Browsing by Author "Meinel, Christoph"

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    Open Access
    Investigating the impact of organised technology-driven orchestration on teaching
    (2018) Phiri, Lighton; Suleman, Hussein; Meinel, Christoph
    Orchestration of learning involves the real-time management of activities performed by educators in learning environments, with a particular focus on the effective use of technology. While different educational settings present unique problems, the common challenges have been noted to primarily be as a result of multiple heterogeneous activities and their associated intrinsic and extrinsic constraints. In addition to these challenges, this thesis argues that the complexities of orchestration are further amplified due to the ad hoc nature of the approaches and techniques used to orchestrate learning activities. The thesis proposes a streamlined approach to technology-driven orchestration of learning, in order to address these challenges and complexities. Specifically, the thesis proposes an organised approach that focuses on three core aspects of orchestration: activity management, resource management and sequencing of learning activities. Orchestration was comprehensively explored in order to identify the core aspects essential for streamlining technology-driven orchestration. Proof-of-concept orchestration toolkits, based on the proposed orchestration approach, were implemented and evaluated in order to assess the feasibility of the approach, its effectiveness and its potential impact on the teaching experience. Comparative analysis and guided orchestration controlled studies were conducted to compare the effectiveness of ad hoc orchestration with streamlined orchestration and to measure the orchestration load, respectively. In addition, a case study of a course that employed a flipped classroom strategy was conducted to assess the feasibility of the proposed approach. The feasibility was further assessed by integrating a workflow, based on the proposed approach, that facilitates the sharing of reusable orchestration packages. The results from the studies suggest that the streamlined approach is more effective when compared to ad hoc orchestration and has a potential to provide a positive user experience. The results also indicate that the approach imposes acceptable orchestration load during scripting of learning activities. Case studies conducted in authentic educational settings suggest that the approach is feasible, and potentially applicable to useful practical usage scenarios. The long-term implications are that streamlining of technology-driven orchestration could potentially improve the effectiveness of educators when orchestrating learning activities.
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    Open Access
    The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks
    (2019) Ncube, Sinini P; Suleman, Hussein; Meinel, Christoph
    A textbook is a boundary object of interest among students within given communities, in some instance, a region or a whole country. Students in such communities have the possibility to engage collaboratively to study and gain a better understanding of similar content together. Collaborative work leverages mass communications that have become a beneficial means of enabling knowledge construction through independent and flexible learning mechanisms. Currently, textbooks are presented as PDFs on online portals with links to discussion forums for discussing the given resources. However, one major challenge is the lack of connection between the content being discussed and where it is discussed. Also, separating forums from their content leads to the discussion of topics that are sometimes irrelevant to the course content as discussions are mainly for general inquiries. In this dissertation, the feasibility of an academically focused social networking system that combines forums with their respective resources was investigated. This research explores various ways of altering the presentation of forums in an attempt to improve co-reading and increase textbook related interactions. An experimental system with internal forums, which are embedded inside eTextbooks, was created. The traditional form of rendering discussions as a standalone platform was also presented as a control system. Our objectives were to determine if the presentation of discussion forums inside resources affect the number and quality of interactions. Another objective was to determine if anonymous identity is essential for collaborating on educational learning platforms. The system was tested and evaluated with high school students as well as university students through various experiments that compared the traditional forums to the proposed system. This work adds nuance to our understanding of effective co-reading for shared boundary objects.