Brett Bligh is a Lecturer in the Department for Educational Research. He conducts research into the connections between our material surroundings, the technologies that permeate them, and the ways we act, think and learn. Two recurring interests are how Universities design and evaluate their built environment estate to support opportunities for learning, and how very large display tools can support learners’ collaboration. More general interests include Activity Theory and collaborative learning. In 2012 he co-authored Nesta's Decoding Learning report, and was previously a member of the EU's "STELLAR" Network of Excellence for Technology Enhanced Learning. In 2010, as part of the Visual Learning Lab, he was awarded a Lord Dearing Award for innovation in teaching and learning.
I am interested in research proposals that investigate the connections between our material surroundings, the technologies that permeate them, and the ways we act, think and learn. Such proposals might focus on technology and/or policy. Some indicative examples of suitable areas: participative design of learning spaces; pedagogically-informed institutional evaluation of campus infrastructure; investigations of how learners experience spaces; use of ubiquitous technologies (from mobile devices to wall-sized screens) to support large and small-group teaching and learning. I am also interested in Activity Theory, either to underpin the kinds of research already described, or as an area of inquiry in its own right.
Current PhD students
• Augusto Fabella - title TBC
• Ioana Hartescu - Exploring students' experience of project-based learning in an instructional design course
• Mark Johnstone - title TBC
• Michael Lower - title TBC
• Tan Nguyen - A study of students' conceptions of networked learning on a learning management system
• Elaine Pattison - An investigation of factors influencing the approaches to learning of trainee teachers
• Ravindra Prasad - Is mobile learning effective? Case studies in the corporate training environment
• John Scahill - Using the Change Laboratory to embed Education for Sustainable Development into higher education praxis
• Julie Wallace - Networkable Me: A socio-material exploration of interactions in learning spaces in a higher education context
PhD students completed
• Hans Lambrecht - Tackling low learning outcomes in South Africa: The contribution from informal mobile learning (jointly supervised with Don Passey)
