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The contents of this document are based on a series of seminars conducted during 2003 and 2004, funded by the ESRC, that were coordinated by Lydia Plowman, University of Stirling. They were also sponsored by a number of organisations including Futurelab. Each seminar was attended by researchers from universities, creators and managers of companies that make educational resources, and people engaged in policy making or representing Government agencies.
The seminars considered the main questions around specific themes and took place in different parts of the UK:
- Seminar 1: Identifying the issues, London (sponsored by the DfES)
- Seminar 2: Narrative, Coventry (sponsored by Becta)
- Seminar 3: Mobile technologies, Bristol (sponsored by Hewlett-Packard)
- Seminar 4: Play and learning, Edinburgh (sponsored by Scottish Executive)
Further information can be found on the ESRC Seminars intro page.
This summary is based on a symposium at the CAL2005 conference in Bristol in April 2005, presented by Charles Crooke (University of Nottingham), Lydia Plowman (University of Stirling), Martin Owen (Futurelab) and Rosamund Sutherland (University of Bristol). It was edited by Martin Owen and Lydia Plowman with contributions from Julie Cogill (Kings College, London) and Ros Sutherland and Federico Olivera (University of Bristol).
Introduction
How can research on teaching and learning be used to improve the design of e-content? Designing e-learning resources requires a team with diverse talents but sometimes the educational aspects get overlooked. Although most people know it's likely to be beneficial to include knowledge about learning and teaching in their designs, it doesn't always happen. There are several reasons why designers might find this difficult:
- They don't know how to find out who the research experts are in the field they're interested in or how to make contact with them.
- They don't know how to find the relevant published research because it's often hidden away in journals that nobody's heard of and that are difficult to locate.
- If they find some research in the right area it's sometimes difficult to see its relevance or to interpret how it might be useful for the design process.
Even if those in the digital content industry find some useful research and identify somebody with expertise in the relevant aspects of teaching and learning, there are still barriers to involving them in the design process. This can be because:
- There is a lack of communication between researchers and industry. Different language and specialised terms may be used to describe areas in which both groups have an interest. But it's also because academic research tends to use its own jargon that can seem impenetrable to others.
- Different timescales can be a barrier to productive collaboration. Commercial companies and the education sector work to different rhythms and schedules. A design process that is informed by user studies can be very time-consuming as it needs to go through a number of cycles.
- Small companies don't always have the budgets for collaboration with educational researchers.
Designers sometimes make a case for involving a researcher in the team but can meet resistance from sales or finance departments which believe that various design inputs are inappropriate, not marketable or too expensive to implement. It is also difficult for them to identify the point in the design cycle at which input is likely to be most valuable and have most impact. So getting input from researchers seems a bit of a luxury because it can add to costs and lengthen timescales.
The case studies in this guide demonstrate that including research on teaching and learning can make a difference to the design process. This should lead to increased sales because it leads to a better product and happier customers - the students and teachers who will use the product.
The design focus here is on e-learning content for delivery through interactive media such as the web, CD-Roms or mobile technologies for children aged 5-16. Some of the questions that will be considered in the
case studies include:
- At which point(s) in the design cycle is research input likely to be most valuable and have most impact?
- How can teachers and learners be included in the design process?
- How generalisable are research findings?
- Which should come first - the overall design or the learning content?
- To what extent does content have to link to the curriculum to have educational value?
- How marketable is educational value?
What follows in this document is a sharing of perspectives, some advice for future action and five case studies illustrating a diverse range of collaborations - small enterprises, a large-scale international company, the Science Museum, BEAM Technology, Nelson-Thornes, and a research team working with a local media company.
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