What can we take from JISC RSC Eastern e-Learning Forum?

The latest JISC RSC Eastern e-Learning Forum was on the 14th March, and was hosted at UCS. The focus was on mobile learning, and in particular managing the roll outs of devices, and integrated learning designs.

The Elevate Team presented on Augmented Reality, Fad or Fab? The slides are below. The focus was on making people aware of the potential of augmented reality within a learning and teaching context, and explaining why it is likely to be a niche learning technology which adds significant value to the learning process within certain disciplines.

Interestingly, when I asked the audience (n = 24);

• Have you previously accessed an augmented reality based activity? Yes = 74% of audience
• Have you created an augmented reality aura (aurasma): 
• Yes with Aurasma Studio (31%)
• Yes with Aurasma App on Mobile (23%)
• No (46%).
• To what extent do you agree with the following statement: Augmented Reality as learning is a fad, it is a marketing dream and not relevant to the delivery of education
• Strongly Agree - 4%
• Agree - 39%
• Unsure - 35%
• Disagree - 13%
• Strongly Disagree - 9%

This questioning was really interesting, as it illustrates the awareness and experience of Augmented Reality in the room was high, and a large proportion thought Augmented Reality might offer little in the long term as a learning technology. This questions were asked before I presented.

Two key ideas I took from the session where;

1. Further develop my ideas of Opinion Leaders in terms of technology adoption through the need to identify these people and run awareness sessions for them.
2. Looking at digital pens as a means of scaling the objective testing for summative and formative reasons, within the classroom. This would also allow us to include subjective questions within the test in a more sustainable model for staff compared to the current OMR.