Student engagement and feedback in material design and participation

(mobile devices/forums/blogs/wikis) BLC Meeting September 2010, London Met

John CookLearning Technology Research Institute &

HALE London Metropolitan University

Available in slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook

Email: john.cook@londonmet.ac.uk Home page: http://staffweb.londonmet.ac.uk/~cookj1/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnnigelcook Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook

Indicative publications:http://staffweb.londonmet.ac.uk/~cookj1/#pubs

Johnnigelcook or Jonni Gel Cook!

Objectives• Explore student engagement and feedback in material

design and participation (forums/blogs/wikis/mobile devices)• Provide resource/guidelines on how blended learning can

be best used to improve feedback and engagement experiences at points of transition. – I would draw on the growing body of evidence in this area (e.g.

Lefever & Currant, 2010) to develop blended approaches to enhance the student experience.

• Disseminated within the faculty, across the university and nationally (funding permitting).

Transitions• Lefever, R. & Currant, B. (2010). How can

technology be used to improve the learner experience at points of transition?

• Becka Currant comments “One of the major areas it has identified for me is the lack of formally evaluated work in this area and the need for approaches to be documented. So onwards with writing up papers for journals then everybody!”

How can technology be used to improve the learner experience at points of transition?

(Lefever & Currant, 2010)• Pre-entry support and aiding early transition• Social interaction and integration• Skills/academic development and ‘learning to learn’• Information communication• Maintaining engagement and participation• Inclusivity and increased student diversity• Student centred approaches• Connecting with student use of technology• Alternative, additional and blended approaches

For example mobile• One of the themes for the upcoming university review

is ‘mobiles’!• See this prize winning paper from LTRI:

Bradley, C., Holley, D. (2010). An analysis of first-year business students’ mobile phones and their use for learning. ALT-C

• http://repository.alt.ac.uk/797/ • This paper reports on ongoing work into mobile

learning that has been conducted with an incoming group of first-year Business Studies students over the last five years.

“The information given was underlined by the 'experience' of the area and therefore given context in both past and present.”

http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook/urban-planning-education-in-context-with-mobile-phones

Work done with trainee teachers in HALE

““it was triggering my own thoughts and I was getting to think for myself about the area and the buildings.”

http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook/cook-acd-sudsv2010

Work done with architecture students

“The ability to be in a particular position but get a variety of views/different visual perspective was a very useful opportunity. The whole thing also got everyone talking in a way I hadn't experienced on field trips to Fountains before.”

Blackboard Mobile: Central & Learn

• http://www.blackboard.com/Mobile/Overview.aspx

References• Bradley, C., Holley, D. (2010). An analysis of first-year business students’

mobile phones and their use for learning. In, Creanor, L., Hawkridge, D., Ng, K., Rennie, F. (Eds). “Into something rich and strange” – making sense of the sea-change, pp 89-98. The 17th Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C 2010). Held 7–9 September 2010, University of Nottingham, England, UK. he paper is available from: http://repository.alt.ac.uk/797

• Lefever, R. & Currant, B. (2010). How can technology be used to improve the learner experience at points of transition? Available from: http://bit.ly/a4Qa8F