Oh, behave!’ Behaviour-led development of learning technologies [18-131] Home : ALT Annual Conference 2018

Public Group Active 4 years, 6 months ago

Tue, Sep 11 2018, 11:30am – 12:30pm

Authors: Elizabeth Ellis, and Alice Gallagher

Room: Rm 2.220

Theme: Critical perspectives in Learning Technology

Type: Work-in-progress report/experimental session – 30mins

Description

Session Description

In this interactive session, participants will have the opportunity to feedback on the innovative development of a Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (Educause, 2017) that allows students to take ownership of their learning in offline and online digital spaces.
By applying robust research into student learning behaviour, the Learning Innovation team at The Open University has created prototypes and concepts to be tested through a series of individual and group activities in a thought provoking experimental session.
Individual activities will allow participants to use their experience of learning and teaching, and take part in a series of tasks or case studies that will allow them to understand the platform and its potential, and provide useful feedback for the next phase of development.
The group activity will use the Ketso workshop format (Tippett, 2014) to challenge assumptions about student learning behaviour in digital spaces, and unpack behaviour-led Technology Enhanced Learning practice.
By the end of this session, participants will:
– Have provided insight and feedback on this innovative NGDLE
– Understand how learning behaviour can be applied to the development of learning technologies
– Grasp the arguments for and against behaviour-led Technology Enhanced Learning practice.

Session content: evaluation and reflection

As part of a strategic project to develop an NGDLE, with better design and creation tools for digital module development, an opportunity has emerged around how this technology could be extended to deliver digital learning experiences for students. In order to understand how best to use the technical potential of the NGDLE platform and the modern cloud-based architecture it uses, the Learning Innovation team at The Open University has conducted a series of student research activities.
The Learning Behaviours of Open University Students Research was carefully designed to gain insight about students’ current learning behaviours and how new technologies could enhance students’ success. Our team use a Human-Centred Design (HCD) approach to product development. Using robust research methodologies has enabled the student engagement to move beyond current debates around online learning to a deeper understanding of the underlying learning behaviours in digital online and offline spaces. An HCD approach is iterative, and involves testing ideas through prototyping at an early stage. The next phase for this project is to progress concepts and prototypes to test and refine the behavioural hypotheses.
The Learning Behaviours of Open University Students Research revealed possible learning behaviours that underpinned the student responses. In order to validate those findings a survey was designed. This survey consisted of 55 behavioural and attitudinal statements aligned to the learning behaviours, some of which were based upon survey instruments from the literature. Survey statements were written to explore each of these on a five-point scale (‘Very true for me’ to ‘Not at all true for me’) in order to identify the concepts that describe the behaviours and preferences of students through a process of Principle Component Analysis (PCA). In addition, the survey included questions to inform the analysis and explore potential confounding factors: accessing university content, access to the web, and technological self-efficacy. The technological self-efficacy statements were selected from the OU’s Digital Competency Framework for Level 1 students. The survey was peer reviewed and piloted, before being sent to a generalised student population. The overall response rate was 12.7% with 524 valid responses received. Seven clear learning behaviours were identified through PCA, and a cluster analysis of the data was carried out. These behaviours are:
– Goal-setting
– Time
– Focus
– Note making
– Digitally Preferred
– Help seeking
– Elaboration

References

Educause (2017) ‘Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE)’ [Online] Available from https://library.educause.edu/topics/teaching-and-learning/next-generation-digital-learning-environment-ngdle (Accessed 26 March 2018).
Tippett, J (2014) ‘Interim Project Report: Innovative approaches to hands-on learning and skills development for students from a ‘widening participation’ background’ [Online] Available from http://www.ketso.com/examples-case-studies/case-studies/teaching#overview-teaching (Accessed 26 March 2018)