The CEL team have awarded one of the  prestigious Vice-Chancellor’s PhD scholarships at Bournemouth University, with the project “Immersive worlds, AR & tools for learning innovation: an empirical investigation in the UK HE context”. Debbie Holley, Jacqueline Priego and Liz Falconer comprise the supervisory team at CEL.

This new project seeks to elucidate the connections between immersive worlds, augmented reality and tools for learning innovation. Using a constructivist perspective, it aims first, to systematically appraise the literature on these three major themes; second, to operationalise learning innovation by developing a teaching and learning framework using augmented reality and other low-cost tools for scalable immersive experiences (e.g. Google cardboard); third, to evaluate the learning potential of this tool-mediated exercise.

After a competitive selection process, Heidi Singleton has been offered the scholarship, and will be joining us at CEL from September 2017, to work on the project.

Heidi has over 14 years of teaching and lecturing experience.  Her MA explored ways to promote student engagement via ipad apps.  She has also conducted nursing research including: growing and investigating microorganisms retrieved from clean neonatal incubators; and demonstrating equivalence between nurse’s and doctor’s pre-operative assessment skills. She tweets @blueprintteach

Heidi says: “I am honoured to have been selected for this scholarship, working with a highly talented blend of supervisors.  Project aims include harnessing the technology to engage students, but more importantly, to demonstrate a measurable improvement in their outcomes.  In addition to working within the CEL, I am thrilled to be collaborating with both the Faculties of Media & Communications and Nursing.  In the future, I hope to build upon this opportunity with a continued contribution to research and teaching at BU”.