SEIS

On December 8th we organised our third annual advisory board meeting. The meeting took place in Tallinn University, in Eduspace and via Zoom. The following Advisory Board members took part: Isa Jahnke, Jarmo Viteli, Solvi Lillejord, Eve Eisenschmidt. In addition to short presentations of our activities and events carried out in 2022, the focus of the meeting was also to discuss the following points:

The discussion with the Advisory Board started with reflecting on lessons learned during the project and the main takeaways for the future. In general, despite the sudden lockdown because of COVID19 for almost two years, the SEIS team agreed that the objectives have been achieved, however, the weakest part of the project was the lack of opportunities to initiate new joint empirical research studies. On the other hand, the team also acknowledged that because of the COVID19 the SEIS project was a unique one.

Actually there was so much that was good about the COVID19 period and its impact on education and this should be kept and developed further. This is where researchers in the field of educational sciences and innovation can step in and provide evidence-based recommendations and support to educational systems. In addition to learning science experts there is also a need for people who have technical ability to analyse systems we use because datafication, platformization and learning analytics are the main keywords in the future in the educational research and innovation field. There is also a new concept arising – entangled pedagogy.

One of the Advisory Board members also reflected on her work in the light of the SEIS project and she thinks that the professional development of a researcher and the key competences are changing, and this is also true with early-stage researchers.

Finally, it was a great pleasure to hear positive feedback, but also some hints and suggestions for the future. One of the Advisory Board members said that “I am really impressed, I scrolled through the material you sent earlier and now listening to your reflections and explanations, you have done an excellent work”.

Detailed information about the Advisory Board meeting and the discussion is described in D6.3 Third annual advisory board meeting.

13 research papers presented at EDEN2022 in Tallinn were invited to be including in the EDEN2022 conference proceedings Shaping the Digital Transformation of the Education Ecosystem in Europe published in the series of Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS), Springer.

11 full papers and 2 short papers presented in this volume were selected from a total of 78 submissions. The proceedings is divided into the following sections: higher education; teachers’ professional development; digital competencies; inclusive education .

ERASMUS-EDU-2022-CBHE project GOT – Building Capacity for Online Tuition in Ghana prepared together with Tampere University, Tallinn University, and two universities from Ghana – University of Education, Winneba and University of Cape Coast got funded and will start on January 2023.

The project idea is derived from lessons learned during the pandemic. There is opportunity to change course digital delivery in higher education institutions in Ghana and build sustainable digital learning policy in sub-Saharan Africa. Extraction from the project summary: ….The project will result in the development of an educational research based action plan, which will include the development of the delivery system and training. This will enable the facilitation of digital educational innovation and research at UCC and UEW. The project thus intends to cause a shift towards data-driven and evidence-based methods of providing digital education at UCC and UEW, changing the thinking of researchers, educators and digital solutions providers…

Cecilie Hansen from UiB shared research and collaboration with schools she has been involved in. Title of her presentation was: Inquiring classroom practices to enhance professional digital competence. Supporting teachers in developing digital practices are on the agenda in Norwegian policy documents. How can these goals be supported in practice and everyday in the schools? In this presentation Cecilie Hansen talked about a partnership between the University of Bergen and seven primary schools. The schools have used Teacher Inquiry to develop projects with a focus on different aspects in relation to digital competence development.  She presented the collaboration with the schools, and some of the Teacher Inquiry projects done by the schools.

On June 20-22, Tallinn University together with EDEN and the SEIS team hosted a 31st Annual Conference of EDEN (European Distance and e-Learning Network) titled Shaping the digital transformation of the education ecosystem in Europe. The conference was organised as a hybrid event providing an opportunity to participate from all over the world. Virtual part of the conference was mediated through Worksup.com environment.

7 keynote speakers were invited: Nicole Johnson, Karl Vilhelm Valter, Lesley Gourlay, Kyungmee Lee, Mart Laanpere, Riina Vuorikari.

Terje Väljataga from Tallinn University represented a SEIS team as a programme chair of EDEN2022 conference. Furthermore, Merike Saar and Linda Helene Sillat, PhD students from Tallinn University introduced the research done in relation to the SEIS project. Merike talked about Teachers’ technology use, decision-making process and concerns in data-informed teacher inquiries and Linda Helene presented her research on Developing the Evidence-Informed Digital Competence Assessment Instrument and Platform for Educators. It must be noted here that the best paper award was given to Merike.

The selection of best papers will be published in A Springer Nature Computer Science book series.

A PhD student Kadri Mettis from Tallinn University spent some weeks in June 2022 in Tampere University. She visited Jussi Okkonen and Iiris Tuvi from the Research Center for Interactive Media. Kadri’s goal for the visit was to discuss her PhD topic “Facilitating knowledge acquisition and transfer in mobile outdoor learning settings” and extend her professional network.

A PhD student Juri Mets

and Yagmur Cisem Yilmaz from Tallinn University visited a Center for the Science of Learning and Technology research group in Bergen, September 2022. Yagmur’s goal of the visit was to discuss creativity in STEAM as part of her PhD thesis, Juri aimed to discuss different aspects of his PhD thesis “Development of an educational game framework to enhance transferable critical thinking skills at work”.

Pankaj Chejara

and

Merike Saar

visit Bergen University, SLATE – Center for the Science of Learning and Technology to share their research ideas, extend their research network and learn from the Bergen colleagues. Pankaj’s research focuses on building an automated feedback system to support teachers in tracking and monitoring collaboration behaviour among students. Merike’s research focuses on supporting teachers’ professional development through classroom learning analytics.

In May 21-28 several PhD students from Tallinn University participated in the The Sixteenth EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning. The event attracted 129 participants, speakers of 6 keynotes and 45 different workshops for one’s professional development as a researcher in the field of technology-enhanced learning. Furthermore, it is an excellent event for creating and building one’s professional network. The participants have shared their experience: Participating in JTEL Summer School 2022 was particularly useful in networking with young researchers in my field to build synergies between my research and others’ interests; I really enjoyed meeting new people, sharing similar doubts and ideas, and most importantly, building up my network in the TEL community.

Rosaline Danielle Erica Barendregt from Bergen University gave a presentation about interaction design. In the presentation ‘Introduction to interaction design’ she gave us an overview of what is interaction design and 6 design principles, why we put the user in the center when designing applications and services. Rosaline also introduced her research in the area of eHealth. Definitely an interesting research to follow with very practical value.

Tampere colleagues organised a SEIS writing clinic in a lovely and inspiring place for our event – Vaihmalan Hovi, May 16th to May20th 2022. 5 researchers from Tallinn University, 5 researchers from Tampere University and a professor from University of Missouri supporting our writing efforts.

This successful event provided for the participants a lot of inspiration, peer-feedback, an opportunity to discuss one’s work with experts, but also some time to actually do the writing tasks. One of the participants said: “this writing clinic was extremely vital and highly meaningful to me. This special group of people from different parts of the world became my ‘classmates’ and peers last week. They provided the interaction, sparring, exchange of ideas, recommendations, critical feedback, and camaraderie that I have so desperately needed these past couple of years.” The other one mentioned that “During the writing clinic, I got several comments and suggests, which in my opinion were interesting and helped me to look at my research ideas from different perspectives.”

One of the days was dedicated to a SEIS project meeting. Mainly having zoom meetings, it was a refreshing experience to discuss project related aspect face-to-face.

The next similar type of event is planned to be taken place in autumn in Bergen.