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

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Piloting Multimodal Learning Analytics using Mobile Mixed Reality in Health Education

© 2019 IEEE. Mobile mixed reality has been shown to increase higher achievement and lower cognitive load within spatial disciplines. However, traditional methods of assessment restrict examiners ability to holistically assess spatial understanding. Multimodal learning analytics seeks to investigate how combinations of data types such as spatial data and traditional assessment can be combined to better understand both the learner and learning environment. This paper explores the pedagogical possibilities of a smartphone enabled mixed reality multimodal learning analytics case study for health education, focused on learning the anatomy of the heart. The context for this study is the first loop of a design based research study exploring the acquisition and retention of knowledge by piloting the proposed system with practicing health experts. Outcomes from the pilot study showed engagement and enthusiasm of the method among the experts, but also demonstrated problems to overcome in the pedagogical method before deployment with learners

Sustainable consumption: towards action and impact. : International scientific conference November 6th-8th 2011, Hamburg - European Green Capital 2011, Germany: abstract volume

This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed

Where are all the climate change games? Locating digital games' response to climate change

The burgeoning genre of climate fiction, or ‘cli-fi’, in literature and the arts has begun to attract both scholarly and popular attention. It hasbeen described as ‘potentially [having] crucial contributions to make toward full understanding of the multiple, accelerating environmental challenges facing the world today.’ (Buell, 2014) Implicitly, these works confront the current orthodoxy about where exactly the issue of climate change sits in domains of knowledge. As Jordan (2014) notes: ‘climate change as ‘nature’ not culture is still largely perceived as a problem for the sciences alongside planning, policy, and geography.’ In this paper we ask where is, or alternatively what does or could climate fiction within the field of digital games look like? Even a passing familiarity with the cultural output of the mainstream game industry reveals the startling omission of the subject–with scant few games telling stories that engage with climate change and the unfolding ecological crisis. (Abraham, 2015) Finding a relative dearth of explicit engagement, this paper offers an alternative engagement with climate change in games by focussing on the underlying ideas, conceptions and narratives of human-environment relationships that have been a part of games since their earliest incarnations. We argue that it is possible to read games for particular conceptualisations of human relationships to nature, and offer a description of four highly prevalent ‘modes’ of human-environment engagement. We describe and analyse these relationships for their participation in or challenge to the same issues and problems that undergird the current ecological crisis, such as enlightenment narratives of human mastery and dominion over the earth

In response to 'Celebrate citation: flipping the pedagogy of plagiarism in Qatar'

In her article (http://uobrep.openrepository.com/uobrep/handle/10547/335947) Molly McHarg makes several points that I agree with, particularly that for the majority of students the plagiarism is not deliberate but is due to a lack of understanding of how to reference correctly