Designing an educator toolkit for the mobile learning age

Copyright © 2018, IGI Global. Mobile technologies have been described as ‘boundary’ objects which enable teachers and learners to transcend many of the barriers such as rigid schedules and spaces which have hitherto characterised traditional forms of education. However, educators need to better understand how to design learning scenarios which genuinely exploit the unique pedagogical affordances of mobile technologies rather than replicating existing patterns and modes of behaviour. This article describes the design and development of a mobile learning toolkit for educators to realise this vision. It presents the theoretical underpinnings for the toolkit and describes the development of different tools, instruments and resources. The main aim of the toolkit is to help teacher educators and teachers build knowledge and understanding of more diverse mobile pedagogical approaches

Envisioning Futures of Design Education: An Exploratory Workshop with Design Educator

The demand for innovation in the creative economy has seen the adoption and adaptation of design thinking and design methods into domains outside design, such as business management, education, healthcare, and engineering. Design thinking and methodologies are now considered useful for identifying, framing and solving complex, often wicked social, technological, economic and public policy problems. As the practice of design undergoes change, design education is also expected to adjust to prepare future designers to have dramatically different demands made upon their general abilities and bases of knowledge than have design career paths from years past. Future designers will have to develop skills and be able to construct and utilize knowledge that allows them to make meaningful contributions to collaborative efforts involving experts from disciplines outside design. Exactly how future designers should be prepared to do this has sparked a good deal of conjecture and debate in the professional and academic design communities. This report proposes that the process of creating future scenarios that more broadly explore and expand the role, or roles, for design and designers in the world’s increasingly interwoven and interdependent societies can help uncover core needs and envision framework(s) for design education. This approach informed the creation of a workshop held at the Design Research Society conference in Brighton, UK in June of 2016, where six design educators shared four future scenarios that served as catalysts for conversations about the future of design education. Each scenario presented a specific future design education context. One scenario described the progression of design education as a core component of K-12 curricula; another scenario situated design at the core of a network of globally-linked local Universities; the third scenario highlighted the expanding role of designers over time; and the final scenario described a distance design education context that made learning relevant and “close” to an individual learner’s areas of interest. Forty participants in teams of up to six were asked to collaboratively visualize a possible future vision of design education based on one of these four scenarios and supported by a toolkit consisting of a set of trigger cards (with images and text), along with markers, glue and flipcharts. The collaborative visions that were jointly created as posters using the toolkit and then presented by the teams to all the workshop participants and facilitators are offered here as a case study. Although inspired by different scenarios, their collectively envisioned futures of what design education should facilitate displayed some key similarities. Some of those were: Future design education curricula will focus on developing collaborative approaches within which faculty and students are co-learners; These curricula will bring together ways of learning and knowing that stem from multiple disciplines; and Learning in and about the natural environment will be a key goal (the specifics of how that would be accomplished were not elaborated upon.) In addition, the need for transdisciplinarity was expressed across the collaborative visions created by each of the teams, but the manner that participants chose to express their ideas about this varied. Some envisioned that design would evolve by drawing on other disciplinary knowledge, and others envisioned that design would gradually integrate with other disciplines

Barriers and solutions to innovation in teacher education

This article proposes how mobile technologies are being employed innovatively in teacher education across the European Union, contributing to an adjustment in teacher training models. It identifies various barriers and challenges to innovation and illustrates how teacher educators have addressed these in the first year of an Erasmus+ funded project

Digital communities: context for leading learning into the future?

In 2011, a robust, on-campus, three-element Community of Practice model consisting of growing community, sharing of practice and building domain knowledge was piloted in a digital learning environment. An interim evaluation of the pilot study revealed that the three-element framework, when used in a digital environment, required a fourth element. This element, which appears to happen incidentally in the face-to-face context, is that of reflecting, reporting and revising. This paper outlines the extension of the pilot study to the national tertiary education context in order to explore the implications for the design, leadership roles, and selection of appropriate technologies to support and sustain digital communities using the four-element model

Toolkits for the Development of Hybrid Games: from Tangible Tabletops to Interactive Spaces

Durante los últimos años, los dispositivos tabletop han sido considerados el entorno ideal para los juegos híbridos, los cuales combinan técnicas de juego tradicional, como el uso de objetos físicos para interactuar con el juego de una forma natural, con las nuevas posibilidades que los tabletops ofrecen de aumentar el espacio de juego con imágenes digitales y audio.Sin embargo, los juegos híbridos no se restringen simplemente a tabletops, pudiéndose jugar también en entornos más amplios en los que convergen otros paradigmas de interacción. Por esta razón, el uso de juegos híbridos en Espacios Interactivos está ganando fuerza, pero el número y heterogeneidad de dispositivos y estilos de interacción que se encuentran en estos entornos hace que el diseño y prototipado de juegos sea una tarea difícil. Por lo tanto, el gran reto se encuentra en ofrecer a diseñadores y desarrolladores herramientas apropiadas para la creación de estas aplicaciones.En esta línea de trabajo, el grupo Affective Lab lanzó el proyecto JUGUEMOS (TIN2015-67149-C3-1R), un proyecto nacional centrado en el desarrollo de juegos híbridos en entornos interactivos. Esta Tesis Doctoral se enmarca en este proyecto.El primer paso de la realización de esta tesis fue establecer los dos objetivos principales (Capítulo 1):1) El primer objetivo que se estableció fue profundizar en el uso de tabletops tangibles en terapia con niños con necesidades especiales. Durante los últimos años el grupo Affective Lab había visto la potencialidad de los tabletops tangibles para el trabajo con niños pequeños, pero todavía era necesario llevar a cabo más experiencias y evaluaciones en el ámbito terapéutico, así como explorar si otros grupos de usuarios (adultos con problemas cognitivos) podían beneficiarse de las características de los tabletops.2) El segundo objetivo consistió en diseñar e implementar un toolkit para el desarrollo de juegos híbridos para espacios interactivos. Se decidió que el toolkit estuviera dirigido a desarrolladores para facilitar su trabajo a la hora de crear este tipo de aplicaciones.Una vez establecidos los objetivos, se realizó un estado del arte a su vez dividido en dos partes (Capítulo 2):1) Se realizó una categorización de juegos híbridos para entender y extraer sus principales características, así como los principales retos que surgen al desarrollar este tipo de juegos. También se estudiaron toolkits cuyo objetivo era el desarrollo de juegos híbridos.2) Se estudiaron juegos híbridos desarrollados para niños con necesidades especiales y adultos con problemas cognitivos que hacían uso de la Interacción Tangible y tabletops, así como toolkits dirigidos a terapeutas o educadores para ayudarles en la creación de actividades para sus pacientes.Para llevar a cabo las experiencias y evaluaciones relacionadas con el primer objetivo, se hizo uso del tabletop tangible NIKVision, desarrollado previamente por el grupo Affective Lab, y el toolkit KitVision, una herramienta dirigida a profesionales sin conocimientos de programación para la creación de actividades tangibles y que fue desarrollado durante el Proyecto Final de Carrera de la autora. En el Capítulo 3 de esta Tesis se comenta brevemente el tabletop NIKVision y la arquitectura de KitVision, se describen las evaluaciones que se llevaron a cabo con terapeutas con el objetivo de mejorar y probar la utilidad del toolkit, y se explica una experiencia de un año durante la cual una terapeuta ocupacional de ASAPME, una asociaciónque trabaja con adultos con problemas cognitivos, estuvo usando el tabletop y el toolkit sin supervisión.En el Capítulo 4 se describen diferentes experiencias con KitVision que se llevaron a cabo:- Gracias a una colaboración con la Residencia Romareda, NIKVision y KitVision fueron instalados provisionalmente en la residencia y, tras una evaluación inicial, se desarrollaron tres nuevas actividades para los usuarios de la residencia.- Gracias a la colaboración con ENMOvimienTO y con uno de los centros de Atención Temprana del Instituto Aragonés de Servicios Sociales (IASS), ambos enfocados a trabajar con niños con problemas de aprendizaje, se pudieron realizar evaluaciones que nos permitieron mejorar KitVision y crear nuevas actividades específicamente diseñadas para ellos.- Finalmente, gracias a una colaboración con Atenciona, pudimos evaluar actividades con niños con Trastorno por Déficit de Atención e Hiperactividad (TDAH) y extraer una serie de directrices para diseñar actividades para este tipo de niños. También pudimos llevar a cabo una experiencia de Diseño Participativo con estos niños.El completo desarrollo del toolkit JUGUEMOS, para la creación de juegos híbridos en espacios interactivos, se explica en el Capítulo 5. En este apartado primero se describe el Espacio Interactivo JUGUEMOS que sirvió de base para desarrollar el toolkit. Después se explican con detalle las decisiones de diseño que se tomaron, el modelo de abstracción que se usó para diseñar los juegos, y la arquitectura del toolkit. También se detallan las distintas fases de implementación que se llevaron a cabo, basadas en los tres retos que se extrajeron en el estado del arte: (1) integrar diferentes dispositivos, (2) gestionar salidas gráficas diversas y (3) facilitar la codificación del juego. Finalmente, se presentan dos prototipos de juegos que se desarrollaron durante las dos estancias de investigación que la autora realizó.Finalmente, en el Capítulo 6 se describen los tres casos de uso que se realizaron para tener una primera valoración de la usabilidad del toolkit JUGUEMOS: (1) una evaluación con estudiantes de Máster en la que se implementó un juego completamente funcional para el Espacio Interactivo JUGUEMOS, (2) un juego que fue completamente desarrollado usando el toolkit JUGUEMOS una vez que éste se acabó de implementar, (3) una experiencia que involucró a dos grupos multidisciplinares compuestos por diseñadores y desarrolladores, en la que tuvieron que colaborar para diseñar e implementar dos prototipos de juegos híbridos para el espacio interactivo.<br /

Designing Open and Distance Learning for Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: A toolkit for educators and planners

Everyone remembers a good teacher. Good teachers are the key to educational expansion and improvement. In many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is an urgent need to expand the number of primary and secondary teachers. In all African countries, there is an equally important need to improve the quality of teaching. To achieve this, it is clear that new approaches to teacher education are essential. Existing institutions of teacher education will continue to play an important role, but, alone, they will not meet the goals of Education for All (EFA) by 2015. It is fortunate that, just as the twin needs to improve the quantity and quality of teachers become imperative, so new forms of education and training are becoming available. The world is witnessing a revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs), which can offer training and support of a type and at a cost hitherto impossible to consider, and thus, must be fully explored given the scale and urgency of demand. In doing so, however, it will be necessary to build on existing and well-tested strategies, including the best models of open and distance learning. This toolkit is the third in a series of recent publications by the Africa Region Human Development Department of the World Bank to share knowledge and experience on how distance education and ICTs can support education in Sub-Saharan Africa. It emphasizes the rigorous process by which new forms of distance-education programs for teacher education can be planned and implemented. The best models of established programs are considered along with the potential for incorporating, as the means become available, new modes of communication. Most forms of teacher education, particularly those concerned with qualification upgrading and ongoing professional development, will have to be based in schools. The authors demonstrate how school-based programs, appropriately resourced and supported, have the potential not only to raise significantly the number and quality of teachers, but also to improve classroom practice and school organization, generally. The guidance and advice, which is drawn from many years of experience in design and implementation, and embraces a range of case studies from across the region, will be of considerable value to those preparing new policies and programs of teacher education and to those seeking to improve existing programs

Digital Learning: Reforming Teacher Education to Promote Access, Equity and Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the present and future impact of digital learning on teacher education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Digital learning in this report is defined as any instructional practice that uses new communication technologies effectively to improve access to and strengthen learning. The focus of the report is student-teachers and teachers. The 2015–2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly seek to substantially increase the supply of well-qualified teachers in the region, drawing on international forms of development and co-operation where necessary (Goal 4)

Can New Modes of Digital Learning Help Resolve the Teacher Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Sub-Saharan Africa, more than any other part of the world, is experiencing a crisis in finding sufficiently qualified teachers to meet the needs of expanding school systems. The professional development support provided to serving teachers is also inadequate in most countries. The most recent data on learner outcomes has revealed a worrying picture of significant under-achievement across the region. This paper argues that the teacher education and training structures of the last century will never be able to meet urgent contemporary needs. Given population growth, especially among the young, large-scale expansion of the teaching force and the associated teacher education systems will be the norm through to the middle years of the century and beyond. In this context the paper argues for a significant policy shift to expand quality teacher education and professional support at scale through a more school-based and digitally supported network model of provision. Examples of current digital programmes within the region are considered as well as the new technologies that are emerging with relevance to teacher education. The paper suggests a three-phase process through which national governments might move in making the necessary changes in policy and practice