Visitors

Heli Ruokamo, Centre for Media Pedagogy, Univ. of Lapland, Finland.

June 2012 - June 2013.
Hosted by Roy Pea,

H-STAR. 

My research focuses on the development of pedagogical models for educational use of ICT’s and on-line learning. My visit to H-STAR is a part of the "TravEd - Research and Development of Traveling Services through Mobile Education" project, the main objective of which is to develop pedagogical models appropriate especially for decentralized tourism education in resorts. We examine mobile technologies and mobile social media applications that may enhance teaching and learning processes outside classrooms. In addition to exploring the possibilities of flexible learning our focus is 

on new work solutions in the resorts, modified for the purposes of tourism to promote year-round activities in ski resorts.

Jari Takatalo, CICERO Learning, Univ. of Helsinki, Finland.
August 2012-July 2013.
Working with Jeremy Bailenson, Dept. of Communication.
My visit to H-STAR is part of the FINNABLE 2020 project, in which I'’ll focus on how emerging learning technologies and communities are evaluated and experienced. I’ am especially interested in the use of serious games, virtual environments, and game elements (i.e., gamification) in education and training. During my visit, I'’ll work on a psychological framework, which can be used to understand and evaluate both the essential experiences related to the use of new technologies, such as the sense of presence and engagement, and the outcomes that are expected for their use, such as learning.

Kaarina Nikunen,

My project explores the spaces of compassion and solidarity as well as conflict and hostility in social media. The virtual sphere holds a promise of an inclusive political medium that may restructure political processes and rejuvenate political practices, as we have seen in the case of Arab Spring and the Green Movement of Iran. How do social media add to the understanding of others’ life situations and experiences of struggle and tragedy? Or, do these spaces increase the fragmentation of the public sphere and creation of multiple, even hostile and exclusionary spaces of communication. I am investigating transnational dimensions of social media participation connected particularly with issues of multiculturalism and immigration.

Anna Siewiorek, CICERO Learning, Univ. of Helsinki, Finland.
September 2012-March 2013.

Working with Paulo Blikstein, School of Education.
My research work examines how mobile technology can be applied to learning, and how it can enhance collaboration and sharing across schools in different countries. In particular, my research aims at creating a prototype for global sharing pedagogy where students can share and learn from their digital video stories regardless of time and place.
During my stay at H-STAR, I am focusing primarily on working with schools in the Bay Area and FabLab at Stanford University. The purpose is to promote hands-on learning through digital storytelling across schools around the world.

Ulla Konnerup, e-Learning Lab - Center for User Driven Innovation, Learning and Design, Dept of Communication & Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark.
September-December 2012. Hosted by Jeremy Bailenson, Dept. of Communication.
My research explores how interaction in immersive virtual worlds (IVW) might contribute to reconstruction of the communication competency among people suffering from aphasia after a brain injury. By transforming the rehabilitation landscape into an immersive virtual environment, with multimodal ways of communication, social interactions and an involvement of the body and nonverbal activities the reestablishing of the brain may process positively and promote cognitive and communicative functions. During my visit at H-STAR my focus is on the bodily immersion and interaction through avatar mediation and how this representation of self might contribute to recreation of self and communication competencies after a brain injury.

Jun Liu, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
September-December 2012. Hosted by Fred Turner, Dept of Communication.
My research examines the use of the mobile phone in contentious politics in contemporary China. Drawing on Negt and Kluge’s conceptual framework of the counter-public sphere, my study addresses the role of the mobile phone in guaranteeing the right to communication, which not only articulates the lived experiences of social and political exclusion but also ensures a relatively independent communicative sphere for counter-publics beyond the dominant public sphere in China. During my stay at H-STAR, I am focusing on the idea of "liberation technology," social movement, and democratization in authoritarian regimes.

Kristian Kiili, Advanced Multimedia Center, Tampere University of Technology, Pori, Finland.
February-April 2013. Hosted by Byron Reeves.
My research focuses on game based learning, human-computer interaction and user experience. During my visit at H-STAR I am working on the framework for understanding the elements of educational exergames. Educational exergames combine gameplay elements from learning games (cognitively challenging games) and exergames (physically challenging games). This work is part of the FINNABLE 2020 project, in which my research team studies and develops game solutions that increase physical activity in classrooms without interfering the objectives of the curriculum. A particular research interest is exploring ways to utilize mobile phones and tablets as exergame controllers.