George Veletsianos, PhD

Collection of Open Access Books

On January 25, 2010

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

By George Veletsianos

On January 13, 2010

In 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

By George Veletsianos

On January 4, 2010

In 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

By George Veletsianos

On January 3, 2010

In 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

By George Veletsianos

On December 31, 2009

In 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

By George Veletsianos

On December 28, 2009

In 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

By George Veletsianos

On December 23, 2009

In 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.