Abstract

Developments in technology have reached a level of capability that enables more sophisticated and thought induced applications to be contemplated than were previously possible.  E-Learning and m-Learning are maturing and the users of the technology are more familiar with the concepts involved. 

The RAFT (Remote Accessible Field Trips) philosophy is, therefore, to employ such systems to produce an integrated, interactive system to link, in real-time, field trips and classrooms.  It is being designed to make appropriate use of technology to improve and enhance the educational experience of students.  The primary driver for this development is the fact that it is becoming increasing difficult in many countries to organise field trips for reasons including finance, staffing levels and health and safety issues. 

The RAFT approach offers a viable solution as only a few students will go to the field but the remaining students interact in real-time with the students in the field.  Web based interaction tools, including video conferencing and wireless wide area networking are used to achieve this.  The design of the technology reflects best practice in collaborative and cooperative learning principles. 

It is intended that the field trips will be firmly embedded in the curriculum as they are being developed with the cooperation of practising teachers in a wide range of subjects.  During the field trip, many learning objects will be produced and these will be managed by an Adaptive Learning Environment for later reuse in assignments and in future study.  There is also scope to extend the reach of the school by having remote classrooms and remote experts contributing to and participating in the field trip.  This paper describes the approaches used and the progress made to date in the project.

Introduction

The developments in wireless communications and in mobile devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile phones and tablets PCs in addition to the acclimatisation of educators to these devices and other technologies mean that there is now an opportunity to apply technology in appropriate ways that will enhance the educational experience of students.   e-Learning and m-Learning theories to accompany applications of technology to education have been sparse to date but it has been felt that the use of technology should be beneficial to educational attainment.   However, statistically significant gains in educational attainment are shown only in several areas and these are very small (DfES Becta 2002). The general belief has been that technology has been imposed without due regard to technique, effectiveness and appropriateness and without consideration of learning theories and pedagogies.

The RAFT (Remote Accessible Field Trips) project seeks to answer some of these points.  It is developing a method of spanning field trip and classroom locations using technology in order to provide an integrated event for the set of pupils involved. This will take the practice of m-Learning into the realms of cooperative and collaborative learning (DfES NGfL 2002).

In order to ensure that all pupils are fully engaged in the event, the project team is exploring a range of roles that could be taken by the pupils. The scope of these roles is being investigated, including the qualities that will be developed in the pupils taking these roles.

A variety of scenarios is being developed, focusing on the areas of Biology, Art and History to give a good range of material and approaches to field trips. The curriculum is being considered within the secondary education systems of Canada, Scotland, Germany and Slovakia.

Prototype systems are being constructed based on innovative classroom technologies and on mobile devices in the field.  Initially a variety of simple scenarios is being enacted with school students to explore the nature of the roles that might be necessary, and the functionality required of the systems to enable these roles to be enacted.  In addition trial field trips have taken place in order to explore the interactions between the classrooms and the field trip and the capabilities of the current wide areas technologies, whilst anticipating the capabilities of future infrastructures.

This paper will report on the initial work of the project, and will highlight the nature of the collaboration and the place of roles being explored in m-learning, the design of hardware, software and interfaces and the role of the RAFT project in the development of personalised learning as well as describing the underpinning learning theories in this approach to providing a valuable educational experience.

Objectives of RAFT

The RAFT project is designed to contribute to the effective and appropriate use of technology in the education of everyone but particularly young people and in helping them to attain not only skills in a subject but also in technology and in other areas.  These areas will include transferable skills such as team working and the application of new cognitive skills as well as possible affective domain gains. 

Developments in technology have enabled e-Learning and m-Learning to become possible.  E-learning is the “use of multimedia technologies and the internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services as well as remote exchanges and collaboration” (http://www.elearningeuropa.info/).  M-learning is the “intersection of mobile computing and e-learning” (http://www.linezine.com).  More information about m-learning can be found on the m-learning forum website (http://www.pjb.co.uk/m-learning) and on http://cc.oulu.fi/~jlaru/mlearning/. 

E-learning and m-learning are significant developments which highlight the need for change in learning and teaching approaches and which impinge on the RAFT approach.  There is a need therefore for research into innovation in learning technologies and innovative learning and pedagogical approaches.  The RAFT project will extend existing e- and m-learning approaches and focus on the following objectives:

§         To demonstrate the educational benefits and technical feasibility of remote field trips, with a view to prompting best practice to support this learning activity.

§         To establish extensions on current learning material standards and exchange formats for contextualisation of learning material.  This is combined with the embedding of learning and teaching activities in an authentic real world context.

§         To establish new forms of contextualised learner collaboration with real time video conferencing and audio communication in authentic contexts.

§         To complement learning done in the classroom by promoting thinking skills and processes and application of learning.

Curriculum, Learning Theories and Pedagogies

Along with the development of the RAFT approach to field work, investigations into the current state of field trips and the curricula in various countries are being investigated.  Despite the recognised educational worth of field trips there are many limiting factors such as time in the curriculum, consent, health and safety factors and forms, insurance and staffing which inhibit the number of these activities (Barker, Slingsby and Tilling 2002).  Virtual field trips have become popular in some subjects in that they provide the next best thing to actually being there in the field.  However, as in distance learning, problems in learning occur as students need personal contact and face to face communication with their teachers (Frank, Reich and Humphreys 2003).  The RAFT approach to field trips is designed to help alleviate this problem by allowing opportunities for constant communication between students and with teachers and also to provide a rich educational experience for all students. 

Comparisons of curricula in various countries have been made and these show that there are enough common areas in the curricula of each country to be able to develop European and internationally relevant field trips. The RAFT team is consulting and working with teachers in each of the countries involved to ensure that the field trips are designed to be worthwhile and relevant in each of the participating countries.  

The field trips which have been proposed by practising teachers at RAFT workshops and in consultations are noted in a RAFT scenario server (http://raft01.fit.fraunhofer.de/cgi-bin/WebObjects/uss) and some have been chosen to be fully developed for the purposes of the project and to provide exemplar field trips for future use and reference.  These are in History, Biology and Art and Design.

The learning theories and pedagogies identified as being appropriate to RAFT because of its m-learning context  include collaborative and cooperative, situated (Lave and Wenger 1991), peer assisted (Topping and Ehly 1998) and vicarious learning (Lee et al 1999). Examples of where these may occur are noted in Table 1.  Underpinning these are Piagetian and Vygotskian concepts and learning being a social activity.

 

Functional Overview of the RAFT System

There are many facets to this proposed approach to field trips.  These include planning, coordinating and evaluating the field trip as well as managing the users, their learning and the collaborative learning environment.  There could be a number of other classrooms and experts from anywhere in the world participating in the field trip in real time thus extending the collaborative learning experience.  This has to be underpinned by an infrastructure which is reliable.  Different functions of the proposed system in three distinct but dependency related layers, operating, servicing and enabling, are shown in Figure 2.

The planning stage includes the setting up of the field trip by the teacher, deciding location, date, subject matter and tasks involved.  The students participating on the field trip need to be identified and entered into the system and all data collection forms and assessments need to be prepared.  At the service level all channels of communication and data transfer require to be functional.  Both these layers depend on the enabling layer to be set up well and for it to be reliable to allow the whole approach to be used successfully. 

In addition the Adaptive Learning Environment (Learning Services in the diagram) is central to the management of the fieldtrip, the participants and the data collected.  Communication, both synchronous and asynchronous, is required and has to be accommodated in this system.  The synchronous communication provides the engagement factor for students in the classroom and the asynchronous communication allows messaging to occur throughout the field trip and also for additional developing tasks to be alerted and allocated.

Different field trips may require different combinations of the functionality: a scientific one may require data logging facilities whereas an interview of an artist would need more audio-visual equipment.  RAFT accommodates these possibilities and is a system that is scalable and flexible.

Roles Identified

To make the learning experience valuable with only a few students in the field and most of the students in the classroom, the field trip, as well as having to be well organised and planned, should allow all students to be and feel involved in it.  To achieve this a cooperative approach to learning has been adopted (Johnston and Johnston 1994).  Each student has a particular role in a group each of which has a specific task.  All students are working towards a common goal and each student’s contribution is important.  The initial roles proposed included, in the classroom, classroom coordinator, classroom communicator, researchers and archivist and, in the field, field communicator, scouts, data gatherers and annotators.

From initial trials, the most effective field trips with interaction and a feeling of involvement from all students have occurred when the classroom coordinator has shown leadership skills and has taken responsibility for driving the communication.  It also emerged from initial prototyping that each person in a group needs a uniquely defined role and the roles proposed included researcher, communicator, analyst, collator and developer.  There may be several of each of these in the classroom depending on the number of tasks and groups involved.   This follows cooperative learning theory principles.

However from recent feedback received, roles and channels of communication have been more clearly defined and developed.  These are summarised in Figure 3. 

The roles have been split into classroom and field and it is envisaged that students, especially in the field, will participate in pairs for both educational and safety reasons.  Data, messaging and engagement channels of communication between field and classroom have been designed.  The data channel allows the data collected from the field to be directed to the relevant person in the classroom.  The messaging channel allows questions and general feedback to occur from field to class and class to field thus keeping the field involved in the classroom activity and vice versa.  The engagement channel allows the classroom(s) to experience what is happening in the field as it occurs in real time.  Interaction between students in the field and in the classroom is paramount in this approach.

A more detailed description of the roles anticipated for a RAFT fieldtrip are described in Table 2 below.

Role	Description
Scout	To look around the field trip site to identify appropriate locations to gather the data required by field trip tasks
Data Gatherer	To gather data from the field in response to a field trip task
Annotator	To gather the raw data being generated by the DataGatherer and to add initial meta data prior to the material being placed within a collection
Communicator	To work in partnership with a Reporter to follow the activity taking place in the field so that classroom participants can watch the activity
Reporter	To work in partnership with a communicator to comment on the activity taking place in the field and to interview remote experts in the field
Field Coordinator	Has the overview of field activity and coordinates activities with the classroom
Archivist	To take raw data from field trips and archive them as standards conformant RLOs
Analyst	To monitor the data being gathered in the field and to process that data in response to the field trip task
Researcher	To answer questions generated by Data Gatherers and Annotators during a field trip
Task Manager	To allocate tasks to the participants in the field and classroom
Message Manager	To manage the flow of message between the participants in the field and classroom
Conference Manager	To manage the audio/video communication between the participants in the field and classroom
Director	To oversee the progress of the field trip and to direct the various field and classroom managers in their tasks, including control of the main classroom displays
Enquirer	To reflect on and observe the field trip development and generate questions during the field trip.
Classroom Teacher	To oversee the field trip and the management team, manage the classroom and enable students with tasks.
Field Teacher	To oversee the field trip in the field and enable students with tasks.

The rationale for roles within the RAFT field trip experience

Given the apparent complexity of the RAFT system as proposed, due largely to the extensive set of roles to be enabled, it is important to reiterate that the spectrum of roles has been specified for sound pedagogical and practical reasons.

The central rationale is based on the nature of the interactions between participants that are implicit in a field trip, and are reinforced by the goal of providing live interactions between field and classroom. This implies a collaborative learning experience, where peers interact sharing knowledge, outcomes of discovery and expertise in processes or functional skills.  Because of the nature of the activities that make up a distributed field trip, including gathering information in the field, answering questions, analysing data from the field in order to provide immediate feedback, communication taking place between the field and classroom for example, it soon becomes apparent that the distributed field trip will involve a wide spectrum of tasks and interactions between those involved in enacting those tasks. Effective cooperative learning depends on each participant contributing their knowledge, insights and practical skills to the activity.  By defining concrete roles for the participants, each individual has a well-understood contribution to make.  In this environment peers will be able to involve each other with a clear expectation of the contribution of each member of the team.  Role specification in this way has the benefit of reducing the ambiguity of the nature of the contribution of each participant, and strengthens the sense of legitimacy within the team.

Once roles have been specified according to tasks in this way, the allocation of technology to each role can be optimised, reducing the complexity of the functionality of the technology used by each RAFT participant, and reducing the size and complexity of each device operated by each participant to the minimum required to successfully perform the tasks allocated to a specific role.  This is particularly important in the field, where school children cannot be expected to be able to carry bulky all-purpose portable computers that are capable of doing many tasks, but are not optimised for any.

The allocation of roles to students can then become an important element of the learning gain experienced by each individual involved in the event.  It may be that the skills possessed by the students are identified and they are allocated a role accordingly in order to maximise their contribution to the immediate peer team or to the overall event.  Alternatively, the learning needs of an individual may be identified and a role assigned that will maximise their learning gain.  This gain may be in terms of knowledge gained, practical or process skills used, social or collaborative skills reinforced, or opportunities to deepen thinking.

Leading on from this therefore is the opportunity to observe or, better still practise, future vocational skills.  Given the spectrum of activities collated within the roles identified for a RAFT event, participants will have the opportunity to exercise skills and gain knowledge in a wider set of domains than are covered by the curriculum matter being encountered in the field trip.  A wide variety of social, collaborative, technical and context specific skills can be experienced.  By bundling activities within roles, the spectrum of these wider learning gains can be identified and progress in the enhancement of these skills can be tracked. In this sense the RAFT enabled field trips become a powerful platform for gaining important transferable and vocational skills.

Given this distribution of activity to specific roles, it is claimed that the RAFT system will provide a managed learning event with clear learning outcomes based on good pedagogic practice.  It is the intention of the RAFT team to verify this claim in the validation trials within the project.

Adaptive Learning Environment (ALE)

In addition to providing an educational experience, the data gathered and generated by the students will be stored as Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) and these can be used by others in the class for their particular task, in future years by other classes and by teachers who have access to the ALE.   These are some of the advantages of using this system.  The ALE provides students with the ability to access information for their own use and, for teachers, it allows the use of the data in preparation of teaching and learning materials with the knowledge that it is relevant for that particular syllabus or curriculum.  Thus saving everyone valuable time. The Adaptive Learning Environment is central to the success of this system.  It is accessed from the planning stage, during the field trip to the storing of the data after the field trip.  The ALE also has the potential to incorporate profiles so that a user on logging on to the system is provided with his/her preferred mode of working and a record of his/her achievement or progress to date.

Technology

As the nature of the approach is to have students communicate from remote places to classrooms, wireless communication is important.  Various types from Bluetooth, 3G and Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) are being investigated as to suitability. 

PDAs, tablet PCs and laptops are all being trialled for suitability of use for students on the move and in classrooms and for suitability of running software available.  Customised interfaces are being developed from input from students in the classroom and prototypes are being tested.  The concept of mobile computing is also being prototyped with ideas about designs and preferences for new devices being developed in discussions with students.  The results of these and the idea that personal tools should be highly portable, individual, unobtrusive, available, adaptable, persistent, useful and intuitive (Sharples 2000) are also being taken into account along with the idea of wearable computers.  During the course of the project, developments in technology, especially in wireless networking, will be monitored and utilised as appropriate.

RAFT and Personalised Learning

Personalised learning is where learning can occur anytime anywhere, where students find their preferred mode of working and the information they require is automatically loaded into the device for the environment or particular topic being researched.  With the use of an ALE, this idea becomes more viable.  The advantages are that students, whatever their circumstance, whether they have special needs, are ill or wish to do extra work, have the opportunity to participate in educational experiences which they might otherwise have missed.  Thus the scope for widening educational opportunities for all students becomes more possible.

Conclusion

The project is developing and many issues have to be explored and developed.  These include:

§         finding reliable wireless networking

§         development of the video conferencing interface

§         deciding on the best collaborative and learning delivery tools

§         design of the classroom

§         design of the hardware and interfaces

§         definition of roles

§         achieving best synchronous collaboration between field and classroom.

RAFT is at the prototyping stage and for the next year the data gathered will be used in the development stage. After that full field trip trials will occur and these will be evaluated in a comprehensive manner covering many areas from learning efficiency to effectiveness of video conferencing. 

At all stages communication and cooperation with schools, teachers and students to ensure functionality and suitability will continue.  This should result in a system that is accepted by teachers, where they are sure that the content is curriculum specific, where the technology is used naturally and appropriately to enhance the educational experience.  Further information is available on the RAFT portal (http://www.raft-project.net).

In addition, with the approach of utilising the interests and skills of the students, the potential of RAFT to fully engage all students, from those with disability to those who are less motivated, becomes more real.  RAFT also offers the opportunity to complement the learning of the classroom with the development of thinking, analytical and transferable skills and the knowledge and experience of how to apply these skills. 

Acknowledgments

This work is part funded by the Commission of the European Community under the IST 5th Framework Programme.  The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the RAFT team in this work and the use of some items of Microsoft^© clip-art in Figure 2. 

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