Teemu Leinonen

Collaborative discovering of key ideas in knowledge building

In this paper, we describe our work-in-progress for developing Collaborative Discovering Tool (CoDi tool) that is meant for enhancing knowledge building discourse in the Future Learning Environment 2 (Fle2) system. Knowledge building discourse in the Fle2 type of systems usually leads to gradual accumulation of notes. We have found that users experience difficulties to get an overall picture of the knowledge produced and synthesize its advancement. By providing means for the participants to highlight key ideas, that they find particularly useful, the CoDi tool was designed to facilitate collective management of knowledge and inquiry and provide various visual representations of the database. We report results of a pilot experiment carried out with the CoDi prototype that appears to be a promising tool. However there are certain open questions concerning what are the social and pedagogical effects of highlighting ideas in different educational setting, how highlighting should be organized so that it would provide strongest support of knowledge advancement, and whether the results should always be shared not only by tutors but also by students. Regardless of the challenges, the development of the CoDi tool appears to open up an interesting line of inquiry that we would like to share with the CSCL community.

Information Architecture and Design Solutions Scaffolding Authoring of Open Educational Resources

This paper presents the open learning object repository and collaborative authoring platform LeMill (http://lemill.net), which has over 7,500 members and over 8,500 reusable learning resources (situation in October 30th, 2009), all created by the community members. The design of LeMill has tackled numerous challenges that hinder the authoring and sharing of educational resources by communities of teachers. This paper describes the research-based design process that was used to solve these challenges. The information architecture of LeMill scaffolds authors toward collaboration and sharing. The licensing scheme encourages reusing and remixing of educational content. In order to make LeMill easy to learn and use we have avoided technical terminology and complicated metadata forms in the user interface. As an open community we have also tackled multicultural and multilingual issues. In this paper, we present the information architecture and design of LeMill, including the technical solutions. We believe that our design solutions will contribute to the goal of creating an open educational resource ecosystem.

The Code ABC MOOC: Experiences from a Coding and Computational Thinking MOOC for Finnish Primary School Teachers

The Finnish primary school curriculum will feature programming and computational thinking as mandatory cross-curricular elements in all teaching starting from the first grade. Many teachers are quite concerned about this and feel ill-prepared. A group of volunteers created a MOOC for teachers and, with no budget, trained over 500 primary school teachers to be competent teachers of programming (38% of the participants). The results from a study conducted within the course indicate that Finnish teachers seem to think that coding is an important addition to the school curriculum and they exhibit low levels of anxiety over it. The MOOC design focused on connectivist design principles (cMOOC) and was considered extremely successful by the participants. The MOOC participants seemed confident that the MOOC would equip them to face the new challenge, and indeed, the feedback from the MOOC and its results support this.

Designing Edukata, a Participatory Design Model for Creating Learning Activities

Closing gaps between visionary ideas and classroom practice was the key achievement of the design research and work of the iTEC project. The design activities were based on the traditions of Scandinavian participatory design, activity theory, service design, artistry, and a specific view on learning design. Within iTEC, the design research and work brought forward the concept of Learning Activities as a useful mode of communicating new ideas to teachers that provided both challenges and support for overcoming those challenges. Evaluation results showed that Learning Activities were extremely successful. This success led to the need to ensure the continuation of Learning Activity design and production beyond the project. The design approach for creating the Learning Activities was captured for educators in the Edukata toolkit. Radical simplification yielded a model that seems to be valuable for teachers even with small amounts of training. However, the full impact of this model and its applicability in the diverse school learning settings across Europe remains to be validated. In this article we present the design research process and one of its main results: the Edukata toolkit for teachers to design their own Learning Activities to bridge the gap between tie visionary ideas and classroom practice.

Design-driven education in primary and secondary school contexts. A qualitative study on teachers’ conceptions on designing

Abstract Design in educational contexts is a relatively new topic. The basic idea of design and design-driven education is that students and teachers participate together in the planning, implementation and evaluation of learning projects. However, how design-driven education should be carried out in practice is yet to be established. Therefore, the aim of this study is to gain insights into how such practice could be implemented. Through a qualitative study, the authors examined primary and secondary school teachers’ (N = 5) conceptions on various aspects of design in educational contexts. The results indicate that design-driven education emphasises the need for collaboration between students and teachers, and the teachers’ active roles as facilitators for learning. Furthermore, in order for such design-driven practices to be successful, the learning process requires students to be self-regulative learners. The use of technology was also experienced as a natural part of design-driven education. The results present the participating teachers’ understanding of how design-driven education in school contexts could be organised.

Why do we want data for learning? Learning analytics and the laws of media

With the increase of online education programs, learning analytics (LA) tools have become a popular addition to many learning management systems (LMS). As a tool for supporting learning in an educational context, LA has generated some controversy among scholars. Therefore, in this text, we aim to provide a theoretical and analytical understanding of the approach and its implications for teaching and learning. To achieve this, we apply McLuhan’s semiotic analysis of media (1988). The “Laws of Media” questions are asked about LA tools: What do they enhance, make obsolete, retrieve, and reverse into. By answering these questions, we outline which practices of teaching and learning are more likely to become common when LA tools are taken into use more widely and which others will be relegated. In the analysis, we point out that LA tools enhance prediction and personalization of learning, while they displace certain teachers’ skills, personal interaction between teachers and students, and qualitative interpretation and assessment of learning. Simultaneously, LA retrieves behaviourist views of learning and urges discussion about data literacy. Taken to the limits, LA reverses its effects and becomes a tool for supporting awareness and reflection in teaching and learning. We consider these contributions relevant for understanding and reflecting on the type of pedagogies that LA supports, the implicit values it holds, and the changes it introduces into educational practice.

Creating and Sharing Knowledge Through Experiences: A Case Study with Ach so! in Healthcare Education

This paper reports results from a case study that investigated creating and sharing knowledge arising from experiences with the Ach so! mobile app for video annotation in healthcare education. The qualitative content analysis of the interview data indicated that Ach so! enhanced reflection when the students saw their action from videos and thus were able to evaluate their own and group performance as external observers and to create knowledge on their experiences. Ach so! promoted knowledge sharing when the students together reflected their performance and annotated successful and failed incidents. Research outcomes contributed to the design of the Ach so! and workplace practices, and suggested applying Ach so! to dynamic learning contexts and scaling the applicability of Ach so! to informal and non-formal learning contexts at workplaces.

Scenarios for peer-to-peer learning in construction with emerging forms of collaborative computing

Many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Europe are interested in finding new methods of training and workplace learning. Technology-enhanced practices of peer-to-peer learning may offer various new possibilities for SMEs. In this study we consider emerging technologies for informal learning in construction work. These technologies include wearable computing, invisible and ambient computing, augmented reality and novel interaction technologies. Three preliminary scenarios presented in this paper demonstrate how these technologies may be used. These scenarios have been developed, with a focus on the use of technology within a community supporting peer-to-peer learning, that may negate some of the social concerns of wearable and ubiquitous technologies. The inclusion of the construction workers in the design process, combined with smart design, is expected to find acceptable and fair solutions. It remains to be seen whether construction industry work communities will support this assertion.