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John Cook has been invited to talk at a HALE Staff Development event
John has been invited to talk at a Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Languages and Education (HALE) Blended Learning Staff Development event. All staff are warmly invited to the following presentation:
Title: ‘Technology Enhanced Learning Research: Seven things to remember (plus or minus two)!’
Time: 1pm to 2pm, Thursday 25 March
Venue: T1-20 (Staff Café), Tower Building, North Campus

Andrew Ravenscroft invited to join ECOM&EGOV'10 conference committee
Andrew has been invited on to the conference Program Committee for 10th International Multidisciplinary Conference on e-Commerce and e-Government, ECOM&EGOV'10 http://www.imcsit.org/pg/347/272 18/3/10

OER10 Conference, Cambridge, March 22-24
The following papers are being presented by LTRI members at the OER10 Conference in Cambridge, March 22-24.
> Greaves, L., Roller, S., and Bradley, C. 2010 Repurposing with a purpose - a story with a happy ending.
> Doherty, T., Holley, D. and Boyle, T. 2010. Opening up special collections: the use of GLO Maker with resources from the Women's Library.
> Qi, M. and Boyle, T. 2010. Dimensions of culturally sensitive factors in the design and development of learning Objects.
For details see http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer10/index.html

Carl Smith on mobile learning panel
Carl has been invited onto the panel 'How Can We Exploit Mobile Data To Customise Learning Based On A Student’s Environmental Surroundings?' at this years IADIS Mobile Learning Conference, to be held in Porto, Portugal on March 20th.

In particular, the panel will discuss the following key questions:
• What patterns can be identified in mobile data in order to develop
complex and authentic learner profiles?
• What patterns can be identified in mobile data to better understand
students’ learning processes and patterns beyond school hours?
• What opportunities exist for intelligent systems to create new
relationships between informal learning and existing curriculum?
• How may these new relationships impact upon what are thought of as best practices in teaching?

Panel members will come from a range of disciplines including education, interaction design, information systems and industry. Further information: http://www.mlearning-conf.org/panel.asp

John Cook invited to serve on the ESRC Peer Review College
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is currently in the process of establishing a new Peer Review College as part of its Peer Review Process. John Cook has been nominated by ALT to serve on the College and following a selection procedure, the ESRC has subsequently invited John to serve on the prestigious College as an Academic Reviewer. 17/3/10

Article on LTRI mobile learning project in LMBS Research Newsletter
There is an article on the university-funded project led by Claire Bradley and Dr Debbie Holley in the latest edition of the London Metropolitan Business School Research Newsletter. The project is entitled 'Making the most of my space': Students use of mobile phones for studying and note making. The project is funded by the Write Now and Learn Higher CETLs and CAPD. See Newsletter 17/3/10

Mobile technology seminar, 31/3/2010
Tamsin Treasure-Jones from the ALPS CETL will be visiting LTRI in Shoreditch and giving a seminar on 31 March.
Talk: ALPS Mobile Technology
Date: 31 March; 1.30 - 2.30
By: Tamsin Treasure-Jones, Mobile Technologies Project Manager, ALPS CETL [http://www.alps-cetl.ac.uk/ALPS.html] 9/3/10

New journal article published by John Cook and colleagues
Title: Appropriation of Mobile Cultural Resources for Learning
Authors: Norbert Pachler (Institute of Education, UK); John Cook (London Metropolitan University, UK); Ben Bachmair (University of Kassel, Germany) International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 2(1), 1-21. For journal details see here
Abstract: This article proposes appropriation as the key for the recognition of mobile devices — as well as the artefacts accessed through, and produced with them — as cultural resources across different cultural practices of use, in everyday life and formal education. The article analyses the interrelationship of users of mobile devices with the structures, agency and practices of, and in relation to what the authors call the “mobile complex”. Two examples are presented and some curricular options for the assimilation of mobile devices into settings of formal learning are discussed. Also, a typology of appropriation is presented that serves as an explanatory, analytical frame and starting point for a discussion about attendant issues. 4/3/10

Paper and symposium accepted for Ed-Media conference 2010
Paper:
Ravenscroft, A. & Boyle, T. (2010). Deep Learning Design for Technology Enhanced Learning, Full Paper Accepted for International Conference on Educational Media (Ed-Media) 2010, Toronto, June 29-July 2 2010. See paper
Symposium, organised by:
Ravenscroft, A., Warburton, S. & Hatzipanagos, S. (2010). Design perspectives for learning with social media: Reconciling informal and formal learning through Web 2.0? Symposium Accepted for International Conference on Educational Media (Ed-Media) 2010, Toronto, June 29-July 2 2010. See paper
We have also gained approval for a Special Issue of JCAL to come out of the Symposia, that John Cook is also contributing to. 3/3/10

Paper accepted for ICALT 2010
Andrew Ravenscroft has a full paper accepted for ICALT 2010, authored with MATURE colleagues:
Ravenscroft, A., Braun, S. & Nelker, T. (2010). Combining Dialogue and Semantics for Learning and Knowledge Maturing: Developing Collaborative Understanding in the ‘Web 2.0 Workplace’, Full Paper Accepted for International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT) 2010, July 5-7, 2010, Sousse, Tunisia. 3/3/10

John Cook is a facilitator at the ALT Research Symposium, 5/3/10
In his capacity as Chair of ALT's Research Committee John Cook is one of the facilitators at the ALT Research Symposium on 5 Mar 2010 at the London Knowledge Lab. The aim of the day is to produce a shared “Manifesto for Learning Technology” with a subsidiary aim of producing a list of key points for inclusion into a development programme for new researchers in the LT field. There will be 20-25 participants from TEL-TLRP, ALT, Capital, and Becta. Outcomes will be of interest to the Deep Learning Design concept and for new researchers across London Met in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning. 2/3/2010

Carl Smith invited to give workshop at IoE, 9/3/2010
Carl has been invited to give a two hour workshop for the Visual and Multimodal Research Forum at the Institute of Education on 9th March from 1pm to 3pm.
Title: Learning encounters with new forms of educational experience
Description: The workshop will be jointly run with Arthur Male at the Institute of Education. The aim of the workshop is to enable staff and student participants to view their experience in doctoral school in a new way by means of various activities and media. Staff and student colleagues will interact and work together linking collaborative conversations, supervisory relationships, community participation, courses, seminars and conferences, warranting authorities, universal wisdom and evidentiary presentations to craft feedback and associations into a doctoral thesis. Research journeys are individually scripted scenarios screening personal quests for originality. 26/2/10

Faculty of Computing Research Seminar, Wednesday, 03/03/2010, 13:00, T9-05 (North Campus), with Prof John Cook
John has been invited to give a seminar to the University's Faculty of Computing Research Seminar on March 3. The title of the seminar is 'Mobile Phones as Mediating Tools Within Augmented Contexts for Development'. Abstract | Slides

Carl Smith has paper accepted for the EVA conference
For the third year running Carl Smith has had a full paper accepted for the EVA conference. The paper details are: Smith, C. (2010). Augmenting the Knowledge Manifold using the World as an Interface. Full paper accepted for the annual Electronic Visualisation and the Arts conference. The conference will be held at the British Computer Society, London, 5-7 July, 2010. Further details: http://www.eva-conferences.com/eva_london/2010_home 16/2/10

John Cook invited onto workshop program committee
John Cook and Carl Smith have been invited onto the "Using Microblogging to enhance communication within Communities of Practice (MicroECoP)" workshop program committee. To submit see http://bit.ly/9ofx3O #microecop. This workshop is part of the WCC 2010 conference [http://wcc2010.org/], to be held in Brisbane, September 2010. 11/2/09

John Cook has journal paper accepted
John Cook has had a paper accepted on what he describes as "my recent 'big idea' and a significant contribution to LTRI's Deep Learning Design initiative". The paper details are: Cook, J. (2010). Mobile Phones as Mediating Tools Within Augmented Contexts for Development. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning. Due March. 3/2/10

Tom Boyle has journal paper published
Boyle T. (2010) Layered learning design: towards an integration of learning design and learning object perspectives. Computers & Education, Learning in Digital Worlds: Selected Contributions from the CAL 09 Conference, 54, 3, 661-668. 2/2/10

Invited talk at Southampton University
Andrew Ravenscroft has been invited to give a talk and explore collaborations with the Learning Societies Lab in the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University, see: http://www.lsl.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ The talk is on the 3 March and entitled: ‘Dialogue, Semantics and Deep Learning Design for TEL: Towards a 'smarter' web?’ 1/2/10

CONTSENS Project completed
The EU-funded project ‘Using wireless technologies for context sensitive education and training’ ended at the end of December 2009. The project partnership (consisting of Ericsson Education Ireland, Giunti Labs, ECLO, Plovdiv University & Corvinno) has developed a number of training/learning materials for mobile learning enhanced by context sensitive and location based delivery. LTRI members John Cook, Carl Smith and Claire Bradley worked on the project and between them have generated 34 publications and presentations on the work. For details see the project page
The project website with more details and access to the project's outputs is here

Invited talk by John Cook
John Cook has been invited to give a talk to the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Languages and Education (HALE, London Met) as part of their Blended Learning Staff Development Programme.
Title: "Technology Enhanced Learning Research: Seven things to remember (plus or minus two)!"
Date: Tuesday 23 March, 1-2pm 22/1/10

John Cook invited onto Editorial Board
John has been invited to join the Editorial Board of 'International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments' (IJVPLE) "The mission of the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments (IJVPLE) is to study and disseminate research about the design, development, and evaluation of online learning environments. IJVPLE is committed to encouraging the best teaching and learning practices by examining the role of technology enhanced learning in the emerging area of virtual and personal learning environments." https://igi-pub.com/journals/details.asp?ID=33046&v=mission 22/1/10

Andrew Ravenscroft invited onto Program Committees
Andrew has been invited on to the Program Committees for the following two conferences:
Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2010 (ITS 2010), see http://sites.google.com/site/its2010home/
IADIS e-learning 2010, see http://www.elearning-conf.org/ 22/1/10

Carl Smith to give seminars
Carl has been invited to give an extended seminar ‘Augmenting the formation of Knowledge using the World as an Interface’ at the Open University's TLRG (Technology and Learning Research Group) & CALRG (Computers and Learning Research Group) research groups at the Institute of Educational Technology on the 27th January. Further Information: http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/news.cfm?newsstrandid=1

Carl has been invited to give a ‘Research Matters’ seminar at Anglia Ruskin University on ‘Accessing and Augmenting the Context of Urban Education using Mixed Reality Techniques’. Research Matters seminars are structured presentations in which individuals present their research findings or research in progress. The seminar will run from 4.30pm to 6pm and will held at the Chelmsford campus on the 10th June. Further Information here: 12/1/10

New book on mobile learning
John Cook has a new book on mobile learning published this month by Springer. The book is co-authored with colleagues from the London Mobile Learning Group (http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/). For publishers page see http://bit.ly/7i5asL
Details: Mobile Learning: Structures, Agency, Practices. Pachler, Norbert, Bachmair, Ben, Cook, John 2010, XXI, 382 p., Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4419-0584-0 4/1/10

Carl Smith awarded scholarship
Carl Smith has been awarded a scholarship to attend the JTEL Winter School by the STELLAR Network of Excellence which takes place in Innsbruck, 1-6 February 2010. The STELLAR Network (http://www.stellarnet.eu) offered a limited number of scholarships for outstanding Ph.D. students in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning. The Winter School brings interdisciplinary doctoral researchers together in order to provide intense research training and to foster cross-domain collaboration. The JTEL Winter School is limited to 45 participants. Further information: http://www.teleurope.eu/pg/groups/43/ 4/1/10

GLO Maker v2.1 and community Wiki launched
An update to the GLO Maker learning object authoring tool has been launched. The new version includes the ability to add hyperlinks in GLOs, changes to the default 'Stage', and bug fixes. For more details and to download the free software, go to: http://www.glomaker.org
The GLO Maker community Wiki has also been launched to provide more dynamic, up-to-date news support and discussion about the use of GLO Maker. Go to http://glomaker.wetpaint.com

LTRI receives funding for 2 University SWAP projects
Two projects submitted to the SWAP fund (Supporting Writing for Assessment Purposes), supported by the WriteNow and Learnhigher CETLs and the Centre for Academic Professional Development, have been accepted for grants of £2,000 each. Claire Bradley and Dr Debbie Holley are working on a project entitled 'Making the most of my space': Students use of mobile phones for studying and note making. Carl Smith has a project on adapting the Notemaking RLO for the mobile phone. 18 projects within the University were funded. 14/12/09

John Cook invited to join the Academic committee of the PLE Conference
John has been invited to join the Academic committee of the PLE Conference. The conference is planned to take place in Barcelona at the Open Innovation Centre for the Community in Barcelona on 8 and 9 June 2010. The PLE Conference is intended to produce a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experience and research around the development and implementation of PLEs including the design of environments, sociological and educational issues and their effectiveness and desirability as (informal) learning spaces.
Whilst the conference will include a traditional research paper strand, we also wish to encourage proposals for sessions in different formats including workshops, posters, debates, cafe sessions, hands on sessions and demonstrations. 14/12/09

John Cook is one of 25 selected experts worldwide invited to take part in Mobile Learning Expert Study
John is one of 25 selected experts worldwide invited to take part in Mobile Learning Expert Study (part of EU-funded STELLAR Network of Excellence http://stellarnet.eu/). The study is titled ‘Location-based and contextual mobile learning’, and will be conducted by the Learning Sciences Research Institute (University of Nottingham) and the Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies (Open University of the Netherlands). 14/12/09

Carl Smith has been nominated for an award for graphics
Carl Smith has been nominated for an award by the Musion Academy for his recent work in holographic art. A reconstructed 3D model of a world heritage site is used to explore in context the spatial literacy of the user by allowing them to question whether more can be learnt about a specific building or style of architecture if that building is itself treated as an interface. The Musion Academy was launched as a unique academic collaboration program exploring the new medium of holographic projection - creatively and technically. Musion is the technology behind the Madonna and Gorillaz holographic Grammy performance and the holographic projections of HRH Prince of Wales and David Beckham. The work has been nominated in the open source distance learning category. More details: http://www.musion.co.uk/musion_academy.html 19/11/09

Book chapter accepted
Carl Smith and John Cook have had a book chapter accepted for the forthcoming book ‘Learner-Generated Contexts: Issues in developing the Participative Knowledge Economy’. We present the concept of Learner Generated Contexts as a potential framework through which the more effective use of technology to support learning might be supported and engendered. Learner Generated Contexts are about opening up the process through which knowledge is constructed and understanding is gained. In this chapter we present the latest iteration of our specification for Learner Generated Contexts. In particular we concentrate upon their theoretical grounding as we consider how we can facilitate the development of context-based models as the organising principle for designing learning. More details to follow. 19/11/09

Paper accepted for the Research Strand of the MoLeNET Mobile Learning Conference 2009.
Smith, C., Cook, J., Bradley, C. (2009). Using the World as an Interface: Augmenting Contexts for Development to Absorb, Transform and Reuse Information. Conference to be held in central London on 1st December. Further details: http://www.molenet.org.uk/learningconference2009/index.aspx 19/11/09

OER10 Conference, Cambridge, March 22-24
The Open Educational Resources 2010 conference, organised by the RLO-CETL, will be held at Clare College in Cambridge, March 22-24. There is currently a call for papers for oral presentations, workshops, symposia and demonstrations, which ends 6/11/09. Registration opens 30/11/09. For details go to:
http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer10/index.html

2 LTRI PhD successes
Two LTRI members have successfully completed their PhD vivas. Congratulations go out to Nigel and Mei. Details are:
> Nigel Medhurst, "Uses and meanings of multiliteracies in a community of learners: student responses and practices in an online teaching module".
> Mei Qi, "Influence of culture on learning object design and evaluation". 22/10/09

Journal article accepted
John Cook (with colleagues) has a journal article accepted for the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning.
Pachler, N., Cook, J. and Bachmair, B. (accepted). Appropriation of Mobile Phones and Learning. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning. 22/10/09

John Cook has been invited to give a talk at a node of the ESRC funded National Centre for Research Methods
John has been invited to give a talk at a node of the ESRC funded National Centre for Research Methods. The title of the talk is “E-Learning in its Element: Building Informal Learning and Research Capacity in Large Communities”, and will be given on Tuesday 10th Nov at the Work-Based Learning for Education centre, IoE.
The remit of the ESRC funded National Centre for Research Methods is to promote a "step change" in the use of innovative cutting edge research methods in the social sciences. It is funded on a Hub and Node model, with the Hub coordinating the activities of the Nodes. The Nodes are not working with university students, their constituency are social science researchers who tend to attend a short workshop, seminar or conference to learn about a particular new method, see below http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/about/organisation/Nodes/ 14/10/09

Claire Bradley re-invited onto conference programme committee
Claire has been re-invited onto the conference committee for the IADIS Mobile Learning Conference 2010, March 19-21, 2010, Porto, Portugal. The call for papers is open until October 30, 2009, and the theme of the conference is Mobile Learning, a Retrospective Outlook. http://www.mlearning-conf.org/ 14/10/09

LTRI members invited onto conference committee
Andrew Ravenscroft and Carl Smith have been invited onto the conference committee for: IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE E-SOCIETY 2010, March 18-21, 2010, Porto, Portugal. http://www.esociety-conf.org/ 12/10/09

Paper on Layered learning design accepted
Tom Boyle has a paper on “Layered learning design: towards an integration of learning design and learning object perspectives” accepted for the journal Computers & Education. Earlier drafts of this paper have influenced the ESRC LDSE (Learning Design Support Environment) project. 28/9/09

John Cook appointed as Chair of ALT's Research Committee
ALT's Trustees have appointed John Cook as Chair of ALT's Research Committee; John was also co-opted as Trustees of ALT (which means he will serve on ALT's Central Executive). ALT 2010 will be held in Nottingham, September 7-9 http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2010

LTRI at ALT-C, Manchester, 8-10 September
This year, LTRI Director Tom Boyle was co-chair of the conference, for which the theme was "In dreams begins responsibility". RLO-CETL also had an exhibition stand, at which the recently released GLO Maker 2 learning object authoring tool was demonstrated. Recordings of keynotes and invited speakers from the conference are at http://elluminate.alt.ac.uk/recordings.html
Twitter postings are at http://www.twitter.com/#altc2009
For more info on the conference go to http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2009/

GLO Maker 2 learning object authoring tool now available
Version 2.0 of the GLO Maker tool for authoring learning objects is now available for download from www.glomaker.org. On the GLO Maker website there are also guides, animated tutorials and sample GLOs (generative learning objects) to show you how to use the tool and create your own learning objects. It is a powerful tool for producing multimedia learning objects that can be loaded into a VLE, or made available on the Web. The tool is open source and free to use for educational purposes. For more details and to download the free software, go to: http://www.glomaker.org

Professor Andrew Ravenscroft's inaugural lecture
Professor Andrew Ravenscroft's inaugural lecture will take place on Tuesday 3rd November 2009, in London.
Title:‘Where is my Mind?’ Dialogue, Learning and Design for the Web
Date: Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
Venue: Henry Thomas room, Holloway Road, London Metropolitan University 18/8/09

John Cook has journal articles accepted
Cook, J. (2008). Unlocking Potential: Harnessing the Pedagogical Benefits of E-Learning. Investigations (in University Teaching and Learning), 5(1), 57–61. In-house journal from London Metropolitan University, see http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/capd/in-house-journal-investigations/home.cfm
Cook, J. and Pachler, N. (accepted). Appropriation of Mobile Phones in and Across Formal and Informal Learning. E-Learning, http://www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/. Due Winter 2009. 18/8/09

Claire Bradley invited to review for MoLeNET Mobile Learning Conference
Claire has been invited to review abstracts for the MoLeNET Mobile Learning Conference 2009. The conference is organised by the LSN, and will be held in London on December 1 2009. For details of the conference go to: www.molenet.org.uk/learningconference2009 29/7/09

Workshop accepted
With colleagues from Germany and the Institute of Education, John Cook has had a workshop accepted at the prestigious German Education Research Association Congress (DGfE 2010: http://www.dgfe2010.de/), to be held in Mainz, Germany, March 2010. The workshop is called 'Individualised mobility as cultural resource: harnessing the ‘mobile complex’ for participatory learning'. The lead proposer is Professor Ben Bachmair. 29/7/09

Book chapter accepted
Richard Haynes and Carl Smith have a book chapter accepted on Digital Geographies and Mobile Computing. The book entitled 'Digital Media Handbook' is edited by Chris Lane and Elena Moschini and will be published by Pearson in 2010. The publication aims to enable students to contextualise creative digital media practice within the theoretical framework of digital media research. The book will explore the relationship between various forms of new media production and the current debate on digital culture and digital media theory. It will propose new areas of development in digital media research in both the theoretical and practice-based areas. This textbook will also contribute to the debate on the role of the designer and the producer as critical and reflective practitioners, and will analyse and explore the historical heritage of "traditional" media production traditions and the move from analogue to digital media. 29/7/09

Accepted workshop and position paper
John Cook is part of the London Mobile Learning Group (LMLG) accepted workshop at the Alpine Rendez-Vous, within the framework of the STELLAR Network of Excellence and organised by the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. The workshop is entitled 'Technology-enhanced learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformations'. The LMLG workshop will take place from November 30 to December 1 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria. There has been a tough competition for places, during which the Reviewer Board had to reject 50% of the proposals. In addition to helping organise the workshop, John has a position paper to present: 'Individualized participation in public forms of communication and learning: reshaping contexts in a changing world of cultural products', by John Cook (LTRI) and Elisabetta Adami (University of Verona, Italy).
Another workshop paper accepted for STELLAR Network of Excellence Alpine Rendez-Vous.
John Cook, J. (2009). Performing the Mediascape: Putting Urban Planning Education in Context with Mobile Phones. Workshop: Education in the Wild. Alpine Rendez-Vous, within the framework of the STELLAR Network of Excellence. December 3-4, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany.
Links
LMLG workshop description:
http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/?page=Alpine-rendez-vous
Alpine Rendez-Vous: http://www.stellarnet.eu/programme/wp3/rendez-vous/
LMLG: http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/
STELLAR Network of Excellence: http://www.stellarnet.eu

Completion of TechDis HEAT project
Carl Smith has successfully completed the JISC TechDis HEAT project: ‘Smart phones for interactivity in urban education (HCA310)’ The HEAT scheme provides staff working in higher education (teaching staff, library staff, careers officers, staff developers, IT specialists and accessibility or support specialists) with technology with which to develop or uncover an aspect of good inclusive practice. This may be specific to the teaching of a particular discipline, supporting a specific role area, or may have more generic applicability across the sector. Further details: http://www.techdis.ac.uk/getheatscheme

GLO Maker 2 presentation
Tom Boyle gave an invited talk on “Developing open education resources using GLO Maker 2 at the seminar on “Creating and sharing digital content: promises and pitfalls”, Edge Hill University, 16 July 2009. The demonstration of the GLO Maker 2 authoring tool generated considerable interest from the audience. The authoring tool will be released on August 21 2009. It is open source and free for educational use. 21/7/09

Paper presented at EVA 2009 conference
Carl Smith presented a full paper ‘The Unit of Construction + The Multiple Point of View = The Evolution of Form’ at the annual Electronic Visualisation and the Arts conference. The conference was held at the British Computer Society, 6-8 July. Further details:
http://www.eva-conferences.com/eva_london/2009_home

Presentation at InterFace 2009
Carl Smith presented a paper ‘Activating the Space of Reception in the World as Interface’ at InterFace 2009: the 1st National Symposium for Humanities and Technology. InterFace is a new type of annual event. Part conference, part workshop, part networking opportunity, it brings together postdocs, early career academics and postgraduate researchers from the fields of Information Technology and the Humanities in order to foster cutting-edge collaboration. As well as having a focus on Digital Humanities, it will also be an important forum for Humanities contributions to Computer Science. The conference was held at the University of Southampton, July 9-10 2009. Further details: http://www.interface09.org.uk/

Presentation at London Met's annual Learning and Teaching conference
Carl Smith ran a successful workshop on the GLO maker v2 ‘Generative Learning Objects (GLOs) What Are They and How Can They Help You?’ at the annual Learning and Teaching conference held at London Metropolitan University on 7th July. Reusable learning objects, whilst engaging, interactive and educationally effective, are limited in some respects. The basic unit of reuse is the object as a whole and this leads to marked limitation in productivity. GLOs provide a much more flexible format for developing learning objects which supports both increased productivity in initial development and flexible repurposing by tutors. The GLO-Maker aims to provide a powerful and user friendly tool to create new generative learning objects, or adapt and repurpose existing learning objects. The workshop provided a brief introduction to the authoring environment followed by a hands on session where participants were encouraged to adapt or produce from scratch their own interactive learning content. Further details

Workshop on User Centred Requirements Processes for E-Learning and Knowledge Management
On July 2, 2009 LTRI hosted the successful MATURE Workshop on User Centred Requirements Processes for E-Learning and Knowledge Management – A European-Wide Perspective. John Cook has provided a summary of the day: http://mature-ip.eu/en/node/315
The slides from the day are available from: http://mature-ip.eu/en/event/user-centered-requirements-engineering
All participants seemed to agree that this had been a highly productive day and the organisers (Andreas Schmidt and John Cook) are planning to hold follow up activities in order to keep the momentum and intellectual clarity generated on the day going. 15/7/09

Presentation at Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology 6th annual conference
Carl Smith and Janet Tatlock have presented the latest iteration of their ‘Values & Worth’ project (which has been repurposed using the GLOmaker v2) at the Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology 6th annual conference on Teaching and Learning in Archaeology which was held on July 1-2, 2009 at Birkbeck, University of London. The ‘Values & Worth’ project is an Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) approach to encountering and constructing collections in both the real and virtual world. It involves the digital capture of objects held within the University’s collections as a way to introduce school students to the reflective learning essential at the University level. Further details

John Cook gives keynote at JISC Institutional Impact online meeting 9/7/09
John Cook has been invited to give a keynote at the JISC Institutional Impact online meeting (using Elluminate), Thursday 09/07/09. The title of John's talk is 'Scaffolding the Mobile Wave'. See the following link for details: http://ssbr0709.inin.jisc-ssbr.net/programme/
Slides available at: http://tinyurl.com/m27lhc

John Cook invited to give talk, 9 July
John has been invited to give a talk at Mobile Learning: Telling Tales. This event showcases how mobile technologies are being used to enhance the learning experience in the classroom and on the move. The event will be held on Thursday, 09 July 2009 at The University of Westminster Cavendish Campus in the Pavilion Room.
See: www.mimas.ac.uk/mob09
Slides available at: http://tinyurl.com/m27lhc

Presentation at ECLO 16th International Conference
Carl Smith gave a paper on behalf of the CONTSENS team summarising the vocational based training workpackages completed so far on urban planning and archaeological surveying at the ECLO 16th International Conference in Hertogenbosch, Netherlands on June 18-19, 2009. Further details: http://eclo.org/pages/Hertogenbosch%20Homepage.html

Musbah Sagar completes his PhD
Congratulations to Musbah who has completed and submitted his PhD thesis, entitled ‘Web-based Approach to Engineering Adaptive Collaborative Applications’. 29/5/09

Book chapter accepted
John Cook has a chapter accepted for an edited book on learner generated context.
Cook, J. (2009). Mobile Learner Generated Contexts: Research on the Internalization of the World of Cultural Products. In B. Bachmair (Ed.) Media Literacy in New Cultural Spaces (Medienbildung in Neuen Kulturräumen). Wiesbaden, Germany: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft, due end of 2009. 28/5/09

John Cook and Carl Smith participate in Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning
The Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning starts this weekend, May 30-June 6.
http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/summer-school-2009 Follow it on twitter with hash tag #telss09
Slides for John Cook's invited talk 'Phases of Mobile Learning' are now available at: http://tinyurl.com/psejxu
John Cook and Carl Smith are also running a workshop on context sensitive mobile learning. 28/5/09

ESRC seminar
Carl Smith was invited to attend ESRC seminar series on New Forms of Doctorate Practice, the PhD and new forms of doctorate at London Knowledge Lab, May 19. The seminars focus is the influence of multimodality and e-learning on the nature and format of doctoral theses in education and the social sciences. Further details: http://newdoctorates.blogspot.com/

Keynote on mobile work
Carl Smith was invited to give a keynote on his mobile learning work at the 'digital delights' event at Make Your Mark. Make Your Mark is run by Enterprise Insight. Its aim is to create an enterprise culture in the UK by inspiring young people to turn their enterprising ideas into reality. Further details: http://makeyourmark.org.uk/

Graham Attwell to give a talk on July 1st
Graham Attwell will be visiting the LTRI and giving a talk on 1st July. He's Director of a very interesting 'e-learning company', Pontydysgsu [http://www.pontydysgu.org/], and is a fellow member on the MATURE project. More details to follow. 28/5/09

John Cook invited to join editorial board
John Cook has been invited to join the editorial board of Interactive Learning Environments, and has accept this offer. The Taylor & Francis journal Interactive Learning Environments is an ISI social science indexed learning technologies journal, which has recently increased to four issues per year. Founded in 1990, Interactive Learning Environments publishes peer-reviewed articles on all aspects of the design and use of interactive learning environments in the broadest sense, encompassing environments that support individual learners through to environments that support collaboration amongst groups of learners or co-workers. For more info see: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t716100701 28/5/09

Andrew Ravenscroft contributes to online radio show
Andrew partcipated in an online JISC radio show on May 21 at 18.00. Andrew was on a 'live panel' with Oleg Liber and Claire Newhouse. More info at: http://www.pontydysgu.org/2009/05/more-about-the-elearning-show/ 28/5/09

Tom Boyle receives award for ‘Achievement in the Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning’
Tom Boyle has received the Guild of Educators award for ‘Achievement in the Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning’. The award will be presented at a formal lunch in the City of London on June 22.
The Guild of Educators operates “within the philanthropic tradition of the City of London livery companies” to provide a forum to bring together senior representatives of all the sectors of education. The award recognises achievements that have improved the design, application and evaluation of technology enhanced learning. This involves the direction of major initiatives such as the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Reusable Learning objects, extensive publication in the area, and demonstrated impact on practice. The web site for the Guild is at http://www.guildofeducators.com/ 13/5/09

Claire Bradley invited to review for ASCILITE conference
Claire has been invited to review papers for the ASCILITE conference again this year. This will be the 3rd successive year she has reviewed for the conference. ASCILITE is the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. This year the conference is being held in Auckland, December 6-9. The Conference's call for papers, to be available mid-May, describes the major deadlines, the Conference themes 'Same places, different spaces', and the categories of papers and presentations: http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/ 13/5/09

Book chapter on mobile learning published
We have a chapter published in the book 'Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training', Edited by Mohamed Ally and published by Athabasca University.
Chapter 8 Design and Development of Multimedia Learning Objects for Mobile Phones, Claire Bradley, Richard Haynes, John Cook, Tom Boyle, and Carl Smith.
For details and to download the book, see: http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120155

Andrew Ravenscroft invited to workshop
Andrew has been invited by The Oxford Internet Institute and the Department of Education, University of Oxford to the workshop “Learning Companions and Pedagogical Agents: Future Trends and Possibilities”, on 28th May.

Paper accepted for IADIS e-learning conference
Andrew Ravenscroft has had a paper accepted with co-authors from York and Leeds for IADIS e-learning 2009:
Yuan, T., Moore, D. and Ravenscroft. (2009). Evaluations of a Human-computer Debating System for Educational Debate. Paper Accepted for IADIS Conference on e-Learning 2009, Algarve, Portugal, 17-20 June 2009.

LTRI staff present at HERS seminar, June 3
I would like to invite you to attend the next seminar in the HERS series, which will take place on Wednesday 3rd June, 12.30 - 1.30 in LC-G36 (LearnHigher room).Sandra Sinfield, Debbie Holley, Tom Burns (Academic Staff), Kate Hoskins (Student Ambassador), Carl Smith, James Connor & Richard Haynes(Multi- media developers) will present the following paper: Attaching information to space: the development of a notemaking tool to enable students to reconceptualise ideas anywhere, anyplace, anytime. 8/5/09

Debbie Holley has journal article accepted on her PhD work
Holley, D,. & Oliver, M. (2009). Negotiating the digital divide: narratives from the have and the have-nots. Journal of Enhancing Learning in the Social Sciences (ELISS) Journal Vol. 1 Issue 3. Available online from April 30: http://www.eliss.org.uk/ 28/4/09

Book chapter accepted
We have had a significant book chapter accepted that compares reuse of learning objects across 2 institutions (LondonMet and TVU). There was lots of competition, from 63 initial submissions to 22 accepted.
Holley, D., Bradley, C. Greaves, L. and Cook, J. (2009). “You Can Take Out of it What you Want” – How Learning Objects Within Blended Learning Designs Encourage Personalised Learning. In John O’Donoghue (Ed.) Technology Supported Environment for Personalised Learning: Methods and Case Studies. IGI Global. 28/4/09

Workshop invitation, Indiana, June 17-18
Andrew Ravenscroft has been invited to a workshop on ‘digging into data’ and visualisation, organised by Prof Colin Allen and Prof Katy Borner at the University of Indiana funded by the USA National Science Foundation and McDonnell Foundation. This is building on a proposed joint project with Indiana and Dundee in information science and data visualisation, where we aim to use models or argument and dialogue (such as dialogue games) to improve semantic data retrieval and visualisation. The workshop will be held in Indiana on 17-18 June, and is very useful opportunity to extend LTRI work into the field of information science for education through collaborating with world leaders in this field. 28/4/09

Paper accepted
Andrew Ravenscroft has had a paper formally accepted for Knowledge Engineering Review, co-authored with other Dialogue Game partners in the UK and France:
Yuan, T., Moore, D., Reed, C., Ravenscroft, & A. Maudat, N. (2009). Informal Logic Dialogue Games In Human-Computer Dialogue, Knowledge Engineering Review. (In Press). 28/4/09

Slides from AERA symposium
Slides from our well-received AERA09 symposium on mobile learning can be found at the London Mobile Learning Group web site: http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/. AERA had 15,000 attendees this year! 22/4/09

Successful CONTSENS project meeting held in Sestri Levante
John Cook, Carl Smith and Claire Bradley attended the latest CONTSENS project meeting at Sestri Levante in Italy on February 24, where partner Giunti Labs is based. Partners presented updates on their context-sensitive, location-aware training packages, and we had a demo from Giunti Labs of their package in situ (see photograph to the right). The package enables engineers to receive appropriate training materials according on their location in the field. For more information about the CONTSENS project see the project page in our research section.

Announcement
John Cook is organising a by invitation only, one-day small event being held under the auspices of the MATURE EC funded Integrating Project (http://mature-ip.eu/en/start): "Workshop on User Centred Requirements Processes for E-Learning and Knowledge Management – A European-Wide Perspective." The event will be held July 2nd, London Metropolitan University. Leaders in the field have been invited to share their own evolving findings in this area; Andreas Schmidt (Scientific coordinator MATURE) and Professor John Cook look forward to welcoming them in July to discuss and explore current thinking on user centred requirements processes. For details see: http://mature-ip.eu/en/event/user-centered-requirements-engineering9/3/09

LTRI are presenting at the 3rd WLE Mobile Learning Symposium
Carl Smith and John Cook are presenting a paper at this symposium in London on March 27. John is also chairing the strand 'Learning across contexts'.
> Smith, C. and Cook, J. (2009). Interaction Heuristics for Context-Sensitive Mobile Learning. Paper accepted for 3rd WLE Mobile Learning Symposium: Mobile Learning Cultures across Education, Work and Leisure 27 March 2009, WLE Centre, IOE London, UK. For the symposium programme see: http://symposium.londonmobilelearning.net/?page=Programme
6/3/09

Invited talk at LearnHigher CETL
John Cook has been invited to talk at the LearnHigher CETL ‘M-Posium’.
> Cook, J. (2009). Invited talk at LearnHigher CETL ‘M-Posium’ on Mobile Learning. April 22nd, Manchester Metropolitan University.
http://www.learnhigher.ac.uk/mposium/index.html
See here for a report from the event

Workshop paper accepted
We've had a workshop paper accepted for AISB2009 Symposium on persuasive Technology and Digital Behavior Intervention, in Edinburgh 6-9 April 2009. Paper is: Mapping Persuasive Dialogue Games onto Argumentation Structures, by Andrew Ravenscroft, Simon Wells, Musbah Sagar and Chris Reed, which is basically a collaboration between LTRI and the Argumentation Research Group in Computer Science at Dundee, where we are proposing linking the InterLoc style games and interfaces to more heavy weight knowledge representation and agent technology - the mission being a World Wide Argument Web (WWAW).

John Cook gives 2 presentations
> Cook, J. (2009). Reflections on a 16 Year Research Journey from Mentoring, Metacognition and Music to Mobile Learning. Invited contribution at Computers and Learning Research Group (CALRG) 30th Anniversary, 18th May, Open University.
> Cook, J. (2009). What Advice Do the Panel Members Have in Regards to How Students Can Maximise the Opportunities for Success Provided by Higher Education? Invited presentation and discussant at Get Ahead Student Conference, 11th February, Holloway Road, London Metropolitan University. See http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/latest-news/february-2009/how-to-get-ahead-and-lead-london.cfm

John Cook invited to present at Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) 2009
John has been invited to give a lecture and run a workshop on mobile learning at Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) 2009. The lecture is on ‘Phases of mobile learning’.* *Carl Smith will provide supporting expertise derived through the CONTSENS and MATURE projects for the workshop, which is called ‘Context sensitive, location aware mobile learning’. This week long event is run by EC Framework (FP7) projects and networks: "Our ambition is to foster cross-domain training and collaboration opportunities among researchers in Europe and beyond, working in the disparate fields of expertise which promote the advancement of TEL at the workplace. The programme includes lectures and working sessions from leading professors in the field, tutoring, mentoring, and joint research opportunities. Additionally the school will offer practical sessions in research methodology for Technology Enhanced Learning." To be held Terchova, Slovakia, May 30 - June 6, 2009. More details: http://www.jTELSummerSchool.eu

Get Ahead student conference
London Met's annual student conference was held on February 11. The Get Ahead conference was organised by London Metropolitan University’s three Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and supported by Student Services. Staff from the LTRI and RLO-CETL were involved in several presentations about their work and how it can benefit students throughout the day. See video about the conference
For more details of the the event see: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/latest-news/february-2009/how-to-get-ahead-and-lead-london.cfm

John Cook's inaugural professorial lecture
John Cook, Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning gave his inaugural lecture, called "The digitally literate learner and the appropriation of new technologies and media for education". The slides and text are all available from here: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook (Note it is 31MB, but the Note Page view gives the text of the lecture)
It has also been blogged: http://fm.schmoller.net/2009/02/the-digitally-literate-learner-and-the-appropriation-of-new-technologies-and-media-for-education.html

Tom Boyle invited to present in Saudi Arabia
Tom Boyle is presenting an invited paper at the First International Conference on e- Learning and Distance Learning, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 16-18 2009. http://www.eli.elc.edu.sa/en/index.php
The paper in on “Generative learning objects (GLOs): design as the basis for reuse and repurposing”.

Special issue of JCAL on Social Software, Web 2.0 and Learning published
The Special Issue of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (JCAL) on ‘Social Software, Web 2.0 and Learning’ is now published. LTRIs Andrew Ravenscroft has provided the Editorial on ‘Social Software, Web 2.0 and Learning: Status and implications of an evolving paradigm’. This is the first journal special issue in this area, and provides a critical account of this fast developing area of research. For more information see: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121640389/issue

Journal article accepted
Bachmair, B., Pachler, N. and Cook, J. (2009). Mobile Phones as Cultural Resources of Learning, an Education Analysis of Structures, Mobile Expertise and Cultural Practices. MedienPädagogik online journal (and from University of Aarhus press in Danish). See paper: http://www.medienpaed.com/2009/bachmair0903.pdf

LTRI success in the RAE
The RAE results came out on Friday 19th December 2008. The LTRI was entered in the Education Unit of Assessment; this achieved the highest score in the University and this puts us in the top 20% of all Universities in the UK. 50% of the Education papers are in the 4* and 3* categories which is classified as world leading and internationally leading respectively. This is a great achievement and gives us a very strong base from which to contribute to the University's new Strategic plans and it provides a foundation on which to build in the future.
For more info see click here

Papers accepted for IADIS mobile learning conference
2 papers have been accepted for the IADIS mobile learning conference, to be held in Barcelona, February 26-28 2009
> Smith, C., Cook, J. and Pratt-Adams, S. (2009). Context Sensitive Mobile Learning: Designing a ‘Technoscape’ for Urban Planners. Mobile Learning, Barcelona, 26-28 February.
> Seipold, J., Pachler, N. and Cook, J. (2009). Towards a Methodology of Researching Mobile Learning. Mobile Learning, Barcelona, 26-28 February.
For more info see: http://www.mlearning-conf.org/

Andrew Ravenscroft invited to AIED program committee
Andrew has been invited onto the Program Committee for the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED2009). AIED2009 is held in cooperation with AAAI and is part of an ongoing series of biennial international conferences for top quality research in intelligent systems and cognitive science for educational computing applications. It will be held in Brighton, UK, 6-10 July 2009. Further details are available on the conference web site: http://www.aied2009.com/ 15/12/08

Online journal article published
Peter Oriogun and Diana Cave have a paper published in the online journal ‘Journal of Online Interactive Learning’.
Oriogun, P.K. & Cave, D. (2008). Using Code-Recode to Detect Critical Thinking Aspects of Asynchronous Small Group CMC Collaborative Learning, Journal of Online Interactive Learning, (7)3. See paper 11/12/08

LTRI members have papers accepted for CAL conference
A number of papers have been accepted for CAL 09: Learning in Digital Worlds, to be held in Brighton, March 23-25. [http://www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/]
> Deploying dialogue games to engage students in collaborative thinking: An evaluation and case study, Baur, E., Ravenscoft, A, Sagar, M. & Schofield. S. (2009). Oral Paper accepted for CAL 09.
> Layered learning design, Boyle, T.
> Learning and thinking on the web: Issues and implications from a decade of digital argumentation, Ravenscroft, A. (2009). Oral Paper accepted for CAL 09.
> Student engagement and blended learning: portraits of risk, Holley, D & Oliver, M. Oral paper accepted for CAL 09.
> Smith, C., Cook, J., Bradley, C. (2009). Attaching Information to Space to Allow Real-Time Engineering of Complex Data in a Vocational Mobile Context. Oral Paper accepted for CAL 09.
> Symposium entitled "Outside in, inside out? Digital media as cultural resources for learning". (Convener: Cook) Individual papers accepted as part of the symposium: ‘Appropriation of mobile phones for learning’, by John Cook, LTRI; ‘Smartphones: a social semiotic view and implications for their use in formal education’, by Norbert Pachler, Institute of Education, London and Elisabetta Adami, University of Verona; ‘Curricular assimilation of conflicting mobile expertises into the school, a case study on students’ lifestyle habitus and mobile use in media convergence’, by Ben Bachmair, University of Kassel, Germany.
> Symposium entitled "Design of learning objects for wider adoption: a combined CETL symposium". Tom Boyle has a contribution entitled “Highly adaptable learning objects”. This is part of a symposium that the RLO-CETL is running in conjunction with the Open CETL at the OU. Dawn Leeder from the RLO-CETL is also presenting together with Steve Swithenby, Bob Lambourne and Bill Tait from the OU.
> E-portfolio constructs: a developing method for case study analysis, Wilson-Medhurst, S, Holley, D, Chalk, P, Pokorny, H & Andrew, D. Poster. 1/12/08

Andrew Ravenscroft writes editorial to JCAL special issue
Andrew has just submitted his Editorial to a Special Edition of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (JCAL) that will be published in the first issue of 2009, and is the first Journal Special Issue in this area. Ravenscroft, A. (2008). Social Software, Web 2.0 and Learning: Status and implications of an evolving paradigm, Guest Editorial for Special Issue of Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (JCAL), (In Press, due in first Issue of 2009). 1/12/08

Andrew Ravenscroft gives invited talks
Andrew has recently given three invited talks:
> Ravenscroft, A. (2008).The thinking web? Designing tools and mashups for cyber-argumentation. Computer Science Seminar Series, University of Dundee, October 1 2008.
> Ravenscroft, A. (2008). Designing learning interaction in the digital age: Reclaiming dialogue, thinking and meaning making? Interaction Design Centre (UCLIC) Seminar Series, UCL, November 11 2008.
> Ravenscroft, A. (2008). Personalisation as practices: Issues, challenges and future directions for design. Workshop on Personalised Learning Environments (PLEs), held at London Knowledge Lab (LKL)/Birkbeck College, University of London, November 18. 1/12/08

Notification of acceptance of a Symposium at AERA 2009 (American Educational Research Association)
LTRI’s John Cook is part of a successful proposal that includes Norbert Pachler and Gunther Kress (Institute of Education), Ben Bachmair (University of Kassel, Germany) and Elisabetta Adami (University of Verona). This is very good news indeed, particularly given the fact that 11,000 papers appear to have been submitted this year!
Details: Outside In and Inside Out: Interdisciplinarity and Mobile Learning Research. Symposium accepted for 2009 AERA Annual Meeting, Disciplined Inquiry: Education Research in the Circle of Knowledge, April 13–17, San Diego, USA.
See: http://www.aera.net/Default.aspx?id=5348 11/11/08

John Cook's inaugural professorial lecture, 3/2/09
In December 2006 John was appointed Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning. His inaugural professorial lecture has now been arranged for Tuesday 3rd February, 2009, and will be introduced by Brian Roper, Vice-Chancellor London Metropolitan University. If you would like to attend, please email c.rainey@londonmet.ac.uk
Venue: Henry Thomas room, Holloway Road, London Metropolitan University
Time: 6.00 pm
Title: The digitally literate learner and the appropriation of new technologies and media for education. See abstract 4/11/08

John Cook invited to speak at Institute of Education’s CETL event
LTRI’s John Cook, also a member of the London Mobile Learning Group (http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/), will be invited speaker at the WLE CETL Dissemination Event, 25 November, Institute of Education. John's talk is entitled 'Phases of mobile learning' and will address the question 'what specifically commends mobile phone usage as a mediating tool for learning inside and outside the school context'. John will discuss the development of mobile learning over time through examples of a range of projects. See website | See poster

John Cook joins core cross-university working group
As part of his cross-university role of E-Learning Project Leader, in June 2008 John Cook joined a four person core working group responsible for cross-university 'Teaching, Assessment, Learning, and Technology Enhanced Learning' (TALTEL). Working with a lager TALTEL Executive, the role of this group is to turn London Metropolitan University’s new strategic plan into an action plan (initially 5 years). Key foci is on retention, progression and achievement, including assessment, and on blended e-learning, incorporating WebLearn, e-portfolio and other initiatives.

LTRI involved in organising and running the symposium 'How can HE and FE be transformed for 21st century learning?'
ALT (http://www.alt.ac.uk/), under the auspices of its Research Committee, is holding a two-day by invitation only symposium between 18-19 November 2008, with a follow-up review meeting on Monday 23 February in Birmingham. The title of the symposium is 'How can HE and FE be transformed for 21st century learning?'. John Cook, as Vice-Chair of the ALT Research Committee, is co-organising and facilitating this event with Professor Robin Mason (OU, Chair of ALT Research Committee), ALT and others like Professor Mike Sharples (University of Nottingham). This symposium and the review meeting are part funded under the CAPITAL project, part of the Research & Development Programme for the next phase of the Becta’s Harnessing Technology Strategy, led by the Learning Science Research Institute at the University of Nottingham, and Sero Consulting Ltd in Sheffield. The output from the symposium will, alongside a range of other research activities taking place within CAPITAL, inform recommendations about new models and strategies for learning for the next phase of the Harnessing Technology strategy. The February 23 workshop will enable participants to scrutinise and comment upon those recommendations.

GLO Maker v1 released
Version 1 of the GLO Maker learning object authoring tool is now released and available for use. This tool can be used to create and adapt Generative Learning Objects (GLOs). For more information about GLOs see the support website, where you can download the GLO Maker programme and a comprehensive User Guide
http://www.glomaker.org

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Upcoming conference presentations

OER10 Conference, Cambridge, March 22-24
The following papers are being presented by LTRI members at the OER10 Conference in Cambridge, March 22-24.
> Greaves, L., Roller, S., and Bradley, C. 2010 Repurposing with a purpose - a story with a happy ending.
> Doherty, T., Holley, D. and Boyle, T. 2010. Opening up special collections: the use of GLO Maker with resources from the Women's Library.
> Qi, M. and Boyle, T. 2010. Dimensions of culturally sensitive factors in the design and development of learning Objects.
For details see http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer10/index.html

Ed-Media 2010, Toronto, June 29-July 2
A paper and a symposium have been accepted for this year's Ed-Media conference.
Paper:
Ravenscroft, A. & Boyle, T. (2010). Deep Learning Design for Technology Enhanced Learning, Full Paper Accepted for International Conference on Educational Media (Ed-Media) 2010, Toronto, June 29-July 2 2010. See paper
Symposium, organised by:
Ravenscroft, A., Warburton, S. & Hatzipanagos, S. (2010). Design perspectives for learning with social media: Reconciling informal and formal learning through Web 2.0? Symposium Accepted for International Conference on Educational Media (Ed-Media) 2010, Toronto, June 29-July 2 2010. See paper
We have also gained approval for a Special Issue of JCAL to come out of the Symposia, that John Cook is also contributing to.

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Recent news

March 2010

German Education Research Association Congress (DGfE 2010) | Mainz, Germany | March 2010
With colleagues from Germany and the Institute of Education, John Cook has had a workshop accepted at the prestigious German Education Research Association Congress (DGfE 2010: http://www.dgfe2010.de/), to be held in Mainz, Germany, March 2010. The workshop is called 'Individualised mobility as cultural resource: harnessing the ‘mobile complex’ for participatory learning'. The lead proposer is Professor Ben Bachmair.

December 2009

Alpine Rendez-Vous | Nov 30-Dec 1 | Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria
John Cook had papers in two workshops at this event.
'Individualized participation in public forms of communication and learning: reshaping contexts in a changing world of cultural products', by John Cook (LTRI) and Elisabetta Adami (University of Verona, Italy). Workshop: Technology-enhanced learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformations.
John Cook, (2009). Performing the Mediascape: Putting Urban Planning Education in Context with Mobile Phones. Workshop: Education in the Wild. Links:
LMLG workshop description:
http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/?page=Alpine-rendez-vous
Alpine Rendez-Vous: http://www.stellarnet.eu/programme/wp3/rendez-vous/

MoLeNET Mobile Learning Conference 2009 | December 1 | London
Paper presented by Claire Bradley in the Research Strand of the MoLeNET Mobile Learning Conference 2009. Smith, C., Cook, J., Bradley, C. (2009). Using the World as an Interface: Augmenting Contexts for Development to Absorb, Transform and Reuse Information. Conference held in central London on 1st December. Further details: http://www.molenet.org.uk/learningconference2009/index.aspx

September 2009

BERA 2009 Annual Conference, University of Manchester, 2nd - 5th September 2009
Simon Pratt-Adams, John Cook, Carl Smith, Claire Bradley: Developing Context-Sensitive Mobile Learning to Explore Urban Education

March 2009

Smith, C. and Cook, J. (2009). Interaction Heuristics for Context-Sensitive Mobile Learning. Paper presented 3rd WLE Mobile Learning Symposium: Mobile Learning Cultures across Education, Work and Leisure 27 March 2009, WLE Centre, IOE London, UK.
For the symposium programme see: http://symposium.londonmobilelearning.net/?page=Programme

CAL 09, March 23-25, Brighton
A number of papers were presented at CAL 09: Learning in Digital Worlds, to be held in Brighton, March 23-25.
[http://www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/]
> Deploying dialogue games to engage students in collaborative thinking: An evaluation and case study, Baur, E., Ravenscoft, A, Sagar, M. & Schofield. S. (2009). Oral Paper accepted for CAL 09.
> Layered learning design, Boyle, T.
> Learning and thinking on the web: Issues and implications from a decade of digital argumentation, Ravenscroft, A. (2009). Oral Paper accepted for CAL 09.
> Student engagement and blended learning: portraits of risk, Holley, D & Oliver, M. Oral paper accepted for CAL 09.
> Smith, C., Cook, J., Bradley, C. (2009). Attaching Information to Space to Allow Real-Time Engineering of Complex Data in a Vocational Mobile Context. Oral Paper accepted for CAL 09.
> Symposium entitled "Outside in, inside out? Digital media as cultural resources for learning". (Convener: Cook) Individual papers accepted as part of the symposium: ‘Appropriation of mobile phones for learning’, by John Cook, LTRI; ‘Smartphones: a social semiotic view and implications for their use in formal education’, by Norbert Pachler, Institute of Education, London and Elisabetta Adami, University of Verona; ‘Curricular assimilation of conflicting mobile expertises into the school, a case study on students’ lifestyle habitus and mobile use in media convergence’, by Ben Bachmair, University of Kassel, Germany.
> Symposium contribution entitled “Highly adaptable learning objects”, Boyle T. This is part of a symposium that we are running in conjunction with the Open CETL at the OU. Dawn Leeder from the RLO-CETL is also presenting together with Steve Swithenby, Bob Lambourne and Bill Tait from the OU
> E-portfolio constructs: a developing method for case study analysis, Wilson-Medhurst, S, Holley, D, Chalk, P, Pokorny, H & Andrew, D. Poster.

February 2009

IADIS mobile learning conference, Barcelona, February 26-28
2 papers have been accepted for the IADIS mobile learning conference, to be held in Barcelona, February 26-28 2009
> Smith, C., Cook, J. and Pratt-Adams, S. (2009). Context Sensitive Mobile Learning: Designing a ‘Technoscape’ for Urban Planners. Mobile Learning, Barcelona, 26-28 February.
> Seipold, J., Pachler, N. and Cook, J. (2009). Towards a Methodology of Researching Mobile Learning. Mobile Learning, Barcelona, 26-28 February.
For more info see: http://www.mlearning-conf.org/

December 2008

ONLINE EDUCA 2008
Carl Smith has been invited to take part in a panel discussion and present a paper at Online Educa 2008 which will be held in Berlin from 3rd to 5th December. The paper ‘Attaching Information to Physical and Virtual Space to Allow Real-Time Manipulation of Complex Data in a Mobile Context’ will be presented on Friday 5th December. The session is called the Learning Design Symposium and will be chaired by Prof Gilly Salmon. The idea behind this session is to explore what makes good design in online and mobile learning. Each speaker will present their specific perspective on learning design and then Prof Salmon will lead the discussion taking into account the various viewpoints and experiences raised. Further details can be found here: http://www.online-educa.com/programme

November 2008

John Cook invited to Learning Futures Festival
Professor Gilly Salmon, University of Leicester, has invited John Cook to be part of an intervention panel at the F2F event on the 8th January as part of annual Learning Futures Festival. This is part of a panel of 4 with 5-10 minutes within an hour moderated session. For further information on the festival see: http://www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/festival 4/11/08

Delegation from Palestine Universities visits UK
A delegation from Palestine Universities, Dr Raed AlQuadi and Dr Loai Malhis, on a World Bank sponsored visit, facilitated by ALT, looking into e-learning in UK HE, Monday 3-6 November. They met e-learning experts in Sheffield from at the Ufi (Dick Moore and Susan Proctor) and Sheffield College (Julie Hooper and Julia Duggleby). They moved to London on November 6 to the LSE where they met Steve Ryan and the LSE team and LTRI’s John Cook.

Learning Sciences Research Institute at Nottingham launch
John Cook was invited to attend the Learning Sciences Research Institute’s (University of Nottingham) official opening, Friday 7th November 2008. The event included interactive exhibition of the Institute’s research and a special lecture from distinguished American learning scientist, Professor Roy Pea, Stanford University, on 21st century learning. See http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/launch/

October 2008

EC funded MATURE team attend successful consortium meeting in Barcelona
The LTRI MATURE team of John Cook, Andrew Ravenscroft and Claire Bradley attended the successful three day EC funded MATURE FP7 consortium meeting in Barcelona (October 2008). See http://mature-ip.eu/en/overview. Andrew is leading on Design Studies and mashups, Claire on Evaluation, John on informal and mobile learning. All of this feeds into a loosely coupled set of tools that will form a Personalised Learning Environment (PLE) for continuous social learning in the workplace. As such, all team members will be working on the new LTRI PLE, which will feed into the MATURE PLE work (see also http://blogs.londonmet.ac.uk/tel/category/personalisation/).

LTRI has high profile at the mLearn conference
'Learning on the Move', LTRI's mobile learning team, gave various successful talks plus a workshop at mLearn 2008 [(http://www.mlearn2008.org/].
1. Pre-conference workshop: ‘How to Design Your Own Mobile Learning Object’ (John Cook, Cecile Tschirhart, Carl Smith, Chris O’Reilly and Claire Bradley). Evaluation results from participants at this pre-conference workshop shows that it went down very well indeed (av. score = 4.4; 5 = highest). Workshop images and the evaluation are now on CETL website here. We had people attending from corporations like Intel and Texas Instruments, plus from FE, HE and Adult Education institutions around the world.
2. Full paper: ‘Language Learning on the Go’. Tschirhart, O’Reilly and Bradley.
3. Full paper: ‘Appropriation of Mobile Phones For Learning’. Cook, Pachler and Bradley.
4. Poster: ‘Mobile multimedia language learning activities’. Tschirhart, O’Reilly and Bradley.
Team members are busy converting their mLearn papers into Conference Special Issue journal papers. Learning on the Move (convener John Cook) will have an open meeting in T10-01 sometime November/December for interested parties. Please contact c.rainey@londonmet.ac.uk to signal an interest. 29/10/08

Andrew Ravenscroft invited to speak at workshop
Andrew has been invited to speak at the workshop on "Personalised technologies for lifelong learning" which will be held at the London Knowledge Lab on 18th November 2008, organised by George Magoulas (MyPlan and LDSE) and Alex Poulovassilis (Co-Director of LKL). Andrew will be giving an invited talk and also participating in the plenary discussion at the end of the day. 27/10/08

Tom Boyle gives keynote in Hong Kong
Tom Boyle gave the keynote presentation at “Expo Excellence Online” at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on October 17th. The title of his presentation was: “Effective Design for Technology Enhanced Learning”. See PowerPoint slides
The symposium website is at: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eLearning/expo/

Talk at Dundee School of Computing
Andrew Ravenscroft gave an invited talk at the University of Dundee School of Computing Seminar Series on October 1, entitled: "The thinking web? Designing tools and mashups for cyber-argumentation".

John Cook invited to conference program committee
John was invited to join the International Program Committee of CSEDU 2009, the “International Conference on Computer Supported Education” - CSEDU 2009. The main topic areas of this conference are: - Information Technologies Supporting Learning - Learning/Teaching Methodologies and Assessment - Social Context and Learning Environments - Legal and Cultural Management Issues - Domain Applications and Case Studies - Quality, Evaluation and Accreditation Policies. A more detailed list of subtopics can be found on the call for papers, at http://www.csedu.org/cfp.htm 29/10/08

Visualisation in Archaeology
Carl Smith presented a paper at the Visualisation in Archaeology 2008 Workshop. The paper ’The Physical World as a Virtual Interface: Enhancing Access to the Units of Construction in Archaeological Data Sets’ was given on the 24th October. The workshop was held at the University of Southampton on 23 & 24 October 2008. Further details can be found here: http://www.viarch.org.uk/content/research-workshop.asp

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking, Budapest, September 25-27
John Cook had a paper with colleague Norbert Pachler from the Institute of Education accepted for this conference.. The paper is called: Mobile, informal and lifelong learning: a UK policy perspective. The conference is organized by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and T-Mobile Hungary. http://www.socialscience.t-mobile.hu/2008/

mLearn 2008, Telford, UK, October 8-10
Two full papers and a poster were presented at mLearn 2008.
> Cook, J., Pachler, N. and Bradley, C. (2008). Appropriation of mobile phones for learning. Full paper.
> Tschirhart, C., O'Reilly, C., Bradley, C. (2008). Language Learning 'on the go'. Full paper.
> Tschirhart, C., O'Reilly, C., Bradley, C. (2008). Mobile multimedia language learning activities. Poster.
The RLO-CETL M-Learning team also had a pre-conference workshop to run on 7th October: 'How to Design Your Own Mobile Learning Object'.
See http://www.mlearn2008.org 26/6/08

September 2008

Carl Smith attends EC funded CONTSENS consortium meeting
The LTRI CONTSENS team is John Cook, Carl Smith and Claire Bradley. See http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ltri/research/projects/contsens.htm. On behalf of the team, Carl attended the successful two day consortium meeting in Varna, Bulgaria (September 2008). CONTSENS investigates wireless technologies for context sensitive education and training. CONTSENS is part of the 'Learning on the Move' team activities (convener John Cook), who will have an open meeting in T10-01 sometime November/December for parties interested in mobile learning. Please contact c.rainey@londonmet.ac.uk to signal an interest.

Invitation to join DCSF Consultation Group
Andrew Ravenscroft has been invited on to the DCSF Beyond Current Horizons Consultation Group for the theme: Knowledge, Creativity and Communication: The Futures of Education, that is being led by Carey Jewitt at London Knowledge Lab. The first event took place on September 15 and the next one will be on November 25 2008.

ONLINE EDUCA 2008
Carl Smith has been invited to take part in a panel discussion and present a paper at Online Educa 2008 which will be held in Berlin from 3rd to 5th December. The paper ‘Attaching Information to Physical and Virtual Space to Allow Real-Time Manipulation of Complex Data in a Mobile Context’ will be presented on Friday 5th December. Online Educa Berlin is the largest global e-learning conference in Europe with over 2000 delegates from more than 95 countries. The session is called the Learning Design Symposium and will be chaired by Prof Gilly Salmon. The idea behind this session is to explore what makes good design in online and mobile learning. Each speaker will present their specific perspective on learning design and then Prof Salmon will lead the discussion taking into account the various viewpoints and experiences raised. Further details can be found here: http://www.online-educa.com/programme

Handheld Learning 2008
Carl Smith, John Cook, Claire Bradley had a paper accepted under the research strand for this years Handheld conference. The paper ‘Engineering suitable content for context sensitive education and vocational training (CONTSENS)’will be presented on Wednesday 15th October. The conference will take place from the 13th to 15th October at the Barbican Centre, London. The full conference guide can be downloaded at: http://www.handheldlearning2008.com/media/HHLGuide2008.pdf

Visualisation in Archaeology
Carl Smith has had a paper accepted for the Visualisation in Archaeology 2008 Workshop. The paper ’The Physical World as a Virtual Interface: Enhancing Access to the Units of Construction in Archaeological Data Sets’ will be given on the 24th October. The workshop will be held at the University of Southampton on 23 & 24 October 2008. Further details can be found here: http://www.viarch.org.uk/content/research-workshop.asp

Presentation at ALT-C
Boyle T., Ljubojevic D., Agombar M. and Baur E. (2008) Developing and adapting generative learning objects (GLOs). Presentation at ALT-C 2008, Annual Conference of the Association for Learning Technology, September 2008, Manchester.

Peter Oriogon becomes a Fellow of The British Computer Society
Congratulations to Peter who has been nominated by Professor Margaret Ross to be a Fellow of The British Computer Society (FBCS), the highest category of membership of the institute. 25/9/08

John Cook to facilitate at JISC online conference, November 4-7, 2008
The JISC e-Learning Programme third international Online Conference Innovating e-Learning 2008, is taking place from 4th – 7th November 2008. The title for this year’s event is Learning in a digital age – are we prepared? John has accepted an invitation to facilitate the keynote session for Theme 2 which is to be given by Rose Luckin. This session will be addressing the questions: Who will drive the learning process? What is the future of the relationship between learners, their tutors and institutions?. Theme 2 'Going boldly into the dark' explores the uncertain but stimulating possibilities technology will bring to learning and teaching in the future, including:
> Who will drive the learning process? What is the future of the relationship between learners, their tutors and institutions?
> What are the benefits and issues around learning in immersive worlds?
> How can institutions plan for the future?
More information on the conference and the themes can be found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/elpconference08

Debbie Holley awarded PhD
Congratulations to Dr Debbie Holley for completing her PhD. The focus of her work was 'Spaces and Places: negotiating learning in the context of new technology'.

Paper accepted on MATURE project work
A full paper from the MATURE project, involving the LTRI team and other members of the Consortium, has been accepted for International Workshop on Learning in Enterprise 2.0 and Beyond (LEB 08) at the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 2008, Maastricht, Netherlands, 16-19 September 2008. It will be published as part of the Conference Proceedings in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series (LNCS). The paper is:
> A. Ravenscroft, S. Braun, J. Cook, A. Schmidt, J. Bimrose, A. Brown & C. Bradley. (2008). Ontologies, Dialogue and Knowledge Maturing: Towards a Mashup and Design Study.
This is a deliverable at an early stage of the MATURE project, which sketches out how we aim to articulate some of our evaluation work on the project according to a design based research approach. This involves synthesising our work in web-technologies, dialogue and mobile learning and combine this with work into ontologies and social software at Karlsruhe... through exploring the development of educational mashups - so it should be encouraging to see how this all develops. 3/9/08

Tom Boyle presents at symposium in Colombia
Tom Boyle gave two invited presentations at the “2nd Symposio Soluciones Educative: la education imersiva revoluciona el aprendizaje” in Bogota, Colombia on 22 August. The talks were on: Pedagogical principles for the design of multimedia virtual environments and Virtual Learning Objects: achievements and challenges, and included presenting the GLO Maker tool. Tom said, "The talks went very well. There were about 300 people and they had simultaneous translation." The symposium blog site is at http://e-sanitas.edu.co/simposio/blog/ It has photos and comments from attendees (in Spanish) on the talks. 3/9/08

Networks of Design conference, University College Falmouth, September 3–6
Carl Smith has a paper accepted at this conference in September.
Smith, C. (2008). The evolution of form. The unit of construction. The ultimate network.
Further information: http://www.networksofdesign.co.uk/conference.htm

International Workshop on Learning in Enterprise 2.0 and Beyond (LEB 08) at the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 2008, Maastricht, Netherlands, September 16-19
A full paper from the MATURE project, involving the LTRI team and other members of the Consortium, has been accepted for International Workshop on Learning in Enterprise 2.0 and Beyond (LEB 08) at the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 2008, Maastricht, Netherlands, 16-19 September 2008. It will be published as part of the Conference Proceedings in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series (LNCS). The paper is:
> A. Ravenscroft, S. Braun, J. Cook, A. Schmidt, J. Bimrose, A. Brown & C. Bradley. (2008). Ontologies, Dialogue and Knowledge Maturing: Towards a Mashup and Design Study.

August 2008

Tom Boyle to co-chair ALT-C 2009
Tom has been invited to co-chair next year's ALT-C conference with Gilly Salmon. ALT is the conference for the Association for Learning Technology, and in 2009 will be held in Manchester, September 8-10. 7/8/07

Video on Using QR codes in Mobile Learning
Following on from the JISC TechDis event ‘Creating Content for Mobile Learning: A Resource Creation Day’, Carl Smith has produced a short instructional video entitled ‘Using QR codes in Mobile Learning’. Quick Response (QR) Codes, are 2D matrix codes (as pictured in the image on the right) that can be decoded via mobile phones. They store addresses, and URLs may appear on buildings, on signs, below paintings in exhibitions, or on just about any object that a user might need information about. A user with a camera phone equipped with the free reader software can scan the QR Code by taking a picture of it and is then linked directly to URLs, e-books, images or videos etc. A user can also generate and print their own QR Codes for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites. We will be incorporating them into learning applications as part of the CONTSENS project.
The video can be downloaded from here [65 Mb]:
http:// www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk/developers/smith/qrcodes_carl_smith.zip
JISC Techdis are producing a CD of all the content produced on the day which will be available shortly. 6/8/07

Paper presented at the EVA conference
Carl Smith, Janet Tatlock and Samantha Lackey presented a paper ‘Learning and Enquiry via Collections in Real and Virtual Worlds’ at the EVA conference held at the British Computer Society [www.eva-conferences.com/eva_london/]. The ‘Values & Worth’ project is an Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) approach to encountering and constructing collections in both the real and virtual world. It involves the digital capture of objects held within the University’s collections as a way to introduce school students to the reflective learning essential at the University level via a generative learning object (GLO). 6/8/07

Keynote talk on mobile learning work given
John Cook and Carl Smith were invited to give a keynote talk about their mobile learning work at a technology immersion day which included visits to Bloomberg, Apple and the British Film Institute. These visits are being made ahead of a major school regeneration project called Building Schools for the Future [www.bsf.gov.uk] which has an annual spend of £2.2bn per year for the next 15 years. 6/8/07

Fiona French to run a workshop at 'Women in Games' conference
Fiona is running a workshop with Barbara Zambrini from Gamelab at this year's Women in Games conference at the University of Warwick 10-12 Sept 08 [http://www.womeningames.com/] called The Pink Wink Workshop. They are working on an ARG (alternate reality game) for teenagers aiming to encourage more girls into science and technology. It starts with a mystery - who is responsible for the current misleading media representation of girls and women as fluff-headed pink-wearing image-obsessed lightweights who are scared of maths and whose sole aim in life is to get a bloke? 4/8/07

Book chapter proposal accepted
Debbie Holley, Claire Bradley, Lyn Greaves (TVU) and John Cook have had a book chapter accepted for publication. The title of the chapter is: “You can take out of it what you want” – how learning objects within blended learning designs encourage personalised learning. To appear in John O’Donoghue (Ed.) Technology Supported Environment for Personalised Learning: Methods and Case Studies. Published by IGI Global. 1/8/08

Tom Boyle invited to speak at symposium in Colombia
Tom Boyle will be giving two invited presentations at the “2nd Symposio Soluciones Educative: la education imersiva revoluciona el aprendizaje” in Bogota, Colombia on 22 August. The themes are: Pedagogical principles for the design of multimedia virtual environments and Virtual Learning Objects: achievements and challenges. The symposium web site is at: http://www.e-sanitas.edu.co/simposio/programa.html

July 2008

Book chapter published
Tom Boyle (2008). The Design of Learning Objects for Pedagogical Impact. In L. Lockyer, S. Bennett, S. Agostinho and B. Harper (Eds) Handbook of Research on Learning Design and Learning Objects: Issues, Applications and Technologies (2 Volumes). Information Science Reference. This is a major reference book for Learning design and learning objects. See table of contents at: http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=7731&v=tableOfContents 10/7/08

Visiting speakers
The LTRI are hosting two talks by distinguished international speakers on Monday 11 August from 11:00am to 12:30pm. Carmel Mc Naught 'Using eLearning to drive institutional growth and change” David Kennedy “Mobile learning” (full title to be confirmed). Venue RLO-CETL Centre Room, Tower Building 10/7/08

Workshop proposal accepted
A workshop proposal entitled 'Not by Accident but by Design: Collaborative Design of Reusable Learning Technology' (D. Ljubojevic, E. OKell, and E. Baur) has been accepted for the 3rd International Conference on Design Principles and Practices to be held in Berlin, February 15-17. Details available here: http://G09.cgpublisher.com/proposals/63 10/7/08

Workshop at London Met Learning and Teaching Conference
The LTRI and RLO-CETL performed a joint workshop at the London Metropolitan University "Learning and Teaching Conference 2008: Engaging with Diversity" in a session entitled: Tools and Resources for Promoting E-learning for Diverse Students A combination of presentations and demos were given covering the Dialogue Game, GL0-Maker and Mobile Learning in HE projects, with these sessions presented by Andrew Ravenscroft, John Cook, Musbah Sagar and Enzian Baur. More details at: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/capd/lt-conference-2008/ 10/7/08

IADIS e-Learning 2008 Conference, Amsterdam, July 22-25
Peter Oriogun presented a paper at the IADIS e-Learning 2008 Conference, July22-25. The paper is co-authored by Diana Cave from Accenture.
Paper Title: Towards exploring existing content analysis schemes for asynchronous small group collaborative CMC learning.
See: http://www.elearning-conf.org/

HE Academy Annual Conference, July 1-3, Harrogate
A paper was presented at this year's conference, "Transforming the student experience". The paper was led by Andy Mitchell, London Met's student representative of the CETL, and explores the dynamics of the student contribution to the RLO CETL across all its partners.
Mitchell, A., Holley, D., Cook, J., Windle, R., Morales, R. (2008). 360 degree rotations – a kaleidoscope of voices from the RLO-CETL.
See: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/conference

June 2008

CONTSENS project web site launch
The CONTSENS project web site has now been launched by Ericsson. The project investigates the use of wireless technologies for context sensitive education and training; it is funded by the Leonardo Life Long Learning Program. The 2 year project involves a European-wide consortium headed by Ericsson Education, Ireland. John Cook leads the LTRI team of Carl Smith and Claire Bradley. See website 26/6/08

LTRI activities at mLearn conference 2008
Two papers and a poster have been accepted for mLearn 2008, Telford, Shropshire, UK, 8-10 October. Paper details:
> Cook, J., Pachler, N. and Bradley, C. (2008). Appropriation of mobile phones for learning. Full paper.
> Tschirhart, C., O' Reilly, C., Bradley, C. (2008). Language Learning 'on the go'. Full paper.
> Tschirhart, C., O' Reilly, C., Bradley, C. (2008). Mobile multimedia language learning activities. Poster.
The M-Learning team also have a pre-conference workshop to run on 7th October: 'How to Design Your Own Mobile Learning Object'.
See http://www.mlearn2008.org 26/6/08

John Cook interviewed for online article on handheld learning
John Cook has been interviewed for an article on handheld learning in SecEd, a Website for secondary education. See: http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/features/article.html?uid=4010 23/6/08

John Cook invited to present at London Met Learning and Teaching Conference
John has been invited to give a talk at London Met's Learning and Teaching Conference, to be held 8th July. The title of his talk is 'Unlocking Potential: harnessing the pedagogical benefits of blended e-learning'. 23/6/08

LTRI Professorial appointment
Congratulations to Andrew Ravenscroft who has been awarded the title Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning by the University. 13/6/08

Carl Smith to present at Teaching and Learning in Archaeology 2008 conference
Carl Smith has a paper accepted for the Teaching and Learning in Archaeology 2008 conference to be held at the University of Liverpool, June 25th-26th. The conference is organised by the HEA Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology. The details are:
Smith, C. (2008). Simulation as an Aid to Archaeological Drawing. 10/6/08

Carl Smith invited to talk at JISC TechDis event
Carl Smith has been invited to talk at the JISC TechDis event entitled ‘Creating Content for Mobile Learning: A Resource Creation Day’ to be held at the Higher Education Academy, York on Thursday 26th June as part of the LSN mobile learning and inclusion project. The purpose of the day will include a range of activities including how content for mobile learning can be created for a range of subject areas to the collation of good practice advice and guidance material. 10/6/08

Peter Chalk presented at ePortfolio conference
Chalk, P. (2008). 'Identifying the key issues that will persuade staff and students to engage with ePortfolios: the results of nine pilot modules', presentation at the Telling ePortfolio Stories 'The Road to Stickiness' Conference, 5/6/08, University of Wolverhampton. 10/6/08

ED-MEDIA, Vienna, June 30-July 4
These papers were presented at the ED-MEDIA conference held in Vienna, Austria, June 30-July 4, 2008. For more information see: http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/default.htm
> Boyle, T., Wharrad, H., Cook, J., and Leeder, D. Making, Sharing and Evaluating Learning Objects. Pre-conference Workshop, June 30.
> Boyle, T., Ljubojevic, D., Agombar, M., Baur, E. (2008). The conceptual structure of generative learning objects (GLOs).
> Greaves, L., Bradley, C., Cook, J. (2008). A Blended Learning Design to Support Student Learning, Lyn Greaves, Claire Bradley, John Cook. Full paper.
> Oriogun, P. (2008). Using Code-Recode to Measure Students Critical Thinking Online within Asynchronous Small Group Collaborative Learning Environment. Full paper.
> Smith, C., Sinfield, S., Holley, D., Burns, T., Hoskins, K. (2008). Attaching information to space to avoid plagiarism: the development of a web and mobile based notemaking tool to enable students to conceptualise and ‘re author’ ideas into multiple ‘forms’, ‘spaces’ and ‘points of view’. Full paper.
> Wharrad, H., Windle, R., Morales, R., Bradley C. (2008). A toolkit for a multilayered, cross institutional evaluation strategy. Best practice session.

Third International Blended Learning Conference, June 18-19, University of Hertfordshire
The following paper was presented at this conference:
> Smith, C., Sinfield, S., Holley, D., Burns, T., Haynes, R. (2008). Title: Capturing student creativity to combat plagiarism - the development of a note making tool to enable user driven learning. University of Hertfordshire, 18th-19th June 2008. See conference website

May 2008

Journal article published
Debbie Holley and Caroline Dobson have an article published in Learning, Media and Technology. The full details are:
Holley, D. & Dobson, C. (2008). Encouraging student engagement in a blended learning environment: the use of contemporary learning spaces, Learning, Media and Technology, Volume 33 Issue 2 p.p. 139-150. 28/5/08

Peter Oriogun and Claire Bradley invited to review for ASCILITE
Peter and Claire have been invited again to review papers for this year's ASCILITE conference which will be held in Melbourne in December. ASCILITE is The Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. The deadline for paper submissions to the conference is July 30th. See conference details: http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/

Invited presentation on mobile language learning at workshop
Cecile Tschirhart, Chris O' Reilly and Claire Bradley have been invited to present at an e-learning workshop on languages on June 9th in Bristol. The workshop is organised by the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Their presentation is entitled 'It's my phone and it's my second heart!': a case for mobile language learning. It focuses on the prototype activities developed for mobile phones and their evaluation with students. For details see: http://www.llas.ac.uk/events/llaseventitem.aspx?resourceid=2918

Carl Smith presents his work at visualisation conference
Carl has been invited to talk about his work on information visualisation at the 2nd Interdisciplinary Conference on Intersections of Visualization Practices and Techniques to be held at Loughborough University from May 7-9 2008. Carl has been invited to demonstrate a number of projects whose data sets have been optimised to allow the visual processes and distinct design methodologies to be examined via dynamic access to the units of construction. More information can be found at: http://www.viznet.ac.uk/files/viznet2008_flyer.pdf

Debbie Holley has book chapter published
Debbie has a chapter on 'How to use computers and e-learning to support your learning' in a book on essential study skills. The study skills RLOs developed within the RLO-CETL are featured in the chapter. The book is a popular study skills book for students across the UK. Book details:
Holley, D. (2008). How to use computers and e-learning to support your learning, in Burns, T & Sinfield, S, Essential Study Skills: the complete guide to success at university (2nd ed), London: Sage publications, Chapter 6 pp 80-97. 7/5/08

Andrew Ravenscroft invited to Scientific Committee for e-learning conference
Andrew has been invited onto the scientific committee for the IADIS international e-learning conference: e-LEARNING - EL2008. 7/5/08 http://www.elearning-conf.org/

Claire Bradley invited to review panel for mLearn conference
Claire has been invited to contribute as part of a review panel for short papers and posters for the mLearn conference (Mobile Learning) to be held in Shropshire, October 7-10 2008. The deadline for submissions for full papers is April 28 and May 12 for short papers and posters. For more info about the conference go to: http://www.mlearn2008.org

e-Learning conference, York, May 14-15 2008
Carl Smith presented a paper at the International e-Learning Conference ‘e-Learning in Dialogue: Innovative Teaching and Learning in Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies’. The conference was organised by the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies, to be held at the Higher Education Academy, University of York, May 14th-15th.
Smith, C. (2008). Accessing, manipulating and achieving transformative dialogue using advanced learning technology.
Further details of the conference can be found here.

April 2008

Online journal article published on mobile learning
John Cook and Claire Bradley, with colleague Norbert Pachler from the Institute of Education, have a new paper published in the Special issue on Learning While Mobile of the online journal 'Journal of the Research Centre in Educational Technology'. Paper details:
Cook, J., Pachler, N., Bradley, C. (2008). Bridging the gap? Mobile phones at the interface between informal and formal learning, Journal of the Research Centre for Educational Technology, Special issue on Learning While Mobile, Spring 2008. 25/4/08
Available online

Article featuring GLO Maker use in Education Guardian
On Tuesday 22/04/2008 eduactionguardian.co.uk published an article entitled 'Time's running out to preserve our treasures' featuring an excerpt from an interview with Val Marsden, a teacher of modern foreign languages at Franklin college, Grimsby. We have worked with Val, as a part of the QIA JISC project, to help her reuse the materials from the NewsFilmOnline archive for her teaching, using GLO Maker software. She has used the GLO Maker to create a learning object for her students based on video footage of Eric Cantona obtained from the archive. Unfortunately the article does not mention the use of the GLO Maker tool and the RLO-CETL website URL is incorrect, but it provides inspiration in how digital archives can be used to create engaging learning materials. 25/4/08

Conference paper accepted
John Cook has a paper with colleague Norbert Pachler from the Institute of Education accepted for the conference 'Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking'. The paper is called: Mobile, informal and lifelong learning: a UK policy perspective. The conference is to take place in Budapest, September 25-27, 2008. The conference is organized by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and T-Mobile Hungary. http://www.socialscience.t-mobile.hu/2008/ 18/4/08

More papers for ED-MEDIA conference accepted
LTRI members have another 4 papers accepted for the EdMedia conference to be held in Vienna at the end of June. This brings the total of full papers now accepted to 4, plus a pre-conference workshop and a best practice paper. For full details of all the papers accepted see Upcoming conference presentations on this page. The additional papers are:
> The conceptual structure of generative learning objects (GLOs), Tom Boyle, Dejan Ljubojevic, Martin Agombar, Enzian Baur.
> Using Code-Recode to Measure Students Critical Thinking Online within Asynchronous Small Group Collaborative Learning Environment, Peter Oriogun.
> A Blended Learning Design to Support Student Learning, Lyn Greaves, Claire Bradley, John Cook.
> A toolkit for a multilayered, cross institutional evaluation strategy, Heather Wharrad, Richard Windle, Raquel Morales, Claire Bradley. 17/4/08

Peter Oriogun has journal article accepted
Peter has an article accepted for The Journal of Interactive Online Learning for publication in November 2008. The title is 'Using Code-Recode to Detect Critical Thinking Aspects of Asynchronous Small Group Collaborative Learning'. 17/4/08

Book chapter accepted
The Digital Dialogue Game/InterLoc team has had a book chapter accepted:
Ravenscroft, A., Sagar, M., Baur, E & Oriogun. P. (2008). Beyond Web 2.0: Designing meaningful learning experiences and ambient pedagogies for the digital age. Hatzipanagos, S. & Warburton, S. (2008), (Eds.), Social Software & Developing Community Ontologies, IGI Global Publishing. (Accepted).
This is the first full article covering the design principles and approaches that were presented at the LTRI seminar in November and how these feed into and are realised through the development of InterLoc 3 (that was completed and launched relatively recently). It also locates this line of work in the developing discourse on social software/web 2.0 for learning. 11/4/08

Tom Boyle presents keynote address
Tom Boyle presented the keynote address at the University of Winchester Learning and Teaching Day on 9 April 2008. The title of the talk was: “Perspectives on Pedagogy and eLearning”. 11/4/08

LTRI is partner in successful ESRC/EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Programme bid
We are partners in a successful bid to the joint ESRC/EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Programme. The title is “A Learning Design Support Environment (LDSE) for Teachers and Lecturers”. “The main focus of this proposal is on the use of digital technologies to support teachers in designing technology-enhanced learning. A key assumption is that the teaching community should be at the forefront of TEL innovation. The bid is led by Diana Laurillard at the IOE. The other partner universities are the University of Oxford, LSE, Birbeck and the Royal Veterinary College. The project is for three years starting in September 2008. Tom Boyle is a co-applicant on the bid so we will be closely involved in the LDSE developments. Our main contribution will to align the Generative Learning Objects (GLO) development in the CETL within the wider LDSE. 7/4/08

MATURE project begins
The kick-off meeting for the MATURE project was held in Karlsruhe, April 2-4. MATURE is an EU-funded Integrating Project. MATURE investigates knowledge maturing as new forms of learning in businesses and organisations, a dynamic view on e-learning and knowledge management.
See press release [pdf]
For more info about the project see: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ltri/research/projects/mature.htm 7/4/08

Journal article accepted for the International Journal of Research and Method in Education
Andrew Ravenscroft and Simon McAlister have had a Journal article accepted for the International Journal of Research and Method in Education, which is a review and critique of dialogue and argumentation evaluation methods we have used over the past ten years or so, emphasising how these link to the design of digital tools (such as AdademicTalk and InterLoc), the reference is:
Ravenscroft, A. & McAlister, S. (2008). Investigating and promoting educational argumentation: towards new digital practices, International Journal of Research and Method in Education (IJRME), Special Issue on Researching Argumentation in Educational contexts: new methods, new directions. Guest edited by Caroline Coffin and Kieran O’Halloran, The Open University, UK, (Accepted). 7/4/08

Paper accepted for eL 2008 Conference
Peter Oriogun has a paper accepted for the IADIS e-Learning 2008 (eL 2008) Conference, July22-25. The paper is co-authored by Diana Cave from Accenture.
Paper Title: Towards exploring existing content analysis schemes for asynchronous small group collaborative CMC learning. 7/4/08

Tom Boyle presents at the American Educational Research Association Conference
Tom presented a paper on “Generative Learning Objects: a more powerful basis for reuse and repurposing” at the AERA (American Educational Research Association) Conference in New York on 25 March. This paper was part of a symposium organised by Tom on “Design-Based Approaches to Learning Objects and Learning Models”. 7/4/08

Paper accepted for Networks of Design conference
Carl Smith has a paper accepted at this conference in September. The theme Networks of Design responds to recent academic interest in the fields of design, technology and the social sciences in the ‘networks’ of interactions within processes of knowledge formation.
Smith, C. (2008). The evolution of form. The unit of construction. The ultimate network.
Conference to be held at University College Falmouth, September 3–6, 2008. Further information: http://www.networksofdesign.co.uk/conference.htm 2/4/08

Andrew Ravenscroft invited onto conference programme committee
Andrew has been invited onto the programme committee for the "3rd International conference on the Pragmatic Web: innovating the interactive society", 29-30 September 2008, Uppsala, Sweden. http://www.pragmaticweb.info/index.php 2/4/08

Andrew Ravenscroft invited to talk at University of Dundee
Andrew will be giving an invited talk at the School of Computing, University of Dundee, 1 October 2008. His talk is on 'Digital Dialogue Games: Modelling and promoting cyber-argumentation'. 2/4/08

Presentation on Mobile Learning
Debbie Holley and Carl Smith were invited to talk about Mobile Learning to the Business Education Research Group (BERG) on Monday 7th April. BERG are influential in setting the education research agenda for the newly formed London Metropolitan Business School. The Business School has a number of high profile launch activities scheduled over the next few months, for more information visit the website: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/lmbs/ 2/4/08

March 2008

Dejan Ljubojevic presents at JISC workshop
Dejan presented at the QIA JISC project event entitled Using Digitised Resources to Enhance Learning & Teaching In Further Education, a one-day seminar at the New Technology Institute, Leeds, March 17 2008. The presentation was a brief reflection on the successful deployment of GLO Maker by a number of participants in this project, and plans for the potential further and wider adoption of the tool. 26/3/08

Paper on RLO-CETL work accepted for HEA Conference
A paper has been accepted for this year's conference, "Transforming the student experience". The paper is led by Andy Mitchell, London Met's student representative of the CETL. It will explore the dynamics of the student contribution to the RLO CETL, and offer the reader a portrayal of the added value given to the CETL by the students’ voices at all stages of our work - management, team, development, evaluation and dissemination. The presentation will involve a number of other CETL staff as well as students from the other partner institutions, including Christian Bryan, Rick Day and Laura McKinlay.
Mitchell, A., Holley, D., Cook, J., Windle, R., Morales, R. (2008). 360 degree rotations – a kaleidoscope of voices from the RLO-CETL.
See: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/conference 26/3/08

Carl Smith invited to workshop
Carl Smith has been invited to the “Virtual Audio and Past Environments” workshop at the National Centre for Early Music, York on 17 March 2008. The workshop will explore multi-disciplinary approaches to audio, acoustics, and sound design, in order to discover how current techniques and research might be applied specifically to heritage and related applications. The aim of the workshop is to share knowledge, experience and the promotion of good practice in order to create focused collaborations and working parties for the development of new projects and/or research proposals. Further details can be found at: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~dtm3/acoustics_heritage.html 17/3/08

Paper accepted for e-Learning conference
Carl Smith has a paper accepted for the International e-Learning Conference ‘e-Learning in Dialogue: Innovative Teaching and Learning in Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies’. The conference is organised by the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies, to be held at the Higher Education Academy, University of York, May 14th-15th.
Smith, C. (2008). Accessing, manipulating and achieving transformative dialogue using advanced learning technology.
Further details of the conference can be found here. 17/3/08

Paper being presented at SQM '08
Peter Oriogun presented at the SQM '08 conference at the University of Ulster, March 18-19 2008. The conference is organised by the BCS Software Quality Special Group (Peter is also a PC member of the conference and the Group), Chaired by Professor Margaret Ross. His co-author is one of our ex colleagues at CCTM (now Computing) who now works for Accenture as User Experience Consultant, Diana Cave, who evaluated the SQUAD environment in the paper, in her capacity as a Usability Consultant. Details of the paper are below.
Paper title: Towards Software Quality Integrity of Existing Asynchronous Content Analysis Schemes for Small Group Collaborative CMC Learning Environment
Authors: Peter K Oriogun, Diana Cave http://sqm2008.ulster.ac.uk/index.php

RLO-CETL staff help to make Get Ahead student conference a great success
Students and their learning experience were at the heart of the 2008 Get Ahead student conference at London Metropolitan University, which was held on February 13. The free conference, which was aimed exclusively at students, attracted over one hundred people and provided an upbeat and positive way of addressing study and academic skills issues.

London Met's three Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) worked together with staff and students across the University to organise a wide range of learning activities at the one day event. The conference was designed help students learn more about how to make the most out of their time at the University and how best to maximise their potential.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Development), Professor Paul Lister, gave an inspiring speech to students in which he outlined what it takes to succeed both at university and in life in general. The rest of the day consisted of a series of workshops and talks focusing on different areas of learning and development. Alumnus and recent Vice-President of JP Morgan, Wajid Malik, who graduated with a BSc Business and Computing in 1992 also presented a talk at the conference. He spoke to students about his personal experiences at the University and in the world of work. He also discussed what attributes were necessary to be successful in the corporate world. He motivated the audience by highlighting the benefits of making the most of opportunities afforded at the University.

Andy Mitchell, one of the conference organisers, said: ‘It has been a great day. I think this sort of focus event really helps and motivates students. The feedback we have had from student delegates was very positive and a lot of interest has been shown in whether we will be organising conferences like this in the near future.’

One student delegate said: ‘This event has been really useful and I'm grateful to everyone who organised it.' Go to photo gallery of the event.

Paper accepted on RLO re-use
A paper has been accepted for the BMAF conference in April on the re-use of RLOs produced by the RLO-CETL at Thames Valley University. BMAF is the HE Academy subject centre for Business, Management, Accountancy and Finance. For more details of the conference go to: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/business/events/conference
Greaves, L., Bradley, C., Cook, J. (2008). An Investigation of the Purpose and use Made by Students of Reusable Learning Objects within a Blended Learning Curriculum, Designed to Support Progression and Academic Competence, BMAF Conference, Edinburgh, April 29-30. 5/3/08

Paper accepted
Tom Boyle has a paper accepted for CGGR '08, Grand Grand Challenges in Computing Research. See abstract [pdf]. For more info go to: http://www.ukcrc.org.uk/grand_challenges/news/challenge08.cfm
Boyle T. (2008) Developing the foundations for a design based discipline of technology enhanced learning. Paper accepted for Grand Challenges in Computing Research – GCCR’08, London, 18-19 March 2008. 5/3/08

SQM '08, University of Ulster, March 18-19 2008
Peter Oriogun presented a paper at this conference.
Paper title: Towards Software Quality Integrity of Existing Asynchronous Content Analysis Schemes for Small Group Collaborative CMC Learning Environment
Authors: Peter K Oriogun, Diana Cave http://sqm2008.ulster.ac.uk/index.php

21st Congress of the German Corporation for Educational Science, Dresden, Germany, March 16-19 2008
John Cook is took part in a symposium at the Congress 'Cultures of Education – 21st Congress of the German Corporation for Educational Science', Dresden, Germany, March 16-19 2008.
> Bachmair, B., Pachler, N., Cook, J., Hug, T. and Kress, G. (2008). Transforming School Culture with the Help of Everyday Life Mobile Phone Use of Young People - Mobile Learning as a Pedagogical Response to the Diversification of Education. Click here for details

February 2008

John Cook is seconded to University-wide post of ‘E-Learning Project Leader’
John has been seconded for half of his time to a University-wide post of ‘E-Learning Project Leader’. His cross-university role will include taking a strategic look at embedding/transforming practice through e-learning. One of the first challenges of this new role will be to embed the RLO-CETL, and other e-learning/mobile learning work, across the whole university. This will ensure the sustainability of the CETL at London Met beyond the period of HEFCE funding. As a result of this new role, John will gradually step down from direct involvement in the running of the RLO-CETL. 1/2/08

John Cook invited back to talk to Irish colleagues
In November 2006 John Cook delivered the well received keynote address (Reusable Learning Objects and Repositories: Working practices and cultural changes) at the launch of the National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) Education Community of Practice (EduCoP) at National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland. John has been invited back to give an invited talk and to facilitate a community planning day on February 27, 2008. The idea is to use the day to decide upon and plan EduCoP activities for the coming year. A core task includes identifying resources (RLOs) that the community would find useful, through a process of brainstorming/storyboarding. Invitations like this are growing evidence of the international impact that the RLO-CETL is having. See http://www.ndlr.ie/ and http://www.ndlr.ie/educop/blog/ 1/2/08

Second Annual ‘Get Ahead’ conference
Following the success of last year’s event, the 3 London Metropolitan University Centres of Excellence in Teaching and Learning have decided to do it again. We are pleased to announce that this year’s conference is being held on Wednesday 13th February, 2008 at the Graduate Centre, North Campus. It starts at 10.00am and finishes at approximately 5.00pm. Andy Mitchell (a former student) has been employed to organise the event for us. See http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/getahead/ 1/2/08

Paper accepted for Third International Blended Learning Conference
Smith, C., Sinfield, S., Holley, D., Burns, T., Haynes, R. (2008). Title: Capturing student creativity to combat plagiarism - the development of a note making tool to enable user driven learning. Conference to be held at the University of Hertfordshire, 18th-19th June 2008. 25/2/08

LTRI presents at The Lab Group Open Day
Tom Boyle, John Cook and Andrew Ravenscroft presented LTRIs work at the The Lab Group Open Day on 20 February 2008, at Oracle’s City of London Building. The Lab Group [http://www.labgroup.org.uk] is an Association for Learning Technology-supported collaboration between labs which undertake research and development in learning mediated by technology. This second Lab Group Open Day will enable:
> around a dozen member labs to showcase some of their work, discuss the concepts that lie behind it, answer questions about it, and get feedback on it from other labs;
> participants from policy-making and funding bodies to keep abreast of developments, and improve their understanding of what is going on in the development and research community. 21/2/08

LTRI papers accepted for ED-MEDIA
These papers have been accepted for the ED-MEDIA conference to be held in Vienna, Austria, June 30-July 4, 2008. For more information see: http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/default.htm
> Smith, C., Sinfield, S., Holley, D., Burns, T., Hoskins, K. (2008). Attaching information to space to avoid plagiarism: the development of a web and mobile based notemaking tool to enable students to conceptualise and ‘re author’ ideas into multiple ‘forms’, ‘spaces’ and ‘points of view’. Full paper.
> Boyle, T., Wharrad, H., Cook, J., and Leeder, D. Making, Sharing and Evaluating Learning Objects. Workshop, June 30. 21/2/08

Accepted symposium
Sandra Sinfield, Debbie Holley, Carl Smith, Tom Burns and Kate Hoskins, ‘The contested terrain of notemaking: the development of a web and mobile based tool enabling students to gain their own voice through recontextualising their notes and ideas.'
The symposium will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, during The 7th Conference of the Discourse, Power, Resistance Series: Cultures in Resistance. 18– 20 March 2008.
The 90 min interactive symposium is designed to enable academics and those interested in the process of supporting student writing to focus intensively on notemaking. We take as our starting premise that this simple study practice is under-researched, and hence under-theorised. We start with a critique that note making is not value free, indeed, we argue that for widening participation students it can be an emancipatory practice, which enables them to develop their own voice within exclusionary higher education discourse. Participants will explore an innovative notemaking reusable learning object (RLO) and come away with the knowledge of how to reuse it in their own learning contexts, with their own students. Further details can be found here: http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/dpr/ 20/2/08

Carl Smith invited to workshop
Carl Smith has been invited to the “Performing Space” workshop at Nottingham Trent University School of Art and Design on 22 February 2008. The research aim of this hybrid workshop is to bring together a range of researchers and artists to examine what is new and challenging about working with ICT networks for creative production and research and to question how these networks are transforming our understanding of contemporary public and private space. Further details can be found here. 20/2/08

Debbie Holley has paper published
Holley, D. (2008). Using biographic narrative to explore students' experiences of online learning, in Using Auto/biography in Learning and Teaching, (eds) Frame, P & Burnett, J. SEDA Paper 120, pp53-58. 20/2/08

LTRI seminar, Thursday Feb 28
The next LTRI seminar is at 3pm, on Thursday 28th Feb, in BR4-04, North Campus. The theme for this session is Designing and researching e-learning for the future and will be led by John Cook, Andrew Ravenscroft, Carl Smith and Claire Bradley. 13/2/08

Tom Boyle gives invited talk at the Metadata 2 workshop
Tom Boyle presented a talk on “Metadata for OBJECTS or metadata for LEARNING?” at the Metadata 2 workshop held at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven on February 7. The workshop concerned the development of a new generation of metadata to enable a more flexible and versatile metadata world in 2010 and beyond. The talk argued that the aspiration of generating highly personalized learning on a significant scale is not attainable without improvements in metadata for learning. It proposed that greater dialogue is needed between researchers in “design for learning” (especially executable designs for learning) and the metadata development community. Outline ideas for framing this dialogue were proposed. The slides for this talk are available here. 12/2/08

RLOs to be used within JISC-funded ‘Reuse of Learning Content’ project at TVU
Lyn Greaves at Thames Valley University has been successful in a £25,000 JISC bid that involves reusing and repurposing learning objects developed by the RLO-CETL. The project is entitled ‘Blended Learning 4 Academic Competence and Critical Enquiry (BL4ACE)’, and will run for one year from March 2008. Tom Boyle and Claire Bradley will be working as consultants on the project. This is a very good example of the CETL having impact outside the partner institutions. A brief summary of the project follows.
By the end of the project, the team will have embedded a new technology enhanced module across a range of courses using TVU’s current Blackboard VLE, and will have addressed the following:
> Use of the RLO CETL Generative Learning Object tool to adapt RLO’s to meet specific needs if required and appropriate.
> Assessment of the relative merits of adopting a ‘more tutor-managed delivery’ of RLOs as opposed to ‘more student-managed approaches’ e.g. a comparison of three scenarios:
1. Using RLO wraparounds (keeping the RLO as it is and adding a front-end to set the TVU context and a follow-up reflection or assessment to make the learning relevant to the local needs)
2. Modifying the RLO itself so that it is more suitable for TVU needs
3. Providing RLO choice (providing students with a selection of RLOs that cover similar learning outcomes and allowing students to manage their own learning).
The project is also going to use the London Pedagogy Planner tool which has been developed by a JISC-funded Design for Learning project, of which LTRI is a partner. The tool will be used to assist the process of curriculum evaluation and redesign. 1/2/08

John Cook gives 2 workshops at NIACE Conference
John Cook gives two enthusiastically received workshops at the NIACE Conference ‘E-Learning: The future of learning’, January 31, East Midlands Conference Centre. The sessions were called 'User generated content and m-learning’. There was plenty of time for delegates to use our N91s to try out our mobile learning objects. One participant was so pleased he described the session as “inspirational” and is coming to our Get Ahead Conference (described in a related news item). Out of those evaluations returned and who attended John's workshop 78% rated it as very stimulating or stimulating. Comments specific to this workshop included: 'received good knowledge of m-learning potential', 'Interested in the mobile learning initiative at London Met Uni, will keep an eye out'. See http://www.niace.org.uk/conferences/e-learning-future.htm 1/2/08

January 2008

Visiting PhD research student, Stefan Thalmann
Stefan is current with us as a visiting PhD research student from the University of Innsbruck and will stay with us until 21/03/2008. He will be working on the EU MATURE project starting in April, of which we are also a partner. 31/1/08

CONTSENS project kick-off meeting
John Cook attended the first meeting of the EU-funded CONTSENS project ‘Using wireless technologies for context sensitive education and training’ in Dublin on January 21. 22/1/08

Musbah has journal article accepted
Musbah Sagar has had an article accepted for the special issue on 'Specification, Standards and Information Management Distributed Systems' for the Journal of Computer Standards and Interfaces published by Elsevier. Full details are:
Sagar, M., Duce, D., & Younas, M. (2008). The Oea Framework for Class-Based Object Oriented Style JavaScript for Web Programming. Journal of Computer Standards and Interfaces.

Workshop using the GLO tool to create new learning objects
We had a very productive workshop on using the GLO tool to create multimedia learning objects on Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th January. The workshop was organised as part of QIA JISC Collections project led by Kevin Burden for the University of Hull. The project involves using the GLO-Maker tool to develop multimedia learning objects that that incorporate material from JISC digitized collections. These online collections include Newsfilm Online [http://newsfilm.bufvc.ac.uk/] and Archival Sound Recording [http://sounds.bl.uk/].
The workshop involved teams of tutors from several northern FE colleges in using the GLO tool to begin to develop learning objects that made use this of resources from the archives. Support for use of the GLO tool was provided by Tom Boyle and Dejan Ljubojevic. Progress was rapid. The teams downloaded the GLO tool on Tuesday morning and by the end of the day some teams had already developed impressive prototype learning objects incorporating a series of video and audio resources downloaded from the online repositories.
The completed Learning objects from the project will be mounted on the Quality Innovation Agency Excellence Gateway [http://excellence.qia.org.uk/] by the end of March 2008. 9/1/08

Talk at OU
We've been invited to give a demonstration and talk about Dialogue Games and InterLoc at a Workshop on Effective Argumentation organised by the Educational Dialogue Research Unit (EDRU) at the OU on 23 January. This is a national network, with other sessions by Prof Rupert Wegerif (Exeter), Prof Karen Littleton (OU) and Chris Reed (Dundee). Andrew Ravenscroft will be sharing a one-hour session on "Into the future" with Simon Buckingham-Shum (KMI, OU), and the talk/demo is entitled: "InterLoc: Dialogue Games for Cyber-Argumentation". 18/1/08

Tom Boyle gives an invited talk on Learning design and learning objects
Tom Boyle presented an invited talk on “Learning design and learning objects” at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium on January 10. The talk described our work on generative learning objects (GLOs), which focuses on pedagogical design rather than content as a basis for reuse. The GLO authoring tool was demonstrated. The talk situated the GLO approach within the wider framework of learning design, including the IMS LD specification, and recent work carried out in the JISC “Design for Learning” programme in the UK. From this emerged a perspective on the central relationship between learning objects and learning design. See PPT slides.

HE Academy Conference on Technology in Assessment, York, January 22 2008
Carl Smith ran an invited workshop: ‘Mobile Learning: Does it Reinforce Learning?’.

NIACE (National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) Conference 'E-Learning: The future of learning', Nottingham, January 31, 2008
John Cook gave a workshop on ‘User generated content and m-learning’.
NIACE website

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