Barry Harper

Understanding the design context for Australian university teachers: implications for the future of learning design

Based on the premise that providing support for university teachers in designing for their teaching will ultimately improve the quality of student learning outcomes, recent interest in the development of support tools and strategies has gained momentum. This article reports on a study that examined the context in which Australian university teachers design in order to understand what role design support tools and strategies could play. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 30 academics across 16 Australian universities. The findings suggest that most Australian university teachers have a high degree of flexibility in their design decisions suggesting that opportunities exist for learning design tools and strategies to be adopted.

The engagement of social media technologies by undergraduate informatics students for academic purpose in Malaysia

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the perceptions, acceptance, usage and access to social media by students and academics in higher education in informatics programs in Malaysia. A conceptual model based on Connectivism and communities of practice (CoPs) learning theory was developed and were used as a basis of mapping the research questions to the design frameworks and the research outcomes. A significant outcome of this study will be the development of a design framework for implementing social media as supporting tools for student engagement and teaching and learning of informatics programs in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-method research methodology with a significant survey research component was employed for this research. This methodology focused on collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data to better understand the research problems. For this study, a mixed-method sequential transformative research strategy based on a...

The Importance of Active Exploration, Optical Flow, and Task Alignment for Spatial Learning in Desktop 3D Environments

Arguments for the use of interactive 3D simulations in education and training depend to a large extent on an implicit assumption that a more accurate and complete spatial cognitive model can be formed through active user-controlled exploration of such an environment than from viewing an equivalent animation. There is a similar implicit assumption that the viewing of animated view changes provides advantages over the viewing of static images due to the value of optical flow. The results to date, however, do not clearly support these assumptions. In particular, the findings of Peruch, Vercher, and Gauthier (1995) and Christou and Bulthoff (1999) conflict in relation to the importance of active exploration and of optical flow. This article reports the results of two studies exploring the importance of active exploration and of optical flow for spatial learning in 3D environments. The results indicate that active exploration can provide greater spatial learning than viewing of animations, but only if there is an alignment between the task goals during this exploration and the spatial learning being tested. In addition, the results suggest that a set of well-chosen static views of the environment can in some cases allow the formation of as complete a spatial cognitive model as a set of animated views. The article concludes with an analysis of the methodologies used by Peruch et al. and by Christou and Bulthoff in light of the findings reported here, leading to a new explanation for their conflicting results.

Researching learning design in open, distance, and flexible learning: investigating approaches to supporting design processes and practices

Taylor and Francis CDIE_A_402490.sgm 10.1080/01587 10903023173 Distance Education 0158-7919 (pri t)/1475-0198 (online) Origi al Article 2 09 pen and D st nce Learning Association of Australia Inc. 3 000 ug t 2 SueBennet sbenn tt@uow.edu.au The past decade has seen a significant expansion of distance, open, and flexible learning as advancements in information and communication technologies have offered new opportunities for teachers and learners to interact without their needing to be in the same place at the same time. Online technologies have transformed traditional print-and-post distance education and enabled campus-based institutions to offer flexible study options. The effect has been particularly significant in higher and further education, but also of importance in K-12 school education, training, and continuing professional education. This expansion has promoted a greater awareness of the need for carefully planned and designed learning experiences that are based on principles of effective pedagogy. While long recognised by institutions that have had a history of participation in distance education, for many universities the notion of educational design as an important part of an academic’s routine activities is a relatively new one. Many universities offer support for academics through central units or faculty-based instructional designers; however, challenges remain in supporting the educational design process and disseminating successful designs for use by other university teachers. Learning design and pedagogical pattern approaches seek to address this challenge in two ways. The first is by providing a means for teachers to document and work with their designs to support the planning and implementation process. The second is by offering a format in which designs can be shared, and therefore reviewed and adapted by others. All learning design approaches are based on the assumption that learning and teaching experiences must be systematically described using an appropriate formalism to make apparent critical features. The intention is that high-quality designs, if described in such a way, can be adapted and customised by another teacher to suit his or her context. The aim is not to prescribe a particular design to be copied but to extend a teacher’s pedagogical repertoire through the process of modifying someone else’s design. A central theme of learning design research has been the application of this concept to distance and flexible delivery with an emphasis on design sharing and reusability for online learning, including distance and blended educational approaches. The range of current research foci include:

Supporting Authentic Learning Contexts Beyond Classroom Walls

At the classroom level, contexts for learning are often limited in the experiential component. Teachers and trainers feel overwhelmed by the difficulty of inventing authentic learning contexts, and creating tasks that truly reflect the way knowledge would be used in the real world (Herrington et al. 2004). However, there are growing numbers of examples of how such authentic learning environments are being used in schools, higher education, and professional development in a variety of contexts and discipline areas, such as in literacy education (Ferry et al. 2006), in physical activity fitness and health (Rice et al. 1999), in Indigenous education (Marshall et al. 2001), in evaluation (Agostinho 2006), in multimedia and ICT (Bennett et al. 2001), in literature (Fitzsimmons 2006), and in business writing (Pennell et al. 1997). Teachers and trainers who subscribe to this approach to learning can be very inventive in developing learner perceptions of authentic contexts, but often financial, situational and time constraints limit the experiential elements of authentic learning settings. Open image in new window

Making News Today: a tool for adoption of ethics principles using technology¿supported television journalism

There are movements internationally towards curricula that incorporate values and citizenship education. In Australia, this movement has been illustrated with the adoption of a national curriculum in values education. This has arisen from the perceived need for citizens to hold values around the rights and responsibilities of functioning within a democracy. The Making News Today programme has been designed to develop a range of literacies enabling learners, for example, to read the media beyond the interests of the elite. The programme incorporates a journalistic process for television news production for middle school students using laptop and handheld video technologies, with embedded ethics and values education. The article reports on an analysis of the implementation of this programme with middle school students in Australia with reference to student adoption of ethical stances in the journalistic process and the implications for the use of this project in developing ethics, values and citizenship as part of the curriculum process.