Learning Ecologies in Higher Education
The Learning Ecologies project examines how students learn with networking and digital technologies, both in the formal academic context and beyond it.
The project aims to generate knowledge about the connected nature of students’ learning practices, with a particular interest for how such practices manifest across contexts of learning, aided by digital technologies. Illustration: Pixabay
About the project
The project explores how students’ digital learning practices can be used productively in higher education. In the digital age, students’ actual learning practices are increasingly diverging from instructional and assessment practices in higher education, as students capitalize on opportunities provided by novel digital technologies for communicating, networking and knowledge sharing. Still, it is highly unclear how students make sense of such information and practices and whether/how these could be integrated productively in higher education. Many of such opportunities abound but remain unexploited due to lacking knowledge about how digital ways of life may have academic value.
Objectives
The project aims to generate knowledge about the connected nature of students’ learning practices, with a particular interest for how such practices manifest across contexts of learning, aided by digital technologies. By investigating how students navigate in networked environments, the project aims to generate new understanding of how digital technologies can create opportunities for learning, how students use such opportunities and how such learning can be connected to activities and demands of higher education.
Background
This project examine students’ naturally occurring learning practices with networking and digital technologies, and explore how such technologies can be used most productively in higher education, as tools to access domain knowledge or means for communication.
The different sub-projects employ survey methods to collect students perception and experiences with digitally-supported connected learning activities; mixed-methods, combining interviews, survey data and a micro-ethnography of students connected learning activities and use of digital technologies; and a design-based research, where researchers and teachers work together to identify and develop strategies to support cross-context learning in university programmes.
Financing
The project is funded internally by incentive funds from the Department of Education and the Career program at the Faculty of Educational Sciences.
Selected publications
Markauskaite, L., Carvahlo, L. & Damşa, C. (in press). Ecological perspectives on learning and methodological implications for research and design, In Damşa, C, Rajala, A., Ritella, G. & Brouwer, J. (Eds.). Re-theorizing learning and research methods in learning research, Routledge, EARLI series.
Araos, A., Damşa, C., & Gašević, D. (2023). Browsing to learn: How computer and software engineering students se online platforms in learning activities. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 1– 18. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12774
Damşa, C.I., Uehara, D., Langford, M. & Scherer, R. (2021). Teachers’ agency and online teaching in times of crisis, Computers in Human Behaviour, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106793
Damsa, Crina I.; Araos, Andres & Gasevic, Dragan (2022). Online platforms as sites for Learning: Exploring the use of online resources in Computer and Software Engineering Education. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Series (CSCL). ISSN 1573-4552.
Araos Moya, Andres Arturo; Damsa, Crina-Ioana & Gašević, Dragan (2021). Exploring Affordances Provided by Online Non-Curricular Resources to Uundergraduate Students Learning Software Development. Proceedings (International Conference of the Learning Sciences). ISSN 1814-9316. s. 1063–1064.
Henriksen, L. T., Uehara, D., & Damsa, C. (2021). Exploring University Students’ Ecologies of Digital Resources in the Context of Disciplinary Learning. In de Vries, E., Hod, Y., & Ahn, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2021. (pp. 963-964). Bochum, Germany: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Damşa, C., Richter, C., Heidrun A., Cerratto Pargman, T., et al. (2020). Learning in Unbounded Landscapes ̶ Conceptualizations and Design from an Ecological Perspective, In: Gresalfi, M. and Horn, I. S. (Eds.). (2020). The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020, Volume 1, pp. 366-374. Nashville, Tennessee: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Araos, A.A.M., Damşa, C., Gašević, D. (2022). Online platforms as sites for Learning: Exploring the use of online resources in Computer and Software Engineering Education, in Chinn, C., Tan, E., Chan, C., & Kali, Y. (Eds.). Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences. Hiroshima, Japan (1097-1101)
Crina Damṣa, Julian Sefton-Green, Ola Erstad, et al. (2021). Platformization in and of education ̶Exploring a new research agenda (pp. 121-125), In Oshima, J. Mochizuki, T. & Hayashi, Y. (Eds.). (2022). General Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the International Society of the Learning Sciences 2022. Hiroshima, Japan: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Damşa, C., & Andreadakis, Z. (2020). Exploring Students’ Ecologies of Digital Resources in Higher Education, In: Gresalfi, M. and Horn, I. S. (Eds.). (2020). The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020, Volume 2, pp. 1087-1094. Nashville, Tennessee: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Damşa, C. & Nerland, M., Andreadakis, Z. (2019). An Ecological Perspective on Learner-Constructed Learning Spaces, British Journal of Educational Technology, 11, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12855
Damşa, C. I. & Jornet Gil, A. (2017). Revisiting learning in higher education—Framing notions redefined through an ecological perspective, Frontline Learning Research, 4(4), 39-47, https://doi.org/10.14786/flr.v4i4.208
Damşa, C. & de Lange, T. (2109). Student-centred learning environments in higher education - From conceptualization to design, In C. Damşa & T. de Lange (eds.), Studentsentrerte perspektiver og tiltak i høyere utdanning. Et forskningsbasert innspill til kvalitetsarbeid i praksis, UNIPED, 42(1), 9-26, https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.1893-8981-2019-01-02
Published Jan. 27, 2020 12:39 PM
- Last modified Jan. 25, 2023 11:02 AM