Dr Niall Winters

  • Qualifications and position:
    • Senior Lecturer in Learning Technologies for Development
  • Faculty:
    • Faculty of Children and Learning
  • Department:
    • Culture, Communications and Media
  • Centre:
    • London Knowledge Lab
  • Summary:
    • Dr. Niall Winters is a Senior Lecturer in Learning Technologies for Development at the London Knowledge Lab http://www.lkl.ac.uk/ (LKL), Institute of Education http://www.ioe.ac.uk/, University of London http://www.lon.ac.uk/. He works primarily in the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), where his main research interest is in the participatory design of mobile applications and activties for education in developing regions. The current focus of this work is on supporting the training of healthcare professionals in East Africa. These include nurses, veterinarians and frontline community health workers. Niall was previously a RCUK Academic Fellow at the London Knowledge Lab and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin.
  • Teaching:
    • Niall is the Programme Director for MA ICT in Education and Programme co-Director for the MSc in Learning Technologies. He teaches the Technologies for Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing module on the MSc and co-teaches the Research Methods module on the MA.
  • Research Projects:
    • Supporting veterinary training of distance learners in Tanzania.
      Funded by the Centre for Distance Education http://www.cde.london.ac.uk/. The aim of this project was to investigate how distance learners (final year vet students) visiting the Department of Livestock Development in Zanzibar, Tanzania could be supported during their fieldwork on the diagnostics of East Coast Fever, acting as a test-bed for similar approaches using mobile devices in distance education in both African and UK contexts.

      Mobile learning for development
      Training lecturers in Nigeria on the practice of mobile learning design.

      Mobile learning for development.
      Funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund. This project investigated ways to provide development practitioners with the capacity to design their own mobile learning activities, introducing them to innovative mobile learning design practice. A number of workshops were run, where participants designed activities to address one of the following challenges: (i) how to support the integration of mobiles into practice; (ii) how analysis of mobile data can provide new insights into learning processes; and (iii) the role played by mobiles in personal support and guidance for learners.

      CoMo: supporting collaborative group work using mobile phones.
      A 1-year project funded by the Centre for Distance Education http://www.cde.london.ac.uk, investigating how collaborative learning activites in veterinary education can be enhanced through the use of mobile phones, and the contexts in which this occurs.
  • Postgraduate Research:
    • Niall's research interests are in the areas of mobile learning, interdisciplinary design methodologies, ICT for development and intelligent support for technology-enhanced learning software.

      Current PhD students

      * Damien Darcy (co-supervised with Rose Luckin
      Title: Learning Activity Design and Collaborative Interactions in Hybrid Spaces
      * Joel Mitchell (co-supervised with Nick Short , Royal Veterinary College)
      Title: Mobile Learning for Development: Participatory Design of an Open Mobile Knowledge Exchange Network for the Detection, Identification and Monitoring of Infectious Disease [Bloomsbury studentship]
      * Josh Underwood (co-supervised with Rose Luckin
      Title: Designing Mobile Phone Software to Support Self-initiated Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning through Personal and Collaborative Inquiry
      * Jade Vu Henry
      Title: Participatory Design and Community Health Partnerships for Mobile Veterinary Learning in Developing Regions

      Past students

      * Saima Rana (Ph.D. 2011, co-supervised with Martin Oliver )
      Title: ICT and Educational Purpose in the English Secondary School: Using Bell's Cultural Contradictions to Challenge Techno-economic Justifications of ICT Use
      * Kevin Walker (Ph.D. 2010, co-supervised with Richard Noss)
      Title: Designing for meaning making in museums: Visitor-constructed trails using mobile digital technologies
      * Christothea Herodotou (Ph.D. 2009, co-supervised with Maria Kambouri)
      Title: Game appropriation: Where does the gamer fit?
      * Esra Wali (Ph.D. 2008, co-supervised with Martin Oliver
      Title: Reinterpreting mobile learning: An activity-theoretic analysis of portable devices in higher educationanalysis of portable devices in higher education
  • Conferences/presentations:
    • "Retelling Stories: Setting Learner Narratives in Resource Ecologies" Underwood, J., Luckin, R. and Winters, N. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL 2011), Hong Kong: International Society of the Learning Sciences
      "The role of mobile learning in applied distance education", Winters, N. In Proceedings of eLearning Africa 2011, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
      "Designing ubiquitous support for self-initiated foreign language inquiry learning: A mobile personal language learning environment" Underwood, J. Luckin, R. and Winters N. In Proceddings of CAL'11, Manchester, UK
      "Narrative Methods in Design & Evaluation of Next Gen TEL" Underwood, J. Luckin, R. and Winters N. Position paper for the ARV Workshop on Methods for Next Generation TEL
      "Innovations in mobile phone applicatons for health and education in East Africa", Winters, N., Short, N., Aanensen, D. and Hagner, A. Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh Annual Conference 2010: ICT: Africa's Revolutionary Tools for the 21st Century?'
      "Mobile learning for development: Supporting veterinary training of distance learners in Tanzania", Winters, N. Centre for Distance Education Conference, London, UK
      "Veterinary training with mobile phones: a case study from Zanzibar",Winters, N. In Proceedings of eLearning Africa 2010, Lusaka, Zambia
      "A framework for designing mobile learning experiences",Winters, N. In Proceedings of Online Educa Berlin, Berlin, Germany
      "Designing a mobile learning experience for veterinary students", Winters, N., Mor, Y. and Lackovic, N., Presentation at CAL'09
      "Mobile Learning across contexts: Methodological considerations", Wali, E., Winters, N. and Oliver, M. In Proceedings of Mobile Learning 2008, p. 98-105, Algarve, Portugal.
      "Designing for Development: Understanding the One Laptop Per Child in its Historical Context", Ananny, M. & Winters, N. In Proceedings of the2007 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, Bangalore, India
      "Participatory design in open education: a workshop model for developing a pattern language", Winters, N. and Mor, Y., In Proceedings of OpenLearn2007, Milton Keynes, UK, October 2007
 

Contact details

Contact details

  • Email:

  • Address:
  • Culture, Communications and Media
    Institute of Education
    University of London
    23-29 Emerald Street
    London WC1H 3QS

  • Office Location:
  • London Knowledge Lab, Level 2,
    23-29 Emerald Street, WC1N 3QS

Publications

  • Underwood, J., Luckin, R. and Winters, N (forthcoming) 'miLexicon: Harnessing Resources for Personal and Collaborative Language Inquiry' In G. Wannemacker, P. Clarebout, De Causmaecker (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Approaches to Adaptive Learning: A Look at the Neighbours First International Conference on Interdisciplinary Research on Technology, Education and Communication, ITEC 2010, Kortrijk, Belgium, May 25-27, 2010. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg..
  • Dray, S., Light, A., Evers, V., Dearden, A., Densmore, M.,†Kam, M.,†Marsden, G., Ramachandran, D., Sambasivan, N., Smyth, T., van Greunen, D. and Winters, N. (forthcoming) 'Human Computer Interaction for Development: Changing HCI to Change the World' In J. Jacko, (Ed.), The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, Third Editiion.
  • Herodotou, C., Winters, N. & Kambouri, M. (forthcoming) 'A motivationally oriented approach to understanding game appropriation', International Journal of Human Computer Interaction
  • Herodotou, C. Kambouri, M. and Winters, N. (2011) 'The role of trait emotional intelligence in gamers' preferences for play and frequency of gaming', Computers in Human Behavior 27(5), 1815 - 1819.
  • Winters, N. and Mor, Y. (2009) 'Dealing with abstraction: case study generalisation as a method for eliciting design patterns', Computers in Human Behavior
  • Winters, N. and Mor, Y. (2008) 'IDR: a participatory methodology for interdisciplinary design in technology enhanced learning', Computers & Education 50(2), 579-600.
  • Mor, Y. and Winters, N. (2008) 'Participatory design in open education: a workshop model for developing a pattern language', Journal of Interactive Media in Education 13,
  • Wali, E., Winters, N. and Oliver, M. (2008) 'Maintaining, Changing and Crossing Contexts: an Activity Theoretic Reinterpretation of Mobile Learning', Journal of the Assocation for Learning Technology 16(1), 41-57.
  • Winters, N. Mor, Y. and Pratt D. (2008) 'The distributed developmental network – d2n: a social configuration to support design pattern generation' In P. Goodyear and S. Retalis (eds), Technology enhanced learning: Design Patterns and Pattern Languages. Rotterdam: Sense.
  • Pratt, D., Winters, N., Cerulli, M. and Leemkuil, H. (2008) 'A pattern approach to connecting the design and deployment of mathematical games and simulations' In N. Balacheff, S. Ludvigsen, T. de Jong, A. Lazonder, S. Barnes and L. Montandon (eds), Technology-Enhanced Learning – Principles and Products. Berlin: Springer.
  • Mor Y. and Winters, N. (2007) 'Design approaches in technology enhanced learning', Journal of Interactive Learning Environments 15(1), 61-75.
  • Winters, N. (2006) 'What is mobile learning?', In M. Sharples (ed.) Big Issues in Mobile Learning: Report of a workshop by the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence Mobile Learning Initiative Nottingham: University of Nottingham,