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.