BERA 2016
Research, research, research! If there's one thing I've enjoyed most about BERA 2016 it's been the clear focus on serious and rigorous research, right across the educational spectrum. This year was my first BERA, and I'll be prioritising it from here on as one to attend.
The format was especially new to me. Less plenaries and many streams meant a lot of travel across the Leeds University campus. The breadth of options gave new meaning to the term 'multiple choice'! Sessions were generally excellent and thought-provoking. Sadly, I am unable to link to the abstracts of the sessions identified below. I do find it surprising that abstracts are not made publicly available! I'll limit myself to those presentations that I personally found noteworthy.
The first presentation I attended was Kate Litherland's Sustainability in technologies for higher education - a review of the literature. Kate's presentation was a highlight for me, as it drew attention to the serious issue of sustainability's lack of attention in the field. From her sample of 9,000 articles in education technology over 2012-2013 revealed only 3.5% of them took sustainability of initiative seriously. The field, Kate suggested, is being limited by the predominant methodology of, in particular, action research. One note I took down during the presentation was "TEL
as a field risks being out of step with the HE agenda". The call, echoed across several conversations I had at the event, is for more critical, transferable and grand-scale research. I'm looking forward to the publication that will likely follow!
Other presentations were inspirational because of their cleverness and application. Jamie Harle's "Evaluating attitudes to an e-Learning radiation physics resource between UK campus students and African online students learning through a not-for-profit training portal" and Gail Casey's "Learning through creativity and experimentation using mobile devices and student led activities: A framework for active learning" were two such sessions. Both demonstrated how re-using reference materials (an application to teach concepts of radiation, and a series of step-by-step videos respectively) can be successfully applied to boost student learning.
It's always rewarding to come away from a conference with a concept that's new to you. I confess that up until BERA 2016 I had not encountered educational design research as a methodology. A number of presentations mentioned it, and the winner of the BJET Best Educational Technology Paper Award (see later) is an excellent example of it. A book by McKenney & Reeves provides a comprehensive overview (another, Educational Design Research edited by Akker et al, seems to be also freely available as a PDF). A more recent EDUCAUSE overview, "7 Things You Should Know About Educational Design Research", is also available in PDF.
Work by Laura Delgaty was also particularly interesting. Her presentation "Digital capabilities and expectations of prospective students: preparing higher education for learning and teaching of the future" investigated the perspective of young people five years ahead of university enrolment, looking for demographic determinants. She found that relatively well-off children had higher expectations and more independence when it came to technology use and choice; she also found that those students less well-off prefer closed, rather than open, learning spaces.
One of the presentations in a parallel session surprised me in that it cited Prensky's Digital Natives as a framework describing the new generation of learners. The concept of digital natives is contentious, and actual evidence for the distinction and its homogeneity is questionable [1], [2]. Still, the remainder of what is happening at the University of Worcester evidenced across their "Developing innovative TEL practice in teacher education" stream was highly commendable. I found Kerry Whitehouse's, Jane Sisk's and (virtually) David Hunt's presentations particularly intriguing.
After lunch the BERA Educational Technologies SIG (Special Interest Group) met. It's likely a Spring gathering will take place at The Open University in Milton Keynes.
The final session I attended on day two was Morag Redford's and Helen Coker's "Student Teacher E-portfolios: The emergence of student agency through structured dialogue and critical engagement". The presentation evidenced a very effective implementation of Mahara, based on a clear sense of purpose drawn from literature; the deliberate implementation in itself made this an interesting session. Morag and Helen's study gives rise to a number of useful questions that will hopefully help ePortfolio literature further advance.
Louis's joint project (University of Cambridge and University of Oslo) is applying education design research in the development of TalkWall, a free collaborative application combining the best of Padlet and, say, Twitter with a teacher-facilitated discussion. Called DiDiAC, the project will be of interest to all involved in education - from Primary to Higher Education. Appropriately, the project began with the question of how technology might support engagement, inter-thinking, and the co-construction of knowledge. The project begins formal data gathering next year, and won the award on the basis of the research base already applied to the project in setting its trajectory.
Two other presentations I attended on this final day deserve special mention. The first, Zayd and Faiq Waghid's "Examining digital technology for (higher) education through action research and critical discourse analysis", demonstrated the use of Facebook as a collaborative VLE-replacement. Facebook was chosen as the student-preferred, most accessible solution; the presentation outlined how each subsequent use of Facebook benefited from the insights of previous discourse. It seems unrestricted openness of interaction worked best under the circumstances. The second was Samar Alharbi and her presentation "Immediacy behaviours in an e-learning environment: Reflecting on students' and tutors' experiences in a Saudi Arabian university". Samar's research explores university tutors’ experiences and perceptions about immediacy behaviours in e-learning environment with Saudi female learners, providing a fascinating insight into how gender norms do indeed flow into online discourse.
The final plenary of the event featured a keynote by Siân Bayne called "Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching", featuring the exploits of a Twitterbot developed for a Coursera MOOC called "E-learning and Digital Cultures". The general context can be found online [1], [2], and a research article. Essentially the keynote demonstrated the potential for automation for routine tasks and reinforced Arthur C Clarke's view (cited) that "Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!". It was an engaging, amusing and thought-provoking session.
BERA 2016 was my first BERA, and I'm hoping it won't be the last. I left with new contacts, a richer perspective, and a new inspiration to keep up my own research activities. Surely that's what every academic conference aims to achieve!
The format was especially new to me. Less plenaries and many streams meant a lot of travel across the Leeds University campus. The breadth of options gave new meaning to the term 'multiple choice'! Sessions were generally excellent and thought-provoking. Sadly, I am unable to link to the abstracts of the sessions identified below. I do find it surprising that abstracts are not made publicly available! I'll limit myself to those presentations that I personally found noteworthy.
Day One
The first presentation I attended was Kate Litherland's Sustainability in technologies for higher education - a review of the literature. Kate's presentation was a highlight for me, as it drew attention to the serious issue of sustainability's lack of attention in the field. From her sample of 9,000 articles in education technology over 2012-2013 revealed only 3.5% of them took sustainability of initiative seriously. The field, Kate suggested, is being limited by the predominant methodology of, in particular, action research. One note I took down during the presentation was "TEL
as a field risks being out of step with the HE agenda". The call, echoed across several conversations I had at the event, is for more critical, transferable and grand-scale research. I'm looking forward to the publication that will likely follow!Other presentations were inspirational because of their cleverness and application. Jamie Harle's "Evaluating attitudes to an e-Learning radiation physics resource between UK campus students and African online students learning through a not-for-profit training portal" and Gail Casey's "Learning through creativity and experimentation using mobile devices and student led activities: A framework for active learning" were two such sessions. Both demonstrated how re-using reference materials (an application to teach concepts of radiation, and a series of step-by-step videos respectively) can be successfully applied to boost student learning.
It's always rewarding to come away from a conference with a concept that's new to you. I confess that up until BERA 2016 I had not encountered educational design research as a methodology. A number of presentations mentioned it, and the winner of the BJET Best Educational Technology Paper Award (see later) is an excellent example of it. A book by McKenney & Reeves provides a comprehensive overview (another, Educational Design Research edited by Akker et al, seems to be also freely available as a PDF). A more recent EDUCAUSE overview, "7 Things You Should Know About Educational Design Research", is also available in PDF.
Work by Laura Delgaty was also particularly interesting. Her presentation "Digital capabilities and expectations of prospective students: preparing higher education for learning and teaching of the future" investigated the perspective of young people five years ahead of university enrolment, looking for demographic determinants. She found that relatively well-off children had higher expectations and more independence when it came to technology use and choice; she also found that those students less well-off prefer closed, rather than open, learning spaces.
Day Two
I have had a long-standing, yet seldom explored, interest in educational philosophy and theory. The first parallel session I attended on day two was on the theme, "Education, social theory and social justice: the challenge of theorising alternative futures". It seems the work of Allen, Dewey, Dorling, Fielding & Moss, Lippmann, Rancière, Rosanvallon, Spinoza and (naturally) Žižek - a mix of classic and contemporary voices, educational, philosophical and political - combine to provide a rich framework for critique. There was a rich seam of thought and perspective provided by the four presentations across the parallel session. One of the things I find most difficult about the various responsibilities and interests I have is that there is seldom the opportunity to explore such things in depth. I am grateful for those scholars who take the time to present their perspectives so cogently.One of the presentations in a parallel session surprised me in that it cited Prensky's Digital Natives as a framework describing the new generation of learners. The concept of digital natives is contentious, and actual evidence for the distinction and its homogeneity is questionable [1], [2]. Still, the remainder of what is happening at the University of Worcester evidenced across their "Developing innovative TEL practice in teacher education" stream was highly commendable. I found Kerry Whitehouse's, Jane Sisk's and (virtually) David Hunt's presentations particularly intriguing.
After lunch the BERA Educational Technologies SIG (Special Interest Group) met. It's likely a Spring gathering will take place at The Open University in Milton Keynes.
The final session I attended on day two was Morag Redford's and Helen Coker's "Student Teacher E-portfolios: The emergence of student agency through structured dialogue and critical engagement". The presentation evidenced a very effective implementation of Mahara, based on a clear sense of purpose drawn from literature; the deliberate implementation in itself made this an interesting session. Morag and Helen's study gives rise to a number of useful questions that will hopefully help ePortfolio literature further advance.
Day Three
There were various items of interest on this, the last day of the conference. I was very impressed with Louis Major's "Digitalised dialogues across the curriculum (DiDiAC): introducing TalkWall", which won him the BJET award mentioned earlier.
Louis's joint project (University of Cambridge and University of Oslo) is applying education design research in the development of TalkWall, a free collaborative application combining the best of Padlet and, say, Twitter with a teacher-facilitated discussion. Called DiDiAC, the project will be of interest to all involved in education - from Primary to Higher Education. Appropriately, the project began with the question of how technology might support engagement, inter-thinking, and the co-construction of knowledge. The project begins formal data gathering next year, and won the award on the basis of the research base already applied to the project in setting its trajectory.
Two other presentations I attended on this final day deserve special mention. The first, Zayd and Faiq Waghid's "Examining digital technology for (higher) education through action research and critical discourse analysis", demonstrated the use of Facebook as a collaborative VLE-replacement. Facebook was chosen as the student-preferred, most accessible solution; the presentation outlined how each subsequent use of Facebook benefited from the insights of previous discourse. It seems unrestricted openness of interaction worked best under the circumstances. The second was Samar Alharbi and her presentation "Immediacy behaviours in an e-learning environment: Reflecting on students' and tutors' experiences in a Saudi Arabian university". Samar's research explores university tutors’ experiences and perceptions about immediacy behaviours in e-learning environment with Saudi female learners, providing a fascinating insight into how gender norms do indeed flow into online discourse.
The final plenary of the event featured a keynote by Siân Bayne called "Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching", featuring the exploits of a Twitterbot developed for a Coursera MOOC called "E-learning and Digital Cultures". The general context can be found online [1], [2], and a research article. Essentially the keynote demonstrated the potential for automation for routine tasks and reinforced Arthur C Clarke's view (cited) that "Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!". It was an engaging, amusing and thought-provoking session.
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