In the last couple of months the LEAD project’s university research partners have been focusing on case studies, additional participatory design sessions and development of new prototypes.
The research group of at the University of Tampere (UTA) has continued with their research on data collected with the OPEKA -tool. During the autumn term the UTA’s reseach group reformulated their research questions. They are now formulated, as follows:
- Which community, technological and structural factors are behind the sharing and communication practices between teachers?
- What kinds of teaching cultures are present in the case schools and how these support or hinder the learning and sharing of ICT-practices?
Further analysis has been conducted on the Opeka data. On goal has been to select schools for a closer investigation through interviews including high and low level schools in IST development. Interviews of from 30-36 teachers (principals, ict-support teachers, “regular” staff teachers) in hi/low-end, upper/lower primary schools Tampere, Hämeenlinna and in 1-2 national top schools are underway. There is still a need for more responses from Hämeenlinna and Tampere schools to get statistically representative data (some schools missing or low response percentage) for sampling of low-end schools.
HIIT has explored the concept of computer-supported live participation, namely different systems which allow the audience to participate to performances via a real-time computer-mediated participation channel. Backchannels, Twitter streams and our very own Presemo are examples of live participation. On top of the more conceptual work the research has focus on several case studies including research on previous cases, re-engineering the backbone system of the Presemo and current work to increase field installations and re-examine potential to do more experimental research.
HIIT team has also got international. Matti is currently in UC Berkeley taking courses on behavioral economics and online collaboration. He’s also engaging to study online participation (both live and non-live) further by examining commenting systems, backchannels and online exchange systems. Even while not always aimed at education, having knowledge on more general online practices will be helpful for development of online solutions too.
In the Aalto’s Media Lab Helsinki the latest activities relate to experimenting with the Edukata, a participatory design guide for teachers to extend their educational design skills. Edukata is based on a design research process that has been adapted for use by teachers and educational planners. As part of the iTEC project Edukata will be piloted in over 1000 classroom around Europe in the fall 2013. In Finland we do more Edukata related research is done in the framework of the LEAD project.
A new prototype under design is called Feeler. a set of tools integrated in Feeler aims to combine data about wellbeing, such as physical activity and rest, with data about learning performance in order to generate visualizations that support learners’ reflection processes. The idea has been presented in the ARTEL workshop that took place in EC-TEL conference and during Aalto researchers day 2013. Currently, Feeler’s first prototype will use Moves’ open API in order to collect data about physical activity. Studies of the possibilities to collect data about learning performance in ongoing and focusing on the Eliademy’s virtual classrooms and/or Open EdX, which is installed for research purposes to the project’s server. The EdX server and service will also be studied with special focus on its pedagogical affordances and possibilities.