Blogging From ASCILITE: Day 3 - Sessions

The conference closed with an excellent day of interesting sessions. Jeremy Williams from the fully online university, Universitas 21 Global. He gave a great overview of the past, present, and future environments that universities have and will be operating in. He pointed out that as a whole, the funding that was once available for online education projects has for the most part used itself up. He gave a great quote, I only wish I had noted down the source: "Universities are not in the campus business, but in the education business." To me, this puts the emphasis on the learning itself, not the facilities or the methods used to achieve the learning. He gave a startling figure from a recent Merrill Lynch survey which estimated that the growth in the number of individuals currently participating in higher education in China will grow from the current 3% to 20% by 2020. If this prediction is accurate, there will be 240 million Chinese students wanting tertiary education 15 years from now. It really makes you think how current education models will stand up to that level of demand. Jeremy closed by pointing out a website, No Significant Difference, which supported a book written by Dr Richard E Clark who argues that there is no significant difference in the outcomes of learners regardless of subject delivery mode.

Rob Phillips from Murdoch University followed with his presentation on change management strategies for instructional technology implementations, a topic of significant interest to me. He discussed Theory in Use vs Espoused Theories as they relate both to the change management of learning systems as well as teaching and learning practice itself. He argued that practice differed wildly from supported theories and asked the question, "Why is teaching and learning practice not informed by the research?" He wasn't able to get an answer from the audience. Rob also talked about three approaches to change management as it is used within education:

Top-Down: Where change is policy-driven and therefore not easily accepted by free-thinking academics who want to know the rational behind the change and to be able to become involved the change process.

Bottom-Up: Where change occurs as a grass-roots movement but lack buy-in from senior administrators and management and is also not effectively coordinated across the university.

Middle-Out: Where middle managers, usually within Teaching & Learning Centres, work as change agents to influence both the executive and the academic community and are therefore more successful in implementing and institutionalising change.
Rob went on to describe that the Middle-Out approach required these middle managers to be proactive, consultative, and closely involved in operational planning, as well as adopting a role of change agents, not just act in support of the change. All up a very practical and interesting presentation. I will definitely be reading Rob's full paper.

Next up was Phillip Uys from Charles Sturt University. Phillip has just completed a study of the organisational structure of 39 Australian universities, looking at how they structure their teaching & learning support centers as well as their teaching & learning systems groups. His study found, among other things, that the majority of universities (60%) chose to organisationally align their teaching & learning systems groups with their teaching & learning centres, rather than with their IT divisions. He did not however that a significant number of these (23%) used a distributed model where teaching & learning advisors and technical support staff were located within the schools/faculties they supported, but were centrally managed as a cohesive unit. He argued that this distributed model achieved the best balance of alignment and proximity to students and teachers, and efficiencies and strategic direction achieved by central coordination.

After a great closing session which included presentations on digital storytelling and learning design, I left the conference this afternoon feeling as though I had gained a very useful insight into the academic world. I was interested to note that during the closing session, the affiliations of the delegates was described, and the number of people who identified themselves as Professional - Managers, was very low (below 10% from memory). I was disappointed to see that not many IT and division managers had attended, and thought that if more IT managers, project managers, learning systems experts, and division heads attended these types of conferences, we would know an awful lot more about the educational needs of our clients, and would therefore be able to develop and deploy systems and technologies that more closely met their needs. I hope to be able to make it to next year's ASCILITE conference, and will encourage more mangers who are involved with learning systems and technologies to do the same.

Blogging From ASCILITE: Day 3 - Keynote

Slightly cooler today, and therefore less exhausting. This morning started with I think the best keynote of the conference. Prof Allison Littlejohn is a academic and researcher based in Scotland and is just finishing an ASCILITE scholarship. She gave her talk on Community dimensions of learning object repositories. She talked about the communities that are forming around the creation and use of learning objects and learning content and gave some great examples of effective learning object repositories. She also discussed the issue of funding for these community-based projects. In this regard it seems that the UK is further along in developing sustainable funding models for educational innovation, much of which is done by the government-run body JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee)

I found myself nodding at a lot of what Allison was saying and appreciated her appreciation for librarians and the increasing role they are playing in the effective management of learning resources. At one point she commented that almost everything she had learned in the last 2 years she had learned from librarians. That point resonated very strongly with me as I have also learned an awful lot about resource management and information access from the librarians I have been fortunate enough to work with over the past 2 years. I've also attended a few social functions organised by librarians and have yet to see a more organised BBQ. I think even the ants may have been catalogued by sub-species.

But I digress. Allison went on to discuss the trend to move away from a single, Swiss-army knife LMS with large arrays of functionality, to a collection of inter-operatable web-services which provide learners with the content, communication tools, and assessment functions they require. I very much like this notion and it has become one of the major ideas I am taking away from this conference.

Allison then covered the trend towards bringing the library and the classroom closer together. She described this as a merging of the 'formal' resources provided by the library with the 'informal' resources developed by teachers and learners alike for use in the classroom. She talked about the perceived disposable nature of learning resources created for use in the classroom which can often be just as rich and useful as the more permanent resources collected by libraries. She argued that learning resources developed for classroom use need to be better stored and managed to increase their potential for re-use. She illustrated this point by showing DIDET, a learning object repository populated by learning objects created by students as part of their classroom work.

The issue of equity is one that has come up many times throughout the conference, with delegates concerned that utilising technology in their teaching will exclude learners who don't have access to the tools required to access that technology (eg. laptops, tablet PCs etc). On this point, Allison argued that teachers need to think laterally to utilise the technology that is already owned by the majority of students: mobile phones. She demonstrated this by posing a question to the audience and having them respond via text messages to her own phone. Simple, but effective. She also argued that instead of holding back the progress of educational technologies, governments and educational institutions should be subsidising the cost of providing students with technology, just as they used to provide students with slates and pencils if they couldn't afford them. All in all, and excellent keynote. Here are a few of the community-based learning object repositories mentioned:

JORUM

Stor Curam

UHI Millennium Institute

The BBC: Spoken Word

The International Virtual Medical School

Now, back out into the heat for this afternoon's sessions.

Blogging From ASCILITE - Day 2

Another scorching, muggy, oppressingly hot day over brings me one day closer to the certain cold of my Canadian holiday, and one day further into the ASCILITE conference.

Today's keynote was a conversation between Erica McWilliam and John Gough and we watched on as they discussed the conference themes as from their own perspectives on cultural theory and computer science respectively. The format of the presentation was excellent, although would have failed miserably with presenters of a lesser caliber. They discussed the posing of new questions about educational technology and looked at the purpose, practice, and perspective of current learning, as well as a couple of other 'p's I neglected to take note of. Despite the highly philosophical nature of the discussion, I did take away a few practical points:

There is a philosophical trend at least, of a move away from faith in the purely written word. This notion struck a cord with me as technology now allows us to communicate concepts and ideas in what I perceive to be the more natural format of speech and imagery. Erica and John discussed the shift from books to digitised literature to multimedia as teaching vehicles.

Erica made a great analogy of audio and imagery no longer being the garnish to the roast, but the roast itself. There are huge change management implications to this shift as teachers and students both have to overcome their perceptions of the transience of media and the solidity of text.

My own interpretation of some of this was the notion that providing students with lecturecasts instead of the traditional lecture notes allows that to make their own reflections and conclusions on the material being presented and encourages them to be more reflective thinkers. From my own experience as a learner, I find that I grasp concepts best once I have listened to them and made my own interpretations on their meaning, rather than just reading and noting important points.

I then attended a session on the educational use of blogs and wikis, with a standout presentation by James Farmer. Firstly, his presentation was the best on the conference so far in terms of his presentation style alone. Simple, to the point, and not a trace of the Powerpoint abuse I had seen evidence of so far. He described his 6 "revelations" about blog use for education. A few of the follow presentations discussing their experiences with blogs proceeded to do many of James' don'ts, which made for some excellent discussion. You can find his excellent presentation at his blog, incorporated Subversion. He also provided information about 2 great blogging resources and services for education providers and their students:

EduBlogs(for educators)

UniBlogs(for students)

In showing support for a former colleague from Griffith University, I actually learned a great deal. I attended a session given by Regina Obexer on a project she did while at Griffith (she's now at QUT). Her presentation described a project she had been involved in with an academic who was delivering course in Aviation medicine, which was delivered both to fully online students, and student who attended face-to-face workshops. I was interested to hear of the outcomes as myself and my former team had had many dealings with the instructor and students of this course, mostly when the technology required simply wouldn't work! Regina outlined a framework that had been used which centred on:

Creating social presence

Using interaction in the form of negotiated assessment of discussion board postings

Using cognitive strategies including a structured content design and self-assessment quizzes

encouraging collaborative learning via a group project where fully online students had to work collaboratively with those students who could meet face to face

Creating learner centeredness by encouraging students to facilitate online chat sessions

She also mentioned how students quickly broke out of the tools within the LMS and used MSN Messenger to collaborate on their group assignments. This fit with my belief that technology is merely a tool, and if there is a better tool to be had, use it.

The other presentation of note for the day was one about a Hong Kong university's evaluation of student's perceptions of Blackboard versus Moodle. The students in question were teachers in training, and were asked to evaluate their preference for and perception of the two platforms in preparation for their work with LMSs in their careers as teachers. After listening to the evaluation method used and the data collection techniques, I was keen to hear the outcome of the study. The result? The students had no significant preference. Kind of a let-down, but it again reinforces my belief that the tools themselves are irrelevant, its how they are used that matters.

Blogging from ASCILITE - Day 1

I thought that rather than writing a boring conference report on my experienced at and reflections on this year's ASCILITE conference, I would use a medium tailor-made for recording reflecting observation and report via my newest blog. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend this year's ASCILITE conference (that's Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education for the uninitiated) in Brisbane, despite the conference being held in the week before I head off on a month's leave. I've put my holiday countdown on hold for 3 days to learn a little about the educational practice and academic world I am becoming increasingly involved in.

After attending the award ceremony last night and catching up with lots of old colleagues, I got well and truly stuck into things today. The theme for the conference was Balance, Fidelity, Mobility: Maintaining the Momentum? There was also an underlying theme of "wellness", so I'll see how that pans out.

Observations on day one:

Don't take Brisbane public transport when its over 30 degrees. Just don't.

The keynote by Dr. John Munson was interesting, even if I didn't warm to his group participation tactics too well. His talk was very much centered on approaches to wellness within educational institutions. While I admired his enthusiasm, I felt it was a little difficult to apply to my own context. I think his decision to include a photograph of himself with a deer he had shot and killed when describing his leisure activities may have biased my opinion of him.

I decided to focus on academic staff development topics on the first day, and attended two very interesting presentations from Deakin University and UTS. Both discussed the use of fellowships and grants to assist academic staff with development of innovative course offerings utilising technology. Both programs seemed to be working well. Deakin also uses internal awards to promote excellent teaching practice and reward the individuals responsible for it. They promote the award winners via their Contemporary Online Teaching practice website. UTS includes a compulsory, 3-day program for all new teaching staff in their staff development practices. This program covers the administrative aspects of teaching at UTS, as well as generic teaching skills and specific online teaching skills. UTS has developed 3 principles which guide their staff development framework:

Providing the right support at the right time

Acknowledging the scholarly value of electronic and flexible learning

Encouraging and facilitating the integration of technology and alternate methods of delivery into curriculum

I think this last principle is key in institutionalising and perfecting the use of technology as a tool for the delivery of education.

Overall, the idea that time spent by academics on developing teaching strategies the utilise new technologies needs greater recognition came across in a number of the short presentations I attended today.

Now, as one of the winners of a dinner with the executive chef of the Merlot group tonight, I'm off to claim my (hopefully) delicious prize!