About the Project
Date: Apr 22nd, 2008
“Ensemble: Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case Based Learning” project is one of eight projects currently funded under the joint ESRC and EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning Programme, which is part of the broader Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). This research and development project will commence work in October 2008 and will run for three years.
The project will explore the potential of the emerging ‘Semantic Web’ to support teaching in complex, controversial and rapidly-evolving fields where case based learning is the pedagogical approach of choice. This will involve working with teachers and students in undergraduate and postgraduate courses to explore both the nature and role of the cases around which learning is focused, and the part that emerging Semantic Web technologies and techniques can play in supporting this learning.
It recognises that teaching and learning environments are complex and evolving, and that participants in these environment may have multiple identities – as teachers, learners, researchers and workers. The learning technologies they use need to be robust yet flexible enough to support teachers and learners as they grapple with complex situations and develop creative solutions.
Research Questions
The project will seek to address the following questions:
- What are the nature, scope and role of cases and case based learning across disciplines in higher education and their relationship to learning outcomes and expertise?
- How do teachers and learners design, develop, describe and reconstruct cases, and how do these processes contribute to academic and professional outcomes?
- What are the pedagogical affordances of using semantic web technologies in support of case based learning?
- What new tools can be developed to allow users (learners, teachers, researchers) to access, adapt and manage their case based learning and that of others?
- What are the theoretical framings for researching technology enhanced learning and informing interdisciplinary dialogues when knowledge, technologies and pedagogies are in a state of flux?
Project Activities
Led from the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies in Cambridge, the project brings together a team from five UK universities (City University, the University of Stirling, the University of East Anglia and the University of Essex), together with project partners at the SIMILE project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Technology, Sydney. The project will include an international seminar series running concurrently with research and development activity. This reflects not only wide interest in the Semantic Web and its applications in education, but also the opportunities offered by the project for researchers interested in discovering how emerging ‘Web 3.0′ technologies are understood and used by teachers and learners in different disciplines and environments.
Why “Ensemble”?
The short name for the project, “Ensemble” was selected in preference over an acronym or near-acronym as it represents the interdisciplinary, multi-institutional nature of the project; and points up the fact that groups (of people, technologies and practices) may often be creative and generative associations rather than permanent and clearly bounded social structures. Musical ‘ensembles’ are often innovative and improvisational – a good analogy for the kind of ‘culture of inquiry’ the project hopes to promote.