SPEcial education & EDucational Research Group (SPEED)

Duration: 2018 -

Participants: Anette Andresen (head), Leila Ferguson, Thea Kanstad Heimdal, Gro Skåland, Lotte Furuvik Sand, Øistein Anmarkrud, Jarmila Bubikova-Moan, OsloMet (assosiert medlem), Kari Bachmann, Høgskolen i Molde (assosiert medlem).

We study students with special educational needs, multilingual pupils, university students, and teachers in higher education. Our research topics include early language and literacy skills, dyslexia, online learning in higher education, critical source evaluation, epistemic beliefs, and perceptions of learning and teaching among students and educators in higher education.

Critical Source Evaluation in Higher Education Teachers

HE teachers must critically comprehend and make use of educational research, while not having a background in this research area. As a response to this situation and as a measure to support development of HE teachers, the current project focuses on HE teachers’ use of educational research literature in pedagogical portfolios that were submitted as part of a Teaching & Learning (T&L) in HE course.

Project group: Leila Ferguson, Anette Andresen, Thea Kanstad Heimdal & Gro Skåland.

The State of SOTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning)

This project is a scoping review of Norwegian peer-reviewed SoTL research. SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) is a research field that seeks to improve teaching practices and learning outcomes in higher education. SoTL encourages academics from all disciplines to share their findings and experiences, so that the knowledge can contribute to a broader understanding of what promotes effective learning. Through this study, we provide insights into what characterizes Norwegian SoTL research today and define interesting areas for future research. 

Project group: Leila E. Ferguson, Anette Andresen, Thea Kanstad Heimdal, Lotte Furuvik Sand and Gro Skåland.

Assessment of second language development

To draw a line between a child’s special educational needs and the need for special language instruction can be difficult. This is because there are similarities between a second language under development and developmental language disorders. In the article we discuss a sentence repetition test as a possible supplement to a test developed by The Directorate for education and training for assessment of second language development.

Project group:  May-Britt Monsrud and Anette Andresen.

Student involvement in higher education

Higher education institutions need to stay responsive to the evolving needs of society and the changing landscape of education. This entails continuously improving programs, facilities, and resources to enhance the quality of education. This project is part of a research project in continuation of the innovation project "The Good Student Experience" at Oslo Metropolitan University and focuses on students' Co-creation. Co-creation, defined as "when staff and students work collaboratively with one another to create components of curricula and/or pedagogical approaches", represents a proactive approach to such development. In this study, we aim to describe how students' positioning and collective agency counteract traditional power relations in higher education, in explicitly planned collaborations and as self-emergent change efforts among students. Further, we seek to identify patterns of pedagogical moves that facilitate self-emergent change initiatives.

 Project group: Maren Omland and Gro Skåland.

Designing AI tutor personalities

This use case explores an AI tutor designed at Kristiania University College. The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration among pedagogy, programming, design, and media studies, aiming to explore the potential of dialogic AI tutoring in programming. 

The tutor was designed to imitate a teacher who follows dialogic teaching principles, where the relation between student and teacher is central. The project group seeks to explore the possibility of training AI tutors to simulate more equal teacher/student relations, and to describe how students experience their relations to the AI tutor and their peers during collaborative programming tasks, and to suggest implications for design and pedagogy in AI-supported beginner programming.

Project group: Rolando Gonzalez, Gro Skåland, Sturla Bakke, Toktam Ramezanifarkhani, Morten Forsberg.

MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity

https://mishmash.no/

MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity is a Norwegian AI centre funded by the Research Council of Norway (2025-2030). For the first time in history, the arts fields are included in a research project funded by the Research Council of Norway, and our primary objective is to create, explore, and reflect on AI for, through, and in creative practices. We will investigate AI's impact on creative processes, develop innovative CoCreative AI systems, and address AI's ethical, cultural, and societal implications in creative domains. The centre has recently begun developing projects across seven work packages, in which SPEED participates in WP4 and WP7.

MishMash WP4: How can Creative AI be integrated into education to enhance learning and foster AI literacy while considering diversity, justice, inclusion, and well‐being?

MishMash WP7: How can Creative AI enhance human agency, control, and expression in problem‐solving while adhering to physical, legal, and societal constraints during the creative process?

 Project group: Gro Skåland and multiple partners.

Teaching in Higher Education (THE Project)

A research project on teaching in higher education aiming to explore university and college teachers' perceptions of teaching, how their teaching develops over time, and their thoughts on researching their own teaching.

The project consists of several parts, including a survey and a qualitative study using interviews to gain insight into educators' perceptions and practices.

Researchers: Professor Leila Ferguson, School of Health Sciences, Kristiania (project lead), Senior Advisor Maike Luimes, Center for Educational Development, Kristiania.