2016, Charteris, Jennifer, Gregory, Sue

Some of us were lucky to own a camera growing up and our teen years were punctuated by parents moaning about the time taken talking on the phone, via a landline. Callers who wanted to contact us would have to run the gauntlet with gatekeeping parents who answered the phone. How times have changed! With the advent of smartphones and tablets, young people are awash in visual images. Young people, now experts in multimedia production, curate photographs and videos that narrate their worlds. Immersed in a plethora of digital images, they use Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to story the minutiae of their daily lives. But what are the implications for educators? And how is this influencing the changing cultures of young people themselves? Snapchat is a disappearing media that was developed in 2011 and marketed to the 13 to 34 age bracket. With 100 million people using the application every day, it has taken hold among young people (Ingram, 2015). Although there has been a lot of research on Facebook, there are few studies into the use of Snapchat among young people and the implications for educators.

2017, Al Lily, Abdulrahman E, Foland, Jed, Vlachopoulos, Dimitrios, Oni, Aderonke, Liu, Yuliang, Badosek, Radim, de la Madrid, Maria Cristina Lopez, Mazzoni, Elvis, Lee, Hwansoo, Kinley, Khamsum, Kalz, Marco, Sambuu, Uyanga, Stoloff, David, Bushnaq, Tatiana, Pinkwart, Niels, Adedokun-Shittu, Nafisat Afolake, Zander, Par-Ola Mikael, Oliver, Kevin, Pombo, Lucia Maria Teixeira, Sali, Jale Balaban, Gregory, Sue, Tobgay, Sonam, Joy, Mike, Gogus, Aytac, Elen, Jan, Jwaifell, Mustafa Odeh Helal, Said, Mohd Nihra Haruzuan Mohamad, Al-Saggaf, Yeslam, Naaji, Antoanela, White, Julie, Jordan, Kathy, Gerstein, Jackie, Yapici, Ibrahim Umit, Sanga, Camilius, Erguvan, Inan Deniz, Nleya, Paul T, Sbihi, Boubker, Lucas, Margarida Rocha, Mbarika, Victor, Reiners, Torsten, Schon, Sandra, Sujo-Montes, Laura, Santally, Mohammad, Hakkinen, Paivi, Saif, Abdulkarim Al, Awshar, Mapotse Tome, Gegenfurtner, Andreas, Schatz, Steven, Vigil, Virginia Padilla, Tannahill, Catherine, Partida, Siria Padilla, Zhang, Zuochen, Charalambous, Kyriacos, Moreira, Antonio, Coto, Mayela, Laxman, Kumar, Tondeur, Jo, Farley, Helen Sara, Gumbo, Mishack T, Simsek, Ali, Ramganesh, E, Birzina, Rita, Player-Koro, Catarina, Dumbraveanu, Roza, Ziphorah, Mmankoko, Mohamudally, Nawaz, Thomas, Sarah, Hammond, Michael, Romero, Margarida, Nirmala, Mungamuru, Cifuentes, Lauren, Osaily, Raja Zuhair Khaled, Omoogun, Ajayi Clemency, Seferoglu, S Sadi, Elci, Alev, Edyburn, Dave, Moudgalya, Kannan, Ebner, Martin, Venter, Isabella M, Bottino, Rosa, Khoo, Elaine, Pedro, Luis, Buarki, Hanadi, Roman-Odio, Clara, Qureshi, Ijaz A, Khan, Mahbub Ahsan, Thornthwaite, Carrie, Kerimkulova, Sulushash, Downes, Toni, Jerry, Paul, Malmi, Lauri, Bardakci, Salih, Itmazi, Jamil, Rogers, Jim, Rughooputh, Soonil D D V, Akour, Mohammed Ali, Henderson, J Bryan, de Freitas, Sarah, Schrader, P G

This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non-human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars' reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mutual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political 'actors', just like their human counterparts, having 'agency' - which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) 'battlefields' wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain.

2014, Gregory, Sue

Davis and Stewart explore the use of a virtual birthing unit to teach midwifery students various skills required in real life practice. They have used the virtual worlds for role-plays, exploring whether these skills are transferable, and discussed assessment around these learnings. These three areas are explored further.

2014, Reiners, Torsten, Wood, Lincoln C, Gregory, Sue

Despite significant and rapid technology improvements, educators have frequently failed to make use of the new opportunities to create more authentic learning scenarios. Virtual worlds offer an attractive proposition to create 3D representations of real business environments to provide an authentic learning activity for higher education students to take part in. However, the controls and displays are still clunky and unnatural, reducing the opportunity for students to immerse themselves in the event and focus on experiential learning. To overcome this challenge we examine the role of using a headset display that allows the user to change perspective with a flick of the head, improving their ability to 'feel' part of the environment, and thus increase their immersion in the activities that they are engaged in through more realistic control and improved perspective in the virtual environment. A series of experiments are conducted comparing the technology to established technologies and the level of control exerted by the learner (e.g., they either 'control' or they 'passively observe' as someone else controls). These experiments provide evidence that consumer-technology can improve immersion and equip educators with an affordable instrument to present classes that learners 'take more seriously'.

2016, Alvarez, Victor, Bower, Matt, de Freitas, Sara, Gregory, Sue, de Wit, Bianca

Innovation and increased access to wearable technologies are poised to inspire a new generation of technology-enhanced learning environments. Wearables provide students and teachers with hands-free access to contextually-relevant knowledge, which can be displayed as a 3D virtual world or overlaid on smart glasses, accessed via a smart watch or wristband, or used for providing biofeedback through EEG monitoring. A wide range of wearable devices is available, and it is often difficult for educators to introduce these advanced techniques into higher education contexts. This paper presents three examples of the kinds of educational applications that have been delivered in Australia and indicate key considerations for educators aiming to develop their practice and embed wearable tools into the classroom.

2016, Gregory, Brent, Gregory, Sue, Gregory, Boahdan

What can we harvest from Pokémon Go? This is a conceptual paper about the use of Pokémon Go in Accounting and Education in higher education. The authors provide readers with an overview and context of Pokémon Go, then ways in which this disruptive technology can be used in educational settings. Outlined are ways in which the Pokémon Go app can be used as a tool to provide problem based learning, problem solving and a variety of other skills in the areas of accounting and education.

2016, Lee, Mark J W, Dalgarno, Barney, Gregory, Sue, Tynan, Belinda

Three-dimensional (3D) immersive virtual worlds have been touted as being capable of facilitating highly interactive, engaging, multimodal learning experiences; as a result, they have enjoyed considerable interest and uptake in education over the past several years. Educators and institutions worldwide have invested heavily in virtual worlds, with some making use of commercially hosted platforms like Second Life and ActiveWorlds, and others extending and adapting open-source products such as OpenSimulator (OpenSim), Open Wonderland, and Open Cobalt to create worlds hosted on internal servers and networks. Still others have built their own bespoke platforms and systems using a variety of programming languages and game engines to accommodate specific needs and goals.

2016, Charteris, Jennifer, Gregory, Sue, Masters, Yvonne, Maple, Myfanwy, Kennedy, Amanda L

Snapchat is one of the most popular social media applications among Australian young people. Its global impact has grown rapidly in recent years. Reported is a mixed methods case study located in New South Wales schools. An online survey was conducted with education practitioners to enquire into their experiences of Snapchat in their school settings. The researchers used survey responses and comments from follow up interviews to consider how networked affect is enacted through Snapchat. Networked affect can be seen as a visceral movement of emotion through the intra-action of social media and human bodies. Both corporeal affect and Snapchat have received increased attention by researchers over the last five years although little has been written to link the two. We highlight the importance of reading the affective social impact of Snapchat use among young people and the potential of looking beyond its abuses to the affordances of the application.

2011, Dalgarno, Barney, Lee, Mark JW, Carlson, Lauren, Gregory, Sue, Tynan, Belinda

This article describes the research design of, and reports selected findings from, a scoping study aimed at examining current and planned applications of 3D immersive virtual worlds at higher education institutions across Australia and New Zealand. The scoping study is the first of its kind in the region, intended to parallel and complement a number of studies conducted in other parts of the world. Results from a sector-wide questionnaire administered as part of the scoping study, portions of which are presented in this article, appear consistent with international trends, especially in terms of the platforms chosen and the dramatic increase in usage seen in recent years. Higher education teaching staff in Australia and New Zealand are using 3D immersive virtual worlds with their students in a variety of ways, for both assessable and non-assessable tasks and in face to face, fully online/distance as well as blended-mode subjects, although use in face to face and blended contexts appears to be most common. The results also provide some insight into the demographics (e.g. age) of staff who have adopted 3D immersive virtual worlds in their teaching, as well as into the academic disciplines in which the technology is being employed.

2013, Gregory, Sue

Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are multi-user, interactive computer-simulated environments created for users to inhabit and interact via avatars, which are graphical representations of a person that can be personalised and used in the virtual world. In this research, 239 off-campus (distance) education students chose to attend weekly sessions in Second Life from 2008 to 2011. These sessions catered for a diverse group of students. It is internationally claimed that virtual worlds are engaging for distance education students. Engagement is the combination of student's feelings, observable actions or performance, perceptions, and beliefs. This mixed-methods research sought to investigate whether virtual worlds were engaging for adult student learners. Recorded in-world (in the virtual world) conversations and the completion of a survey by university students provide data from which the findings are made. In-world discussion found that the virtual world, in this case Second Life, is an engaging environment in which to learn. These findings indicate the need for further research in using a virtual world as an educational resource.