From ‘hands up’ to ‘hands on’: harnessing the kinaesthetic potential of educational gaming

Traditional approaches to distance learning and the student learning journey have focused on closing the gap between the experience of off-campus students and their on-campus peers. While many initiatives have sought to embed a sense of community, create virtual learning environments and even build collaborative spaces for team-based assessment and presentations, they are limited by technological innovation in terms of the types of learning styles they support and develop. Mainstream gaming development – such as with the Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Wii – have a strong element of kinaesthetic learning from early attempts to simulate impact, recoil, velocity and other environmental factors to the more sophisticated movement-based games which create a sense of almost total immersion and allow untethered (in a technical sense) interaction with the games’ objects, characters and other players. Likewise, gamification of learning has become a critical focus for the engagement of learners and its commercialisation, especially through products such as the Wii Fit. As this technology matures, there are strong opportunities for universities to utilise gaming consoles to embed levels of kinaesthetic learning into the student experience – a learning style which has been largely neglected in the distance education sector. This paper will explore the potential impact of these technologies, to broadly imagine the possibilities for future innovation in higher education

Innovative learning in action (ILIA) issue five: Learning technologies in the curriculum

Consideration of the papers and snapshots in this edition of Innovative Learning in Action, focused on learning technology, will provide the reader with insights into a range of excellent and innovative approaches to the application of learning technologies to enhance learning both in the classroom and at a distance. It also provides us with examples of how learning technologies can both stimulate and support partnership with staff and students and collaborative learning and working. This edition is particularly timely given the aim of the University’s 2005-2008 Learning Technologies Implementation Plan (LTIP), which is to enhance the quality of, and access to, learning, teaching and assessment by supporting and developing the curriculum through the appropriate and effective use of learning technologies. The LTIP is designed to help us to reach a situation where the effective use of appropriate learning technologies becomes part of our normal teaching, research and enterprise activities, and enhances access to our programmes by all our students whether they are learning on campus, at a distance, or in the workplace. The emphasis at the University of Salford has consistently been on the identification and creative application of the appropriate blends of ICT and traditional methods, shaped by pedagogical, rather than technological drivers, and acknowledging and reflecting different academic contexts and professional and vocational requirements. We have some excellent examples of how this has been achieved here, ILIA once again providing us with an opportunity to reflect on practice and student learning, to share experience and hopefully to identify future areas for collaboration in a key area of curriculum development

Revolutionizing Legal Education: Embracing Technology to Equip Students for Success in the Digital Age

The legal profession is changing as law schools embrace technology to prepare students for 21st-century concerns. This study covered legal education's technological initiatives, including online training, blended learning, adaptive learning materials, and online mentorship programs. This study aims to provide a detailed review of legal education's technological innovations and their effects on the legal profession. We examined online education, including synchronous and asynchronous distance learning and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which provide students flexibility and convenience. Blended learning lets law professors use educational videos and other internet resources to make learning more engaging and effective. Technology is revolutionizing legal education and preparing students for the digital age. Law schools may prepare students for a future where technology will be increasingly crucial by adopting new tools and instructional approaches. The study stressed the necessity for forward-thinking legal education and keeping up with legal business technology

The potential of mobile phones to transform teacher professional development

Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project’s greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result EIA is currently using a mobile phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit—known as the ‘trainer in your pocket’—to foster a ‘quiet revolution’ in the provision of teacher professional development at scale to an additional 67,500 teachers and 10 million students

Flying not flapping: a strategic framework for e‐learning and pedagogical innovation in higher education institutions

E‐learning is in a rather extraordinary position. It was born as a ‘tool’ and now finds itself in the guise of a somewhat wobbly arrow of change. In practice, changing the way thousands of teachers teach, learners learn, innovation is promoted and sustainable change in traditional institutions is achieved across hundreds of different disciplines is a demanding endeavour that will not be achieved by learning technologies alone. It involves art, craft and science as well as technology. This paper attempts to show how it might be possible to capture and model complex strategic processes that will help move the potential of e‐learning in universities to a new stage of development. It offers the example of a four‐quadrant model created as a framework for an e‐learning strategy

Sustainable eLearning in a Changing Landscape: A Scoping Study (SeLScope)

The report begins by exploring the concept of sustainable e-learning - defining it and establishing its characteristics in the context of Higher Education. To ensure a sound and systematic process, the review is informed by a five-phase methodological framework for scoping reviews by Arksey and O'Malley (2005). Examples and perspectives on the concept of sustainable e-learning are summarised and key factors impacting on sustainability are abstracted. highlights potential gaps and suggests directions for further research on the topic

Managing evolution and change in web-based teaching and learning environments

The state of the art in information technology and educational technologies is evolving constantly. Courses taught are subject to constant change from organisational and subject-specific reasons. Evolution and change affect educators and developers of computer-based teaching and learning environments alike – both often being unprepared to respond effectively. A large number of educational systems are designed and developed without change and evolution in mind. We will present our approach to the design and maintenance of these systems in rapidly evolving environments and illustrate the consequences of evolution and change for these systems and for the educators and developers responsible for their implementation and deployment. We discuss various factors of change, illustrated by a Web-based virtual course, with the objective of raising an awareness of this issue of evolution and change in computer-supported teaching and learning environments. This discussion leads towards the establishment of a development and management framework for teaching and learning systems

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Attaining 21st century skills online: A programmatic approach

This case study reports on the practical use of technology to support a programmatic approach to achieving learning outcomes. This is achieved through the provision of appropriate opportunities for online distance learning (ODL) students to achieve the range of 21st century skills needed to manage the complexity of future problems and continue to be critical consumers and producers of knowledge throughout their lives. A programme-focused assessment strategy is utilised on an ODL Humanities programme with a distributed, modular provision model, in order to satisfy related learning outcomes. This strategy allows for the deployment of a range of assessment types, many of which are only possible through the current affordances of online learning, for example, wiki-building in groups and debates using discussion forums. Both the students and the majority of the academic staff are off-campus, with technology providing the means for interaction and communication relating to assessment of learning outcome achievement. Technology is also the medium through which the off-campus subject experts who develop assessments receive appropriate, professional development such that they understand the pedagogical approaches and technological solutions available for assessment and feedback design and development. This paper will present the model through which this professional development takes place, and the way in which a team-based approach is used to ensure the appropriate design and development of assessments and related feedback mechanisms