VIII eMadrid Workshop on "Cyberlearning"

1. Marcelo Milrad
Madrid, July 3, 2018
Pedagogical Approaches and Digital
Technologies to Promote Creativity,
Collaboration and Critical
Thinking among Students and Teachers:
Challenges and Perspectives

2. Agenda••• Short about ourselves and our environment• The rationale of this talk• Defining the problem• Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL):a retrospective view and current status• Examples from our projects• Conclusion and Challenges• Questions•

5. Short about LNU
• Linnaeus University (34000
students, 30% distance
students) http://lnu.se/?l=en
• An attractive international
learning and research environ
ment promoting curiosity,
creativity, companionship and
usefulness
• Place where Carl Linnaeus
grew up
• VXO: one of the greenest
cities of Europe

6. CeLeKT: Current Research Focus
Our research activities are focused on:• The design and development of mobile systems, socialmedia and web 2.0 applications and tools to supportcollaborative learning and intellectual work.• The design and development of innovative web andmobile services within the fields health care andenvironmental science.• Interplay between people, services and interactivetechnologies.•••

7. The rationale of this talk: setting the stage

8. The Rationale of this Talk
A collective intellectual exercise to critical reflect upon
our own practices in order to better understand how
through research and novel practices of Technology
Enhanced Learning (TEL) we can address some of the
problems our educational systems are facing.
See also Sir Ken Robinson´s TED talk on “Changing
Educations Paradigms” at:
https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms

9. 21st Century Skills & Innovation for
Learners & Teachers
Scaramalia, M,. et al. (2010). New Assessments and Environments for Knowledge Building, ATCS -
Assessment & Teaching of 21ST Century Skills, University of Melbourne, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft,

10. The old learning gap
Computer
Classroom
Traditional
Classroom
Source: Sharples (2008)
Background

11. Slow changeFast change
ClassroomInformal
The new learning gap
Source: Sharples (2008)
Motivation

12. Visions: Back to the Future

13. Back to the Future …
From Technology Driven to
Educational Process Oriented

14. Examples and demonstrations
I. Geometry Mobile (GEM)
II. LETS GO (Environmental Science)
III: Reaching for the Stars / Computational Thinking

15. GeM: Learning Geometry in “the Wild”

16. GeM Background
• Value of mathematical knowledge in everyday
life
• Concerned with supporting and enhancing
collaboration between learners to create
learning spaces outside and in the classroom.
• A design-based research approach to designing,
developing and implementing ICT innovation in
schools
• Geometry Mobile (GeM) is part of a 8 years

17. Task: Estimate the heights of the buildings

18. An Activity with Four Connected Tasks
Presentation
and discussion
Answer questions
Take pictures
Record sound
Self-regulated
outdoor activity
Introduction and
instrumentation
Problem-solving
with AR

19. Instructions for the outdoor tasks
Choose answer
(multiple-choice)
Take two pictures of each house
Record your strategy (1 minute)
Estimate the height of the buildings

20. Next: Video from the trial
The video illustrates how the activity addresses the following
goals in the Swedish curriculum for compulsory school:
•Mathematical reasoning
•Logical argumentation
•Collaborative problem solving
•Communicate solution methods and conclusions (in real life as
well as mathematical contexts)

22. Transitions Supported by ICT tools
In our learning activity, mobile and web technologies support
transitions between outdoor and indoor learning contexts.
geo-tagged digital content
Rich multimodal presentation
in the classroom
Self-regulate
d
outdoor task
pictures
sound

23. Research Questions
1) Did the provided scaffolds – the immediate outdoor setting,
natural physical references, activity prompts – enhance the
students’ reasoning and the didactical quality of the voice
recorded strategies?
Furthermore, as we make use of design-based research as a
methodological framework, we also address the following
research question:
2) Which specific design issues should be particularly considered
during the next iteration(s) of the design in order to enhance
the learning trajectories within the activity?

25. LETS GO Partners

26. Philosophy of LETS GO
• Learning science by doing science with inquiry cycles - which
include…
• Seeding learning with powerful ideas & scripts that launch
inquiries
• Inviting & supporting learners‘ open-ended questions
• Guided team field investigations for collaborative inquiry –
division of labor and role rotation fosters deeper
understanding of conduct of science by fostering learning
conversations and activity coordinations
• Reflection: Data analysis and pattern finding - Learning to use
multiple representations (graphs, maps, data tables, statistics,
text…) for asking and answering questions and making
scientific arguments from data

27. Teachers´ Workshop in Sweden: November
2008

29. The Web Visualization Tool

30. Sustainability in TEL
1) The word sustainability is derived from the Latin sustinere (tenere, to
hold; sus, up). In a general sense, Sustainability is the capacity of a system to
support, maintain or endure.
2) Research efforts in the field have seldom reported on problems and limitations
while introducing and adopting new technologies in education or, on different
types of barriers or constraints the use of mobile devices faces in every
educational settings (Pargman & Milrad, 2015).
3) Educational systems have problems to adopt and scale up technology-based
innovations (in many cases lack of policies, OECD, 2010)
4) Research versus policy driven innovation.
5) Different sustainability components (Ng & Nicholas, 2012; Khaddage et al.,
2015)

31. Reaching for the stars
http://motnyahojder.com/

32. Our Vision…
• …to increase interest for Science,
Technology, Maths and Engineering
(STEM) related topics among students all
ages (addressing the points discussed
earlier)
•
• … to find new venues and novel ways of
cooperation between schools and
industry
•
• … inspire for innovations for the region´s
companies
•
• … meet the forecoming challenges of
skill´s supply for the region and the
country. ”Develop bright minds for
solving hard core future problems and
challenges”
●

33. From the start we have
• Presented three challenges per semester
including scientific experiments, technical
designs and group activities
• Worked with digital tools and methods
as well as simple coding
•
• Had an average of 4200 students per
semester participating in these activities
•
• 300 companies involved
•
• Provided solutions and rich media content
through more than 200 class blogs

34. The themes…
• Explore space! (2015)
•
• Make IT happen! (2016 spring)
•
• Make sound happen! (2016 fall)
•
• Make IT move (2017 )

35. Reaching for the stars – the map
Jusufi, I., Milrad, M., & Legaspi, X. (2016). Interactive Exploration of Student Generated Content
presented in Blogs. In The 18th EG/VGTC Conference on Visualization (EuroVis' 16), Groningen,
The Netherlands, 6-10 June, 2016 (pp. 53-55). Eurographics-European Association for Computer
Graphics.

36. What are the teachers saying?
Evaluation Fall 2016
Do you think that students' attitude
to the STEM related topics were
positively affected by their
engagement in ”Reaching for the
stars”?
yes no don´t know
(70,5%) (4,9%) (24,65)
Response rate: 92,4% (61/66)

37. Have the challenges
presented in ”Reaching
for the stars” and their
content generated new
competencies for you as
a teacher?
What are the teachers saying?
Evaluation Fall 2016
Response rate: 92,4% (61/66)
yes no
(83,6%) (16,4%)

39. Maker Tour Spring 2016

40. Programming in schools

41. Programming in schools

42. On-Going Efforts
•More teacher´s workshops on this topic•Three 7,5 ECTS university courses for “In serviceteachers” (Fall 2017 and Fall 2018)•https://vimeo.com/channels/1me150ht17/page:4•Follow up R&D together with teachers inspired onthe “Living Lab” concept•https://vimeo.com/channels/1371487•Since this Spring, a new National 4 years R&Dinitiative in 3 regions reaching more than 30000children

43. On-Going Efforts: ”Our vision”
“Together we will design, develop and use
different ICT tools and methods that will
shape the schools of tomorrow in order to
promote students´ curiosity and critical
thinking, as well as to increase teachers
´professional knowledge thus improving the
overall quality of our educational system."

44. Sustainable Educational Innovation
How should learning activities supported by novel
ICT tools and tools be conceptualized, designed,
deployed and evaluated in order to sustain
innovative educational practices in
schools/universities?
●

45. Conclusions & Challenges
• Changing learning conditions including new roles and
obligations for educators and students
• The ecological paradigm shift. The ecosystem
perspective on the learning environments
(Colpaert, 2012).
• There is a need for creating new collaboration spaces
between different stakeholders
• Research and implementation challenges in terms of
design, implementation and evaluation methods
(multidisciplinary research perspectives and large
scale piloting )
• Beyond innovation: sustainable collaborative informati
and knowledge ecosystems.

46. Conclusions & Challenges
“There is a need to know more about how
governments (and educational agencies) promote,
monitor, evaluate and scale up successful
technology-based or supported innovations, paying
particular attention to the role played by research,
monitoring and evaluation, and the resulting
knowledge base, both at national and international
level.” (OECD, 2010).

47. Recent Related Publications
Cerratto-Pargman, T. & Milrad, M. (2016). Beyond Innovation in mobile Learning: Towards Sustainability in Schools. Book
chapter in Mobile Learning: The Next Generation. Edited by Traxler, J. and Kukulska-Hulme, A. Routledge, pp 154-178
Jusufi, I., Milrad, M., & Legaspi, X. (2016). Interactive Exploration of Student Generated Content presented in Blogs. In The
18th EG/VGTC Conference on Visualization (EuroVis' 16), Groningen, The Netherlands, 6-10 June, 2016 (pp. 53-55).
Eurographics-European Association for Computer Graphics.
Nordmark, S, & Milrad, M. (2015). Tell Your Story About History: A Mobile Seamless Learning Approach to Support
Mobile Digital Storytelling (mDS). Book chapter in Seamless Learning in the Age of Mobile Connectivity. Springer,
Singapore, pp 353-376.
Sollervall, H. & Milrad, M. (2015). Designing with mobile technologies for enabling transitions across mathematical
contexts. Book chapter in Mobile Learning and Mathematics, Edited by Traxler, J. & Compton, H. Routldege, pp 71-85
Zbick, J., Nake, I., Milrad, M., & Jansen, M. (2015). A web-based framework to design and deploy mobile learning activities:
Evaluating its usability, learnability and acceptance. In Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), 2015 IEEE 15th
International Conference on (pp. 88-92). IEEE. Press
Gil de la Iglesia, D., Calderon, J., Weyns, D., Milrad, M., & Nussbaum Voehl, M. (2015) A Self-Adaptive MultiAgent System
Approach for Collaborative Mobile Learning. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies. Vol 8, issue 2. DOI:
10.1109/TLT.2014.2367493
Vogel, B., Kurti, A., Milrad, M., Johansson, E., & Müller, M. (2014). Mobile Inquiry Learning in Sweden: Development
Insights on Interoperability, Extensibility and Sustainability of the LETS GO Software System. Educational Technology &
Society, 17 (2), 43–57.

48. “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution,
which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill”.
- Albert Einstein
…and More New
Challenges

49. Contact Information
●
Dr. Marcelo Milrad, Professor & Vice-Dean of Digitalization
Department of Computer Science & Media Technology
Linnaeus University
351 95, Växjö, Sweden
E-mail: marcelo.milrad@lnu.se
https://lnu.se/en/staff/marcelo.milrad/
A special thank you goes to all members of CeLeKT