Group-work in the design of complex adaptive learning strategies

Abstract

This paper presents a case study where twelve graduate students undertook the demanding role of the adaptive e-course developer and worked collaboratively on an authentic and complex design task in the context of open and distance tertiary education. The students had to work in groups in order to conceptualise and design a learning scenario for adaptive learning, develop learning materials and adaptive learning strategies, implement the respective adaptive e-course and finally, reflect on their experience. The primary goal of this intervention was to engage the students in the whole lifecycle of a Technology Enhanced Learning design artefact. In teaching highly complex skills for the ill-structured domain of Learning Design the four components instructional model (4C/ID) was exploited. Students were exposed to a wide range of interconnected issues and made design choices. Mixed research methods are used to conclude on the effectiveness of the intervention. Implications of this study include design guidelines towards an environment that implements complex adaptive behaviour in today's learner-generated digital world where Computer Supported Collaborative Learning often converges with Computer Supported Collaborative Design.

Internet Video Calling and Desktop Sharing (vcds) as an Emerging Research Method for Exploring Pedagogical Reasoning in Lesson Planning

“…Internet-mediated research, and the more recent phenomenon of video calling as one example, have been seen incrementally as methodological frontiers for at least a decade ( The rise of consumer internet-calling technologies such as Skype (initially released in 2003) with subsequent video calling capabilities has led to increasing acceptance of internet telephony itself as a data collection tool (Deakin & Wakefield, 2014;Mavroudi & Hadzilacos, 2013;O'Connor & Madge, 2008;Paulus, Lester & Dempster, 2014;Weller, 2015). However, desktop sharing has rarely been mentioned in terms of research methods, even where it has been used for research projects (Paulus et al, 2014).…”