Enhancing the content and experience of Interactive Childrens Television. Interactive television (iTV) as a participatory, on-demand communication provides a unique opportunity to significantly engage, entertain and educate preschool children. Through considerable industry partner collaboration and participation, this project will evaluate three distinct interactive options produced from selected children's television programs with proven success in Australia. Usability studies employing a vari ....Enhancing the content and experience of Interactive Childrens Television. Interactive television (iTV) as a participatory, on-demand communication provides a unique opportunity to significantly engage, entertain and educate preschool children. Through considerable industry partner collaboration and participation, this project will evaluate three distinct interactive options produced from selected children's television programs with proven success in Australia. Usability studies employing a variety of surveillance techniques will evaluate content design and user response. Children's viewing habits will be evaluated within a social context (the home) and a mobile lab setting using qualitative and quantitative assessment. The results will identify effective ways to produce meaningful interactivity and will encourage future industry based research.Read moreRead less
A learning design to operationalise new pedagogical frameworks: developing critical multi-literacy within a technology-supported learning environment. This study seeks to use the goals of current state and national education policies to develop specific teaching and learning strategies that can be employed in secondary school classrooms. The study will research the process of implementing such strategies and measure outcomes associated with improved student learning. These learning outcomes wil ....A learning design to operationalise new pedagogical frameworks: developing critical multi-literacy within a technology-supported learning environment. This study seeks to use the goals of current state and national education policies to develop specific teaching and learning strategies that can be employed in secondary school classrooms. The study will research the process of implementing such strategies and measure outcomes associated with improved student learning. These learning outcomes will be assessed in terms of the development of critical levels of technology, media, visual and information literacies. It is this critical multi-literacy that is considered necessary for the next generation of contributors to Australia's economic and societal innovation and growth.Read moreRead less
Production Challenges in the On-Line Learning Environment. The shift of responsibility from teacher-centred learning to learner-centred learning has raised important questions of access for diverse groups in Australia and overseas. The project seeks to investigate new delivery mechanisms that respond to worldwide trends in virtual communities and self-directed learning. This research will explore the relationship between content pedagogy, use of technology, and work-related issues and expectatio ....Production Challenges in the On-Line Learning Environment. The shift of responsibility from teacher-centred learning to learner-centred learning has raised important questions of access for diverse groups in Australia and overseas. The project seeks to investigate new delivery mechanisms that respond to worldwide trends in virtual communities and self-directed learning. This research will explore the relationship between content pedagogy, use of technology, and work-related issues and expectations. It will adopt a qualitative and quantitative research methodology in identifying opportunities, producing a learning prototype, testing and trialing that prototype and applying research outcomes in the context of emergent new educational models that draw upon convergent media.Read moreRead less
Towards a social theory of semiotic technology: Exploring PowerPoint's design and its use in higher education and corporate settings. PowerPoint has become the dominant technology for designing and delivering presentations in many important settings and skills in the use of PowerPoint have become essential for professional and academic success. This study will investigate the use of PowerPoint in higher education and corporate settings in order to discover what these skills are and how the desig ....Towards a social theory of semiotic technology: Exploring PowerPoint's design and its use in higher education and corporate settings. PowerPoint has become the dominant technology for designing and delivering presentations in many important settings and skills in the use of PowerPoint have become essential for professional and academic success. This study will investigate the use of PowerPoint in higher education and corporate settings in order to discover what these skills are and how the design of PowerPoint supports or hinders the achievement of a range of communicative purposes. The study will provide guidelines for evaluating and improving the design and use of PowerPoint and other, similar presentation software.Read moreRead less
Researching, designing and evaluating online learning tools to effectively utilise audio-visual archives: critical literacies through rich task interactivity. In collaboration with Film Australia and award winning eLearning company Crank Media, researchers will prototype next-generation broadband learning tools that continually assess and respond to an individual user's knowledge gaps, and enable access to digital resources derived from personal learning styles and preferences. Underpinned by di ....Researching, designing and evaluating online learning tools to effectively utilise audio-visual archives: critical literacies through rich task interactivity. In collaboration with Film Australia and award winning eLearning company Crank Media, researchers will prototype next-generation broadband learning tools that continually assess and respond to an individual user's knowledge gaps, and enable access to digital resources derived from personal learning styles and preferences. Underpinned by distributed learning theory and working with ?rich task? activities within a content aggregation scaffolding the research will design and field test innovative online study and revision activities. It will engage learners in recognizing and switching their learning paradigms appropriately, and in articulating these decisions through dynamic content pathways utilizing Film Australia's invaluable archives.Read moreRead less
Improving university teaching: Creating strategies and tools to support the design process. This project will create strategies and tools to help university teachers design effective online learning experiences. Excellence in online education is important to Australia, socially and economically. Social benefits come from greater participation and graduates better equipped to contribute to their communities. Economic benefits come from graduates with skills and knowledge to be flexible, adaptable ....Improving university teaching: Creating strategies and tools to support the design process. This project will create strategies and tools to help university teachers design effective online learning experiences. Excellence in online education is important to Australia, socially and economically. Social benefits come from greater participation and graduates better equipped to contribute to their communities. Economic benefits come from graduates with skills and knowledge to be flexible, adaptable and productive in a dynamic workplace. As high quality online education providers, Australian universities will be more competitive in the international education market. This project will raise the profile of Australian research and lead to new commercial ventures through the development of innovative technologies for online learning.Read moreRead less
Pedagogies for eLearning: A Critical Analysis of Strategies for Effective Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Teaching and Learning. This project will assess the potential benefits and weaknesses of 'elearning' in different subject areas and across a range of social settings (including socio-economic, gender and other critical aspects of learner diversity). It will trace the microdynamics of traditional classroom as contrasted with elearning, and develop models which most prod ....Pedagogies for eLearning: A Critical Analysis of Strategies for Effective Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Teaching and Learning. This project will assess the potential benefits and weaknesses of 'elearning' in different subject areas and across a range of social settings (including socio-economic, gender and other critical aspects of learner diversity). It will trace the microdynamics of traditional classroom as contrasted with elearning, and develop models which most productively exploit the educational potentials of elearning. No such direct comparisons of teaching and learning has been made before. The results will inform the development of learning environments which most effectively contribute to the formation of fully enabled members of the emerging 'knowledge society'.Read moreRead less
Beyond letters, numbers and screens: new basics, technologies, numeracy and early childhood education. This project will create detailed models of the 'New Basics' approach to teaching and learning numeracy using information technologies (IT). The models will provide springboards for action for Queensland and Australian teachers. The project will document how numeracy can be learned through IT to produce students who are more technologically aware and whose numeracy skills are enhanced. Resul ....Beyond letters, numbers and screens: new basics, technologies, numeracy and early childhood education. This project will create detailed models of the 'New Basics' approach to teaching and learning numeracy using information technologies (IT). The models will provide springboards for action for Queensland and Australian teachers. The project will document how numeracy can be learned through IT to produce students who are more technologically aware and whose numeracy skills are enhanced. Resulting data will inform the research and educational community about the cognitive and social aspects of young children learning numeracy through IT. The findings will be of strategic importance for planning educational opportunities to produce citizens of the 21st century.Read moreRead less
Becoming numerate with information technologies in early childhood education. This project will create a detailed model of teaching and learning in numeracy using information technologies (IT) that will act as springboards for action for Australian teachers. It will investigate and document the ways in which numeracy can be learned through IT to produce students who are more technologically aware. Resulting data will inform the research and educational community about the cognitive and social as ....Becoming numerate with information technologies in early childhood education. This project will create a detailed model of teaching and learning in numeracy using information technologies (IT) that will act as springboards for action for Australian teachers. It will investigate and document the ways in which numeracy can be learned through IT to produce students who are more technologically aware. Resulting data will inform the research and educational community about the cognitive and social aspects of young children learning numeracy using IT. In this way the findings will be of strategic importance for planning education opportunities to produce citizens of the 21st century.Read moreRead less
Literacy Teaching in the Changing Communications Environment: Reading and Writing Multimodal and Digital Texts. This project will make a contribution to the updating of literacy pedagogy to meet the needs of learners in a communications environment where digital and multimodal texts are of ever greater significance. It will attempt to develop a 'metalanguage', or educationally accessible way of talking about contemporary texts in the classroom context, which supplements and extends traditional g ....Literacy Teaching in the Changing Communications Environment: Reading and Writing Multimodal and Digital Texts. This project will make a contribution to the updating of literacy pedagogy to meet the needs of learners in a communications environment where digital and multimodal texts are of ever greater significance. It will attempt to develop a 'metalanguage', or educationally accessible way of talking about contemporary texts in the classroom context, which supplements and extends traditional grammatical and literary understandings of the written word. The purpose of this research will be to create a model of literacy teaching which is more relevant to the contemporary communications environment and which students find more engaging.Read moreRead less