Talks by Richard Brown and Louise Schofield

Richard Brown and Louise Schofield, both from the MRL, will present their current PhD work to the group.

Richard Brown

Richard's PhD is a practise based investigation into intermedial performance and improvisation. One of the outcomes of the research is iMorphia, a prototype embodied performance system.

The research is documented at kinectic.net which includes contextual and technical background to the research and a diary like research blog with video documentation of enactments resulting from the practice based research.

In this talk Richard will discuss the practice based approach and through referencing videos and images from the website summarise key findings and describe the primary narrative, "The Embodied Performative Turn", which is intended to form the backbone of the PhD.

Louise Schofield: Understanding how teacher presence in online educational video presentations affects engagement and learning retention

With over 7 million user accounts held on Coursera and 10 million on Khan Academy, the need to design effective digital materials that provide a good quality of education is becoming more prevalent and widely researched. The MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is a phrase frequently encountered when discussing e-learning, redefining online educational practices and how people can access education. Videos are the most common form for presenting educational material on these online platforms, and the styles adopted vary widely across providers. By further understanding how online courses can be created to improve engagement and maximise learning retention, this could lead to more informed design choices being made that benefit the student. Within this talk I will be presenting some of my findings from an exploratory research study, an overview of the outcomes from interviews with educational content creators and viewers, and the initial findings of a pilot looking at the variations in instructional presentation designs.