| 15/05/2012 16:00 | LSRI labs | SynergyNet: Multi-touch tables, classroom orchestration and collaborative learning | Steve Higgins | University of Durham | .. | Yes | Yes | | | |
| 06/03/2012 16:00 | LSRI labs | Next generation facial expression recognition systems | Michel Valstar | University of Nottingham | .. | Yes | Yes | | | |
| 28/02/2012 16:00 | LSRI labs | Analysing the playground: sensitizing concepts to inform systems that promote playful interaction | Stefan Rennick Egglestone | Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham | .. | Yes | Yes | | | |
| 31/01/2012 16:00 | LSRI labs | Recognizing learning: a perspective from a social semiotic theory of multimodality | Gunther Kress | Institute of Education, London | .. | Yes | Yes | | | |
| 03/05/2011 16:00 | | Digital content creation as a means for participatory user involvement in a museum setting | | Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials | The presentation takes a closer look at a recent attempt to create a participatory learning environment in a museum setting using digital technologies. What happens when users are allowed to publish productions online and onsite? And in what ways do young museum users create, share and reflect?
The examples are from a Danish museum of media, with digital exhibits designed to illustrate the constructed nature of media content, but awareness around the actual publishing of content is also an important learning goal. Qualitative research indicates that there are both problems and opportunities in the current design of the digital participatory exhibits, and this presentation will comment on these. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 19/04/2011 16:00 | | Auditory perceptual learning, educational technologies and game design | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | N.B. seminar rescheduled from 22 March
The presentation will report on the current work done in collaboration with LSRI and NBRUH.
Our aim is to investigate how auditory perceptual learning, educational technologies and game design can be further combined into an approach of training that is suitable for use by individuals outside the laboratory, e.g. on home computers or mobile devices.
The context of the work is auditory discrimination therapy for tinnitus (ADT). I will illustrate some of design issues that were identified through the prototyping of two game-based learning environments: the auditory submarine and the auditory treasure hunter. The games illustrate two different alternative paradigms for ADT, in an attempt to integrate both game design and auditory training principles.
I will show the importance of the tight integration between the learning material and the gameplay, and therefore the need for an inter-disciplinary approach to auditory training. As an outcome of the design-based research process, I will try and generalize from our experience, proposing some provisionary principles and guidelines to drive the conception of the next generation of game-based auditory training. | No | No | | | |
| 15/03/2011 16:00 | | Automatically data-mining learners' behaviour using CALL software to generate learning recommendations | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | Howler is a hypertextual, partly-collaborative Computer Assisted Language Learning system. It pervasively tracks user interaction with the system and uses this individual and group data to cluster similar learners by their behaviour. These clusters are then used to automatically generate tutor-style recommendations to resources, and to alterations in an individual's learning styles. I will discuss the motivation for the system, a bit about the design and implementation, and then focus on interesting uses of the system. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 08/03/2011 16:00 | | High Fidelity Simulation as a Rich and Situated Learning Environment | | | This talk explores high-fidelity simulation, which is now being used fairly extensively in medical education and the allied health professions. Interestingly, though the use of these technologies in a situated learning setting is based primarily on similar use in industry (e.g., nuclear power plants, airline pilot training), little work has been done on the potential pedagogical value and underlying theoretical justification. This talk will explore the nature of the learning experience, and will tentatively explore some theoretical constructs that can help to further understand, frame, and direct empirical work for these settings. The notion of fidelity and how it can impact on the learner experience, for example, and the collaborative and situated nature of the experience, might provide a valuable complementarity in their approaches: the former addresses issues of design and representations, the latter is very much linked to how the simulation enhances learning. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 01/03/2011 16:00 | | Constraining 'natural' user interfaces to support collaborative learning | | | There is much interest in how 'natural' user interfaces, such as multi-touch surfaces, can help students learn and work together. A claim is that they provide more opportunities for flexible forms of collaboration compared with other technologies (e.g. PCs, mobiles) enabling co-located learners to interact more smoothly. However, there seems to be no clear rationale for why these new kinds of interfaces provide an apparently superior means for collaboration. In my talk I will describe a new framework we have been developing, based on behavioural mechanisms and constraint, that characterizes how multi-user technologies can be designed effectively to support desired forms of collaboration. I also challenge the idea that interaction across such interfaces is necessarily natural and instead argue that it is only through the judicious use of constraints that effective collaboration will ensue. | No | No | | | |
| 22/02/2011 16:00 | | Improvisation and Learning | Mike Sharples/Ruolan Wang | | We shall explore improvisation as an aspect of learning by children and adults. Improvisational learning involves 'making it up as you go along', through rapid alternation of planning and execution that draws upon the resources of a material environment. The combination of cognitive and material constraint provides a structure within which creativity and meaning making can occur. Ensemble improvisation requires mutual acceptance and an ability to build on the emerging performance of others. Learning can occur by exploring a space of possibilities, by developing new routines or coordinations, and by gaining an understanding of the function of improvisation within problem solving or innovation. Despite its analytic complexity, improvisation through imaginative play forms an essential part of early learning, as children explore imaginary worlds, distinguish fantasy from reality, and learn the rules of games and how to modify them. But an analysis of learning episodes by adults shows little evidence of such playful improvisation. Instead, they engage in improvisational learning a tool for problem solving or as a consequence of progressing a craft activity. Some forms of deliberate and skilful adult improvisation, in drama and music, are based around ensemble play. We suggest there is an opportunity to support a developmental progression of learning through improvisation from childhood play to adult ensemble performance, as a way to maintain young people's interest in learning, to engage them in constructive inquiry, and to develop skills of creative extemporization that will be required to prosper in a complex, changing world. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 15/02/2011 16:00 | | Mobile Game Based Learning for PE (Peer Educators) of the MSM (Males having Sex with Males) Community in India | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | A SMS based game on mobile phones has been deployed with a marginalised group of Peer Educators in Kolkata, India. This group is called Males having Sex with Males (MSM) and are a core part of HIV prevention strategy in higher at risk groups in India. The SMS game endeavoured to simulate real life (outreach) work experiences of the MSM Peer Educators.
At the start of the project the research question was, "Can we design and evaluate an effective learning support for Peer Educators of the MSM community using mobile game based learning?" and the specific objectives of the study were:
1. To explore peer education and identify the key learning needs of the Peer Educators
2. To use a participatory process to design and pilot the game as a learning intervention
3. To implement the SMS based intervention amongst a group of Peer Educators.
4. To evaluate whether the SMS text based game had any impact on:
a. learning needs identified by the Peer Educators
b. processes and practices of peer education
5. To evaluate the SMS game
Has the project been able to achieve what it was set to do? | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 08/02/2011 16:00 | | Developing a Sustainable Seamless (Mobile) Learning Education Innovation in Singapore | | National Institute of Education, Singapore | Mobile computing technologies are becoming more and more pervasive, and affordable in our daily lives. Such technologies are suitable for one-to-one and seamless learning (learning everywhere and all the time). However, how to prepare young students for the new habits of learning that are sustainable is a big challenge. We embarked on a three-year research study to explore how to develop a sustainable seamless learning pedagogy in a primary school. We worked with one primary three experimental and mixed ability class (3X) since 2009. Each student in 3X was given a smart phone with unlimited Internet access, data plan and some educational software tools and he/she could use the phone 24/7. My presentation will focus on how we have integrated the affordances of mobile technologies to transform the existing primary three and four science curriculum, our multiple assessment modes, and some of the changes in the science teacher and the students (mainly the “formal” sub-group’s work; we also have a “informal” sub-group within the project team). I will also share some of our challenges we have faced. We hope the presentation becomes a means for our exchange of ideas in using mobile technology for 21st century learning. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 01/02/2011 16:00 | | Creating "Wales in a website" – Casgliad y Werin Cymru/People’s Collection Wales | | People's Collection Wales | Casgliad y Werin Cymru – The People’s Collection Wales is a collaborative and federated programme developed by national institutions to tell the story of a nation from the perspective of its people. Drawing upon the memories, photographs, video, audio and 3D resources of national, regional and local archives, as well as user-generated content from groups and individuals, the website is creating a resource that places heritage media in its temporal and spatial context, and encourages all users not just to view but to contribute and re-use this media in innovative ways.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 25/01/2011 16:00 | | Towards a Field Toolkit for in-field construction of 3D surface models | | LSRI/Horizon, University of Nottingham | My research interests are centred around teaching and learning through model building in the field using mobile technology. My work encompasses a multitude of different techniques and disciplines including mobile learning, glacial reconstruction, mobile augmented reality and remote data collection. The presentation will showcase developments in my research including a prototype of a mobile field intervention designed for students to reconstruct glacial models in the field by picking out a glacial trim-line from field evidence. This will allow them to reflect and learn about the natural landscape with an inquiry based approach. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 18/01/2011 16:00 | | Africa... 'Development', Learning, Mobiles | | University of Wolverhampton | There is much activity, much discussion and much interest in the capacity of mobile devices to deliver, support and enhance learning for the disenfranchised, the disadvantaged and the developing communities and regions of the world especially in Africa. I argue that much of this discussion, interest and activity is however uncritical, simplistic and poorly synthesised.
In general the argument for using mobile phones or other mobile devices to address educational disadvantage is plausible, self-evident and straightforward: their ownership and acceptance are near-universal and cut across most notions of ‘digital divides’; their use is based around robust sustainable business models; they are, unlike other ICTs, found at the BOP amongst the next billion subscribers; they deliver information, ideas and, increasingly, images. And there are no other options!
There is furthermore a rapidly increasing ownership of more powerful handsets in the developing world, decreasing real costs of this hardware and connectivity, increasing coverage of higher specification networks in these regions and renewed activity of donors and of corporates representing publishing, handsets, services and infrastructure looking for sustainable business models based on the educational use of mobile devices in developing regions.
These various communities, necessary actors in facilitating successful learning using mobile devices and technologies, each come with considerable potential but often inappropriate contributions, partial understandings and flawed assumptions. This seminar will explore the extent to which their optimism is misplaced.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 11/01/2011 16:00 | | An Internet of Things that Don’t Exist | | | The term 'internet of things' refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is 'on', and every device is connected in some way to the internet. However, many versions of the 'internet of things' rely upon one premise: that the thing remains in existence. This paper forecasts a near future when digital memories that have been associated with artefacts remain as the only reference to that thing, because that thing has been lost or disposed of. Remaining as entries in databases whilst its material instantiation has been crushed, burnt or tipped into a landfill, the immaterial artefact has the potential to live on within the networks society. Alive and well in the cloud, these ghosts will haunt their makers, distributors, vendors and owners forever, remaining as searchable artefacts that can be correlated against any other data from the past, present or future.
In this seminar Chris Speed will reflect upon recent research / art projects that evoke a sense of time and exhume personal memories of the past.
Chris Speed is Reader in Digital Spaces within the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. http://fields.eca.ac.uk | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 14/12/2010 16:00 | | "Play" | Thomas Sweeney / Matthew McFall | | Join Ilinx Inc for a delightful ludic learning experience. Places are limited. Golden Tickets available in November (more details to follow).
Watch this space... | No | No | | | |
| 07/12/2010 16:00 | | Games rooted in the player's context: An introduction to Hypercontextualized Game Design | | University Eastern Finland (formerly University of Joensuu) | A considerable amount of research focuses to cover the needs of a growing information society, aiming to gather data to be delivered to masses and growing markets. By following only the global trend, we neglect the richness in information and experience that is enclosed in particular locations. There exists a need to focus on small audiences and to support them to express themselves, futhermore to help individuals to create roots in their environments. The philosopher Weil mentions: "[t]o be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul."
In my talk I will present my research into Hypercontextualized Games (HCG). A HCG is a locally designed game with a specific purpose, which focuses on small audiences. HCG is strongly interwoven with the context where designers and players are embedded, by using physical resources available on site. Furthermore, HCG contains information about the subject matter of the game's purpose to promote the guidance of informal learning experiences on-site.
The seminar explains the HCG design concept, and the journey which helped us to derive it. The talk will make use of case studies in Finland and Tanzania. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 30/11/2010 16:00 | | Spaces in-between us: Understanding spatial practice in Second Life | Maggi Savin-Baden | Learning Innovation, Coventry University | This seminar will present a study that explored space and spatial practice in Second Life from the point of view of participants in higher education (lectures, developers and researchers) who had been Second Life or virtual world users for more than three years. It investigated uses of spaces, perceptions of space and participants’ views of them-selves in the Second Life space. The overarching methodology was narrative inquiry which was adopted as access to stories and experiences of space seemed a useful means of coming to understand space and spatial practice from staff perspectives. Methods adopted included an in-world discussion as well as interview-discussions with participants. The findings indicated that issues such as Spatial Practice, Second Life Proxemics, Symbolic Identities and Spatial Conventions were central concerns for those involved in using Second Life in teaching, development and research. Further it was evident that adopting Second Life in higher education could prompt in-depth consideration of the impact of issues such as territory, spatial interaction and identity on student learning. Yet the findings also indicated that areas such as learning design, proxemics and preparation of staff and students about spatial issues are concerns that bear further research. | Yes | No | Slides | | |
| 23/11/2010 16:00 | | Metafora: learning to learn together through social orchestration | Yang Yang and Rupert Wegerif | | The aim of the project is for children to plan their gaming experience around the challenge by using a visual language to signify a scientific investigation process. In the game, children will be assigned different roles to tackle the challenge and to reflect and refine their plans across time. Moreover, to engage children in scientific debates with critical and creative reasoning, micro-process of online discussion will be orchestrated and guided. In this seminar, we will talk through the proposed structure of metafora system and invite a discussion, in order to refine the design. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 16/11/2010 16:00 | | Student as Producer: A Pedagogy for the Avant-Garde; or, how do revolutionary teachers teach? | | | Student as Producer aims to connect undergraduate teaching and learning and academic research so that students become part of the academic project of the university: as producers of knowledge and meaning. The paper sets out the intellectual ideas that lie behind the concept, and how Student as Producer is being developed across the sector and at the University of Lincoln. The theoretical basis for this work is derived from critical social theory grounded in avant-garde Marxism that developed in Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik uprising in 1917, before being suppressed by Stalin, and a group of modernist Marxists working in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. A key issue for Student as Producer is that social learning is more than the individual learning in a social context, and includes the way in which the social context itself is transformed through progressive pedagogic practice. This transformation includes the institution within which the pedagogical activities are taking place, and the society out of which the particular institution is derived. At a time when the market-based model for social development appears increasingly untenable, the creation of a more progressive and sustainable social world becomes ever more necessary and desirable. This work is currently being funded by the Higher Education Academy through the National Fellowship Project Scheme 2010-2013. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 09/11/2010 16:00 | | Constructionist learning by computing for construal | | | A construal is a physical object that supports sense-making through exploratory interaction and interpretation. This notion was elaborated by the historian and philosopher of science David Gooding in his account of Faraday's experimental methods. The advent of computing technology has liberated the making of construals, but construal-by-computer is not well-served by the focus in computer science on principles and tools for developing programs.
In this talk, I shall present a prototype environment for creating construals by computer that exploits model-building with dependency such as is represented in spreadsheets and dynamic geometry environments. Our construals are made up of definitions that express dependencies between observables. As will be illustrated with reference to construing human solving of Sudoku puzzles, many kinds of human agency can be expressed through modifying the current set of definitions. The construal serves as a shared artefact with which developers, teachers and pupils can all interact concurrently in essentially the same way, each according to their role and experience. Preliminary experiments with schoolchildren highlight potential for rich and radically new kinds of learning experience and unprecedented scope for recording, monitoring and intervening in support of constructionist learning.
Background sources
| Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 02/11/2010 16:00 | | CANCELLED - new date to be announced in the Spring Term | | Institute of Education, London | | No | No | | | |
| 27/10/2010 13:30 | | WORKSHOP: Thinking about thinking: fostering metacognition and inquiry when learning with Web 2.0 tools and mobile devices | | Queensland University of Technology, Australia | Metacognition, or ‘thinking about thinking’, is central to a student’s ability to independently inquire and take responsibility for their own learning. In this workshop we will discuss how we can foster metacognitive processes when students are using web 2.0 tools and mobile devices. We will brainstorm how this knowledge can be translated into the design of a smart learning tool.
Background
Intelligent recommender systems can generate complex learner profiles by aggregating data from sources across a student’s personal learning environment. These sources may include school-based data such as grades, preferred learning methods, skill levels and learning goals; web-based data sources such as digital social networks, RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social bookmarks and internet search history; and mobile-based data such as location, motion, connectivity options and proximity to others. The value in aggregating data from a range of sources across a student’s personal learning environment is two fold. Firstly, it allows an intelligent system to build complex student profiles, opening up possibilities for the customisation of instruction. Secondly, it provides an opportunity to frame elements of a student’s personal learning environment, such as web 2.0 tools and mobile devices, as scaffolding for learning. While it has been argued that students are learning important 21st Century skills through their use of new technologies such as web 2.0 tools and mobile devices, studies have shown that this skills development may not be as comprehensive as suggested. This workshop is geared toward identifying how we can encourage learners to think critically about how and why they may use web 2.0 tools and mobile devices in order to ensure they develop these essential 21st century skills.
Workshop
We will in engage in a number of activities to investigate the following questions:
• What learning strategies are supported by web 2.0 tools and mobile devices?
• What tools are most relevant to each stage of inquiry-based learning?
• How can students be encouraged to engage in self-regulation and reflection?
• What data can be used to make recommendations adaptable and fade-able to match student development?
The Details:
When: Weds 27 October 2010, 1:30pm - 3:30pm
Where: LSRI labs
Who: Interested Staff and Students
No design expertise required
25 spaces available
| No | No | Workshop flyer (PDF) | | |
| 26/10/2010 16:00 | | Exploiting intelligent recommendation systems to scaffold independent learning with Web 2.0 tools and mobile devices | | Queensland University of Technology, Australia | Intelligent recommender systems can generate complex learner profiles by aggregating data from sources across a student’s personal learning environment. These data sources may include school-based sources such as grades, preferred learning methods, skill levels and learning goals; web-based sources such as digital social networks, RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social bookmarks and internet search history; and mobile-based data such as location, motion, weather, connectivity options and proximity to others.
The value in aggregating data from a range of sources across a student’s personal learning environment is two fold. Firstly, it allows an intelligent system to build complex student profiles, opening up possibilities for the customisation of instruction. Secondly, it provides an opportunity to frame elements of a student’s personal learning environment, such as web 2.0 tools and mobile devices, as scaffolding for learning.
In this presentation I will be discussing how intelligent recommender systems can be applied to foster metacognition and inquiry-based learning by framing the use of web 2.0 tools and mobile devices. I will present initial design specifications for a new learning tool that seeks to put this theory into practice.
This seminar will be followed by a hands-on design workshop to be held the following day, October 27. Staff and students are very welcome to participate in both events. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 19/10/2010 16:00 | | Interactive environments and autism | Gnanathusharan Rajendran | Department of Psychology, University of Strathclyde | I will describe two studies in which interactive environments have been used with children with autism. 1). the Virtual Errands Task was used to investigate the Executive ability of multitasking in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). 2). is from the ongoing ECHOES project – in which we created a virtual environment for children with ASD to experience joint attention with a virtual character. Touch screen technology and eye-tracking webcams are used to measure real time interaction. In the first foundation study we found that children with autism responded fastest to a request of an object when the virtual character both looked at the child and pointed to the object. A rich interpretation of this suggests that the children were in some way sensitive to and facilitated by the 'social' nature of mutual gaze even from a virtual character. | No | No | Slides | | |
| 12/10/2010 16:00 | | Education in the wild: contextual and location-based learning in action | | | In this talk, I will present my research into location-based contextual mobile learning. I will give an overview of, and background to, the field, particularly into work carried out by colleagues in Europe.
I will then explore the notion of informal learning about the landscape, through a couple of case studies: firstly, how visitors can engage with with the landscape through the use of mobile devices when visiting the Lake District and secondly what guidelines are useful for the design of location-based audio for mobile learning.
Lastly, I will present ongoing research into using crowd-sourced gelocated content for 'ad hoc' environmental education in situ. | Yes | Yes | Slides | | |
| 05/10/2010 16:00 | | Requirements for mobile, web-based tools to support HE students on field trips | Giasemi Vavoula | | Focusing on students in the Arts and Humanities, the Study Visit project aims to understand what potential mobile, web-based tools have to support HE field trips. In this talk I will report a pilot study with Museum Studies students at the University of Leicester, which has enabled the scoping of requirements for such tools through an analysis of different perceptions of context and support. I will also report lessons learned from explorations of the interplay between pedagogical and technological design. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 28/09/2010 16:00 | | The use of art and interactive designs to attract and disseminate research | | | By tradition, academic work has various communication routes ranging from journal and conference articles to presentations and posters. More recently the increasing emphasis on ‘impact’ presents the challenge of developing ways to communicate research to a wider audience. One possibility, that arguably has received limited attention, is the use of ‘art’, particularly interactive designs, as a medium to attract and disseminate work. If art does offer a productive communication medium, what efforts should be expected from researchers, in areas such as learning sciences, to develop such ‘skills’? This talk aims to ignite this heated debate by presenting some of the experiences and designs of ‘MakingStuff’. MakingStuff is a motley crew at the LSRI who have met somewhat haphazardly over the last year to discuss stuff like art, learning, and whose turn it is to make coffee. | Yes | No | | | |
| 06/09/2010 00:00 | | SPECIAL SEMINAR MONDAY at 12.00 - Researching the relationship between new learning environments and outcomes in Victoria, Australia | | Group Manager, Research, Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Victoria/Honorary Research Fellow, LSRI | Recent investments in school education in Australia have resulted in widespread upgrades and rebuilding of the physical infrastructure, as well as new ICT devices and high speed broadband. Through the Digital Education Revolution (DER) program, the Government is providing $2.2 billion (₤1.26bn) over six years to provide for ICT equipment for all secondary schools with students in years 9 to12. In addition, as a response to the Global Financial Crisis, the Government initiated Building the Education Revolution (BER), a $14.7 billion (₤8.45bn) program of school rebuilding and refurbishment designed to generate growth in the building and construction sector.
The state of Victoria has a population almost 6 million (of Australia’s 22 million) and is growing fast. The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) commenced its own school building program prior to the BER, and has recently introduced a state wide digital learning platform, the Ultranet. It has also developed an outcomes-focused framework, rather than a project-specific methodology, for evaluating the effects of its initiatives. These outcomes cover the period from birth to 18 years, the current remit of the Department.
DEECD holds rich data sets about children and young people’s health, wellbeing, and learning outcomes, as well as attitude data from teachers, students and parents. Research and evaluation, using many methods from data mining and regression analysis to field trials, surveys and observation, is an important aspect of our work. However we are aware of a need to ramp up our research in both ICT and learning spaces.
This seminar will outline current programs of research into these areas, including the OECD/CERI Innovative Learning Environments project, the methods used and the challenges associated with understanding the relationships between these large-scale initiatives and outcomes for children and young people. I am very interested in finding new ways to conduct this type of research and as a result of the seminar I hope to develop new collaborations with LSRI researchers for mutual benefit. | No | No | Slides | | |
| 27/07/2010 16:00 | | A computer model of “how we write” | Rafael Perez y Perez | Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico | MEXICA is a computer model that generates plots for short stories based on the engagement-reflection cognitive account of writing, described by Mike Sharples in his book “how we write” (Sharples, 1999). During engagement MEXICA generates material guided by content and rhetorical constraints, avoiding the use of explicit characters' goals or story-structures. During reflection the system breaks impasses, evaluates the novelty and interestingness of the story in progress and verifies that coherence requirements are satisfied.
In this talk I will give a brief introduction to automatic story-generators. Then, I will explain the main characteristics of the MEXICA system, I will show how a computational representation of emotions is employed to progress a story in a coherent way and generate novel situations, and how the dramatic tension of the story in progress might be employed to evaluate its interestingness. Finally, I will mention how we are employing MEXICA as starting point for new research projects. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 08/07/2010 12:00 | | Finding Common Ground: Enhancing Domestic-International Student Engagement in the Classroom | | University of Melbourne | The presentation showcases the results of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) funded project which involved three Australian Universities (University of Melbourne, RMIT University and Victoria University. Many Universities in Australia argue that one of the key benefits of having international students on campus is the potential for cross-cultural interactions between students. Yet, there is research that indicates that interaction levels are relatively low across disciplines. While much research has focused on their social interaction outside the classroom, this project looks at what might occur within the classroom environment (including teutorials, seminars, laboratories and online discussion). This project argued that interaction between domestic and international students need to be strategically planned for and encouraged within classrooms. The presentation highlights a range of strategies which academics might consider in trying to enhance engagement between diverse groups of students.
Presenter:
Dr Shanton Chang is a senior lecturer in Change Management and Social Impacts of Information Systems at the Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne. He completed his PhD in Competencies for Managing Multicultural Workforces at Monash University. His current primary areas of research include the Social Aspects of Broadband Technology Adoption, Online Behaviour and Online Prosumers, and Health and Education Informatics. He is also a recipient of a number of Awards for Excellence in Teaching from the University. Shanton has been involved in the international education sector in Australia for nearly two decades. His involvement started during his days as an international student in the early nineties. In 2000, he received the IDP award for outstanding contribution to the international education sector. In 2008, he received the ISANA Award for ongoing contribution to the International Education Association. (ISANA is the Australian counterpart of UKCISA). | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 05/07/2010 10:00 | | Special ESRC Educational Futures Seminar Series: Methods and Tools for Educational Futures | Richard Slaughter, Giasemi Vavoula & Richard Sandford | Educational Futures Seminar Series | Speakers:
Richard Slaughter, Director, Foresight International: Integral futures for education: theory and methods
Giasemi Vavoula, University of Leicester: The future technology workshop method
Richard Sandford, Futurelab: A survey of methods for educational futures research
The day will be divided into speaker sessions and discussion sessions organised around the question - 'what constitutes a 'futures literate' education system?‘
No charge for attendance - limited places available on a first come, first served basis. To register, please email Barbara Ashcroft on b.ashcroft@mmu.ac.ukThe seminar is part of the ESRC funded 'Educational Futures Seminar Series', run jointly by the Education and Social Research Institute, MMU; Graduate School of Education, Exeter University; London Knowledge Lab; LSRI, Nottingham University; Futurelab
| Yes | Yes | | Videos | |
| 29/06/2010 16:00 | | Ensuring Personal Data Remains Personal in Next Generation Internet Computing Applications | | | The EU Framework 7 project TAS³ (Trusted Architecture for Securely Shared Services) aims to create a service infrastructure that will place the user in control of the use of their personal data in service orientated distributed computing environments at all times. The TAS³ implementation at the University of Nottingham is supporting a regional student placement scheme which will provide students with automated placement matching and management services from various service providers. The objective is to use TAS³ technology to allow users to track use of data extracted from their ePortfolios in other applications. We aim to allow users to be able to monitor how their data is used and by whom, and even to recall it.
The system is managed in real time using Policy Enforcement Points (PEP) and Policy Decision Points (PDP) linked to a user Dashboard via a specifically designed Audit Bus. This framework informs users about how their data is being used once it is extracted from the original data store (i.e. social networking site or ePortfolio). The rules of the framework are based on a trust model; separate services that manage trust in TAS³ work in tandem with service negotiation and discovery services. The results of the implementation were demonstrated to the European Commission at the formal project review in March 2010. The demonstrator showed successfully how a user can control the use of their personal data when it is extracted from the original hosted environment. The TAS³ framework is being applied in other domains, including Healthcare, and has the potential to revolutionise how personal data use on the internet is viewed. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/06/2010 16:00 | | Open Learner Modelling as an Approach to Personalising e-Learning | | | The notion of personalisation pervades much of the discussion about both the potential of, and the current practices associated with, e-learning. Open Learner Modelling (OLM) emphasises the learner as owner of the system's model of the learner so OLM has a potential benefit to those seeking to personalise learning. We discuss this potential in relation to our work on a system called the extended Learner Model (xLM) and its associated extended Open Learner Model (xOLM). | No | No | Slides | | |
| 15/06/2010 16:00 | | Children’s conceptions of the equals sign: developing theory and informing pedagogy | Paul Escalante-Mead | LSRI, University of Nottingham | Most children see the equals sign as meaning "write the answer here" rather than as a symbol of mathematical equivalence (Behr et al., 1976). This can lead to inflexible thinking about arithmetic notation and causes difficulties when pupils meet symbolic algebra at the start of secondary school (Knuth et al., 2006). Recent studies have shown that teaching the equals sign means "is the same as" helps reduce pupils' difficulties (e.g. Li et al., 2008). Several interventions have demonstrated the value of presenting carefully selected sequences of non-canonical statements such as 7+7+9=14+9 and asking pupils to assess their truth (e.g. Molina et al., 2008). However, these studies neglect that symbolic substitution is central to understanding mathematical equivalence, and that the equals sign also means "can be exchanged for". This talk will report on a study that involved the development and evaluation of teaching materials that support both the exchanging and sameness meanings for the equal sign.
The project involved two phases to address our research questions. First, a design and research phase developed classroom materials that supported both meanings for the equals sign in arithmetic contexts. This included the development of a specially designed piece of online mathematical software called "Sum Puzzles" the product of doctoral research by Dr Ian Jones, and to which we will present during this seminar. Worksheets and flashcards were also developed to supplement the software, but are not this talk’s focus. Second, a teaching intervention to Year 7 pupils to evaluate the classroom materials was also developed and will be expounded in this talk. In particular we were interested in how pupils came to engage with the exchanging meaning for the equals sign, and how this conflicted with their existing meanings. We will be reporting on pre and post test interviews with all pupils involved in the intervention to ascertain their understandings of the equal sign.
Preliminary findings will describe the immediate learning gains of pupils in terms of understanding the equals sign upon engaging with the Sum Puzzle’s software and their performance at solving missing number arithmetic questions. Implications for pedagogy and for wider research will be discussed.
| No | No | | | |
| 08/06/2010 16:00 | | TEL it to the People: Technology Enhanced Learning and the Making and Hacking Communities | | | Until recently, Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) tools that support embodied learning modalities have been locked away in academic and corporate research labs. But in the past few years, rich communities of creative exploration have grown, due to the ease of Internet communication, open-source hardware, and low cost components. Sharing their collected experiences and successes via social networking sites, groups of Makers and Hackers have made it easier to try out physical interactive devices. TEL researchers are starting to unlock the potential of these new tools.
I will present a brief survey of the Making and Hacking phenomena and the potential it has for TEL, followed by a short overview of recent research at the London Knowledge Lab, which explored embodied learning of mathematics and geometry. I'll also demo some of the quickly hacked together tools we used for this project. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 01/06/2010 16:00 | | Supporting Collaborative Learning with Interactive Tabletops | Jochen "Jeff" Rick | | Interactive tabletops allow multiple users to interact with the same large horizontal display concurrently through touch input, pen input, or moving physical objects whose position and orientation can be tracked. Hence, there is growing excitement about this technology's potential to support small group work (2-4 learners per tabletop). For instance, SMART Technologies is already selling a commercial product aimed at the classroom.
In this presentation, I provide an overview of the major research to date on children's use of interactive tabletops. I provide concrete examples from my own research on developing tabletop applications and evaluating children's use of these applications. I will address several important questions: How does the age of the participants impact the use of the technology and the nature of the collaboration? What is the value of concurrent input? What models of collaborative learning apply? How can we alter a design to encourage a different form of interaction? What are the major barriers to interactive tabletops succeeding as widespread educational technology and how can research help to overcome these barriers? | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 25/05/2010 16:00 | | A Design Toolkit for Emerging Learning Landscapes Supported by Ubiquitous Computing | Daniel Spikol | Linnaeus University, Vaxjo | The wide use of mobile devices and their integration in our everyday activities is changing the way we communicate, share information, and learn. For example, in populous African countries like Uganda and Nigeria more people have access to mobile phones than electricity in their homes (Kerr, 2010). Also in the OECD, the rapid adoption of powerful mobile devices offers new opportunities to support alternative types of education (Shuler, 2009; Johnson, Levine, Smith, & Stone, 2010). Yet, researchers, policy makers, teachers, and learners struggle to evolve educational theories and practice for meeting the demands of our network society. Mobile devices along with different types of computers are always connected providing a constant stream of digital content to and from people, thus adding new layers to our everyday information landscape. These emergent trends are changing our communication and collaboration patterns that are present in many aspects of our daily lives, but they have not been effectively harnessed for the field of education yet.
Almost twenty years ago, Kaput (1992) argued that the limitations of computer use in the coming decades are likely to be less a result of technological limitations than a result of limited human imagination and the constraints of old habits and social structures. Therefore, it can be argued that different strategies are needed to explore and promote innovative educational practices with new technologies and design can be argued is this catalyst. The main research question addressed in this thesis is formulated as following; what new design approaches can be developed for supporting emerging learning landscapes with ubiquitous computing? In order to investigate this question design thinking is used to bring together the different perspectives of ubiquitous computing, human-computer interaction, and learning. This is exemplified by Simon's (1996) classic definition of design; everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. More recently Morello (2000), has positioned design as a tool that can help predict the future when it anticipates experience. Yet, the practice of design in research, to develop and implement innovative education practices supported by mobile and ubiquitous technologies has not mirrored the widespread adoption outside of the field of learning.
The empirical work presented in this dissertation is based on the activities and outcomes that emerge from three projects that include educational games, inquiry based science learning, and mathematics activities. These projects are analyzed by comparing the different design approaches and by presenting their advantages and drawbacks. From this analysis, the most salient design approaches are identified in order to provide the foundations of a design toolkit. The technological components that are part of the learning landscape include, multiple devices ranging from sensors, mobile phones, & personal computers, to large interactive displays, and the software solutions to support seamless interactions. The orchestration of these pieces; namely people, activities, spaces, and technologies requires a toolkit approach where designers can choose the right course of action. The intention for creating and utilizing such a toolkit is to allow for a better flow between the requirements for learning and the interactions in the networked world. This improved flow is accomplished by the identification of different design factors and interaction modes that recognize the differences between physical, cognitive and social navigation across these emerging landscapes. Therefore, an expanded interaction design process is developed that recognizes the central role of the designer for supporting innovative research and practices in technology-enhanced learning. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 18/05/2010 17:00 | LSRI labs: Please note this seminar will be at 5pm | Critiquing research on children's learning of mathematics | | | Please note this seminar will be at 5pm (not 4pm as per usual). The seminar forms part of the MMES (Midlands Mathematics Education Seminars).
Research in mathematics learning is a diverse field, drawing on a large number of influences and disciplines. This interdisciplinarity seems like a good thing, until we come to try and make sense of questions that are either located at, or cross, disciplinary boundaries. A particularly difficult boundary to work at is that between ‘the individual’ and ‘the group’. A large number of theorists and commentators have between them established a rhetoric of cognitive v. sociocultural, acquisition v. participation and individual v. social. The starting point for this seminar will be a description of some of the difficulties that can be encountered when talking about children's learning of mathematics - focusing in particular on this boundary between individual and group learning.
The rest of the seminar will deal with the question: what happens if we reject the individual/group dichotomy? Can we develop an approach to the research of mathematics learning that is genuinely interdisciplinary? And would this be a useful thing to do?
This is very much a work in progress, and hopefully will stimulate some interesting discussion. Drawing together my own experience in psychology, philosophy, computer science and education, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to discuss the issues in this seminar with an LSRI audience.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 11/05/2010 16:00 | | Tangibles technologies for early number development – the role of physical manipulation in solving number problems | | | In this talk I would like to share my PhD work which evaluated the potential of tangible (hand held) technologies to support early numerical development. To evaluate the importance of physically manipulating representations, the research focused on how young children used physical cubes to solve a particular numerical problem – identify ways a single digit number (e.g., 9) can be broken down into pairs (e.g., 2 & 7) - and compared their problem solving using other representations such as paper squares and virtual representations manipulated with a mouse.
The talk will focus on four of the seven studies carried out that highlight the progression of the thesis – from examining the effect of physical manipulation on children’s numerical strategies to then testing whether strategies can be significantly influenced by changing the representation’s manipulative properties (manipulating virtual squares using a mouse) and perceptual properties (objects that change colour when put into different numerical groups). The talk hopes to elicit the audience’s thoughts surrounding the importance of ‘hands on learning’ and how technology might be used to develop novel forms of abstract representations to support early learning. | No | No | Slides | | |
| 23/03/2010 16:00 | | More than Pretty Pictures | | | Observe any group of scientists sharing ideas and information, and you will invariably see that, at some point, someone will take out a pen and paper, or a napkin over lunch, or walk up to a whiteboard and start drawing. One need not be an artist to communicate the scientific concept in the drawing. The purpose of the exercise is to visually represent and communicate an idea or information, nothing more. Intriguingly, we have found that there is a profound effect on the drawer in this exercise. That is, in addition to communicating, the person making the drawing achieves a better understanding of a concept through the process of thinking about how to visually explain it.
The judgment and decision-making required to render the visual clarifies the thinking. One must decide on a hierarchy of information—what must be included and what might be left out? What is the main point of the visual? Just as in writing an article or responding to an essay question, we must understand and then plan what we want to “say” in a drawing.
This talk will describe the National Science Foundation-funded program, "Picturing to Learn" ( www.picturingtolearn.org) for undergraduate students and will include a personal story of science photographer Felice Frankel's efforts (her successes and failures) in visually communicating science for journal submissions and for the public.
| Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 17/03/2010 09:00 | | Drawing Workshop | | | Human Development and Learning (HDL) and Learning Sciences Research Institute (LSRI) are hosting a Drawing Workshop on the 17th March 2010
The Keynote talk will be given by Richard Jolley the subject will be “The Education of Drawing and its Psychological Benefits for Children”
There will be also talks from Danielle Ropar, Alistair Smith and Shaaron Ainsworth.
For the timetable of the day please click the link below
| No | No | | | |
| 16/03/2010 16:00 | | Drawings as a means to support dynamic modeling activities | | | Dynamic modeling of scientific phenomena is seen as a promising approach to enhance the learning of science. By constructing an external executable representation of a domain, learners are expected to acquire a deeper understanding of the structure of the domain at hand.
Despite its benefits for teaching, modeling is a complex task for most learners. It requires integrating problem information and prior knowledge using a modeling language that is not always familiar.
In this presentation I will explore the possibility to use freehand drawings as a means to support modeling, especially for beginning modelers. Using drawings learners can express their prior knowledge in a way of their choosing, unbound by the formal representation required for modeling. Topics that will be discussed are the analysis of drawings, automatic recognition of drawing elements to support the use of the drawing as initial model, or even to the drawing becoming the model. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 09/03/2010 16:00 | | Is non-symbolic ‘number sense’ related to formal mathematics ability? | | | There is growing evidence that humans have an inbuilt `number sense' system, which supports approximate numerical operations. This system is present in infancy and adulthood, providing abstract approximate representations of numerosity, which can be compared and manipulated. Findings suggest that when we learn to deal with symbolic numerals, they may be mapped onto the pre-existing non-symbolic system. However, the relationship between 'number sense' and formal mathematics ability remains unclear. If symbolic arithmetic is aided by the use of a non-symbolic system, then children's understanding of number could be facilitated by improving mapping between systems.
Halberda, Mazzocco, & Feigenson (2008) measured the acuity of 14-year-olds' number sense in a non-symbolic comparison task and related this retrospectively to the children's performance on formal mathematics measures, which had been taken each year from the ages of five to eleven. They found a positive relationship between non-symbolic acuity and performance on symbolic mathematics assessments, controlling for various cognitive factors such as IQ and working memory.
In the present study, participants were assessed for non-symbolic acuity, formal mathematics ability and IQ, among other measures. In contrast to Halberda et al., we found no relationship between formal mathematics ability and accuracy in a non-symbolic comparison task with large numerosities when controlling for IQ. Several possible sources of this discrepancy are discussed. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 02/03/2010 16:00 | | Emotion understanding and performance during computer supported collaboration | | | Computer supported collaboration is a powerful way to facilitate learning. In comparison with cognitive, social and design factors, little is known about affect and emotions in computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL). My PhD project investigated the relationship between the way that collaborators understand the emotions of each other and their performance during the use of collaborative technologies. I will explain the method and results of three studies that combine statistical techniques for group analysis with detailed qualitative descriptions. The first one assessed the relationship between the emotions of partners collaborating around a concept mapping tool and an educational computer game. The second study is an over-time investigation about the relationship between partners’ emotions and their performance during the use of a collaborative computer game. The third study assessed the benefits of supporting the awareness about the emotions of the partner during face-to-face collaborations and remote collaborations. Implications about the evaluation of collaborative learning technologies and the role of emotions in collaborative learning will be discussed. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 23/02/2010 16:00 | | Understanding visual and multimodal learning | | | When people are learning complicated new ideas, interpreting and constructing visual or multiple forms of representation can bring unique benefits. In other words, representations are powerful tools for learning but like all powerful tools they need careful handling if learners are to use them successfully. Moreover, even after many years of active research, it is not clear how representations mediate learning nor which activities on what representations help specific learners in particular contexts. In this talk I will illustrate some of the many facets of learning with representations in order to try to move closer to an answer to these questions.
Due to technical problems the first 2 minutes of the video has no audio please keep watching and the audio does start. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 16/02/2010 16:00 | | Using technology to support children's collaboration in work and play | | | How do we distinguish gimmicks from the genuinely useful when looking at how technology can support collaboration? Should we enforce or enable collaboration, and how much of what we observe is a response to mere novelty?
I will discuss recent research we have done on the ShareIT project ( www.shareitproject.org) and other work in our lab ( http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/research/chatlab/) to look at how technology might support or stifle some of the psychological underpinnings of collaboration – awareness of the other, joint attention and joint action – and how examining these processes needs to be part of our investigation of technology-supported social activity. | No | No | Slides | | |
| 09/02/2010 16:00 | | CANCELLED - Children’s mapping between different representations of number | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | SEMINAR CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS
Numerous studies show that humans possess a ‘number sense’ system that supports non-symbolic representation and processing of number. This system allows infants, children and adults to distinguish and manipulate set of items on the basis of number. When children learn to count and are taught arithmetic in school, they acquire a symbolic system to represent and process number. These symbolic representations become mapped onto children’s pre-existing non-symbolic representations. However, we currently know little about how this mapping process takes place. I will present data from a series of studies that examine the nature of this mapping in children and adults, and consider the role it plays in learning formal mathematics. | No | No | | | |
| 02/02/2010 16:00 | | If learning mathematics requires a teacher, where did the teachers come from? | Aaron Sloman | | I shall try to show why we need to combine philosophy of mathematics, biology (evolution and epigenesis), developmental psychology, and AI/Robotics in order to understand how mathematical competences grow out of more general competences produced by biological evolution for dealing creatively with a rich and varied, but highly structured physical environment.
I suspect that there are deep implications for primary school education and how mathematics can be taught, as well as for the design of future intelligent robots. But the problems are hard and I am looking for clever collaborators and critics!
It may be of interest also to some philosophers, mathematicians, AI researchers, and researchers studying animal cognition, as well as people from the learning sciences and psychology.
| Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 26/01/2010 16:00 | | Auditory training to reduce the cognitive burdens that arise from hearing impairments | | | Difficulties communicating are common in everyday life. It is frustrating when you cannot understand someone at the pub or on a bad mobile phone connection. The education of children is hampered when they cannot understand the teacher because the classroom is noisy. The frequency and severity of these communication difficulties are increased for individuals with hearing impairments. Hearing loss distorts speech and likely increases the cognitive resources required for communicating.
This is a major problem because cognitive resources devoted to communicating cannot be used for other things (e.g., hearing-impaired children may devote more cognitive resources to understanding the teacher and therefore less cognitive resources to learning than normal-hearing children). There are a number of potential ways to compensate for the adverse effects of hearing loss. One of the most obvious ways is to change the acoustics (e.g., through hearing aid amplification and noise reduction). Another way, which could be used in conjunction with acoustic strategies, is to capitalize on our tremendous capacity to learn. This talk will focus on a training based intervention that is being designed to promote auditory perceptual learning as a means of reducing the cognitive burdens that arise from hearing impairments. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 19/01/2010 16:00 | | Development of Crowd Sourced System for Ubiquitous Language Learning | | | Ubiquitous technologies can provide great opportunities for learning. Learning in this way should not tie learners to specific places, times and situations as it is delivered through existing technologies already in use in the context of learners’ day-to-day activities. In particular, new generation of mobile devices with PC-like functionality, advance sensing and multimedia capabilities have great potential for supporting ubiquitous language learning.
This presentation focuses on the development of a collaborative mobile knowledge sharing system for language learners (CloudBank) that combines the characteristics of personal use, contextual use, informal learning, Web 2.0 ideas of user-generated content, content syndication and social networks, to build a mobile- and web-based crowed-sourced information system to help international students further their knowledge of local UK language and culture. An overview of the application design is given and technical architecture and implementation of the system is discussed. The paper concludes with a discussion of research and evaluation issues that arise in the context of crowd sourced systems for ubiquitous language learning. | Yes | No | | Video | |
| 13/01/2010 12:00 | | Ubiquitous Learning Log: How can we learn from past experiences? | | | This talk will presents a system for ubiquitous learning log, which supports learners with a system to share and reuse learning log by linking videos and environmental objects. We assume that every object has RFID tags and mobile devices have a RFID reader and can record a video at anytime and anyplace. By scanning RFID tags of real objects, this system can provide only video segments that include the objects. Also the system recommends the similar videos to be compared. In this system, the video recording and RFID tagging are used purposely to support further teaching or learning rather than “just record it and use it in some day”. We think that this system can be applied to various kinds of domains that employ several kinds of real objects and vary the results depending on the combination of the objects; for example, cooking, checking upon cars such as oils, battery, and tires, surgery operations and chemical experimentations.
| No | No | | | |
| 12/01/2010 16:00 | | POSTPONED - Children’s mapping between different representations of number | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | Numerous studies show that humans possess a ‘number sense’ system that supports non-symbolic representation and processing of number. This system allows infants, children and adults to distinguish and manipulate set of items on the basis of number. When children learn to count and are taught arithmetic in school, they acquire a symbolic system to represent and process number. These symbolic representations become mapped onto children’s pre-existing non-symbolic representations. However, we currently know little about how this mapping process takes place. I will present data from a series of studies that examine the nature of this mapping in children and adults, and consider the role it plays in learning formal mathematics. | No | No | | | |
| 08/12/2009 16:00 | | Learning-through-Touring | | Goldsmiths College, University of London | How can touring urban buildings and their environs reinvigorate learning activities? Exploring this question is the focus for this seminar. Concepts and processes for learning through touring are presented in two forms:
1. As analytic investigations from different disciplines such as architecture, art, education, geography and urbanism in which notions of site-specificity and subjectivity are argued to be relevant in rethinking the relationship between learning and touring
2. As a series of site-specific design projects in which these ideas are explored in practice - Mudlarking in Deptford, Transitional Spaces at the V&A and Cracking Maps at the British Library
Discussion around a new design methodology – learning-through-touring – concludes the seminar. This methodology has relevance for those concerned with developing participatory practice in urban design and architecture, with education centres committed to delivering learning activities in and about the built environment, with educators who develop creative ways of engaging with the topography of the urban landscape, and with those researching mobile learning.
http://www.gold.ac.uk/design/staff/sprake/ | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 01/12/2009 16:00 | | The Importance of the Interface | | Human Factors Research Group, University of Nottingham | It seems intuitive to ergonomists that the design of the interface has a critical impact on the success of a product, whether in a work, leisure or educational environment. However, it is sometimes difficult to demonstrate this importance. This talk will consider examples of work drawn from areas such as virtual reality, pedestrian navigation systems, social networking technologies and transport control interfaces to consider how the design of the interface does contribute to operator performance and satisfaction, and how this interacts with other aspects of cognitive ergonomics and design. | No | Yes | Slides | | |
| 24/11/2009 16:00 | | Mobile Game Based Learning for Peer Educators of the MSM Community in India - the journey so far | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | Peer education is a worldwide strategy for HIV prevention especially amongst the ‘hard to reach’ vulnerable groups such as Males having Sex with Males (MSM). In India, it is one of the main components for the national HIV/AIDS control initiatives. Despite its growing popularity, little is known about the processes of peer education and the problems or difficulties faced by the Peer Educators (PE). This research examines peer education in the MSM community and aims to explore how mobile game based learning may contribute towards enhancing the knowledge and skills of the PE. In this context, the research aims to develop and evaluate a Short Message Service (SMS) based game on mobile phones to increase collaboration and skills of the MSM PE.
http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/Students/A_Roy.php | No | No | | | |
| 17/11/2009 16:00 | | Adaptive cognition: How do we exploit images as a learning resource in modern technologies? | | | The argument can be made that, in the recent past, the use of images as communication and learning tools has been eclipsed by text. Recent developments in ICT have now redressed that balance and the growth of available visual information in fields as diverse as medicine, archaeology, fashion, and the media generally, is plain to see. How we adapt to this growth, and exploit it, is however unclear, and a symptom of this is clear evidence that image databases are ineffective and can be hard to use. In this talk I argue that one approach to take is to examine the natural ecology of tasks using images from where we can identify cognitive competences and opportunities for exploitation. From the applied side, we can use this approach to infer ways in which learning through visual media can be supported, and on the theoretical side it identifies areas of cognitive theory we need to explore further to make this possible. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 10/11/2009 16:00 | | Representations of learning. Acts of learning. | | | Talk of "learning" is everywhere (mobile, continuing, just-in-time, informal, e-, and so on). Indeed it may flourish in contexts where once the talk was more about "education". The form of discourse that dominates the "learning sciences" tends to be cognitive in nature. Yet the currently pervasive interest in learning reminds us that there is a political and institutional discourse that also needs to be addressed by this new learning science. The present seminar will pursue such matters through discussing a comparative investigation (historical and cultural) of popular images of learning and learners. Some tensions in the vision that emerges will be explored through other empirical material arising from the observation of new "learning spaces". All of this foregrounds learning as cultural practice. The latter part of the seminar will consider a practice taxonomy of learning based around the organising notion of "mediation". | No | No | | | |
| 03/11/2009 16:00 | | Childhood, bio-politics and human futures | | University of Warwick | The study of childhood is currently weakened by a biological/social dualism, separating ‘social’ from ‘developmental’ traditions and falsely identifying the investigation of life processes with the naturalisation of childhood. Researching the emerging space of childhood bio-politics, in which life processes are central to social and political processes, requires that these problems be managed. The view of childhood as a ‘hybrid’ phenomenon allows for the management of dualism but has difficulty navigating bio-political space. A supplementary approach based on multiplicities of ‘life’, ‘voice’ and ‘resource’ is described. The argument is illustrated by discussion of sonic ‘teen deterrents’ in the UK.
| No | Yes | | | |
| 27/10/2009 16:00 | | Orchestrating learning in a one-to-one technology classroom | | | One-to-one technology classrooms equip each child with a computing device that provides personalised learning tools. They offer promising environments to support individual and small group learning through the affordances of handheld devices such as portability, low cost and communication features. However, there are management problems in the technology-enabled classroom, for instance, lack of support for scaffolding collaborative and whole class working, design of lessons that switch easily from one to another activity, and difficulty in re-using lesson components.
The research investigates the development and evaluation of a software tool (SceDer) to enable a teacher to design and orchestrate learning in a one-to-one classroom. It begins with the studies: one-to-one classroom characteristics; currently available software tools and specifications in e-learning such as IMS LD, IMS LD compliant software tools and LAMS; research and practices in the area of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning such as CSCL Scripts; and the ideal of effective scenarios for one-to-one classrooms. A subset of the effective scenarios are then analysed to the level of activity and interaction in order to discover how technology can support the teachers and students when the lessons are mediated by the technology.
The results of the scenarios analysis, together with the requirements from relevant stakeholders such as students, teachers, researchers, and technologists captured from the literature review, are then brought together for developing the SceDer system to orchestrate learning with one-to-one technologies. SceDer consists of three main parts: SceDer Authoring, an authoring system for teachers to design lessons; an interchange language (COML), for describing lesson sequences and resources; and a delivery system based on Group Scribbles software, for enabling the teacher to deliver and manage the designed lessons in the one-to-one classrooms.
The talk relates to the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of the SceDer system which has been tested in school classrooms to assess its usability, usefulness and expressiveness. The results of usability demonstrate that the system provides intuitive designer and player tools, that can be easily used by teachers and students to achieve the lesson goals. The results of usefulness show that SceDer can manage fluid transitions between individual, group, and whole class learning activities. In term of expressiveness, SceDer is able to support teachers to rapidly design and conduct a wide range of scenarios. This includes the reflection on the work and possible approaches to further improve the system.
http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/Students/Jitti.php | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 20/10/2009 16:00 | | Towards an Interdisciplinary Design Science of Learning | | | A central problem with the study of learning is that it is inherently interdisciplinary. Understanding learning as a process of effecting permanent changes to the brain is an aspect of neuroscience; as the acquisition of skills and knowledge, learning forms part of cognitive psychology; as an activity of social and cultural development, it falls under social sciences; as a process of systemic adaptation to societal changes it could be part of history, business or economics. In addition, enabling people to learn more effectively brings in the disciplines of design and engineering.
We need to develop new methods to integrate this knowledge and to harness it for the benefit of learners and society. The suggestion is to build a design science of complex systems for teaching and learning. Such an enterprise needs be international, to build on expertise across many research centres. It should be cross-cultural, respecting and celebrating the diversity of settings and approaches to learning. It needs to be both practitioner-oriented and design-based, if it is to analyse how learning is currently achieved and also develop new methods for enabling and supporting productive learning. It must embrace multiple technologies, including digital media, traditional media and human knowledge, not just as resources for learning, but as integral parts of a complex learning system. It needs to be multi-level and multi-method, seeking to integrate the neural, cognitive, social and cultural aspects of learning.
Some immediate consequences of such an agenda are that this cannot be done be one researcher, or one lab, alone. Just as the Human Genome project required a cooperation of many research labs, a long timescale, a shared infrastructure and ethical framework, and a common set of tools, so the development of an Interdisciplinary Design Science of Learning needs a shared effort to integrate facilities for the co-design of technology-enabled learning and cross-cultural studies of learning effectiveness. Such studies are already underway. For example, the Group Scribbles technology developed at SRI ( http://groupscribbles.sri.com/) is being developed and tested across multiple sites in a worldwide collaboration. International research on educational design patterns is developing a shared notation and framework to analyse and guide productive learning.
The talk will be an exploration of the challenges and opportunities for a large-scale Design Science of Learning, some methods that might be appropriate, and examples of work already underway. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 13/10/2009 16:00 | | Using facets to integrate knowledge, learning and communities | | | Traditional classification schemes, such as Dewey Decimal, categorize assets into mutually exclusive and hierarchically arranged categories. These taxonomies can usefully present information within a principled and informative model. However, critics such as Clay Shirky assert that "ontology is overrated", arguing that a taxonomy embodies a theory of a domain that is often unhelpful, biased or inflexible.
By contrast, Ranganathan's faceted classification schemes place categories at the intersections of two or more independent and orthogonal dimensions. Apples and radishes live in the set of things that are spherical, red and edible. By adding "flavour" as a fourth dimension we can distinguish radishes and tomatoes ("savoury") from apples and plums ("sweet"). By losing the "spherical" constraint, we get to strawberries and raspberries. Alternatively, we can explore "red" and "spherical" to discover red Giants, Dahlias and cricket balls. Where taxonomies assert a single point of view based on specialisation relationships, facets encourage exploration and discovery of content linked by shared properties. The reader can easily narrow down, broaden out or dog-leg through a hypercube of related concepts. Faceted schemes work well for computer-based repositories. Marti Hearst's Flamenco browser is an established design pattern for integrating faceted browsing and free-form search. For example, http://flamenco.berkeley.edu/demos.html illustrates the ability to explore exhibits in the fine arts museums of San Francisco by attributes such as colour, media and artist.
This session will discuss practical applications of faceted classification for organizing learning and knowledge. Drawing on his experiences while applying faceted models in public and private sector solutions, Paul we will share techniques for the integration of formal documentation, on-line learning, harvested knowledge, external resources and communities of practice. He will also review opportunities to integrate facets with social media within a learning management system.
| Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 09/10/2009 12:00 | | Mobile Content Development for Post Graduate Students in UKM (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) | | Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National Universiti of Malaysia) | In the mobile revolution, people are increasingly connected and are digitally communicating with each other in ways that would have been impossible to imagine only a few years ago. Considering that many learners today are from the Gen Y group of learners, mobile learning may be the next best approach to complement other modes of learning. It has the potential to add value to lectures, tutorials, learning materials, and other learning activities. In Malaysia, the emergence of mobile technology has gradually developed the attention of the e-communities. Taking this into consideration, a group of researchers from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) is developing a prototype of mobile content for the postgraduate students. This presentation highlights the preliminary findings of the research which includes the attitude and readiness pertaining the mobile learning among postgraduate students in UKM. The samples are 100 students, who are involved in one of the postgraduate core courses, which is Research Methodology 1. The research employed quantitative method in which a set of online questionnaire was published and distributed in an online mode to the students. A blended pedagogical approach, which include face-to-face and mobile approach were used. The research data was analyzed and reported analytically and descriptively. The findings revealed that the respondents agreed with the mobile learning technology which they found very effective. These preliminary findings also indicated that mobile learning could be applied to contribute to the effectiveness of the blended pedagogical approach used. | No | No | | | |
| 06/10/2009 16:00 | | The Personal Inquiry (PI) project: lessons learned | | | The PI: Personal Inquiry project, a joint project between University of Nottingham and the Open University, is developing a new approach to ‘Personal Scripted Inquiry Learning’ as a learning experience where children are engaged in a scientific process of gathering and assessing evidence, conducting experiments, visualising rich information, and engaging in informed debate.
The seminar will focus on the second case study across a school classroom and the home of year 9 students of a local Nottingham school, using a first prototype of the personal inquiry toolkit. The main aim of the study was to incorporate inquiry learning activities within an extended school science environment in order to investigate opportunities for technological mediations and to extract guidelines for the design of personal technology to link inquiry learning across different settings. A set of evaluation activities will be carried out, the outcomes of which will be discussed in the seminar. We will also discuss our insights for the development of the technology to support their activities and how such technologies could be appropriated as tools for learning. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 29/09/2009 16:00 | Amenities Building, Room B11 | CANCELLED - TEL it to the People: Technology Enhanced Learning and the Making and Hacking Communities | Brock Craft | London Knowledge Lab | Please note this seminar has had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances - it will be re-scheduled for Spring 2010
Until recently, Technology Enanced Learning (TEL) tools that support embodied learning modalities have been locked away in academic and corporate research labs. But in the past few years, rich communities of creative exploration have grown, due to the ease of internet communication, open-source hardware, and low cost components. Sharing their collected experiences and sucesses via social networking sites, groups of Makers and Hackers have made it easier to try out physical interactive devices. TEL researchers are starting to unlock the potential of these new tools.
I will present a brief survey of the Making and Hacking phenomena and the potential it has for TEL, followe by a short overview of recent research at the London Knowledge Lab, which explored embodied learning of mathematics and geometry. I'll also demo some of the tools we used for this project. | No | No | | | |
| 23/06/2009 16:00 | | A pattern-based approach for Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) scripts | | | Learning design or scripting has drawn considerable attention in the field of CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning). Such an interest draws on research in flexible scaffolding of complex collaborative situations as well as on parallel research regarding Learning Design.
This talk will address a pattern-based approach to CSCL macro-scripts as a means to support teachers in the Learning Design process. Besides a presentation of prior work on Collaborative Learning Flow Patterns and the WebCollage tool, this talk will describe current research efforts that aim at interweaving learning and assessment patterns. | Yes | Yes | Slides | | |
| 16/06/2009 16:00 | | Engaging school science using mobile technologies | | Department of Psychology, University of Bath | At the CREATE group in Bath we are exploring how newly available technologies such as bespoke educational sensors, 3G mobile phones and internet applications such as Google Maps can be appropriated for use in scientific investigations in schools. We focus on a hands-on approach placing the emphasis on learning practice rather than teaching findings. In my talk I will highlight work carried out within the JISC SENSE and Mobile Phones for School projects, the TSB/EPSRC Participate project and more recent work funded by GWR (Great Western Research) and Sciencescope. We have carried out scientific investigations in a number of schools and begun to explore how such technology-rich learning contexts work and could scale up to national size programmes. I shall highlight key aspects of our work including the need for retaining context to aid interpretation where this has explicitly led from observational analysis to targeted study design.
| No | No | | | |
| 09/06/2009 16:00 | | The EPPE Research: combining methods to study the impact of pre-school | | School of Education, University of Nottingham | The Effective Provision of Pre-school and Primary School (EPPE3-11) research was a longitudinal study funded by the DCSF in England during 1997-2008. It adopted an educational effectiveness design and employed a mixed methodology. This included
- a large scale quantitative element involving the longitudinal tracking of a sample of approximately 3000 children from 141 different pre-school settings from age 3+ to 11 years, including multilevel analyses of pre-school centre effects.
- a focus on a broad range of child outcomes (cognitive progress and social behavioural development)
- the investigation of the impact of various processes eg measures of centre quality, and
- detailed qualitative case studies of selected pre-school centres identified as having positive effects on different child outcomes.
This session will discuss the EPPE research design and use of mixed methods and some of the key findings of the study and the implications for policy and practice.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 02/06/2009 16:00 | | Developing a computer game to aid behavioural, emotional and social education | | Computer Science, University of Nottingham | Computer games are often seen as at best a mindless distraction and at worst a way in which children and young adults are lured into bad behaviours. At the same time many children who are exhibiting behavioural disorders (violent behaviours, attention deficit etc.) end up excluded from school and have to be helped to deal with these symptoms of their underlying problems.
This treatment often involves a teacher in one to one and small group activities seeking to engage the children in discussion about their behaviour; the idea being to get the children to understand the relationship between their own and others behaviour, thoughts and feelings. Such children often find the activities difficult to engage with. However, computer games have already been shown to be useful tools in engaging such students in discussion. The talk details the development of a 3D, super hero themed role-playing adventure based on exploration, collection and interaction with in-game characters. The game aims to allow educators/workers to introduce and discuss important topics with the child in a non-confrontational way; To aid in development of the child/worker relationship by providing a fun activity where the child is afforded control; To provide education aimed at developing coping strategies through learning about the relationship between thoughts, feelings and emotions, and by exploring techniques for recognising and questioning faulty thinking patterns. | Yes | Yes | | | |
| 27/05/2009 12:00 | | LSRI Research Day | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | On the fringes of the Learning Sciences there are disciplines like Social Neuroscience and Health Sciences. The aim of this research day is to explore the relations between these disciplines and the Learning Science and other disciplines: What can we learn from them, what can we offer them?
During this half day event, there will be talks from Social Neuroscience and Health Sciences addressing each field, their methods and their relations to the Learning Sciences. Subsequently there will be a group discussion on what the Learning Sciences can both offer to and take from these disciplines. The day will conclude with a panel discussion on the contribution of the Learning Sciences to its core disciplines.
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Details of the two talks are as follows:
Learning from other people: brain systems for non-verbal social
interaction
Antonia Hamilton
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham
Brain imaging methods are providing important insights into the mechanisms underlying the human ability to interact with and learn from other people. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of some of the ways in which the field of social neuroscience is developing. One particular area of social neuroscience with relevance for learning sciences is the study of mirror neuron systems in the brain. These systems allow us to understand, imitate and learn from other people in a non-verbal, embodied fashion. I will outline current ideas about the mirror neuron system and present some of my own research into the role of this system in learning physical skills (e.g. dance) and in understanding other people's behaviour. Possible implications of mirror systems abnormalities for development and learning will also be considered. Finally, I will attempt to place this work in a broader context and will emphasise the growing interest in embodied cognition as way to make sense of the social world.
Collaborative approaches to support the creation of on-line learning environments in health sciences
Heather Wharrad
School of Nursing Educational Technology Group (SONET), University of Nottingham
Virtual environments have the potential to make a real impact on learning in the health sciences. In this talk I will provide an overview of some of the key areas of development in the field and outline some of the methods used to evaluate their effectiveness. I will then describe some of our work on the design and pedagogy of reusable learning objects, focusing on some of our projects involving collaborative approaches including student generated and client generated content.
| Yes | Yes | | | |
| 26/05/2009 16:00 | | Ethnography and Systems Design | | Mixed Reality Lab, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham | This seminar addresses the nature of ethnography in the design of computing systems. It draws a contrast between ethnography as practised in the social sciences and ethnomethodologically-informed ethnography, a distinctive approach which has particular purchase in systems design. The seminar unpacks this distinctive approach, works through a concrete study, and outlines the various ways in which such studies may be used to inform and shape systems design.
| No | No | | | |
| 19/05/2009 17:00 | | Assessment of learning in the 21st Century: An epistemic approach | | University of Wisconsin-Madison | What do children learn from playing computer and video games, and how do we measure it? Professor Shaffer discusses theories of learning in the digital age, and new techniques of measurement that assess what and how young people learn in virtual worlds. While the focus is on game-based learning, the concepts and techniques apply to learning in any domain where students engage in complex problem solving.
| Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 12/05/2009 16:00 | | Text Segmentation for On-Screen Foreign Language Authentic Text Reading | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | Text segmentation modifies a text’s surface appearance by placing breaks or spaces at the boundaries of a chosen linguistic unit. Text segmentation is deployed to support learners to develop reading fluency in their mother tongue. Text segmentation is also a feature of digital texts which appear in small screen displays. However, little is known about the effects of text segmentation in foreign language reading, particularly of authentic texts.
Two studies were conducted to explore the impact of text segmentation for foreign language reading. The Study I compared continuous text with paragraph segmentation. The Study II focused on comparing paragraph and phrase segmentation types. Both studies followed similar procedures. Data was gathered on online processes during reading, recall (after reading) and individual perceptions on texts and segmentation types.
Evidence found in the two studies suggests that the finer the segmentation of the text the more detectable the effect on construction processes during reading. Also, evidence found segmentation also can conflict or even hamper processes of integration. Segmenting texts also had an impact on the affective responses to text and reading in the foreign language. Finally, these findings are relevant in guiding some aspects of the introduction of authentic texts in the foreign language classroom. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 05/05/2009 17:00 | | What Counts? Cognitive Factors that Predict Children’s Mathematical Learning | | Carleton University, Canada | Children’s early numeracy skills are excellent predictors of their performance on conventional mathematical tasks one to two years later. In this presentation, I will describe a model of the relations among cognitive precursors, early numeracy skill, and mathematical outcomes. The model includes three precursor pathways: quantitative, linguistic, and attentional, and specifies the distinct role that these forms of knowledge play in early numeracy acquisition. Using longitudinal data from 182 children (aged between 4 and 7 years), I will show that these three pathways relate differentially to performance on conventional mathematical tasks assessed two years later. The model may be useful in understanding how and why children’s mathematical abilities vary across domains such as numeration, calculation, geometry, and measurement.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 28/04/2009 16:00 | | Mobile Group Blogging in Learning: A Case Study of Supporting Cultural Transition | | LSRI, University of Nottingham | A mobile group blog is an example of a Web 2.0 social space, as well as a tool for the instant collection of contextual information , the immediate sharing of information and later reflection. Records in the form of multimedia created through mobile blogging can assist people to keep a versatile representation of artefacts they encounter on the move in everyday life. Overseas students are an example of a large group of people who could benefit from this technology. They could share contextual information and their own stories with other people currently experiencing the host culture, as well as people who do not have the opportunity to experience the host culture first-hand. This research explored the suitability and benefits of a mobile group blog in assisting overseas students to reduce culture shock. Four studies were conducted. The first two investigated the demands and needs of a mobile group blog application in culture transition. The third study investigated real and practical mobile blogging activities with a group of twelve newly arrived Chinese overseas students in Nottingham. The fourth study was conducted in China. In this study, a number of Chinese students who intended to study abroad were asked to evaluate the contents of the mobile group blog which was created by the twelve Chinese mobloggers in study three.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 17:15 | | Q Methodology – a research technique combining the best of qualitative and quantitative methods | | Principal Educational Psychologist and Head of Inclusion Services, Nottinghamshire County Council | Q Methodology – the application of ‘by-person’ factor analysis to opinion data, was developed by British physicist and psychologist William Stephenson (Stephenson, 1953) and employed by a subsequent generation of American researchers (Brown, 1980). In the 1980’s it began to enjoy something of a revival in England, where it was adopted by social constructionist researchers as a rich technique for describing, in their own terms, how people see a complex topic (for example Kitzinger (1986) on lesbian identities; W Stainton Rogers (1991) on conceptions of illness; Stenner and R Stainton Rogers (1998) on jealousy; Stenner and Watts (2004) on conceptions of love.)
Q methodology provides the rich accounts normally found in qualitative enquiries, but uses factor analysis to delineate the range of viewpoints encountered. As Baker, Thompson and Mannion, (2006) put it ‘We argue that Q offers a means of exploring subjectivity, beliefs and values while retaining the transparency, rigour and mathematical underpinnings of quantitative techniques.’
This seminar will provide an overview of Q methodology illustrated with material from my research looking at how young people from Nottinghamshire’s former coalfield communities see the idea of ‘going to university’. There will be an opportunity to discuss how Q methodology could be employed in your research.
John Bradley studied at Brunel University, the Froebel Institute and the Tavistock Clinic qualifying as a teacher and educational psychologist. He has worked in England, Hong Kong and Brunei. He recently completed his doctorate in the Psychology Department at the University of Nottingham as a (very) mature student.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 16:00 | | Growing a vocabulary | | School of Arts and Humanities, University of Swansea | This paper illustrates how some very simple models of lexical networks raise some very complex questions about how vocabularies grow in L1 and in L2, and how they might interact. The illustrations demonstrate the usefulness of simulations and modelling in Applied Linguistics research, and the importance of unpacking widely accepted metaphors like “lexical network”. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 15:15 | | What percentage of vocabulary in a text do you need to know in order to comprehend it? | | | This presentation reports on research into how text coverage (knowledge of the vocabulary in a written text) is related to the ability to comprehend the information in that text. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 15:05 | | CRAL Introduction | | | Introduction to CRAL at University of Nottingham | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 14:40 | | Is auditory learning dependent on feedback? | | | There is currently no consensus about the effects of feedback on perceptual learning. We have previously reported (Amitay et al., 2006) robust training effects on an impossible discrimination task where meaningless feedback was given to participants on a trial-by-trial basis such that they believed they had selected the ‘correct’ response on approximately 33% of trials. This learning was comparable to that induced by conditions where feedback was meaningful to performance. In this study we examined the effect of feedback on training on an impossible frequency discrimination (FD) task. Three groups of listeners trained on an ‘oddball’ discrimination task using three identical 1-kHz tones. One group received (meaningless) positive feedback on 90% of the trials. Listeners were informed positive feedback denoted a ‘correct’ response, whereas no feedback was given for an ‘incorrect’ response. A second group received positive feedback on 10% of the trials. A third group received no feedback. Learning on FD at 1 kHz was evaluated as the difference between the pre- and post-training thresholds. Only the group that received 10% feedback showed significant learning, with the 90% feedback and no feedback groups showing no overall learning. However, group means concealed interesting interactions between learning, individual abilities, and non-verbal intelligence quotient (IQ). Listeners were divided into subgroups based on whether performance improved, declined or did not change with training, and this factor was included in a model predicting overall performance on the FD task. Non-verbal IQ was included as a covariate in the model. Higher IQ scores were related to better performance on FD overall, but did so to a greater or lesser degree depending on the learning subgroup, with the greatest effect observed in the no feedback group where listeners whose performance declined tended to have lower IQ scores. These results suggest a complex relationship between perceptual performance and individual abilities and how feedback is used to drive learning. The results highlight the importance of tailoring training to individual needs and abilities.
References:
Amitay, S., Irwin, A. & Moore, D.R. 2006. Discrimination learning induced by training with identical stimuli. Nat Neurosci, 9, 1446-8.
| Yes | Yes | | | |
| 22/04/2009 14:30 | | MRC Institute for Hearing Research (IHR) Introduction | | | | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 14:05 | | Teachers, Technology and Collaboration: Teachers’ Perspectives on Failed Collaboration | | | This paper explores data from two exploratory practice studies investigating teacher collaboration using technologies in pre-service and in-service teacher development contexts. After a brief introduction of the aims and contexts of these two studies, this paper will focus on teacher participants’ accounts of why peer collaboration failed. Whilst the context (in-service or pre-service) determined the participants’ analysis of failed collaboration I will argue that both sets of teachers (to varying degrees) were unable to collaborate effectively in each of these contexts in part due to a lack of recognition of others and in part due to a perceived lack of agency. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 13:55 | | Introduction to language research at CELE | | | Introduction to language research at CELE | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 11:50 | | Sensitivity to orthographic structure influences letter position encoding | | | We have been investigating if letter identification is influenced by the distributional regularities inherent to orthography. Specifically, if letter position encoding is sensitive to positional letter frequency (i.e. the frequency with which individual letters appear in particular positions within written words of a specified length). I shall report a series of studies with skilled (N=28) and dyslexic (N=29) adult readers of English and skilled adult readers of Greek (N=24) who were each given a letter search task that required identification of a prespecified letter target embedded within a random five-letter string. Stimuli were drawn from the reader’s native orthography and consisted of 25 English letters and 20 Greek letters. Response latencies to identify individual letter targets in each of the five string positions were correlated with positional letter frequency counts for the reader’s native orthography. Results showed significant negative correlations for each of the three participant groups for letters appearing in the initial string position, reflecting shorter response latencies for more frequently occurring letters. A significant negative correlation between response latency and positional letter frequency was also found for skilled readers of English for letters presented in the final string position. These results suggest that extraction of statistical regularities from orthographic input is a mechanism by which orthographic learning occurs. | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 11:25 | | Introduction to Language Research in Psychology | | | Introduction to language research in Psychology | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 11:15 | | Can L1 reading instruction affect L2 listening ability? | | School of Education, University of Nottingham | The answer to the question I have posed would seem to be an obvious ‘No’. How can the way you are taught to read in your first language possibly affect your ability in a different skill in a different language at a later date?
In terms of transfer from one skill to another, however, there does seem to be a connection between reading and the perception of sounds. Several studies have found that, on tests of phonological awareness, Chinese children who have learnt to read using the alphabetic pinyin system generally outperform those who have learnt to read using the traditional morphosyllabic system. In other words, those taught to read using pinyin tended to be better at perceiving, analysing and manipulating the sounds of L1 speech (especially at the phonemic level).
In terms of transfer from one L1 skill to a different L2 skill, research is admittedly sparse. However, there have been a few studies which suggest that learning to read an L1 using an alphabetic system may lead to improved phonological awareness or speech processing ability in an L2 (English).
In this talk I will report on some preliminary small-scale research in which mainland Chinese students (taught to read using pinyin) outperformed Hong Kong counterparts (taught to read using Chinese characters) when it came to recognising the initial and final phonemes of spoken English words. I will also outline plans for further investigation of the question I’ve posed, and for potential pedagogic support to help Chinese learners improve their ability to recognise spoken English words.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 11:05 | | Second and Foreign Language Pedagogy Group: Introduction | | School of Education, University of Nottingham | Second and Foreign Language Pedagogy Group: Introduction. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 10:25 | | Visual word recognition in Chinese-English bilinguals | | | Hanyu Pinyin is a romanisation system for Standard Mandarin that is used in schools in China to teach Mandarin pronunciation. Interestingly, some Chinese words written in Hanyu Pinyin are also correctly spelled English words, for example the Hanyu Pinyin word "gun" written without tone diacritics. In addition to these orthographic similarities between Chinese words written in Hanyu Pinyin and English words there are also phonological similarities, for example the Chinese word ? and the English word "buy" are pronounced similarly. In this talk I will present the results of a series of experiments in which we investigated the effects of such cross-linguistic orthographic and phonological similarities on word recognition in Chinese-English bilinguals. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 10:15 | | BRG Introduction | | | | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 09:50 | | Training Novel Phonemic Contrasts: A Comparison of Identification and Oddity Discrimination Training | | | To date, the technique which has made the most progress towards achieving the goals of pronunciation training is High Variability Pronunciation Training (HVPT) (Logan et al., 1991). It has been demonstrated that this technique, in which learners are presented minimal pairs containing non-native phonemes in a forced-choice identification (ID) task with immediate feedback – high variability comes from the use of stimuli which vary in terms of phonetic context and talker, is effective in teaching the perception of non-native phonemic contrasts, and that this skill transfers to pronunciation and is retained long-term.
HVPT is, however, not very efficient. Discrimination training is an alternative to ID training, which focuses on the differences between speech sounds. It has the potential to enhance phonetic training by increasing the variety of tasks proposed to the learner. Discrimination training has, however, been neglected on the basis that it promotes fine-grained discrimination of speech sounds, which is inconsistent with what we know about speech perception. There are, however, variations of discrimination training, which promote classification in addition to discrimination. An example is oddity training. In oddity training,learners are presented three stimuli, two from one class of speech sounds and one from the other and asked to identify which stimulus was the odd one out.
I report a comparison of ID and oddity discrimination training in the context of training Mandarin-Chinese learners to perceive and pronounce the English /r/-/l/ contrast.
References
Logan, J., Lively, S., Pisoni, D. (1991) Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: A final report. J. Acousti. Soc. Am. 89 (2): 874-886
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 09:40 | | LSRI Introduction | | | | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 09:15 | | Languaging Science in English through Project-based Learning: Reflections on a Successful Course | | Division of English Studies, UNNC | The linguistic and cultural diversity of tertiary classrooms today presents special challenges in course design and pedagogy for the teacher of academic writing in English. Some challenges include different levels of language proficiency within each classroom, and students coming from different writing traditions, with different cultural learning styles, and different understanding of genre conventions. This paper describes how an undergraduate academic writing course for life sciences students at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, dealt with these challenges by integrating a genre- and a project-based approach. It reflects on how a small group project focus offered flexibility to address the issues described, even as students were provided scaffolding in constructing the various parts of a conventional (western) scientific research report. Additionally, it explores how the course met the challenges of teaching writing to large groups in a multilingual setting, in particular, through a combination of traditional lectures, collaborative learning using an online project management tool, encouraging learner autonomy through reflective writing, and providing platforms for resolving problems through tutor-student conferencing and online forums. It is argued that such an approach, unlike more traditional forms of EAP writing instruction, empowers students with tools to appropriate and manipulate dominant scientific discourse conventions on their own terms, in their own voices, and for their own purposes. | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 09:05 | | CRAL at UNNC Introduction | | | Introduction to CRAL at UNNC | Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 22/04/2009 09:00 | | Language Research Day | | | With talks from:
Prof. Paul Meara, School of Arts, University of Swansea
and
Dr John Bradley, Principal Educational Psychologist and Head of Inclusion Services, Nottinghamshire County Council.
This interdisciplinary event aims to bring together researchers from across the University of Nottingham with interests in language, language acquisition, and language pedagogy from a variety of perspectives. It is an opportunity to broaden your network and identify collaboration opportunities.
A full programme is available at: http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/lrg/LanguageResearchDay.html
Details of the invited talks can be found below:
Growing a vocabulary
Prof. Paul Meara
School of Arts, University of Swansea
This paper illustrates how some very simple models of lexical networks raise some very complex questions about how vocabularies grow in L1 and in L2, and how they might interact. The illustrations demonstrate the usefulness of simulations and modelling in Applied Linguistics research, and the importance of unpacking widely accepted metaphors like “lexical network”.
Q Methodology – a research technique combining the best of qualitative and quantitative methods
Dr John Bradley
Principal Educational Psychologist and Head of Inclusion Services, Nottinghamshire County Council
Q Methodology – the application of ‘by-person’ factor analysis to opinion data, was developed by British physicist and psychologist William Stephenson (Stephenson, 1953) and employed by a subsequent generation of American researchers (Brown, 1980). In the 1980’s it began to enjoy something of a revival in England, where it was adopted by social constructionist researchers as a rich technique for describing, in their own terms, how people see a complex topic (for example Kitzinger (1986) on lesbian identities; W Stainton Rogers (1991) on conceptions of illness; Stenner and R Stainton Rogers (1998) on jealousy; Stenner and Watts (2004) on conceptions of love.)
Q methodology provides the rich accounts normally found in qualitative enquiries, but uses factor analysis to delineate the range of viewpoints encountered. As Baker, Thompson and Mannion, (2006) put it ‘We argue that Q offers a means of exploring subjectivity, beliefs and values while retaining the transparency, rigour and mathematical underpinnings of quantitative techniques.’
This seminar will provide an overview of Q methodology illustrated with material from my research looking at how young people from Nottinghamshire’s former coalfield communities see the idea of ‘going to university’. There will be an opportunity to discuss how Q methodology could be employed in your research.
| Yes | Yes | | | |
| 21/04/2009 16:00 | | Beyond SatNav: Using the Global Positioning System as a tool for the behavioural sciences | | School of Psychology, University of Nottingham | Satellite tracking is currently used in many applications, from navigating a car journey to making calculations in land surveys. In this talk I will suggest how psychologists can begin to use this technology as a means to study human spatial behaviour. Whereas most experiments tend to take place in laboratory environments, GPS allows us to test in much larger open spaces, giving us a better picture of real-world behaviour. I will use two studies from my own laboratory as examples of this technology in action. The first addresses reorientation behaviour in children, and finds that younger children are more likely to use landmark information to reorient when tested in a natural environment, compared to laboratory studies. The second study examines path integration behaviour, the process by which we update spatial position from self-movement information. Here we compared athletes trained at large spatial scales (rugby) to those trained at smaller scales (martial arts) and found that rugby players were more accurate at calculating heading direction.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 08/04/2009 16:00 | | CANCELLED - Does it count? Evaluating learning spaces | | Swinburne University, Australia | Unfortunately due to illness this seminar has had to be cancelled. | No | No | | | |
| 17/03/2009 16:00 | | Connecting the linguistic and cognitive aspects of mathematical proof: Can a non-proof prove? | |
Mathematics Education Centre, Loughborough University
| An ability to successfully deal with argumentation and proof is an important part of learning mathematics. Earlier researchers have noticed that students tend to have two simultaneous conflicting standards for judging arguments -- personal conviction and formal validity. However, researchers have had to use relatively complicated question-types to illicit these different conceptions from participants. which raises doubts about the practical significance of this theoretical observation. In this talk, I report some recent corpora analyses and experimental work which suggest that the distinction between conviction and validity may be of more practical importance than previously recognised. I will conclude by claiming that, in some cases at least, I have proved that non-proofs prove.
| Yes | Yes | | Video | |
| 10/03/2009 16:00 | | Children’s School Related Learning with Social Software Out of school | | | With the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies, teenage children turn out to be savvy users of social software such as Msn Messenger or Bebo in their daily life, even when they are out-of-school. Therefore, children’s use of social software has the potential to re-shape the map of children's out-of-school activities. In addition, this may also lead to opportunities for harnessing children’s energy in using social software to have a learning purpose that emerges from children’s own interests and needs in an out-of-school context.
This seminar is based on my ongoing PhD research that has investigated British children’s authentic use of three different types of social software including a homework messageboard, a Mandarin learning social network site and an online SAT Maths revision chatroom/whiteboard. Instead of attempting an overview of all the various ways the social software could be used, the investigations have furnished an opportunity to capture children’s natural learning concerns and preferences out-of-school with technology. Furthermore, in order to reveal how the British children’s concerns and preferences were affected by their out-of-school context, Chinese children’s use of homework messageboard was investigated and interviews with both British children and Chinese children were taken. By involving two comparable groups of children different in culture, it might shed further light on how contextual factors constructed the British children’s experiences. These contextual factors would not be visible until the British children were understood together with their equivalent Chinese counterparts | Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |
| 03/03/2009 16:00 | | Exploring the impact of anonymity in classroom debates | | LSRI/School of Psychology | The advent of networked electronic voting and communication environments into the classroom is changing educational debates in many ways. This research addresses a significant opportunity provided by these environments
- anonymity - to explore its consequences when learners are adolescents, co-present in a classroom and anonymous only to peers not to teachers. We predicted anonymity should enhance these debates as it will encourage students to express their opinions authentically without fearing off-putting social consequences, but will not encourage negative behaviours such as deception, and insulting or irrelevant interactions. Three studies with
16-17 year olds used a vote-debate-vote scenario to explore anonymous voting and public oral debate Study 1 (n= 59), anonymous voting and public written debate Study 2 (n=78) and anonymous voting and debating Study 3 (n= 67).
Study 1 used a pen and paper prototype and Studies 2 and 3 the CoFFEE discussion support system. This talk will discuss how our results guided the design of the system and argue that in general, anonymity brings positive benefits to the classroom experience of debate.
| Yes | Yes | Slides | Video | |