Ervaringen met nieuwe tecSpecial issue: Experiences with new technologies to capture the proces of learning
Within the last decades, a lot of new technologies have become available that should make it possible to ‘capture’ the process of learning and professional development, such as learning analytics, or sensors that measure eye movement, muscular tensions or brain activity. However educational researchers that use these technologies encounter a lot of practical and methodological challenges. A two-part special issue of the online magazine Frontline Learning Research is devoted to their experiences. Halszka Jarodzka, researcher at the Welten Institute is one of the initiators.
New technologies
Recent development of software methodology and hardware technology opened fascinating opportunities for educational research. Relatively cheap wearable sensors have become available, companies offer ‘plug en play’ software. Hence, many researchers started utilizing these methodologies in a wide area of educational research. Especially in the field of online learning research these techniques seemed very promising. However, quickly it turned out that neither was the use of the hardware as easy as the sellers claimed, nor was the analysis of the data as straightforward.
Exchange of experiences
Worldwide searchers face the same issues or similar problems on and on as they cannot get easily access to the progress made by others in their field. Due to this lack of exchange, researchers often have to re-invent the wheel. On top of that, the data on learning that their research generates are very detailed, whereas the current theoretical models of learning and expertise development usually address the macro level of development. In this two-part special issue of Frontline Learning Research, researchers share their experience and exchange the problems they faced using these technologies and the way they have tried to overcome them.
Frontline Learning Research is a open source online scientific journal. Initiators and editoris of this special issue are Halszka Jarodzka, Christian Hartels en Ellen Kok. They describe the aim of the issue in their editorial: ‘The journey to proficiency: exploring new objective methodologies to capture the process of learning and professional development’.
