Month: April 2017

Educational Research Design Module (Week 2)

The following is the research work I carried out on the week immediately after the class that took place on 25th April 2017.  I was interested in finding out about the Horizon 2020 Newton Project as I was aware that Dr. Ioana Ghergulescu, Head of Research and Adaptive Learning, Adaptemy was involved in this project.  Dr. Ghergulescu had previously advised me to read up on Professor Peter Brusilovsky’s work.

Horizon 2020 Newton Project
NEWTON is a large scale European-funded international project which involves 14 partners from 7 countries and is funded under Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (2016 – 2019).

NEWTON develops, integrates and disseminates innovative technology-enhanced learning (TEL) methods and tools, to create new or inter-connect existing state-of-the art teaching labs and to build a pan-European learning network platform that supports fast dissemination of learning content to a wide audience in a ubiquitous manner. NEWTON focuses on employing novel technologies in order to increase learner quality of experience, improve learning process and increase learning outcome.

CONTACTS

Contacts (DCU)
Dr. Gabriel-Miro Muntean
Tel: (01) 7007648
Email: gabriel.muntean@dcu.ie
Room: S326, Research & Engineering Building, School of Electronic Engineering.
http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~munteang

Contacts (NCI)
Dr. Cristina Muntean
Title: Project Principal Investigator (PI)
Tel: (01) 4498623
Email: cristina.muntean@ncirl.ie
Room: 3.16, Lecturer, School of Computing
https://www.ncirl.ie/Research/-Research-Projects/NEWTON-Project/NEWTON-Team-Members

Contacts (NCI)
Dr Pramod Pathak
Title: Project Co – Principal Investigator (Co-PI)
Tel: (01) 4498611
Email: pramod.pathak@ncirl.ie
Room: 3.22, Dean of School of Computing
https://www.ncirl.ie/Research/-Research-Projects/NEWTON-Project/NEWTON-Team-Members

Contacts (NCI)
Dr. Arghir Nicolae Moldovan
Title: Postdoctoral Researcher
Tel: (01) 4498209
Email: arghirnicolae.moldovan@ncirl.ie
Room: none, Lecturer, School of Computing
https://www.ncirl.ie/Research/-Research-Projects/NEWTON-Project/NEWTON-Team-Members

Contacts (NCI)
Ms Josephine Andrews
Title: Research Assistant
Tel: None
Email: josephine.andrews@ncirl.ie
Room: none, Research Assistant, School of Computing
https://www.ncirl.ie/Research/-Research-Projects/NEWTON-Project/NEWTON-Team-Members

Contacts (Adaptemy)
Dr. Ioana Ghergulescu
Title: ???
Tel: (076) 888 6150
Email: hello@adaptemy.com,
Room: none, Head of Research and Adaptive Learning
https://www.adaptemy.com/about-us/

Contacts (Adaptemy)
Mr. Conor O’Sullivan
Title: ???
Tel: (01) 76 888 6150
Email: hello@adaptemy.com,
Room: none, CEO
https://www.adaptemy.com/about-us/

LINKS

Horizon 2020
The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation
https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020

Enhancing STEM Education
http://horizon2020projects.com/pr-knowledge-innovation/enhancing-stem-education/

NEWTON About

About

NEWTON at INTED2017 with “A New Experiential Model to Innovate the STEM Learning Process” and “Review of Virtual Labs as the Emerging Technologies for Teaching STEM Subjects”
March 2017
http://www.newtonproject.eu/2017/03/

NEWTON Coordinator DCU Dr Gabriel-Miro on Finding the best user experience for rich media over wireless networks
February 2017

NEWTON Coordinator DCU Dr Gabriel-Miro on Finding the best user experience for rich media over wireless networks

NEWTON Mulsemedia-enhanced Teaching Laboratory Sessions
December 2016
http://www.newtonproject.eu/2016/12/

NEWTON at E-Learn 2016 with “An Evaluation Framework for Adaptive and Intelligent Tutoring Systems”
November 2016
www.newtonproject.eu/newton-at-e-learn-2016-with-an-evaluation-framework-for-adaptive-and-intelligent-tutoring-systems/

NEWTON at NCI
https://www.ncirl.ie/Research/-Research-Projects/Newton-Project

NEWTON Post-Doctoral Researcher Job Advert
https://www.ncirl.ie/About/Jobs-in-NCI/Current-Vacancies/Postdoctoral-Researcher-NEWTON-Project

NEWTON at DCU
https://www.dcu.ie/news/2016/mar/s0316h.shtml
https://www.dcu.ie/sites/default/files/hr/Postdoctoral%20Researcher%20Electronic%20Engineering1.pdf

NEWTON at Adaptemy
https://www.adaptemy.com/research/

Adaptemy
https://www.adaptemy.com

Adaptemy Junior Cert Maths Knowledge Map
https://www.adaptemy.com/junior-cert-maths-knowledge-map/

Adaptemy Science
https://www.adaptemy.com/adaptemy-science/

Adaptemy Job Advert for NEWTON
https://www.adaptemy.com/we-are-hiring-a-senior-researcher/
N.B. Research skills required in ‘Assessment and evaluation of learning effectiveness’

EmpowerThe User
(software to build learning simulations)
http://www.etu.ie/

Check out Adaptemy links with DCU, NCI, Learnovate, Folens and HORIZON project. Also Learnovate links with TCD, Professor Vincent Wade, Fallons. Also EmpowerThe User links with Professor Vincent Wade.

Home 2018

Check out Folen’s BuildUp software and find out if it was developed in conjunction with Adaptemy
https://www.buildup.ie/

NEWTON at NCI

NEWTON Project

NEWTON is a large scale European-funded international project which involves 14 partners from 7 countries and is funded under Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (2016 – 2019).

NEWTON develops, integrates and disseminates innovative technology-enhanced learning (TEL) methods and tools, to create new or inter-connect existing state-of-the art teaching labs and to build a pan-European learning network platform that supports fast dissemination of learning content to a wide audience in a ubiquitous manner. NEWTON focuses on employing novel technologies in order to increase learner quality of experience, improve learning process and increase learning outcome.

The NEWTON project goals are to:

develop and deploy a set of new TEL mechanisms involving multi-modal and multi-sensorial media distribution.
develop, integrate, deploy and disseminate state of the art technology-enhanced teaching methodologies including augmented reality, gamification and self-directed learning addressed to users from secondary and vocational schools, third level and further education, including students with physical disabilities.
build a large platform that links all stakeholders in education, enables content reuse, supports generation of new content, increases content exchange in diverse forms, develops and disseminates new teaching scenarios, and encourages new innovative businesses
perform personalisation and adaptation for content, delivery and presentation in order to increase learner quality of experience and to improve learning process, and validate the platform impact and the effectiveness of the teaching scenarios in terms of user satisfaction, improvement of the learning and teaching experience, etc. and the underlying technology through an European-wide real-life pilot

Newton at NCI
National College of Ireland is a partner for the NEWTON project and aims to:

contribute with innovative learning pedagogical methods that make use of technology when teaching STEM subjects in secondary schools and 3rd level education institutions.
research innovative multi-sensorial media (mulsemedia) content delivery solutions that make use of olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and thermoceptive sensations, and how these can be employed for learner benefit.
design and build User Models that support content personalisation and adaptation.
assess the learning performance and learner satisfaction as result of applying various pedagogical methods.

Novel concepts emerging from the performed research are validated experimentally by integrating them into the teaching and learning process of a number of subjects delivered in 3rd level educational institutions as well as secondary schools.

National College of Ireland is leading Work package 4 of the NEWTON project that has the following objectives:

to identify and investigate innovative pedagogical methods that can be used to teach STEM subjects
to propose a suite of teaching solutions that make use of technology enhanced teaching and learning approaches
technology-enhanced teaching and learning approaches that use:
augmented reality
gamification-based learning
self-directed learning and teaching methods
to define a link between virtual labs (WP2) and the proposed pedagogical methods

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 688503.

Educational Research Design Module (Week 2)

The following is a description of the Tuesday morning class that took place on 25th April 2017 from 10:00 to 13:00.

Description

THIS WEEK:  Research Questions (Part 1); Library (Part 2)

NOTES:  from today’s class…

PART 1

#LTTCRM = Twitter Feed

From research area to research question.

Research is about asking good questions

Good research is about asking better questions

When you’re reading papers, focus on what the author’s research question is.

Do I need a hypothesis?

No, it is not mandatory.

For each narrow research question, can you predict what is likely to be found.

Research Area = Adaptive Learning

Research Topic = Towards a domain model for secondary school mathematics

Research Question = 

Clear, focussed, complex,…..

Appropriate level of complexity.

Feasibility – do you have the resources, how long will the research take, can you obtain the permission if the necessary participants.

Use a question format (rather than a statement)

Making a strong research question

Do I know the field and its literature well?

What are the important research questions?

What areas need further exploration?

Could my study fill a gap?

Hourglass Model

Cough & Nutbrown, 2002, p.33-34

– Goldilocks Test: is the question too big, too small, too sensitive, what question would be just right?

– Russian Doll Principle: break down the research question from the original statement, get to the heart of the question

PART 2

Library – Roisin Guilfoyle (and Diana)

Devise search strategy

Find relevant information for your proposal

Evaluate your information

Set up an EndNote account.

Research – can be

=======

Theoretical

Empirical

Practice

Policy

Literature – can be

========

Published or unpublished

Peer reviewed or refereed by editor

Not reviewed

Community reviewed

Not always scholarly

Types of Literature

==============

Books

Journal Articles

Reports

Official Publications

Conference Proceedings

Grey Literature

Websites

Theses

Popular Media (Newspapers, magazines, etc)

Literature and Your Proposal (2,500 to 3,000 words)

======================================

Proposal heading

Introduction – Possible sources (Books, grey literature, journal articles,

Context and rationale for research

Chapter 1 – Aim of the research and research objectives

Chapter 2 – Literature Review – critical – Possible sources (Books, journal articles, reports, official publications, ……

Chapter 3 – Research Design – Possible sources (Books, journal articles, conference proceedings, theses)

* Theoretical Perspective

* Methodology

* Methods

Ethical Considerations – Possible sources (Books, DIT policy

Delimitations and limitations and outline of timescales/research plan

Beginning to search

===============

– Background reading

– Define your topic

– Identify concepts/keywords (very important)

– Narrow/broaden focus

Example – the highest level of abstraction

– Formative assessment of first year university students

– formative assessment of university students

– assessment of university students

How to narrow the focus of a subject

===========================

The experience of part time postgraduate students in using electronic library resources during their first year.

Tips on topic selection

================

– You can research one or two aspects of a larger subject/topic

– You should make a list of keywords

– ??????????

Finding alternative keywords

=====================

Thesaurus/Dictionaries

Tips for searching with Keywords

Find alternative keywords

Link terms with Boolean search operators (AND/OR/NOT)

Use advanced search features

Don’t use generic terms, sentences

Keep a research log

Evaluate results

– relevance

– quality

Databases

========

Subject Gateways

A – Z by Subject

Education

Australian (distance learning)

Science Direct

ERIC

myendnoteweb.com

Educational Research Design Module (Week 1)

The following is the homework I carried out on the week immediately after the class that took place on 4th April 2017.

Paper 1 – Introduction
The first paper I used for this week’s homework was written by Professor Vincent Wade (TCD) et al.  I consider it to be a an important paper as it reviewed a number of authoring systems for adaptive learning and personalisation as well as looking at the obstacles to the mainstream adoption of these technologies.

Reference
O’Donnell, E., Lawless, S., Sharp, M., & Wade, V. (2015). A review of personalised e-learning: Towards supporting learner diversity.  Retrieved April 18, 2017, from http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/73933/odonnell_IJDET%2013%281%29%20article.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Definition
The authors define personalisation as the provision of “…each user of a system or the World Wide Web (WWW) with content or an experience which has been tailored to suit their specific needs based on implicit or explicit information about that user…”

Summary
This paper is a review of personalised e-learning, with an impressive reference list of 113 books, articles and web sites spanning 15 years from 1999 to 2013.  It examines some of the technological challenges which software developers may encounter in creating authoring tools for personalised e-learning. It also looks at some of the pedagogical challenges which authors face when creating personalised e-learning activities for students.

Argument that is presented
One of the arguments presented is that learners retain and understand information better by doing something active with it and that the creation of personalised e-learning activities may facilitate active learning.

What I learned from it
That the usability of authoring tools needs to be improved in order to facilitate personalised e-learning.  An ‘adaptive engine’ adapts or dynamically generates the content so that individual users have different learning pathways.

Weakness of one conclusion
The authors refer to an ‘old’ 2005 paper that states that adaptive technologies have only been tested in lab experiments and not by (many) academics.  

How this paper will influence my research proposal
It has focussed my attention on some of the important issues that needs to be addressed before even attempting to design for adaptive learning.

Paper 2 – Introduction
The second paper I used for this week’s homework was written by Professor Peter Brusilovsky (University of Pittsburgh) and his co-author Eva Millán (University of Malaga).  This is considered to be a seminal paper in the field of user modelling.

Reference
Brusilovsky, P., & Millán, E. (2007). User models for adaptive hypermedia and adaptive educational systems. In The adaptive web (pp. 3-53). Springer-Verlag. Retrieved April 18, 2017, from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5cfe/fc79fb172d79c86c17dd2dc1fb6c18786666.pdf

Definition
The user model is a representation of information about an individual user that is essential for an adaptive system to provide the adaptation effect, i.e., to behave differently for different users.

Summary
This paper, which has had 788 academic citations to date, examines the modern approach to user model representation which is called feature-based modelling. This approach attempts to model specific features of individual users such as knowledge and goals.  The older stereotype modelling attempted to cluster all possible users of an adaptive system into several groups called stereotypes.

Argument that is presented
Overlays can be used for user features such as knowledge and interests.  The overlay approach to knowledge modelling uses the domain model and the overlay knowledge model.  The domain model breaks down the body of knowledge about the domain into a set of domain knowledge elements. The overlay knowledge model organises that for each domain model concept, the knowledge component of the user model stores some data that is an estimation of the user knowledge level of this concept.

What I learned from it
I became aware of the five most popular and useful features of the user as an individual are: knowledge, interests, goals, background, individual traits.  These features should be considered when designing for adaptive learning.

How this paper will influence my research proposal
An extension of the overlay knowledge model is a layered model that stores several values to represent user knowledge of each concept.  For example, the system may choose to store separately the levels of user knowledge corresponding to different levels of concept mastery such as Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.  I had previously discussed incorporating Bloom’s Taxonomy in a meeting with Dr. Ioana Ghergulescu, Head of Research and Adaptive Learning with Adaptemy on 13/04/17.

Research Topic
Currently, there is a lot of interest, both academically and commercially, in the field of adaptive learning.  The Horizon 2020 NEWTON project began on 01/03/16 and one its goals is to perform personalisation and adaptation for content, delivery and presentation in order to increase learner quality of experience and to improve learning process.  Three of the fourteen partners are from Ireland:  DCU, NCI and Adaptemy.

My research proposal will be in the area of adaptive learning and personalisation.  Adaptive learning systems are usually divided into separate components or models including domain model (field knowledge), user model (learner profile) and teaching model (pedagogical rules).  I am considering designing and evaluating multi-layered domain and user models and possibly a teaching model, for a well defined part of the Irish second level school curriculum for Mathematics, e.g. functions at Leaving Certificate Ordinary Level.  The final design would be a multilayered network of nodes (knowledge components) and links (connecting these knowledge components) created using graph visualisation/network diagram software such as Graphviz or Microsoft Visio.

Educational Research Design Module (Week 1)

The following is a description of the Tuesday morning class that took place on 4th April 2017 from 10:00 to 13:00.

Description

THIS WEEK:  Role of Research and Role of the Researcher

NOTES:  from today’s class…

Introducing the Module

10 ECTS

8 weeks

Research Proposal for Assessment

The Handbook…

Role of Research

What is Research?

US

– Body of material

– Hypothesis/Thesis

– Noun or Verb

– Literature

– Methodology

– Discovery

– Ethical

THE BOOKS

…the systematic, controlled, empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical propositions about the presumed relations among natural phenomena.

Cohen & Mannion (2007)

What does Research Do?

– Asks questions

– Examines Policy/Practice

– Provides Solutions

– Creates Questions

-Tests Hypotheses

What Makes Good Research

– Relevant

– Unbiased

– Clear Objectives

– Ethical

– Theoretical Background

– Verifiable

– Organised

– Concise

– Can be built on

Who Does Research

– Everybody

– In education, undergraduates and postgraduates

– Professional Researchers

What is Educational Research?

…the collection and analysis of information on the world of education so as to understand it and explain it better.

Opine, 2007 p.3

Role of Your Research

What’s my goal?

Ans. To bring about change in my area of teaching.

What can I get from the process?

How can other’s potentially benefit from my research?

Role of Researcher during the Research Process

– Research Proposal

– Introduction

– Literature Review

– Research Design and Methodology

– Data/Findings

– Conclusions

– Interpreter

– Interviewer

– Listener Proofreader

– Creator

– Administrator

– Decision Maker

– Writer

– Authority

– Reviewer

– Ethics Guardian

– Reflector

– Observer

The 

Paper (Say on effects/supports provided by the artefact)

Artefact (say website for teachers)

EPortfolio

Ontology and Epistemology

Ontology – knowledge that’s out there to be known (all the stars)

Epistemology – how we are going to come to know about it (use a telescope)

Ontology – Definition…..

Epistemology – 

O’Leary, 2010, p.5

Ontology – What’s out there to know?

Epistemology – How can we know about it

Methodology – How can we go about acquiring that knowledge?

Methods – Which precise procedures can we use to acquire it

Sources – Which data can we collect?

Figure 1:  The interrelationship between the building blocks of research

Source:  Figure adapted from Hay, 2002, p.64

Subjective-Objective Dimension

A scheme for analysing assumptions about the nature of social science

The Subjectivist

– Nominalism

– Interptretivism-Anti-Positivisn

– Voluntarism

– Idiographic

The Objectivist

– 

–

–

–

Cohen & Mannion quoting Burrell

Four “Worldviews”

Postpositivism

– Determination

– Reductionism

– Empirical observation and measurement

– theory verification

Constructivism

– Understanding

– Multiple participant meanings

Transformative

– 

Pragmatism

– Consequences of actions

– Problem- centred

– Pluralistic

Creswell 2014, p.6

Framework for Research

Postpostivist => Quantitative

Constructivist => Qualitative

Research Methods

Questions

Data Collection

…plus 2 others?

Paradigms and Paradigm Wars

Qualitative v Quantitative

Quantitative Purists: We can observe objectively, measure, analyse and determine reliable and valid outcomes

Qualitative Purists:  It is not possible nor desirable to research objectively, multiple realities constructed by individuals

Theoretical Perspectives

As an educational researcher you need to be aware of your perspective…

– What assumptions might you be making?

– What is your “home” discipline telling you and is it different to what you are investigating here?

What might be the connections with learning theories?

Researching with people?

Your Research in Practice

RESEARCH IS THINKING WORK

Focus shifts from design/disciplinary tradition to the research question

What is the best (mix) of methods we can use to answer that question?

The Research and Writing Process

Research is not necessarily a linear process

Step 1 => Step 2 => Step 3 => Step 4

Ideas, Drafting

Your Approach will Depend on your Preference

– Linear

– Mindmap

– Coming up with an idea, writing, showing it to others, rewriting

– Weaving