Centre for eLearning
Dr Tony Herrington
Email: A.Herrington@curtin.edu.au
Telephone: 9266 4821
Fax: 9 9266 1734
Office of Teaching and Learning
Centre for eLearning
Flexible Learning Grant: Expression of Interest
Grant request:
Up to and including $10,000.00
Greater than $10,000.00
Date:
7 December 2009
Applicant:
Richard Lowe and Brett Clarke
School:
Education
Email:
r.k.lowe@curtin.edu.au
Telephone:
2186
Project title:
Web 2.0 visualization for improving process-oriented learning
Describe your project in 300 words or less:
This project addresses the challenges of providing off-campus Technology and Enterprise (T&E)
students with adequate insights into the Technology Process as they work from original identification
of a design need to a final development outcome. When teaching process-oriented subjects in a
conventional classroom or laboratory, the lecturer relies extensively on close ongoing observation and
monitoring of students’ activities during hands-on learning experiences. Our goal is to use Web 2.0
visual tools to bring online learning closer to this situation. At the core of T&E is prototyping designs
and testing their performance. For example, a design brief may require students to develop an
insulated storage container that keeps particular items hot for a specified length of time. In the
classroom, students can have direct experience of how the measurements involved in product
performance testing are made, analysed and communicated. With the online environment, the
possibilities are far more limited. We propose extending Blackboard’s facilities by using data logging
devices and sensors to provide online students with data streams from actual performance measures
across time. The generated data will provide the raw material for students to use in developing a range
of visualizations (graphs, diagrams, flow charts, etc.) that both assist their own thinking, and
communicate effectively with others. Novel forms of visually-oriented assessment will also be devised.
These will involve students in producing original media items that help them to actively explore the
knowledge and skills to be covered. In particular, we will emphasize visual thinking as a powerful tool
for understanding and design. For example, instead of merely submitting only conventional (and
limited) written assignments, they will be required to produce visual reflections and commentaries.
Although the end results will be artefacts such as an enhanced podcasts, we see the processes here as
being far more important than the products
Insert the study package number(s) and the number of students normally enrolled in the units
concerned:
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Study Package: 309277 Technology and Enterprise 215 (for OUA and on-campus Primary Teacher
Education Units). Estimated 1000 OUA students (over study periods 2 and 4), plus perhaps another
150 internal students.
Details of milestones and key dates:
The project will run for the remainder of 2009 and throughout 2010.
December 2009: Plans developed for visualizing hands-on activities and making direct graphic
annotation onto students’ draft designs (such as diagrams of proposed systems or visually-based
operating instructions for those systems)
February 2010: Visualization and graphic annotation approaches piloted and refined ready for
implementation (data logging visualization, short video capture, audio editing, enhanced podcast
production, fitting to delivery constraints, online teamwork facilitation, collaborative information
sharing)
April 2010: Materials and approaches implemented with internal students – Data logging of design
testing approaches and collaborative information sharing progressively introduced with face-to-face
classes followed by adaptation for OUA students. First stage of students’ digital narratives developed
and feedback provided via graphic annotation approach.
June 2010: OUA version introduced at start of Study Period 2. Internal students submit final
assignment involving development of enhanced podcast suitable for constraints of iPhone delivery.
Exemplars for supporting OUA students produced from most successful internal assignments. OUA
Study Period 2 students introduced to visualization, data-logging, online teamwork, and collaborative
information sharing approaches.
August 2010: Initial trial with internal students evaluated and revised in response to formative
feedback. Modifications of OUA approach to take account of trial.
October 2010: OUA assignments evaluated for improvements to approach. Modifications in time for
start of Study Period 4 (November 30th) OUA students
December 2010: Staff website established, T & L forum presentation prepared, staff manuals written.
How will the project improve the quality of teaching and learning in your area?
The project will improve the quality of teaching and learning by providing comparable process-oriented
experiences for internal and online Teacher Education students. In 2010, T&E is offered for the first
time as an OUA unit.
Background
When school children have lessons on Technology and Enterprise, they must design, construct and test
a variety of devices (e.g. a rubber band car, a self watering pot from recycled materials, an insulated
container for keeping drinks hot or cold, an animated toy, etc.). The purpose of Curtin’s Technology
and Enterprise 215 unit is to help Teacher Education students learn to teach effectively in the
Technology and Enterprise subject area. It is essential for our Curtin students to work through the
same hands-on Technology and Enterprise activities as the school children they are training to teach
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will be undertaking. Teacher Education students can thus come to appreciate for themselves the
challenges that children can face in carrying out these activities and so design their lessons accordingly.
For this purpose is not good enough for them merely to read about those activities – they must actually
experience them directly. In a face-to-face situation, it is easy for lecturers to give this direct
experience by providing the necessary materials, guiding the students through the procedures
involved, and giving immediate feedback as required. However, this is clearly not the case in an online
situation. In line with Curtin’s Flexible Learning Policy, the goal of the proposed project is to provide
online students with learning opportunities that are comparable to those available for face-to-face
students.
Visualising hands-on activities (see Example 1, attached)
In a face-to-face learning situation, our Teacher Education students can see and experience the types
of hands-on activities their school pupils would undertake. The highly visual aspects of these activities
are absolutely fundamental to the required learning outcomes. They involve tasks such as interpreting
existing pictures and plans, visually analysing the structure of devices, manipulating the components
these devices are made from, preparing diagrams and graphic instructions for building devices, and
mapping out manufacturing processes. Students in an online learning environment would be severely
disadvantaged if the presentation of their learning materials was largely text-based. Without the rich
visual information that is available in a face-to-face setting, they would be required to undertake the
hands-on activities in a very impoverished information environment. Our intention is to address this
potential inequity by preparing a range of graphic materials (photographs, diagrams, sequential
illustrations, videos, animations, etc.) that capture and present the highly varied visual experiences
that these students would normally miss. These graphic materials will not only provide visual
instructions for the hands-on activities they must undertake in their own settings but will also provide
real-time visual displays of information about activities being carried out at Curtin and the results. As
well as offering online students experiences that are much more comparable to those available for
face-to-face students, this real-time dimension will create an invaluable sense of immediacy and
personal involvement (something that is sadly lacking in many online learning situations).
Visually-oriented assessment (see Example 2, attached)
Because various types of visual information are crucial aspects of the Technology and Enterprise unit, it
is vital that the assessment approaches we use are consistent with this emphasis. The deeply
entrenched historical assessment approaches that dominate university education are almost
completely text-based. In the case of an innovative unit such as Technology and Enterprise which is rich
with visual forms of information, sole reliance on such approaches would result in a serious mismatch
between the nature of the subject matter and the form of assessment used. This conflict would clearly
disadvantage students, particularly those who lack the type of background traditionally associated with
university study. Our intention is therefore to use types of assessment that are consistent with the
nature of the to-be-learned subject matter. We will therefore use a mixture of traditional text-based
assessments and specially designed visually-oriented assessments. These will require students to
design, produce, modify, and manipulate various types of visual information. This can be thought of as
in terms of the wider goal of matching assessments with learning outcomes.
Visual reflection
In other Teacher Education units, our students are required to generate reflections on their own
learning. The conventional way of recording and analysing these experiences is via written reflections
in a learning journal or diary. This approach is used intensively in units that deal with the English and
Mathematics learning areas. However, words alone are poorly suited to capturing reflections about
learning experiences where the subject matter is highly visual in character. As noted earlier, this is a
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defining feature of Technology and Enterprise. There are compelling precedents for the power visual
reflection – Leonardo da Vinci who is acknowledged as one of the greatest thinkers the world has ever
known used drawings extensively as a means of reflecting on the world, how it works, and his
experiences in designing devices to meet human needs and wants. This latter focus is central to the
Technology and Enterprise. We therefore propose that this unit will require students to generate visual
reflections that capture the development in their thinking about Technology and Enterprise issues.
These reflections will take the form of the various types of visual information discussed above. The
online materials for this unit will model how this visual reflection can be carried out and demonstrate
its enormous value to learners.
Graphic annotation (see Example 3, attached)
When students submit exercises, reflections, or assessments in the traditional form of written text,
lecturers typically provide feedback and guidance via the written (or spoken) word. However, words
are ill-suited for providing these types of support when the submission is presented as visual
information (static or dynamic graphics of various types). In a face-to-face situation, the lecturer could
quickly point to relevant parts of a depiction or doodle on the graphic material to show how it could be
altered and improved. This allows the student to receive prompt feedback and takes minimum time for
the lecturer to implement. However, this informal approach does not translate well to an online
context due to the constraints of time and space. Our intention is therefore to develop techniques by
which graphic materials produced by students (construction plans, instructional diagrams, visual
explanations, etc.) can be directly and promptly responded to using graphic annotations without being
limited by these constraints. For example, a student may submit a pdf of a depiction they have created
that the lecturer on which the lecturer can quickly draw, scribble, write, and otherwise annotate in a
manner that is as natural and immediate as it would be if doing this on paper. Conventional
approaches to giving students feedback are cumbersome and ineffective for this purpose. For this
reason, we propose developing an innovative graphic approach to providing annotations that is ‘fit for
purpose’. It will use the flexibility of a graphics tablet interface to give the lecture the freedom that is
required to respond to online students’ work in the most appropriate and timely way possible.
Turnaround in providing formative feedback and guidance will be fast, efficient, and effective so that
online students will remain engaged and on task. This approach will also result in considerable time
savings for lecturing staff working in the online context.
Overview
Our plan is to use the unique affordances offered by visually-oriented aspects of Web 2.0 technologies
to address the challenges students face due to their lack of experience and confidence in the nontraditional T & E area. This subject differs from the majority of units offered online in that as well as
covering very distinctive content, it has a heavy process emphasis. It requires students to engage in
creative problem solving activities as they draft and refine their ideas. The strategy for tackling both of
these aspects will involve the core theme of Information that is woven throughout the T&E syllabus.
This theme is a powerful vehicle for providing our remote students with authentic experiences of
design process aspects of T&E. Because these processes rely heavily on visual information, our
emphasis will be on using the exciting range of possibilities Web 2.0 technologies offer for a highly
visual, involving, and student-centred treatment. This will also allow us to devise a smooth blending
across face-to-face and online environments. Given that T & E is taken by both internal and OUA
students, our proposal will have an impact on a significant number of students. Although T & E is not
taken by 'first year students', innovative use of flexible teaching/learning methodologies will still have a
strong positive influence on overall retention. For example, our Head of Department has noted that
attrition is a real problem with OUA students at about the time they are due to take T & E. It is
therefore vital that we do everything we can at that crucial stage to make sure they are retained. I am
sure that the proposals we have for T & E will make a significant contribution to persuading our
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wavering OUA students to 'hang in there'! OUA classes are up to 75 students each - our goal is to
improve the quality of teaching with such large numbers by increasing the level of involvement,
activity, and support. In addition, the nature of the T & E unit provides some interesting opportunities
for showcasing a whole range of possibilities regarding what can be done in the way of ICT-supported
flexible learning. These possibilities would be relevant to many teaching areas at Curtin and therefore
generalizable across the University.
Relationship to podcasts
The use of enhanced podcasts as a means of visualizing hands-on activities will be modelled as part of
the learning materials provided by the lecturer. However, students will not be mere recipients of this
form of information One of the core assessments in this unit will be student creation of an enhanced
podcast. Given the nature of the unit as described above, students will be required to use a variety of
information visualizations in this assignment (i.e., it will be a visually-oriented assessment). For
example, the podcast could be a set of instructions that use static graphics (photos, diagrams, etc.) and
dynamic graphics (videos, animations, etc.) as well as verbal material (spoken, written) to explain how
to assemble a device the student has designed. As an illustration, consider the case of a flat-pack
rubber band car kit that students would be required to develop during this Technology and Enterprise
unit. The kit itself needs a sheet of assembly instructions to be included with the posted materials.
However, as shown by the burgeoning use of YouTube and similar video sharing sites, people also now
look for physical demonstrations of how such assembly tasks are actually carried out in practice.
Today’s students are more attuned to visual and audio presentations than they are to conventional
sets of printed instructions. Enhanced podcasts provide a more flexible and appropriate means for
students to demonstrate their grasp of Technology and Enterprise content and processes than
traditional written assignments. Feedback on these assignments will include graphic annotations of the
type described above.
Digital Narratives
The term ‘narrative’ is somewhat misleading in the context of Technology and Enterprise because the
unit is more about exposition and explanation than about story-telling in the generally accepted sense.
Perhaps the term Digital Exposition would be more appropriate here. Nevertheless, the intention is for
students in this unit to use digital media technologies to express their ideas (even if these are not
strictly in the form of a conventional narrative). Digital forms of visual information are a more effective
and efficient way of presenting they types of material that is covered in Technology and Enterprise.
Our intention is to provide more flexible and powerful opportunities for students to present their
thinking and achievements that go beyond the constraints of traditional text-based expositions. This
will enable them to produce visual reflections that capture the development of their ideas in taskappropriate ways. The ease of editing the various digital components that will comprise a digital
narrative gives students much greater scope for demonstrating their understandings and learning.
With text, students refine their ideas by putting down their thoughts, selecting the most compelling
aspects of that thinking, manipulating the material to frame coherent arguments, structuring those
arguments so that they crisply present the information, then crafting the presentation so that it is
appropriate for the target audience. A similar set of processes can be used with the construction of
digital narratives but with a much wider range of possibilities for thinking and communication.
Web 2.0 tools
We propose incorporating a range of Web 2.0 tools in this unit. The Blackboard Campus Fusion pack
with its Blog, Wiki and Podcast system will be used for setting up the cooperative design and
development project teams that are a fundamental part of the Technology and Enterprise unit. In the
standard classroom environment, these teams collaborate in a face-to-face setting. For the online
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students, we will enable the team approach through the Campus Fusion pack facilities. In line with the
overarching intent of our proposal, this will particularly involve student sharing of information and
experiences using visually-oriented aspects of these tools. The Technology Process cycle that is at the
core of Technology and Enterprise assumes a high level of collaboration between team members and
requires rich communicative possibilities. For this reason, we will also incorporate the use of facilities
such as YouTube and EDNA networks. The doodle facility of VoiceThread and its support of a range of
comment types make it an ideal tool for the subtle and recursive types of interchange that are required
when working on the Technology Process. We would also like to use Illuminate to enable larger
meeting formats that link online students with those in face-to-face classes. This would be an excellent
way to receive brief updates across the various development teams. In addition, sites such as
Teamwork PM would be useful for individual teams to manage their joint projects.
Data logging
The data logging tools will be used to provide online students with real-time information about what is
happening during the testing of designs developed in Technology and Enterprise activities. For
example, a video stream showing the dropping water level in the reservoir of a self-watering pot
prototype would be available to online students as a 24/7 ‘on- demand’ facility. This video information
would be supplemented with data from electronic sensors that measure both environmental
conditions and the behaviour of the system being tested. Updating recording graphs of ambient
temperature, humidity, and percentage of soil moisture would allow students to log in whenever they
wishes to follow how the environmental conditions were affecting the performance of the selfwatering pot. If students were up late at night, they may wish to check out how the water level
changes after dark compared with that during the daytime and relate that to the temperature. If there
was a particularly hot day, students may be interested to see how well the pot coped under those
conditions. Students would use these data visualizations as part of their evaluation of designs, a key
aspect of the technology process. Our goal is to provide online students with richer and more
authentic learning opportunities by connecting them to real data ‘as it happens’ – a much more
involving and experiential approach than would otherwise be available to them. As well as being a
highly involving and engaging addition to the learning materials provided, this approach is designed to
help students synthesise multiple types and sources of data (especially in visual form) in order to better
understand the relevant relationships. It should be noted that primary schools are already making
increasing use of simple data logging equipment such as the Easysense Q5+ device in a range of science
activities. The use of this facility in Technology and Enterprise is a logical extension of this approach.
Our use of this remote data feed will model for students how a similar approach could be used for
sharing data between schools so that different sites could compare their technological designs.
How will you share the outcomes of your project/learning with other members of staff?
The outcomes will be shared with other members of Education staff by (a) the establishment of a
dedicated Curtin-wide website on visual approaches to learning and assessment (b) T & L forum
presentations (c) in-house professional development within the School of Education and beyond (d)
procedural manuals produced for delivery of visualizations from hands-on activities and graphic
annotation techniques.
The current project is set in the context of the School of Education and training of teachers. However,
we strongly believe that the visual approaches to online learning that we are pioneering have much
wider ramifications across Curtin. There are many disciplines taught at our university that increasingly
rely on visualizations as one of their primary forms of professional information. These include
Engineering, Health Sciences, Business, Resources, Chemistry and Spatial Sciences. Many of these
disciplines face similar challenges in finding effective ways to teach their students the visualization
skills that are today so central to their professional competence. We consider that the outcomes of this
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project would provide a concrete example of how these challenges can be tackled in other disciplines.
How will this project influence the learning delivery strategy for the remainder of the course?
This project will influence the learning delivery strategy of the remainder of the course by
demonstrating practical ways in which Web 2.0 technologies can improve the student experience in
process-oriented units. In the Primary Teacher Education Course, units such as those for the
Mathematics and Science learning areas are structured around hands-on activities. In face-to-face
classroom settings, these units rely heavily on concrete materials and physical investigations. However,
it is challenging to provide online students with these approaches. Our visualization strategies offer a
cost-effective and educationally sound alternative by which online students can have an experience
that is comparable with that available in face-to-face settings.
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