Researching with and through technologies

Gráinne Conole PhD Research Day

University of Leicester14th September 2012

Emergent technologies and

affordances

Resources, OER and Pedagogical

Patterns

The e-learning landscape

E-p

ed

ag

og

ies,

str

ate

gie

s

an

d learn

ing

desig

n

Interventions

Th

eory

an

d m

eth

od

olo

gy

Evaluations

What is needed in a world of new and

proliferating e-learning practices are research approaches that are multiple and varied and that recognise their heterogeneity explicitly. (Friesen,

2009)

From Web pages and forums to complex online

interactionsAre we up for the challenge???

Examples

•Learning analytics

•Social Network Analysis

Learning Analytics

Measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of

data about learners and their contexts, for the purposes of

understanding and optimising learning and the

environments in which it occurs US Department of Education

We leave trails everywhere we go and that data is valuable (George Siemens)

Erik Duval

Contribution•Learning analytics:

•as a tool to understand learning behaviour

•to provide evidence to support design of more effective learning environments

•to make effective use of social and participatory media

Pedagogies

•Learning analytics to foster:

•Assessment and feedback

•Enquiry and sensemaking

•Discourse

Assessment & feedback•Importance of assessment and

feedback as part of the learning process

•Issues around marking and workload

•Open Mentor and Open Comment: feedback through reflection and social networking

•Coding of feedback comments and power of Bale’s categories of group interaction Whitelock

Enquiry and sensemaking•New social networking spaces like

Cloudworks to support dialogue and knowledge construction

•Cloudworks: object- rather than ego centric, collective aggregation and improvement, supporting collective intelligence and distribution cognition (Salomon, 1983)

•Disputational, cumulative and exploratory talk

Ferguson

Discourse•Cohere: structured discourse and

knowledge construction

•Discourse as an indicator of learning

•Language as social action

•Visualisation both as an analytic tool and a means of supporting sensemaking

Buckingham Shum

Putting it all together•Combining different forms of data

analytics

•VLE stats

•Library analytics

•Sitewide tracking

•Course analytics

•Powerful new analytics tools to understand data and network connections

•Making sense of Massive Open Online Courses

Hirst

Resources• LAK11 conference

https://tekri.athabascau.ca/analytics/

•Special issue of ETS http://www.learninganalytics.net/

•Definitions http://learninganalytics.net/LearningAnalyticsDefinitionsProcessesPotential.pdf

•Siemens: presentation http://www.slideshare.net/gsiemens/learning-analytics-educause

Social Network Analysis

OER communities•7 in-depth case studies

•Articulate the nature of the OER communities and the patterns of user behaviour

•Using the LOOK SNA tool

•Relationships between individuals and themes

LOOK tool

•Interviews

•Thematic analysis

•Key themes

•Filter by user and theme connections