Category Archives: Design

STEM Education in Canada

Posted on June 17, 2022 by | Leave a comment

Just uploaded “Status and Trends of STEM Education in Canada” to my Academia.edu account: Canada is at various crossroads and one of these is STEM education. The Canadian government anticipates that STEM will be a catalyst for economic and cultural change. After a decade of federal policies and funds for STEM education, there is little to show in K-12 schools and teacher education programs. The vast majority of non-profit, private sector, and professional society policy recommendations reinforce the federal government’s lead. This chapter provides a critical analysis of challenges, policies, practices, and trends in STEM education in Canada. The chapter primarily focuses on K-12 STEM education and teacher education and tangentially on postsecondary STEM education.

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Curriculum, Design, Interdisciplinary, STEAM

Tagged , ,

Jennifer Jing Zhao #UBC PhD Defence: Design of a 3D Virtual Learning Environment for Acquisition of Cultural Competence in Nurse Education #UBCEDCP

Posted on September 23, 2019 by | Leave a comment

The Final Oral Examination For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Curriculum Studies)

Jennifer Jing Zhao

Tuesday September 24, 2019, 4:00 pm
Room 200 of the Graduate Student Centre (6371 Crescent Road)

Design of a 3D Virtual Learning Environment for Acquisition of Cultural Competence in Nurse Education: Experiences of Nursing and Other Health Care Students, Instructors, and Instructional Designers

ABSTRACT: This study investigates how a 3D virtual world or learning environment facilitates nursing and other health care students’ acquisition of cultural competence. The study specifically explores the experience of students, instructors, and instructional designers in a 3D virtual learning environment designed specifically for this research. The research questions are: 1) What are the experiences of instructional designers and instructors in a simulated immersive learning environment of a 3D virtual world for the acquisition of cultural competence for students in nursing and other health related fields? 2) What are the experiences of students in a simulated immersive learning environment of a 3D virtual world for the acquisition of cultural competence? The design of the 3D world and analysis of data draw on a framework based on Deweyan and Confucian theories of experience. The theoretical framework suggests that learning is best supported through affordances for continuity and interaction, which are essential when designing, integrating, and evaluating simulation and immersion in 3D virtual worlds. Design-based research (DBR) and user experience (UX) methodologies are employed to explore the experience of students, instructors, and other participants. A taxonomy of experience (ToE) established by Coxon (2007) guides qualitative data collection and analysis in this study. Users’ data were distilled through nine steps to help experiences to be “seen” and to make abstract concepts comprehensible and visible. The findings include seven themes distilled from the data: Simulation for 3D learning environments is best: 1) grounded in real-world contexts; 2) shaped through holistic design; 3) designed for embodiment; 4) designed for interactivity; and 5) designed for continuous experience; 6) 3D learning environments should take the complexity of the technical interface into account; and 7) Design for the acquisition of cultural competence should take the users’ experience and knowledge into account. Implications include: 1) Conceptualization of “designer as host” and hospitality through Chinese understandings of guest-host relations; 2) Consideration of virtual experience overlooked within Deweyan and Confucian pragmatism.

EXAMINING COMMITTEE

Chair:
Prof Guofang Li (Language and Literacy Education)
Supervisory Committee:
Prof Stephen Petrina, Research Supervisor
Prof Hsiao-Cheng Sandrine Han
Prof Francis Feng
University Examiners:
Prof Marlene Asselin
Prof Samson Nashon

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Communication, Design, Design-Based Research, Instructional Design, Pedagogy, Technology, Technology Studies, User Experience, Virtual Worlds

Tagged , , , ,

Kesiena Chris-Iwuru #UBC MA Defence: Youth Perspectives on #Cyberbullying and Social Media Platforms #bced

Posted on January 15, 2018 by | 1 comment

Kesiena Chris-Iwuru, BSc, MSc

Masters of Arts in Media & Technology Studies Thesis Defense

YOUTH PERSPECTIVES ON CYBERBULLYING AND SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS: TEEN AGENCY, INTERACTIVITY, AND SOCIAL COGNITION

Friday January 19, 2018, 10:00 am, Scarfe 2108

ABSTRACT: This research examines how social media platforms have reconfigured traditional notions of social interaction and specifically how a sample of youth view these platforms in light of problems with cyberbullying. The research design included two primary questions: 1) How do social media platforms reconfigure social interaction and means by which youth perceive and understand these platforms? 2) What role does social cognition play in youth perspectives of online identities and interactions in relation to cyberbullying? The participants included nine Grades 10-12 students (4 males and 5 females), aged between 16-21 years. The research site was an independent high school located in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada. Actor-network theory and optimal distinctive theory (Brewer, 1991; Latour, 2005) formed the theoretical perspective for analyzing, discussing and the presentation of the research study findings. Data were collected through ethnographic techniques, including observations, artefacts (documents, etc.), and interviews.

The findings from this study indicate that the ubiquitous mode of interaction within these spaces deviates from traditional norms, with resulting consequence that impact users’ ability to perceive telepresence. The manner in which social media spaces are understood is largely influenced and informed by the predominant collective, where the self is seen as undefined and enacted in context-specific processes. The findings also indicate that interactions, perception, and mode of responses to conflict situations are based on previous experiences and currently held notions of what constitutes appropriate online behaviour. The implications and significance of the research findings have relevance for educators on how best to engage and understand teenagers in these spaces, with new and effective measures to examine instances of conflict and antisocial behaviour online. For social media companies and startups, it provides an insight into the nuanced mode and context of interaction prevalent within these platforms and the resulting impact on how individuals, the collective, and the platform itself all exert influence on each other.

  • SUPERVISOR:  Dr. Stephen Petrina
  • COMMITTEE MEMBER:  Dr. Franc Feng
  • THESIS EXAMINER:  Dr. Samson Nashon
Email, RSS Follow

1 Comment

Posted in Cyberbullying, Design, Media, New Media, Social Media, STS, Technology, Technology Studies

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Yu-Ling Lee #UBC PhD Defence: Designing TechnoTheologies #bced

Posted on May 5, 2017 by | Leave a comment

The Final Oral Examination For the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Curriculum Studies)

Yu-Ling Lee

Wednesday, May 10, 2017. 12:30 pm
Room 207, Anthropology and Sociology Building,
6303 Northwest Marine Drive

DESIGNING TECHNOTHEOLOGIES: ETHICS, PEDAGOGIES, AND SPIRITUALITIES IN MAKER ACTOR-NETWORKS

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to understand how religion and spirituality matter in the consumer use, design, and engineering of media and technology. Specifically, the research questions were: 1) What role do ethics and values perform in maker and hacker networks? 2) How are ethics and values integrated and manifested throughout the design process in maker or hacker networks? 3) What are the routines, rituals, and subjective well-being of participants in the maker or hacker design process? The research setting was the designers in the maker community in Vancouver and technologists associated with Code for the Kingdom in Seattle. All designers and technologists in Vancouver and Seattle have independent projects at various levels of collaboration. I recruited seven participants affiliated with the Vancouver maker community for in-depth analysis of their design process. In Seattle, I recruited two hackers who participated in Code for the Kingdom, a Christian organization that hosts hackathons for altruistic and religious purposes. Their focus on innovation, design methodologies, and critical making allowed me to discern their values and ethics through their design process. These participants have different perspectives on religion and spirituality, which make their technotheological networks complex. Case studies facilitated in-depth examination of makers and hackers as the main actors of our inquiry. The use of video in dialogue with ethnographic inquiry allowed for nuance, discerning complexities, and giving form to expression in designing technotheologies. Conceptually, the research is framed by actor-network theory (ANT) and value sensitive design (VSD), enabling the study to discern how participants discover, design artifacts, make meaning, develop values, and maintain a sense of the good life and well-being, emotional and spiritual. Findings indicate that among the makers and hackers, technotheological networks articulate specific values alongside technological creations, practices, and personal ways of being. In their own unique ways, these makers and hackers inquire into the materialized morality and design phases of ethically responsible decision making processes. Conversely, the non-human actors express their own values within technotheological networks. My role as a techno-theologian helped facilitate competing value claims by positing a normative focus and by temporarily opening black boxes.

EXAMINING COMMITTEE
Chair:
Prof Richard Young (Counselling Psychology)

Supervisory Committee:
Prof Stephen Petrina, Research Supervisor (Curriculum Studies)
Prof E. Wayne Ross (Curriculum Studies)
Prof Francis Feng (Curriculum Studies)

University Examiners:
Prof Kerry Renwick (Curriculum Studies)
Prof Brian Wilson (Kinesiology)

External Examiner:
Prof Matt Ratto

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Case Study, Curriculum, Design, Hacker Culture, Maker Culture, Media, STS, Technology, Technology Studies, TechnoTheology

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Keeping Up with the Media

Posted on September 6, 2016 by | Leave a comment

Paula MacDowell

Keeping Up with the Media is a media study guide created for teachers and students, by teachers. The authors are all practicing teachers (elementary and secondary) completing a Master of Education in Digital Learning and Curriculum at UBC. This elite team produced this guide to enhance media literacy and media education across the K-12 curriculum.

Authors: #UBCDLC3
Editor: Paula MacDowell
Publication Date: August 4, 2016
Format: Interactive, multi-touch eBook
Online: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1149612619

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Curriculum, Design, Pedagogy, Teachers

Tagged , ,

MAKE

Posted on April 6, 2016 by | Leave a comment

Paula MacDowell

As Solnit (2013) shares in in The Faraway Nearby, “to become a maker is to make the world for others, not only the material world but the world of ideas that rules over the material world, the dreams we dream and inhabit together.”

What are you making? What are you sharing? What’s your story?

MAKE: Creativity & Learning in a New Tonality is a collection of creative and intellectual works (artifacts, stories, poetry, photography, ethnodrama, and research) by a team of teachers engaged in the art of making meaning together. We welcome you to join us in our journey, “let us take what we have learned from our courses and from each other and fly on eagles’ wings to (s)p(l)aces beyond our imagination” (Stuart, 2016).

Authors: EDCP 508 Collective
Editor: Paula MacDowell
Publication Date: March 13, 2016
Format: Interactive, multi-touch eBook
Online: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1093003369

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Curriculum, Design, Pedagogy, Teachers

Tagged

Critique of Media & Technology Workshop #yreubc #hwl #ices

Posted on April 28, 2015 by | Leave a comment

CRITIQUE OF MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY WORKSHOP 

Wednesday, April 29, 2015
10:20-12:00     Scarfe 1209
Year of Research in Education event #yreubc

CRITIQUE OF MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY

Stephen Petrina
University of British Columbia

This workshop focuses on the Critique of Media & Technology. The first part of the workshop includes a presentation and discussion on a forthcoming chapter. The second part of the workshop focuses on the process of researching and writing with special attention to philosophical and historical research 2.0 and narrative. How can we or ought we write a (big) history of the critique of media and technology?

The chapter begins with the spiritual critique of media and technology and proceeds historically through cultural criticism and social, psychic, ontic, and identic critiques. Differentiated from the spiritual critique that precedes, cultural criticism of media and technology emerges in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a mode of describing and depicting the mechanical arts. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, spiritual critique is displaced through a rejection of religion and theology as sources of modern authority. With spiritual ground undermined, social, psychic, ontic, and identic critics of media and technology compete for defensible ground for leverage. The history of critique is a search for ground. This chapter historicizes the critique of media and technology as well as critique as a practice that has run out of steam. “Critical distance” from or “free relation” to media and technology— a seductive orientation since the 1940s— has been instrumental in critique’s gradual decline. The critique of critique has quickened the decline. The conclusion questions the short-term future of machinic critique and long-term renewal of spiritual critique.

Download the Critique of Media & Technology chapter

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Critique of M&T, Design, HWL Forums, Interdisciplinary, Media, STS, Technology, Technology Studies, Theology

Tagged , , , ,

Paula (PJ) MacDowell’s PhD final oral exam @ Empowering Girls as Change Makers in Maker Culture: Stories from a Summer Camp for Girls in Design, Media & Technology

Posted on March 16, 2015 by | Leave a comment

You are invited to
The Final Oral Examination
For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Curriculum Studies)

PAULA (PJ) MACDOWELL
B.Ed, The University of Regina, 1995 MET,
The University of British Columbia, 2007

Monday, March 16, 2015, 12:30 pm
Room 200, Graduate Student Centre
Latecomers will not be admitted

Empowering Girls as Change Makers in Maker Culture: Stories from a Summer Camp for Girls in Design, Media & Technology

EXAM DETAILS
1. Exam Time: 12:30 PM on Monday, March 16, 2015 (Please arrive 5 minutes early, so the exam can begin promptly).
2. Exam Location: Room 200 of the Graduate Student Centre (Koerner Building, 6371 Crescent Road).

EXAMINING COMMITTEE
Chair:
Dr. Sandra Mathison (Measurement, Evaluation, and Research Methodology)
Supervisory Committee:
Dr. Stephen Petrina, Research Supervisor (Curriculum Studies)
Dr. Franc Feng (Curriculum Studies)
Dr. Sandra Scott (Curriculum Studies)
University Examiners:
Dr. E. Wayne Ross (Curriculum Studies)
Dr. Laurie Ford (School Psychology)
External Examiner:
Dr. Ann Marie Hill
Faculty of Education
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how girls develop new affinities towards and capabilities in media and technology. Thirty co-researchers, girls aged 10-13, were recruited into 101 Technology Fun, a series of summer camps with learning labs in animation, game design, movie production, and robotics programming. The design studio setting, created by the How We Learn (Media & Technology Across the Lifespan) collective, offered girls their own makerspace to explore media and technology. A novel methodology was developed, the Tween Empowerment & Advocacy Methodology (TEAM), which emphasizes relational ethics through artifact production, storymaking, mind scripting, invention, and imagination. Highlighting the importance for youth voices to be recognized and given influence in the academic research concerning their lives and learning circumstances, the findings focus on the catalytic or generative artifacts and “little stories” (e.g., Lyotard’s petits récits) revealing the co-researchers’ experiences and expressions of girlhood-in-interaction-with-technology (the key unit of analysis).

This research addresses artifacts as they relate to stories made or examined by the team members, including our concerns, needs, talents, inspiration, literacy, and volition. The artifacts, such as music videos, robotic amusement park, and the momME alternate reality game, are catalytic for storymaking and, symmetrically, the stories are catalytic to artifact production and sharing. Four distinct yet interrelated elements characterize our fieldwork and designworks:

(1) agency (girls having influence and power)
(2) ingenuity (girls being clever and inventive)
(3) self-interpretation (girls making sense and significance)
(4) self-efficacy (girls judging their technological capabilities).

Findings underscore the statement that it is not really a question of whether girls like to design (most do), as much a matter concerning how, when, and why they learn to become innovators, leaders, and producers of media and technology (thereby overturning traditional gender and generational stereotypes). Indeed, how a group of female youth story changes in their sense of technological self-efficacy, self-interpretation, ingenuity, and agency is one of the most important contributions of this study. Questions, both guiding and emergent, are articulated in artifact and text to motivate further scholarly inquiry, action, and advocacy, thereby generating more opportunities for girls to participate in, design, make, and transform technology culture.

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Design, Design-Based Research, Interdisciplinary, Media, New Media, Robots, Technology, Technology Studies

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Research stories: A graduate forum #hwl #yreUBC #UBC #bced

Posted on November 18, 2014 by | Leave a comment

RESEARCH STORIES: A GRADUATE FORUM

 How We Learn Media and Technology (across the lifespan)
Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy
University of British Columbia

Wednesday, November 19, 2014
10:00-11:30     Scarfe 1209
Year of Research in Education event

GIRLS DESIGNING GAMES, MEDIA, ROBOTS, SELVES, AND CULTURE
Paula (PJ) MacDowell
University of British Columbia

This research involved 30 co-researchers, girls aged 10–13, who were recruited into 101 Technology Fun, a series of intensive research camps offering learning labs in game design, video production, and robotics. Utilizing design-based and participatory techniques, including artifact production, mind scripting, and storymaking, this research examines how girls, through their artifact making and designerly practices, story themselves and express their understandings of technology. Highlighting the importance for girls’ voices to be recognized and given influence in research concerning their lives and learning circumstances, findings focus on the catalytic or generative artifacts and “little stories” that reveal how a team of girls analyze their experiences of girlhood-in-interaction-with technology.

MIGRANT MEXICAN YOUTH IN THE PACIFIC NORTWEST
Mike D. Boyer
Boise State University

 What are the stories of migrant, undocumented Mexican youth, as they struggle with language and acculturation in the English-speaking rural Northwest? As Michael Boyer describes, his own study of a set of such stories takes as its starting point narratives written and illustrated by students in his grade 7-12 ESL classroom some 10 years ago. Of course, these stories subsequently diverge as they continue to the present, and as these former students, now adults, connect back to their earlier experiences and reflect on the relation of these experiences to the present. The collection and investigation of these stories, new and old, and their relationship to past realities and future possibilities offers startling insights into the experiences of those othered and marginalized as “immigrant Hispanic children” in America. At the same time, it also entails the creative combination or a range of narratological, political and cultural categories and modes of analysis.

DESIGNING THINGS, PRACTICES AND CONCERN FOR THE GOOD LIFE
Yu-Ling Lee
University of British Columbia

 This research examines the complex relationship between design, the sacred and online learning, framed by matters of concern. It is the culmination of a yearlong ethnographic research project in the lives of Christian undergraduate students in Vancouver. Focal concerns in the form of things and practices have disclosive power if they are designed for the good life. The task of the designer, then, is to purposefully move away from matters of fact towards matters of concern. The interviews were open-ended and based on a loosely structured set of questions about faith background, Internet usage, online spiritual experiences, and other factors. Conversations and participant observations were then analyzed as matters of concern.

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Design, New Media, Technology, Technology Studies, Theology

Tagged , , , , , ,

#HWL at STEM 2014

Posted on July 13, 2014 by | Leave a comment

STEM2014-logo flowers

Researchers on the How We Learn (HWL) team are presenting in a symposium this afternoon at 3:00 at the STEM 2014 Conference.

Design and Engineering Cognition and
Design-Based Research

Stephen Petrina, Franc Feng, Mirela Gutica, Peter Halim, Yu-Ling Lee, Lesley Liu, PJ Rusnak, Yifei Wang & Jennifer Zhao

University of British Columbia

Symposium Chairs: Yifei Wang & Stephen Petrina

This symposium aims to generate discussion and understanding of design-based research (DBR) in design and engineering cognition. Seven empirical reports exploring design and engineering cognition or using DBR give the symposium depth and structure: Studies of 1) thirty tweenage girls in designing a mother’s day game, media, and robots; 2) fifteen elementary students testing a new educational video game; 3) nineteen young adults within an immersive virtual environment; 4) four teen students on the design of games; 5) six nursing students involved in a simulated learning environment; 6) Conceptual paper exploring technology and the “design” in DBR; and 7) Methodological paper connecting DBR with design and engineering cognition and ethical know-how. Arguably, new technologies along with a return of DIY or maker culture invite or configure everyone to employ inventive practices or “designerly ways of knowing.” Design now marks interaction with new technologies, making DBR increasingly important and relevant for STEM.

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted in Design, Design-Based Research, Learning Analytics, Technology, Technology Studies

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Image

3D Printing: Paper as media, in the 3rd Industrial Revolution

Interesting conference and expo, specializing in 3D printing technologies as the emergent third industrial revolution (perhaps Vancouver next, for its upcoming Expos?), where it has become possible, to print any content in any form (see the 3D printed guitar!) in any media- even paper, in full color 3D- dispelling possible prior preconceptions of paper, in which paper emerges as durable material, for our design considerations, that due of its unique properties, can also be coated, to extend its initial properties with the strength and properties of other as/more durable materials. 3D printing

Email, RSS Follow

Leave a comment

Posted on May 15, 2014 by in Conferences, Design, Media, New Media, STS, Technology, Technology Studies

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,