While educational technology has a long pedigree, the last few years have seen quite dramatic changes: including MOOCs, learning analytics and flipped class teaching. What has Human–Computer Interaction to contribute to these in terms of the design of authoring and learning platforms, and the wider socio-political implications of increasingly metric-driven governance? How will these changes affect HCI education?
In recent years we have seen the rise of MOOCs, first as ‘disruptive’ and, arguably, democratising forces in higher education and their movement into more established large scale platforms such as edX, Coursera and FutureLearn. Similar technology that enabled MOOCS had already given rise to more ground-up initiatives such as Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU) and Kahn Academy. Increasing costs of education have given new life to alternative forms of delivery and open educational resources.
In the classroom, lecture capture, first seen in early research initiatives such as Classroom2000 (eClass), has become ubiquitous and the commodification of audio-visual technology together with widespread availability of open educational resources has enabled new styles of teaching including flipped classroom. Some schools and universities are going ‘digital only’, basing their courses on eTextbooks and even having book-free libraries.
Data collected from digital media use, VLE engagement and online testing is being increasingly used to enable institutional and individual learning analytics allowing warnings to be raised potentially to help failing students, but also leading to an increasing metrics-driven environment.
These new developments raise several related challenges for HCI:
- What are the interaction challenges connected with the creation, delivery and use of these technologies? For example: Do we understand enough about the academic life or student life to know how these technologies fit with face-to-face university instruction?
- How do we visualise complex analytics in ways that motivate students? Can motivational techniques inform the design and facilitate the adoption of these solutions?
- What are the wider societal implications of this, and how can HCI influence this? For example, positive effects in reaching marginal groups, or negative effects excluding those without access to expensive technology.
- What are the implications of these technologies for teaching HCI? For example, one of the workshop organisers taught a HCI MOOC and then used the videos from this as part of flipped class teaching.
- Can we tell which of these will survive the test of time? Many technologies have command gone, which of the current ‘revolutions’ will permanently (even if less dramatically) changing ongoing practice?
Position papers are invited addressing HCI issues related to any of the above or other recent changes and challenges in educational technology.
We seek both those using HCI to study or design educational systems and those using novel educational methods to teach HCI.
Submissions
see separate instructions for remote participation
length: Position papers should be 2-4 pages A4 + including a short abstract (see below).
format: We are investigating different options for making the workshop proceedings available on the web in perpetuity, and will advise a format for accepted position papers when this is finalised. We have allowed a period subsequent to acceptance for this formatting.
publication and copyright: We will publish a workshop proceedings; only short abstract of each accepted position paper will appear in the AVI Conference published proceedings (in ACM DL) as part of the workshop summary. Copyright will b retained by author, except for granting permission to publish the position paper as part of the workshop proceedings
abstract page: The short entry for each paper has a hard word limit of 150 words, but this includes the paper title and author names (including ‘and’ before last author name) as well as the abstract. For all but very long titles or author lists, this will be sufficient for a standard 100 word abstract. However, if the word limit looks like being a problem you may need to consider title+subtitle or a shortened abstract — if unsure please contact the organisers.
We have extended the submission deadline to Monday 4th April to give time over the Easter break, but we would be grateful if you let us know if you intended to submit so we can arrange reviewing, and we will also accept submissions before that date and arrange earlier review accordingly.
ready?: send your completed position paper to: hcied2016@gmail.com
Important Dates
18th March 4 April 2016 — position papers submission (extended)
15th April 2016 — notification of acceptance (in time for AVI early bird registration)
13th May — camera ready version due
23rd May — remote participation deadline
7th June 2016 — workshop in Bari, Italy