Mobile and contextual learning

This is the editorial introducing the special issue on Mobile and Contextual Learning

Innovation in Mobile Learning: A European Perspective

In the evolving landscape of mobile learning, European researchers have conducted significant mobile learning projects, representing a distinct perspective on mobile learning research and development. Our paper aims to explore how these projects have arisen, showing the driving forces of European innovation in mobile learning. We propose context as a central construct in mobile learning and examine theories of learning for the mobile world, based on physical, technological, conceptual, social and temporal mobility. We also examine the impacts of mobile learning research on educational practices and the implications for policy. Throughout, we identify lessons learnt from European experiences to date

The genesis and development of mobile learning in Europe

In the past two decades, European researchers have conducted many significant mobile learning projects. The chapter explores how these projects have arisen and what each one has contributed, so as to show the driving forces and outcomes of European innovation in mobile learning. The authors identify context as a central construct in European researchers’ conceptualizations of mobile learning and examine theories of learning for the mobile world, based on physical, technological, conceptual, social and temporal mobility. The authors also examine the impacts of mobile learning research on educational practices and the implications for policy. Finally, they suggest future challenges for researchers, developers and policy makers in shaping the future of mobile learning

Global warming is dead, long live global heating?

We discuss how global heating is used in comparison to global warming, look at its semantic history and examine the communicative problems it may pose and the confusion it may lead to

Global warming is dead, long live global heating?

We discuss how global heating is used in comparison to global warming, look at its semantic history and examine the communicative problems it may pose and the confusion it may lead to

Climates Multiple: Three Baselines, Two Tolerances, One Normal

Today, Friday 1 January 2021, a new World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) climatological standard normal came into effect. The ‘present-day’ climate will now formally be represented by the meteorological statistics of the period 1991-2020, replacing those from 1961-1990. National Meteorological Agencies in member states are instructed to issue new standard normals for observing stations and for associated climatological products. Climate will ‘change’, one might say, in an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer. It is somewhat equivalent to re-setting Universal Time or adjusting the exact definition of a metre

Methods and models of next generation technology enhanced learning - White Paper

Our understanding of learning with technology is increasingly lagging behind technological advancements, such that it is no longer possible to fully understand learning with technologies without bringing together evidence from practice-based experiences and theoretical insight to inform research, design, policy and practice. Furthermore, whilst practical experiences and theoretical insights make significant contributions towards understanding learning with new technologies, the dynamic nature of learner practices and study contexts make it difficult to predict future requirements in terms of methods and models for next generation technology enhanced learning. We therefore require formal and comprehensive methods and models of learning with technology that accommodate theory and practice whilst allowing us to anticipate methodological innovations that capture future transitions and changes in learner practices and study contexts, in order to inform research, design, policy and practice. Workshop participants represented different communities of interest including research, design, evaluation and assessment. The overall objective was to anticipate methodological innovations in technology enhanced learning research and design over the next 5/10 years

Self-Directed Learning in Trial FutureLearn courses

Self-Directed Learning (SDL) in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) is gaining interest, as online learning is increasingly learner-centred and autonomous. Most SDL research starts from the premise that SDL happens more frequently in connectivism MOOC (cMOOC) than in the more instructor-led MOOCs. In this study the authors look at SDL experiences from learners enrolled in two MOOC courses during the early trials of the FutureLearn platform. The meaning and experiences of the phenomenon of being enrolled as a learner in FutureLearn was gathered through various research instruments (online survey, learning logs, one-on-one interviews). The resulting data was collected pre-, during, and post- course. The key categories for each sub-question of the research are shared in the results and analysis section. This study concluded that SDL is indeed taking place in FutureLearn courses, which points towards SDL happening beyond the connectivist MOOCs

The Colour of Risk: An Exploration of the IPCC’s “Burning Embers” Diagram

This article tracks the historical emergence of a new visual convention in the representation of the risks associated with climate change. The “reasons for concern” or “burning embers” diagram has become a prominent visual element of the climate change debate. By drawing on a number of cultural resources, the image has gained a level of discursive power which has resulted both in material mobility and epistemic transformation as the diagram itself has become a tool for a variety of actors to reason with. The case brings to light a number of challenges associated with attempts to know and visualize abstract concepts such as risk and danger, including the social organisation of knowledge production and the role of expert judgment in contexts where science is asked to retreat from normativity

Climate, cartography, and the life and death of the ‘natural region’ in British geography

During the first fifteen years of the twentieth century, Oxford-based Scottish geographer Andrew Herbertson constructed a framework for comprehending and categorising climate and its interrelations: natural regions. Along with a large circle of students and collaborators, Herbertson promoted natural regions as the conceptual keystone for geographical teaching and research. This article shows how natural regions theory conceived of climate as an object that was differently defined in different academic disciplines. Geography’s climate, according to Herbertson and his supporters, was defined by its relations with other spatially distributed phenomena rather than being the quantifiable and isolable entity of modern climatology. Building on recent work in the history of cartography foregrounding map use and reception, the article also argues that natural regions were products of particular modes of map reading, comparison, and synthesis. Although maps were arguably the most influential medium for communicating natural regions, they also proved limited as bearers of the multiscalar version of climate that Herbertson and his successors sought to convey. Finally, the article explains how natural regions and associated conceptions of climate came to be sidelined in the mid-twentieth century as geographers foregrounded human agency in region formation and adopted climatology’s definitions and analytical tools. Revisiting the life and death of theories of natural regions illuminates the contested significance of climate in the discipline of geography, and contributes to ongoing efforts to pluralise the history of climate sciences