Weeks 13 & 14 – A1a: The learner experience

LEX project

This project focuses on both formal and informal learning.

The study focused on three main issues:

1. characteristics of effective elearners
2. beliefs and intentions
3. strategies for effective elearning.

“The findings demonstrate that technologies are now core to students’ learning.”

“Students made extensive use of personally owned technologies including mobile phones, laptop computers, personal digital assistants and memory sticks. They personalise and appropriate the technologies to their own preferred ways of working and communicating – mixing standard office tools, institutional technologies and freely available web-based services”

LPX project

The LXP study found that the Web is unequivocally the first port of call for students;

1. sophisticated ways in which they are finding and synthesising information and integrating across multiple sources of data.
2. technologies are used to communicate with peers and tutors, through the use of a variety of tools.

Findings point to a profound shift in the way in which students are working and suggest a rich and complex interrelationship between the individuals and the tools.

he LXP project identified eight factors (Figure 1) in terms of the changing nature of the way in which students are working.

1. Pervasive and integrated
2. Personalised
3. Social
4. Interactive
5. Changing skills set
6. Transferability
7. Time
8. Changing working patterns

“They didn’t see the technology as anything special, but as just another tool to support their learning”

A1a: A vision of students today

One of the most interesting message brought forward by this video is; “I will read 8 books this year…2300 web pages and 1281 facebook profiles”. This message highlights the preferences of students in every day life. But at the same time, attaching this to last week, will students still perceive learning valid if it is done through popular media like web pages or facebook?

1. Is the message being presented in this visual way any different from the primarily text-based presentation of findings used so far this week?

Quiet similar message as each shows that technology can be used as a tool in learning. Technology will be used only if the students finds it feasible.

2. How important is the medium and the technologies themselves in terms of conveying messages about this research area?

3. What are the implications for your own practice?

Amount of time allocated to different daily activities and the ‘need’ of multitasking even during a lecture shows that learning design needs to be conscious of what preferences students have. At the same time such preferences should not emarginalise the minority which might be finding difficulty with this type of innovations.

Shifting from the use of books to the use of other more ‘student user friendly’ media. Informally I have seen this shift where in the start of my career, I tried to upload notes online but the majority of students found different problems in downloding them. This year I have tried this again and to my astonishment (and ) an overwhelming majority are finding this system easy to use.