Research Reviews

There is considerable debate and discussion on the topic of personalised learning that advocates suggest has been enabled by the use of digital technologies. Some years ago, the UK Department of Education adopted a policy of personalised education. The five key components for personalised learning outlined by the department were: assessment for learning; effective teaching and learning; curriculum entitlement and choice; school organisation, and beyond the school. However, the benefits and processes of personalised learning have remained controversial and elusive for many.

This week’s research highlight is once again focussed on learning using smart mobile devices (see Mobile phones and improved educational outcomes, July 22, 2010). In fact the latest Horizon Report 2010 argues that the time to adoption of mobile computing in practice is one year or less, so discussion and research about the use of mobile devices is relevant and timely. The paper Smartphones give you wings: Pedagogical affordances of mobile 2.0 by Thomas Cochrane and Roger Bateman is undoubtedly one of the best papers DERN has read on research into the use of mobile technologies and the World Wide Web. Smartphones was published earlier in 2010 in the excellent and premier online journal Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET).

This week DERN (http://www.dern.org) follows a new topic in the research quest for understanding the use of digital technologies in teaching and learning. Collaboration has seen considerable press in relation to the use of ICT. However, very few research works define what they mean by collaboration, especially in education, unlike similar research in business, health and the arts. The recently released 2010 report The Metlife Survey of The American Teacher: Collaborating for Student Success (http://www.metlife.com/about/corporate-profile/citizenship/metlife-foundation/metlife-survey-of-the-american-teacher.html?WT.mc_id=vu1101) does explain its meaning of collaboration to begin. It states, “In general, it [collaboration] entails a shared purpose, commitment to a continuing relationship, and bringing together people of different experiences and perspectives to gain results greater than could have been accomplished individually” (p. 10). Based on this general meaning, Collaborating for Success (http://www.metlife.com/assets/cao/contributions/foundation/american-teacher/MetLife_Teacher_Survey_2009.pdf) reports on the views of Principals, teachers and students about collaboration.

In education, the use of elearning in each of the different sectors (schools, training and higher education) can be substantially different. The recently released annual survey of elearning take up, use and impact in the Australian training sector, entitled 2009 E-learning Benchmarking Survey highlighted those differences.

There would appear to be two trends in the use of ICT which are becoming more common in education. The use of mobile learning (mLearning) and augmented reality, especially for post-compulsory learners, are increasing. This week’s DERN research-post highlights a very interesting research study Using mobile phones to improve educational outcomes: An analysis of outcomes from Asia. The work comes from the influential and scholarly online journal The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) edited by Terry Anderson at Athabasca University in Canada. IRRODL is essential reading for serious education and technology scholars.

Interesting new research released by Walden University and undertaken by Grunwald Associates focusses on the drive towards teaching 21st century skills and tackles five myths about the use of technology in education. Research into the use technology by teachers is not prolific and so this report entitled Educators, Technology and 21st Century Skills: Dispelling Five Myths - A Study on the Connection Between K–12 Technology Use and 21st Century Skills is a welcome addition to the literature.

There have been many studies of the impact of ICT on learning performance from such leading international groups as BECTa, the US Department of Education, European Schoolnet , the European Commission and the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) at the OECD. No doubt there will be many more studies in the coming years. However, to date many of these studies about the impact on learning of the use of digital technologies have been general studies rather than specific to disciplines such as language, mathematics, science and so on. Perhaps the lack of specific studies has been because of the difficulty of developing a conceptual framework for assessing the effects of ICT in education. A publication recently released by the European Union and OECD begins to address these difficult questions. The book, freely available from the OECD Bookshop, Assessing the effects of ICT in education: Indicators, criteria and benchmarks for international comparisonsedited by Freidrich Scheuermann and Frances Pedró (2009) begins to address some of those difficult questions.

The arguments about open scholarship have been aired for over a decade. Such eminent and respected proponents as Stephen Downes at the National Research Council in Canada and David Wiley at Brigham Young University have long espoused the benefits of openness for education and research. A concise introduction to open access written by Keith Jeffrey can be seen on ERCIM News 64. The research that is highlighted this week comes from the economics field, outside of education. However, its findings on the economic benefits of open publishing, especially for research and scholarship, certainly have implications for education, training, research and knowledge building.

A word that has crept into the language is 'produsage' which Dr Axel Brun (2008) defined as 'the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement' (p. 16) in his book Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (Digital Formations). Produsage comes from a combination of two words 'production' and 'usage' and has come about because of the changes that interactive web networking (often mistakenly called Web 2.0) has enabled. However, coming to grips with how interactive web networking including produsage can be used in education can be difficult.