ENSEMBLE

The Ensemble project held a well-attended and successful ‘user event’ at St John’s College, Cambridge on 8th January.  This involved members of the project team and its advisory group, members of participating departments at both Cambridge University and City University London, and representatives of other groups and organisations interested in collaborating with the project as it explores the potential of semantic technologies to enhance learning in higher education.

This group heard about work of the the project from Patrick Carmichael (Cambridge University) and Uma Patel (City University London)  They then had an opportunity to see demonstrations of the web applications built during the first months of the project and talk to the project team members and student researchers who developed them.  A lively discussion of how the semantic technologies on display might be used in different teaching and learning environments.

David Good, member of the project advisory group, summed up the discussions, highlighting how technological issues raised were underpinned by fundamental questions about teaching and learning.  Of particular interest and importance, he suggested, was the development of deep understanding of the role of cases in learning which would be necessary to respond to new curricular challenges and make the best use of new technologies.

The Ensemble Project will present its plans, development work and early findings in a symposium at the international Computer Assisted Learning Conference to be held in Brighton in March 2009.

An initial overview of the project and some of the emerging issues and themes will be followed by presentations of four of the demonstrators developed during the Pilot Phase of the project (Summer 2008).  These include examples drawn from across disciplines and demonstrate different applications of semantic technologies.

Participants in the symposium will have an opportunity to engage in discussions with the presenters in a ’round-table’ format which will be further supported by a poster display.  Rather than having a formal discussant role, a chaired ‘panel discussion’ will allow participants to offer responses to the presentations.  We intend that this session will initiate a continuing dialogue about the potential, nature and scope of ‘Web 3.0′ to enhance teaching and learning.

The two linked ESRC students have begun work on the Ensemble Project. Their projects will complement and extend the work of the main project.

Nicola Beddall joins the project from Heythrop College London and will be based at City University, London, working on her project ‘Information visualisations as boundary objects? An actor-network theory approach to understanding HCI design’ under the supervision of Jonathan Raper, Uma Patel and Frank Webster.

Sanna Rimpilainen who has been working on the Applied Education Research Scheme at Strathclyde University will be based at the University of Stirling and working, under the supervision of Richard Edwards and Patrick Carmichael, on her project: ‘Fluid objects? An actor-network theory approach to studying cases and contexts in higher education’.

The Ensemble Project welcomes its researchers, as the main funded phase of the project’s work begins.

Dr. Fran Tracy from joins the project from CARET in Cambridge and Dr. Michael Tscholl comes from the Computer Science Department at University College London. With their wide range of experience and their complementary interests and disciplinary perspectives, they add to the interdisciplinary character of the project. Both Fran and Michael will be working in research settings at Cambridge and City University London.

Katy Jordan joins the project as a Research Administrator and will be based in CARET. She will also be working on the University of Cambridge’s ‘Transferable Skills’ project. Amongst her responsibilities will be the development of a communications infrastructure to support the work of the project; as an established user of semantic technologies, she will be looking at ways to use these in ‘technology enhanced research’ activities of the project.