Browsing by Author "Hughes, Janette"

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    Developing a Faculty-Librarian Community of Inquiry: A Blended Learning Approach to Facilitate Information Literacy Education
    (2018-06-21) Melgosa, Annette Alyce; Jacobsen, Michele; Hayden, Katharine Alix; Kim, Beaumie; Raffin Bouchal, Shelley; Hughes, Janette; Burns, Amy M.
    The purpose of the study was to explore how disciplinary understanding around Information Literacy (IL) might be achieved between faculty members and librarians through the design and implementation of a blended Community of Inquiry (CoI) (Garrison, 2011) Faculty-Librarians CoI Workshop (FacLibCoI) within a social constructivist epistemology. A mixed methods, design-based research (DBR) approach was used to build and test the FacLibCoI prototype and was based on Pool and Laubscher’s (2016) micro/meso iterative-cycle approach to McKenney and Reeves’ (2012) Generic Model for Educational Design Research. An environmental scan of the literature and the university where the study took place comprised phase one of the study. In addition to the review of literature, university reports were reviewed, and focus group interviews were conducted with university faculty members and students. Analysis revealed that faculty viewed research as discovery while students equated it with term papers. Students who had learned IL in general studies writing courses demonstrated good conceptual knowledge but poor implementation skills. Phase Two comprised the design phase. The FacLibCoI was designed to last two months and include three in-person sessions with accompanying asynchronous online discussions. The FacLibCoI workshop was implemented and analyzed in phase three. The design changed to four in-person sessions and two asynchronous discussions. Data included before-and-after participant interviews, transcripts, CoI questionnaires, and group artifacts. All CoI presences and metacognition were achieved in the FacLibCoI. Participants demonstrated group cohesion and disciplinary-based, shared understanding of IL, producing a disciplinary IL Model, IL learning goals mapped to disciplinary and IL standards, and an action plan for IL implementation. A CoI was established in less time than in studies reported in the literature and holds promise for scaling up. The online portion of the design proved unsustainable, and technology platforms and busy schedules were negative factors. Online collaboration between librarians and faculty may prove successful during a later departmental IL implementation phase. This phase should be considered in future iterations. Consulting participants on selection of a technological platform is advised.
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    'Making' within Material, Cultural, and Emotional Constraints
    (2017) Somanath, Sowmya; Sharlin, Ehud; Costa Sousa, Mário; Oehlberg, Lora; Hughes, Janette; Parlac, Vera; Meruvia Pastor, Oscar
    The Maker Movement aims to democratize technological practices and promises many benefits for people including improved technical literacy, a means for self-expression and agency, and an opportunity to become more than consumers of technology. As part of the Maker Movement, people build hobbyist and utilitarian projects by themselves using programmable electronics (e.g., microcontroller, sensors, actuators) and software tools. While the Maker Movement is gaining momentum globally, some people are left out. Constraints such as material limitations, educational culture restrictions, and emotional or behavioral difficulties can often limit people from taking part in the Maker Movement. We refer to the systematic investigation of how diverse people respond to making-centered activities within constraints as an exploration of making within constraints. In this dissertation, we (1) study how people respond to creating physical objects by themselves within constraints and, (2) investigate how to design technology that can help makers within constraints. We conducted an observational study in an impoverished school in India and identified the students' challenges and their strategies for making within material and educational culture constraints. We conducted a second study with at-promise youth in Canada and identified a set of lessons learned to engage youth within emotional and behavioral constraints in making-centered activities. Leveraging our observations, we proposed Augmented Reality (AR)-mediated prototyping as a way to address material constraints. AR-mediated prototyping can help makers to build, program, interact with and iterate on physical computing projects that combine both real-world and stand-in virtual electronic components. We designed, implemented, and evaluated a technology probe, Polymorphic Cube (PMC), as an instance of our vision. Our results show that PMC helped participants prototype despite missing I/O electronic components, and highlighted how AR-mediated prototyping extends to exploring project ideas, tinkering with implementation, and making with others. Informed by our empirical and design explorations, we suggest a set of characteristics of constraints and implications for designing future technologies for makers within constraints. In the long-term, we hope that this research will inspire interaction designers to develop new tools that can help resolve constraints for making.
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    Supporting Teachers’ Understanding of Innovative Maker Pedagogies During a Pandemic Through the Design of Ethical and Relational Online Professional Learning
    (Canadian Association for Teacher Education, 2022-12-04) Morrison, Laura; Becker, Sandra; Hughes, Janette; Jacobsen, Michele; Schira-Hagerman, Michelle
    This qualitative research explores the challenges involved in designing online professional learning (OPL) for teachers with a focus on innovative pedagogies, specifically maker-centred practices. This OPL was designed in response to teachers’ expressed need for support to the government mandated pivot to emergency remote teaching (ERT) during the 2020 pandemic. The research question addressed is: What are the many ways in which we create the conditions for meaningful, authentic, and respectful professional learning focused on innovative practices, such as making, in an online environment? In this study, the conceptual model considers human-centred design and Nodding’s (2013) relational practice in the context of the Ontario College of Teachers’ (OCT) four-part conception of professional ethics. Implications include that designers: (a) can enhance teacher learning by highlighting the connection between empathy, perspective-taking, and techno-pedagogical competence with making; (b) should focus the sessions on common tools, as well as transferable activities and curriculum, to support early success; and (c) design with teachers, which requires the intentional design of conditions for teacher learning, targeted supports and scaffolds for learning, awareness of resources needed, and provision of appropriate instructional guidance and expertise.