ECHOES II

Together with Dr Oliver Lemon (Principal Investigator) from Edinburgh University, Dr Kaska Porayska-Pomsta is leading an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Scotland, England and Wales aiming to design an enhanced reality multimodal learning environment (ECHOES II). The environment will support typically developing children and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in exploring and learning about social interaction and verbal communication.

In particular ECHOES II aims to:

• develop a set of learning activities capable of supporting children who follow different developmental trajectories in improving their ability to engage in social interactions.
• use a participatory learner-centred approach to ensure that children, and their parents and carers, as appropriate, are given a voice in the design process from the very beginning.
• implement a technology-enhanced learning environment capable of scaffolding children's exploration and learning of social interaction skills at different levels of social engagement.
• develop a comprehensive framework for assessing the effectiveness of the learning activities and tools created during the project.

LDSE

Professor Diana Laurillard is leading an interdisciplinary team of researchers, including Dr George Magoulas as the Birkbeck PI.

This £1.5M grant aims to develop an interactive environment, a Learning Design Support Environment (LDSE), to enable teachers to lead the discovery of innovative pedagogical designs that exploit the potential of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and better integrate TEL in the mainstream provision, processes and practice of educational institutions. The LDSE will provide a space where teachers can explore, model and share ways of ënormalisingí their uses of technology, and build on each othersí work. The LDSE promotes a view of teaching that is closer to a science of learning design and is both a personal, reflective journey, and also a social, collaborative activity.