language learning 2.0 in action: web 2.0 tools to enhance language learning conference proceedings...

8/14/2019 Language Learning 2.0 in Action: Web 2.0 Tools To Enhance Language Learning Conference Proceedings 2009

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4th Plymouth e-Learning Conference

Boundary Changes: Redefining Learning Spaces

Roland Levinsky Building

University of Plymouth

23rd 24th April 2009

Conference Proceedings

Book of Abstracts

Edited by Steve Wheeler


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Conference Organising Committee .

Conference Chair: Steve Wheeler

Conference Co-Chair: Mark Townsend

Reception Manager: Priska Schoenborn

Exhibitor Co-ordination: Mark Townsend / Peter Yeomans

Design Direction: Mark Lyndon

Technical Direction: Dominic Martignetti

Committee Members: Mark Pannell Flea Palmer

Janice Gibbs Debby Cotton

Neil Witt Robert Bennett

Sally Holden

Student Help Team: Lisa Chrisp Kerry McCann

Nick Barton Dan Kennedy

Editorial Board .

Steve Wheeler (Editor) Faculty of Education

Robert Bennett Faculty of Education

Debby Cotton Educational Development and Learning Technologies

Janice Gibbs Educational Development and Learning Technologies

Sally Holden Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry

Mark Lyndon Educational Development and Learning Technologies

Dominic Martignetti Faculty of Education

Flea Palmer Educational Development and Learning Technologies

Mark Pannell Educational Development and Learning Technologies

Mark Townsend Faculty of Education

Neil Witt Higher Education Learning Partnerships (HeLP) CeTL

Peter Yeomans Canterbury Christchurch University

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Welcome to the Conference .

On behalf of the organising committee, I extend a very warm welcome to all delegates attending the

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Plymouth e-Learning Conference. In previous conferences we have explored learning usingtechnology in a time of change, and we continue the theme with this years event. The title

Boundary Changes: Redefining Learning Spaces is one that I hope will resonate with all who are

attending this event, whether you are a student or a professor. We are living in a time of rapid

change where technologies are proliferating and where the boundaries of our activities are

constantly extending to embrace learning on the move, learning at a distance and learning in all its

multitude of forms and combinations. At this conference you will be able to listen to papers about

how boundaries are being pushed back by social software, mobile learning and virtual reality. You

will be able to participate in workshops about assessment, digital identity and lifelong learning.

Topics are wide ranging including e-portfolios, podcasting, audience response systems and

microblogging. There will be live demonstrations of a number of leading edge technology enhancedprojects including the opportunities to visit the 3D Immersion Vision Theatre and to test drive

LearnPlus Lab. There will also of course be plenty of time to network with old and new friends and

visit the exhibition space.

We are very fortunate to have been able to secure the services of two excellent keynote speakers

this year. Mike Blamires is well known for his many books and articles on best practice and the

effective uses of ICT in schools. Graham Attwell is an inspiring speaker whose wealth of knowledge

comes from his involvement in many leading edge e-learning projects across Europe. I am confident

that both will provide delegates with much food for thought and will provoke much discussion during

the conference with their own

This year we have for the first time ventured into a two-day conference format, which has both

excited and challenged us as a conference organising team. For the first time also, we are now a

truly international event, and we welcome delegates from more than a dozen countries to the

conference this year. We extend a particularly warm welcome to delegates representing Atlantis, a

collaborative transnational student mobility project based in Germany, Poland, Ireland and here at

the University of Plymouth. The students and staff of Atlantis successfully submitted 14 papers for

this conference, and rightly deserve their own special Atlantis conference stream. Do pay a visit or

two to find out what the students of Atlantis are researching as a part of their post-graduate studies.

Finally, I personally wish all who are attending this conference a most enjoyable, challenging and

stimulating two days. If you are visiting the region I hope you are able to find some time to take insome of the stunning countryside of the West Country, and enjoy some of the cultural delights that

await you. Have a great conference!

Steve Wheeler

Chair of the Plymouth e-Learning Conference

e-Learning Research Network Convenor


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Day 1Thursday 23rd April

Parallel Session 1A: Web 2.0 Tools .

Venue: Roland Levinsky Room 08 Time: 11:15-12:45

Session Chair: Mark Pannell, University of Plymouth

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Podcasting in Science Education: Unnecessary Distraction or ValuableEnhancement?

Andrew WilliamsKingston College

This paper will report on lessons emerging from the KASTANET project (Kingston Access toScience Teaching Across New and Emerging Technologies) led by Kingston College and funded byJISC's HE in FE E-Learning Programme (April 2007 - March 2009). The project has explored theimpact of podcasting and other forms of mobile technology on learning, learning support andassessment on the Science Degree Foundation (SDF) course delivered by Kingston College inpartnership with Kingston University. It has explored both the enabling and disruptive elements ofmobile content provision in the context of progression between further and higher education.Podcasting has been extensively used to provide welcome, induction and orientation messages;pre-lecture preparatory materials; post-lecture summaries; assessment resources; tutorial materialsand support for study skills. The impact on the planning, preparation, delivery and assessmentactivities of teaching staff involved in the SDF course has been considerable and the paper reviews

the extent to which this work is distracting or enhancing. It reports on an extensive evaluationexercise undertaken with tutors and learners and probes the ill-defined cultural, social andoperational context within which mobile learning content is conceived, created and cascaded. Itconcludes that mobile technologies hold the potential to provide a new paradigm for learning andteaching but if the benefits of this approach are to be realised significant challenges will need to beovercome for institutions, technical support teams and curriculum staff.

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Giving Education a Voice: Lessons from Practical Podcasting Experiences

Martin Belgrove and Susan Harrison

University of East London

The paper presents the findings of a small scale investigative study into the use of a variety of audiouses to supplement face to face teaching in the School of Law. The audio approaches comprisedlecture recording incorporating full series and selected critical lectures, lecture scene setting,module descriptions and other podcasting voices. Through a review of literature the paper identifiestheoretical stances and frameworks to underpin podcasting approaches most notably the notion thata subject based podcasting pedagogy (or podagogy) can be developed congruent with the natureand demands of the subject.

The results of the investigation include access trends of audio files and identifying a significantminority who access all lecture recordings and poses the question of whether it is appropriate to

record a whole series of lectures purely for this significant minority or whether resources are betterdeployed recording critical lectures for a wider audience. Student feedback collected via


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Parallel Session 1B: Web 2.0 Tools: Blogs .


Session Chair: Flea Palmer, University of Plymouth

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Blogging as Reflective Practice in Teacher Education

Steve Wheeler and Wendy Lambert-HeggsUniversity of Plymouth

This is a follow up paper to last years Plymouth e-Learning Conference paper in which we outlinedour initial research into the use of two person blogs to provide mentor support for trainee teachers(the MentorBlog Project). In this paper we ask the question can blogging replace face-to-facementoring for initial teacher training? Following the analysis of a number of post experience in-

depth semi-structured interviews with 6 students, we reveal what students thought about usingblogs as reflexive tools and examine the extent to which they thought their blogging had supportedtheir professional practice. In our discussion we highlight issues relating to interpersonalcommunication and the mentor-mentee relationship, professional issues, immediacy, reflectivepractice, software affordances, habituation and use, privacy, identity, and emotional bandwidth.Students and mentors who used the two-person blogs were generally favourable in their comments,whilst some face-to-face students also expressed an interest to use blogging in the future as asubstitute for conventional mentoring processes. Subsequent project funding is now being sought toextend this project into a larger, distributed format, with the possible integration of mobiletechnologies to support nomadic learners (those who are required to travel extensively during theirwork). There will discussion on this development during the presentation, to explore issues ofremote mentoring for trainee teachers in greater depth.

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How Did I Become a Blogging Addict at the Age of 42? I started on aUniversity Course

Kathy Jarrett and Karen RussellUniversity College Plymouth St Mark and St John

This study investigates the use of blogs in helping a group of mature part-time students to:

1. Achieve the feeling of quickly belonging to a group thus allowing them to feel at ease with

each other and to quickly form positive and supportive working relationships. It was hopedthat this would help them during their weekly classes at the university to feel more confidentin making oral contributions and joining in discussions and debates.

2. Create a support network for those students in the group who were geographically isolatedand living at a distance from their fellow students.

3. Access advice and support from tutors in a way that would be perceived by the students asinformal, supportive and non-threatening.

The students attend the university for only one day each week. They have work-based tasks tocomplete each week and an assignment every five weeks. In addition, they all have jobs working for20 hours or more. Many have families with young children and all lead very busy lives. The Blog isalso viewed as the start of a process aimed at encouraging heutagogy (self-determined learning)amongst these students and other future students. It is hoped that this can be achieved byintroducing the students to The Blog as a technology, albeit at first for communicating with each


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other, but more significantly, as part of a further development into online learning. Ashton and Elliott(2007:172) have commented: 'The heutagogy revolution is driven by new technologies which makeglobal knowledge readily accessible for all learners'.

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Social Software to Support Mobile Students

Thomas Fischer* and Karsten Oster Lundqvist+*University of Erlangen-Nuremburg, +University of Reading

Social software tools or Web 2.0 applications and what today is extended to related terms such asLearning 2.0 are regarded to be able to open up innovative, bottom-up and direct possibilities for notonly informal learning. Advocates of Web 2.0 suggest that the Internet has already moved frompassive publication to active participation and social interaction; that the Internet is one of the majorknowledge repositories for personal knowledge acquisition (or informal learning); and will as aconsequence put increasing pressure on traditional formal Education and Training (E&T) includingHigher Education systems. It can be furthermore assumed that informal learning is alreadytriggering non-formal or even formal learning processes.Set against this background Mobi-Blog, the European Weblog Platform for Mobile Students aims atbridging traditional story telling approaches with Web 2.0 applications such as blogs and wikis, atfostering processes of model learning, self refection and independent decision making of Europeanexchange students and at informally supporting learners in formal Higher Education environments.The presentation will report on the technological and organisational choices implemented andsummarise the experiences made up-to-date:

1. On the self-sustaining web-based multi-lingual European service for mobile studentssupporting a growing number of blogs about the experience of studying abroad, with positiveexamples of overcoming motivational, social and cultural barriers to mobility.

2. On the forthcoming wiki based online guide for students which outlines their real lifeexperiences of barriers to mobility and how they got around them, linked to the compellingfirst-person testimonies in the blogs.

3. On the community network of universities in Europe using Mobi-Blog within their informationand support services for exchange studies.

More information is available athttp://www.mobi-blog.eu

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http://www.mobi-blog.eu/http://www.mobi-blog.eu/http://www.mobi-blog.eu/http://www.mobi-blog.eu/


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Parallel Session 1C: e-Learning .


Session Chair: Janice Gibbs, University of Plymouth

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E-Learning: Profile of the Teacher

Filipa Lopes dos ReisUniversity Aberta de Portugal

There are difficulties, through conventional means, to prepare teachers to adequately use newtechnologies, for it is necessary to educate to correspond to the created expectations. The attemptsto include the study of new technologies in the curricula of teacher education courses face thedifficult investment required to the acquisition of equipment, the shortage of teachers capable of

overcoming prejudice and practices that reject technology maintaining an education in which theprevalent method is the reproduction of replaceable models by others more suitable to theeducational problematic. Teachers are professionals that have a function of systematic recreation,this being the only form to proceed when you have so diversified a field of students and learningcontexts, as happens in all levels of education. The teacher's function is the systematic creation andrecreation that bears in mind the context in which the activity is developed in and the target-population of said activity. It is necessary to stimulate research and to be open to the wealth ofexploration, of discovery, for the teacher may also learn with the student and during and in the endof the process, needs to incorporate in his methodology:

Knowledge of new technologies and the ways to apply them; Ability to allow the student to justify and discuss his essays;

Stimulate research as a basis for constructing knowledge through the computer.

The society of knowledge demands a new profile from the teacher, that is: open to changes,dialogue, cooperative action, that contributes so that knowledge in class is relevant to theprofessional life of the students; that promotes a demanding teaching helping students to advanceautonomously in their study processes and interpret in a critical fashion all knowledge and to makeevident a solid general culture that makes possible for him to have an interdisciplinary practicedominating educational technologies.

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Students Experiences of eLearning and PBL: Evidence from a Work-in-

Progress

Fiona DaltonUniversity of Plymouth

Informal learning can be differentiated from formal learning in that it takes place outside of anyformal educational establishment; is managed by the learner; and is student centred (Downes,2006). Societal changes mean that students will need to become independent lifelong learners.Work and learning will no longer be separated and universities are beginning to recognise this fact(Boud & Garrick, 1999). The move to more student centred learning practices is necessary to equipthe employees of the future. The Problem based learning (PBL) curriculum is student centred,

contextual and collaborative. The distinguishing features of PBL are activation of prior knowledge,placing knowledge in context, activity and the opportunity to elaborate on the knowledge gained


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through discussion or questions (Albanese, 2006). For many years a PBL approach has been usedon an undergraduate course on financial reporting. In order to support a more student centredapproach, encourage deeper learning and to introduce an element of informal learning an onlineapproach to PBL has been adopted. This paper reports on an action research project whichinvestigates the student experience of a PBL approach using wiki pages rather than conventionalface to face meetings. Evidence from observation, questionnaires and focus group discussions ispresented.

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UsPaCe: Not Re-inventing the Wheel but using the Wheels to make a Better

Vehicle?

Neil Witt, Anne McDermott and Rob StillwellUniversity of Plymouth

In the UK there are a variety of drivers at national level to improve the links between employers and

educational institutions particularly in relation to Work Based Learning (WBL). At the University ofPlymouth much of the WBL that takes place is undertaken by students on Foundation degrees(FDs) through the University of Plymouth Colleges Faculty. These degrees differ from traditionalhonours courses in that that they are delivered by partner Further Education Colleges, are of shorterduration and have lower entry requirements. FD learners undertaking WBL are often spread over1000s of square miles and, as such, are isolated from peers, tutors and resources. The UsPaCeproject has deployed a variety of Web 2.0 technologies to address these issues. Using a rapidprototyping approach to refine the toolkit, groups of students and tutors were asked to feedback ona number of possible software applications, enabling the UsPaCe team to identify core tools andfunctionality requirements. These were pinpointed as:

iGoogle to create a personalised UsPaCe page with Google Gadgets;

Del.icio.us to enable collecting, notating and sharing of web pages; ELGG open source, social networking platform which facilitates the creation of groups and

communities ePortfolio creation and user interaction. Folio interfaced with ELGG to provide community workspace; Google Docs providing online document collaboration.

However, UsPaCe may be extended to add more services if it is required to meet the needs of othergroups of learners. UsPaCe is able to provide cross-institutional delivery and seamless lifelonglearning environments. It has the advantage that it uses applications with which many Internet userswill be familiar and comfortable, and it gives learners a high degree of flexibility in terms of havingaccess and controlling the access rights of others, to their information, content and ePortfolio.Having identified what it believes to be core functionality for supporting FD students, a pilot with 7groups of learners is currently being undertaken. This will conclude in July 2008. This paper willreport findings from the pedagogic and usability evaluations of the pilot and outline the nextdevelopmental stage of UsPaCe which will be trialled in autumn 2008.

Dialogue with audience: As part of the initial staff / student consultations, in order to give the projectteam an indication of the level of support learners might need, participants were asked about theiruse and awareness of Web2.0 technologies and tools. It was expected that this would be broadly inline with the findings of other studies. The data is still undergoing analysis but early indications arethat the degree of use and familiarity by FD students is far lower than anticipated. We are interestedto know which Web2.0 technologies other academics are using for teaching or to support teaching;and how are their students responding.

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Worskhop 1: Microblogging .

Venue: Smeaton 100 Time: 11:15-12:45

Session Chair: Debby Cotton, University of Plymouth

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Networks, Nuggets & Nonsense: An Introduction to Microblogging

Matt LingardLondon School of Economics

Heard of Twitter, but not really sure what it is? Perhaps you have dabbled but remain unconvinced?This demonstration and hands-on workshop will introduce participants to microblogging and inparticular, the potential it offers for informal learning and developing your 'professional' network.Microblogging is both a form of blogging and social networking. Microbloggers, using services such

as Twitter, Jaiku & Plurk, post regular 'what-am-I-doing-now' updates of no more than 140-characters. Users of the service can then choose to follow each other and their microblogginghomepage becomes a stream of updates from their 'friends'. By following and being followed byothers, a microblogger develops a network of friends based on shared interests. Not surprisingly,there is a strong e-learning presence on Twitter.

From the outside microblogging often appears irreverent and purely social. It certainly can be andthe fun aspect is undoubtedly part of the appeal. Services like Twitter occupy a space where theboundaries between the informal & formal, work & social, personal & professional are blurred. Thissession will focus on how microblogging can be used to develop your 'professional' network and forinformal learning. This includes:

Finding nuggets of information as 'friends' share what they are reading, writing, thinking Getting answers to your questions, quickly. Getting feedback from peers on your ideas Extending your network: beyond walls, beyond your sector, beyond your specialism Strengthening relationships as you get to know people better

Following and participating in an event (such as this conference!)The session begins with a live demonstration of Twitter, highlighting the above uses. This will befollowed by hands-on activities where participants will create Twitter accounts and start twittering!

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Parallel Session 1D: Primary Learning .

Venue: Jill Craigie Cinema Time: 11:15-12:45

Session Chair: Mark Townsend, University of Plymouth

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Building on Strong Foundations: Early Learning in a Digital Age

Tricia NealIndependent ICT Consultant

The theme of developing new skills and understandings for young people to live a fulfilling life,through work, learning and leisure, contributing to the economy and society in a future of great shiftsand exponential changes including jobs that have not been invented, is well rehearsed but tends tobe focused on the older school age group. But what are the needs of young children born into a

digital society? What is happening in the Early Years?

In 2005 Jackie Marsh, University of Sheffield in her contribution to Young children and digitalliteracy English 21 QCA 2005 drew a composite picture of a three-year old childs wide digitalexperiences. It ends with this paragraph: Yvette is looking forward to starting nursery next month,as on a recent visit, she saw a computer in the corner of the nursery. But will she be disappointedwhen she gets there??

Jackie goes on to say: Although Yvette is a fictional figure, this vignette is drawn from a range ofdata which indicates that there are many young children in England who have the experiences andskills that Yvette demonstrates and this is supported by further evidence from international studies.In addition, some young children are starting nursery already able to grasp the concept of digital

filming and editing at the age of three. What kind of educational experiences will they need in 2015if they are to extend learning in appropriate ways?

Three years on and things have changed, as recognised by Sir Jim Rose in his interim report. Thereare a wider range of digital tools easily available to families and Early Years settings, digitalcameras, digital video cameras, sound recorders and online web 2.00 tools. How are these settingsresponding to and reflecting the digital world the children are born into? Lets go on a tour andexplore how settings globally are responding to the challenges of creating 21st century learningenvironments for 21st century citizens.

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Confronting Web 2.0 in a Primary Context

Peter Yeomans and Robin SmithCanterbury Christchurch University

We are living in exponential times (Fisch, 2006). Primary Schools are at a challenging point in theirdevelopment, with the imminent redesign of the Primary Curriculum following the Rose Review, inwhich the interim advice (Rose, 2008) states that children deserve a curriculum that will engage,challenge and inspire them and that e-learning and more importantly, the skill of e-learning, has akey role in providing some of those opportunities.

Heads struggle with their conflicting impressions of advice from local authorities and governmentbodies, combined with a lack of personal awareness and fears of the world in which children grow


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and learn. They each have to meet a set of unique demands for their school and are only beingoffered 'one size fits all' solutions.

This paper charts the progress a local primary school is making in their ongoing engagement withWeb 2.0. It will share the chief obstacles facing the schools leadership as they have resolved theissues of e-pedagogy, e-safety, creativity, future proofing equipment to redesign the learningexperience of their children to create 21st century learners.

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Authoring Spaces: Taking Advantage of Playful Expectations

Katina HazeldenUniversity of Plymouth

This paper suggests there are lost opportunities for the potential of interactive technologies in infantlearning (ages 4 to 7 years), due to a misalignment between childrens expectations of use, and thetechnologies provided in their first few years of formal education. Children at this age are not drivenby a desire to learn about the technology, or via it - but because they perceive it as an opportunity toplay. This study found that educational software, whilst being both visually and aurally appealing topresent a faade of play, does little to accommodate the social and physical attributes of playfulbehaviour. In order to move the research forward through design, this project constructed interactiveand embedded technologies that were developmentally appropriate for childrens learning, byidentifying characteristics that structure and define playful action and play ecologies.

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Parallel Session 1E: Atlantis Project .


Session Chair: Paul Walsh, Cork Institute of Technology

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Atlantis University: The Future of Learning and Teaching

Udo Bleimann, Ingo Stengel and Oliver SchneiderAtlantis Project

We are living in a Knowledge Society, which has great impacts on learning and teaching. Facts andfigures are no longer that important. We all have to learn How to learn? and will make use of thisfor lifetime. We all have to learn How to adapt to fast changing situations?

We all have to learn How to solve problems in (international) teams? which leads to a much higherimportance of social skills. The paper gives an overview of the research topics addressed within ourAtlantis University project and tries to form a basis for the following presentations in the context ofthis project. Atlantis University is looking for answers to the questions raised alongside the mottos ofour research Learn Your Own Way and Learning by Contribution. Atlantis University is a virtualuniversity formed by 10 partners from different countries aiming for new learning and teachingscenarios. It deals with the development of a new infrastructure as well as new content to supportthis and serves as test environment for new ideas. The basic ideas included are:

Extended Blended Learning a combination of face-to-face learning, e-learning and project-based learning adjusted to the learners needs;

Content and way of teaching are both depended on users learner preferences; Learning by contribution, using wikis and collaborative content manipulation; Make use of personal knowledge management for learning;

Assessment based on online contribution rather than exams; The impact of mobility on learning.

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Atlantis University Platform

Markus KeinzAtlantis Project

There are many applications with very different benefits providing an e-learning process. To ensurebest results using an e-learning platform, knowledge from various applications has to be broughttogether. Therefore it is necessary to provide a single point of entry, enabling all learners to accesstheir desired learning supporting applications like Moodle, Document Management System, Wikiand a global search functionality over the content of all applications.

The first conceptual design of a portal framework bases on an individual implementation of a centralwebsite header. The header is dealing with all functions needed to access the applications viasingle-sign on and load content in corporate design within a certain area. AJAX (AsynchronousJavaScript and XML) is the used technology to load content from various applications within acertain content area on the website. When requesting a website of an integrated e-learning

application, an AJAX call will be send to an proxy-server, that handles a problem called cross-sitescripting appearing when a server wants to edit or access a object from another server. The proxy-


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server receives the AJAX call and builds the requested website on the server. A cachingmechanism increases the performance concerning loading times.

An additional re-factor functionality provides the possibility to customise the loaded websites undercertain rules. Therewith every websites, independent of the applications it comes from, can bedisplayed in a common look and feel without editing the basic source code or style sheets. To offerthe e-learning users an overall search containing the whole content of all e-learning supportingapplications the web-based ontology of the University of Applied Science Darmstadt is used. Webservices will extract content out of the applications and integrate it through the web-based ontology.

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CoCoMa: Collaborative Content Manipulation

Pejman EghlimiAtlantis Project

CoCoMa is a web-based platform, an independent and interactive system that has the goal tosupport collaboration between teachers and students. It is part of the Atlantis project started by Prof.Dr. Udo Bleimann (Faculty of Computer Science:http://www.fbi.h-da.de/organisation/personen/bleimann-udo) at the Darmstadt University of AppliedSciences, Germany. The idea of Atlantis is to provide a single platform that supports a combinationof three different ways of learning: face-to-face learning, e-learning and project-based learning. Inthe e-learning field the six diversely learner preferences, introduced by Prof. Dr. Franz-Josef(Faculty of Social Sciences: http://www.sozarb.h-da.de/kontakt/lehrende/franz-josef-roell/index.htm),are fundamental for the entire concept: Only computer-based learning can address thecharacteristics of every single student.

CoCoMa is one of Atlantis' tools to bring these concepts to life. It gives students a possibility to

suggest improvements to the presentations provided by the lecturer of a module. Every enrolledstudent can create an own version of any available slide. The lecturer is able to accept the studentschanges and override his own slide. Of course, changes can also be reverted. It is very likely thatcontent created by a certain learner preference can be understood best by people that prefer thesame type. Hence, the system marks all slides and revisions with the learner preferences of theircreators. With this information the whole slide set can be filtered to get the fitting slides thatcorrelate best to the student's learner preferences.

Currently, the tool provides presentation functionality via a DHTML-based format called 'S5' (URL:http://yatil.de/s5/). This is a temporary solution for prototyping purposes, since there is no possibilityto import/export common formats like 'Open Document' (ODP) or 'Microsoft PowerPoint' (PPT).However, in near future, there will be an open source project dedicated to find solutions for this kind

of challenges and to achieve a higher awareness in the community in order to attract more externaldevelopers and experts to join CoCoMa.

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Parallel Session 2A: Social Networking .


Session Chair: Thomas Fischer, University of Erlangen-Nuremburg

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Blurring Boundaries: Facebook for Film Studies

Tony McNeillKingston University

The growing popularity of networked participatory technologies characteristic of Web 2.0 presentssome interesting challenges to an HE sector which has invested heavily in centrally-supportedvirtual learning environments (VLEs). This paper will describe the use of a third-party socialnetworking site (SNS) to support an undergraduate programme at Kingston University.

The paper identifies a number of key questions in Higher Education about the use of Web 2.0 toolsand environments as a supplement to, or substitute for, institutional VLEs. In particular, it addressessuch questions as: i) the blurring of academic and non-academic identities; ii) social distancebetween academics and students; iii) the emerging literacy practices, i.e. ways of communicatingand of making and sharing texts characteristic of SNSs and their fit with accepted academicliteracies; and iv) the extent to which the participatory and community ethos characteristic of SNS-based 'affinity spaces' can be recreated for more formal study-related purposes.

The paper will describe the use of Facebook by colleagues in Film Studies to support a number ofundergraduate modules. Analysing data collected in Facebook interactions (emails, wall anddiscussion board posts, comments to uploaded content) as well as interviews with staff and relevant

academic staff, the paper will draw a number of conclusions about the suitability of and potentialvalue of SNSs to undergraduate education.

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Facing up to the Educational Potential of Facebook

Annette OdellUniversity of East London

Social networking systems, and Facebook in particular, are used by many higher educationinstitutions for marketing purposes and as a means of supporting prospective and new students.

However, its use for teaching/learning purposes within individual courses is currently less commonand there is consequently a paucity of detailed case studies which we can use to assess potentialwithin our own specific teaching/learning contexts.

The School of Architecture and the Visual Arts at the University of East London has internal fundingto research the use of Facebook as the core learning technology within the delivery of certainmodules and programmes. This has included both qualitative and quantitative research into bothtutors' and learners' experiences of using Facebook in this way. Both existing literature andexperimentation over the last three semesters have also generated a set of 'good practiceguidelines'. These have wider implications in that, for example, 'managing online identity' becomesa necessary skill for current study as well as lifelong learning, with consequent implications for theskills curriculum.


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This paper summarises our findings to date and discusses them in relation to related researchfindings. It also lists our own emerging 'good practice guidelines' and discusses the actions that aninstitution may need to take in order that the use of online social networking for teaching/learning isas secure and effective as it can possibly be.

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The Challenge of Aggregation

Karsten Oster LundqvistUniversity of Reading

A typical learner belongs to many online learning communities. Some of which are formal, such asthose in institutionally owned managed learning environments. Others are less formal, especiallysocial-based communities that centre around the user's own online social networks (e.g. facebook,bebo.) Learners often find that their content is scattered across all of these places. TheMeAggregator is a JISC funded project, which aims to ease this dilemma by allowing learners toaggregate and share their learning content.

At first hand this might appear a simple task, however there are many technical issues that hasbeen faced in realising the MeAggregator:

1. How the system locate content2. Where to aggregate (Desktop or Internet based)3. Password protected zones4. Firewalls5. Use of bespoke / closed technologies for displaying content6. Changes in APIs7. Lack of well defined APIs

8. Improper use of standards9. Non-existent standards10. Screen scraping

The MeAggregator is able to locate content through a bespoke ontological tagging file system ofdistributed content. Each learner can tag content using their own tagging regime, thus enable themto create associative links to the content better than in a normal folder oriented file system, thusallowing the aggregation to take place independently of the place of aggregation.

The other challenges are solved by using a flexible plug-in system, which utilises the ontologicaltagging file system, but enables the plug-in creator to specify how passwords are handled; specificAPI and standards are used and the other issues addressed. There are also social and ethical

concerns with the use of the MeAggregator such as:

1. Intellectual Property Rights and copyrights issues2. Plagiarism3. Digital Identity

These are being explored and addressed in the Eduserve funded 'This is Me' project.

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Parallel Session 2B: Various .


Session Chair: Robert Bennett, University of Plymouth

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So What Happens Now?

Doug DickinsonIndependent ICT Consultant

I cant exactly tell you what I will say by the time the Conference arises because I dont know whatwill happen between now and then. If the last year is anything to go by then there will be somereally exciting advances just think about the mini-book boom and the potential for those devicesto change access to information and how about that Smart table and the Microsoft Surface? And

there will be some rubbish things that, on the face of it will look great and glossy and captivatingand exciting but will have a short life and attention span as the army of other similar things stormsover the horizon.

So I cant really say yet but

So, what happens now..?

The progression from Web 1.0 through Web 2.0 and onwards is exponential. From docs to blogs,pods, wikis and beyond, children, students and learners of all types are using the growing power attheir fingertips to develop their ideas in exciting, stimulating and creative ways. They arecollaborating, creating, digesting, reworking, demanding, focusing, inventing and re-inventing! The

read/write aspects that excited us with passion last year have sprinted forward giving newmeanings to both parts read and write. Each day we find institutions besieged by the advancesmade, which they seemingly have little or no control over and todays person wants control! Whatprice is a three to five year development plan when change is so fast? How do we match this in aworld where earthquakes and the global crunch have the capacity to change peoples livesforever? How do we manage all of the information we now have? What effect does it have on usand ours? Who are the owners? Who are the buyers and who the sellers?

So what happens now lets explore the opportunities and take the risk of finding out foreveryones sake!

About the presenter: With 40 years experience in Primary education, Doug is now an independent ICT

consultant working on all aspects of enhancing teaching and learning with ICT. A Primary PGCE lecturer atLeicester University School of Education, Doug has also written a number of guides, training modules, booksand training materials on primary ICT.

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Cops and Robbers: How the New Technologies are Informing and ChangingLaw Enforcement, Criminals and Terrorists

William Hutchinson and Craig ValliEdith Cowan University

The use of electronic media by terrorists, criminals and law enforcement agencies to communicatemessages and for command and control has been well documented. Not so well known is the use


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of new technologies by these actors to train and educate their members. Games technologies areespecially being used develop strategies for homeland security and other law enforcementscenarios. Terrorists and criminals groups are using such products as Second Life not only to gainfunds via traditional direct contribution but also to extort or defraud money. In addition thesetechnologies are being leveraged as a source of training in many of the techniques and tactics usedby such groups. Much of this software gives extra richness and context to the education ofparticipants of the legal divide.

The use of electronic media is used to great effect in influence operations where manypropagandistic techniques are used. However, this has been taken a stage further with the use ofpersuasive software. Based on conventional advertising and psychological techniques, these toolscan consist of overt games that espouse particular causes, such as killing Al Qaeda members or, onthe reverse side, destroying American forces. Many of these techniques are supplemented byeducational material on Web sites such as YouTube and blogs and are becoming seriouscontenders to mainstream media sources. People are becoming educated and influenced bymaterial in the virtual world. With the use of anonymising technologies such as TOR (The OnionRouting) network hides their activities and makes their interactions with these systems untraceable

and unreliable.

The type of learning in these groups tends to be of four types: passive (where the user absorbsinformation such as that used in propagandistic influence operations), active (conventional learningfrom information supplied on specific media such as weapons construction), emergent learning(learning from doing in a virtual environment such as role playing in a combat game thus providingskills not sought such as that is active learning), and forensic learning (learning from theexamination of others behaviour, simple examples are the scanning of web page visits or theanalysis of SMS messages). The latter two are the most novel as, in a network centric and virtualorganisation, learning is ad hoc in comparison to that of a hierarchical structure. In a competitive orcombative situation each opponent must learn to survive in this environment.This paper will examine the use of new media in this network centric environment and the different

learning strategies needed.

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Workshop 4 & Parallel Session 2C: e-Pedagogy .


Session Chair: Sally Holden, Peninsula Medical and Dental School

. .

E-pedagogy: Emperor's New Clothes or New Directions?

Mark Russell* and Lindsay Jordan+*University of Hertfordshire, +University of Bath

The interplay between teaching, assessment and ultimately learning is complex. Notions of alignedteaching are often offered as being important in constructing an environment in which learning canflourish. Whilst our understanding of how people learn and what constitutes good educationalpractice varies, there are numerous collections of research-informed principles that describe how

learning might be enhanced. Many of these collections appear generic and hence are notconstrained to disciplinary groupings. Our workshop will identify some of these principles andexplore the concept of an e-pedagogy. Through participant interaction the workshop will gainadditional views of what features of learning environments are needed to promote and supportlearning. Additionally we will establish if these features have any uniqueness or specific relevanceto technology-rich or technology-sparse learning environments.

Ultimately, we will engage in participant dialogue to establish if an e-pedagogy exists, or whether itcan be described as the use of learning technologies to support existing pedagogies. We will debateif the development and use of new technologies warrants a reconsideration and revision ofpedagogical principles or see if our current understanding of what supports learning independent ofinnovation in learning and teaching?

The workshop will be facilitated by two practitioners, one with experience of the distance learningdomain and the other the blended learning domain.

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Suggested Future View for a Virtual Learning Environment commensurate withEducational Total Quality Standards in Saudi Arabia

Amani Al-Hosan and Afnan OyaidUniversity of Exeter

Education in Saudi has experienced a number of significant changes in the last few years that havealtered educationalists view to the traditional model entirely. The recent government drive towardsincreasing the use of ICT in Education has invited research in issues related to varied applicationsof ICT in education. Virtual learning environments (VLE) is one application of e-learning thatattracted such interest, however, since VLE is newly introduced application in constantly developingand changing field the quality of teaching and learning taking place within it should be managed andcontrolled. Therefore, the proposed study aims to investigate and explore the following issues:

The importance of e-learning International and Arab approaches to e-learning in general and VLE in particular Methods and procedures of applying total quality standards (TQM) in VLE

Proposals for improving quality management in VLE Futuristic proposed view of VLE commensurate with total quality management standards


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Parallel Session 2D: ICT in Schools .


Session Chair: Thomas Kretschmer, University of Erlangen-Nuremburg

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What are Kids learning when their Teachers aren't looking?

Miles Berry and Terry FreedmanAlton Convent Preparatory School

The presentation explores young people's use of technology for informal learning outside of theformal education system, focusing principally on use in the upper primary and secondary phases.Drawing on published research from a number of sources they discuss a number of areas in whichyoung people are using web-based and hand held tools for creativity and social networking across

text, graphic, music, game and video media.

The authors have also recently conducted their own web-based surveys of informal learning viatechnology, collecting over 1700 responses. The authors will present an analysis of theirquantitative and qualitative data, covering areas of access to and use of technology at home,examples of informal learning, young people's views on Internet filtering at home and school, andtheir different perceptions of ICT between home and school, the 'digital disconnect'. A number ofcase studies highlighting particular examples of informal learning using technology will bepresented.

E-safety issues in relation to social networking will be discussed and the authors will conclude bygiving a number of practical recommendations for how educators can better leverage young

people's enthusiasm for communication, creativity and collaboration inside the formal curriculum.

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Promoting, Standardizing and Certifying ICT Integration in Austrian SecondarySchools

Peter MicheuzAlpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt

The integration of information technology in schools has always been a matter of Austria's nationaleducational policy since more than twenty years. In 2002, one major Austrian top-down initiative,

called eLSA, which is an acronym for 'e-Learning in everyday school lives' has been launched bythe Ministry of Education. Since then eLSA has become a trademark for successful integration ofICT for the lower secondary level. Even if the financial stimulation becomes weaker the number ofschools is still increasing and profiting from the common knowledge which has been gathered byinnovative teachers within some years of practical classroom experience. The participating schoolshave to commit themselves to deliver regular reports and to fulfil the ambitious project goals. Eachschool involved in the eLSA-project has been financially supported mainly for hardware and in-service training, accompanied by the commitment to fulfil these goals as part of their schoolprogram.

Being an important part of the new 'FutureLearning' programme of the Austrian Ministry ofEducation, recently the eLSA project offers to involved schools a special eLSA-certificate. Based onthe eLSA-goals as a quasi standard for good practice of ICT integration, the certification processrequires clearly defined indicators. By now, a proposed framework of about 60 items has been


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developed by the coordinating team of the eLSA project. Due to this recommendation, some pilotcertifications in a few schools have been conducted by regional coordinators.

So far, there was no experience with a certification process of this kind. Moreover, externalevaluations have almost no tradition in Austria's educational system. Till now applying for the eLSA-certificate is voluntary and only some schools with a considerable experience in ICT- integrationmake use of it. As the author himself is currently involved in these new attempts of certifying andauditing schools externally, first empirical results about the process and the results of 'e-evaluating'schools, underpinned by some reflections based on research work in this field, can be presented atthe conference.

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Unchaining the British Library: Structures Mediating Digital Archives forPedagogic Use

Julie Blake* and Tim Shortis+

*British Library,

+

Institute of Education

This paper will be of interest to those engaged in e-learning approaches to English and Humanitiessubjects in Secondary Education, Further Education and Higher Education, and to scholars of e-learning methodologies. The context for the paper is the ongoing development of the new Languageand Literature website being undertaken by the British Librarys Learning Team. Developed in thewake of the success of such recent BL projects as Texts in Context and Sounds Familiar, the newsite is designed for a primary audience of students following GCE A Level English Literature,English Language and combined English Language and Literature courses, but is also structured toengage with the needs and interests of UK HE students, students of English from the USA, Canadaand Australia, as well as the general audience. Our paper will be a refocused development of thearguments presented in the attached drafts, which were presented to the NCTE convention in San

Antonio Texas. These draw upon past work but will also present new material which extends thetheoretical and methodological basis of the much larger project now in hand (Blake and Shortis,2008, Shortis, 2007, Robertson et al., 2004, Shortis and Jewitt, 2005, Shortis et al., 2005).

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Complexity of Learning Path Algorithms

Tillman Swinke and Normen HaasAtlantis Project

In a more and more complex world, learners face greater tasks in learning than ever. They not onlyhave to gain more knowledge but they have to acquire deeper and more diversified interdisciplinaryknowledge. These emerging tasks result in more and more complex pedagogical concepts. Withine-Learning in particular, these pedagogical concepts need to be mapped to a system that supportsthese pedagogical concepts and their complexity.

One example of a complex pedagogical concept is the extended blended learning concept whichcombines face-to-face learning, e-learning and project-based learning. It also includes contents fordifferent learner preferences. So the system adapts perfectly to the learners needs. In the age ofweb 2.0 and personalised user interfaces, users demand new systems that are able to adjust to theuser and are offering personalized interfaces or content. An example for such a system is theeLearning platform of the Atlantis University; it is tuned to the users needs in terms of the way of

learning (eLearning, project-based learning and face-to-face learning) and in terms of the userslearner preference. It combines a new complex pedagogical concept and an up-to-date web 2.0compliant user interface. Within the Atlantis University Platform an algorithm is needed to calculatethe best learning path for each learner. It is obvious that this algorithm becomes more complex themore attributes it has to include in its calculation, but it is not obvious how much the complexity isrising.

This papers goal is to raise an awareness of the type of problems that can emerge from thisadjustability and the gap that is yawning between new upcoming pedagogical concepts and theimplementation that is supposed to map these concepts to an IT infrastructure. The paper willexamine the class of complexity based on the learning path model.

Workshop 5: e-Tutoring .

Venue: Rolle 302 Access Grid Time: 16:30-17:30

Session Chair: Flea Palmer, University of Plymouth

. .

Advancing Online Dialogue through Web Annotation

Cindy Xin*, Geoffrey Glass* and Vivian Neal+

*Simon Fraser University,

+


One of the key advantages of asynchronous communication is the ability to archive its content.However, in educational forums discussion archives are often underused. New technical structuresshould be implemented so that ideas generated through discussion can be recaptured by theparticipants, who can use them to further the dialogue. To this end, we have developed an award-winning* open source Web annotation tool, called Marginalia (http://www.geof.net/code/annotation/).It is integrated into the Moodle discussion forum and is used in a number of online classrooms andcommunities of practice.

Marginalia allows users to highlight passages of text and type notes in the margin of a post, as witha paper book. By making annotations in a discussion forum, students are better able to mark up

points for follow up, summarize the dialogue, and make further contributions based on what theyhave read.


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In this workshop, the facilitators will discuss the design of Marginalia, describe the pedagogicalconsiderations behind its design, and explain how it can be used in online classrooms. Initialresearch on the effectiveness of the tool when used for the retrieval, recall, and reflection ofarchived postings will also be discussed. The initial usage of the tool in a number of undergraduateand graduate courses has confirmed the main research hypothesis: the use of Marginalia results inincreased interaction, critical engagement with the content, and sophistication of dialogue.

Participants in this workshop will get a chance to use the tool and consider its application in theirparticular context. The session will be video-linked using the new Access Grid Suite.

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Parallel Session 3C: Various Papers .


Session Chair: Peter Yeomans, Canterbury Christchurch University

. .

Designing Powerful Learning Environments: An Overview of Major Models

Ayse KokUniversity of Oxford

This conceptual paper discusses some principles for powerful learning environments based on acognitive perspective. Throughout the paper, it is argued that the accommodation of differentindividual cognitive preferences is crucial for its alignment with the human cognitive architecture.The paper concludes that in order to be aligned with the human cognitive architecture, TEL

(technology enhanced learning) environments should provide supportive visual and interactivemultimedia, self-assessment tools, instructional guidance about the purpose of the learningenvironment and how to operate it. Based on the prior research undertaken in this area, the paperconcludes that a more evidence-based model for deriving the positioning would allow the learningprofessionals to move from a framework to a genuine taxonomy.

With the proliferation of ICTs (information communication technologies) in the educational settings,radical changes have already taken place in the design and delivery of the learning experience.Contrary to the popular belief, one of the main challenges in this new era of learning is how tobridge the divide between technology and the learners themselves rather than the divide in terms ofaccess to the ICTs. In order for technologies to be useful, effective, cognitively demanding andengaging the underlying cognitive and psychological mechanisms should be taken into

consideration.

The problem addressed in this paper can be summarized as follows: How can the design principlesfor powerful learning environments be integrated into TEL (technology enhanced learning) andmake it aligned with the human cognitive architecture?

The paper first provides an overview of the TEL environments along with its potential benefits andunderlying architecture and then discusses the design principles of powerful learning environmentsby taking into account the cognitive load theory.

. .

Exploring the use of QR Codes as a Learning Technology

Andy RamsdenUniversity of Bath

This paper will focus on disseminating the ongoing research findings from the University of Bath onthe potential use of QR (Quick Response) codes in Further and Higher Education. This session willanswer the following questions; what is a QR code? How can they be effectively used in teachingand learning context? What do students think?

A QR code is a two-dimensional bar code which stores small amounts of encoded data that can beread using a mobile camera phone. With the ability to store hyperlinks, text, pre-prepared SMSmessages and phone numbers, a QR code provides a fast and intuitive means of transferringinformation from real world (physical) media to hand-held device.


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The use of QR codes in teaching and learning is very exciting. QR Codes are a rapidly emerginglow threshold technology. It is very easy for teachers and students to create and access theinformation within the QR Code. Some of the more obvious applications include the inclusion onprint outs and handbooks, the use in face to face teaching for people to access information quickly,the use within formative feedback and uses within collaborative problem solving games as a QRCode simply links the physical and electronic learning spaces.

The University of Bath is currently managing a number of QR code related projects, includingcoordinating a number of QR code pilot projects across 7 HE/FE institutions. The emphasis of theproject is to implement a number of uses and learn some practical lessons. Within the broadercontext of trying to answer the question, what do QR codes offer us as a learning technology? Thispresentation will include findings from this study.

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Parallel Session 3D: Online Learning .


Session Chair: Mark Pannell, University of Plymouth

. .

Choosing Technologies for Online Courses

John Smith, Bronwyn Stuckey, Beverly Trayner, Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and Shirley WilliamsUniversity of Reading

Facilitating an online course has many challenges. One of the first challenges is deciding whichtechnologies to use. This auto ethnographic study reflects on the experiences of: developing anonline course, facilitating two instances of it, the technologies used, and the impact on theparticipants.

The course was CPsquare's Connected Futures, which is described as:Connected futures: New social strategies and tools for communities of practice is a five weekworkshop for community managers, designers and conveners to explore social strategies and toolsto support them (referred to by some as Web 2.0). (http://cpsquare.org/edu/cp2tech/) This coursewas developed by a team from around the world (west coast US, through Europe to Australia), withparticipants also spanning the globe.

The technologies used can be categorised in three phases:

1. Course development and management2. The first run of the course

3. The second run of the course

The initial idea of the course was introduced by email, and followed by a conference call, using aphone bridge and Skype chat for note taking. A wiki was used to develop material and regular callsused to keep up to date with development. Throughout both runs of the course a Skype chat waskept open for the facilitators. The first run of the course, had a home base in Web Crossing,supplemented by other technologies. The second run of the course used Google technologies toprovide the home base. Each set of technologies created some frustrations for the participants,including the dilemma of where to post things, and missing what was considered important.

. .

HESS - Higher Education Study Skills - Delivering and Supporting HE StudySkills across a Dispersed Partnership

Julie SwainUniversity of Plymouth

The University of Plymouth Colleges (UPC) Faculty was established in 2003 and supports a networkof nineteen colleges delivering higher education to students in their local area across the SouthWest region. From a modest start in 1989 with just 450 students, provision has grown to more than10,500 students in 2008. UPC has been recognised nationally and received an outstanding QAACollaborative Audit report published in 2006.
http://cpsquare.org/edu/cp2tech/http://cpsquare.org/edu/cp2tech/http://cpsquare.org/edu/cp2tech/http://cpsquare.org/edu/cp2tech/


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With the vast expansion and success of FDs in UPC, blended learning is fundamental to the core ofits activity and future developments. With dedicated support to enable widening participation andonline communities UPC has developed a blended learning strategy (Swain J.A, and Witt, N.A.J2007) to move forward its strategic blended agenda. This has evolved from both the UPC and TheHigher Education Learning Partnership (HELP) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning(CETL) strategy which is part of a national network of 74 CETLs which are funded by HEFCE toreward excellence in learning and teaching and to promote educational research. The HELP CETLis funded (2005-2010) to support HE in FE development. Its purpose is to develop, embed andsustain blended developments working with a multitude of different Information Technology systemsand learning environments. Blended opportunities focus energy on pedagogical approaches thatunderpin innovation and reflective practice.

The UPC toolbox (HESS) has been designed to support students and lecturers in Higher EducationStudy Skills. Within the application there are a wealth of resources, in many forms such as worddocuments, interactive quizzes and web links, all which support the user with their study skills.The 3D Toolbox covers many different subjects, such as researching information, reflection andevaluation, developing your skills and being an effective learner. Each of these categories, then

have sub-headings which then in turn contain more categories that are topic specific. It has beendesigned to be a pick & mix approach with the benefit of all study skills resources are accessiblewithin one package and are signposted by level of study.Its main aims are to support:

students from non-traditional academic backgrounds who require additional study skillssupport

part-time students who want access to support materials outside college/university openhours

students who are accustomed to 24/7 access to materials staff who wish to use ready-made materials for their face to face study skills tutoring or to

direct students to specific sections to support their individual needs

Within the package is a built in evaluation function and upload of new resources. The toolbox hasproved an excellent resource and we are currently researching and developing HESS II which willincorporate the feedback from staff and students and engage further with appropriate Web 2.0technologies.

Parallel Session 3E: Learning Management Systems .


Session Chair: Dominic Martignetti, University of Plymouth

. .

Adopting an LMS: Compromise and Development

Chris HubbardCambridge ESOL

When adopting a Learning Management system (LMS) to be used for the online delivery of all, orpart, of an existing process it is inevitable that a review of that process will be required, and thisreview will raise questions related to the configuration of administrative and content structures. NoLMS comes out of the box 'ready to go' for your situation. Decisions need to be made on issues

such as the groupings of users, the access rights they will have in relation to each other and thesystem tools and content.


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When In making these decisions a complex negotiation develops between the pressure inertiaexerted by the structure of the existing system, the aim to maintain underlying educational orpedagogical objectives and the desire to create, develop and exploit a new and innovative learningenvironment. The outcomes of decisions vary in the weight any one of these may hold, and whilststriving to develop a 'new approach' compromises of some of these are needed. Final decisions willat times push development in directions which may might not normally otherwise have beenadopted. Are these directions forced compromises or positive development?

This session will case study a project undertaken by Cambridge ESOL to introduce the onlinedelivery of aspects of its quality assurance procedures for Oral Examiners who are locatedworldwide. I will outline the main features of the established 'face to face' standardisation systemand the process followed to adopt an LMS and move this online including the main developmentquestions we faced, the decisions we made and why. In particular, I will focus on instances wherewe moved away form our established approach, why we made those 'compromises' and whether,looking back, they have actually become positive developments.

. .

Learning Management System ScorDO for SVYAZINVEST Group, Russia

Andrey SylkaCorporate e-Learning Russia

General Contractor - "Corporate Training System" ZAO (BCC Group) www.bcc.ru, St.Petersburg,Russia ScorDO is a LMS for the automation of learning processes to support the implementation ofcentralized IT Programs (CRM, ERP & Billing) in SVYAZINVEST, with the possibility of mass usertraining in the limited time frame, has large number of training courses (over 300).

LMS has a unique hierarchical decentralized scheme with regional nodes and the central node. In

LMS design the question of restrictions on the corporate network bandwidth data transfer was takeninto account. One of the unique features of WEB-CD support, is to provide training for offline users.Choice of e-Learning: The analysis of the demands in education caused by the introduction ofCentralized IT-Programmes into MRC, during 2008-2009, revealed the necessity to train about100.000 employees to work with new information systems.

Naturally, in order to decrease the expenses for maintaining two systems at the same time, it wasnecessary to train the employees to work with the new system under time. Due to the geographicaldistances between the departments and large number of courses developed by the author of theintroduced information system (around 300) the internal training was completely irrelevant. Theorganization of internal courses for the huge number of employees is a rather laborious andexpensive process.

By developing the strategy of education the following groups of employees were formed: instructors,key users and, of course, users. Instructors underwent monthly internal courses, key usersunderwent either short-term internal training or e-learning, but under the supervision of instructors.The largest in number group is, of course, the group of users. It was decided to provide e-learningfor them with instructors and key users assisting them in the process of training.

Another reason for choosing e-learning was the requirement for the employees not only no obtainknowledge, but also to acquire skill in working with information system. But it is unacceptable totrain employees working with the real system, the same as it is impossible to launch a copy of thesystem for each learner. Therefore it was necessary to develop training apparatus or exercises forworking with the system.


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Parallel Session 3F: Atlantis Project .

Venue: Roland Levinsky LT 1 Time: 16:30-17:30

Session Chair: Ingo Stengel, University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt

. .

Identification of Learning Needs of Virtual Software Development TeamsBased on Virtual Team Performance Forecasts

Ralf Friedrich, Udo Bleimann, Ingo Stengel, Siegfried Seibert and Paul WalshAtlantis Project

The virtual software development team performance forecaster is a system of metrics that assessesteam performance data against expected project complexity. In ideal situations, the teamperformance will match or exceed the project complexity. If the team performance is less than the

project complexity, then project performance problems can be expected.

To improve the team performance, preventive actions need to be initiated. For a virtual team,elearning activities are a good choice, as elearning is easier to organize than other trainingactivities. At a later phase in the project, the efficiency of the elearning can be validated, as theteam performance should increase.

The advantages of the virtual software development team performance forecaster are: It combinesthe special needs of software development teams and software project complexity and it providestentative forecast values and uses metrics which are easy to measure.

The current models either do not combine software project complexity with virtual software

development team performance or they do not provide a simple forecast measurement system.Forecasting virtual software team performance is important to predict the likelihood of projectsuccess and can be used as decision criteria for the need of elearning and as a validation of itsefficiency.

. .

Integrating Motivation in eLearning: A Monitoring Instrument for SupportingMotivational Self- and Co-regulation in Learning Groups

Thomas Martens, Amin Hatteh, Michael Shulmeyer and Oliver SchneiderAtlantis Project

The Quality of Working in Groups Instrument (QWIGI) from Boekaerts and Minnaert (2003) aimson supporting learning groups by monitoring and improving their motivation. Each member of alearning group has to answer eight questions on a weekly base measuring Interest and the threepsychological needs proposed by Deci & Ryan: Perceived Autonomy, Perceived Competency andPerceived Social Relatedness.

Based on those answers, each group member can assess personal line charts comparing their owndata with the group mean representing the four dimensions. Previous studies show that thismonitoring tool for reflecting motivational processes can compensate motivational loss in learninggroups. With the provided feedback, the group members can discuss the current learning situation,

identify lacking motivation and can therefore start to self- and co-regulate their motivation. Given the


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proper integration of the instrument in the course context the lecturer can also try to facilitatemotivational processes.

This paper describes the implementation of QWIGI as an online tool and the prototypical integrationin an eLearning environment as part of the Atlantis platform. In a first step the standaloneapplication is integrated in Atlantis by using same Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) so thatindividuals and their group assignment can be identified automatically. A development path for thefull embedding of the application in the Atlantis Platform will be outlined. Improving motivation withinlearning groups is crucial for most learning processes, e.g. for deep and thorough understanding.The described application will therefore add an important feature to the Atlantis platform andcontributes all three pillars of Atlantis University: face-to-face learning, project based learning andeLearning.

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Parallel Session 3A: e-Portfolios .


Session Chair: Peter Micheuz, Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt

. .

A Portfolio with a Difference: Blending Electronic and Paper for Personal andProfessional Development

Margaret Fisher and Stephen HodgeUniversity of Plymouth

The Midwifery team in the Faculty of Health and Social Work at the University of Plymouth, togetherwith University IT support, has recently developed an innovative practice portfolio which is part-electronic and part-paper. This combines findings from the Ceppl (Centre for Excellence in

Professional Placement Learning) Assessment of Practice research project, evidence from theliterature and professional body requirements.

The Ceppl research project a longitudinal study over three years of undergraduate programmes inMidwifery, Social Work and post-registration Emergency Care has identified key principles relatingto portfolio and criterion referenced assessment which should be incorporated into practiceassessment. This has originated from findings of student perceptions as well as evidence from theliterature. Recent re-validation of the BSc (Hons) Midwifery curriculum has provided a window ofopportunity to apply these principles to the practice assessment documentation. The intention is toencourage students to understand the purpose of practice assessment seeing this in the contextof their personal and professional learning and development, whilst fulfilling professional body andprogramme requirements. The flexibility offered by the e-portfolio system empowers the learner and

promotes autonomy in the gathering of their evidence, which they demonstrate through a system ofhyperlinks. Clarity and consistency of multimedia guidance and facilities for regular feedback onprogress are key features of the new electronic portfolio. A successful pilot study was undertaken inwhich students with a range of IT and learning styles experimented with the new format. Theirpositive feedback has enabled the wiki-based e-portfolio to be developed into a functional record oflearning and personal and professional development which is currently being rolled out to studentsand mentors. The e-portfolio has also attracted central University attention, having beendemonstrated at the recent e-portfolio showcase event, and has been volunteered as part of thepilot for the new e-portfolio system proposed for the University in September 2009.

. .

Informal Learning and e-Portfolios

Dave CrootUniversity of Plymouth

This paper presents a position statement on current developments at the University of Plymouthwith respect to two strategic developments: ePortfolios and Informal learning. The Universityrecently invested in ePortfolio software (PebblePad) which will be instrumental in the delivery of itse-learning strategy. PebblePad will be rolled out to all parts of the University in September 2009,and is designed to scaffold many aspects of learning teaching and assessment. However, despiteits many other functions, PebblePad is specifically designed to provide learner-centric support forthe processes involved in and the assets accumulated as a result of Informal Learning.


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This paper explores the results of national research into the scope of Informal Learning (IL) in theHE sector, how IL is defined, how the outcomes are stored, and particularly how the sector isrecognising and accrediting IL in the light of the imminent Burgess Group recommendations on thefuture of the degree transcript. A range of models for articulating the relationship between formaland informal learning processes are presented and evaluated. Such models are represented in arange of learning settings at the University of Plymouth and its partner colleges, so the evolvingUniversity strategy must accommodate all these current practices and weave them into the newePortfolio as well as making allowance for recognition, accreditation and the new Higher EducationAchievement Record.

A particular strength of PebblePad is its ability to enable learners to share their learning experienceswith peers, academic tutors and work-based mentors wherever the individuals happen to be. As thesystem is Web2.0 based, such sharing is site independent and to an extent independent oftechnology, as the system is designed to take in SMS and text messaging with slightly simplifiedtools.

As we move forwards into structured and scaffolded life-long and life-wide learning, the inter-linked

agendas of ePortfolios and Informal Learning become increasingly important not only to theUniversity, but also local and regional workforce development.

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Conclusion: An assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the project led to the conclusionthat e-Learning of this sort definitely extends and enriches the student experience.

. .

Across Continents: The Role of ICT in Creating an Environment for Cross

Border Post Graduate Blended Learning

Kevin Walls and Denis FosterBirmingham City University

The technology innovation centre, (tic) is a faculty of Birmingham City University. It began deliveryof its first UK blended programme, an MSc in Logistics/Supply Chain Management in Sept 2006,which produced its first graduates in Sept 2008. As a first venture into blended delivery, there was avery steep learning curve and many lessons learnt, especially in the choice and use of supportmechanisms and student engagement.

This programme will be taken overseas for the first time early in 2009, in conjunction with NilaiUniversity College, Malaysia. This paper examines how the tic is analysing and adapting theexperience gained during the delivery of its UK programme to drive the structure and organisation ofthe overseas delivery. The learning space will be transformed; by culture, learner expectations anda huge physical distance.

The paper examines the processes, decisions and choices which were made to prepare the UKblended learning programme for a successful delivery in Malaysia. It shows how InformationTechnology was the key component in the process of creating a learning environment whichenabled staff to engage and support students more than 10,000km away. It describes the successor otherwise of several different methods of electronic communication which have been used on thisprogramme. The paper is divided into two sections:

How to engage the students. This includes a comparative analysis of the use of, andapproach to, two quite different video-conferencing tools.

How to support the e-learning materials. This includes the use of chat, forums and theUniversity's learning environment to enable staff and tutors to communicate and collaborateacross continents.

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Day 2Friday 24th April

Workshop 6: Mobile Technologies .

Venue: Smeaton 100 Time: 11:15-12:45

Session Chair: James Clay, Gloucestershire College

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It's a Mobile World

James ClayGloucestershire College

Mobile technologies and mobile learning have the potential to change the way in which learners canengage and interact with learning?Gloucestershire College has been using mobile learning toenhance and enrich the learning process, for a range of learners, across the curriculum. They havedeveloped a range of learning scenarios and activities that are integrated into the learning processand support a diverse range of learners.

In this workshop, small groups of participants will examine the potential of mobile technologies andmobile learning to rethink the digital divide, including addressing the tensions between formal andinformal learning, enabling access and removing exclusion, and empowering learners to takeresponsibility for their own learning.

The workshop introduction will provide an exploration of mobile learning and mobile technologies.Participants will discuss and debate mobile learning scenarios, and cover how they could be utilisedwithin their own institutions, examining the potential conflict between formal learning and informallearning that mobile learning offers. They will also debate the idea and concept that mobile learningis accessible and inclusive for all learners. The small group discussion will also address how mobilelearning can empower learners to take responsibility for their own learning. The groups will thenfeedback through a blog entry, an audio podcast or a video presentation. This feedback will bemade available online to allow comment and further discussion beyond the workshop and with otherconference delegates.

After the workshop, participants will have a greater understanding of the role of mobile learning in

addressing the digital divide. Mobile technologies will have been used within the workshop by theparticipants to understand the learning scenarios, and the participants will have presented theworkshop outcomes through a variety of learning technologies

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Parallel Session 4A: VLEs and MLEs .


Session Chair: Mark Lyndon, University of Plymouth

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The VLE is dead, long live the PLE: 'Netbooks' in the Lab and Field

Brian WhalleyQueens University Belfast

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) have become a standard e-learning tool in education. Thispaper examines their possible replacement by personal learning environments (PLEs) based on alaptop or 'netbook' as the focus of student learning. VLEs are not very student oriented even thoughstudents use them as

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