“It’s Not Just About Research” says Erin Clarke-Dorrell

Erin’s goal after finishing her doctoral degree is to obtain a faculty position somewhere in academia. Her work in the LED Research Group is a great resource that has helped her find her voice and learn how to research collaboratively with others. While that is one component of obtaining tenure and working as a professor, there are two other vital components to the role. Teaching and service are crucial in becoming well-rounded in the realm of academics. For Erin, she has always enjoyed providing service and making a difference in her community. So, she decided to jump into service as a Ph.D. student since she is already working on the research part and soon teaching.

Service in academia looks like many different things. Instead of doing things like walking dogs at the local animal shelter, it is serving on a hiring committee or planning college events. Currently, she serves as the co-chair for the Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology’s Department of Educational Studies Equity, Diversity, and Global Engagement (EDGE) Committee. As a committee, their work focuses on supporting and encouraging critical thinking about issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion across the Department of Educational Studies. Right now, she is spearheading an awareness campaign to bring to light ways in which faculty in the department can support their diverse students.

Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC).

As Erin said, she enjoys being active, so she also was elected and took on the role of chair of the Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC). The Dean, Dr. Pope-Davis, created this council, and its primary function is to support and provide a voice for graduate students across the College. However, they are still trying to navigate how they want to serve the college since the council was just formed this academic year. Additionally, Erin has recently been invited to join the College of Education & Human Ecology first Dean’s Advisory Board. This board is bringing together students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, community advocates to advise the Dean on important matters to the college.

Overall, in being active on a service level, Erin wants to make a difference and leave Ohio State a better place than when she started. Also, she feels privileged in that she can represent the LED Research Group through her service. Working together, for our future, is what it means to connect service and life in a research group.

Sean Hickey, award-wining learning designer joins the LED research group

Sean Hickey is a doctoral student in Learning Technologies at The Ohio State University. Hickey received his B.S. in Biology from The Ohio State University in 1998. After graduation, he worked as a curriculum developer and program director at the Center of Science and Industry, a science museum in Columbus, Ohio. Hickey later moved on to McGraw-Hill Education, where he developed print and digital instructional materials while simultaneously earning his M.A. in Integrated Teaching and Learning from The Ohio State University.

He currently works at Ohio State’s Center on Education and Training for Employment (CETE) as Lead Curriculum Developer. As part of his role, he facilitates item-writing workshops for statewide career-tech end-of-course tests and industry credentialing exams and develops eLearning materials for teachers and subject-matter experts.

An award-winning instructional designer, he is active in the learning-technologies community and has presented at several conferences related to both EdTech/learning technology and learning and development. Most recently, he has presented at the Future of Educational Technology Conference (FETC), the Ohio Educational Technology Conference (OETC), the eLearning Guild Learning Solutions Conference (LSCon), and OSU’s own Innovate conference, on topics such as assessment strategies, gamification, branching learning scenarios, and inquiry education.

Among his many eLearning projects, Hickey created a software-training game for users of CETE’s WebXam testing system. The game won the “Seasoned Professional” division of Central Ohio ATD’s Look & Learn event. He was also co-creator of an eLearning game about writing multiple-choice test items, called “Multiple-Choice Mayhem,” which was recognized by the Association for Educational Communications & Technology (AECT) as a 2019 Outstanding Digital Learning Artifact and received “Best in Show” at the 2019 Learning Solutions Conference (LSCon) DemoFest.

As part of the research group, Hickey plans to study critical-thinking and non-cognitive skills and how they can be developed or enhanced using technology. He is also currently researching how augmented reality and virtual reality can be used in career-technical education for both training and assessment.

Ana-Paula Correia as invited speaker at Brazilian leading educational research conference

Dr. Correia was the invited speaker for the Special Interest Group in Education & Communication at the 39th Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação (ANPEd) annual meeting in Niterói, Brazil on October 23, 2019. More than 4,000 educators, teachers, educational researchers, post-graduate students, and practitioners who are impacting education in Brazil attended this meeting.

Opening Ceremony @AnpedEducacao on October 21, 2019.

Dr. Correia gave a presentation on her research on online learning and teaching. In particular, she explored research and post-graduate education in online formats in the context of the United States. She delivered this invited talk in her first language, Portuguese.

Screenshot of Dr. Correia’s @AnpedEducacao presentation.

Dr. Correia was hosted by Professor Edméa Santos from the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Chair for the Special Interest Group in Education & Communication. She networked and discussed issues in online learning in higher education that permeate cultures and countries.

Selfie with Professors Edméa Santos and Cristina D’Ávila.

LED research group welcomes Social Media influencer, Fan Xu

The LED research group welcomes Fan Xu this semester. Fan is a graduate from the University of Hong Kong and a first-year doctoral student in Education, specialization in Learning Technologies at The Ohio State University. She loves sharing her life on social media platform and there are 300,000 Chinese people are watching her Vlog.

Fan received her B. S. in Educational Technology from Shanghai Normal University, China in 2017. She then pursued a M.S. in Information Technology in Education at The University of Hong Kong, specializing in Learning Design Technology. She has contributed to the data analysis of several University of Hong Kong Small Private Online Courses by working as a research assistant at Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative. While studying in Hong Kong, she worked as an instructional designer at a local company that focused on e-learning design and development of Mandarin courses for French adult learners. She also designed and developed online training courses by cooperating with local universities and insurance companies. She has a great passion for optimizing e-learning design to engage and motivate adult learners.

After earning her master’s degree, Fan worked at Southern University of Science and Technology in China where she was involved in several academic projects initiated by the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO. During that time, she became interested in MOOC design and assessment in higher education contexts, and she is excited about MOOCs teaching potential, particularly in developing countries.

Chenxi Liu, educational TV & Film director joins LED research group

Chenxi Liu is a doctoral student in Education, specializing in Learning Technologies at The Ohio State University. Liu holds a B.A. in Radio and TV Editing and Directing from Zhejiang University of Media and Communications in China, and an M.A. in Curriculum and Teaching from Bowling Green State University.

Liu has worked as a Chinese language teacher, program co-founder, curriculum developer, and instructional designer. She has also worked in the media industry as a TV director and editor in the field of children’s education & development. Her working experience includes local schools, online learning organizations, and TV & Film.

Driven by her work experience and educational background, Liu desires to explore innovative strategies to promote learners’ motivation and engagement and help them to reach their full potential as 21st-century learners. She wishes to fuse research and practice in educational settings. Utilizing data and cognitive science, she aims to design and develop connected digital learning systems that support learners in various educational pursuits.

Liu’s current research interests include online and mobile learning, collaborative learning, learning design and evaluation, learning experience design, educational technology design and production, and learning analytics and modeling.

The project that Liu is currently working on as part of the LED research group aims to explore learning experience design strategies to improve students’ engagement in mobile-computer-supported collaborative learning.

LED Research Group Impact at 2019 InnovateX

The LED Research Group made an impact at InnovateX on May 16, 2019 at the Ohio State University. We gave two sessions at the conference in the Experience and Excite tracks, and presented our ideas to a packed audience of academics, practitioners, and students.

Our first session was “Digital Engagement: What Students Want from Your Online Class?” In this session, Drs. Ana-Paula Correia and Rick Voithofer hosted a panel of current and former students who had taken online courses for the Master of Learning Technologies at the Ohio State University. The panelists include LED members, Karen Bruce Wallace, Erin Clarke, and Cara North, as well as Anna Leach and Robbie McCord. They shared their thoughts on how to make online classes more engaging. They discussed the technologies and teaching methods they preferred, shared recommendations and solutions to help instructors improve their online teaching, and talked about how they applied their learning beyond their online course. Afterwards, they participated in a robust question and answer session, where they fielded a range of challenging questions from the audience.
Panel on Digital Engagement, May 16, 2019 at InnovateX

Panel on Digital Engagement, May 16, 2019 at InnovateX

Our second session was “Creating Interactive Learning Experiences.” In it, Cara North, incoming LED member Sean Hickey, and Karen Bruce Wallace explored the importance of choice in learning. They examined how choice could improve learners’ engagement, covered principles of using choice in learning, and offered a range of applications in the form of interactive demos. The demos included adventures built in Camtasia and Storyline, Keynote, and Twine.

Creating Interactive Learning Experiences, May 16, 2019 at InnovateX

In addition, the three presenters structured the session around the idea of choice. The audience could choose from whom they wanted to hear, what topics they wanted to be explored, and help to navigate the demos. That way, the audience could experience the power of choice for themselves.

LED had a fantastic time at InnovateX, and hope to return next year!

Making it Through the First Year: An Appreciative Take of the Research Group

If you are reading this, you may be interested in starting a Ph.D. or how what it is like to be in a research group. Well, I will begin by telling you that being a first-year doctoral student is no joke. It is stressful and draining on many levels, but I can confidently say that being in the Learning & Experience Design Research Group has helped. The LED Research Group offered me the support (both academic and emotional) I needed to get through my first year. When I was accepted into the Learning Technologies Program in the College of Education and Human Ecology (EHE) here at OSU, my advisor told me I would be joining her research group. Honestly, I was intimidated and had no idea what to expect. I falsely assumed that I would have to give up my personal research interests to participate. However, I have learned that a good research group allows each member to contribute their own perspectives to the group’s work.

As a first-year doctoral student, I had very little confidence in my work and not any substantial research to my name. That is okay!! It is thanks to the members of the LED Research Group that I plucked up the courage to create and present my first ever research poster for the EHE Research Forum.

Erin presenting at EHE Research Forum on February 14, 2019.

My advice to anyone joining a research group is to listen and take advantage of the opportunities extended to you through your participation in the group. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be a member of the Educational Studies Diversity Committee (EDGE), be working collaboratively on a manuscript for journal submission or soon be traveling to Las Vegas to present at the Association for Educational Communications & Technology conference so early in my doctoral studies. I am so excited that my work with the group this past year culminates this week at the OSU 2019 Innovate conference. It has been one heck of a year, but looking back, I can say it was worth all the hard work, and I look forward to two more years.

Come and Learn from LED at Innovate on 16 May 2019

Ohio Union Exterior

LED members will be presenting at two highly interactive, engaging sessions at InnovateX on 16 May 2019.

Digital Engagement: What Students Want from Your Online Class

10:15-11:00, Great Hall Meeting Room 1

Meaningful engagement in online learning is a major challenge when teaching at the college level. Do you know what students want from your online class? In this interactive panel presentation, students from Ohio State’s online Master of Learning Technologies program candidly discuss their experiences with teaching methods and technologies in higher education. Gain insight from a variety of students, and take the opportunity to ask them your questions.

Creating Interactive Learning Experiences

11:15-12:00, Great Hall Meeting Room 1

Did you flip pages in narrative adventures such as Choose Your Own Adventure? Did Black Mirror: Bandersnatch snatch your attention? Both excite their audience by offering meaningful choices and encouraging multiple attempts through branching storylines. Learn how the research behind—and applications of—choosing your own adventures inlearning can inspire curiosity and encourage higher-order thinking. Experiment with sample games created through simple presentation software, an eLearning module, and video.

Come and start your conference experience by learning with LED!

 

Dr. Correia presents at the 2019 American Educational Research Association annual meeting

Dr. Ana-Paula Correia presented two papers at the 2019 American Educational Research Association annual meeting, which took place on 5-9 April in Toronto, Canada.

In the first paper “Examining Online Learning Experiences in Collectivist Cultures through the Community of Inquiry Framework,” Dr. Correia extended the existing research on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. Traditionally, studies have applied the CoI framework within North American online learning environments, which tend to have students from individualist cultures. Dr. Correia considered how CoI applied to collectivist cultures, such as Portugal, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica. She discovered that high percentages of agreement for social, teaching, and cognitive presence resulted in a significant level of student engagement in online learning within these cultures. She also observed that the members of the community felt a need for additional ways to show affection and care towards the other people within it.

Session promo flyer

In the second paper “Investigating Students’ Perceptions of Educational Technology Use in College Teaching”, Dr. Correia and her co-author Dr. Karly Good drew on a large set of institutional data to understand how college students’ perceptions of educational technology related to other key instructional elements. In particular, they examined the relationship between educational technology use and important elements such as teaching methods, progress on learning objectives, and course features. Their study showed that an increase in the use of educational technology corresponds to an increase in effective teaching methods and higher scores on the overall quality of the teaching and the course offered. These results are exciting, because they can help universities and colleges to offer more timely and targeted faculty development, based on data-driven decision-making.

In addition, Dr. Correia hosted the AERA Special Interest Group Online Learning and Teaching Business meeting, and shared her vision for the SIG as the incoming Chair as she interacted with members and guests. She will continue contributing to AERA as SIG chair, presenter and reviewer. Her extensive national and international leadership in educational technology adds much value to the SIG and the association.

Colleagues and friends at 2019 AERA annual meeting

References:

Correia, A.-P. (2019). Examining Online Learning Experiences in Collectivist Cultures through the Community of Inquiry Framework. Presented at American Educational Research Association 2019 Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada, April 5-9, 2019.

Correia, A.-P., & Good, K. (2019). Investigating Students’ Perceptions of Educational Technology Use in College Teaching. Presented at American Educational Research Association 2019 Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada, April 5-9, 2019.

North and Hickey Win National Award in Instructional Design

Cara North and Sean Hickey (incoming LED research group member) received the “Best in Show” award for their eLearning game entitled Multiple-Choice Mayhem at the Learning Solutions, March 2019.

Multiple-Choice Mayhem teaches the user how to identify common item-writing flaws that make the answer apparent or allows a test-taker to easily eliminate several choices. This eLearning game was designed to prepare subject-matter experts for creating more effective multiple-choice assessments. Hickey and North created the game after realizing the existing teaching tools were not effective and contained information that was outdated.

Designed in the style of a 1970’s television game show, Multiple-Choice Mayhem presents users with 7 multiple-choice trivia questions. Users may miss one or two but will generally find the questions easy. After answering the questions, the user will then learn through a brief animation and explanation of why the item was easy to answer. Hickey and North designed the game to have the player to learn the consequences of bad item-writing firsthand to help them recognize the value of following item-writing standards and to avoid pitfalls. Since its launch in September 2017, Multiple-Choice Mayhem has been viewed and played by more than 600 people.

“Best in Show” award at the Learning Solutions conference, March 2019.

The Learning Solutions conference is an annual conference from the eLearning Guild, a professional organization for those in the field of learning and development. More than 1,500 human resources, learning and development, training, and eLearning professionals from more than 15 countries attend the three-day conference to get practical learning and training content they can take home and apply immediately.

The last evening of Learning Solutions is DemoFest, a showcase of attendees’ best eLearning, video, and training programs. A month prior to the event, attendees must apply to participate. For 2019, 40 products were selected to participate in categories that included Academic, Alternative, Blended Learning, Business Process, Game-Based Training, Immersive/Simulation, and Video. Conference participants attend DemoFest and vote for the best demos. One “Best in Show” award is given to each of the eLearning vendor demo and the non-vendor attendee demo with the most votes. In addition, the highest vote earner in each category is given an award for that category. Multiple-Choice Mayhem won “Best in Show” (non-vendor) as part of DemoFest.

Congratulations Cara and Sean!

Learning Solutions conference, March 2019.