Claire McAvinia

A visualisation tool to aid exploration of students' interactions in asynchronous online communication

Much research in recent years has focused on the introduction of virtual learning environments (VLEs) to universities, documenting practice, and sharing experience (Armitage, Browne, & Jenkins, 2001; Browne & Jenkins, 2003; Moron-Garcia, 2004; Weller, 2007). Attention has been directed towards the importance of online dialogue for learning as a defining feature of the VLE. Communicative tools are an important means by which VLEs have the potential to transform learning with computers from being passive and transmissive in nature, to being active and constructivist (Pavey & Garland, 2004). However, practical methods of reviewing and analysing online communication to trace cycles of real dialogue (and learning) have proved somewhat elusive. Qualitative methods are also under-used for VLE discussions, since they demand new sets of research skills for those unfamiliar with them, and can be time intensive. This paper describes a visualisation tool to aid the analysis of online communication. The tool has two purposes: first, it can be used on a day-to-day basis by teachers or forum moderators to review the development of a discussion and to support appropriate interventions. Second, the tool can support research activities since the visualisations generated provide the basis for further qualitative and quantitative analysis of online dialogue. The visualisation software is designed to encode interaction types simply and quickly. The software was tested and then used to analyse data from a sample of forums within the Moodle VLE. The paper discusses both the method of visualisation and analysis of the online interactions as a pilot for further research analysing interaction in discussion forums.

Towards Reusable Personas for Everyday Design

Personas are artificial character based representations of user goals, attitudes, motivations and abilities which enable designers to focus their design efforts on key, targeted users. The success of personas in design is due to their capacity to enable designers to empathize with users and understand user goals. Persona development is rooted in the rigorous collection and analysis of data specifically related to the design project being undertaken. New design projects thus require the development of new personas. Since redevelopment is not always achievable attention has turned towards reuse of personas and the underlying data. This paper reports on ongoing research into the development of reusable personas for use by non-expert, everyday designers. Such designers are regularly faced with small scale but diverse design challenges for which they cannot carry out user research and modelling. They can, however, make use of general, reusable personas developed independently of their current design project.

CALLers and learning technologists: Where do they meet, and what do they have in common?

In the UK and Ireland, the context in which CALL is developing in higher education is changing. Language teachers in universities may increasingly be involved in CALL development and research, but their universities are simultaneously increasing formal central support for all staff in adopting and exploiting new technologies. In both CALL, and this wider adoption of technology, we see distinct areas of practice and research emerging. In such a context of change and growth, it is not always clear where the work of specialists in languages might dovetail with that of staff working across the institution to enhance the use of technologies for learning and teaching. In this paper, the author will examine common themes and approaches between CALL and what is often labelled ‘learning technology’ from a communities of practice perspective, and ask where and in what ways each can inform the development of the other.

I don’t have the time! Analysing talk of time in lecturers’ use of the VLE

This paper reports on findings from the recent extension of the VLE survey which examined VLE usage from a staff perspective. 580 staff across seven institutions responded to the survey. The survey explored staff perceptions of the VLE and the opportunities for and barriers to its effective use. Qualitative and quantitative data were analysed in order to identify the major factors influencing staff engagement with the VLE. Time (or the lack thereof) emerged as the greatest barrier to effective use of the VLE. When time was in scarce supply, staff evaluated where to spend it and prioritised accordingly. The amount of time needed to gain proficiency in all or particular elements of the VLE was cited as a barrier to its effective use. There was a perception that large tracts of time were required to attend training. This led to questions about the pedagogical value of VLE usage. Technical infrastructure and usability were also factors which prevented staff from engaging with the VLE. We discuss these factors in light of a move towards micro courses and micro-credentialling, and the growing body of scholarly evidence available to support investment of valuable time by staff in the VLE.

The VLE versus Open Education

In this paper we consider the position of the VLE in the context of the open education movement. This paper gathers data from the #VLEIreland survey in order to explore further whether open education was a concern of the academics involved, and if so, how it shaped their use of the local VLE. We will explore the nature of open education and open educational resources (OER), and whether there are interactions between these resources and the VLE. Open educational resources are materials shared online for educators to use and adapt, including full courses, modules, textbooks, and assets such as video clips, images or teaching methods. Data from our staff survey indicates a range of responses to the sharing and use of OERs and a spectrum of understanding (or lack of understanding) of copyright issues. We explore these findings and discuss their implications for OER in the future, and suggest that the ideals of “openness” are challenged by institutional VLEs and other mechanisms for resource sharing in higher education.

A Software Development Process for Freshman Undergraduate Students

This conceptual paper presents work which is part of an ongoing research project into the design of a software development process aimed at freshman, undergraduate computing students. The process of how to plan and develop a solution is a topic that is addressed very lightly in many freshman, undergraduate courses which can leave novices open to developing habit-forming, maladaptive cognitive practices. The conceptual software development process described in this paper has a learning process at its core which centres on declarative knowledge (in the form of threshold concepts) and procedural knowledge (in the form of computational thinking skills) scaffolding freshman software development from initial planning through to final solution. The process - known as Computational Analysis and Design Engineered Thinking (CADET) - aims to support the structured development of both software and student self-efficacy.

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR A SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS BASED ON COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

A software development process is a mechanism for problem solving to help software developers plan, design and structure the development of software to solve a problem. Without a process to guide the structured evolution of a solution, it is extremely likely that at least some aspect of the resulting software will be omitted or incorrectly implemented. Even though the importance of utilising a software process for solving problems is accepted in the business and academic communities, it is a topic that is addressed very lightly (if at all) in most freshman undergraduate computing courses with most courses focussing on programming procedures rather than the process of how to develop a solution. A consequence of this is that some students go on to develop maladaptive cognitive practices where they rush to implement solutions to problems with little planning. Typically these maladaptive practices involve surface practices such as coding by rote learning and cutting and pasting code from existing projects. Such practices can be very difficult to unlearn and can result in students lacking skills in planning and designing solutions to problems which can persist to graduation. Despite these issues, little active research has been found on the development of software processes aimed at freshman third level learners and consequently there are few approaches available to help freshman students through all stages of the software process. However, there is a wealth of current research into computational thinking (CT) as a mechanism to help solve computational problems. Even though CT is seen as a key practice of computer science, most of the research into CT (as a named area) is aimed at 1st and 2nd level education with CT being a more implicit part of third level computing courses. This suggests that there is an exciting opportunity to explicitly exploit the affordances and skills of CT into a software process aimed at freshman third level learners. This paper presents work which has been carried out as part of an ongoing research project into this issue in which the key skills associated with computational thinking are incorporated into a conceptual framework which will provide a structure for a software process aimed at freshman undergraduate computing students. This research is not tied to any particular programming paradigm but its use is assumed to be in the context of imperative, commercial programming languages. The framework is centred on declarative knowledge (in the form of threshold concepts) and procedural knowledge (in the form of CT skills) scaffolding freshman software development from initial planning through to final solution. The framework known as Computational Analysis and Design Engineered Thinking (CADET) – once operationalised as a software process with an accompanying support tool aims to support the structured development of both software and student self-efficacy in the topic.

Understanding the Everyday Designer in Organisations

This paper builds upon the existing concept of an everyday designer as a non-expert designer who carries out design activities using available resources in a given environment. It does so by examining the design activities undertaken by non-expert, informal, designers in organisations who make use of the formal and informal technology already in use in organisations while designing to direct, influence, change or transform the practices of people in the organisation. These people represent a cohort of designers who are given little attention in the literature on information systems, despite their central role in the formation of practice and enactment of technology in organisations. The paper describes the experiences of 18 everyday designers in an academic setting using three concepts: everyday designer in an organisation, empathy through design and experiencing an awareness gap. These concepts were constructed through the analysis of in-depth interviews with the participants. The paper concludes with a call for tool support for everyday designers in organisations to enable them to better understand the audience for whom they are designing and the role technology plays in the organisation.