ICT as learning media and research instrument: What eResearch can offer for those who research eLearning?

Students‘ interactions in digital learning environments are distributed over time and space, and many aspects of eLearning phenomenon cannot be investigated using traditional research approaches. At the same time, the possibility to collect digital data about students‘ online interactions and learning opens a range of new opportunities to use ICT as research tool and apply new research approaches. This symposium brings together some of the recent advancements in the area of ICT-enhanced research and aims to discuss future directions for methodological innovation in this area. The session will include four presentations that will explore different directions of ICT use for eLearning research

Transitions through lifelong learning: Implications for learning analytics

The ability to develop new skills and competencies is a central concept of lifelong learning. Research to date has largely focused on the processes and support individuals require to engage in upskilling, re-learning or training. However, there has been limited attention examining the types of support that are necessary to assist a learner's transition from “old” workplace contexts to “new”. Professionals often undergo significant restructuring of their knowledge, skills, and identities as they transition between career roles, industries, and sectors. Domains such as learning analytics (LA) have the potential to support learners as they use the analysis of fine-grained data collected from education technologies. However, we argue that to support transitions throughout lifelong learning, LA needs fundamentally new analytical and methodological approaches. To enable insights, research needs to capture and explain variability, dynamics, and causal interactions between different levels of individual development, at varying time scales. Scholarly conceptions of the context in which transitions occur are also required. Our interdisciplinary argument builds on the synthesis of literature about transitions in the range of disciplinary and thematic domains such as conceptual change, shifts between educational systems, and changing roles during life course. We highlight specific areas in research designs and current analytical methods that hinder insight into transformational changes during transitions. The paper concludes with starting points and frameworks that can advance research in this area

Dissolving the Dichotomies Between Online and Campus-Based Teaching: a Collective Response to The Manifesto for Teaching Online (Bayne et al. 2020)

This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in teaching in Higher Education. The 2020 Manifesto continues in the same critically provocative fashion, and, as the response collected here demonstrates, its publication could not be timelier. Though the Manifesto was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the responses gathered here inevitably reflect on the experiences of moving to digital, distant, online teaching under unprecedented conditions. As these contributions reveal, the challenges were many and varied, ranging from the positive, breakthrough opportunities that digital learning offered to many students, including the disabled, to the problematic, such as poor digital networks and access, and simple digital poverty. Regardless of the nature of each response, taken together, what they show is that The Manifesto for Teaching Online offers welcome insights into and practical advice on how to teach online, and creatively confront the supremacy of face-to-face teaching

Learning design, design contexts and pedagogical knowledge-in-pieces

This paper argues the case for conducting theoretically well-grounded empirical research into teachers’ design activities, including their design thinking, as a strategically important complement to practical development work in the field of learning design. We identify some issues arising from two related lines of empirical research in which we have been engaged – drawing attention to the importance of context in design cognition. We also introduce a conception of teachers’ personal pedagogical knowledge as ‘knowledge in pieces’, and examine some of the implications of this view for thinking about the relationships between pedagogical beliefs, design decisions and teaching practices

Investigating university students’ conceptions of engineering: an implied identity perspective

Examining how learners ascribe meaning to different aspects of their university life is a necessary undertaking in higher education. This article aims to investigate university students’ conceptions of engineering and explore how these conceptions relate to the context of their experience. Our data collection method and data analysis are informed by the techniques of the phenomenographic approach and the Implied Identity Framework. Fifteen engineering students in a course about sustainability participated in the study. Results revealed eight categories of participants’ conceptions: (1) engineering as a practice for designing solutions; (2) engineering as a pragmatic practice for the welfare of people; (3) engineering as a knowledge-based practice; (4) engineering as a communicative practice; (5) engineering as a technology-mediated practice; (6) engineering as thinking; (7) engineering as an independent practice; and (8) engineering as learning. These conceptions had cognitive, technological, or social orientations and were related to three aspects of engineering: outcome-focused; process-focused; and person-focused. Also, findings demonstrated that different contexts of the university, workplace, and society prompt different ways of thinking about engineering. The findings place a greater emphasis on personal agency and the development of student identities as lifelong learners

How can we design for learning in an AI world?

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