Reflections on the Use of Autovideography in an Undergraduate Education Context

In a recent study of undergraduates' use of information and communication technologies to support their academic work, we asked students to make video recordings of their personal study sessions. Our motivation was to capture their study practice as it occurred rather than relying solely on self-reports of their perceived or remembered practice. As we worked with the participant-created videos, we recognised their uniqueness as sources of evidence and their potential to reveal situated and authentic data. In this article, we have identified some of the complex and problematic elements of this method as we trace its evolution in our research practice

The Office: The impact of the digital revolution on the office practices of early career academics

This thesis is fundamentally about the digital revolution and its impact on the office practices of new academics. It explored the degree to which a group of early career academics were being influenced by ‘new ways of working’—a practice that is currently driving change in many organisations globally. The office activities of five millennial academics were monitored over a six-month period using digital still images to investigate space/place, continuous camera observations to investigate physical behaviour and computer usage logs to investigate visual behaviour. While the findings show the importance of the computer to daily work practice, and a degree of work practices extending beyond the office, the data revealed that the concept of the office, office practices and computer usage were more akin to traditional ways of working. This was a position reinforced by participants who, aware of the pace of technology and change, harboured a feeling of being left-behind. The focus on activity and the use of sensor-based data offered an opportunity to explore ‘new ways’ of undertaking higher education research. Rather than following the traditional perception-based research model, this study adopted activity as the unit of analysis. Digital sensors were employed to capture significant volumes of naturally occurring continuous data. The use of such methods in educational research is new, and for this reason, a central element of this thesis is the development of a preliminary blueprint for a new methodology focused on ‘precision research’. Finally, rather than academics being the drivers of change, it is argued that as a learning organisation, the university is responsible for addressing academic and professional progress in times of turbulent change, and that it is the institution that is best positioned to plan for and drive positive change. Universities that overlook or disregard these progressive, technological practices are unlikely to yield valuable knowledge or relevant knowledge workers. Like so many large commercial organisations already, universities too could be left-behind

Developing a Virtual Interdisciplinary Research Community in Clinical Education: Enticing People to the “Tea-Room”

Background: Many interdisciplinary collaborative research programs in the health sector are adopting the community of practice concept within virtual environments. This study explores the factors that affect the members of a geographically dispersed group of health professionals in their attempt to create an interprofessional Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) from which to promote clinical education research.Method & Findings: A survey was used to determine participants’ degree of computer competency. System logs recorded members’ access details and site activity. Member perceptions and beliefs were established using focus groups. While members stated they were enthusiastic about the VCoP, the primary use was viewing. Their online behaviour indicated that on average it took six visits to generate a post. This suggests a stronger focus on viewing (consumption of) information than on contributing (construction of) information.Conclusions: We believe it is crucial for members to contribute during the initial phase of any pre-structured VCoP in order to overcome the consumption-construction dilemma. It is during this initial phase that members will decide on the community’s value. If the community cannot offer added value, members who engage are likely to consume for a time and then leave

The Office: The impact of the digital revolution on the office practices of early career academics

This thesis is fundamentally about the digital revolution and its impact on the office practices of new academics. It explored the degree to which a group of early career academics were being influenced by ‘new ways of working’—a practice that is currently driving change in many organisations globally. The office activities of five millennial academics were monitored over a six-month period using digital still images to investigate space/place, continuous camera observations to investigate physical behaviour and computer usage logs to investigate visual behaviour. While the findings show the importance of the computer to daily work practice, and a degree of work practices extending beyond the office, the data revealed that the concept of the office, office practices and computer usage were more akin to traditional ways of working. This was a position reinforced by participants who, aware of the pace of technology and change, harboured a feeling of being left-behind. The focus on activity and the use of sensor-based data offered an opportunity to explore ‘new ways’ of undertaking higher education research. Rather than following the traditional perception-based research model, this study adopted activity as the unit of analysis. Digital sensors were employed to capture significant volumes of naturally occurring continuous data. The use of such methods in educational research is new, and for this reason, a central element of this thesis is the development of a preliminary blueprint for a new methodology focused on ‘precision research’. Finally, rather than academics being the drivers of change, it is argued that as a learning organisation, the university is responsible for addressing academic and professional progress in times of turbulent change, and that it is the institution that is best positioned to plan for and drive positive change. Universities that overlook or disregard these progressive, technological practices are unlikely to yield valuable knowledge or relevant knowledge workers. Like so many large commercial organisations already, universities too could be left-behind

That ‘Teaching’ is a Prodigious Illusion: In the Words and Form of Søren Kierkegaard

Everyone with some capacity for observation, who seriously considers what is called education, or has thought about the conditions in a so-called learning institution, must surely be assailed by profound misgivings. What does it mean that all these thousands call themselves teachers as a matter of course? People who perhaps never really think about learning, who never talk with or about their students! People upon whom it has never dawned that they might have any obligation to their students, people who do not regard it as a maxim to be thoughtful toward their students, or do not count even this quite necessary! Yet all these people, calling themselves teachers, are recognized as teachers by the State, are buried as teachers, are certified as teachers for eternity

To What Degree are Undergraduate Students Using their Personal Computers to Support their Daily Study Practices?

This scoping study examines the degree to which twenty two undergraduate students used their personal computers to support their academic study. The students were selected based on their responses to a questionnaire aimed at gauging their degree of computer skill. Computer activity data was harvested from the personal computers of eighteen students and video footage of the students personal study sessions was gathered from a further four students. Three core themes emerged: (1) Academic Use vs. Non-academic Use; (2) Computer Orientated vs. Paper Orientated; and (3) Self-reports of Practice vs. Actual Practice. Overall results suggested three fundamental behaviors relating to technology use: 1] they were more likely to engage in nonacademic work than academic work on their personal computer; 2] they were more inclined to use paper-based approaches compared to digital ones despite the high rate of personal computer ownership and internet access; 3] there was a disparity between students’ self-reports of the degree to which they used their personal computers for academic purposes (high) and nonacademic purposes (low) to what we found from computer logs which showed academic use as low and non-academic use as high. From these results we conclude that for this group of students computers played an important role in their day to day lives, but the degree to which they were used in their academic study was lower than we had expected

The perceptions of the meaning and value of analytics in New Zealand higher education institutions

Abstract This article presents the current perceptions on the value of analytics and their possible contribution to the higher education sector in New Zealand. Seven out of eight research-intensive public universities in New Zealand took part in the study. Participants included senior management and those who have some role associated with decision-making within higher education (N = 82). The study found inconsistent understanding of the meaning of analytics across participants. In particular, three forms of perceptions of analytics were identified: structural; functional and structural-functional. It was evident that some participants viewed analytics in its structural elements such as statistics, metrics, trends, numbers, graph, and any relevant information/data to enhance better decision-making, whereas other participants perceived the notion of analytics in terms of functional aspect; as means to an end, a process to use the data to gain insights and taking action on complex problems, yet a third group viewed analytics from both structural-functional perspectives. These kinds of perceptions have to a larger extent influenced participants’ views on the value of analytics in shaping policy and practice. Also, literature has addressed a number of possible challenges associated with the large-scale institutional implementation of analytics. These challenges were: difficulties in extracting data from multiple databases, maintaining data quality, ethical and privacy issues, and lack of professional development opportunities. This article aims to broadly contribute to a better understanding of current perception and value of analytics in higher education, and in particular within the New Zealand context

Visualising the Doctoral Research Process: an exploration into empirical research processes of emerging researchers.

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Data Science Approach for Simulating Educational Data: Towards the Development of Teaching Outcome Model (TOM)

The increasing availability of educational data provides the educational researcher with numerous opportunities to use analytics to extract useful knowledge to enhance teaching and learning. While learning analytics focuses on the collection and analysis of data about students and their learning contexts, teaching analytics focuses on the analysis of the design of the teaching environment and the quality of learning activities provided to students. In this article, we propose a data science approach that incorporates the analysis and delivery of data-driven solution to explore the role of teaching analytics, without compromising issues of privacy, by creating pseudocode that simulates data to help develop test cases of teaching activities. The outcome of this approach is intended to inform the development of a teaching outcome model (TOM), that can be used to inspire and inspect quality of teaching. The simulated approach reported in the research was accomplished through Splunk. Splunk is a Big Data platform designed to collect and analyse high volumes of machine-generated data and render results on a dashboard in real-time. We present the results as a series of visual dashboards illustrating patterns, trends and results in teaching performance. Our research aims to contribute to the development of an educational data science approach to support the culture of data-informed decision making in higher education