Seann Dikkers

Amplifications of learning: Use of mobile media devices among youth

Smart mobile devices like the iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire, and iPad have energized educators’ interest in using mobile media for education. Applications from clickers to games to augmented reality game creation software are thriving in research settings, and in some cases schools, but relatively little is known about how youth use such devices for learning outside of school. This research study seeks to add to the research literature detailing the technological affordances of such devices by using a Social Construction of Technology (or SCOT) approach, to see how one user group – adolescents – construct the technology particularly in regards to learning. It employs a design intervention approach in which we gave fully operational iPhones with unlimited data plans to three cohorts of youth to use throughout the day. Participants included homeschooled students, students enrolled in alternative schools, and students at a conventional American high school. Participants strongly valued these devices for learning, and constructed them as personalized devices for amplifying learning, specifically through amplifying access to information, social networks, and ability to participate in the world. Access to mobile devices was deeply tied to personal power for these youth, as they were able to function more effectively to meet their goals with employers, teachers, and peers. Although they destabilized relationships, they caused almost no friction, and instead, parents, teachers, and peers reported valuing how youth could participate more fully in the world. The article concludes with implications for how educators and software designers might best capitalize on these social affordances when designing for mobile-enabled classrooms.

Framing Feedback for School Improvement Around Distributed Leadership

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to examine the utility of framing formative feedback to improve school leadership with a focus on task-based evaluation of distributed leadership rather than on role-based evaluation of an individual leader. Research Methods/Approach: Using data from research on the development of the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning, we examine ways to design formative evaluation and feedback organized around distributed leadership practices. This study draws on qualitative data from iterative design research conducted with middle and high school principals, assistant principals, teachers, and staff in 2011. Findings: Many challenges in providing actionable, multirater feedback were addressed by using an assessment instrument that focused on measuring distributed instructional leadership practices. Users reported that task-based multirater feedback provided transparency in communicating a clear theory of action for school improvement and fostered formal and informal conversations around school improvement. Implications for Research and Practice: The study suggests that focusing on distributed leadership practices may help overcome some of the limitations to the use of evaluation feedback that is targeted to an individual leader. Key features of formative feedback design desired by school principals included transparency in the theory of action underlying assessment items to prime teachers and leaders for collaborative discussions of current and potential practices, and research-based guidance on next steps schools can take to build distributed instructional leadership capacity in their schools.

Questing as learning: iterative course design using game inspired elements

Purpose – This study aims to review the development of six iterations of a master’s level course between the summers of 2013 and 2015, with a particular focus on the use of optional quests to engage and motivate student learning. Design/methodology/approach – The comparative case study analysis draws on design-based research theory to consider learner activity, perceptions and commentary on course design. Findings – Findings show students consistently exceeding expectations in the classroom, creating their own assignments, accepting custom challenges and, on average, sustaining a high regard for the learning process and format. Practical implications – Positive results appear using free and available tools that can be adopted in any classroom setting. Originality/value – Given the degree of voluntary engagement with course content, this local set of case studies implies that quest-based learning can drive an entire course design with positive results and provides a design model for others to adopt and bui...

Real-Time Research: An Experiment in the Design of Scholarship.

This article reports on an unconventional collaborative event called Real-Time Research, a project that brought 25 participants together from radically divergent fields for a playful and somewhat improvisational investigation of what it means to do games and learning research. Real-Time Research took the form of a two-part workshop session at the ‘Games, Learning & Society’ (GLS) conference during the summer of 2008, in which attendees collaboratively designed and then conducted five research experiments that took place over the course of the two-day conference. The article reports on the results of those studies and the processes that generated them.