Learning cultures on the move: where are we heading?

The paper analyzes the globally recognized cultural move towards a more learner-centred education and discusses the implications for the adoption of mobile technologies and design for learning. Current expectations vis-à-vis learner attributes, skills and competences are explored. The pervasiveness of mobile technologies is precipitating these developments, whilst also generating a distinct mobile culture where learners take mobility and context-awareness as starting points and become more visible as innovators, creators and producers. Language learning, one of the most popular application areas of mobile learning, provides fertile ground for the growth of this phenomenon. The paper reviews several innovative language learning applications and concludes by indicating the directions in which we are heading

A Trial for Curriculum Development: The Effect of Educational Philosophy Curriculum on the Attitudes towards Course and Educational Views

In Turkey, Educational Philosophy is a compulsory course for the students of education faculties, which serve the purpose of training the teachers of future generations. Furthermore, in some other programs, students are able to take the course as an elective course. The continuous changes in culture, science, and technology force the curriculum of all courses to be renovated, as in the situation of Educational Philosophy. The current study aims (1) to design a new curriculum for the course of Educational Philosophy, and determine the effect of this design on (2) student attitudes towards the course and (3) the perceptions about educational viewpoints and practices. In the current study, the Taba Model, one of the curriculum development models, was used during the preparation process of the draft. For the evaluation process of the curriculum design, single group pre- and post-test design as one of the quantitative methods was conducted. The Educational Philosophy course was developed through adopting a student-centred design and using the Taba Model. As the result of the curriculum implementation, it was concluded that: (1) The curriculum designed for the study changed the attitudes of learners significantly and positively (2) The curriculum designed for the study decreased the anxiety of the learners towards the course significantly and positively, (3) The curriculum designed for the study changed the beliefs of the learners significantly and positively that they would use these common course standards in their teaching, (4) The curriculum designed for the study made the participant learners get out of traditional [Positivist-Modern] subject- or teacher-centred educational philosophy, (5) The curriculum designed for the study made the participants be familiar with the learner-centred popular-modern [Constructivist] educational philosophy

Using two models of workplace facilitation to create conditions for development of a person-centred culture: A participatory action research study

Jan Dewing - ORCID 0000-0002-7968-2213 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7968-2213Aims and objectives: To examine facilitation in workplace learning where nurses are focused on creating person-centred cultures; to provide a framework for novice and proficient facilitators/practitioners to learn in and from their own workplaces and practices; to provide the conditions where practitioners can gain an understanding of the culture and context within their own workplace. Background: Evidence suggests that person-centred cultures depend on purposeful, facilitated practice based learning activities. For person-centredness to become more meaningful to nursing leaders in their daily work, focus must be placed on their acquisition and use of facilitation skills. The facilitation framework ‘Critical Companionship’ remains an exemplar in the development of expert facilitation skills. Two sequential facilitation models were developed as ‘steps’ towards Critical Companionship, as a framework for novice and proficient facilitators and practitioners to learn in and from their own workplaces and practices. Design and Methods: This research, situated in a critical social science paradigm, drew on participatory action research to devise, explore and refine two facilitation models: Critical Allies and Critical Friends. The researcher adopted an insider approach to work with five nursing leaders, which was subsequently reported using the EQUATOR Guidelines for Best Practice in the reporting of Participatory Action Research. Results: Show the complexity of enabling facilitation within the workplace. Four themes and twelve sub-themes emerged from the data that describe the attributes needed to facilitate workplace learning and reveal that mangers can have an active role in enabling person-centred culture development. Conclusions: This research adds to the body of knowledge on developing person-centred culture. It offers practical stepping stones for novice and proficient facilitators to enable embodiment of the skills necessary to facilitate learning in person-cultures. The models offer a workplace friendly pathway with practical methods and further contribute to our understanding of how we create person-centred cultures. Relevance to Clinical Practice Facilitation of practice development and workplace learning remains the most effective methods to develop person-centred cultures. This research introduces a pathway for clinical leaders/managers to become facilitators with their own teams, maximising the impact on the culture where care is delivered.28pubpub15-1

Supporting the growth of a design thinking culture : Action research at Telia Finland

As the competition and need for innovativeness in different markets is getting more and more intense, many companies have taken on the challenge to build strong design thinking cultures across the organizations in order to boost creativity and innovation. In this thesis, a design maturity model was used to study the current design maturity level of a large Finnish telecommunications operator, Telia Finland, which has grown its design thinking culture since 2014. Three concrete actions were used to support the design thinking culture to reach the next maturity level. The study was conducted as a mixed method action research, with a strong focus on the practical side of the issue, and an active participation of the researcher and the target organization. First, three different maturity models were compared, and the Maturity Solar System by InVision (2019) was chosen as the theoretical framework. Second, an organization wide survey was conducted, and the current design maturity level was determined based on the results. Third, interviews were conducted to deepen the understanding of the current culture and to better understand the obstacles employees were facing at the time. These methods were able to provide ideas about what the organization could do in order to move towards the next maturity level. Finally, three concrete initiatives were launched in hopes to move the organization towards the next level. The three initiatives included a Human Centred Design workshop, an internal webpage, and a weekly Design Clinic meetup. The initiatives got a positive welcome by the employees, although the face-to-face initiatives proved to be more effective based on the gathered feedback

Presenting the SCL model: adding value to business strategy through UCD principles

This paper presents the Sustainable Consumption Leveraging (SCL) Model and its toolkit, which was developed to help businesses examine their potential for enabling sustainable consumption whilst identifying areas of opportunity to improve their business model and value proposition. The paper begins by establishing the contribution of business towards sustainable consumption and sets out user-centred design (UCD) principles as a valuable approach to leverage sustainable consumption. The relationship between UCD principles and sustainable consumption in a business context was studied through qualitative research. The findings of in-depth interviews with experts, a focus group and a document analysis led to the construction of a theoretical framework, which was used to develop the SCL Model and its toolkit

Technology Culture of Mobile Maintenance Men

Technology plays a major role in our life and the role is increasing as a result of fast technological development occurring all the time. Technology’s impact on our everyday life sets new challenges also to designers. In order to design products which are usable. We need to understand technologies and devices we are developing, users of our designed products, and the relationships our users have with different kinds of technologies. User-centred design (UCD) has emerged as a counter part for traditional technology centred product development. UCD emphasizes the role of the users in every phase of product design and development. However, it seems that the users’ relationships with technologies is underestimated and sometimes even forgotten also in UCD. The users’ current tools and technological environment is seen as just surroundings and task related tools instead of as an important factor that affects to users’ actions and opinions. This article presents a case study where mobile IT maintenance men where studied with traditional UCD methods and in addition the user research was deepened with focusing on users’ relationships with technology. The results show that UCD’s methods can miss some critical phenomena relating to users’ relationships with technology and affecting to usability and quality of the developed products. Understanding how users comprehend the technologies they use, i.e. understanding what kind of technology culture the users are a part of, enables designers to better evaluate how well the developed product will fit in the lives of it’s users and what sorts of changes are possibly going to happen or required to happen in order the new product to be included in the users’ technology culture. These kinds of evaluations help the designers to design better products and the companies to better estimate business risks relating to for example technology acceptance. Keywords: Technology Culture, User-Centred Design, User Research, Distributed and Mobile Work</p

Development of a Randomised Controlled Trial of Counselling for Depression

Many members of the UK counselling community feel that their profession and practice is under threat, particularly within NHS settings. This can be attributed, primarily, to the near-complete absence of recommendations for counselling in clinical guidelines, as a consequence of the relative lack of randomised controlled trial (RCT) evidence in support of this therapy. Expert opinion suggests that this need for RCT evidence is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. In recent years, BACP has led the development of Counselling for Depression (CfD), a systematic, person-centred experiential treatment for depression, based on evidenced humanistic competences. The development of this intervention and its roll out into some Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services gives the counselling community one of its best opportunities, yet, to develop a body of RCT evidence in support of counselling. Expert opinion leans towards two specific strategies for trialling CfD: first, a relatively short-term comparison of CfD against waiting list in IAPT settings; second, a more extended trial comparing the effectiveness of CfD against CBT. It is recommended that BACP set up a CfD RCT Task Force to take forward these projects, possibly through the development of pilot trials; and to look at ways of developing a more RCT-friendly culture within the counselling community

Designing library tools: the (un)importance of employee involvement

The growing trend of public institutions to open up data and information to citizens encouraged archives and libraries to enhance the disclosure of their content towards end-users. This implies technical challenges as more and more information is exchanged not only between people, but also between different databases and applications which are consulted by different user groups through different devices and entry points. For libraries, the challenge lies in constructing a properly functioning catalogue which is able to combine a huge amount of information from various sources and is consultable by a large group of end-users in a user friendly manner. Based on the User Centred Design paradigm and Kaulio’s (1998) degrees of user involvement in innovation, this paper wants to consider whether involving users during the creation of metadata tools can result in more motivated library co-workers and a more appreciated tool and (hopefully) in a permanent tagging tool