Project Team: Gill Clough, Eliz Hartnett, Andrew Brasher, Canan Blake, Anne Adams

We are really excited to have been selected for seed funding from the Evidencing Engaged Research call. This project builds on and extends the work we are doing on the JuxtaLearn Project which aims to engage students with science and technology through creative video performance (see our earlier post).

Since we began work on JuxtaLearn, we have been struck by the levels of engagement and enthusiasm we have encountered from the teachers in our local participating school, Radcliffe School and teachers we have presented to at the JuxtaLearn Fair in May. The JuxtaLearn project focuses on Threshold Concepts, those critical topics which many students will struggle to understand and without which they will find it very difficult to progress in the subject. The focus of JuxtaLearn is science and technology at A-level and higher education. However teachers would like to see the JuxtaLearn Process extending into arts and humanities, and down through the age ranges to GCSE and even to primary school.

This is outside the remit of the EU funded JuxtaLearn project, but an opportunity not to be missed to develop and evaluate a variety of engagement data collection tools (e.g. structured blog posts, vlogs, forms, twitter prompts, interviews) for their richness in collecting engagement changes and effects for teachers, students and researchers. We are running our first JuxtaLearn workshop with Humanities in early July, so we should be starting to collect good engagement data soon.