Loughborough University Library: Open Journals
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Making little things visible
Full text linkThe response to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 (Covid-19) will leave a lasting impression on all sectors of education. For design educators especially, the rapid transition from traditional to distance modes of teaching was, and still is, particularly challenging. Design, and especially studio-based education, remain predominantly physically focused and located practices. Moving out of the studio takes away far more than just a space for teaching; so much so, that the initial response to the response to the shift has been compared to that of grief (Brown, 2020).
But what has 2020 revealed about our discipline? About the state of our teaching and learning? About the resilience and legacy of our modes of education? Has the studio, as a fixed space, proven to be impossible to replace? Or will some of the affordances and opportunities experienced become part of future curricula? What does the response say of design education research and knowledge
Spatial cognitive processes involved in electronic circuit interpretation and translation: their use as powerful pedagogical tools within an education scenario
Full text linkWhile there is much research concerning the interpretation of diagrams such as geographical maps and networks for information systems, there is very little on the diagrams involved in electrical and electronic engineering. Such research is important not only because it supports arguments made for other types of diagrams but also because it informs on the cognitive processes going on while learning electrical and electronic engineering domains, which are generally considered difficult to teach and learn. Such insight is useful to have as a pedagogical tool for teachers. It might also benefit would be self-learners, entrepreneurs, and hobbyists in the field because it can guide self-learning practices. When cognitive practices specific to this knowledge domain are more understood, they might give rise to automated intelligent tutor systems which could be used to augment teaching and learning practices in the education of electrical and electronic engineering. This research analyses the spatial cognitive processes involved in the translation of an electronic circuit schematic diagram into an iconic representation of the same circuit. The work shows that the cognitive affordances of proximity and paths perceived from a circuit schematic diagram have great influence on the design of an iconic diagram, or assembly diagram, representing a topologically equivalent electronic circuit. Such cognitive affordances reflect and affect thought and can be used as powerful pedagogical tools within an educational scenario
(Mis)information, information literacy, and democracy
Full text linkThe current political climate is characterized by an alarming pattern of global democratic regression driven by authoritarian populist leaders who deploy vast misinformation campaigns. These offensives are successful when the majority of the population lack skills that would allow them to think critically about information in the political sphere, to identify misinformation, and therefore to fully exercise democratic citizenship. Political science has theorized the link between information and power and information professionals understand the cognitive decision-making process involved in processing information, but these two literatures rarely intersect. This paper interrogates the links between information literacy (IL) and the rise of authoritarian populism in order to advance the development of a new transtheoretical model that links political science (which studies power), information science, and critical pedagogy to suggest new paths for teaching and research. We call for a collaborative research and teaching agenda, grounded in a holistic understanding of information as power, that will contribute to achieving a more informed citizenship and promoting a more inclusive democracy
Workplace information literacy
Full text linkThis paper focuses information literacy (IL) from a methodological perspective, addressing quantitative IL measures, suitable for evaluating the role of IL in supporting work activities. So far, IL in workplace contexts has mostly been studied using qualitative methods, designed for studying situational and context-dependent practices. Therefore it is important to explore how quantitative measures could be used to bring forward the relation between IL and organisational outcomes, that is the assessment of the impact of IL in workplace contexts. Quantitative research into IL is not unknown, but has been mainly developed in higher education, in order to measure students’ abilities to make use of information.
This paper brings forward three separate studies, conducted by the authors, highlighting different workplace contexts: small and medium enterprises; universities; and community councils. The common approach is that survey instruments were used to measure IL and its impact in these organisational contexts. The methodological implementations and insights are presented and combined, and methodological strengths and challenges are discussed, with the aims of (1) building knowledge about IL measures in workplace settings that is currently lacking, (2) finding additional measures for the complex IL construct, and (3) considering the scope of the practices that can be measured. The paper highlights the complexity of studying the impacts of IL in workplace contexts, and the importance of using multiple methods. It constitutes an important step towards a more unified understanding of how to study workplace IL
Book review of Takayanagi, T., 2020. Informal learning and literacy among Maasai women: Education, emancipation and empowerment
Full text linkFestivIL 2021
Full text linkA report on the FestivIL Conference 2021 from the perspective of a school librarian
Book Review Food Education and Food Technology in School Curricula: International Perspectives
Full text linkAll the Thoughts I Ever Had or Sitting With Uncertainty
No full textThis paper is a reflective document that reviews a presentation/performance titled All The Thoughts I Ever Had, given at the Drawing Matters Symposium by noting its methods, acts, and frameworks. The term ‘presentation/performance’ fuses conventional academic research presentations, highlighting the performativity of the process. The presentation/performance used drawings, writings, and drawing/writings from ‘The magnified glass of liberation: A review of fictional drawings’ published in Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice (2018). This article uses an inactive creative period to consider drawing as a type of fiction. It chronicled the preparation of fictional drawings for a Fictional Museum of Drawing created by Phil Sawdon. Reworking this site of fictional drawing, the research advocated drawings’ fictions as rooted in foresight where predisposed thinking is navigated and anticipation reigns. This work placed certain recognitions of fiction by considering the material illusions of thought and, importantly for Drawing Matters, the materiality of the text was revisited and performed to disrupt certainty, favouring a presentation of a corporal subject as well as negotiating a process of understanding that played out ‘failures’ rather than resolves. The title all the thoughts I ever had was a way to introduce the performance/presentation as absurd and inherently situated to ‘fail’. This desire to confront failure emerged through the repeated experience of miscarriage. This paper is followed by a selection of the drawings and writings that I went on to make after the Drawing Matters presentation/performance, which became a publication called Sitting with Uncertainty (2019)
