Michael A. Cowling

Piloting mobile mixed reality simulation in paramedic distance education

New pedagogical methods delivered through mobile mixed reality (via a user-supplied mobile phone incorporating 3d printing and augmented reality) are becoming possible in distance education, shifting pedagogy from 2D images, words and videos to interactive simulations and immersive mobile skill training environments. This paper presents insights from the implementation and testing of a mobile mixed reality intervention in an Australian distance paramedic science classroom. The context of this mobile simulation study is skills acquisition in airways management focusing on direct laryngoscopy with foreign body removal. The intervention aims to assist distance education learners in practicing skills prior to attending mandatory residential schools and helps build a baseline equality between those students that study face to face and those at a distance. Outcomes from the pilot study showed improvements in several key performance indicators in the distance learners, but also demonstrated problems to overcome in the pedagogical method.

Pedagogy before Technology: A Design-Based Research Approach to Enhancing Skills Development in Paramedic Science Using Mixed Reality

In health sciences education, there is growing evidence that simulation improves learners’ safety, competence, and skills, especially when compared to traditional didactic methods or no simulation training. However, this approach to simulation becomes difficult when students are studying at a distance, leading to the need to develop simulations that suit this pedagogical problem and the logistics of this intervention method. This paper describes the use of a design-based research (DBR) methodology, combined with a new model for putting ‘pedagogy before technology’ when approaching these types of education problems, to develop a mixed reality education solution. This combined model is used to analyse a classroom learning problem in paramedic health sciences with respect to student evidence, assisting the educational designer to identify a solution, and subsequently develop a technology-based mixed reality simulation via a mobile phone application and three-dimensional (3D) printed tools to provide an analogue approximation for an on-campus simulation experience. The developed intervention was tested with students and refined through a repeat of the process, showing that a DBR process, supported by a model that puts ‘pedagogy before technology’, can produce over several iterations a much-improved simulation that results in a simulation that satisfies student pedagogical needs.

Teaching Pervasive Game Design in a Zombie Apocalypse

Pervasive games have some unique properties that make them difficult to teach and challenging to design. The best examples of pervasive games are all now unplayable, having been specifically situated in both space and time. Pervasive games can be big, comprised of large player communities and covering sizable geographies. They can take a long time to play, sometimes lasting weeks or months. This makes them cumbersome to iteratively playtest and inaccessible to most student game designers, who must rely upon written accounts and sparse documentation to imagine the game experience. In this paper we describe and reflect on the process of teaching pervasive game design through a playful in-class exercise that we deployed in the Spring of 2016. We discuss how teaching pervasive games in this manner can not only provide students insight into this difficult design space, but can also create a unique context for designers to iteratively test new large-scale game ideas.

Designing Hybrid Games for Playful Fabrication: Augmentation, Accumulation & Idleness

Personal fabrication is on the rise as small scale manufacturing technology becomes more accessible. However, current uses of the technology are typically utilitarian, with little consideration given to the potential of fabrication systems to support more playful and creative experiences. In this paper, we argue that these new technologies can be used for more than prototyping and manufacturing. We propose the term playful fabrication to highlight how these technologies can be used in expressive and creative ways. Using two work-in-progress case studies, we identify three characteristics, augmentation, accumulation, and idleness, that highlight the opportunities and challenges for playful fabrication.

Navigating the Path Between Positivism and Interpretivism for the Technology Academic Completing Education Research

Technology researchers, who typically come from a background steeped in experimentation and dogma, may contribute to qualitative research in learning and teaching. This chapter challenges the perceived positivist epistemology of technology academics, its communication with research in technology, focusing in particular on how epistemology in this discipline is usually downplayed in favour of discussion of methods at the expense of epistemology and methodology. Using work such as that by Hofer and Bendixen (Personal epistemology: Theory, research, and future directions. In K. Harris, S. Graham, & T. Urdan (Eds.), APA educational psychology handbook, Vol. 1. Theories, constructs, and critical issues (pp. 227–256). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2012) on “personal epistemology”, the position of different epistemologies and their relationships to research questions will be discussed, with strategies identified to allow researchers coming from technology research to navigate an epistemological shift for learning and teaching research and discussion on why this might be required.