Open Access Journals at Aalborg University
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Towards automated assessment of participation and value creation in networked learning
Get PDFThis paper investigates the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to improve student engagement and learning outcomes. MOOCs have transformed the landscape of online education, offering wide accessibility but at the price of high dropout rates and limited ability to measure student engagement. With MOOCs' expansive user base, it has been difficult until now to move beyond conventional metrics of course completion and quiz scores, which are insufficient for understanding the multifaceted nature of student engagement. The study addresses these challenges through a novel method of applying a large language model (LLM) to develop a more complex and meaningful understanding of student engagement and experiences in MOOCs.The research is grounded in the networked learning (NL) research tradition by using the Community of Inquiry framework to explore social, cognitive, and teaching presence in online educational environments and automate the assessment of student learning participation. The study focuses on social engagement and interaction, crucial for perceived value creation. Theoretical soundness, data targeting and quality, interpretation benchmarks, and robust data sampling and analysis strategies constitute the foundational pillars of the proposed predictive system. This framework guides the study's approach to address common MOOC issues, such as learner isolation and limited interaction, which are critical factors in students' perceived value and learning.The methodology involves a dual approach of human and LLM coding, testing the ability of LLMs to replicate human coding accuracy. The study was conducted in a non-massive open online course to test system effectiveness before applying it to larger MOOCs. Analysis indicates that an initial noncomplex LLM model can match human coding performance to 60% reliability, representing a significant step forward in automating qualitative analysis in online education, with potential for enhanced results using more complex LLM modelling. Key findings show that AI can effectively measure and enhance student engagement in MOOCs. The use of LLMs in coding qualitative data offers a reliable method for understanding student participation, which is vital for improving educational outcomes in online courses. The research highlights the potential of AI in transforming online education by providing deeper insights into student engagement and learning processes.The study also provides insights into the interplay of AI-measured engagement and learners' value perception, advancing the understanding of networked learning participation and its impact on educational outcomes. Implications extend to curriculum development, pedagogical strategies, and the broader field of online education. Future work includes expanding this methodology to more extensive MOOC environments and incorporating qualitative interviews to enrich the analysis
Exploring Digital Lifeworlds: Doing Postphenomenology in Networked Learning Research
Get PDFNetworked Learning (NL), originally presented by Goodyear et al. (2004), has recently been reimagined to embrace a richer, more context-sensitive understanding that incorporates the entangled, emergent and “messy” nature of learning (NLEC, Gourlay, Rodríguez-Illera, et al., 2021). Postphenomenology was cited as one of the multiple methodological frameworks relevant to this redefinition. Matthews (in NLEC, Gourlay, Rodríguez-Illera, et al., 2021) recommends postphenomenology for its focus on human-nonhuman mediation and questions of agency in sociotechnical networks. Similarly, Thestrup & Gislev (in NLEC, Gourlay, Rodríguez-Illera, et al., 2021) draw on postphenomenology to reconceive the learning network as a media ecology where “technology, not being neutral, but multistable (Ihde 1990), mediates the perceptions and actions of the participants (Verbeek 2005), and by that co-shapes the space, the connections, and the network” (p. 346). But what is postphenomenology? This workshop will introduce participants to postphenomenology as a philosophy of technology, a theoretical framework, and a pragmatic approach to doing NL research.
Postphenomenology emerged from philosopher Don Ihde’s (1975, 1979) early phenomenological investigations of specific technologies being used in everyday life: chalk, eyeglasses, telephones, etc. His inquiries led to several key discoveries including the occurrence of distinct forms of human-technology-world relations (embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity and background) which can be further characterized by their amplification-reduction structure. Today, Ihde’s approach to studying technologies “phenomenologically, i.e., as belonging in different ways to our experience and use” (1993, p. 34) is known as postphenomenology and has evolved into an increasingly popular posthuman form of qualitative inquiry in education and the social sciences (Aagaard, 2016). As a theoretical framework, postphenomenology views technology not as a neutral tool but as an active mediator in shaping and co-constituting human actions, perceptions, and interpretations including interactions with others and their world (Ihde, 1990; Verbeek, 2005). Peter-Paul Verbeek (2005) expanded postphenomenology to include key insights from Actor-Network Theory, drawing especially on the work of Bruno Latour (1992, 2002), and thereby broadening its theoretical reach to include the morality of hybrid beings and the ethical design of things.
As an approach to research, postphenomenology allows for in-depth explorations of how digital technologies mediate educational experiences (Aagaard, 2017; Adams & Turville, 2018). It is especially well-suited to studying how technologies shape ethical actions and decisions (Verbeek, 2011, 2023). Through “investigating how technologies help to shape human practices, perceptions, and interpretative frameworks, [postphenomenology] makes visible a moral dimension of technology itself” (Verbeek, 2023, p. 49). Postphenomenology employs a variety of phenomenological and empirically grounded methods to capture the everyday, lived experiences of different technologies including disciplined observation of humans employing specific technologies (Aagaard & Matthiesen, 2016), “interviewing objects” (Adams & Thompson, 2016) and “thing writing” (Adams & Yin, 2017). Here, doing postphenomenology demands an out-of-the-corner-of-one’s-eye attentiveness to everyday life, “an ear for meaning and an eye for materiality” (Aagaard & Matthiesen, 2016, p. 41, emphasis in original). Postphenomenological analysis often begins by first reconstructing “posthuman anecdotes”, that is, descriptions of human-technology-world interactions as they are lived, then subjecting these “reassembled resemblings” (Adams & Thompson, 2016, p. 31) to a set of postphenomenological analytic tools to help untangle how humans and different technologies in use are mutually shaping and co-constituting each other. Analytics include studying breakdowns (e.g., the “broken hammer” strategy), attending to the invitational quality of things, and discerning the spectrum of human-technology-world (HTW) relations (Adams & Turville, 2018; Adams & Thompson, 2016).
Student regulation in online learning groups
Get PDFAlthough much research has been done on student regulation in F2F settings, more needs to be known about the concept in online learning groups. During the NLC 2024 round table, we will share findings from an exploratory study to establish the status quo in this area, and discuss the optimal conditions for students’ regulation of learning in online learning groups. The overall guiding question in this round table is: how can we foster student regulation in online learning groups within higher education?
During the roundtable, the following (preliminary) questions are guiding:
How can we improve the sociability of online learning environments to stimulate student regulation in online learning groups?
Which techniques can we apply to enhance students’ social presence/social space in online learning groups during regulation?
How can we support the 'teacher as designer' in facilitating student regulation in online learning groups?
In the discussion, we use two models to indicate the level at which we focus in the conversation to arrive at a new conceptual model regarding the regulation of learning in online learning groups. We note the findings in the respective models, together with the audience, which we display as posters
Using the DigCompEdu Framework to analyse your institution’s support for teachers’ digital competencies development
Get PDFEveryone agrees that teachers at all levels need to develop their digital competencies – but both the institution and the individual teachers need to take on this task – so this session asks: What can institutions do to take on some of the responsibility? Strategic goal setting is nice and helpful, but how can teaching and learning units, system owners and others improve the resources and help they provide to teachers to support digital competencies development?
The University of Copenhagen have used the European framework DigCompEdu to analyse and evaluate how the university as an institution can better support the competence development needs of individual teachers. The purpose of this exercise was to avoid competence development becoming an individualized problem for the teacher.
The participants have a choice in the workshop's hands-on part:Hands-on A: Plan an analysis of your own institution using the CUTE Canvas.Hands-on B: Analyse your own institution.
This workshop is based on the work carried out in the ERASMUS+: Strategic Partnership CUTE (KA203-867FE04B) (2019-2022) and the CUTIE project (2022-2024
“The facts alone will not save us”: A workshop on speculative education future and history making
Get PDFThis workshop aims to explore speculative fiction as a form of educational enquiry and practice. In this pursuit it draws upon the provocative contention of Ruha Benjamin (2016) that “the facts, alone, will not save us.” Instead, she argues, “social change requires novel fictions that reimagine and rework all that is taken for granted about the current structure of society. Such narratives are not meant to convince others of what is, but to expand our own visions of what is possible” (Benjamin, 2016).The ethical implications of educational technologies (EdTech) from simple classroom tools to almighty platforms are raising increasing concerns. These are postdigital concerns insofar as they are inescapable yet also emergent and ongoing. They are amplified by the power and influence of AI (Bozkurt et al, 2023; Cox et al 2023) with its implications for fraud, scams, surveillance, privacy and more fundamentally encodings of privileged norms of race, gender, sexuality, religion and so on. In addition the material and carbon costs of digital learning may force us to reckon with EdTech as inherently ecologically destructive (Selwyn, 2021).Is this to say that all our futures are grim and that hope has been foreclosed? Or if not, how can we work together to plot our way out of these problems? Indeed, would trying to solve all of this too quickly be part of the problem and start another round of techno-solutionism? One approach that has seen increasing attention is the use of storytelling as a sense-making activity that may allow us to first “stay with the trouble” (Harraway, 2020) and describe it, before rushing to the fix. This recent speculative turn has seen educational researchers attempt to cast themselves as writers of fictions that can explore the multitude of interrelated socio-technical issues that are characteristic of complex contemporary networked learning environments (Houlden & Veletsianos, 2023; Hrastinski, 2023; Selwyn et al., 2020; Macgilchrist et al., 2020). It has seen teachers and educators developing or adopting speculative scenarios as tools for students to explore the types of socio-technical entanglements that our world now involves (Krutka et al., 2022).In this workshop participants will co-create speculative fictions that explore hopeful and dystopic possibilities of education. Participants will explore the development of educational fictions based on speculative futuring, of no-yet-ness (Ross, 2017), but also alternative histories that might allow us see the prospective tools of our work, including texts, as neither neutral nor ahistorical. The concept of anti-patterns and deliberately destructive design will be introduced to allow participants to pull on conceptual threads that help unravel education as a relentless and progressive assembly and instead see it as a story that may be unlearned and retold.In summary this workshop provides an invitation to participants to use their deep imaginative capabilities to dream new educational interfaces, via speculative fiction, that allow us to be more awake and alive to ourselves, our students and the communities we serve
Unboxing the process of revision between two design-based hybrid learning interventions
Get PDFThe paper investigates the revision process of a Design-Based Research (DBR) project, in which a hybrid continuing professional development (CPD) course for educators from three higher education institutions is developed, tested and redesigned. The course runs over two cycles and is based on a key design principle, which aims at fostering inter-institutional collaboration among participants in relation to developing, testing and evaluating new learning designs in the participants’ respective teaching practices.
On the basis of semi-structured interviews with the course participants, it is discussed which aspects of the course should be revised and which design strategy to apply during the revision process. Moreover, the implications for the following intervention are discussed and the redesigned course is presented.
The empirical contribution of the paper lies in the detailed unboxing of the steps taken by the research and design team in the revision process between the two cycles of the course. As such, the paper exemplifies data-informed revision processes in which the key design principle of a course is maintained, but the adaptation of it is fundamentally revised though the strategy of branching out, i.e. central aspects of the design are revised to create a new solution
Transitions in social media use and social media use for transition: A survey study of the shift from high school to college
Get PDFHigh school and college students are known to be heavy users of social media. Much of their use is focused on peer social interactions and entertainment, but social media is also a potential platform for informal networked learning. In this study, we examine how college students used social media to learn about and prepare for college, how they use it in the university context, and how their social media use has changed as they mature and transition from one educational setting to another. Undergraduate students at a large public research university completed an online survey about their social media uses and perceptions. In terms of using social media to support the high school to college transition, preliminary findings show that for many students social media provided a valuable source of information about colleges, and in particular helped them plan and begin to build their social and activity networks in their new setting. Once at college, social media continued to help provide connections, serving as a source of information about campus events and supporting social connections. Social media was less frequently used as a means of networking with instructors.
Many students noted that their use of social media had changed in meaningful ways as they transitioned to college. These students indicated that their networks were now different, that their attitudes and uses had matured, and that they were better able to use their social media networks as a platform for awareness and change. Whether they perceived meaningful changes in their use of social media across the transition, most participants alluded to a desire to minimize drama, social comparison, and other ill effects of social media.
As data analysis continues, we will be exploring differences across platforms and relationships in college-related social media use based on intensity of use and sense of belonging. The study has implications for how institutions offer and support the development of social media networks among prospective and current students and provides insight into mindsets that can support or inhibit greater use of social media as a platform for informal networked learning as youth transition from high school to college and eventually on to careers
Negotiating Networked Learning Relationships with Augmentation Technologies: Smart Education, Data Analytics, and Human-autonomy Teaming
Get PDFThe hosts of this round table discussion, members of the Building Digital Literacy (BDL) research cluster of the Digital Life Institute (www.digitallife.org), adopt a critical disposition (NLEC, 2021a, 2021b) toward emerging augmentation technologies that sit at the core of networked learning. Augmentation technologies, such as wearable devices that extend human senses, augment creative abilities, or overcome physical limitations (Pederson & Hill, 2021), represent the engine that drives the next generation of networked learning. As emerging augmentation technologies, use of data analytics, and “smart” technologies proliferate, we see the critical need for research, presentation, and discussion of the implications for networked learning. This round table invites conversation about the role of artificial intelligence, big data, and learning analytics in networked learning
Thinking through ACAD - learning to see theory in action
Get PDFThe Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) has been developed as a meta-theoretical framework for understanding and improving complex networked learning situations (Goodyear et al., 2021; Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014). ACAD helps to foreground two distinct moments related to the design of complex learning situations. The first entails advanced planning – and it involves design time – when an educator may consider the selection of specific tasks, tools, and complementary social arrangements of a learning situation. The second involves learning time – or what happens as a learning activity unfolds.
When designing for networked learning educators need to anticipate a certain form of human activity and consider how designable elements may influence what students do (first view). But educators also need to channel what actually happens on the day, as activity unfolds, noticing how designable elements influence (or not) the intended learning activity (second view). One difficulty for teachers or educational designers relates to being able to draw connections between what has been designed (planned) and what learners actually do (learn)
Symposium 1: Analyzing Special Needs Support through Networks and Learning Analytics in Primary Education
No full textIn this short paper, analytical issues of networked learning are related to special needs support and learning analytics research in primary education. Very brief suggestions for these analytical issues are discussed for the networked learning research field to continue to expand upon. In part, the discussion is intended to form the underpinnings of a work-in-progress research project with cross-disciplinary networked connections across multiple universities.
Currently, teachers are faced with an expansion of their professional role that may be too economically demanding, which may result in consequences that is not beneficial for children with special needs. Researchers that aim to study inclusive education face the challenge to represent findings in a way that does not increase workload for teachers in primary education. Any failings in this regard may strengthen the intertwining of educational results and economical interest, which to a large extent could be considered as opposed to networked learning theory, dualistically separated from pedagogical concerns.
The inclusive goal of addressing diversity for children with special needs may be promoted by providing an educational setting with networked connections that enhances variation to modes of behavior, by addressing specific and contextual strengths and challenges of students appropriately. With learning analytics, specific and contextual strengths and challenges of students might be easier to highlight with new database schemas, algorithms, and user interfaces to represent networked data. Radical behaviorist methodology may further emphasize specific contextual findings from primary education through strictly defined events of behavior, which may be of interest to the networked learning research community to further expand upon.
Thus, this paper proposes suggestions for networked learning research of primary education, with approaches commonly implemented in special education, such as radical behaviorist methodology. The suggestions are based on networked consequences from three social dimensions: political, economic, and technology-developmental.
1 The political dimension is discussed through the notion of inclusive education for children with special needs and its current state,
2 the economic dimension is discussed through the 21st century role expansion of teachers,
3 the technology-developmental dimension is discussed through learning analytic research and its connection to bodily and biological associations. This dimension is especially noteworthy, as learning analytics is currently underutilized in primary education research as opposed to common higher education research