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!