Assessment, Learning & Teaching Reflections |
Tueday 24 January, 2006
Can new digital media enhance the student teaching and learning experience? Learning behaviours vary individually and innovative learning techniques will continue to develop as new technologies emerge. Innovation North and Carnegie are currently leading investigations into how SMS text messaging can be used to help students learn, interact and develop. We are focusing on important concerns within Higher Education, including education, health, lifestyle and more specific issues, such as democratic participation.
Recent research in Innovation North showed that SMS text messaging (texting) is almost universal in the current UK youth population. Young people often use texting to send and receive educational, social and lifestyle information. The ubiquity of the mobile phone and the universality of texting skills among students means that they can send and/or receive information at any given moment. We are exploring how students do this in their everyday lives. This is linked to what they have learned, and/or how they share and support the behaviours they have developed. Our current research could enhance learning and student experience in current and future student cohorts. The work proposes an intriguing prospect; by influencing just one person (electronic stakeholders?), we may inadvertently be reaching thousands of others through electromagnetic waves.
Philippa Trevorrow
Research Officer and Lecturer and
Professor Jim McKenna
Running Stream Professor
School of Sport , Physical Education and Exercise, Carnegie Faculty
