The number of students entering higher education has grown considerably during the last decade. High student numbers and the attendant large class sizes present significant challenges for teachers. Such challenges include knowing how to ensure students are engaging in appropriate out-of-class activity, how to provide prompt and personalised feedback and how to establish what students know and what they don't. If these challenges are left un-resolved the students' learning will not be well supported. This could ultimately lead to students failing modules. This research presents a response to the growth of the student population and was prompted by a high failure rate in a core first year engineering module. The large numbers of students enrolled on the module presented exactly the kinds of challenges noted above, and the existing assessment regime did little to motivate student learning. The response presented in this thesis is the design, development, testing, implementation and evaluation of a new assessment programme; an approach to assessment that provides students with unique weekly tasks. The tasks were formally assessed and contributed towards the students' marks for the module. To ensure the viability of the assessment programme, bespoke computer tools were developed to create, collect and mark the tasks, and to provide feedback to the students. The implementation has been evaluated through an exploration of the impact of the assessment programme on student support, teaching and student learning. In three of the four years where the students were exposed to the assessment programme, the failure rate on the module decreased. The reduction in failure rate is arguably associated with the alignment of the assessment programme with good pedagogy. During the implementation of the assessment programme, the students were engaging in appropriate out-of-class activity in relation to the current topic area. The students had an opportunity to engage in dialogue with their peers and were receiving prompt and regular feedback. The teachers also benefited, since they were able to prepare lectures according to the students' level of demonstrable understanding. In the case where the failure rate did not improve, the students themselves suggested they were downloading and using worked solutions to the problems from the internet. It is suggested that such activity neither provides meaningful opportunity to practise, nor alerts the students to their genuine levels of understanding of the topic areas. In this case the students were following solution procedures rather than developing their own. Student feedback on the assessment has been positive, with many noting how being led to engage with their studies was useful. Somewhat concerning was the feedback from students who noted "they thought the work would help them with their examinations", "they wanted the assessment programme used on other modules" and yet many indicated "they would not have engaged with the activity if it did not count towards the module grade".

The New Labour government’s (1997-2010) policy of personalised learning was announced as an idea ‘exciting’ the profession and promising ‘radical implications’ for the shape of education in England. The policy attracted much debate and criticism and its enactment is a site worthy of research. This study makes a contribution to knowledge through researching the rarely heard stories of young people in this policy enactment. It makes a further contribution to policy scholarship through the interplay of the data from school practices and moral philosophy drawn from Alasdair MacIntyre.Qualitative interviews and focus group activities were conducted with young people in three different secondary schools in order to understand their stories of personalised learning some two years into New Labour’s third term of government. To understand more of the context for the stories of the young people, some strategic actors in policy dissemination were interviewed, as were the headteachers of the three schools.Personalised learning promised to engage the voice of the learner in learning practices. The research finds a young peoples’ story that is consistently one of a mute and invisible identity within the schools. An argument is presented that the purposes of schools ought to be judged on standards of excellence definitive of, and extended by, a concept of virtues. A distinction is made between effectiveness in producing exam results and a richer sense of excellence in education practice. It is argued that virtues that define standards of excellence at the institutional level of practice can enrich and prefigure wider concepts of justice than are contained in policy. Young peoples’ stories in this research indicate that, contrary to policy ideals, they often perceived unfairness and arbitrariness in their school experiences. Personalised learning needs to be set within the narrative of the personalisation of public services: a reforming rubric, employing the motif of the citizen-consumer as a proposition about social justice and modernisation. New Labour’s ideology and models of governance are explored and related to the testimony of headteachers to understand more about the young peoples’ perceptions. Literatures are drawn upon to place personalisation in a historical context, linking it to moral orders of contemporary social imaginaries. New Labour made a case for personalised learning as furthering the cause of social justice and is thus a policy in need of ethical examination. Following MacIntyre, it is argued that modernity has left few moral resources by which to evaluate the personal, but the experiences of young people suggested that a richer moral agency is glimpsed within their stories of schooling. The social practice at the level of schools is thus critical but requires policy to enable ethical spaces for schools to re-invigorate their purposes. I argue that in the light of some critical fault lines, such as neoliberalism and a reconfiguration of tiers of local governance, personalisation as a ‘modernising’ policy proposition could do little to extend the goods of schooling beyond some narrow conceptions of effectiveness.

This research concerns tensions between ‘personalisation’, a neo-liberal concept adapted by New Labour to empower and motivate students and ‘performativity’, an aspect of governance whereby institutional effectiveness is monitored by statistical outcomes. Their ambiguous reconciliation in Personalised Learning (DfES 2004a) continues to develop in schools and colleges. A research focus on Key Stage 3/4 wider curriculum choice, one of five key but under-researched elements in this policy, provides the opportunity to explore this paradox. Involving an investigation into the recent experience of 14-15 year olds in an inner city English comprehensive school, the degree of equity afforded students in decision-making, based on teacher perceptions of students as achievers and underachievers may reveal conflicting values in the management of this process. Taking an ethnographic approach to case study development, triangulation of method and source is used to test internal validity. Analysis of interview data from a range of pastoral staff provides outline images of the institutional management of student choice. A comparative statistical analysis using data from anonymous student questionnaires provides an independent account of the effects of this interpretation on the student stakeholder role. From the questionnaire sample, qualitative data from twenty student interviews offers further insight into the processing of decisions. Relying on respondent validation procedures throughout, for ethical reasons the identification of student interviewees as ‘achievers’ or ‘underachievers’ is retrospective. Demonstrating how student access to the KS4 optional curriculum operates, the research reveals power differences firstly between the student cohort and ‘gate-keeping’ pastoral staff and secondly between individual students. While some evidence of social control through self-surveillance, implied through Foucauldian criticism of neo-liberal strategies (Rose and Miller 1992) may exist, the extreme social and economic deprivation of the area is used to justify this institutional interpretation of the stakeholder role through the moral imperative of social inclusion.

21st century schools face significant challenges as they move towards providing opportunities for learners which recognize and build on their strengths and abilities. The process of supporting young people to develop the desire and the confidence to recognise personal potential and to manage their ongoing learning is a priority. Communication and collaboration are key to learners becoming informed active participants in their own learning and experiencing successful outcomes in today's society. Our old models of learning where pre packaged parcels of knowledge were delivered to students by teachers will no longer suffice. As we respond to the new meaning of knowledge in the 21st century and begin to view knowledge as an active process, it is clear that many of the top down structures and organisational practices present in New Zealand secondary schools need change. The idea of personalisation in order to support independent learners to reach their potential is a familiar one for many teachers and is one of the ideals which may have brought them into the teaching profession. However, the institutional contexts in which they operate can act not as a driving force for personalised learning but as a barrier to it. In seeking to find one possible way in which secondary school systems can be re shaped around the needs of the learner, this study examines the role of online mentoring with experts outside the school. This small scale qualitative study uses ethnographic methods to gather data from twelve secondary school year thirteen physical education students and their teacher as they engage in an eight week online project with expert sports coaches at Auckland University of Technology. Eleven of the students were boys. In examining the impact which online mentoring might have on this group of learners and their teacher, rich data was collected via web transcripts, observation, image data and interviews. The research findings reveal that students found a high degree of satisfaction with the process and placed value on having the opportunity to pursue personalised goals as they worked with mentors in a collaborative online environment. Teacher behaviour and practice underwent change in the project with the teacher becoming repositioned within the group in the role of learner. In a process where authoritarian approaches were replaced by collaborative group action and inquiry, students reported an enhanced ability to think deeply, to manage their own learning and to relate in highly skilled ways with others. Students' perceptions about the ways in which they were working were analysed using the New Zealand Curriculum Key Competencies. As students focused their inquiry past the level of curriculum goals and onto real world personal goals, several experienced a shift in perception concerning their own learning potential and expressed surprised at their own level of competence. The fact that eleven out of the twelve students were boys makes this shift in personal learning expectation worthy of further investigation in the quest for improving academic outcomes for boys. Finally, this study may have relevance for the ways in which the Key Competencies have meaning in secondary schools. The study demonstrated that the emergence of competencies such as self management and relating to others was assisted by changes in teacher behaviour and action. As authoritarian approaches were replaced by a collaborative model where independent learning with others was supported, learners began to exhibit the personal competencies described by the New Zealand Curriculum (2008). These competencies which include Thinking, Using Language, symbols and texts, Managing self, Relating to others and Participating and contributing occurred as a natural consequence of a learning model which was shaped to fit the learner; a personalised approach to learning with support from online mentors.

Mobile phone technologies are transforming how young people think, work, play and relate to each other. However, a central concern for the thesis is that education policy and practice far too often resembles an industrial model that is standardised, mechanistic and linear and that rarely reflects the informational, dynamic and creative lives of young people. In particular, the educational project fails to connect with the way young people use their mobile phone technologies to multi-task, connect, and create content at a precipitous rate. This thesis focuses on the ways in which mobile phone technology is now a significant influence in the way young people develop a sense of self, and a sense of identity and agency that permeates the way they engage with education. The specific research questions that follow from this are: how are young peoples’ identities shaping the meaning and use of mobile phones within (im)material culture? How is the relationship between identity and the creation and use of social space being defined through mobile phone technology? And, taken together how might these processes of identity development influence the way the educational project develops in the future? This thesis addressed these aims by conducting a visual ethnographic study over three years, using participation observation in a sixth-form college in the UK that included video interviews with seven college students. The research has produced a conceptual framework that documents a number of key findings that include: (a) the mobile phone has an immediate symbolic value to young people providing signals about the user’s identity, or presentation of the self; (b) the mobile phone also helps facilitate the performance of lived experiences and is actively part of assisting in various forms of agency. (c) The mobile phone enables a constant flow of (re)presentations of young people that reflects a fluidity of identity that characterises key aspects of contemporary social life. Finally, (d) the mobile phone also supports and enhances the maintenance of social space through the maintenance of social groups and also crucially, the feeling of being oneself. The main conclusion drawn from this research is that too often education systems overlook that fact that learning for young people is typically, and inevitably, personal and yet at the same time located in connected, information-driven environments that are predisposed to digital technologies. Therefore, this research argues for educational policy makers and practitioners to think creatively about how to develop education in ways that fundamentally support young people in their (re)construction of a personalised landscape for learning through their mobile phone technologies.

The metaverse has seen increased usages in its capabilities as an educational tool by immersing users in virtual scenarios. This technology is inaccessible for user groups that require higher degrees of accessibility and personalization, as most metaverse implementations do not adjust to the user’s needs. One such group are individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), rendering them unable to use immersive learning to foster skills that enable independent living. To solve this issue, this thesis aims to employ design science to produce an artefact that answers the research question: ”How can machine learning-based adaptations to 3D-environments be integrated into existing virtual reality platforms in order to increase accessibility for users with ASD?”. By the use of literature studies along with personas supplied from a research project, four different user profiles were established to represent users with ASD. Requirements for the artefact to be produced were then established by exploring possible stakeholders affected by the artefact. Employing data generative techniques, a neural network was trained to predict how the virtual environment should be augmented given the user’s specific characteristics. This neural network was then integrated into a virtual environment set up via Unity, by use of participatory modelling. The resulting artefact was then evaluated against the established requirements, via an experiment that mirrors a typical morning routine meant to increase the person’s skills in independent living. The results of this evaluation found that the artefact could handle known user profiles with a high accuracy (87.7%). The artefact also proved effective in approximating what kind of aide should be presented for the unknown user profiles (8/10 cases). The use of modern development tooling also proved satisfactory in aiding developers to use the artefact to create accessible environments with ease. The artefact’s use of neural networks proved an effective way to model complex user groups, though further ethnographic studies and non-synthetic data is needed to validate this capability.

Knowledge Tracing aims to predict future performance of users of learning platforms based on historical data, by modeling their knowledge state. In this task, the target is a binary variable representing the correctness of the exercise, where an exercise is a word uttered by the user. Current state-of-the-art models add attention layers to autoregressive models or rely on self-attention networks. However, these models are built on publicly available datasets that lack useful information about the interactions users have with exercises. In this work, various techniques are introduced that allow for the incorporation of additional information made available in a dataset provided by Astrid Education. They consist of encoding a time dimension, modeling the skill needed for each exercise explicitly, and adjusting the length of the interaction sequence. Introducing new information to the Knowledge Tracing framework allows Astrid to craft a more personalized experience for its users; thus fulfilling the purpose and goal of the thesis. Additionally, we perform experiments to understand what aspects influence the models. Results show that modeling the skills needed to solve an exercise using an encoding strategy and reducing the length of the interaction sequence lead to improvements in terms of both accuracy and AUC. The time-encoding did not lead to better results, further experimentation is needed to include the time dimension successfully. / Mänsklig kunskap är ett försök att förutsäga användarnas framtida prestanda på lärandeplattformar baserat på historiska data, genom att modellera deras kunskaps tillstånd. I denna uppgift är målet en binär variabel som representerar överensstämmelsen av övningen. Nuvarande state-of-the-art-modeller lägger till uppmärksamhetslager på autoregressiva modeller eller förlitar sig på self-attention-nätverk. Dessa modeller bygger dock på offentligt tillgängliga databaser som saknar användbar information om de interaktioner som användare har med övningar. I detta arbete introduceras olika tekniker som gör det möjligt att inkludera ytterligare information som görs tillgänglig i en databas som tillhandahålls av Astrid Education AB. De består av att koda en tidsdimension, modellera färdigheten som krävs för varje övning explicit och justera interaktionssekvenslängden. Genom att introducera ny information i ramverket för kunskapstracing tillåter Astrid att skapa en mer personlig upplevelse för sina användare; därmed uppfyller syftet och målet med denna avhandling. Dessutom genomför vi experiment för att förstå vilka aspekter som påverkar modellerna. Resultaten visar att modellering av färdigheter med en kodningsstrategi och reducering av interaktionssekvenslängden leder till förbättringar både vad gäller noggrannhet och AUC. Tidskodningen ledde inte till bättre resultat, ytterligare experimentering krävs för att inkludera tidsdimensionen på ett framgångsrikt sätt.