Digital places: location-based digital practices in higher education using Bluetooth Beacons

The physical campus is a shared space that enables staff and students, industry and the public, to collaborate in the acquisition, construction and consolidation of knowledge. However, its position as the primary place for learning is being challenged by blended modes of study that range from learning experiences from fully online to more traditional campus-based approaches. Bluetooth beacons offer the potential to combine the strengths of both the digital world and the traditional university campus by augmenting physical spaces to enhance learning opportunities, and the student experience more generally. This simple technology offers new possibilities to extend and enrich opportunities for learning by exploiting the near-ubiquitous nature of personal technology. This paper provides a high-level overview of Bluetooth beacon technology, along with an indication of some of the ways in which it is developing, and ways that it could be used to support learning in higher education

Implementation of QoS onto virtual bus network

Quality of Service (QoS) is a key issue in a multimedia environment because multimedia applications are sensitive to delay. The virtual bus architecture is a hierarchical access network structure that has been proposed to simplify network signaling. The network employs an interconnection of hierarchical database to support advanced routing of the signaling and traffic load. Therefore, the requirements and management of quality of service is important in the virtual bus network particularly to support multimedia applications. QoS and traffic parameters are specified for each class type and the OMNeT model has been described

Play as you learn: gamification as a technique for motivating learners

Motivation can sometimes be a problem for learners, especially when they do not find the purpose of a learning activity to be clear. Gamification is a recent concept, primarily from the web development industry, that can make learning activities more active and participatory. This paper provides an overview of the background of gamification, the relevant key game concepts, gives an overview of examples from outside education and provides some suggestions for implementing gamification in education generally, and e-learning specifically. This paper is intended to give readers an overview of gamification, allowing an informed analysis of the technique in their own context to be made

The Dvaravati Gap - Linking Prehistory and History in Early Thailand

The author’s principal research has mainly been in the field of Southeast Asian prehistoric archaeology rather than art history but one topic that has preoccupied me since I first excavated between 1980–1985 at the site of Ban Don Ta Phet in west-central Thailand is the relationships between the late prehistoric Iron Age cultures of Southeast Asia and the Indian influenced Buddhist and Hindu civilizations of the early first millennium of the present era and especially the Dvaravati Civilization of Central Thailand which occupied the same region as the late prehistoric Iron Age communities– albeit after an interval of several hundred years

The use of UHF transponders as a potential replacement for cattle passports

Commercially available UHF RFID tags and interrogators (readers) are surveyed with a view to assessing their suitability as a replacement for cattle passports and preliminary laboratory trials for the tag read/write range are presente

Investigating perceptions and potential of open badges in formal higher education

Open Badges are a method, proposed by the Mozilla Foundation, to recognise skill acquisition and ‘informal’ learning, particularly as part of Lifelong Learning. However, there is also significant potential in the formal education sector. This paper outlines a project at City University London to identify whether Open Badges should be supported across the institution, and includes some possible uses for badges. The project involved interviewing staff and conducting focus groups with students to understand their needs and level of interest. The paper includes some anticipated and actual findings from the research and summarises the subsequent work being undertaken as a result of the project. The findings of this project could be used by other institutions considering the use of Open Badges in their own context

Exploring the transformative potential of Bluetooth beacons in higher education

The growing ubiquity of smartphones and tablet devices integrated into personal, social and professional life, facilitated by expansive communication networks globally, has the potential to disrupt higher education. Academics and students are considering the future possibilities of exploiting these tools and utilising networks to consolidate and expand knowledge, enhancing learning gain. Bluetooth beacon technology has been developed by both Apple and Google as a way to situate digital information within physical spaces, and this paper reflects on a beacon intervention in a contemporary art school in higher education conducted by the authors intended to develop a situated community of practice in Art & Design. The paper describes the project, including relevant theoretical foundations and background to the beacon technology, with regards to the potential of using these devices to create a connected learning community by enhancing learning and facilitating knowledge creation in a borderless learning space

Towards the devolution of lifewide learning awards through verifiable digital badges

Lifewide learning has grown in importance amongst UK universities, with many now offering award programmes to both encourage students to take part in extra- and co-curricular activities and to recognise their efforts in these areas. However, the typical requirement to align these awards with the existing academic year means that the submission and assessment of the awards occur at one of the most demanding times of the year for both students and staff. This paper suggests that a model for lifewide learning awards where the assessment activities are devolved to trusted third-parties would help to reduce the burden on students and staff. The idea of Open Badges, a standard for creating and sharing secure, verifiable digital credentials and evidence, is proposed and discussed using a case study as a means to support a devolved approach to lifewide learning awards

Open Badges: a visual, learner-centric approach to recognising achievement

Open Badges are online indicators of skills learned inside or outside the classroom. In order to understand how badges might be used to support learning and development in higher education, Ian Glover and Farzana Latif have been looking into the uptake of these badges. There is a desire for broader mechanisms like badges to help students promote their own unique set of skills, knowledge and experience