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This chapter explores the potential for the development of new learning opportunities in higher education, through students being conceptualised not as consumers, recipients or commodities, but rather as co-researchers and co-producers of knowledge. It discusses the implications of new forms of networked knowledge enabled by the emergence of semantic web and linked data technologies, and the reconceptualisation of the Internet as a ‘global data space’. These approaches have the potential to allow students to engage critically with existing data and data practices, generate new data and, perhaps more significantly, to participate in local or global knowledge networks. These activities involve not only the development of specific techno-literacies, but also broader critical digital literacies of which we offer examples and propose a number of dimensions. A critical digital literacies perspective, particularly when combined with the idea of students as co-researchers and co-producers, provides a basis for student to undertake critical and politicised inquiry as part of a broader reframing of the purposes of higher education.

This article explores how the three aspects of Striphas’ notion of algorithmic culture (information, crowds and algorithms) might influence and potentially disrupt established educational practices...

Emergent technologies are changing the nature and distribution of work, leading to voluntary and involuntary migration and to complex patterns of under-employment, over-employment and precarity. While conventional analyses, including those on the left, have focused on how to preserve the rights of workers and to ensure continuing full employment, alternative traditions in post-Marxist political thought have developed the idea of the refusal of work, both as a form of resistance to these technological changes, and as a position with emancipatory potential. This chapter considers the origins of the notion of refusal of work in Marx’s writings on the abolition of labour and examines two strands of post-Marxist thought in which it was developed in the face of changing technological, social and political conditions: Italian operaismo or ‘workerism’ of the 1960s, and the humanist Marxism of Andre Gorz. Each of these provides us with insights into how educational systems might evolve in the face of new waves of automation. Critical re-imaginings of universities are not new, and others have discussed the role of higher education in the face of automation and precarity, but in this account, alignments are traced between contemporary patterns of technological unemployment; ideas about the refusal of work as radical praxis; and means by which convivial and culturally enriching forms of higher education can prevail in an uncertain future.

After demonstration of the antihypertensive efficacy of the combination of the beta-blocker nebivolol and the angiotensin receptor blocker valsartan in an 8-week, randomized, placebo-controlled trial (N = 4161), we now report the effects of this treatment on the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system in a substudy (n = 805). Plasma renin activity increased with valsartan (54%–73%) and decreased with nebivolol (51%–65%) and the combination treatment (17%–39%). Plasma aldosterone decreased with individual treatments (valsartan, 11%–22%; nebivolol, 20%–26%), with the largest reduction (35%) observed with maximum combination dose (20 mg nebivolol/320 mg valsartan). Baseline ln(plasma renin activity) correlated with the 8-week reductions in 24-hour systolic and diastolic BP following treatments with the combination (all doses combined, P = .003 and P

While elements of Deleuze’s theory, notably the ‘geophilosophical’ concepts of ‘rhizomes’, ‘smoothness’ and ‘striation’ have been applied to educational technologies, his work on time has, to date, been comparatively neglected by educational theorists. This article explores practices and outcomes of educational technology design in terms of Deleuze’s dimensions of time in which habitual practices, trajectories of change and concerns about identities in flux are synthesised into a ‘present-becoming’. The article draws on empirical work carried out during a large, funded research project during which teachers, students, technologists and researchers were able to work together for extended periods in order to explore the potential of emerging ‘semantic web’ and ‘linked data’ technologies and approaches in higher educational settings ( Ensemble: Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case Based Learning). Doing learning technology design and development in a way informed by ‘Deleuzian’ syntheses of time involves conversations not just about creating a technology-rich educational utopia or constantly specifying new ‘gadgets’, but the troubling of existing pedagogical practices and the multiplication of perspectives and subjectivities. By going beyond notions of ‘feature sets’, ‘use cases’ and ‘affordances’ it provides a richer conceptual framework that helps us understand why some educational technologies are adopted and abandoned, some are creatively appropriated and used in unexpected ways, and others sink without trace. The article concludes with suggestions as to how current conditions in higher education, rather than constraining the development of educational technologies, might provide opportunities for these broader explorations to be initiated.

This summary reports on a pilot of a novel, ontology-based e-assessment system in accounting. The system, OeLe, uses emerging semantic technologies to offer an online assessment environment capable of marking students' free text answers to questions of a conceptual nature. It does this by matching their response with a ‘concept map’ or ‘ontology’ of domain knowledge expressed by subject specialists. This article describes the potential affordances and demands of ontology-based assessment and offers suggestions for future development of such an approach.

In this synoptic paper, the authors describe how the transformative potential of semantic web and linked web of data technologies for educational systems has been identified, but highlight the fact that there are few accounts of the pedagogical applications of these same technologies. The papers in this special issue provide accounts of these technologies in use in teaching, learning and curriculum development in higher education. Several of the papers suggest that these new web technologies have important roles to play in changing pedagogical practices in higher education settings in which teachers and students are seen as designers of their own learning technologies and as producers of new knowledge. The authors argue that the theorisation, development and adoption of Semantic Web and linked data technologies would be well served by a ‘turn to practice’ and a focus not on learning technologies in higher education but on the meaning-making practices, discourses and controversies around technologies in hi...

This paper explores the potential of Semantic Web technologies to support teaching and learning in a variety of higher education settings in which some form of case-based learning is the pedagogy of choice. It draws on the empirical work of a major three year research and development project in the United Kingdom: “Ensemble: Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case-Based Learning” which has been oriented toward developing a better understanding of the nature of case-based learning in different settings, but also exploring the potential for Semantic Web technologies to support, enhance, and transform existing practice. The experience of working in diverse educational settings has highlighted Semantic Web technologies that may be particularly valuable, as well as some of the enablers and barriers to wider adoption, and areas for further research and development.

The idea of transformative and troublesome ‘threshold concepts’ has been popular and influential in higher education. This article reports how teachers with different disciplinary affiliations responded to the ‘concept of thresholds’ in the course of a cross‐disciplinary research project. It describes how the idea was territorialised and enacted through established materialising discourses in different disciplinary settings and enacted through pedagogical practice, technology and assessment. This has implications for professional development and pedagogical practice and endeavours to create ‘self‐organising classrooms’ along Deleuzian lines.

'Ensemble' is an interdisciplinary research and development project exploring the potential role of emerging Semantic Web technologies in case-based learning across learning environments in higher education. Empirical findings have challenged the claim that cases 'bring reality into the classroom' and that this, in turn, might provide the basis for an understanding of the role of Semantic Web technologies in case-based learning environments. We describe how the work of authors including Baudrillard and Deleuze has provided an alternative framework for understanding the relationships between cases and the realities with which they are purportedly associated. We discuss how the idea of the 'simulacrum' has influenced our understanding of learning environments, has informed design and development practices, and has led to a shift in our understandings of the potential affordances of Semantic Web technologies in educational settings.

Accounts of how research capacity in education can be developed often make reference to electronic networks and online resources. This paper presents a theoretically driven analysis of the role of one such resource, an online archive of educational research studies that includes not only digitised collections of original documents but also videos of contextual interviews with the original researchers, linked and presented using emerging ‘semantic web’ technologies. An exploration with a group of early career researchers in education of how the archive might be used to support their own research activities is reported: this suggests that thinking about such online resources as elements of heterogeneous ‘assemblages’ may be useful in their design and in understanding their role in research training and research networks more generally.

Interdisciplinary working is often understood as involving individuals or teams from different disciplines to engage with common problems, but this has proved to be an enduring challenge. An alternative framing of interdisciplinary working is Hall's ‘culture of inquiry’, in which it is conceptualised as narrative creation in an environment of formative critique. This paper explores the relevance and applicability of this idea to educational research and development, specifically in the context of purportedly interdisciplinary TEL projects. It draws on the author's experience in projects in which multiple narratives — pedagogical, technological and social — have the potential to contribute to both to individual and collective understanding and the development of new practice.

This paper presents an account of field research into case-based learning in a management course, guided by the questions: ‘what is making change in this setting’, and ‘where is learning located’. Multiple forms of relations between human and nonhuman entities were identified through extensive research, which, analytically does not sit well with more traditional understandings of learning or case-based learning. A critique of those understandings is offered, drawing on concepts from post-modernism and adopting sensibilities from actor-network theory, follow the action in the setting. The authors demonstrate that the case is an assemblage of heterogeneous connections that are made by the teacher and then by the students in the classroom. In working with ANT sensibilities, examination found that tracing the action offers radically different accounts and possibilities for education research and practice. The pragmatic issues in following the action and the challenge of staying coherent and ambivalent are acknowledged.

In order to develop potentially transformative Web 2.0 tools in higher education, the complexity of existing academic practices, including current patterns of technology use, must be recognised. This paper describes how a series of participatory design activities allowed postgraduate students in education, social sciences and computer sciences to contribute to the development of new Web 2.0 tools to enhance an existing virtual collaboration environment. In the course of these design activities, students reflected on and articulated the existing and emerging academic practices in which they were involved as they managed their transition from undergraduate courses to postgraduate research. The tools that were developed can therefore be seen as reifications of participants' emerging academic practices and the challenges they face as new researchers. This highlights the need for flexible design approaches and adaptable technological frameworks if Web 2.0 tools are to be successfully integrated into higher education settings.

‘Threshold concepts’ have proved a useful framing for enquiry into teaching and learning in higher education and early professional learning. Most studies have, however, been concerned with the nature and role of threshold concepts in specific disciplines. This paper discusses how they can also be used as a means of initiating cross-disciplinary discourse. In so doing, they challenge teachers to consider what is distinctive about their own disciplinary ‘ways of thinking and practicing’ and invite reflection: not simply on teaching and learning ‘in the disciplines’, but also on the potential for working across disciplinary boundaries. This also raises important issues about the recruitment, induction and orientation of students as they make transitions into higher education in the Gulf context, as elsewhere.

This account identifies some of the tensions that became apparent in a large interdisciplinary technology‐enhanced learning project as its members attempted to maintain their commitment to responsive, participatory research and development in naturalistic research settings while also ‘enacting’ these commitments in formal research review processes. It discusses how these review processes were accompanied by a commitment to continuing discussion and elaboration across an extended research team and to a view of ethical practice as an aspect of phronesis or ‘practical wisdom’ which demands understanding of specific situations and reference to prior experience. In this respect the interdisciplinary nature of the project allows the diverse experience of the project team to be brought into play, with ethical issues a joint point of focus for continuing interdisciplinary discourse.

Participants with teaching and research experience across eight disciplinary areas were introduced to the idea of `threshold concepts' and were then invited to identify potential threshold concepts in their own disciplines through small-scale research activities. Participants conceptualized their involvement in different ways: for some it provided a means of initiating changes in practice at faculty, department or course level, while others couched their involvement in terms of professional development or intellectual curiosity. This article describes how three selected disciplines — Sports Science, English Literature and Engineering — carried out enquiries into threshold concepts, and the ways in which they reflected on their participation in interdisciplinary seminars and disciplinary enquiry. These accounts highlight the importance of promoting a culture in which enquiry and reflection are central, while at the same time recognizing the value of appropriate `points of focus' for these activities and the importance of context-specific ideas of `quality' in practitioner research.

This paper describes a novel research approach in which server usage data collected from online environments provides a 'focus' for semi-structured interviews in the course of which research participants are involved in a process of co-interpretation and 'sensemaking'. Online environments generate large volumes of data which are useful in determining trends in behaviour, broad patterns and sequences of events but tell us little about the working or learning environments in which online activities are located. We use our experience of researching the use of an online environment with groups of education researchers to demonstrate that it is possible to use these data in the construction of rich and illuminating qualitative accounts which help to 'make sense' of single events repeated sequences, activity-flows and long-term trends in online activities. Our findings suggest that using suitably reduced quantitative data as the focus of qualitative enquiry in this way allows greater understanding of working practices in complex environments and can contribute to evaluation, generation of user requirements and provision of improved support to users of online environments and infrastructures.

Computer‐mediated conferencing has been adopted, particularly for purposes of online course provision, as a method that can deliver community. Widespread interest in a communities‐of‐practice approach within both informal and formal learning has strengthened perceptions of the value of creating a community online. A case study of asynchronous computer conferencing for the purposes of leadership development in schools is the focus for a study of the features and the discursive quality of the online interaction that occurred. Two analytical approaches are used: discourse analysis and social network analysis. These highlighted different aspects of the case, in terms of the role of peers versus the expert moderator (or ‘hotseat guest’), the extent of readership versus contribution and the tone and content of the discussion. Evidence that contributors were learning from the interaction was identified and strong links with place‐based communities of practice were also evident. Nevertheless, the online interacti...

In this paper the authors describe a novel ‘Virtual Research Environment’ (VRE) based on the Sakai Virtual Collaboration Environment and designed to support education research. This VRE has been used for the past two years by projects of the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme, 10 of which were involved in a research and development project funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee. The authors present vignettes of how the VRE has been implemented by three projects, drawing on extensive case records built up over two years of supporting and researching these projects. Rather than adopting the VRE as their sole locus of communication and collaboration, project members were careful to adopt specific VRE components which aligned well with the design of their research projects and established patterns of collaboration, some projects ‘hacking’ tools and other VRE functions in order to address specific needs and ways of working. The authors offer some inter...

This special edition of Technology, Pedagogy and Education brings together a group of papers from projects of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TL...

As part of the Learning How to Learn in Classrooms, Schools and Networks Project, a mapping tool and associated interviews were devised to capture practitioners’ views of the networks associated with their schools and local authorities (LAs). This article discusses the development and use of the mapping tool, including its trialing, and the first stages of analysis. The task was open‐ended asking respondents to represent with whom and how their organization communicates. LA advisers and officers offered an LA‐based perspective and both headteachers and school project coordinators offered a school‐based perspective. Forty‐eight maps have been collected from 18 schools and 5 LAs. Theoretically, the development of the mapping tool draws on three main areas of work—sociograms dating back to the 1930s, social network analysis, currently being used by Finnish researchers, and the work of Mavers et al. in mapping children’s representations of the virtual world of computers. Initial discussion of the range of map...

A key role in the development and deployment of Assistive Technology solutions is that of the ‘assessor‐consultant’. Assessor‐consultants for the UK‐based charity Abilitynet work with clients to develop customized computer‐based assistive technology systems and draw on a range of shared knowledge from the assessor‐consultant community. We provide examples of the process by which assessor‐consultants develop systems for clients with complex difficulties and progressive conditions such as motor neurone disease. We draw attention to the fact that evaluation studies of interventions consist largely of generic findings that are difficult to apply in assessor‐consultants’ everyday work with clients. Analysis of case histories and interviews with experienced assessor‐consultants suggests that reconstructing their work as a knowledge construction activity could form the basis of a shared and collaborative culture of practitioner research. We draw on recent work on knowledge construction and innovation to suggest ...

The ‘Learning How to Learn’ project of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme engaged teachers from primary and secondary schools in the UK in development and research of practice related to ‘assessment for learning’ between 2001 and 2005. As part of the project, we were concerned to discover what factors encouraged the development and sharing of practice within and between schools, including the use of electronic networking. A range of data about the use of electronic networks, tools and resources was collected through: a survey of over 250 teachers; an audit of participating schools' IT infrastructures and available resources; semi-structured interviews; and a novel ‘network mapping’ task. We discovered that while use of IT is now a well-established element of classroom practice, teachers made less use of electronic networks to develop their professional practice, even when their schools were part of networks designed to support them in so doing. Despite a range of barriers to the development...

A 'mapping task' was used to explore the networks available to head teachers, school coordinators and local authority staff. Beginning from an ego-centred perspective on networks, we illustrate a number of key analytic categories, including brokerage, formality, and strength and weakness of links with reference to a single UK primary school. We describe how teachers differentiate between the strength of network links and their value, which is characteristically related to their potential impact on classroom practice.

Economic arguments for the adoption of ‘open source’ software in business have been widely discussed. In this paper we draw on personal experience in the UK, South Africa and Southeast Asia to forward compelling reasons why open source software should be considered as an appropriate and affordable alternative to the currently prevailing dependency on large commercial organisations and proprietary products in the field of education. The dynamic and responsive nature of 'open source' software and the existence of freely available documentation and online communities offers an opportunity for educators, network administrators and software developers to participate in the development of resources appropriate to local needs while developing their own skills. We identify a range of critical development tools such as Perl and Linux, alongside a more specific application, Basic Support for Cooperative Work, which has great versatility for customising to fulfil specific educational needs and for the development of collaborative on-line learning communities.

This paper highlights aspects related to current research and thinking about ethical issues in relation to Brain Computer Interface (BCI) and Brain-Neuronal Computer Interfaces (BNCI) research through the experience of one particular project, BrainAble, which is exploring and developing the potential of these technologies to enable people with complex disabilities to control computers. It describes how ethical practice has been developed both within the multidisciplinary research team and with participants.The paper presents findings in which participants shared their views of the project prototypes, of the potential of BCI/BNCI systems as an assistive technology, and of their other possible applications. This draws attention to the importance of ethical practice in projects where high expectations of technologies, and representations of "ideal types" of disabled users may reinforce stereotypes or drown out participant "voices".Ethical frameworks for research and development in emergent areas such as BCI/BNCI systems should be based on broad notions of a "duty of care" while being sufficiently flexible that researchers can adapt project procedures according to participant needs. They need to be frequently revisited, not only in the light of experience, but also to ensure they reflect new research findings and ever more complex and powerful technologies.

This chapter draws on experiences of designing, developing, using and evaluating web-based Virtual Field Guides (VFGs) for teaching geosciences. The chapter briefly reviews the previous use of VFGs to support students’ learning by fieldwork, highlighting some benefits. VFGs are considered to supplement real fieldwork, but not to become a substitute for it. We then outline the design considerations, development and staff and student evaluation of two VFGs: (1) the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail in Yorkshire developed for Foundation degree students and (2) the Virtual Alps VFG developed for level 2/3 undergraduates. The design and development of these VFGs was undertaken using different approaches, and the advantages and disadvantages of these different approaches are discussed. The Ingleton Waterfalls VFG was developed by a team comprising two academics, one technician and two web developers. Based on the experiences of developing the Ingleton Waterfalls VFG, the Virtual Alps VFG, on the other hand, was developed by two academics, with limited support/input from web developers.

This article reports on a pilot of a novel ontology-based e-assessment system in accounting that draws on the potential of emerging semantic technologies to produce an online assessment environment capable of marking students' free-text answers to questions of a conceptual nature. It does this by matching their response with a "concept map" or "ontology" of domain knowledge expressed by subject specialists. The system used, OeLe, allows not only for marking, but also for feedback to individual students and teachers about student strengths and weaknesses, as well as to whole cohorts, thus providing both a formative and a summative assessment function. This article reports on the results of a "proof of concept" trial of OeLe, in which the system was implemented and evaluated outside its original development environment (an online course in education being used instead in an undergraduate course in financial accounting. It describes the potential affordances and demands of implementing ontology-based assessment in accounting, together with suggestions of what needs to be done if such approaches are to be more widely implemented. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

This paper presents an account of field research into case-based learning in a management course, guided by the questions: ‘what is making change in this setting’, and ‘where is learning located’. Multiple forms of relations between human and nonhuman entities were identified through extensive research, which, analytically does not sit well with more traditional understandings of learning or case-based learning. A critique of those understandings is offered, drawing on concepts from post-modernism and adopting sensibilities from actor-network theory, follow the action in the setting. The authors demonstrate that the case is an assemblage of heterogeneous connections that are made by the teacher and then by the students in the classroom. In working with ANT sensibilities, examination found that tracing the action offers radically different accounts and possibilities for education research and practice. The pragmatic issues in following the action and the challenge of staying coherent and ambivalent are acknowledged.

There is a long tradition in education of examination of the hidden curriculum, those elements which are implicit or tacit to the formal goals of education. This article draws upon that tradition to open up for investigation the hidden curriculum and assumptions about students and knowledge that are embedded in the coding undertaken to facilitate learning through information technologies, and emerging ‘semantic technologies’ in particular. Drawing upon an empirical study of case-based pedagogy in higher education, we examine the ways in which code becomes an actor in both enabling and constraining knowledge, reasoning, representation and students. The article argues that how this occurs, and to what effect, is largely left unexamined and becomes part of the hidden curriculum of electronically mediated learning that can be more explicitly examined by positioning technologies in general, and code in particular, as actors rather than tools. This points to a significant research agenda in technology enhanced learning.