Home page
Here's an overview of my current activities with links to more details and online resources. Further information is available on the publications, research, teaching and contact pages.
Recent publications
Collins, T.D., Mulholland, P. and Gaved, M.B. (2012). Scripting Personal Inquiry. In: K.Littleton, E. Scanlon and M. Sharples (Ed.), Orchestrating Inquiry Learning. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-60113-9.
Stokes, A., Collins, T.D., Maskall, J., Lea, J., Lunt, P. and Davies S.J.M. (2012). Enabling remote access to fieldwork: Gaining insight into the pedagogic effectiveness of 'direct' and 'remote' field activities. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Volume 36, Issue 2, 2012. pp. 197-222. Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group.
Sharples, M., Collins, T., Feisst, M., Gaved, M., Mulholland, P., Paxton, M., Wright, M. (2011) A "Laboratory of Knowledge-Making" for Personal Inquiry Learning. In G. Biswas, S. Bull, J. Kay & A. Mitrovic (eds.) Artificial Intelligence in Education: Proceedings of 15th The International Conference, AIED 2011, Auckland New Zealand, June/July 2011. Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 6738. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 312-319.
Gaved, M., Collins, T.D., Mulholland, P., Kerawalla, L.J., Jones, A., Scanlon, E., Littleton, K., Blake, C., Petrou, M., Clough, G. and Twiner A. (2010). Using netbooks to support mobile learners' investigations across activities and places. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning. Volume 25, Issue 3, pp. 187-200. Routledge.
Research interests
I am interested in exploring how technologies can be used to support learning. I am curious about how people understand and interpret things, and how technology can be applied to help support these processes. My first degree is in Computer Engineering, I have a masters degree in Human-Computer Systems and a doctorate in Artificial Intelligence.
Here are some example projects to illustrate my research.
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ERA (Enabling Remote Activity) - http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/era
The ERA toolkit has been developed to support remote access to science fieldwork courses and research teams. We use a battery powered (temporary) wireless local area network to support local communication and any available backhaul (WAN) connection such as a broadband connection, a (3G) mobile phone network or satellite link to support live communication over the internet.
Keywords: WLAN, VoIP, video streaming, geo-tagging, XMPP, ADSL, 3G, BGAN
Duration: January 2006 and ongoing (Funding: OU, JISC, JANET) -
PI (Personal Inquiry) - http://www.pi-project.ac.uk
The PI project has developed a toolkit to support inquiry learning for secondary school students. The toolkit includes a set of modules for the Drupal content management system that facilitates the allocation of groups within a class, the development of hypotheses, the planning of an inquiry, the collection and interpretation of data, and the formulation of conclusions and reflections on the completed inquiry. Mobile technologies are used to access the Drupal website and help the students move between school, fieldwork and home contexts during their inquiries.
Keywords: inquiry learning, key stage 3, geography, mobile learning, CMS, drupal
Duration: September 2007 to August 2010 (Funding: EPSRC/ESRC - TLRP Technology Enhanced Learning) -
ISOTOPE (Informing Science Outreach and Public Engagement) - http://isotope.open.ac.uk
In the ISOTOPE project we've been taking an action research approach to work with participants across the Science Outreach and Public Engagement (SCOPE) communities to develop a community website for sharing information and resources to support current SCOPE practices.
Keywords: SCOPE, STEM, community informatics, social computing, CMS, drupal
Duration: January 2007 to July 2009 (Funding: NESTA, OU)
Teaching and development
I am involved in providing training workshops for PhD students as part of the university's 'Doing Postgraduate Research' workshop series. I was a postgraduate tutor in KMI, supporting the development of PhD students within the OU's Centre for Research in Computing. I have also worked as a residential school tutor for the OU's cognitive psychology courses.
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Doing Postgraduate Research Workshops - Preview the book on Google Books
A generic research skills workshop series ran for PhD students across the university. Stephen Potter, Ann Jones and I run workshops on giving research presentations.
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CRC PhD Forum - http://crcphd.open.ac.uk [OU internal wiki]
Forum for PhD students in the Centre for Research in Computing (http://crc.open.ac.uk).
Contact details
The easiest way to contact me is to drop me an email - t.d.collins@open.ac.uk