www.assess2learn.com.au

Session 2 - Learning, Design and Technology in Schools, Skills Training and Higher Education

Developmental evaluation and the experience API

Professor Robert Fitzgerald

www.assess2learn.com.au

Learning, design and technology: Developmental evaluation and the

experience API

Professor Robert FitzgeraldFaculty of Education, Science, Education and Technology, University of Canberra

Rethinking Assessment and Learning, GLOBAL MINDSET, Australian Technology Park, Sydney, 29 October, 2014

INNOVATION RESEARCH EDUCATION

• Design Thinking & STEM education

• Next practice learning & design• Mastery pedagogies • Augmented reality• Location based education

services

• ICT4D – Pakistan & Cambodia• Google Glass & Wearables• National mentoring for Maths &

Science teachers• The Experience API

http://www.ideo.com

http://www.tpck.org

INSPIRE: Research, Education & Innovation

Educational challenges

• The “new normal” of increasing demand, diminishing resources, increased expectations and constant change

• Widespread consensus that graduates are not well prepared for the world of work and subsequent lifelong learning (AAEG, 2011; Candy, 1991; Candy, Crebert & O’Leary, 1994; Oliver, 2011; Shah & Nair, 2011)

• John Seely Brown argues we need to radically shift the focus of education from the development of skills & knowledge, to the cultivation of mindsets and dispositions (Thomas & Brown, 2011)

Source: OECD Education

• Emerging forms of interactive media and information communication technology are reshaping almost every aspect of our work and social life; Boundaries are blurring

• New practices and literacies are emerging from digital communications and culture that challenge our traditional ideas about the form and function of communication, learning and education

• Technology is more than just a ‘tool’ but an evocative ‘object to think with’ and an engine of social and cultural change; Change is ecological not additive

• Design thinking: New opportunities for participation and interaction arise from communities of interest where users are active designers & content creators re-mixing, re-purposing and re-distributing content

Technology futures

A lesson: ICT benefits depend on “capital”

Capital = skills, interests, attitudes, resources

scIence

Source: www.oecd.org

The capital gap

The barriers to transformation are not "conceptual, technical, or economic. The primary barriers are psychological, political, and cultural. We now have all the means necessary to implement effective educational models that can prepare all students for a future very different from the immediate past. Whether we have the professional commitment and the societal will to actualize such a vision remains to be seen.”

Dede et al (2013) Educause Review

• We know that feedback is the most effective way of improving student learning (Hattie, 2009)

• Forms of Evaluation - Formative, Summative & Developmental (Patton, 2011)

• Summative and formative evaluation are most often used to examine established programs

• Developmental Evaluation (DE) is well-suited to emergent or developing systems

• DE is a design-based research tool for understanding innovation and change in educational systems

• Salient features– engage in simulations and/or rapid reconnaissance – deploy tools that develop maps of the territory; and– allow for revised and emergent modelling (Patton, 2011)

Feedback - Learning, change & evaluation

• ‘What? So What? Now What? (Gamble, 2008, p. 47)• Learning & change should be expansive and transferable

and not limited to contemporaneous testing (Engeström, 2006; Wiggins & McTighe, 2011, p. 5)

• The theoretical perspectives draws on Vygotsky (1978), Activity Theory (Engestrom, 2001), Variation Theory (Marton & Tsui, 2004) and the concept of Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991)

• Towards a Technology Assisted Developmental Evaluation (TADE) framework that helps teachers and institutions with their data work in ways that support educational decision making in a practical and accessible form (Leonard, Fitzgerald & Bacon [under review])

• “A system is not the sum of its parts, but rather, the product of the interaction of the parts” (Russell Ackoff)

Technology Assisted Developmental Evaluation

Bernhardt, V. (2004). Data analysis for continuous school improvement (2nd ed.). Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Learning everywhere

Source: tincanapi.com/overview

Source: www.brightcookie.com

INSPIREx: A data-driven educational environment based on Experience API

Source: www.brightcookie.com

INSPIREx learning ecology

Personalised learning & The Quantified Self

Source: economist.com

Source: www.cnet.com/news/lumosity-vs-elevate-brain-training-apps

Data for the learner

• Quantified Self goes to school– self-knowledge through self-tracking– designing self-experiments

• What does an increasing personalisation of education and learning mean for learners, teachers, institutions?

• Implications for research – develop repeated measures and single subject designs

• What changes are required when we shift from data about the learner to data for the learner?

• How do we develop hindsight, oversight, foresight, insight in these new data rich environments?

• What happens when learners tell ‘us’ when they are ready for learning?

Rob Fitzgeraldrobert.fitzgerald@canberra.edu.auTwitter: @rfitzgerald

INSPIREWebsite: inspire.edu.auFacebook: www.facebook.com/inspiredu2Twitter: @inspiredu2