Elaine Khoo

For some years now, "maker education" has been conquering the world, and with extensive literature describing projects and activities as well as their characteristics and effects. Many authors have described principles of maker education such as working on a product and do-it-yourself activities. However, the literature on how to develop and design a maker activity with children is still limited. This would be of interest to and inform the systematic training of teachers and maker educators. In this paper we propose an overview of the methodological-didactical variations in maker education base on the systematic analysis of the original principles of adults learning in makerspaces to extrapolate the principles for working with children in maker education. Therefore, this paper offers a collection of methodological-didactical variations concerning three aspects, namely (a) the inclusion of the learner's own interests, (b) learning from and with others, and (c) the kinds of task available at hand. In this way it is intended to offer practitioners support for the design and development of their own maker education programs.

The University of Waikato has embarked on a major curricular review and redesign, making it compulsory for all students enrolling in an undergraduate degree to complete at least one paper/course in work-integrated learning, with the intent of developing workplace competencies and increasing employability outcomes. An investigation into the kinds of competencies valued by key stakeholders involved in supporting student learning and preparation for the workplace was, therefore, warranted as an initial step for (re)designing student university and workplace experiences to ensure coherence and foster more authentic application of theoretical ideas in real-world contexts. PURPOSE This paper reports on the findings from a study investigating science and engineering employers' and university lecturers' perceptions of the essential graduate competencies to be successful in the workplace. Their views and suggestions for enhancing current curriculum, pedagogy and assessment approaches were also sought. APPROACH Using a mixed-method approach, an online survey was conducted for science and engineering employers and science and engineering academic teaching staff. Participants rated 26 graduate competencies in terms of how important they are for graduates entering the workplace across three aspects: important today, important in 10 years' time, and, the competency performance level of recent graduates that have entered the workplace. A follow up focus group interview provided further insights including strategies for strengthening student workplace preparation.

CONTEXT Problem-based learning (PBL) helps engineering graduates develop the competencies needed in order to engage effectively with complex and uncertain workplace demands. PBL’s effectiveness, however, also depends on students having the ability to manage themselves and to work collaboratively. As these professional competencies are not typically the focus of undergraduate engineering programmes, students tend to complete problem-based project work through their own initiatives without the skills relevant to project completion. On the other hand, project management competencies are commonly explicated and core in business and management disciplines.

Flipped classrooms support student-centred learning and are increasingly being adopted in institutions of higher learning worldwide. This paper is a report on the findings of a two-year funded project conducted on the impact of adopting a flipped classroom approach on first-year undergraduate engineering students’ learning in a New Zealand university. A designbased methodology was adopted to allow for five iterative course refinements. Data collected through student achievement data, surveys, focus group interviews, observations and video analytics of student video-watching behaviour indicated a significant improvement in students’ learning and that they valued the flipped course components such as the lecturercreated instructional videos, in-class problem-solving exercises and continuous assessment in supporting their learning. However not all students prefer learning through this approach and more scaffolding is needed for first-year students to take up responsibility for their ow...

ABSTRACT In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the impetus to create open learning spaces that afford spatial and pedagogical flexibility have disrupted the nature of teachers’ work. In redesigned education facilities, teachers engage in sophisticated processes of collaboration and ongoing teacher professional learning. Moving from traditional classroom designs brings with it a shift in how knowledge is transmitted, co-produced and engaging with aspirational pedagogy and attending to the power dynamics of students and teachers and teachers as co-collaborators. Using a patchwork metaphor to frame our methodological approach, examples from research projects into teachers’ work from across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia addresses the question: What is involved in high-quality teacher collaboration in Innovative Learning Environments? This patchwork of practice is intended to support the work of those charged with researching, reviewing and enhancing collaboration in ILEs. Specifically, dimensions of alignment, acculturation, adaptation, aspiration and agency can inform teacher professional learning and development. By examining the complex conditions of ILEs in a range of projects, where teachers are no longer alone in teaching but contribute to both short-lived and sustained collaborations, we identify examples from research that illustrate new teaching realities in ILEs, and frame possibilities for action.

This paper reports on the use and impact of a negotiated intervention for teacher development adopted for facilitating the teaching and learning in a semester-long fully online graduate course in a tertiary institution in New Zealand. The negotiated intervention strategy, while it begins by exploring teachers’ current practice, is explicit in acknowledging that teachers can expect to change their practice albeit in negotiation with a researcher. This approach therefore moves beyond that of one-off workshops and technical training sessions, which are of questionable value in promoting deep conceptual and practice change. Cycles of formative negotiation assisted the experienced, face-to-face teacher to develop and teach his existing graduate course as an asynchronous online course through ongoing reflection on curriculum, pedagogical practice and assessment. Data were collected through daily observations of the teaching-learning processes, weekly teacher reflective interviews and student interviews. Reflective conversations with the teacher revealed the complexities of working with an experienced teacher to reconceptualise and transform his pedagogical practice and the intellectual, social and emotional changes he faced. The negotiated intervention strategy is relevant in technologically innovative learning environments where the teacher is concerned with responding to a diversity of student knowledge, interests and needs. Implications for employing a negotiated intervention in guiding online teacher action enquiry as development are presented.

This report describes the findings from an exploratory study to evaluate the impact of using mobile makerspaces and digital/electronic learning kits to foster community awareness and engagement with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) activities within a library setting. Three questions guided the study: 1. To what extent do participants in the LAB (Libraries' mobile makerspace programme) perceive the programme to be effective in fostering (i) STEAM learning, and, (ii) digital awareness and skills? 2. What are users' suggestions for change and improvement to the current programme? 3. What might more sustainable approaches to conducting the LAB programme look like? Evidence to inform the study was collated from an online survey and focus group interviews with caregivers /parents of children participating in the LAB programme, and, four observations of the LAB programme in action during March to May 2018. The focus of the analysis of data was on the value of the programme in fostering children's participation in STEAM learning. The nature of activities that were engaging and challenges and opportunities that could inform a more sustainable approach to the programme into the future were also identified. The use and the usefulness of the electronic kits in fostering digital learning skills was also a specific focus. The findings are reported in two sections: the first focuses on the evaluation of the LAB programme, while the second section is related to the value of the electronic kits in fostering children's digital skills. Six themes emerged from the findings in relation to participants' access to and reasons for enrolling in the LAB programme, the aspects of the programme which they deemed to be useful for children's learning, the learning and skills children obtained as a result of participating in the programme, and the best and least liked aspects about the programme. Participants' further discussed features of electronic kits that could be introduced as part of the library's resources. Overall, participants (parents of participating children in the LAB programme) were unanimous in their support for the programme and positive about the informal learning gains their children developed from participating in the programme. Based on the overall findings, five recommendations are offered for refining the programme to enhance support for participant experience and inform more sustainable future approaches to conducting the LAB programme. These relate to the: 1) Programme visibility, scheduling and venues, 2) Quality of facilitation in the programme, 3) Nature of activities, 4) Facilitating children's coding skills and Internet safety awareness, and, 5) Ongoing community feedback.

This editorial offers an overview of extended papers presented at the biennial DEANZ2016 conference held at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, from 17-20th April, 2016. In tandem with the conference theme, There and back: Charting flexible pathways in open, mobile and distance education, this special issue highlights think pieces from the three keynote speakers and five papers that offer insights into developments and practices in open, flexible, and distance learning contexts. As such, the collection is a rich repository of ideas and research that contribute to our interrogation of how digital technologies influence teaching and learning and work in a range of New Zealand and international educational contexts.

Time takes on a different character when online teachers take advantage of the possibilities for interactions occurring over different scales of time. Online teachers ’ pedagogical link-making can help students see links between ideas across individual postings so that meaning making becomes cumulative and progressive. This article reports on a qualitative case study of a fully online postgraduate course in Educational Research Methods within a New Zealand tertiary institution where the intention was to develop a learning community. The study was framed within a lecturer– researcher collaborative approach to facilitate online lecturer development. Data collected from the online postings between lecturers and students, and among students and lecturer and student interviews, revealed how postings that point towards previous group ideas, current developing ideas and forward-focused ideas at pivotal points in the course supported student reflection, collaboration, and provided for socio...

Software is not neutral. It comes with social and cultural assumptions that afford particular actions while constraining others. The notion of software literacy is emerging as one way to conceptualize the repertoires of skills and understandings needed for people to be critical and creative users of software packages and systems in a software saturated culture. This conceptual model is a response to current digital literacy frameworks which do not identify the implications of the choice of software on what can be achieved. Studies on information literacy and on ways of mastering software have tended to ignore the role of software itself. The study of software is only now emerging as a field of study. This contribution argues for the relevancy of software literacy as part of understanding the ways people engage with software and how its affordances influences knowledge representation, generation, and critique. It will define the term and set out three progressive tiers of development...

Flipped classrooms can support more open, flexible and collaborative student-centred learning. There is evidence that flipping learning can result in more effective learning processes and outcomes. However, not much is known about students’ learning process in terms of their interactions while working collaboratively in a flipped class context. This understanding is essential to inform lecturers’ timely and relevant facilitation of student learning. This paper reports on the findings from a study focused on the interactions, specifically types of talk, firstyear undergraduate engineering students engaged in while collaboratively solving problem tasks in their practical lab sessions as part of a flipped class learning approach in a New Zealand university. Data were collected from a six-week video observation of student interactions. Herrington and Oliver’s (1999) analytical framework on higher order, lower order, procedural, and social talk was used to analyse the video data. Finding...

"The successful implementation of electronically networked (e-networked) tools to support an inquiry-learning approach in secondary science classrooms is dependent on a range of factors spread between teachers, schools, and students. The teacher must have a clear understanding of the nature of inquiry, the school must provide effective technological infrastructure and sympathetic curriculum parameters, and the students need to be carefully scaffolded to the point of engaging with the inquiry process. Within this study, e-networks supported students to exercise agency, collaborate, and co-construct knowledge using a wide range of resources for meaning making and expression of ideas. These outcomes were, however, contingent on the interplay of teacher understanding of the nature of science inquiry and school provision of an effective technological infrastructure and support for flexible curriculum design."

This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring ways teachers can adopt iPads to provide opportunities for young children’s learning and exploration in an early childhood education and care setting in Hamilton. Interviews with teachers, children and their caregivers as well as observations of teacher interactions with children and copies of children work produced on the iPad informed the study. The findings focused on two teachers’ practice to reveal the different ways teachers can make use of the iPad to expand children’s learning opportunities and foster closer home‐centre links. In particular, four key iPad-supported practices were observed ‐ use of the iPad as a relational tool, as a communicative tool, as a documentation tool, and finally, as an informational tool for supporting child-led learning. These strategies were however contingent on teachers considering the interplay between the opportunities that iPads

Adding Some TEC-VARIETY: 100+ Activities for Motivating and Retaining Learners Online presents a collection of tried and tested activities that have been successfully implemented by online and blended learning environment instructors. It is a practitioner’s guide replete with activities aimed at motivating and retaining online learners. The book is the collaborative work of Curtis J. Bonk and Elaine Khoo, who are both experienced, well-known, and respected distance education practitioners. This book is a result of their three decades of combined experience in blended and online learning environments and the product of years of research, experience, and data collection. The book is broadly divided into three sections. Section 1 sets out the framework and the theoretical and conceptual basis for the book. The first chapter presents the framing acronym TEC-VARIETY, which was developed by the authors to address a variety of factors associated with learner motivation. The acronym breaks ...

This paper reports on findings from a research project concerned with how electronic networking tools (e-networked tools), such as the Internet, online forums, and mobile technologies, can support authentic science inquiry in junior secondary classrooms. It focuses on three qualitative case studies involving science teachers from two high schools together with their Year 9 and Year 10 classes. The ways teachers and students view and take up the affordances of mobile phones to support authentic science inquiry are of interest. Data were collected from teacher reflections, student interviews, a student survey, classroom observations and student work. The findings highlight three key themes that illustrate the advantage of using mobile phones as part of the classroom culture to video record group practical investigations, support students’ developing abilities to think like a scientist, and enable the sharing of learning beyond the classroom. The findings have implications for practice...

Understanding how learning communities are formed and evaluating their efficacy in supporting learning have a bearing on the facilitation of successful online learning experiences. This paper elaborates on the value of adopting a multiple planes of development (Rogoff, 1995) analytical framework to investigate the development and conduct of an online learning community. The analysis is grounded in a case study of a semester long fully online asynchronous graduate course in a New Zealand tertiary institution. Evidence is advanced that while development and change along the personal, interpersonal and community planes of development can be understood as distinct, each plane influences and mediates the other two planes. Such a framework allows for a comprehensive understanding of the active processes involved in shaping a community’s individual and collective knowledge growth. It is a useful tool for responding to the complexity and 'messiness' of real life socialcultural conte...

Developing online learning communities is a promising pedagogical approach in online learning contexts for adult tertiary learners, but it is no easy task. Understanding how learning communities are formed and evaluating their efficacy in supporting learning involves a complex set of issues that have a bearing on the design and facilitation of successful online learning experiences. This paper describes the development of a framework for understanding and developing an online learning community for adult tertiary learners in a New Zealand tertiary institution. In accord with sociocultural views of learning and practices, the framework depicts learning as a mediated, situated, distributed, goal-directed, and participatory activity within a socially and culturally determined learning community. Evidence for the value of the framework is grounded in the findings of a case study of a semester-long fully online asynchronous graduate course. The framework informs our understanding of appr...

In New Zealand and internationally claims are being made about the potential for information and communication technologies (ICTs) to transform teaching and learning. However, the theoretical underpinnings explaining the complex interplay between the content, pedagogy and technology a teacher needs to consider must be expanded. This article explicates theoretical and practical ideas related to teachers' application of their ICT technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) in science. The article unpacks the social and technological dimensions of teachers' use of TPACK when they use digital videos to scaffold learning. It showcases the intricate interplay between teachers' knowledge about content, digital video technology, and students' learning needs based on a qualitative study of two science teachers and their students in a New Zealand primary school.

This paper reports a case study of a particular strategy for teacher development in asynchronous, online teaching in a tertiary institution in New Zealand. We propose a particular strategy and process for assisting online teachers in promoting changes and designing and executing those changes in their online classes. A negotiated intervention strategy was used to assist an experienced, face-to-face, tertiary teacher re-develop and teach his existing masters paper as an asynchronous, online course. Reflective conversations with the teacher reveal the complexities of working with a teacher to develop his online pedagogical practice, and also highlights the potential of the negotiated intervention strategy as a promising tool for online teacher development.

This paper reports on a qualitative case study of a teacher and her students in a postgraduate Tourism course in New Zealand in which a Learning Management System (LMS), discussion forums, and wikis were used to facilitate student engagement and deeper learning of course content. Although the teacher was experienced in face-to-face teaching contexts, she was a novice in the design and delivery of online learning. However, she believed that technology could foster deeper and more meaningful critical collaborative inquiry amongst course participants and was keen to explore how this could be facilitated. Evaluative data were gathered from teacher interviews, student focus groups, and an online student survey . Findings indicate that the use of different online tools was effective for engaging students and helped them develop critical insights into key course concepts. However, careful planning and reflection on different pedagogical approaches were needed so that student learning could...

Software literacy is an essential part of learning and living in the 21st century; something which, we argue, transcends the use of any particular tool and any particular educational, social and cultural context. Software literacy is an increasingly central part of the palette of understandings and skills that comprise the broadening umbrella of digital literacy. It is therefore essential that citizens have a critical understanding of software to make more informed choices about their use, can transfer this critical understanding to software they have yet to encounter, and understand that all software has nuanced affordances and limitations. In tertiary settings this is needed to ensure equitable and critical learning with and through software. This chapter summarises our key insights from our own research into these issues and offers recommendations for future research in the field.

The New Zealand Curriculum [NZC] document states that information and communication technology [ICT] and eLearning have considerable potential to support the teaching approaches recommended in the curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007). In this special issue, we explore the potential for ICTs to support innovative assessment practices that complement effective teaching approaches. Such innovations can enrich the opportunities students have to demonstrate their developing understandings and knowledge, and foster a sense of responsibility for their own and group/class learning. Designed thoughtfully, they can also promote positive student attitudes and motivation towards learning in curriculum learning areas, and towards learning in general.

Given that the current goals for tertiary education is to better prepare students to apply their disciplinary knowledge in the real world and novel situations, it is imperative that students master the necessary disciplinary threshold concepts and competencies. Building on the findings of our pilot study of a partly-flipped undergraduate electronic engineering course, a version of a fully flipped is implemented in an intensive six-week version of the course involving in-class collaborative problem solving and continuous assessment. Data collected from the 32 students enrolled in the course include student surveys, video analytics, weekly student assessments, class observations and a focus group interview. Although data collection is still underway, the emerging findings indicate that students are watching the recommended weekly videos prior to coming to class and are solving online tutorials problems much more diligently, resulting in higher levels of in-class student collaboration ...

Emerging evidence highlights the potential of mobile and tablet technologies such as the Apple iPad in facilitating more productive learning processes and outcomes in formal contexts. Very little research has however been conducted in the New Zealand context, especially in early childhood settings. This study is aimed at understanding the nature of the talk young children (3 and a half to 5 year olds) engaged in while using the iPad for free exploration and play in small group settings with teacher guidance. Data was collected from eight observations (one hour to one and half hours long) of child-directed iPad use (video and audio recordings and photographs). Analysis of the data was based on an adaptation of Mercer's (1994) ‘talk types' framework which discriminates between cumulative, exploratory and disputational talk. Findings indicated that children used different kinds of talk to support one another's attempts to work through an app on the iPad. The iPad further af...

Today’s modern societies are increasingly dependent on digital technologies and the software underpinning these technologies in almost every sphere of professional and personal life. These technologies and software are poorly understood as tools that shape our engagement with knowledge, culture and society in the 21st century. None of these tools are ‘neutral.’ They embody social and cultural assumptions about their use and all have particular values embedded in their interfaces and affordances. This paper draws from a funded research project investigating the notion of software literacy (Khoo, Hight, Torrens, & Cowie, 2017). In the project software literacy is defined as the expertise involved in understanding, applying, problem solving and critiquing software when it is used to achieve particular goals. The project team hypothesised there exists three progressive tiers of development towards software literacy in professional contexts. We conducted case studies of engineering and m...

Buntting, B. & Cowie, B., with Anderson, D., Bull, A., Caygill, R., Hipkins, R., Khoo, E., Metcalfe, V., Moeed, A., Rice, K., Rofe, C., Peter, M., Stewart, G., Vander Zwaag, C. (2017). Towards a systems view of science education in New Zealand. Curriculum Matters, 13, 63-79. https://doi.org/10.18296/cm.0024 Author(s): Cathy Buntting and Bronwen Cowie, with Dayle Anderson, Ally Bull, Robyn Caygill, Rose Hipkins, Elaine Khoo, Victoria Metcalf, Azra Moeed, Kate Rice, Craig Rofe, Mira Peter, Georgina Stewart, and Carrie Vander Zwaag This article draws primarily on a policy discussion hosted by the New Zealand Association of Research in Education’s (NZARE) Science Special Interest Group at the 2016 national conference, arguing that an ecosystem view of science education is a useful metaphor when considering both what is being done to implement the vision for science education as articulated in The New Zealand Curriculum, and where some of the gaps continue to exist.

Many researchers and practitioners are appealing for more innovative approaches where online lecturer use of technology is guided by a clear philosophy of learning to engage students in more meaningful learning. This research aimed to better understand teaching and learning in an online learning environment through the development and application of an appropriate pedagogical framework to facilitate successful learning experiences. To achieve this aim, a qualitative interpretive methodology was adopted to case study an online lecturer and his 14 students’ experiences in a semester long fully online asynchronous graduate Research Methods course in a New Zealand tertiary institution. The study had three phases. Phase 1, the Review Phase, was a baseline survey to elicit the views of various online lecturers and their students on the nature of online learning and how learning can be successfully facilitated in such environments. The findings and recommendations from the literature led t...

Aims The aim of this project is to investigate opportunities for students to connect with real-world science issues they are interested in and find personally engaging. This team will explore and theorise how science education can be made more relevant to and responsive to the needs and interests of students from diverse backgrounds. Overall, the project goals are to:  describe the social construction of knowledge when diverse students are involved in individual or group science inquiries that may involve both, face to face and networked online environments, and  put forward a framework for understanding networked inquiry learning in science classrooms underpinned by activity theory. In order to achieve this we are working collaboratively with six teachers to create a shared vision for inquiry-oriented learning, and identify how to support teachers so they can equip students to conduct science investigations and effectively collect and analyse data in a scientific manner.

In this paper, we explore the relationship between student success in acquiring software literacy and students’ broader engagement and understanding of knowledge across different disciplines. We report on the first phase of a project that examines software literacies associated with Microsoft PowerPoint as a common software package encountered and used by most students at tertiary level. Student data was collected through an online survey and focus-group interviews. One hundred and seventy-nine first-year Engineering and Media Studies students from a New Zealand university responded to the survey. A majority of students considered themselves to be confident and comfortable in engaging with new technologies, had access to mobile-based technologies or laptops, and relied on this hardware and related software for electronic forms of communication and information access in their university courses. On the whole, students expressed a preference for informal strategies (including trial an...

Two Years 7/8 teachers planned, implemented and reflected on teaching a unit about erosion and landforms with the support of ICT tools. They used videos, photos, animations and digital microscopes—as well as Internet resources, such as Google Earth and other maps—to help the students work and think like an earth scientist.

This project explored how ICTs in primary classrooms can enhance the teaching and learning of the practical and theoretical aspects of science. By building on teacher and Years 7/8 student prior knowledge and experiences with ICTs, the authors investigated how ICT use can structure activities that would offer enhanced opportunities for students to actively participate in science. The project generated examples of how ICTs can support ways of exploring and communicating science, and evaluating what has been learnt.

This chapter outlines the role and significance of software in contemporary society. Drawing from the new field of Software Studies, it sets outs key concepts relevant to the study of software, including affordances, agency, human-machine assemblages, and performance to explain the ways users co-create with software. It proposes the notion of software literacy as a framework to help readers unpack the ways the affordances of software can (re)shape the ways we think and act. These ideas are then grounded in an examination of an educational research project into the ways in which students become more literate about the nature and implications of software which they encounter as part of their tertiary studies.

This chapter presents a reflective discussion of ideas related to ‘partnership’ at the tertiary level. We examine the nature and enactment of successful crossdisciplinary partnerships in two Ministry of Education funded research projects involving university-based education researchers and lecturer-practitioners from a number of other disciplines. Ideas about the structure, issues and rewards of research partnerships will be explored.

ABSTRACT Research with children involving their use of digital and mobile technologies either as a methodological tool or in relation to their learning foregrounds emerging ethical issues and practices. This paper explores some of the ethical and practical challenges we faced in studies involving the recruitment of young children as research participants, and where the integrity of these research collaborations was critical. We propose an ethical framework to foreground these challenges that is shaped by a view of children as social actors and experts on their own lives, information and communication technologies as ubiquitous in children’s lives, and ethics as a situated and multifaceted responsibility. This framework has three aspects: access, authenticity and advocacy. We draw on examples from different research projects and use ethically important moments to illustrate how notions of access, authenticity and advocacy can foreground the ethical challenges in teaching–learning research contexts to better consider and offer children greater agency in research collaborations.