Projects

Educational Informatics Lab

The EI-Lab is a group of researchers from UOIT sharing a social-constructivist vision of education. These like-minded researchers, emanating from many faculties, consider that with the adoption and use of digital technologies spreading in all sectors of society and in most parts of the world, the generation and dissemination of "information" and the concept of "knowledge" are changing. The rapid evolution of digital technology and the so-called "information revolution" are unquestionably having some important direct impact on the constant need for continuing education in many disciplines. At the EI-Lab, researchers are working on a series of projects revolving around the concept of informatics as applied to disciplines such as education, health and sciences in the context of life-long learning and higher education. One common element is the various projects in the study of human-computer-human interaction in various forms of online learning. They share an objective to develop initiatives on general concepts such as e-learning, m-learning, computer-mediated-communications and online education with a particular vision that we need to move from a content centered - teacher driven design to a process centered - learner driven approach. This group therefore adopts a position, whereby it is understood that the learners construct knowledge while interacting with others in a collaborative manner.

Students, Poetry and New Media (Dr.Janette Hughes)

The objective of the research is to develop a conceptualization of the relationship between new media and adolescents' writing of poetry while immersed in using new media. The research focuses on the question, "In what ways do new media tools and student poetic thinking interact in what Levy (1997) refers to as a "cognitive ecology" of humans and media?" and explores how the performative affordances of new media interact with the students' creative processes, specifically how students' poetic thinking gets restructured and reorganized as they use new media.

Students as Performance Mathematicians (Dr.Janette Hughes)

In this research we consider parallels between the arts and mathematics: between what makes for "a favourite book or movie" and what makes for "a favourite math idea or activity". It also leads us to look to the performing arts to understand students' repertoires for organizing and expressing the mathematical ideas they seek to communicate to one another and to their worlds outside of the classroom. The idea of "students as performance mathematicians" is new in mathematics education. It offers a fresh perspective on what school mathematics might be and how students might experience the subject. We have created a variety of mathematical performances: see www.edu.uwo.ca/mathscene. We have also worked on developing a Canada-wide Math Performance Festival: see www.mathfest.ca. For the most part, however, it is fair to say that the idea of students creating mathematical performances as a way of communicating their ideas within the classroom and to the world beyond is new. In today's mathematics classrooms "mathematical performance" is associated with testing and standards, and not with students' artistic experiences and expressions of mathematics.