- Room 1.28, Paterson's Land
Institute for Education, Community and Society
Moray House School of Education
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh SCOTLAND UK EH8 8AQ - +44 - (0)131 - 651 4192
Christine Sinclair
University of Edinburgh, Moray House School of Education, Faculty Member
- I am a retired lecturer in digital education and an Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Research in Digital Education a... moreI am a retired lecturer in digital education and an Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. I was formerly an educational developer in three other Scottish universities: Glasgow, Paisley (now UWS) and Strathclyde. I continue to supervise some PhD students and doing some writing and reviewing for academic journals. My main interests are in academic and other forms of writing, student experience and the impact of changing technologies and practices.edit
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The annual report of the Centre for Research in Digital Education, based with the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh
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Keynote presentation
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Research Interests: Psychology, Information Technology, Social Networks, Creativity, Electronic publishing, and 15 moreHigher Education, Privacy, Second Life, Computer Mediated Communication, Social Software, Identity, Identification, New World, Educational Media, Online Courses, Communication and media Studies, Internet, Code of Practice, Disquiet, and Educational Application
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INTRODUCTION Over the last two decades, social theories of learning have assumed a dominant position in learning research. Some researchers maintain that individual learning is socially mediated; knowledge is an active mental construction... more
INTRODUCTION Over the last two decades, social theories of learning have assumed a dominant position in learning research. Some researchers maintain that individual learning is socially mediated; knowledge is an active mental construction that derives from the internaliza- ...
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There is an increasing recognition of the potential of collaborative approaches to research in Education. This paper focuses on how communities can be nurtured to develop, foster and support enquiry that may contribute to educational... more
There is an increasing recognition of the potential of collaborative approaches to research in Education. This paper focuses on how communities can be nurtured to develop, foster and support enquiry that may contribute to educational research. The paper offers an analysis of how different types of communities of enquiry are conceptualised from a range of academic perspectives. In addition it contains an account of how our own community of enquiry, formed to carry out this piece of work, has evolved over a period of six months. A tentative set of recommendations is drawn from these two sources. The recommendations are preliminary ones because, as our findings are disseminated, we anticipate being able to refine and extend them through dialogue with our readers.
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This paper is a summary of philosophy, theory, and practice arising from collective writing experiments conducted between 2016 and 2022 in the community associated with the Editors’ Collective and more than 20 scholarly journals. The main... more
This paper is a summary of philosophy, theory, and practice arising from collective writing experiments conducted between 2016 and 2022 in the community associated with the Editors’ Collective and more than 20 scholarly journals. The main body of the paper summarises the community’s insights into the many faces of collective writing. Appendix 1 presents the workflow of the article’s development. Appendix 2 lists approximately 100 collectively written scholarly articles published between 2016 and 2022. Collective writing is a continuous struggle for meaning-making, and our research insights merely represent one milestone in this struggle. Collective writing can be designed in many different ways, and our workflow merely shows one possible design that we found useful. There are many more collectively written scholarly articles than we could gather, and our reading list merely offers sources that the co-authors could think of. While our research insights and our attempts at synthesis a...
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Page 1. Community of Enquiry: a model for educational research? Alastair Wilson*, Donald Christie*, Claire Cassidy*, Norman Coutts**, Don Skinner***, Sanna Rimpiläinen*, Christine Sinclair* *University of Strathclyde **University of... more
Page 1. Community of Enquiry: a model for educational research? Alastair Wilson*, Donald Christie*, Claire Cassidy*, Norman Coutts**, Don Skinner***, Sanna Rimpiläinen*, Christine Sinclair* *University of Strathclyde **University of Aberdeen ***University of Edinburgh ...
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Conversations between academics and students play a central part in teaching and learning at university level and effective dialogues are key to academic success. An essential feature of these dialogues is the question which triggers the... more
Conversations between academics and students play a central part in teaching and learning at university level and effective dialogues are key to academic success. An essential feature of these dialogues is the question which triggers the interaction. However, we note that students are often reluctant to ask questions and that teachers and students sometimes talk at cross-purposes. The aim of this project was to explore, through semi-structured interviews, what happens in dialogues between teachers and students in learning contexts. Our initial results give insights into the barriers to effective dialogue, the conditions that promote dialogues as well as the strategies that can be employed by teachers and students to encourage good dialogues.
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Grammar: A Friendly Approach is based around issues at university but students from schools and colleges will also love this irreverent look at the rules of grammar: Their teachers and tutors will also see rapid and noticeable... more
Grammar: A Friendly Approach is based around issues at university but students from schools and colleges will also love this irreverent look at the rules of grammar: Their teachers and tutors will also see rapid and noticeable improvements in students' written work.
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This paper presents our perspectives of being learners on the first two modules of a relatively new and innovative MSc in E-Learning. We explore our underlying reasons for undertaking this course, particularly as we are both fairly... more
This paper presents our perspectives of being learners on the first two modules of a relatively new and innovative MSc in E-Learning. We explore our underlying reasons for undertaking this course, particularly as we are both fairly experienced academics, but perhaps more interestingly the paper also examines when and how we experienced ‘stuckness’, and the particular catalysts that resulted in this disjunction. In providing reflections on the same course from two different perspectives, we highlight both shared experiences and very different responses triggered by the same catalysts. The paper delineates the forms of stuckness we have experienced and identifies the catalysts for these forms. The final section of the paper suggests that some of the stuckness we have experienced is related to a new form of lurking and argues that our experience may have implications for other learners in online spaces.
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This presentation looks at collaborative communities of enquiry and new partnerships in educational research
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At the 2018 Networked Learning Conference, a paper attempting to parody conventions of networked learning papers provoked some discussion. Christine Sinclair asks why there is little or no parody of networked learning: perhaps the field... more
At the 2018 Networked Learning Conference, a paper attempting to parody conventions of networked learning papers provoked some discussion. Christine Sinclair asks why there is little or no parody of networked learning: perhaps the field is not sufficiently distinct from other social science writing. Although there is some use of parody in networked learning practice, its academic writing tends not to go beyond parodic allusion. And yet networked learning as a phenomenon uses intertextuality, double voicing, challenges to authority, multimodality and exploration of boundaries which all resonate with the aims of parody. This chapter promotes the value of laughter in encouraging dialogue and renewal, based on Bakhtin’s understanding of parody. This leads to an analogy with the novel in its literary sense as well as in the sense of ‘the new’. Like the novel, perhaps networked learning is itself too unbounded to be imitated, satirised or belittled. The questions raised are left unanswere...
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This Editorial describes the main challenges at the intersections between algorithmic cultures and human learning. It briefly analyses papers in this Special Issue of E-learning and Digital Media ‘Learning in the age of algorithmic... more
This Editorial describes the main challenges at the intersections between algorithmic cultures and human learning. It briefly analyses papers in this Special Issue of E-learning and Digital Media ‘Learning in the age of algorithmic cultures’ and shows that researchers in the field are still struggling with grand ideas and questions. It suggests that studies of algorithms and learning are in their infancy and emphasizes that they carry potentials to confirm our existing ideas and surprise us with fresh insights.
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There have always been people willing to reveal the secrets of deception, with both dupery and revelations about it amplified by the technology of the day. This chapter explores what we can learn from exposure in a range of contexts:... more
There have always been people willing to reveal the secrets of deception, with both dupery and revelations about it amplified by the technology of the day. This chapter explores what we can learn from exposure in a range of contexts: satire, magic, fake science, classroom deception, subversion, hoaxes, con tricks and hacking. In each, deception is used to different effects. The inquiry considers not only the tricks but also our responses to them, which turn out to be more important. We should pay attention to the stories where deception may occur, recognising intentions and what leads to success or failure of the associated practices and how they are framed. We should also be aware of the methods dupers use to manipulate our perception particularly through distractions and misdirection. Dupers use emotional responses to gain access to important information about us, so we need to beware of heightened emotional states. This has implications for those who teach about and, especially, ...
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Conversations between academics and students play a central part in teaching and learning at university level and effective dialogues are key to academic success. An essential feature of these dialogues is the question which triggers the... more
Conversations between academics and students play a central part in teaching and learning at university level and effective dialogues are key to academic success. An essential feature of these dialogues is the question which triggers the interaction. However, we note that students are often reluctant to ask questions and that teachers and students sometimes talk at cross-purposes. The aim of this project was to explore, through semi-structured interviews, what happens in dialogues between teachers and students in learning contexts. Our initial results give insights into the barriers to effective dialogue, the conditions that promote dialogues as well as the strategies that can be employed by teachers and students to encourage good dialogues.