FUTURE OF eLEARNING RESEARCH

‘Prediction is very difficult, especially about…’ YB

Talk Structure• Technological Context

• Learning from the Past

• 14 Enhancements

• Key Issues & Questions

• Top 3 Priorities

Technological Context

• Ubiquitous Computing

• Convergence of IT & Comms

• Portable Devices

• Moore’s Law X 3

• Object-Oriented Programming

• Machine Learning

• Cheap Self ‘Publishing’

New Technologies - Trends

• Self-describing software

• Sound and Touch

• Entering virtual worlds

• Speckled Computing

• Chatty Avatars

• Grid Computing

• High Performance

Briefest History

• 1960s - Skinner, Suppes & Programmed Learning• 1970s - Piaget, Papert & Learning Programming• 1980s - Intelligent Computer Tutors• 1990s - Computer Supported Collaborative

Learning• 2000s - Virtual Schools and Universities• Ephemeral National Programmes• No Significant learning gains• No Saving of recurrent £s

Enhancements to Learning

Special properties used to enhance learning on orthogonal dimensions

1. Visualisation

By augmenting simulation engines, symbolic calculators and other software with graphical output it becomes possible to support student visualisation of highly abstract processes and procedures.

Visualisation Questions

• How best to share them?

• Best Visual Vocabularies?

• Role of Redundant Audio?

• How Organise Visual Libraries?

2. Diagnosis

By tracking student work on related tasks it becomes possible to distinguish ‘accidental’ errors from those which provide statistical evidence for failure to understand key concepts or to master critical skills.

Diagnosis Questions

• Group Diagnosis?

• Where cost-effective?

• Relation to assessment?

3. Remediation

By systematically giving students greater access to relevant information or rehearsing them on weak skills it becomes possible to focus remediation on areas that the student, tutor or software has diagnosed as requiring attention.

Remediation Questions

• Learning Style Variation?

• Remediation V. Exploration?

• Relation to Assessment?

4. Reflection

By giving the student access to records of their past working, the responses of the peers, tutors and systems they were working with and by providing them with tools with which to annotate and file such work it becomes possible to support systematic reflection on what they have learnt and on their own learning processes.

Reflection Questions

• When does Reflection Occur?

• Consistency of stored pasts?

5. Memory Prostheses

By giving students comprehensive access to their past computer mediated work and by providing them with appropriate search engines it becomes possible for students to have the self confidence to be very selective and focused about what they chose to attempt to memorise at any point in time, thus supporting much greater cognitive economy on the part of the learner.

Prosthesis Questions

• Is Forgetting Good?

• Does Confidence Change?

• Computers in Exams?

6. Scaffolding

By tracking student learning gains and by human or system dialogue with the learner it becomes possible to dynamically vary the level of scaffolding provided for learners.

Scaffolding Questions

• Anybody Really Doing This?

• Cog Psych Approaches?

7. Tackling the Hypothetical

By making it possible for students to set up counterfactual situations in simulations or to break laws in symbolic reasoning systems it becomes possible for students to investigate the fundamental principles which underpin formal scientific, mathematical and other models.

Tackling Hyp Qs

• Range of Models & Simulations?

• Evaluate Learning Gains?

• Applications to Soc Sci?

• Applications to Humanities?

8. Time Travel

By facilitating ‘time travel’ as a matter of routine in simulations and databases it becomes possible to help learners augment their understanding by focusing on the key issues of chronology and causality.

Time Travel Questions?

• Does this Happen?

• Learning Gains?

• Is Forward Possible?

9. Autonomy

By taking the learner’s viewpoint when designing instructional software it becomes possible to give the learner greater control over the degree to which there are external interventions in their learning processes.

Autonomy Questions

• Learner Perceptions?

• Learner Style Variation?

• Cog Psych Underpinning?

10. Pacing

By providing a ‘clock’ based on the planned work of a cohort of learners or on an appropriate instructional design it becomes possible for learners to increase their motivation when engaged in sequences of learning activity over longer time periods such as terms and years.

Pacing Questions

• Types of Clock?

• Force of Clock?

• Learner Perceptions?

• Impact on Completion?

11. Redundancy

By encoding the same learning material using different media elements it becomes possible for heterogeneous groups of learners with different learning styles and media preferences to study the same curriculum content.

Redundancy Questions

• Is Claim True?

• Explore by Experiment?

• Audio Redundancy?

• Visual Redundancy?

• Text Redundancy?

• Touch & Gesture?

• Smellovision?

12. Motivation

By addressing issues of intrinsic and extrinsic learner motivation explicitly in the design of learning sequences supported by instructional software and in the design of educational interfaces it becomes possible to enhance motivation in ways that depend on the characteristics of the individual learner.

Motivation Questions

• Types of Intrinsic?

• More Malone PhDs?

• Types of Extrinsic?

• Relationship to Redundancy

• Relationship to Group work?

13. Group Working

By supporting synchronous or asynchronous group working modes and by appropriate choice of design to support competitive, collaborative or complementary activity it becomes possible for learners to work in teams and to acquire higher order learning skills from each other.

Group Working Questions

• Formative Assessment?

• Summative Assessment??

• Synchronous Vehicles?

• Asynchronous Vehicles?

• Peer to Peer?

• Best group Sizes?

• Expert to Novice?

14. Knowledge Integration

By taking a chronological view when designing instructional software, by deliberately incorporating appropriate elements of media redundancy and by planning for student use of memory prosthetics it becomes more possible for the learner to integrate diverse knowledge acquired at different times.

Integration Questions

• Evaluate Best Practice?

• Which VLEs support?

• Value of Learning Objects?

• List Design Vocabulary?

15. Access

By incorporating diverse prosthetics in learner interfaces and by designing for learner autonomy and pacing, it becomes possible to extend access to learners who cannot take advantage of conventional modes of classroom delivery because of their special social or physical circumstances.

Access Questions

• Refine Prosthetics?

• Make New Tech Proof?

• Evaluate Learning Gains?

• Evaluate Design Gains?

General Key Issues

• Improving navigation support

• Reducing cognitive cost - especially for new learners

• Ensuring approaches scale to 1000s of learners and the WWW

• Analysing Success

Navigation Support

• Where am I in this information space?

• Is it really a 2D space, tree, network lattice?

• Who is also active in the space

• How can I plan next week’s route?

• How can I travel between spaces?

• How can I travel in parallel?

Cognitive cost

• Different metaphors - physical object, spatial, locational, computer-computer, etc.

• Broken metaphors - infinite desktops, etc.

• Mixed metaphors - disks into waste bins, etc.

• Different short cut conventions

• Response time variation

Analysing Success

• Micros for Managers

• Protein Crystallography

• Edinburgh UG Medical

• Google

• Dragon Dictate

• Mathematica

• Games, Chat & Mssgng

Specific Key Issues

• Assessment

• VLE Design

• Role of Library

• Educational evaluation

• Economic Evaluation

• 7x24 & portability

• Theoretical bases

Assessment

• How it is changing?

• How it should change?

• Formative v Summative?

• Individual v. Group?

• Computers in Exams!

VLE Design

• Interoperability vital

• Continuity of Use?

• Group Identity?

• Integration of Assessment?

• Peer Learning tools?

Library Leadership

• Digital Curation

• Image Banks & Portals

• Online Journals

• Integration Old & New

• Always Open!

• All World’s Libraries!

Educational Evaluation

• Learning Gains

• New Forms of Learning

• Illuminative Research

• Learning Trajectories

• Learning Robustness

• Retention & Completion

Economic Evaluation

• Cost of Developing

• Cost of Delivering

• Cost of Maintaining

• Cost of Migration

• Substitution V.Augmentation

• New Audiences?

• Scalability?

7x24 - Portability

• Boxing Day?????

• Asynchronous work

• 24 hour banking

• Lightweight Devices

• Robust

• Analogue to Digital

Theoretical Underpinning

• Cognitive Psychology

• Philosophy of Education

• User Interface Design

• Program Reliability

• Discourse Analysis

• Pragmatism, cATHOLIC

• Technological PUSH

Top 3 Priorities

• New Models for Assessment

• Deploy Objects – all sorts

• Learning from Libraries