17 September 11:30 Room D109
- Rosemary Stott Ravensbourne
- Carl Smith Ravensbourne
This paper presents an action research project at Ravensbourne, which is now in its fourth iteration, supported by Jisc ‘Innovation through Technology’ funding. Recognizing that both fixed and mobile technology are commonly used to create learning experiences which tie all the requirements of the users’ attention down to screens at the cost of full contextual experience, the paper explores the design, delivery and outcomes of a learning experience which by contrast takes full advantage of the affordances of both the physical (analogue) and the virtual (digital) equally. Further developing the concept of mobile learning tours created by Cook and Smith (2011), the project seeks to transform the habitually dull, passive learning experience of student induction into an interactive, social learning experience by using location-based learning, mobile technology and user-generated content. The large scale learning experience is preserved, but is transformed by employing mobile technology.
Drawing on Vygotsky’s concept of the ‘more capable peer’ (1926), the project engages undergraduate students in Design and Media Production disciplines in a live brief to develop an interdisciplinary concept for new students’ academic induction. Subsequently, the ‘winning’ students work with their peers, academics and a learning technologist to develop and deliver their ideas and facilitate the live experience. Each group of students designs an element of the learning experience which engages their specific discipline skills, whilst requiring them to collaborate across the disciplines to design the final integrated, interactive induction. Co-creation and interdisciplinarity underpin every stage of the project from the development of the assets, the testing and roll-out, through delivery, evaluation and dissemination.
For each iteration, an enhanced tour or ‘induction trail’ of Ravensbourne was created, engaging new learners through challenges and analogue gamification. Relevant locations in the Ravensbourne building were ‘augmented’ by tagging them with audio/film/visual content. The content was triggered on the fresher students’ tablet or phone when s/he entered a particular location or read a QR code or tagged image/object. The aim was for the new students to respond to the content and create new content of their own in small, interdisciplinary groups, facilitated by co-creators and student ambassadors. Then the content was shared on social media and tracked by a team of co-creators at the ‘base camp’, where a live leader board kept track of progress and broadcast the content produced internally and externally via social media. The project methodology employed online feedback sheets, focus groups (including control groups) and ethnographic material generated by students during the induction tours.
The research outcomes demonstrated that students valued highly the transformation of induction from a teacher-led, passive experience into a student-led, social experience and that the learning was more effective and engaging than in the conventional approach to induction.
References
- Cook, John et al (2011), ‘Ubiquitous Mobility with Mobile Phones: A Cultural Ecology for Mobile Learning’, E-Learning and Digital Media, Volume 8, Number 3, 181–196.
- Vygotsky, Lev [1926] (1997), Educational Psychology. CRC: Boca Raton.
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Fashioning spaces for learning
- Darren Gray London College of Fashion, UAL
- Tim Williams London College of Fashion, UAL
- Andrew Cavers London College of Fashion, UAL
Over the past year, London College of Fashion have been investigating the systematic use of Workflow, (a customised instance of the open-source, e-portfolio software ‘Mahara’) to support collaboration and co-creation in a variety of contexts, within courses, in cross-disciplinary projects and with external industry partners. We have found that Workflow can support teaching and learning in a number of ways. It provides a convenient mechanism for staff and external partners to engage with students and review progress and, by recording both individual and group activity, supports effective assessment. For students, it can provide a ‘safe’ space to participate and develop professional identity and practices. Archives of the projects can be used outside the College to articulate, illustrate and evidence the knowledge and skills they have developed.
From an institutional perspective, the platform allows us to deliver a benchmarked solution which can be deployed quickly and cost-effectively, reaching more students with a higher quality intervention than could have been achieved through a bespoke response. Of course the platform imposes its own constraints on stakeholders and comes with a ‘cost’ to both the institution and end users and we have experienced numerous challenges along the way. In this paper, we present a ‘warts and all’ discussion of how we have established and used online, collaborative spaces in LCF using Workflow. We will explore the pros and cons of using in-house vs. external solutions and the ‘conditions for success’ we have identified which encourage and support students and staff to engage in these spaces.
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Making It up as You Go Along: The Iterative Aglie Development of an Online Journaling Tool
- Graham Hibbert Leeds Beckett University
- Ian Truelove Leeds Beckett University
For the past ten years The School of Art, Architecture and Design at Leeds Beckett University has been developing a set of online tools designed specifically to meet the needs of creative courses. Following the example of early Web 2.0 sites like Flickr and Tumblr, these tools have been built initially through an Agile Development process followed by a series of reductions of features in order to reach a core set of flexible utilities.
This paper charts the development of one particular tool the Feedback Journal from an accidental feature addition, through a series of design iterations, to a central and indispensible part of the student experience. The Journal is a private space, visible only to each student and their tutors, which allows rich media to be documented, reflected on, and shared. It provides an innovative mechanism for capturing engagement and promoting the students' critical reflections, without shifting focus away from the face-to-face shared intellectual enquiry that takes place in tutorials and in the studios. As such it supports the School's teaching methods, which are rooted in the ground-breaking studio-based reflexive approach developed by Harry Thubron at Leeds in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The embedding of critical reflection and evaluation through the online journal throughout the courses enables conversational learning to be captured and assessed through the synoptic assessment process. The paper will identify the key iterations that have contributed to its development, and the contributions that the Journal has had on the ongoing development of courses within the School, including how the Journal has been integrated into course documentation. These iterations have followed a pattern of opening up a range of possibilities through user-led design and then reducing the software to the simplest possible infrastructure to support these possibilities.
The paper will show that by concentrating on providing an infrastructure that can be used flexibly by academics and students, rather than a set of individual solutions to specific problems, we are able to meet the needs of a diverse range of pedagogies within the School and grow the user-base of the software from its initial cohort of thirty students to its current level of over two thousand. It explains why attempts before 2005 to introduce similar systems failed, and outlines some key structural, typographic and pedagogic decisions that were made that have enabled the Journal to be a tool that is robust, authentic, and easy to engage with. Finally it also outlines our current development strategy that will allow other tools to be built on top of its infrastructure.
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