people using multichannel communications. The Cloudscape for the conference is the place to start for all the information, and #OUConf10 is the Twitter hashtag.
I’m official liveblogger, so I’ve been taking notes and putting them there. I’m gathering them all together here on my blog to give a more linear view of what the conference seemed like for me.
Gill Clough, Gráinne Conole, Eileen Scanlon on xDelia’s Design and Evaluation framework.
Not going to talk too much about the framework, more about the link to games.
xDelia is a pan-European project, €3.2m, looking at effects of emotional bias on financial decision-making of: traders; investors; individuals. Three year project, using bio-feedback (sensors) and serious games. Active workpackages on Traders and investors (OU – OUBS), Financial capability (Bristol), Games development (Sweden), Sensor development (Germany), Evaluation (OU – IET).
Back on to the liveblogging of the CALRG conference – Anne Adams, Tim Coughlan, Trevor Collins, Sarah Davies, et al on ‘Out There and In Here (OTIH) Connected to place, task and others through innovative technologies’.
ESRC/EPSRC Digital Economies project, working with Microsoft and others.
Alison Twiner et al on Focusing on multimodality to observe meaning-making trajectories, through a LearnPhysical Interactive approach to subject teaching and learning.
Chris Thompson from dance group – with Katie Vernon-Smith – from ‘the place‘ to discover dance. International centre for contemporary, creative dance. Primary schools – KS1 and KS2. Exploratory work in language, literacy – funding from DfES, then other Departments and projects. Using movement to teach across the curriculum, and shift to working with the teachers. Now ended up as LearnPhysical interactive.
Looking inside a multi-stranded teaching model, exploring new ways of teaching with digital equipment and theoretical framework. Children making physical metaphors in a class about materials.
Alison – case study of Year 2 class, 20 pupils, one term, four-week topic on Great Fire of London (history), two lessons a week, one in classroom, on in hall (with dance specialist on the LearnPhysical interactive). Many students with English as Additional Language – to helping build communication.
Sociocultural approach to analysis – teacher’s toolkit (Wertsch 1991.) Multimodal, multisensory.
Interactive whiteboard used to display and work with text, images, graphics, video, simulations. PSPs to capture and review pupils’ physical explorations.
The resources were improvable objects; re-used the timeline – prepared slides, added to during teaching. Also used images from PSPs.
Explored teacher’s planned meaning-making trajectory. Now analysing this and the learner’s trajectories.
Someone: Focus on talk, but about dance?
Alison: Was analysis focus, not the teacher’s. As a means to review the data.
Chris: That was the trajectory of the analysis. This is about the metaphor; it’s a collaborative activity, negotiating meanings and space. They negotiate how they’ll do it, and how to represent it, and then have to explain it afterwards. Talk is intertwined; the physical metaphor – linguistic metaphors grounded in the experience of the body. How we conceptualise space is based in our physical experience, and is embedded in our language. Is very complex – socially, psychologically, cognitively.
Ruslan: Electronic whiteboards – is there something that teachers can’t do on a conventional board?
Alison: Yes. One slide among many, can follow on many, couldn’t mark them all up in advance, don’t have to draw them out every time, can do them in advance. Having the photographs from the students on display, visuals, resizing images and videos. Could do some on a regular whiteboard but most of these easier or more fluid on interactive – and many just not possible otherwise.
Kim: Dance and older students – these are young, fairly uninhibited – harder with older learners, especially boys?
Chris: Fine up to Year 6; not much of a problem in Primary.
Someone: They get used to working with each other, get closer, work well together. Sometimes team teach male/female teachers, which seems to help. Experimenting to Secondary is harder.
Chris: We have short 3 minute video of Y6 boys dancing who’ve worked on this since Y2, very uninhibited.
Jon Rosewell: Robocup Junior, includes dance competition, good at getting boys in up to Y6/7, program robot to dance, dance alongside it.
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John Richardson on Preference, performance and pass rates in white and ethnic minority students.
Has a handout, but only on request. This topic keeps coming round – face to face versus online tuition. Especially around the attainment gap between white students and others.
Asian and Black students are less likely to obtain good degrees (1st, 2:1) than White students – across the HE sector. At the Open University specifically … over 2002-5, awarded about 21k honours degrees, only 3.7% were from non-White ethnic groups. And trend for non-White students to do worse is very similar to the sector one. Source of effect is the variations in the attainment at the course level. in 2003 133k students taking courses, 6.8% non-white – same pattern in per-course results.
Considerable concern about this, across the sector, and here.
What about face-to-face versus online tuition? Is possible the gap arises from interactions with tutors and other students. Move to online tuition – are there consequences for the attainment gap? Two possibilities: online environment impoverished so less support for underachieving students; or, ethnicity less salient in online communication, so might reduce attainment gap.
Sample: five pairs of courses in Arts and Management – face-to-face and online tuition, but identical curriculum & assessment. 4620 f2f, 1164 online. Original survey about student experience, remarkably little difference found.
Reanalysis of the data to explore the attainment gap.
Why did they choose the mode? Quasi experimental, but no control over which tuition model chosen by student. 85% white, 6% ethnic minorities, 9% unknown (usually expect 1% refuse). No significant difference between ethnicity profiles of students choosing f2f or online tuition. Preference for f2f was mainly (71-75%) preferred it; didn’t know about online (10% ish), don’t have reliable Internet access. Other reason includes need for personal contact or confidence. For online, more like 55% preferred it, >50% was because other commitments prevent attending tutorials; Other (20%+) was around flexibility or disability/chronic illness. Statistically no significant differences – seem to have similar reasons for choosing.
How did they perform? The students’ marks differed significantly across ethnicity – White students outperform others, apart perhaps from Asian students. Variation in marks was broadly similar with f2f and online tuition.
The attainment gap appears to be independent of both discipline and mode of study.
Pass rates – Arts f2f was similar to online; Management pass rate was consistently lower for online. Possibly because of lack of experience of tutors, or priority for study, and so on. Independently, pass rate varied across ethnicity (Black students worst). Variation in pass rates with ethnicity was similar in Arts and Management.
In the end: students from different ethnic groups are qually likely to choose f2f vs online; give similar reasons for choosing; achieve similar marks; and overall pass rates.
Introduction online tuition doesn’t make the gap any worse. (Phew!) But doesn’t make it any better. The mode of tuition does not seem to be involved – but we do need to find out what those factors actually are.
Questions
Ruslan: Geographical location of Management students – all UK-based, or some in Europe?
John: Thorny issue. Was all students who took the courses. Students who apply online to take our courses (regardless of mode) are asked the same question about ethnicity as UK-only … categories derived from the 2001 census – and so include ‘White British’ etc. That would be a place to look had he found differences but didn’t.
Kim: Did they come in at the same level of achievement, prior attainment?
John: No. Some had not prior educational qualifications, some had PhDs. Is a big predictor of OU performance, but ethnicity gap exists independent of that. Controlling for prior attainment doesn’t remove the attainment gap. In f2f UK HE, it explains about 50% of the gap. But we don’t collect data in the same way as the other universities, since they get A-level points scores.
Canan: Ethnicity question – White British, White Other?
John: ‘BME’ is often the phrase used, but there are White minority ethnic groups, discourse leaves those out. Are these categories ones that students regard as sensible? Yes for most UK students, No for students from outside the UK.
John: We lost ethnicity data for students when they applied on paper – about 25% just not typed in. Online they have to tick something, only about 1% refuse to tick anything.
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Rebecca Ferguson on ‘use of visual elements to support knowledge construction in asynchronous dialogue’.
Currently works on Social Learn project, but this work is from her PhD. About collaborative learning online – asynchronous dialogue. Cooperation, collaboration – discussion, debate and community. Study was on FirstClass (OU tool), but also as used on Flickr discussions, Twitter, Cloudworks.
Real-world situation has more ‘backchannel’ communication – non-language aspects. Gestures, gaze, affect. Contention that there is less of this online.
Textual example – concrete poem, changes the form and content. (example Roger McGough 1971 ’40-love’). Example of journal article analysing it – with page break in the middle of it. It’s hard to talk about these things in academic contexts – the journal insists on its own format, colour, size, pagination, flow. When she writes things up, has to put text in to images to ensure it is displayed correctly.
Theoretical framework – Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) on visual analysis.
Reading paths – are widely known within the culture; can tell when it’s not correct – start in top-left. Reading a Japanese Manga comic is hard if you’re not acculturated to it. Similar/parallel devices in other contexts like journal articles.
Her research on extended learning online at the OU, all on First Class (now superseded by Moodle/VLE). Postings have framings, contexts – header, letter-style format, etc.
Example – separating out ideas with framing. Some structuring not possible in face-to-face. Reply highlighting – again, online possible online to give that structure. Subtle indications about importance.
Seems obvious to people who know how to do this – but not everyone does it well without learning. But can do complex and subtle work around authority and responsibility through quoting, complimenting, mirroring, showing empathy.
Another example of a huge discussion managed through use of colour, headings, layout.
Was talking to Moodle development team, had decided to switch off things like colour, size and so on, because not very important (!).
Many people make huge use of these, they are important.
Size matters – and colour, and layout – without them the sense is lost.
Jon Rosewell: Different students working differently on FirstClass – was it a client versus web-interface issue?
Rebecca: Could be. But was clear in different groups – if someone (usually the tutor) was modelling those behaviour, other people would tend to follow. But if nobody led, nobody did it. Also carried things over from one piece of software to another. So not entirely about the software default setup.
Ruslan: Synchronous communication – students agreeing when to come together for e.g. live voice interaction. We know that’s important. Were there examples of that? Mobile, landlines?
Rebecca: Were certain times when groups came together synchronously, or tried to. Not so much phone. Did do in FirstClass, or IM – when had a time-limited decision to make, or a hard deadline. Didn’t manage to get everybody together because of other demands on their time. Was all assessed collaborative work – so tutor guided them away from e.g. email – some baseline marks for participation online.
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Koula Charitonos, PhD student.
Question: What do you think a museum is? Took some time for museums to agree – but ICOM 2001 have agreed it – includes service of society, open to public, tangible & intangible heritage, education, study and enjoyment.
First physical museum C17th, now a ‘distributed network’ as Museum 2.0. Co-creation important. Focus on podcasting – not from institution, but created by users. Looking at artworks on a website.
Museums are (mainly) about objects; need to know about how to interpret them – Bourdieu on ‘interpretive strategies’. Assumption – if give children opportunities to view art on their terms, then will break down access barriers. Museums investing lots in online; know that they’re visited but not how they’re used in the classroom.
Research framework ‘Inspiring Learning for All’. Five generic learning outcomes – widely used in museum sector.
Case study on Tate Kids – includes ‘my gallery’ feature where users can add artworks, upload their own, comment, rate, share. 43 children in Year 5. Pre/post questionnaire, intervention with pre/post interpretation phases, followup interviews. Qualitative content analysis plus some basic quantitative.
Some interesting responses – I thought of nothing, my mind was blank’ – then had more by end ‘It’s a woman dead in the river and flowers are falling fro the trees above her […]’. Were making observations, but not involved in dialogic conversations, and not interested in that – just appeared as a series of unrelated posts.
‘Artcasts’ were object created by kids in process; audio recording of intepretations on artworks, with researcher as prompter. Thirteen audio files created, about 30-40 minutes long. Entertaining stuff! There were references to artist and title, drawing on social techniques, making up a story, drawing on personal associations (somewhat), and exploring the meaning (a little). Discussed visual elements, but in basic terminology; a few drew on process of art-making. Only one group placed an artwork in a historical context – when prompted to look at the year of creation.
Findings: the kids enjoyed artcasting. Participants were employing a wider range of ‘interpretative strategies’, and use of website can enhance learning, can be beneficial, contextual tools require to enable interpretation and meaning-making process.
Question
Kim: Role of researcher. Would need an adult to do something, or could embed in to software?
Koula: Could be teacher. I was trying not to impose my ideas. Was useful to have another person there.
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Liveblog of two presentations in a row at the CALRG conference.
Cindy Kerawalla and Mark Gaved on OU view.
OU/Nottingham collaborative project funded by EPSRC/ESRC TLRP. Developing a toolkit (nQuire) to support personal inquiry learning across formal and informal settings – launch event next month. Very much an iterative approach. KS3 students – 11-14. Seven trials, 300 students, 7 teachers. Coming to end of third and final year.
Kit consists of: Eee netbooks with toolkit loaded on, plus other equipment – sensors from ScienceScope (humidity, temperature etc), cameras, GPS devices. (Tongue-in-cheek Hint: Give students small memory cards, limits the photos you need to analyse!)
Structuring an inquiry process, task sequencing and orchestration, enabling collaboration.
Four trials at OU – mainly geography. Two on urban heat islands (2008, 2009), with whole-year GCSE groups. Comparing walk across Milton Keynes and Northampton. Toolkit enables hypothesis, data collection, collation, and export. Another on Microclimates (2008), around school playground, collecting data. Again supported by toolkit. Final study after-school club on sustainability of the food production cycle – interested in packaging and storage (rotting!). Less formal context.
Conclusions: supports process of making familiar strange; flexibility; joint negotiation, personalisation of inquiry. Supports informal settings, cognitive engagement, and organisation/monitoring of activity.
Next steps: further analysis, rollout of toolkit nQuire (after launch event mentioned above – currently redirects to PI project page), trials on difference mobile devices, and application to FE/HE.
Shailey Minocha: How adaptive is the toolkit?
Cindy: Can choose data, measures and so on.
Mark: Initial work on structure, but now emphasis on flexibility.
Stamatina Anastopoulou presents.
Process is a bit different from OU version; more explicit mention of the stages in the process.
Trial in Nov 2009 – Noise pollution and birds’ eating habits. Year 8 students (13-year-olds). Whole class development from initial views, expert ecology prompts, to research question. Set of learning activities designed to support sense of ownership of investigation, multiple phases of inquiry, multiple data collection methods, individual, group & class orchestration of activities. Field trip to nature reserve, took sound sensor, GPS, photos (GPS-linked). Then visualisation of data using Google Earth. Site has a lot of noise – train tracks, M1, East Midlands airport. Then at school collected similar data around school grounds. Found that in noisy areas, most food was eaten (counter to prediction) – was because one big bird there was unaffected and ate the lot. Smaller birds ate at other feeders and ate less.
More controlled investigation in a garden as an experiment. Set up feeders – one on a quiet tree, and another with a radio next to it as source of noise. Less food eaten by the noisy tree.
Much data collection – pre/post questionnaires, log files, video, interviews, artefacts, observation notes.
Successes around collecting data, seeing data and children’s responses showing understanding.
Concerns around the time taken, and continuity of teaching.
Critical incidents analysis – children need to understand science practised differently in different contexts; transitions between learning settings are potential source of breakdown. Also problems with institutionally provided devices.
Patrick: Different tools between Nottingham/OU? Did you look at other sequencing tools like IMS, LAMS etc.
Stamatina: Was different, now the same. Did look at other possible tools.
Mark: You saw slightly different versions of the tool, has been developed across project. Local instantiations were different. Have web-based authoring tool, so can create different structures for different experiments. Localising the tool was necessary – e.g. to match language used by teachers.
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Another liveblog from the CALRG conference – this time Pauline Ngimwa on The CERD model: three possible approaches to designing collaborative educational digital libraries.
Work in progress, looking for feedback.
Motivated by own experience working in African educational sector, and disconnect between developers of eLearning programmes and digital library programmes.
Digital libraries can benefit if that apply participatory designs, new web technologies, design collaboratively with users, and along with learning objectives.
Qualitative research work – three case studies in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa. 42 interviews with academics, students, librarians and project staff; observations and document analysis; looking at 11 projects. ‘Almost’ grounded theory.
First approach (C-I) is around collaboration and innovation.
Second approach (E-I-C) around education, innovation and collaboration.
Third approach (I-C-QI) around innovation, collaboration and quality innovation.
Exploring relationship between those.
Questions
Kim Issroff: Who decides on what counts as a quality innovation in I-C-QI?
Pauline: If interviewee, or in the documents, says it.
Anna: Grounded theory – why ‘almost’?
Pauline: Didn’t intend to use Grounded Theory initially, but found in the process that it would be useful. But even now keeps returning to the data.
Anne: Surprising that (1) very large importance of policies, the innovative stuff happens when there’s policy behind it, (2) Being HCI user-centred person, thought collaboration was important, but data found was driven by innovation, and technology innovation specifically. Parallels clear with UK situation.
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Doug Clow's Imaginatively-Titled Blog 