Digital environments have the potential to support learning in many different ways. The seminar will present an account of how we can use what we know from neuroscience, cognitive science and pedagogy to develop a theory-driven approach to designing a digital environment for learning.
The idea will be exemplified in terms of ‘dyscalculia’, a developmental neural deficit simply defined as a lack of ‘number sense’. The neuroscience can help us understand what the educational implications might be; cognitive science demonstrates the behavioural difficulties it generates; pedagogy tells us what learners need to do to build this type of formal conceptual understanding. More...
Let’s talk about digital learners in the digital era
This paper reports on a literature review of the concept of “Digital Natives” and related terms. More specifically, it reports on the idea of a homogeneous generation of prolific and skilled users of digital technology born between 1980 and 1994. In all, 127 articles published between 1991 and 2014 were reviewed. On the basis of the findings, there appears to be no commonly-accepted definition of a “Digital Native”. More...