Design approaches in technology enhanced learning

Design is a critical to the successful development of any interactive learning environment (ILE). Moreover, in technology enhanced learning (TEL), the design process requires input from many diverse areas of expertise. As such, anyone undertaking tool development is required to directly address the design challenge from multiple perspectives. We provide a motivation and rationale for design approaches for learning technologies that draws upon Simon's seminal proposition of Design Science (Simon, 1969). We then review the application of Design Experiments (Brown, 1992) and Design Patterns (Alexander et al., 1977) and argue that a patterns approach has the potential to address many of the critical challenges faced by learning technologists

Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development: Synthesis Report, Mobile Learning Week 2019

(First paragraph) 2019’s Mobile Learning Week (MLW), UNESCO’s flagship event for information and communication technology (ICT) in education, focused on the theme ‘Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development’. Held over five days in Paris, it comprised a sequence of high-profile events (a global conference, a policy forum and workshops, a symposium and strategy labs), and involved more than 1,500 participants from 140 countries (including Ministers of Education and ICT, other representatives from Member States, the private sector, academia and international organizations)

Confidence and competence with mathematical procedures

Confidence assessment (CA), in which students state alongside each of their answers a confidence level expressing how certain they are, has been employed successfully within higher education. However, it has not been widely explored with school pupils. This study examined how school mathematics pupils (N = 345) in five different secondary schools in England responded to the use of a CA instrument designed to incentivise the eliciting of truthful confidence ratings in the topic of directed (positive and negative) numbers. Pupils readily understood the negative marking aspect of the CA process and their facility correlated with their mean confidence with r = .546, N = 336, p < .001, indicating that pupils were generally well calibrated. Pupils’ comments indicated that the vast majority were positive about the CA approach, despite its dramatic differences from more usual assessment practices in UK schools. Some pupils felt that CA promoted deeper thinking, increased their confidence and had a potential role to play in classroom formative assessment

From the Shell-shocked Soldier to the Nervous Child: Psychoanalysis in the Aftermath of the First World War

This article investigates the development of child analysis in Britain between the wars, as the anxious child succeeded the shell-shocked soldier as a focus of psychoanalytic enquiry. Historians of psychoanalysis tend to regard the Second World War as a key moment in the discovery of the ‘war within’ the child, but it was in the aftermath of the First War that the warring psyche of the child was observed and elaborated. The personal experience of war and its aftermath, and the attention given to regression in the treatment of war neuroses, encouraged Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and others to turn their attention to children. At the same time, however, the impact of the First World War as a traumatic event, with inter-generational consequences, remained largely unaccounted for within psychoanalysis as Klein and others focused on the child's riven internal world

Digital approaches to researching learners' computer interactions using gazes, actions, utterances and sketches

When learners use computers, they typically look at the screen, type, use the mouse, talk, write, sketch and make gestures. This paper identifies technical, practical, ethical and methodological challenges associated with traditional methods for studying such interactions. It examines the potential of recent technologies for identifying learners’attention, recording real-time writing and sketching, and analyzing multiple data feeds in an integrated way. A study of learners’ interactions with multiple representations is used to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of digital approaches to collecting, coordinating and analyzing observational data. The paper argues that there is a need for research into frameworks for analyzing digital data of learners’ computer interactions in systematic and principled ways

The Role of Audiovisual Translation in Mediating Foreign Language Learning

Part 5: Learning in Specific and Disciplinary ContextsInternational audienceThis is a case study of a specific learning environment in the Intensive English Language Program, characterised by technical, spatial, temporal, and motivational restrictions that impede students’ progress. Activity Theory was used to describe the situation, and to design an intervention in the form of a new activity system. A dubbing project was designed and implemented in the Listening and Speaking Course. It utilised students’ mobile devices in an anywhere, anytime type of learning, and their native language and cultural background as a starting point to engage them in a collaborative effort that led to the production of eight dubbed videos. The resulting videos were entered in an internally-organised video competition which added a further motivational element to the project. To evaluate the project’s effect on students’ perceptions and motivation, data were collected using 5 focus group interviews. Results show high levels of motivation, increased learning, increased confidence and sense of achievement and pride in the resulting work