Digital communities: context for leading learning into the future?

In 2011, a robust, on-campus, three-element Community of Practice model consisting of growing community, sharing of practice and building domain knowledge was piloted in a digital learning environment. An interim evaluation of the pilot study revealed that the three-element framework, when used in a digital environment, required a fourth element. This element, which appears to happen incidentally in the face-to-face context, is that of reflecting, reporting and revising. This paper outlines the extension of the pilot study to the national tertiary education context in order to explore the implications for the design, leadership roles, and selection of appropriate technologies to support and sustain digital communities using the four-element model

The application of innovative virtual world technologies to enhance healthcare education

The World Wide Web has evolved leading to the development of three- dimensional virtual worlds. These are online, accessible environments through which a user may engage, communicate and interact via their digital self, known as their avatar. These virtual worlds offer the opportunity for further content to be generated in order to provide new environments and simulations. This research work explores the potential of virtual worlds in providing an educational platform for healthcare professionals. In order to establish this, the effectiveness of a virtual world environment was determined through the use of a custom-built virtual world operating theatre, which was utilised to train operating theatre novices in preparation for the real-life environment. Following the application of a virtual world environment, this research explored the development of a virtual patient scenario for training healthcare professionals. The virtual patient scenario focused on the management of adverse events associated with medical infusion devices with a nurse user group assessing the simulation face validity. The next step was to devise a methodology to develop a series of immersive virtual patients. This involved the use of allied web technologies to produce a robust, reproducible method of 3D virtual patient generation. Three virtual patients were constructed, with distinct surgical pathologies at three levels of increasing complexity. Subsequently the face, content and construct validity of the virtual patients was established to differentiate surgeons of different training grades. Finally the virtual patients were utilised to emulate real clinical situations, in which handoff of patient information occurred. The virtual patients were used to establish if the quality of handoff impacted on the subsequent patient management in a simulated setting. Overall this research has demonstrated the efficacy of virtual world environments and simulations in providing an alternative educational platform for healthcare professionals.Open Acces

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

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

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