An Interaction Centred Approach to the teaching of Non-technical Skills in a Virtual Environment

In most domains involving expert knowledge, there is a number of cognitive and social factors influencing how efficient one human being is at correctly assessing and responding to certain situations. These factors, which contribute to the efficient and safe realization of a technical activity, are known as non-technical skills, and correspond to a wide range of cognitive proficiencies such as situation awareness, decision making, stress or fatigue management, but also social skills such as communication, leadership and team working. Different studies have shown the impact such skills can have in the successful resolving of a number of critical situations, even more so in our domains of interest which are medical surgery or driving. In this paper, we take a look at the difficulties raised by the teaching of the technical and non-technical skills mobilized during a critical situation, in the context of TEL within virtual environments. We present the advantages of using a combined enactive and situated learning approach to this problematic, and then take an ill-defined perspective to raise some important designing issues in this respect. We show that some aspects of this problem have not been encompassed yet in the ill-defined domains literature, and should be further studied in any attempt at teaching behaviours inducing technical and non-technical skills in a virtual world

Introduction to location-based mobile learning

[About the book] The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning

Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project

Developing an ecology of mind in design

The relationship between design and sustainability (DfS) is forever evolving: from the early focus on cleaner production processes and resource efficiencies to more recent endeavours to promote environmentally benign behaviours or to counter the increasing impacts of climate change. The uncomfortable truth though is that the majority of design activity serves market forces at a global scale and at an ever-increasing rate. Despite predictions of resource scarcity – peak oil, peak minerals, peak water – the increase in the linear transit of material through the Global economy rises year on year. Design straddles this production consumption cycle: it conceives of the processes and technologies that shape our artificial world; and it fashions the forms of that artificial world that drive a consumption ideology. Neither position is sustainable. Informed by Sterling’s rigorous exploration of different sustainable education paradigms, this paper reconstructs a design literacy that has the capacity to realize effective transitions for the long-term wellbeing of environment, biodiversity and humankind

Building the foundations of professional expertise: creating a dialectic between work and formal learning

Recent critiques of management and teacher education curricula and teaching pay particular attention to the disconnection between the de-contextualised, formal knowledge and analytical techniques conveyed in university programs and the messy, ill-structured nature of practice. At the same time research into professional expertise suggests that its development requires bringing together different forms of knowledge and the integration of formal and non-formal learning with the development of cognitive flexibility. Such complex learning outcomes are unlikely to be achieved through a 'knowledge transmission' approach to curriculum design. In this article we argue that in many ways current higher education practices create barriers to developing ways of knowing which can underpin the formation of expertise. Using examples from two practice-focused distance learning courses, we explore the role of distance learning in enabling a dialogue between academic and workplace learning and the use of 'practice dialogues' among course participants to enable integration of learning experiences. Finally, we argue that we need to find ways in higher education of enabling students to engage in relevant communities of expertise, rather than drawing them principally into a community of academic discourse which is not well aligned with practice

Graduate Catalog, 2004-2005

https://scholar.valpo.edu/gradcatalogs/1031/thumbnail.jp