Inquiry in action: Using AI to reimagine learning and teaching: Case studies from the frontline of Higher Education practice

 This open access book, collates a series of case studies from the University of Queensland on 'Using AI to reimagine learning and teaching: case studies from the frontline of higher education practice.

It is edited by Rachel Fitzgerald. 

The book begins with an introduction from the editor, followed by 12 chapters. There are 11 'case studies' with a final collation of themes chapter. 

There are chapters on AI literacy (chapter 1); ethics (chapters 2 and 3); inclusiveness (chapter 4); subject-specific chapters (1 - health, 4 - dentistry, 5 - dietetics, 8,10 -economics/business); inquiry-based learning (chapter 6); Critical thinking (chapter 7); web/mobile development (chapter 9); with application of relevant pedagogy across most of the chapters.

Useful for providing examples of the may ways in which Gen AI can be integrated into learning activities. Discipline/subject examples help our teachers visualise possibilities. 

Gen AI and education: Digital pedagogies, teaching innovation and learning design - springer brief - book overview

This book  by Professor B. Mairēad Pratschke, arrived late last week, just in time for a wet weekend. It is a Springer brief of just over 100 pages, making it a quick but worthwhile read.

The book has 7 chapters. 

Chapter 1 covers the historical evolution of AI in education, a good overview of Gen AI (GAI is used in the book) and a summary of the tenets of digital pedagogy (including connectivism, social constructivism). The chapter closes with the call and rationale for all educators to attain GAI competencies and that its introduction into learning must be teacher-led, not as directives from above.

The second chapter undertakes the unpacking of the implications of GAI on the learning ecosystem. The term AI ecosystem is used to describe how GAI is integrated into teaching platforms and tools, the implications for undertaking this type of innovation, and provides some indications of how AI will impact on education as a whole. We are already able to customise AI bots but in the very near future, embodied AI and the opportunity to not just integrate GAI but to create new forms of education.

In the third chapter, the concept of human-computer hybrid is explored. In doing so, humans (and AI) draw on each other's strengths, leading to true synergy between biological/human and digital/machine/AI. The developments already available are summarised - including ways Gen AI is trained, the role of prompt engineering, Khan academy's experiments with personalised learning using AI, Poe and Hugging Face as the options to create your own bot, expert systems and examples in deploying Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). A refresh of TPACK is proposed to become TPAIK, whereby 'knowledge' is shifted to be 'intelligence'. This leads to thinking about the relationships between technology/ntelligence/knowledge and how these are part of the learning design. Who creates intelligence/knowledge and what is the role of technology in the co-relationship?

In chapter 4, learning design to bring about the connections between educational theory, and digital pedagogy and practice is proposed. The concept of Generativism is proposed to bring GAI into the design, delivery and assessment of learning. The ABC learning design framework (with the learning activities of acquisition, collaboration, discussion, investigation, practice and production from Laurrilard's work) with GAI added, is provided as an example of how GAI contributes to each of the learning activities.

Chapter 5 undertakes an exploration and discussion of the impact of GAI specifically on personalised and peer learning. Intelligent tutoring systems, adaptive learning platforms, integrated assistants and tutors, standalone assistants and tutor, along with aspects of social learning, the implications of affective computing, social AI, intelligent communities and collaborative learning (see Sharple's work) are all introduced, discussed and evaluated. Each has a role, the importance is in selection and emphasis and of the roles of AI supporter and learner. Who has autonomy and what is the role of the educator when personalised learning environments become the norm.

The next chapter focuses on assessing learning. Congruent to the findings from our own AI projects, the emphasis in the AI age, is to place importance on the process of learning, rather than the outputs of learning. The ABC framework is again used, to provide guidance as to how assessments change due to AI and how AI can be used to support the assessment process.

In the last chapter, 'embedding AI', the many themes and threads across the book are brought together. Actions for educators and administrators are provided to help move education into the GIA age. 

In sum, a good book providing a summary of what has occurred thus far with good advice on the way forward. The book is short and therefore not too daunting for the practitioner/teacher/academic leader/head of school etc. to read through. There are good discussion anchors throughout the book and these will be useful as the difficult conversations with on GAI's role in education begin to take place in earnest. 

Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy - catch up on articles

 I blogged about the Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy in 2016, when its first issue was published. Since then, the journal has shifted from Springer to Brill as the publisher. The editor is E.J. White from the University of Canterbury. 

The main focus of the video, is the application of video to the study of education and pedagogy. So far, in the 5 issues (only 1 issue of about 10 articles a year), the articles have been from the compulsory school and higher education sectors. So, a possibility to submit a vocational education context article. A few of the articles have video embedded, either from the research data or a short presentation of the article itself. I will continue to follow the journal as the inclusion of a video into a research article, is still relatively uncommon. I have not found another journal with similar approaches in the education field. 

Video Journal of Education and Pegagogy - issue one overview

The journal, Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, published by Springer is the first scholarly open access journal undertaking to use video as a means of dissemination. The journal is supported by the Association of Visual Pedagogies (AVP) which recently had it's first conference - youtube video promoting the conference and a link to blog with an overview of the first conference.

Came to find out about the journal through my Google Scholar alerts which brought up the article on digital pedagogy and safety in the Australian construction industry.

The journal's page has video interviews from the editors of the journal, Michael Peters, Jayne White and Tina Besley - all from University of Waikato. Michael Peters has a further website on the philosophy of education and published two books I will need to follow up - See to Play - to role of visual literacies in sports and Showing and Doing.

The videos cover a range of interesting viewpoints on the increasing ubiquity of digital culture and the challenges to education and research. These include moving from a pedagogy of one to many to a culture of many to many – a co-constructive ecology with peer to peer ‘informal’ and mobile participants. Research changes due to access to a range of data, not possible before, exampled by big data and learning analytics.

Examples of visual pedagogies include pedagogies sensitive to diverse cultures and multimodal media. Visual literacies are perhaps not well-developed and only recent developments.

Articles have video content hyperlinked in. Most of the article has a traditional format with video content and ‘discussion’. In the future, video from artist, performers, film makers etc. will also be disseminated through the journal. The interest areas include teaching demonstrations, performances (esp. from indigenous research), interviews etc. Encouraged submissions from a wide range of discipline areas within and outside academia.

Peer review is double-blind review through Springer’s ScholarOne journal submission platform.

Good on Springer for supporting a new approach.

What' trades learning' and pedagogy can learn from music pedagogy

Came across this via the facebook page I follow intermittently. The page is looked after by the current band master of my school band. 40 plus years since I left school, the band continues it's strong tradition of excellence set by the first band mistress, playing a leading role in nurturing young people through learning  music and the discipline and camaraderie fostered through long hours of practice required to attain excellence.

Thestrad webpage focuses on supporting string players, with good resources on practice, technique, teaching music and collation of articles on repetitive practice and the need for effective practice. All in, a good resource of pragmatic responses to assist the learning of complex skills.

I had a look at other resources for learning music and came across some books including one on piano pedagogy.

At the CPIT library, there is a scholarly book on teaching piano – Teaching performance: a philosophy of piano pedagogy by Swinkin and published by Springer in 2015.

The book provides background (some historical) on approaches to teaching piano. The aims of the book are detailed in the introduction. Chiefly the book undertakes to try to resolve 2 dilemmas. One is to bring to the fore, the difficulty in studying music as language, the other is to push teaching of music beyond the technical, to instill greater intellectual depth, emotional sensitivity and interpretative skill in musicians. Unfortunately, I have yet to find an equivalent for trades pedagogy. So, there is a gap in the literature to be further investigated :)

Mobile pedagogy - book summary

Disclaimer – I have contributed a chapter in this book.

Book summary of just launched book in the ‘advances in mobile and distance learning series’ published by IGI Global titled ‘mobile pedagogy and perspectives on teaching and learning’. The book is edited by Douglas McConatha, Christian Penny, Jordan Schugar and David Bolton (all based at West Chester University , Pennyslavia, USA) and contains 15 chapters collected into 3 sections.  Brief summary of each chapter below:

Section 1: Current demonstrations and developments in the field of mobile pedagogy

1) Towards a mobile pedagogy by Scott. E. Hamm, Jason, Drysdale and Diana Moore. This chapter reports on the uptake of mobile learning at Abilene Christian College through a range of projects including students’ access to pre-lecture resources on mobile devices; distance learning / remote teaching using mobile devices; introduction of ipads and its impact on the college’s LMS; use of Twitter; audio as alternative to text-based feedback; and using games. Koole’s framework to study the device (useability), social (social technology) and learning (interaction technology) aspects was used across the various projects to evaluate the various projects and form recommendations to improve mobile learning implementation.

2) The second chapter ‘ student development of E-workbooks: A case for situated-technology enhanced learning (STEL) using net tablets’ by Selena Chan with Katrina Fisher and Peter Sauer (Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology), an extension of our project for Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub. Basically, leveraging off affordances of mobile and situated learning with constructivist and multimodal / multi-literacies focus to deploy net tablets (ipads and toshiba thrive android OS tablets) for students to develop their own workbooks or to complete competency based assessments.

3)  Podcasting and pedagogy also from a New Zealand author, Ross Kendall (Wintec, Hamilton, NZ). Uses Engestrom’s expansive activity model to assess the efficacy producing podcasts. A small group of sociology students (level 5) interviewed experts (on sustainability). The students then consolidated their learning through a project to report the outcomes of their interviews, including how they planned , carried out and conducted the sessions.

4) Then a chapter on ‘communities of communication: using social media as medium for supporting teacher interpersonal development’ by Laurie Stone Rogers.  The chapter discusses potentialities and recommendations for various stakeholders (community, administrators, policy makers, teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers). In particular, to encourage the use of social media to provide teachers with the opportunity to overcome isolation, feelings of loneliness and lack of community. In so doing, to improve teachers’ support as they work through an ever challenging time of change.

5) ‘ebook readers for everyone: FATIH project, is from Turkey with Nilgun Ozdamar Keskin, Furat Sarsar and Michael Sean.  A good overview of the historical evolution of ebooks, their advantages and limitations. The chapter also provides a review of recent ebook projects from around the world and then details the FATIH project, the largest educational technology project in Turkey covering 40,000 schools and launched in 2011 to run through to 2014.

Section 2 has 5 chapters on the themes ‘research, theory and practice with mobile pedagogy in differentiated instruction’.

6)  Mobile learning for all: accessibility considerations for mobile pedagogy by Luis Perez and Ezzard Bryant (University of South Florida). Introduces the concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and it’s key principles to make digital resources accessible to all. A degree of flexibility is recommended to cover the myriad contexts of modern technology use. The UDL support of iOS and Android OS are then summarised. Case studies of application of UDL to challenge based learning, including apps used to help students participate in learning activities (brain storming, reflection, data collection, presentation, project management and collaboration) are provided. A good chapter to inform ‘disability’ support services in the education sectors and beyond.

7) Mobile learning applications and differentiated instruction with Shelley A. Jackson, Sharla Snider, Nicole Masek and Joanne Baham (Texas Women's University). Differentiated instruction is defined as being based on teachers being able to adapt instruction to student differences. Examples are provided of implementation of differentiated instruction through instructional groupings, multiple levels of kinds of materials and tests, learning assignments, assessment and evaluations.

8) Then Terese Cumming (University of New South Wales, Australia) continues the theme on ‘does mobile technology have a place in differentiated instruction’. Presents the advantages and challenges of using mobile technology in classrooms. Recommends the process of implementing differential instruction through planning, selecting appropriate ‘content’, undertake processes for teacher planning, contextualise according to ‘product’ (problem based learning, layered curriculum rubrics) and learning environment.

9) Ann Orr and John Conley (Eastern Michigan University) write on ‘mobile technology and differentiated learning: meeting the needs of students with significant disabilities’. This chapter covers assistive technologies and how tablets, with their intuitive interface, variety of access options and possibilities for individualisation offer opportunities for enhancing learning for students with disabilities.

10) M. Liu, C. Navarete, E. Maradiegue and J, Wivagg (University of Texas -Austin) close the section with a chapter on ‘a multiple-case study examining teachers’ use of Ipod touches in their pedagogical practices for English-language learners’. An overview of mobile learning applications that assist English language students with case studies of 3 US of A schools. The challenges of incorporating the technology are discussed along with solutions and recommendations.

Section 3 covers ‘implications and innovative applications of mobile pedagogy.

11)  New demands of reading in the mobile internet age are covered by Byeong-Young Cho and Lindsay Woodward (Iowa State University). Covers the changes on-screen, web-based, small screen and digital / multimedia content impacts on learning reading. The change in how information is presented changes our ‘textual landscape’ and our textual conceptions need to learn higher-order strategies to identify, understand and evaluate web based resources. Recommends reading strategies required to deal with the mobile internet context include being able to constructively and responsively read; realise and construct potential texts; identify important ideas and learning across multiple texts; monitor the process of selecting and understanding texts; and evaluate different aspects of text.

12)  Then ‘iteach literacy with ipad devices: preparing teachers for effective classroom integration, with Diane Santori, Carol Smith and Heather Schugar (West Chester University). Two case studies are presented to discuss the many challenges and potentials through introducing ipads to pre- and in-service teachers for literacy instruction.

13) ‘Journalism and media: From mellowed pedagogy to new mobile learning tools’ is covered by Pamela Walck and Yusuf Kahyango (Ohio University). Studies how mobile technology has changed the way media organisations have changed the way they operate and contrasts to the uptake and deployment of mobile technology in a university preparing undergraduates to work in journalism. Media professionals have been rapid adopters of mobile technology and teaching institutions struggle to keep up with the range of methods now possible.

14) An African example with Mawuadem Koku Amedeker (University of Education, Ghana) with ‘stuck in neutral: why technology hasn’t made major inroads into education in Ghana’. Reports on efforts in Ghana to introduce technology into schools, stymied by lack of professional development support to teachers. Recommends ensuring teachers are ready to integrate ICT into learning before launching hardware focused initiatives.

15) Last chapter a pertinent ‘an ROI Ed-Biz approach for deploying mobile pedagogy with Professor Douglas McConatha. Introduces the CADRE model to evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of introduction of technology into education.

All in a coverage of mobile learning potentialities through real case studies. Of interest is that many of the projects use tablets as the mobile device. Teacher capability also mentioned in many chapters. Without teacher buy-in and understanding of the pedagogical implements of introducing / deploying technology enhanced learning (TEL), the promise of TEL to contribute to educational change (for the better) will never be fully realised. 

Books found at the Unitec library

Over the course of the last two months, I have put half a day a week to refresh my 'apprentices research' bibliography. The libraries both at work and at the university are still quiet as the students have only just started. Despite prevalence of on-line journals, google books & epublications, I still love browsing the stacks. Each trip always ends with a satisfying stack of books relevant to various projects, many of which would have escaped my attention by just relying on catalogue and database searches. Maybe I am not searching them correctly :( but I think not, as some gems are buried - say 123 out of 1000 hits! & I seldom get down beyond scanning the first 100.

While in Auckland last week, I managed to find a couple of hours to browse the 3 shelves of books on education in the library at Unitec as I was interview boating apprentices at Unitec. These include the following pertinent ones:

Understanding pedagogy and its impact on learning (1999) edited by P. Mortimore had a good chapter by Watkins, C & Mortimore, P. Pedagogy, what do we know, Young, M. & Lucas, N. on Pedagogies in further ed. New context, new theories and new possibilities and Griffiths, T. & Guile, D. on pedagogy in workplace contexts. First chapter on google books.

Also browsed through Classroom discourses by Cazden, C.B. (2001), a seminal book on studying class room discourse which provided many examples of discourse analysis techniques undertaken with data collected during class sessions.

Atkinson, T & Claxton. G. (2000) The intuitive practitioner: on the value of not always knowing what one is doing. A fascinating read which I will have to find another copy of.

Lastly, but by no means least, a book that provides inspiration for a longitudinal study. Levin, B. B. (2003) case studies of teacher development: an in-depth look at how thinking about pedagogy develops over time. Which is a 15 year project following 4 graduates of a pre-service teacher training programme and their development as teachers. The understanding of pedagogy was studied using Ammon & Hutchinson’s (1989) model of pedagogical thinking.  I will follow this one through in the next year or so as the CPIT DTLT programme beds down.  It will be good to be able to follow a group of new vocational educators over number of years as they move from professional / trades practioners to becoming teachers.