Thursday 4th June 2009, Edge Hill University, UK
Keynote Speakers
Dr Rhona Sharpe - Staff and Educational Development Consultant, Oxford Brookes University. More info >>>
Watch Rhona Sharp's keynote speech here >>>
The impact of learner experience research
This presentation explores the relationships between innovation, research and development within the context of research into learners’ experiences of e-learning. This field of research is a good example of the SOLSTICE approach that research should inform educational change and vice versa. Institutions have undertaken significant investment in resourcing and promoting technology enhanced learning and learners’ experiences should be a measure of their success – what has been the impact of this investment which is experienced by learners?
Learner experience research has developed rapidly in the last few years. For example, the JISC has supported a programme of carefully designed studies in post-compulsory education that have collected in depth, rich descriptions of learners’ beliefs and expectations of technology. Many of the Higher Education Academy Pathfinder studies promoted institutional research including large scale surveys. We have been developed new ways of eliciting, capturing and analysing learners experiences and have confidence in our developing methodologies. We are at the early stages of developing conceptual accounts to help us make sense of our findings. There is a large and growing community of researchers at ELESIG who are investigating and evaluating learners’ experiences. Moreover, there has been much high profile dissemination, using what we know about what practitioners want and need to change practice. This research is timely, relevant, rigorous and carefully disseminated to have impact.
This keynote will assess what has been the impact of learner experience research in the UK to date, what more could be done in light of the research findings and what we can learn from this experience about the tensions between research, innovation and development.
Tara Brabazon - Professor of Media Studies, University of Brighton. More info >>>
Watch Tara Brabazon's keynote speech here >>>
We’ve spent too much money to go back now: Credit crunched literacy and a future for learning
This is a presentation of activism and intervention. Tara will offer new models and modes of teaching and learning by aligning information literacy, media literacy theories and multiliteracy approaches. There is a priority on learning outcomes rather than technological choices, and social justice rather than transferable skills.
The aim is to show, through examples and applications in university assessment, how students can move from everyday competencies and skill development and into disciplinary and trans-disciplinary scholarship. With public funding under threat, the time for ‘easy’ technological solutions to complicated problems in widening participation agendas requires renewed commitment to literacy, professional development and academic expertise.