Areas of Tension in Technology Enhanced Learning

Areas of Tension in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL):A New Framework for the

Elicitation of Research Questions ?

Denis GILLET (presenter), Hans SPADA, et al.ED MEDIA Graduate Research Training Stream‐

Lisbon, Portugal, Thursday June 30, 16:00-17:001

STELLAR Delphi studyPurpose within the STELLAR network

• Contribute to the STELLAR Grand Challenges,provide input to other STELLAR activities, and disseminate the results beyond STELLAR:– envisioning the most important TEL research themes,

regarding technological developments, educational aspects, and societal challenges

– exploring goals and visions held by TEL experts– integrating these perspectives in a common

framework for future European TEL research– http://tinyurl.com/delphistudy

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Study DesignThe 5 STELLAR Delphi Rounds

Round 1: Internal survey (STELLAR Partners)

Round 4: Second global survey

Round 2: First global survey

Round 3: Two workshops (STELLAR Partners)

Round 5: Elaboration and Dissemination of results

February – September 2009

October 2009 – June 2010

July – October 2010

November 2010 – September 2011

October 2011 – May 2012

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1st STELLAR Delphi Round Overview

• STELLAR-internal survey• Identify future trends: important societal challenges,

technological developments, and research topics• Open format items/qualitative data analysis (Glaser, 1992; Mayring, 2008)

• Development of category systems Future Trends

• Generate future visions Visionary Statements (2025)

Topic SubtopicUbiquitous & contextualized learning and technology

Contextualisation, location-awareness and context-aware applications

Mobile devices & ubiquitous computing

Ubiquitous mobile connectivity

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2nd STELLAR Delphi Round Panel of Experts

Recruiting of 511 international experts• 363 expert nominations by STELLAR partners• 148 members of program committees of TEL-related conferences

Final Panel of Experts (answered the questionnaire) – 45%• 230 international experts

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2nd STELLAR Delphi RoundVisionary Statements Areas of Tension

Rating of 16 Visionary Statements on two dimensionsExamples: “By 2025, our learning history will be recorded resulting in a track record ”

“By 2025, formal education of long running mass programmes will become irrelevant in favour of networked and digitally supported personal learning trajectories. ”

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16 Visionary Statements:• Patterns in the frequency distributions on both rating

scales (realistic- and desirable-rating)

2nd STELLAR Delphi RoundVisionary Statements Areas of Tension

3rd Delphi Round - First Delphi Workshop Visionary Statements Areas of Tension

Area of Tension (AoT): Two opposite positions on a future development within TEL

Example:

Area of Tension Generated visionary statements

Personalized learning: Adaptation to individual needs and competences through data tracking vs.Loss of data privacy:Misuse of personal data such as a person’s learning history

“Education will be adaptive to the learners' levels of cognitive and affective characteristics”“Companies will prescribe employees whatto learn and enforce this electronically”“Policies about what to forget, traces to destroy... (for privacy and better learning)will be established”

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3rd STELLAR Delphi RoundVisionary Statements 5 Areas of Tension

Ubiquitous learning opportunities vs.

Focused and critical processing of information

Individual learning paths vs.

Standardized learning paths

Data tracking for personalized learning vs.

Data privacy

Approved practices vs.

Continuous innovation in the classroom

Digital divide despite technology spread

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2nd STELLAR Delphi RoundFuture Trends Core Research Areas

Future Societal Challenges (18 items)

What key societal demands and challenges will Technology-Enhanced Learning have to respond to in the future?

Future Technological Developments (12 items) What key technological developments will have an impact on Technology-Enhanced Learning in the future?

Future Research Themes (25 items)

Imagine a large international research program on Technology-Enhanced Learning to be carried out from 2015 till 2020:What should be central research themes in this program?

importance / impact rating on 5 point-Likert scales

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2nd Delphi Round Future Trends Core Research Areas

Results – Top 5 Societal Challenges

Future societal demands and challenges• Lifelong learning • Provide teacher training in order to improve

formal education • Adapt education to new generations of

students• Reducing the “digital divide”• Learning on demand

Main effect sign. differences between importance ratings on Future Societal items; F(12.6, 2623.6) = 30.15, p < .001, ƒ = .38

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Results – Top 5 Technological Developments

Future technological developments• Mobile (portable) computing technologies• Collaboration & communication tools• Technology spread• Innovative interfaces• Interoperability• Web 2.0

Main effect sign. differences between impact ratings on Future Technological items; F(9.36, 1994.3) = 49.68, p < .001, ƒ = .48

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Results – Top 10 Research ThemesFuture research themes• Collaborative learning• Enabling developing countries to benefit from

technology enhanced learning• Personalization/individualization of learning• Contextualized learning & context aware ‐

applications• Lifelong learning & workplace learning• Ubiquitous & mobile technology/learning• Emotional and motivational aspects of learning• Connection between formal and informal

learning• Adaptive/Intelligent learning support systems• Analysis of cognitive processes on the group

level

Main effect sign. differences between importance ratings on Future Research items; F(16.1, 3028.3) = 12.57, p < .001, ƒ = .26

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Core Research Areas

2nd 3rd STELLAR Delphi Round Future Trends Core Research Areas

Future societal demands and challenges

+Future technological

developments+

Future research themes

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3rd Delphi Round - Second Delphi Workshop Future Trends Core Research Areas

Societal challenge for TEL - Learning on demand- Lifelong learning

Technological development - Ambient intelligence/computing - Context-aware technologies and applications- Augmented and virtual reality

Research theme - Contextualized learning & context-aware applications

Trendsetting Research Questions:How can we theorize context in a form that is appropriate for enabling new forms of learning? How to enable continuity of the interaction and accessibility of information between different contexts, including virtual and physical ones?How to find and aggregate relevant people, resources and services from the “cloud” for a given context? ….

Example: Contextualized Learning

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3rd STELLAR Delphi RoundFuture Trends 11 Core Research Areas

• Computer-supported collaborative learning• Reducing the digital divide• Personalization of learning• Contextualized learning• Workplace learning• Ubiquitous & mobile technology and learning• Emotional and motivational aspects of

technology-enhanced learning• Informal learning• Improve practices of formal education• Connection between formal and informal learning• Interoperability

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4th STELLAR Delphi RoundSecond Global Survey

• Recruited panel of experts:– about 1500 invited TEL researcher and stakeholders

• Final global panel: – 569 participants answered the questionnaire (38%)– Experts chose one main group they belong to:

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4th STELLAR Delphi RoundQuestionnaire

Areas of Tension– Strength of tension today and in 10 years?– Identification with position A / B?– Impact of tension on research, society…?– Influence of research, society… on development of tension?

Core Research Areas– Ranking of Core Research Areas according to their importance

for research in TEL in the next 10 years– Provide suggestions for concrete research projects

Main goal: Recommendations for a TEL research agenda

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4th STELLAR Delphi RoundCore Research Areas – Ranking Results

In order of rank sum (N=498):1. (4.47) Connection between informal and formal learning2. (4.89) Computer-supported collaborative learning3. (5.07) Personalized learning4. (5.07) Contextualized learning5. (5.49) Ubiquitous and mobile technology and learning6. (5.52) Improve practices in formal education7. (6.19) Emotional and motivational aspects of TEL8. (6.56) Informal learning9. (6.99) Reducing the digital divide10. (7.01) Workplace learning11. (8.05) Interoperability

Part 2: The Voice of PhD Candidateshttp://tinyurl.com/CRA-AoT• Are you a PhD candidate, advisor, other ?• Do you already have clear research questions ?• Should research questions deal with societal challenges (SC) ? Y/N

– If yes, which SC your current research is dealing with ?• Is your current research associated with one of the Core Research Areas

(CRA) ? Y/N– If yes, which one(s) ?– If no, which CRA is missing ?

• Is your current research associated with one of the Areas of Tension (AoT) ? Y/N– If yes, which one(s) ?– If no, which CRA is missing ?

• Are you going to refine your research questions in the light of these findings (AoT, CRA)? Y/N • If yes, how ?

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Part 2: The Voice of PhD Candidateshttp://tinyurl.com/CRA-AoT

• New Areas of tension proposed by the participantsof the last Joint Winter School on TEL– Handwriting versus Typewriting (what are core skills and knowledge to acquire?)

– Action (immediate) versus Vision (mid and long term objectives, … serious games)

– Reproducibility (stable foundation) versus Plasticity (agile personalization)

– Skillfulness versus Closeness (as example, the teachers may not be the right people to deal with digital literacy, despite the fact that they are close to the kids)

– Adoption versus Innovation (careful adoption of useful innovation in education)

– Competences versus Performances (what are the real objectives of education?)

• Your Vision– Write a 6-line visionary scenario for education (desirable)– Write one sentence stating if it is realist or not ? If not, what is the

barrier?22