Learning Platforms and Learning Outcomes

This book provides contemporary insights into learning outcomes arising from the use of learning platforms by pupils, students and teachers in schools. Most current research focuses on the implementation of learning platforms, and the ways in which practices are developing over time, or in specific contexts. This collection offers a range of contrasting but complementary perspectives in this area, including an exploration of applications supporting management of learning across primary and secondary schools in the UK, an in-depth case study of uses and outcomes in a school in Singapore, an analysis of learning outcomes arising across primary, special and secondary schools in one local authority in the UK, and a look at student preferences for using a learning platform in a school in Taiwan.

The volume sheds important light on the subject, but with the ever changing development and introduction of learning platforms, much remains to be explored. Indeed, it is likely that learning platforms will evolve further with affordances and integrated features being added over the next five and more years. This work hints at future practices and their potential outcomes, pointing to the need for greater detail being gathered through future research studies, in order to understand ways teachers and learners might most effectively benefit from more holistic or ‘blended’ approaches across the applications provided.

This book will not only be of particular interest to those involved in using learning platforms, but also to those advising on, and developing, learning platforms. Key lessons and issues are of relevance to policy makers, school managers and teachers, educational advisers, researchers and developers.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Learning, Media and Technology.

Don Passey is a Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning and Co-Director of the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, UK. His research spans uses of digital technologies to support learning, for those in the compulsory school sector, as well as those who find it hard to learn, and those seeking employment and training. He is vice-chair of an international working group on IT in educational management.

Steve Higgins is Professor of Education in the School of Education at Durham University, UK. He has a wide range of research interests, particularly in the use of evidence in education, and in the role of digital technologies in supporting teaching and learning, especially their influence on aspects of interaction and feedback. His recent work has focused on interactive technologies, such as whiteboards and large multi-touch surfaces in classrooms.