George Veletsianos

Collection of Open Access Books

// January 25th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // open

This semester, I am teaching a class focusing on online learning in the context of participatory culture and media. Links to the following open access e-books were provided within my syllabus – I thought these might also be of value to individuals not registered in my class. Enjoy!

Theory and Practice of Online Learning (2nd edition) edited by Terry Anderson http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120146

Accessible Elements:  Teaching Science Online and at a Distance edited by Dietmar Kennepohl and Lawton Shaw at http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120162

Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training edited by Mohamed Ally at http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120155

A Designer’s Log: Case Studies in Instructional Design by Michael Power at http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120161

Herrington, Herrington, Mantei, Olney & Ferry (Eds), New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, 2009: http://ro.uow.edu.au/newtech/

CU Online Handbook from the University of Colorado at Denver (Edited by Patrick R. Lowenthal, David Thomas, Anna Thai, & Brian Yuhnke), via http://www.cudenver.edu/Academics/CUOnline/FacultyResources/Handbook/Pages/Handbook2009.aspx

George Siemen’s Knowing knowledge via http://www.elearnspace.org/

Open Educational Resources Handbook for Educators
http://www.lulu.com/product/download/open-educational-resources-handbook-for-educators-version-10/3396518

Ito et al’s Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out. Kids Living and Learning with New Media from: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/full_pdfs/Hanging_Out.pdf)

Arrived in Austin, TX

// January 13th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // sharing

This blog has been quiet for a bit…. and the reason is because I was moving. I have finally arrived in Austin, Texas and this is the required “I have moved” blog post. Starting next week, I will be joining the Instructional Technology program at the University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor (part of the Curriculum and Instruction department). This blog’s regular program will commence again soon

P.S. Here is the University president’s blog and the newly-launched U of Texas iPhone app – happy to see both of these of course!

2010/365 Project

// January 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // sharing

This year I decided to participate in one of the “take a photo every day” projects. I am doing this partly to improve my photography skills through practice, partly to learn from others, and partly to force myself to pause and enjoy the daily beauty of life that usually escapes undocumented. I commit to taking a picture every single day, but don’t commit to be uploading the photos on a daily basis. I will be posting my photos at my flickr set entitled 2010/365 and at the 2010/365photos group. Pictures from the first four days of January are embedded below. If you’d like to follow, you can add me as a contact on flickr or subscribe to my set’s RSS feed (none of that “RSS is dead” conviction here!)…

A Review of the Adventure Learning Literature

// January 3rd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // papers

The latest issue of The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning has been published and in it there’s an article I wrote with Irene, who’s one of the many talented PhD students I work with. The paper provides an up-to-date analysis and description of Adventure Learning and is intended to be a must-read for researchers and practitioners interested on the topic. Specifically, we are providing a metasynthesis of Adventure Learning identify current research and knowledge on the topic as well as research gaps. I’m very excited about this publication because it was very fun to write, it is my second paper with a PhD student, and it is published in an open access journal. If you are interested, here is the reference, link, and abstract. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it:

Veletsianos, G., & Kleanthous, I. (2009). A review of adventure learning. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 10(6). Retrieved December 27, 2009, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/755

Adventure Learning (AL) is an approach for the design of digitally-enhanced teaching and learning environments driven by a framework of guidelines grounded on experiential and inquiry-based education. The purpose of this paper is to review the Adventure Learning literature and to describe the status quo of the practice by identifying the current knowledge, misconceptions, and future opportunities in Adventure Learning. Specifically, the authors present an integrative analysis of the Adventure Learning literature, identify knowledge gaps, present future research directions, and discuss research methods and approaches that may improve the AL approach.

Authors engaged in a systematic search strategy to identify Adventure Learning studies and then applied a set of criteria to decide whether to include or exclude each study. Results from the systematic review were combined, analyzed, and critiqued inductively using the constant comparative method and weaved together using the qualitative metasynthesis approach.

Results indicate the appeal and promise of the Adventure Learning approach. Nevertheless, the authors recommend further investigation of the approach. Along with studies that investigate learning outcomes, engaging aspects of the AL approach, and the nature of expert-learner collaboration, future Adventure Learning projects that focus on higher education and are (a) small and (b) diverse, can yield significant knowledge into Adventure Learning. Research and design in this area will benefit by taking an activity theory and design-based research perspective.

Measuring (and forging a path to) openness

// December 31st, 2009 // 1 Comment » // sharing

George posted a note on elearnspace blog on developing a Measurement of Openness in Education Systems (MOES) to raise awareness and draw attention to openess, while at the same time providing a measure that allows discussions to ensue. George lists a number of measures to be included in a metric to openness and asks what else can be added to this. The following additions may be of interest:

• Adopting an institutional repository (or at the very least, supporting researchers in posting their publications on university-sponsored sites).
• Open access to the data behind publications (perhaps published concurrently)
• Open Tenure and Review applications, decisions, and data supporting them (see for example, Alec’s application)
• Open access to instructor, department, school, college, and university reviews (e.g., student course evaluations and institutional reviews/assessments)

More importantly however, in line with developing a Measurement of Openness in Education Systems (George’s phrase), we need to develop guidelines on becoming open thus forging a path to openness. As highlighted in the various discussions occurring at the moment surrounding “openness” (here, here, here, and here), the term and it’s meaning are somewhat mystified. To confuse you even more, I suggest that being open doesn’t necessarily mean being open, which I gather is the point behind Siemen’s latest posts.  For example, having a university-wide statement on openness is not the same as adopting and actively supporting an institutional repository or providing incentives for instructors to teach open courses. I keep returning to the shades of gray idea: We usually treat issues as if they are black or white when in actuality they are not. There is no one single notion of closed, open, virtual, real, hybrid education, online learning, constructivism, and so on. There are multiple shades of gray in much the same way that there are multiple variations on constructivism, in much the same way that virtual experiences are quite real.

I am ranting… anyway, the point is that it would be beneficial to publish a document on steps to becoming more open, with each step representing a stronger stance to adopting openness. Such a document can align with the Measurement of Openness in Education Systems suggestion, highlighting relative positions on an openness scale.

< How’s that for an end of year post!? >

(Closed) Open Access, or Open Access Fail

// December 28th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // sharing

A few minutes ago, I received an email alerting me that the following paper was available at the TC Record website: Open Access, Education Research, and Discovery. I clicked on the link, eager to read my colleague’s ideas! But then I hit the subscription wall that you see in the image above. This led to my current state of dizziness. I tried to access the paper through my university’s databases and figured out that we don’t subscribe to TC Record. I searched the googlesphere in case the author posted a copy on his own website or institutional repository, but I couldn’t find it. It’s not that I don’t have $7 to buy the article, though, arguably, some people may not (hence, the economic argument for open access).

I also want to see if this paper would be good for my students since we will be examining the notion of “openness” in technology-enhanced learning next semester. Unfortunately, I have adopted an open access policy for my class, and unless someone directs me to a publicly available copy of the paper, it does not look like this paper will be on the mandatory reading list…

Pedagogical Agents in Virtual Worlds

// December 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // pedagogical agents

It’s standard practice by now that each one of my publications gets its own blog post, not least to alert anyone interested of the availability of the paper and of the fact that they can access a pre-publication copy of it from my publications page.

Our latest paper, which was really fun to write, is:

Veletsianos, G., Heller, R., Overmyer, S., & Procter, M. (2010). Conversational Agents in Virtual Worlds: Bridging Disciplines. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(1), 123-140. [pdf]

This paper is part of a a BJET special issue focusing on Virtual Worlds that I edited with Prof. Sara de Freitas who’s heading the Serious Games Institute at the University of Conventry. In our introduction to the special issue we note that, “…over the last 30 years, academic disciplines have been encouraged to engage in, and have re-arranged methods that better facilitate, cross-engagement and cross-collaboration.”

Lots can be said about the value of multidisciplinary practice. Yet, due to various barriers that exists across the disciplines, such practice is often limited.  Partly to highlight the benefits of multidisciplinary practice and partly to further understanding of issues related to pedagogical agent/avatar design, three colleagues and I engaged in a simple thought experiment: Suppose that you are designing a geriatric avatar with which medical students can hold conversations such that students engage in the diagnosis of certain conditions based on the avatar’s input. How would you design this avatar?

The paper therefore presents the perspective of researchers/practitioners from four disciplines: cognitive
psychology, computing science, learning technologies and engineering. Major challenges are identified, discussed and contrasted across all disciplines. Taken together, the four perspectives draw attention to the quality of agent–user interaction, how theory, practice and research are closely intertwined, and highlight opportunities for cross-fertilisation and collaboration.

Image licensed under a CC commons license by Jungle_Boy.

Educational Design Research: Local Change, Global Impact

// December 19th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // sharing

If you are interested in design-based research and (like me) have a great appreciation of Dr. Reeve’s contributions to our field, you might be interested in the following conference/celebration (via ITFORUM):

“Educational Design Research: Local Change, Global Impact”
A Special Conference to Honor Professor Thomas C. Reeves upon his retirement from The University of Georgia

March 26 – 27, 2010

Call for Participation

Barab and Squire (2004) describe design research as “a series of approaches, with the intent of producing new theories, artifacts, and practices that account for and potentially impact learning and teaching in naturalistic settings” (p. 2) (italics added). This definition highlights the twin outcomes that educational design research ideally yields, important local change with respect to enhancing learning, teaching, and performance, and viable global impact with respect to the development of reusable design principles and enhanced theory. With roots in the 1980s and earlier, educational design research has begun to be more widely adopted by educational researchers and practitioners across a variety of fields, including educational technology and the learning sciences. You are invited to submit papers and posters that report the status and results on recent and on-going design research projects. In addition, papers and posters are encouraged that present arguments for and against educational design research, recommend new directions, and/or share new methods and tools.

Barab, S., & Squire, K. (2004). Design-based research: Putting a stake in the ground. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 1-14.

Submission Overview

Proposals for full papers will be due by January 23, 2010.  Proposals for full papers will be subjected to review by an editorial team. Presenters will have 20 minute slots in the program with 15 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for discussion. Accepted papers will be considered for inclusion in an edited volume of papers from the conference.

Poster proposals (500-1000 word description) will be due by January 23, 2010. Poster proposals will be reviewed by an editorial review team.

Guidelines for paper and poster submissions appear below.

Full paper and Poster proposers will be notified of acceptance decisions by February 15, 2010. Once a proposal has been accepted, each presenter must register for the conference. Presentations/posters will not be scheduled in the program until the presenters of papers or posters have registered. Final revisions of accepted papers will be due no later than March 5, 2010 in order to be included in the conference proceedings.

There will be a minimal registration fee for all attendees. A highly discounted rate for students will be available. The registration fee will primarily be used to help cover the costs of the refreshments and materials for this event. Additional information will be posted to the conference Web site: http://etc.coe.uga.edu/conference/ in January 2010.

Full Paper Proposal Details

Presentation time: 20 minutes including questions
Proposal submission length: 1,000 -1,250 words (without references)
Proceedings length (if selected for presentation/publication): 4,000-5,000 words

Full paper proposals should report on significant work related to research, development or applications of best practices related to the focus of the conference. Integrative literature reviews that advance the knowledgebase in interesting ways are also invited. In addition, paper proposals are encouraged that present arguments for and against educational design research, recommend new directions, and/or share new methods and tools. Proposals reporting studies should include the following information:
The topic and how it relates to the theme of the conference
A description of the problem or opportunity addressed in the work
The goals and/or questions posed
A clear description of what was done (data collected, system development, processes implemented)
Results of the work or major findings
Implications for research, theory, and practice

Please submit your proposal to Diane Igoche (specialconference@gmail.com) as a PDF document by January 23, 2010 at 11:59p. Proposals will be reviewed by an editorial review team and rank ordered according to how well they fulfill the proposal requirements.

If your paper is selected, you must be able to attend the conference, March 26-27 2010.

Poster Proposal Details

Proposal submission length: 500-1,000 words (without references)

Poster proposals should report on significant work related to research, development or applications of best practices related to the focus of the conference. Projects that are in-progress may be presented if preliminary results can be presented. In addition, poster proposals are encouraged that present arguments for and against educational design research, recommend new directions, and/or share new methods and tools. Proposals reporting studies should include the following information:
The topic and how it relates to the theme of the conference
A description of the problem or opportunity addressed in the work
The goals and/or questions posed
A clear description of what was done (data collected, system development, processes implemented)
Results of the work or major findings
Implications for research, theory, and practice

Please submit your proposal to Diane Igoche (specialconference@gmail.com) as a PDF document by January 23, 2010 at 11:59p.

Proposals will be reviewed by an editorial review team and rank ordered according to how well they fulfill the proposal requirements.

If your poster is selected, you must be able to attend the conference, March 26-27 2010.

Preliminary Conference Schedule
Friday, 26 March
Time
Activity
10AM – 12PM
EPIT Department Retirement Celebration for Dr. Reeves
1– 5 PM
Pre-Conference Workshop (4 Hours) – “Conducting Educational Design Research” will be provided by
Dr. Jan Herrington (Murdoch University, Australia),
Dr. Susan McKenney (University of Twente, The Netherlands), and Dr. Thomas C. Reeves (The University of Georgia, USA)
6 – 8 PM
Poster Reception with Refreshments* (Posters will remain up until 5 PM on Saturday)

Saturday, 27 March
Time
Activity
9 – 10:15 AM
Welcome and Keynote – Dr. Jan Herrington
10:15 – 10:30 AM
Coffee Break
10:30 – 11:30 AM
Paper Session 1 (3 papers – 20 minutes each with questions)
11:30 – 12:30 PM
Paper Session 2 (3 papers – 20 minutes each with questions)
12:30 – 1:45 PM
Lunch and Keynote – Dr. Susan McKenney
1:45 – 2:45 PM
Paper Session 3 (3 papers – 20 minutes each with questions)
2:45 – 3:00 PM
Coffee Break
3:00 – 4:00 PM
Paper Session 4 (3 papers – 20 minutes each with questions)
4:00 – 5:00 PM
Keynote and Farewell – Dr. Thomas C. Reeves
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Buffet dinner with folk music and fun