Innovating Pedagogy 2017: Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers. Open University Innovation Report 6

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This sixth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Learning In a NetworKed Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE). Themes: • Big-data inquiry: thinking with data • Learners making science • Navigating post-truth societies • Immersive learning • Learning with internal values • Student-led analytics • Intergroup empathy • Humanistic knowledge-building communities • Open Textbooks • Spaced Learnin

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Android-based augmented reality in science learning for junior high schools: Preliminary study

Technology in education encourages more effective learning facilitation processes. The lack of variation and innovation in the use of technology used in the form of learning media as a means of supporting learning activities raises many new problems for educational institutions. This research aims to identify the need to create innovations in the implementation of science learning, whose research focus is to analyze the needs for developing smartphone-based innovative augmented reality (AR) learning media. This research is descriptive qualitative. Data collection techniques are observation, interviews, and questionnaires. Teachers and students of junior high schools in Surakarta became the subject of this research. The results showed that students were less focused and unmotivated when participating in the learning process. In addition, the use of learning media is still conventional and not interactive, even though currently all students have smartphones. Based on field facts, the media used by teachers still tends to be conventional, and the majority of students have technological devices such as smartphones, there is great potential for developing innovative technology-based learning media. Smartphone ownership and the lack of interactive learning media are important foundations in innovating the development of smartphone-based augmented reality

Modern Technologies in Acoustics and Lighting Teaching and Practice

With the promise that new technologies, and in particular smartphones and virtual reality, may make everyday life easier, numerous apps have been created over the last years for the architectural lighting and acoustic assessments of buildings. This trend opens new opportunities for teaching acoustics and lighting. Meanwhile, the possibilities of augmented and virtual reality are still largely unexplored. The pedagogical aim of exploring new pedagogical approach is to allow students to engage beyond the traditional building physics approach to these subjects and to get a better quantitative and experiential understanding of light and sound parameters. First, the possibility of massive use of auralization is described. Then, the present paper discusses some opportunities for introducing building acoustics and lighting assessments through apps in both courses and architectural studios. The goal is to support experiential learning opportunities for concepts such as the warmth or the enveloping of a space from both an acoustic and lighting perspective. Many questions raised from the first few years of experiences in using smartphone apps are discussed. Comparing different apps on the same or on different smartphones resulted in significant fluctuations in the observed quantities. Since illuminance or sound levels were better detected with professional tools than by smartphones, several challenges of using these apps are discussed. Knowing the limits of current smartphone apps, this paper reflects on how much apps could be integrated into both university teaching and practice approaches. The experience confirmed that smartphone apps cannot yet replace professional measurement tools, while there is evidence about the benefits that modern technologies and in particular virtual reality, can provide to architectural acoustic and lighting teaching and practice

Innovating Pedagogy 2020: Open University Innovation Report 8

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This eighth report, produced by The Open University in collaboration with the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) in Ireland, describes ten innovations that have the potential to influence education in the coming years

Indian and Australian University Students’ Acceptance of Using Accessible, Web-Based, and Smartphone-Delivered Augmented Reality in Tertiary Learning: A Cross-Country Analysis

Accessible and equitable education is a national priority recently highlighted by the Indian and Australian Governments. New developments in web-based architecture allow augmented reality (AR) lessons to be delivered via smartphone. Although educational technology is commonplace in the Australian curriculum, it is unclear if Indian tertiary students would be welcoming towards web-based mobile learning due to a historically slower uptake and only recent availability of connected devices in their educational system. This study evaluated feedback after using a web-deployed AR smartphone-based application across both Australia (70 participants) and India (100 participants) to see if this technology can assist in capacity building on a global scale. From thematic analyses on the provided feedback, it was identified that Australian students were more focused on the benefits received from the educational technology. In contrast, Indian students were far less critical of the embedded lesson, and more interested in the prospect of introducing the specific technology into their curricula. The data suggests that a rollout of web-based mobile AR for learning in countries more digitally-native should likely prioritise the content within it. Alternatively, for countries recently-introduced to educational technology, such as India, a rollout should focus on embedding the technology itself first. Although there is a risk of learners being distracted by the technology, smartphone web-based AR presents an excellent option to equitably provide a modern, innovative intervention, regardless of wealth, location, or status

Innovating Language Education: An NMC Horizon Project Strategic Brief

The NMC is a leading educational technology organization. A main outcome of the collaboration between the Language Flagship Technology Innovation Center and the NMC was this publication, which highlights recommendations that emerged from discussions of major trends, challenges, and technology developments by experts and practitioners in language technologies in higher education. Innovating Language Education identifies main trends and areas of interest and constitutes a rich resource that includes key definitions and proofs of concept