Contributing
Authors
Tom Boyle is director of the Learning Technology Research Institute (LTRI) at London Metropolitan University. He has a long history of developing and evaluating innovative multimedia learning technology. Tom led a major project in the development, use and evaluation of learning objects that won an EASA (European Academic Software Award) in 2004. He is the director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in Reusable Learning Objects. The CETL involves collaboration between three universities – London Metropolitan University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Nottingham – to develop and evaluate high quality learning objects across a range of subject areas.
Claire Bradley is a research fellow at the Learning Technology Research Institute at London Metropolitan University. She has a master’s degree in interactive multimedia from the Royal College of Art. For the past eleven years she has worked on a number of UK and European research projects involved in e-learning, online communities, multimedia, and in the general application and evaluation of digital technologies in teaching and learning. Her recent work focuses on mobile learning. She has co-authored a number of journal articles and papers in these areas.
Pamela A. Burton is an instructor with the Collaboration for Academic Education in the Nursing Program (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) at North Island College in Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada. Her research interests include the use of mobile technologies in nursing education and prevention of medication errors.
Gill Clough is a full time PhD student with the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University (OU). Her doctoral work investigates how mobile devices are used to support informal learning, in particular the role of GPS-enabled devices in engaging people with both physical and social contexts and triggering sustained collaborative learning. She is currently researching the activities of geocachers, looking at the informal learning that occurs through setting and finding geocaches, and at how geocachers collaborate through their geocache descriptions, logs and web forum posts. This interest in the social networks of geocachers is echoed in consultancy work for the Schome Project (not school, not home, Schome). When Schome began to investigate the educational potential of virtual 3D worlds, Gill migrated an avatar to the OU’s educational island on the teen grid, Schome Park. Here she worked with the teenagers on the project, participating in group work and running world workshops for the students.
John Cook has over fourteen years previous experience as a full-time lecturer at various HEIs and six years of project management experience; the latter includes AHRB, BECTA and HEFCE work. Furthermore, Cook has been principal investigator or co-investigator on research and development projects that have attracted $3.4 million in competitive external funding; he has also helped to obtain $500,000 of internal funds. He has published over one hundred refereed articles in the area of e-learning and conducts review work for the ESRC, EPSRC, EU, and Science Foundation of Ireland. Cook was chair/president of the Association for Learning Technology (2004-06), and his current mobile learning interest centres on user generated contexts.
Davide Diamantini is professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca in the Department of Education and vice director of the Nomadis Lab. He coordinates projects related to distance learning, specifically mobile learning. His research areas, as well as distance learning, are the analysis of methodological, cognitive and social aspects of the processes of scientific and technological transfer. He is the author of many national and international publications in his field.
Aleksander Dye has worked with NKI Distance Education since 2001 in the Research and Development Department as a system developer. He has for many years been a member of the team developing SESAM (Scalable Educational System for Administration and Management), the learning management system developed internally in NKI for online distance education. He has specifically worked with different solutions of system adaptation for different purposes, such as mobile learning. The last years he has worked with both system developments and research in four EU Commission projects on mobile learning. Presently, he works as researcher in the field of distance education with emphasis on mobile learning and is also project manager for the development of SESAM.
Merryl Ford is the manager of the ICT in Education Research Group of the Meraka Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa. The ICT in Education Research Group works in partnership with local and international tertiary and research institutions to accelerate the application of ICTs in the education sector to help ensure social and economic development in South Africa and Africa more generally. Merryl has fifteen years of expertise in the ICT domain and was responsible for setting up and managing the largest ISP in South Africa as an incubation project within the CSIR. Merryl has also worked for IBM, where she was a member of a team that provided e-business consulting services to industry. After returning to the CSIR to pursue her passion for innovation, she now focuses on seeking ways to harness the digital knowledge economy to benefit all sectors of the community.
Jon Gregson is currently Director of Global Networks and Communities, University of London External System and he formerly directed for several years the Wye Distance Learning Programme (DLP) of Imperial College London until the DLP was transferred to SOAS in August 2007. He is responsible for the Learning Technology and Production Team and oversees the development of electronic courseware and learning environments. He also looks after the development of educational and student support systems used for the distance learning programme. He manages a range of international collaborations on behalf of the programme, including support for a large number of Commonwealth Scholarship students in Southern Africa in cooperation with University of Pretoria, and involvement in the Global Open Food and Agricultural University (GOFAU) initiative, which is lead by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and is developing a range of courses based on open educational resources. Jon holds a master’s degree from the University of London in managing rural change, and another from the University of Lancaster in distributed interactive systems. He is one of the founding fellows of the University of London Centre for Distance Education (www.cde.london.ac.uk) and is the grant holder for a two year mobile learning project focussed on the needs of postgraduate distance learning students in the Southern African Development Community. Over the last five years he has been involved in authoring and online tutoring of courses in ICT for development and NGO management.
Richard Haynes is a multimedia developer at London Metropolitan University with over ten years of experience developing learning and support materials. Trained originally at Artec in Islington he has worked on many art gallery and educational projects. For the last few years he has worked on learning object design for PCs and mobiles, and was a member of the award winning EASA Learning Object Team in 2004. He has developed learning objects for mobile phones in the areas of marketing and study skills, developing such mobile learning resources as “How to reference books” and “What is your learning style?”
Ann C. Jones is senior lecturer in the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University and co-director of the Computers and Learning Research Group in the Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology. One of her interests in mobile learning concerns the affective aspects of using handheld devices which echoes one of her key research interests in educational technology more generally. In recent work she has focused on adults’ use of handheld devices in different contexts and particularly on the motivating features of using mobile devices for informal learning. She is currently an investigator on the ESRC/EPSRC funded Personal Inquiry Project in which researchers at The Open University and the University of Nottingham are researching how children can best take advantage of hand-held devices – both inside and outside the classroom – to personalize the way they learn about science-related topics.
Dolf Jordaan is an e-learning project manager within the Department for Education Innovation at the University of Pretoria. He is a manager of an e-education division (including instructional designers and other support staff) within the department, and this division supports academic staff at the university with e-learning projects. He is also involved as a project manager in Web and multimedia projects, and he has lectured in multimedia design and development and in project management at the university. A consultant for national and international e-learning projects, Dolf is a qualified educator and holds a master’s degree in computer assisted education. During the last few years he has been involved in international collaboration projects, and he has participated in the management of the e-campus at the university since 2003. He is responsible for the coordination of e-learning and learning management system-related applications, and he currently serves as project manager for the implementation of Blackboard Vista Enterprise Edition on campus.
Richard F. Kenny is an associate professor with the Centre for Distance Education at Athabasca University, where he teaches instructional design and learning theory. His research interests include instructional design and change agency, emerging technologies to foster higher-order thinking, and mobile learning applications and strategies.
Marguerite Koole is the program administrator for the Doctor of Education Program and instructional media analyst for the Centre for Distance Education at Athabasca University. Marguerite has a bachelor’s degree in modern languages, a college diploma in multimedia production, and a master’s degree in distance education. For her thesis, she developed a theory of mobile learning, the FRAME model, and conducted an analysis of mobile devices. Marguerite also has experience in teaching instructional design and multimedia programming. She has designed interactive, online learning activities for various learning purposes and platforms – including print, Web, and mobile devices. Marguerite has taught at the University of Lethbridge, Athabasca University, and private schools in Canada and overseas.
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme is a senior lecturer in educational technology in The Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology, where she led the TeleLearning Research Group and chaired the production of the postgraduate course “Innovations in eLearning.” Agnes has been working in mobile learning since 2001 and is the co-editor of Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers. She has led two JISC funded projects: case studies of wireless and mobile learning in the post-16 sector, and the landscape study on the use of mobile and wireless technologies for learning and teaching. She also led the literature review for a project on the use of Tablet PCs in schools. Agnes’ background is in foreign language learning and from this perspective she has a long standing research interest in user interface design for effective communication.
Teemu Leinonen leads the Learning Environments Research Group of the Media Lab, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland. The group is involved in the research, design, and development of New Media tools, as well as their use and application, in the field of learning. Teemu has more than a decade of experience in the field of research and development in web-based learning, computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), online cooperation, educational planning, and educational politics. Teemu conducts research and publishes in different forums. He has delivered a number of papers at national and international conferences, has given in-service courses for teachers, and has carried out consulting and concept design for ICT and media companies. He is currently undertaking doctoral dissertation research on learning and design with collaborative computer tools in unconventional learning communities.
Patrick McAndrew is senior lecturer at The Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology. He has led a range of research projects addressing how materials and environments can support learning through the use of learning design and the provision of tools for learners. He was responsible for the final evaluation stages within the European MOBILearn Project that reviewed models for mobile learning and developed and demonstrated a flexible task based environment. Patrick has a degree in mathematics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in computer science from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. He is currently the research and evaluation director of OpenLearn, a major initiative to provide open content for free education supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Jan Meiers is an instructor with the Collaboration for Academic Education in Nursing Program, Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), at North Island College in Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada. Her research interests include the use of mobile technologies in nursing education and student attrition in BSN education programs.
Laura Naismith is a research assistant and PhD candidate in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University in Canada. Her current research interests include the development of cognitive tools to support learning and assessment in medicine. In her previous position with the Centre for Learning, Innovation and Collaboration (CLIC) at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, she worked with subject specialists to develop a needs-driven research program in educational technology with funding from Microsoft UK Ltd. Her recent publications include an activity-based literature review of mobile technologies and learning, commissioned by Futurelab UK. Laura holds a BASc in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada, and an MPhil in medicine from the University of Birmingham.
Caroline Park is an associate professor with the Centre for Nursing and Health Studies at Athabasca University, where she teaches in the Master’s of Health Studies and the Master’s of Nursing programs. Besides an interest in handheld devices for learning, she is participating in research relating to inter-disciplinary research teams.
Kristine Peters is director of KPPM Organisational Strategists where her work includes research into emerging learning trends. Notable publications include Learning on the Move: Mobile Technologies in Business and Education (republished as “M-learning: Positioning Educators for a Mobile, Connected Future” in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning), E-learning for Youth for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, and Differentiating Needs: Customer Demand for Online Learning. Kristine’s consulting work provides strategic planning, social research, and organizational development for government, non-profit and private sectors. Her previous experience includes management of a pilot for vocational education in schools, and management roles in training, consumer finance and retail, and she started her career as a teacher. Kristine has a teaching diploma, a master’s in business administration, and is currently undertaking a PhD at Flinders University, exploring the influence of knowledge within social capital networks.
John Pettit is a lecturer at The Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology. He has chaired the postgraduate course Implementing Online, Open and Distance Learning, and has written on innovation and on audio-graphics for Innovations in eLearning – another module within The Open University’s MA programme for online and distance education. He is currently researching the emergent uses of mobile devices among the alumni of that programme, and has a particular interest in what these reveal about Web 2.0 practices. He is a member of IET’s Centre for Educational Development and a core member of the TeleLearning Research Group. John has also led a blended-delivery programme supporting The Open University’s learning and teaching strategy, and he continues to develop university teaching in the area of synchronous and asynchronous conferencing.
Michelle Pieri is specialized in analysis and management of public and company communication and in methodology and theory of teaching at the secondary school level. Since 2005 she has been in a post-doctoral position with the University of Milano-Bicocca’ NOMADIS Lab. Her research interests are concentrated mainly on the psychological and social aspects of communication through the computer and virtual communities, in particular the distance learning field, and specifically in mobile learning. She has published articles on distance learning and computer mediated communication at the national and international level.
Torstein Rekkedal is professor of distance education and director of research and development at NKI Distance Education, Norway. He has worked in distance education research since 1970, producing a stream of research publications in the field of distance education and online learning. He has chaired the research committees of the European Association for Distance Learning (EADL) and the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). In 2003 he was conferred honorary doctor of the British Open University for his research work in the field. He has for many years chaired the Standing Committee for Quality of the Norwegian Association for Distance and Flexible Education. Presently, he is member of the board of the Norwegian state organization for distance education in higher education, Norway Opening Universities. During the last ten years he has participated in over ten EU Commission projects on distance, online and mobile learning. In 2005-2007 he was project manager of the Leonardo da Vinci Project, megatrends in e-learning provision.
Eileen Scanlon is professor of educational technology and co-director of the Centre for Education and Educational Technology at The Open University, and visiting professor at Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. Eileen has a long history of research and teaching in the area of educational technology. Recent projects related to mobile learning include Mobile Learning in Informal Science Settings (MELISSA), a project that explored the consequences of mobile technologies for learning science. In particular it investigated what this means in the area of informal learning in science; where, for example, learners might use portable devices to support their field work as naturalists, geologists or in weather forecasting. She is currently principal investigator on the ESRC/EPSRC funded Personal Inquiry Project in which researchers at The Open University and the University of Nottingham are researching how children can best take advantage of handheld devices – both inside and outside the classroom – to personalize the way they learn about science related topics.
Carl Smith (PGDip, MA) has concentrated on exploiting the various ways that computer based modeling can be used in the design, construction and generation of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) and Mobile Learning Objects (MLOs). His primary research involves the investigation of learning objects from the point of view of their units of construction – to see across the whole range of constituent parts, schemas and key narratives involved in their successful development and application. He uses rich media visualization techniques to produce highly interactive and engaging learning resources for both the Web and mobile devices. His other research interests include visualization as interface, augmented reality, intermediality, mediascapes, 3Dweb art, open source learning, Web 2.0, and the emerging practice within the arts and sciences that merges digital virtual experiences and technologies with physical spatial experiences. His previous projects were based at the Humanities Computing departments at Glasgow and Sheffield universities.
Paul Smith is the director of the Lapworth Museum of Geology at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. He is also a professor of palaeobiology and head of the School of Geography, Environmental and Earth Sciences. Paul trained as a geologist and micropaleontologist at the universities of Leicester and Nottingham, and developed an interest in museums whilst working at the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge and the Geological Museum in Copenhagen.
John Traxler is reader in mobile technology for e-learning and director of the Learning Lab at the University of Wolverhampton. John has co-written a guide to mobile learning in developing countries and is co-editor of a book on mobile learning. He publishes and presents regularly on conceptualising, evaluating and embedding mobile learning, and is interested in the profound social consequences of using universal mobile devices. He is jointly responsible for national workshops on mobile learning for UK universities and has delivered similar workshops to university staff in Africa, Canada and India. He advises UK universities on mobile learning projects, for example in large-scale-messaging, podcasting and broadcasting with Bluetooth, and was recently invited to the Microsoft Mobile Learning Summit in Seattle. He was the evaluator for the EU FP6 M-learning Project, and is advising a Swiss project for Kenya farmers that uses blended web-based and phone-based technology. He is continuing to work with the Kenyan government implementing national support for Kenyan teachers’ in-service training using mobile phones and video, and has links with South Africa’s Meraka Institute.
Jocelyne M. C. Van Neste-Kenny is the Dean of health, human services and applied business technology at North Island College in Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada. Her research interests include practice education models, emerging technologies in practice education, and interprofessional education.
Jocelyn Wishart is currently a lecturer in science education at the University of Bristol specialising in teacher training. She first entered initial teacher education at Loughborough University in 1996 where she taught both PGCE science (physics) and PGCE ICT. Prior to that she taught science, psychology and ICT in secondary schools. She has been involved in research into the use of information and communication technologies for learning since investigating children’s learning through computer games and educational software for her PhD in the 1980s. Her current research focuses on the use of mobile technologies to support teachers in training. Other recent research projects include developing online resources for education in ethical issues within science and evaluating the use of online role play to teach safety on the Internet.