Video diaries: : a discussion of their use for researching the learner experience in higher education

This is the accepted version of the following article: Amanda Jefferies, ‘Video diaries: a discussion of their use for researching the learner experience in higher education’, International Journal of Learning Technology, Vol 10 (3): 237-250, published by Inderscience Publishers, October 2015. The version of record is available online via doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJLT.2015.072359This paper considers the rationale for using video diaries as a method of qualitative data gathering for research into students’ experiences of higher education (HE). In particular, the paper considers how video diaries have been employed for researching students’ views and attitudes to their own learning and development. The paper examines the literature on the purpose of reflective video diary research as the method has moved beyond its initial primary development in medical research and specifically into their use in HE. The particular benefits of personal video-diary compilation are considered in terms of the autonomy of the participant. A methodology for employing video diaries as a research method for data collection is discussed within the context of three case studies with undergraduate students at a UK university. The conclusions highlight the unique value of participant-generated video diaries for researching the nature of the student learning experience in HE.Peer reviewe

Social media and student lifecycle: impact on career success

Over the past few years online social networks have become one of the most popular applications on the Internet. Naturally, social media is attracting a significant attention from researchers probing its educational applicability. Online social networking services (SNS) offer a straightforward way to connect people and support information sharing and communication. University students are often ahead of the rest in the adoption of new technologies, and according to (Quan-Haase, 2007) their communication networks tend to be dense and multilayered. Extant literature abounds with evidence of business opportunities (e.g. Aldrich & Kim, 2007) and educational use (e.g. Mastrodicasa,2008) of social networks. However, very little research attention has been paid towards a systematic adoption of SNS throughout the complete student lifecycle . With the aim of achieving higher levels of success in learning as well as improving their career prospects. This study investigates the use of social media by business students. KU business students and students from four international HE institutions in Europe, including Russia and Greece, have participated in the study. Social media has the potential of providing an easy-to use platform to connect students throughout their entire lifecycle from aspiration rising, enrolment, learning and teaching leading on to employment, alumni communication and life-long learning. This is especially important as the stages of employability management and life-long learning take a centre stage in managing student expectations and influencing their decision of taking up places at which university

Methodological triangulation of the student’s use of recorded lectures

Abstract: A lot of research into the use of recorded lectures has been done by using surveys or interviews. We will show that triangulation of multiple data sources is needed. We will discuss how students use recorded lectures according to their self-report and what actual usage of the recorded lectures can be derived from the data on the system. We will present the data collections and cover areas where the data can be triangulated to increase the credibility of the results or to question the students' responses. The triangulation shows that we lack data for a number of areas. We will need high-quality surveys and interviews combined with the log data to get a complete picture. We need to be able to link data sets together based on the identification of the individual students, which might raise privacy issues

Planning Collaborative Learning in Virtual Environments. La planificación del aprendizaje colaborativo en entornos virtuales

Collaborative learning has a strong presence in technologysupported education and, as a result, practices being developed in the form of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) are more and more common. Planning seems to be one of the critical issues when elaborating CSCL proposals, which necessarily take into account technological resources, methodology and group configuration as a means to boost exchange and learning in the community. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relevance of the CSCL planning phase and weigh up the significance of its key design components as well as examining group agreement typology and its usefulness in team building and performance. To do so, research was carried out using a nonexperimental quantitative methodology consisting of a questionnaire answered by 106 undergraduate students from 5 different CSCLbased subjects. Results prove the usefulness of the planning components and the drafting of group agreements and their influence on group building and interaction. In order to ensure the quality of learning, it is essential to plan CSCL initiatives properly and understand that organizational, pedagogical and technological decisions should converge around a single goal which is to sustain the cognitive and social aspects that configure individual and group learning

A Hybrid Recommender Strategy on an Expanded Content Manager in Formal Learning

The main topic of this paper is to find ways to improve learning in a formal Higher Education Area. In this environment, the teacher publishes or suggests contents that support learners in a given course, as supplement of classroom training. Generally, these materials are pre-stored and not changeable. These contents are typically published in learning management systems (the Moodle platform emerges as one of the main choices) or in sites created and maintained on the web by teachers themselves. These scenarios typically include a specific group of students (class) and a given period of time (semester or school year). Contents reutilization often needs replication and its update requires new edition and new submission by teachers. Normally, these systems do not allow learners to add new materials, or to edit existing ones. The paper presents our motivations, and some related concepts and works. We describe the concepts of sequencing and navigation in adaptive learning systems, followed by a short presentation of some of these systems. We then discuss the effects of social interaction on the learners’ choices. Finally, we refer some more related recommender systems and their applicability in supporting learning. One central idea from our proposal is that we believe that students with the same goals and with similar formal study time can benefit from contents' assessments made by learners that already have completed the same courses and have studied the same contents. We present a model for personalized recommendation of learning activities to learners in a formal learning context that considers two systems. In the extended content management system, learners can add new materials, select materials from teachers and from other learners, evaluate and define the time spent studying them. Based on learner profiles and a hybrid recommendation strategy, combining conditional and collaborative filtering, our second system will predict learning activities scores and offers adaptive and suitable sequencing learning contents to learners. We propose that similarities between learners can be based on their evaluation interests and their recent learning history. The recommender support subsystem aims to assist learners at each step suggesting one suitable ordered list of LOs, by decreasing order of relevance. The proposed model has been implemented in the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), and we present the system’s architecture and design. We will evaluate it in a real higher education formal course and we intend to present experimental results in the near future

Defining adaptation in a generic multi layer model : CAM: the GRAPPLE conceptual adaptation model

Authoring of Adaptive Hypermedia is a difficult and time consuming task. Reference models like LAOS and AHAM separate adaptation and content in different layers. Systems like AHA! offer graphical tools based on these models to allow authors to define adaptation without knowing any adaptation language. The adaptation that can be defined using such tools is still limited. Authoring systems like MOT are more flexible, but usability of adaptation specification is low. This paper proposes a more generic model which allows the adaptation to be defined in an arbitrary number of layers, where adaptation is expressed in terms of relationships between concepts. This model allows the creation of more powerful yet easier to use graphical authoring tools. This paper presents the structure of the Conceptual Adaptation Models used in adaptive applications created within the GRAPPLE adaptive learning environment, and their representation in a graphical authoring tool

Defining adaptation in a generic multi layer model : CAM: the GRAPPLE conceptual adaptation model

Authoring of Adaptive Hypermedia is a difficult and time consuming task. Reference models like LAOS and AHAM separate adaptation and content in different layers. Systems like AHA! offer graphical tools based on these models to allow authors to define adaptation without knowing any adaptation language. The adaptation that can be defined using such tools is still limited. Authoring systems like MOT are more flexible, but usability of adaptation specification is low. This paper proposes a more generic model which allows the adaptation to be defined in an arbitrary number of layers, where adaptation is expressed in terms of relationships between concepts. This model allows the creation of more powerful yet easier to use graphical authoring tools. This paper presents the structure of the Conceptual Adaptation Models used in adaptive applications created within the GRAPPLE adaptive learning environment, and their representation in a graphical authoring tool