Roland van Oostveen

Faculty Use of Tablet Computers at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology

This article describes instructor use of tablet computers for personal use, research activities and teaching practices within the Faculties of Science and Engineering at UOIT. The benefits of tablet use were evaluated on the basis of types of usage, personal and professional productivity and the “richness” of the overall computing experience. Major findings include the enhanced ubiquity of computer use by faculty as a result of increased mobility, and the modification of pedagogical practices before, during and after lectures. The article also reports on faculty speculation regarding the effects of tablet use by students as well as suggestions for improving tablet computer design. The article concludes with a number of recommendations for the expanded use of tablet computers within higher education settings. Resume : Le present article decrit l’utilisation par l’instructeur d’ordinateurs tablettes a des fins personnelles, pour des activites de recherche et la pratique de l’enseignement au sein des facultes de sciences et genie de l’UOIT. On a evalue les avantages de l’utilisation de la tablette en fonction des types d’utilisation, de la productivite personnelle et professionnelle et de la « richesse » de l’ensemble de l’experience de traitement. Parmi les conclusions importantes, on trouve l’ubiquite amelioree de l’utilisation de l’ordinateur par la faculte en raison de la mobilite accrue et de la modification des pratiques pedagogiques avant, pendant et apres les cours. Le present article traite aussi des suppositions du corps professoral quant aux effets de l’utilisation des ordinateurs tablettes par les etudiants et de suggestions visant l’amelioration de la conception de ces ordinateurs. L’article termine sur des recommandations pour une utilisation accrue des ordinateurs tablettes en enseignement superieur.

A course on serious game design and development using an online problem-based learning approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel undergraduate course on serious game design and development that integrates both game and instructional design, thus providing an effective approach to teaching serious game design and development. Very little effort has been dedicated to the teaching of proper serious game design and development leading to many examples of serious games that provide little, if any, educational value. Design/methodology/approach – Organized around a collection of video clips (that provided a brief contextualized overview of the topic and questions for further exploration), readings, interdisciplinary research projects and games, the course introduced the principles of game and instructional design, educational theories used to support game-based learning and methods for evaluating serious games. Discussions and activities supported the problems that students worked on throughout the course to develop a critical stance and approach toward implementing game-based le...

Exploring social immediacy/intimacy in fully online learning communities through synchronous tools

Facial expressions and body language lie at the heart of the way we convey the emotional content of our interactions. The degree to which these aspects are negated in online learning environments is currently a point of debate in the field. In Fully Online Learning Community (FOLC) based programs, the closeness that students report (Childs, van Oostveen, Clarkson & Flynn, 2015) is proposed to be the result of a combination of: (a) the use of synchronous video/audio; (b) decreased transactional distance (Moore, 1993); and (c) the types of interactions that are cultivated in the online environments used in FOLC-based programs. This paper reports on initial findings from an investigation that examined an aspect of social presence, specifically the role of facial expressions, body language and words in supporting a collaborative online environment that fostered closeness and addressed the “dialog” component of transactional distance in FOLC-based programs. The role of synchronous experiences in online courses and programs is discussed and implications for students and educators of using synchronous tools to foster online collaboration and connections are examined.