Teaching, Learning, meet Technology.

Australian Forums for true EdTech-ers

2007-03-16T13:17:00.000+10:00

Ben Buchanan, a former collegue and all-around webby kinda guy, emailed me the other day to ask me what I thought about the currect forums available for collaboration and learning on webby EdTech.

The underlying thought is that for general web geeks we have Web Directions South, but not an equivalent for the education sector. The available events tend to be backend- or academic-focussed, rather than frontend/user experience focussed.
What do you think? Do you think there's a gap in the market, or do people just have the wrong impression about existing events?

And my response:

Not sure if there's a gap as such. I think there are 3 main groups to consider in all this:
- Tech-savvy teachers: The academics/TAFE instructors/K-12 teachers who are using exsisting technology in cool ways.
- Ed Designers (aka Learning Designers, instructional Designers): The professional staff who's role it is to foster and direct technology use within an institution. You tend to have two types within this group; those who are passitionate about technology in education, and those who are passionate about educational practice and dabble in the tech side. This second group are generally the ones at ASCILITE etc, not AusWeb.
- Programmers, web developers etc who happen to be in the edu sector: These are the ones who are passionate about the technology and like to hear about what the first two groups are doing in order to get ideas for building tools that'll do just that, only better (and with drop-shadows).

I suppose there is a 4th group of edtech administrators/managers/leaders who span across all 3 groups.

The tech-savvy teachers are fairly well catered for with ASCILITE, EDUCASE and various local forums. Although I was in an ASCILITE session last year where someone asked the presenter 'what's a blog?', so the focus is really on educational practice, not the technology that supports it.

The Ed Designers do tend to split along those lines I described, with the edu-focussed ones joining the tech-savvy teachers, and the edtech-focussed ones fitting better with the programmers/web developers. While there are a few local forums for this group (QUT's OLT conference fits this, as do the Bb User's conferences, although with the obvious platform focus), there does seem to be a gap here.

I think maybe AusWeb is too broad to accommodate this group, as it encompasses corporate/administrative web as well as edtech web. Maybe an edtech stream, specifically targeting designers and developers involved in educational web technology, would be a good way to fill the gap.

She's ba-ack...

2007-03-06T21:53:00.000+10:00

Right. So after re-reading my past posts on this blog, I realised just how much I did actually gain through the reflection and free-form writing opportunity it provided me with, so I'm taking it up again. The whole process of starting, then abandoning, and now wanting to re-start a blog has got me thinking about the whole reason why many people feel the need to express themselves, sometimes anonymously, to an unknown audience via this medium.

There are two things that are driving my return to this activity:
- I enjoy writing very much, and reflective writing even more. I have kept a journal on and off in the past, but I want the community aspect of blogging. I still regularly read the posts of others and have benefited from the occasional insight. i want to give back to that community.
- I want to keep a record of this time in my professional life. I find that as much as I enjoy or am inspired by events as they happen, reflecting on them after the fact often gives me as much if not more pleasure than the original experience did (case in point, The India Diaries). I want to be able to look back on this manic time in my career 10 years from now and learn even more from it in hindsight than I am able to now, while I'm in the thick of it all.

So, what the hell have I been up to? In true LJ style, here's my 4 months highlight and not-so-highlights:
+ Have settled into the swing of things at QUT. Very different culture from Bond, which I expected, but also very different from Griffith, which surprised me more.
+ I'm happy to be working with GM again, and I like that I am more comfortable disagreeing with him now than I was when we worked together in the past. I've learned a great deal from him in the past, but I'm finding that I'm learning more from challenging and therefore understanding his approach to things than I did from just benefiting from his advice.
- Like any large institution, QUT has complicated internal politics. I need to acknowledge them, provide the best example I can to those around me, but never lose sight of the fact that my ultimate responsibility is to the teaching staff of the university and the students they teach, not to the person in the office next door.
+/- I've now taken on the project management of the largest project I've ever led, let alone been involved in. To put it in perspective, we are replacing an existing, heavily utilised LMS with a new one, and tranferring over 3000 unit and related teaching sites to it, many with extremely customised interfaces and system-dependant designs. And we're doing it in the space of 18 months all up. I'll let you know in a few more months whether I strive and grow under the pressure, or crumble. I'm aiming for the former.
-- The Brisbane Council desperately needs more buses. After having too many buses arrive late, then sail past full to the brim, I'm finally giving in and driving to Kelvin Grove now, at least until the latest order of buses is completed.
++ I have a fantastic project team, with some of the most talented programmers and learning designers you could ever wish for, and they seem to think I'm a bit of okay too.
+ I'm able to help a great former colleague out of a tough spot and onto my project team, and add some well-needed skills to the mix in the process.

That's enough for now. There will be more to come I can promise. I'm aiming for a post a week to get me back into this exercise.

And thank you Peta, for inspiring me to start this up again with the best system outage message ever on the Bond Library's L Files. Glad to see the great spirit down there is still going strong.

On change and practical vision

2006-11-22T18:21:00.000+10:00

After over a month of madness, I feel I can now come up for air, breathe, and reflect a little on what's been happening. First things first. I'm in the middle of my third week in my new role at QUT. Making the decision to leave Bond after only a year was difficult, but I'm now even more confidant that it was the right one. I really do feel that I had taken my work at Bond as far as I wanted to take it, and I had achieve in a year far more than I expected to have achieved (and far far more than anyone at Bond expected me to achieve. I'm happy to have laid some good foundations for others to build on.

Being at QUT has put me back in a position where I'm really working as part of a management team towards a shared vision. I really am loving the energy the environment is producing. I'm loving working with link-minded and passionate people who know exactly where my ideas are coming from because they've come from there too. Having a shared vision means that we're all working in the same direction from the same blueprint. It's wonderful.

On the walk home today (yes, my commute now includes a significant portion of walking!) I began to think about driving a vision and the pitfalls around the formation and communication of a vision. I'm a terribly pragmatic person and a very strong believer in what I'm calling 'practical vision'. There is a place for those people who blue sky think and come up with the ideas that amaze and inspire us but that we know will never actually be realised. There is also a great need for those people with practical vision, who are able to develop and effectively communicate a direction which is achievable and which services a need better than anything else.

The worst, however, is those who attempt to be be both types of people in one. These are the people who's vision is full of blue sky but who persist in putting it into practice regardless of it's impracticality. What results is something that services a need that doesn't exist and which hinders putting real innovation into practice.

I hope to further grow my abilities as a practical visionary. I have some great examples to follow in some of the people I'm now working with.

Cory Doctorow on why content isn't king

2006-10-11T10:08:00.000+10:00

I've read Boing Boing for yonks and quite like how Cory Doctorow can sometimes cut right to the centre of an issue and phrase it in a way that really sticks in my brain. He's done it again in this Boing Boing post quoting a Disney executive's view on piracy as "a business model to be competed with". The exec also describes Disney's strategy as "being primarily about content because it drives everything else..."

I really like Cory's response to this statement:

Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Now think of that in an educational context... Woah.

Sometimes change management goes too well

2006-10-10T16:19:00.000+10:00

I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but things have been getting in the way of my rambling. Here goes.

While I was at Griffith, I was around to experience the Great Blackboard Crash of 2003. This was a result of, among other things, change management working too well. In conjunction with a major upgrade, we promoted the system. We encouraged academics to use it with regular demonstrations of the beauty and wonder that was Blackboad v6. We told them to use it and use it they did, and the students accessed in numbers never anticipated. They brought the system to a complete standstill for the better part of week one of semester and it was still limping for a few more weeks.

Fast forward to 2006 and the full launch of Blackboard at Bond. Day one of semester I was in my office at 7am preparing for the onslaught. I asked my staff to be in early too. This would be our "all hands on deck" week and we were ready. I checked the live usage statistics and watched the numbers climb. Alright, here we go.

By 10am, I was asking my staff how things were going. I was walking through the library and the labs to see lots of monitors showing Blackboard subject sites. I was talking to helpdesk and library staff to find out how they were going. I was talking to faculty support staff to see how they were going.

By noon, I was starting to doubt the live usage stats. I checked with my sys admin. Yes, they were correct. I hesitated to leave my office to get lunch, thinking the support calls would flood in at any minute.

By 3pm, I was feeling a little neglected. A few calls and questions, sure, but where were the cries for help? The screams of anguish needing a diplomatic hand to quiet them? They were using it, oh they were using it. The system was getting a hammering but without breaking a sweat, and we weren't hearing about any problems.

This continued for the rest of the week, and by Friday when I congratulated my staff for a job well done, I couldn't help but feel that the whole week had been a little anti-climactic. The last months had been spent communicating, training, seminar-ing, newsletter-ing, meeting-ing, emailing, more communicating and more training. I guess it had all worked too well. The staff and students didn't need us anymore. They had become... proficient.

Presenting... iLearn-Blogs

2006-09-25T15:41:00.000+10:00

At long last, iLearn-Blogs is up and running. One very keen academic will be using it to host student blogs for assessment in two subjects this semester.

Due to it being week 3 and the service only just being made operational, the integration for this semester will be minimal. This means that:

* Users will create their own accounts
* Users will create their own blogs
* Comments will be moderated by default, and restricted to registered users
* Users must have a bond staff or student email address to register

Many, many technical issues with getting this service set up have meant that it will only be available in a limited way to a limited number of students. I just don't want to go ahead with the full pilot I had planned. So I'm disappointed, but at least we've got a service. And the students are using it. And its an open source application.

Blackboard Impressions via Impressions Scholarcast

2006-09-07T08:48:00.000+10:00

Michael Rees, one of the academics involved in the May semester pilot of Blackboard here at Bond, has begun a series of posts on his experiences with and initial impressions of Blackboard. A long-time ed-tech user, Michael made the switch from using Sharepoint as an LMS to Blackboard this semester. Most of his observations ring true with me, the good and the bad. Reading his first two installments made me think how frequently I've heard similar observations from academic staff I've worked with over the past 5 years. His first summary post describes his experience as an overall positive one, despite a number of niggling frustrations.

His second post reflects on Blackboard's user interface, which, while it's simplicity and ease of navigation was a strength 4 years ago, is now showing its age quite dramatically when compared alongside modern web-applications.

I'm looking forward to reading more on Michael's thoughts on his first run-in with Blackboard.

Blog humour on a blog

2006-09-05T13:07:00.000+10:00

Being up to my eyeballs in basics-level staff development lately has somewhat squashed the analytical, creative, and witty thinking required to come up with a good blog post. I'll be back in usual form soon, but in the meantime, here's a comic from Wondermark about being analytical, creative, and witty in a blog. Enjoy.

Clients furious, but shareholders must be thrilled

2006-08-24T10:07:00.000+10:00

Blackboard has announced a 32 percent jump in second-quarter revenue over last year, pulling in a whopping USD 13.6 million. A Washington Times article makes no mention of the patent or legal action against Desire2Learn that has clients up in arms and legal council Matthew Small doing damage control on a teleconference with Australian clients from a maternity ward while his wife is in labour. The article does describe why many institutions will stick with Bb, despite the company's corporate ethics.

"As long as the industry trends continue, there will be more use of online learning on campus," she said. "So long as that is true, the switching costs are high enough for the universities ... they'd rather just stick with their current vendor."

Having nearly completed a uni-wide Blackboard roll-out, I understand now more than ever the effort involved in fostering adoption of a platform so embedded into teaching and learning activities. Switching is hard. Not so much from a technical perspective but from an organisational change perspective. That said, I'll be interested to see if this figure changes over the coming year:

During the second quarter, Blackboard had a software-license renewal rate of more than 90 percent.

Netvibes is my new homepage

2006-08-22T15:42:00.000+10:00

Written in AJAX, Netvibes appears to be a contender for the mythical title of Uber-Portal (one portal to rule them all). From www.netvibes.com:

Netvibes.com is a custom made web 2.0 home page solution

This service is free and gives the user the ability :

* to create a personalized page with the content they like.
* to put together data feeds and services from web 2.0 with a very simple interface
* to access your page anytime and from any computer .

It is also possible to :

* browse, modify, and import your RSS feeds with our integrated RSS/ATOM feedreader. You can easily import an OPML file as well.
* to import, download and listen podcasts without any additional software
* to check your mail on one or many gmail account, to stick webnotes, weather and many more to come !

Link to PLC eLearning 2.0 blog

2006-08-21T09:26:00.000+10:00

I had included a link to the PLC blog in the title of my previous post, but it looks like some aggregators might not be picking it up. Here it is in text: http://plcmclearning.blogspot.com/ (Thanks Michael for pointing this out!)

Leave it to librarians to make embracing web 2.0 this cool

2006-08-15T16:28:00.000+10:00

Lynette, my former colleague and self-titled "new" librarian, pointed me at this project which is being run by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County in the US. The project seems to have been inspired by 43 Things takes staff on a 9 week guided tour of web 2.0 in the context of learning 2.0.

I really like how they've sent realistic tasks, or "23 Things", that introduce some of the core applications that underpin web 2.0 (eg. blogs, RSS, aggregation) but then go beyond to look at image sharing (Flickr), collaborative cataloging (LibraryThing) and of course media hosting (YouTube). Nice bite-size bits and with prize draws for staff who complete all 23 Things. Kind of like a web 2.0 scavenger hunt.

I always love it when someone manages to cut through the mystery of learning and to enable learning through experimentation. Librarians in particular seem to produce some great examples of this.

The Chronicle: Blackboard Sues Rival Provider of Course-Management Software, Alleging Patent Infringement

2006-08-08T16:49:00.000+10:00

I missed this excellent article from The Chronicle posted on Aug 2nd. It covers views and reactions from a few different fronts including Blackboard, Desire2Learn and clients. A few telling snippets:

"This is not a patent that covers all of e-learning," Mr. Small (Matthew Small, senior vice president and general counsel for Blackboard) said. "It doesn't cover all course-management systems."

He then goes on to say:

many e-learning companies could operate without infringing on the patent, though he declined to provide any examples. However, he also said that had Blackboard not merged with WebCT, then WebCT would have been infringing the patent.

Black web? How about Black-borg?

2006-08-08T13:28:00.000+10:00

Michael Rees has pointed out "Blackweb" as a new name for Blackboard that has been suggested in light of their over-the-top legal activities. A trekkie-minded colleague has suggested "Black-borg", which I think is my favorite so far.

Silliness aside, I've cooled down a bit, had a few days to absorb the media and commentary and have boiled it all down to three things that really have me fuming over this situation.

1) I've worked with Blackboard at client universities for almost 5 years now. I've seen the product go through numerous upgrades, experienced the challenge of overcoming academic and student perceptions after a massive product failure, and more recently gained an insight into the corporate culture of Blackboard as a company. I'm used to being known as "the Blackboard person" while in differing roles (although I do try to correct this view). There has been discussion about how this move by Blackboard will impact on how academics perceive Blackboard as a product. I love the challenge of opening academics' eyes to the possibilities and opportunities educational technology can provide them. It's what I'm passionate about and what gets me up in the morning. It can also be tough. By behaving in a manner which I think is in opposition to many academics' educational ideals, I believe Blackboard has just made my job a whole lot harder.

2) I really don't like the way Blackboard has handled this in terms of communication. I generally receive an official email every 2 weeks or so from Blackboard, advising of everything from conferences to new appointments in my region. The only official communication I've seen from Blackboard regarding the patent and resulting legal action is an email from Michael Chasen, CEO which was sent to a single US usergroup and then forwarded to a global community listserv. This is not how you go about keeping your clients in the loop. Part of the email reads:

We hope that you will come to see that our patent and law suit are not a dramatic change for the industry, but a fair course for us to protect our investments in our technology and your investment in Blackboard. Our aim is to build an organization that will endure and be there to support you as your needs evolve.

3) Which leads me to the third thing that really gets me about all this. I have no problem with patents on technology. I have no problem with capitalising on innovation. Everyone needs to make money somehow and Blackboard has already managed to make an awful lot of money in support of something great. I do have a problem when capitalist activity such as this stumbles a little too far into the sacred three of Education, Health Care, and Religion. I realise that education is already far more of a commodity than it has been in the past, especially in Australia, but there need to be limits on how far this trend can go.

Chuffed: Even without electricity, eLearning comes good

2006-08-03T16:30:00.000+10:00

It's exam week here at Bond, and to my surprise and delight, a number of the academics using Blackboard for the first time this semester have chosen to run some portion of their final exam (as well as other pieces of assessment) online using Blackboard. They didn't get hung up on the reasons not to use online assessment, they just dove right in and tried it out. They were willing to experiment. Fantastic.

The lecturer of one of the largest classes run by the university is one of these willing academics so of course, the practical component of his student's final exam was conducted online through Blackboard. The exam was to be run in an envigilated environment within a computer lab at 10am this morning. Great.

Today, one of the reasons not to use online assessment showed itself in a big way. We had a major power outage this morning. The whole campus as well as the whole suburb was out for about 2 hrs. Back-up power kept the server room running, but not the lab computer or the lights for that matter, so no exam. The willing academic took it all in stride and rescheduled the exam for later this afternoon. Wonderful.

Then another reason not to use online assessment appeared. Some residual problems from the power outage this morning cause Blackboard to go down, as well as a few other services, and it went down in a fairly major way. We had power, we had computers, but we didn't have Blackboard. Nuts.

We got it back up fairly quickly and the students had an extra half hour to sit in the lab and study before finally being able to complete their exam. The willing academic? He'll do it all again next semester. Fantastic.

What a lousy birthday present: Blackboard patents the LMS

2006-08-02T11:40:00.000+10:00

It's my birthday today and it's nothing but bad news. The US Patent office, in their infinite wisdom, has granted Blackboard a patent on pretty much all things related to online course delivery. Ick. Ick, ick, ick. The abstract of their patent (full details available from the US Patent office website) describes their patent of:

A system and methods for implementing education online by providing institutions with the means for allowing the creation of courses to be taken by students online, the courses including assignments, announcements, course materials, chat and whiteboard facilities, and the like, all of which are available to the students over a network such as the Internet.

This is like patenting a lecture hall as an environment that facilitates learning. What are you trying to do, Blackboard? Seriously.

Will the open source community, which is becoming more and more viable, be able to continue to grow with Blackboard standing by with a patent to wave at them? Forgive my rant but this has be quite upset. More thoughts on this once I've cooled down.

No more printing of learning content?

2006-07-26T10:04:00.000+10:00

As much as I support and champion electronic delivery of learning content, I know that the majority of lengthier material is printed and read offline, where it can be annotated, highlighted, and tossed in a backpack to be read on the bus. While I spend most of my working day and a good chunk of my evenings consuming materials from a screen, I wouldn't consider starting a novel or even a lengthy article by curling up with my laptop.

I've been keeping an eye out for technologies that could make reading large quantities of digital material less eye-aching and have been watching the development of Sony's electronic paper-based reader for some time and it looks set to finally be available for purchase. The Reader is a paperback sized tablet device with uses technology called E Ink for its black and white display, rather than the LCD screens of laptops and PDAs.

Instead of rows of glowing cells, E Ink® microcapsules actually appear as either black or white depending on a positive or negative charge determined by the content. The result is a reading experience that's similar to paper - high contrast, high resolution, viewable in direct sunlight and at a nearly 180-degree angle, and requiring no power to maintain the image.

While the design of the casing leaves room for improvement, the technology is so wonderfully simple and effective, I can't help but think about how tools like the Reader could change the way text-based learning content is consumed, and for that matter, the way academics libraries provide resources. No word on retail pricing yet, but with a September release in the US advertised, I will definitely keep watching this one. Just think of the trees that could be saved.

On blogging and student engagement

2006-07-05T09:31:00.000+10:00

Konrad Glogowski posted today on his experiences in establishing a "community of grade eight student bloggers". He writes with excitement and enthusiasm about how his students went from being solitary writers, to leveraging off the knowledge of their peers to deepen and broaden their own understanding. He writes:

I noticed that Student A, writing about genocide in Darfur, started following and linking to the work of Student B who was investigating current human rights abuses. Student A did not learn anything new about genocide from Student B, but she did learn a lot about efforts (or lack thereof) to stop hatred, violence, and discrimination. Entries about human rights abuses taking place all over the world (including the so-called developed nations) were helpful in expanding her understanding of why violence erupts, of why we are not effective at stopping it. Both continued to pursue their own topics but relied on each other to gain a better understanding of human nature, of discrimination, of official responses to these issues.

Read the full post here.

There's been a bit of blog madness happening around the place here, most of it creative and innovative, some of it being driven from a new(ish) buzzy technology. I'll be converting a spare server into a 'miscellaneous web applications' server this month to allow us to organic experimentation with in-house hosted open source tools such as Wordpress. Must write up guidelines for use too, although the last thing I want to do is squash enthusiasm with policy.

On being an administrator and being academically-minded

2006-06-20T12:53:00.000+10:00

I used to think that the academic life wasn't for me. I used to think that hiding away in an office, reading, "researching" (whatever that meant to me), and writing would be so limiting. I wanted to be out doing stuff. Managing projects, developing policy, promoting innovation, managing people(!), and generally rationalising and putting into practice all those crazy ideas academics came up with.

I've changed my thinking a little since taking on this new role at Bond. While I still want to be on the "doing" side of the fence, I would very much like to pursue a bit of academic-style "thinking" more than I'm currently able to do. The thought of hiding away for a few weeks or months to fully develop an original and innovative idea, and then bring it out into the world to actually try it out really appeals to me. To those people who know me well, I know this will come as a shock, but I want to be able to shut out the operational and strategic world I work in and have the opportunity to really think things through.

I wonder if there's a place in higher education for administrators with academic tendencies, or are we too rare a breed to be catered for?

Where things are at

2006-06-19T14:52:00.000+10:00

Wow. A whole month between posts. Must not do that again. So it's Week 6 of the May semester, with 30 some odd academic staff running strong with Blackboard.

I had a great meeting last week with one of the academics who had been a touch resistant and unsure at the start of semester. She had asked my advice on how to encourage her students to engage with the discussion board in preparation for their week 8 tutorial, which will be replaced by postings on a discussion board. I worked with her to refine and communicate to her students her expectations of them in terms of post number, length etc. I wanted to stress to her the importance of giving them a framework to work within and to clearly define the outcomes she wanted them to achieve. Will report back in a couple weeks on how it went.

Speaking of frameworks and clearly defined outcomes, I'll be facilitated a planning morning next week to start to develop these things in relation to my division, Teaching & Learning Services. I've been struggling with the post-project direction of the unit and want to start to map out the services we will be providing to the university and the initiatives we will be responsible for. Not an easy task in Bond's decentralised environment.

There are also happenings afoot in relation to developing a university-wide ICT strategy that will form the framework for communication, governance, funding, learning spaces, service delivery, training and development etc. Oh, and guess who has been asked to be a member of the 5-person working party to develop the strategic framework? Yup. That'd be me. I've thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to such a critical and defining piece of work, but wow. It's a big task.

I'm also involved in two initiatives related to academic staff development. One is to improve basic and general information literacy and ICT skills, which the other is focusing on teaching skills with the view to build towards to a grad cert in higher education or similar.

To round it all out, I'm now gearing up for the second phase of the Blackboard implementation, which involves the full roll-out for use by all subjects. The will involve another level of integration with source data systems as well as a massive staff development effort.

I'm describing all this so I can look back and remember just how varied my role here has been. While the variation keeps things interested, it can be a bit of a stretch to switch between modes. I think my brain is developing flexibility in muscles it never knew it had.

Survived

2006-05-19T17:02:00.000+10:00

Well, that's the first week over and done. It's been fun. I still feel a bit like a proud parent, except that I've been chasing around after one very active toddler for a week, getting up very early, and dealing with a few teething problems along the way. In short, I'm feeling a bit worn out.

In statistical terms, the system had an average of 471 logins per day this week. Not bad considering that only just over 1000 students and about 35 teaching staff are using it this semester. And 20,800 hits per day isn't bad either.

In real terms, the staff are embracing the technology (for the most part). The students and finding their way around and appreciating the new environment (for the most part). The support and helpdesk staff are able to assist staff and students who are having problems (for the most part). I reviewed the original PID and communication and training plans this afternoon, and I was very proud to think that what seemed like a mammoth amount of very complicated work has actually been achieved, and achieved to a considerable standard of quality. Period.

Next week, I plan to write a refelctive 'lesson's learned' post, but for now I'm going home for a celebratory dinner with friends, and to relax over the weekend.

"It's getting noisy"

2006-05-18T09:22:00.000+10:00

Great post by Konrad Glogowski over on the Blog of Proximal Development.

Whenever I 'enter' our online community and start clicking my way through all the entries, I feel like I am in a very noisy place. It's like being in a tiny cafe where, around each tiny table, there are conversations that you overhear as you order your latte and check your pockets for change. It feels like a train station, or a concert hall before the lights go down, or your favourite coffee place, or, well, a classroom before the teacher walks in and all the voices stop. Except, when I 'walk in,' the voices don't stop. The din continues and the constant hum means that I'm doing something right because they're talking, they're writing.

I like his comparisons between online, aka non-traditional, learning environments and other more traditional, non-traditional learning environments of cafes, train stations, jazz clubs. This supports the reality that learning happens everywhere, not just in classrooms.

Out into the world... and off to a slow but steady start

2006-05-12T16:32:00.000+10:00

Our new-born Blackboard server, at the end of it's second full day of work.

Out into the world...

2006-05-10T20:37:00.000+10:00

Bond's new LMS aka iLearn@Bond is now available to students. Yikes. We enabled the student accounts this afternoon and I've logged in this evening just to reasure myself the system is still there, and still happy. Only 29 subjects will be using it this pilot semester, but the grunt work of managing the system imprementation and data integration is done at this point.

I feel... proud. I've been poking my head in on academic's subject sites to see how they are progressing, and while they are all basic in terms of instructional design, I can actually see the personalities of the staff reflected in ther sites. I quite like that the property lawyer has chosen pink bubbles for his navigation menu. There are announcements welcoming students to the sites and explaining that they are the lucky few to be pioneering a new learning tool at Bond. These make me smile.

The energy and enthusiasm of the academics has really surprised and refreshed me. They are so very keen to do... something. Anything. As are the students. The IT HelpDesk forwarded me an email from a student asking why he couldn't login to "the iLearn", as he could access all other university systems with his new account. This was at 2pm this afternoon, 3 hours before we enabled student accounts, and no communications had yet gone out to students. I don't know how he even found the login page as it's not linked to from anywhere on the main site.

I've invited everyone who has been involved in the project so far to a launch drinks tomorrow afternoon and I really am looking forward to it. I'm feeding off the enthusiam and passion of the staff and students at this place. It really is energising.

More on leadership styles

2006-05-05T12:18:00.000+10:00

I'm going to go off on another tangent about leadership styles again. The leaders and managers I've worked with who I most respected and was inspired by, were the ones I was and still am a little intimidated by. The ones I always take a minute to think through questions and ideas before speaking. The ones I most want to impress.

I know I'm a fairly approachable manager. I've always tried to be. While my thoughts and ideas are generally respected, I get the feeling that people aren't intimidated by me or aren't willing to approach me with requests for advice or ideas in the same way I have been towards some of the people who's leadership I most value.

Is my own approachability, something I've always prided myself one, a detriment to my progress into more senior leadership roles? Do you have to be a little bit scary to be a good leader?

The best laid plans...

2006-04-10T17:18:00.000+10:00

I'm learning the value of flexibility in my approach to project management. Before taking on this project, my previous experience managing projects had been fairly structured. I've stuck very closely to a methodology and spent a significant amount of my time planning, scoping, documenting, analysing, and revising. I came to this project, easily the largest I've managed both in budget and impact, with the luxury of lead time. I had a chance to spend what I believed was adequate time planning and preparing for the implementation phases of the project. Of course, nothing ever goes to plan.

While I still value and appreciate good planning, and will never abandon it, this project has taught me the need to be flexible. I've had to change my tack on several aspects of the project and develop contingency plans, and contingency plans for my contingency plans. This project has also improved my ability to make decisions and to trust my own gut and experience, which frankly, has been scary at times. Scary, but damn fun too.

Workshop Phase 1 Wrap-up

2006-03-29T10:12:00.000+10:00

Whew! I made it through the first batch of Blackboard workshops with my pilot group. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I think I'd forgotten how draining this type of training can be. It's actually been a couple years since I did this much intensive training. I was fairly removed from basic level induction and training at Griffith, and generally only got involved on the fancier stuff, and on advising EDs and MDs. The workshops I designed and ran at ACU seem like forever ago. Judging on the feedback and progress of the sessions at Bond, I think I've become much better at this sort of teaching since then!

Here's what I'm taking away from these sessions:

I need to revise the program for the first session. Almost all the groups I've had have been able to get through a lot more in the 3 hours than I thought they would.

My contingency strategies worked a treat. Always have a spare account handy for the staff member who can't login.

For the most part, Bond academics are very efficient, practical folk. They are very time poor and very much appreciate being given the information they need to get on with their jobs, but don't tolerate "waffle" very well. I need to come up with better strategies to make sure the theory and the pedagogy is seamlessly slipped in with the hands-on, practical skills. I think this will become easier as I improve my own understanding of educational theories and how they can be applied

Never underestimate the power of cake. These workshops are almost as draining for the academics as they are for me. I was amazed how much people revive after the mid-session break. I need to schedule it for earlier in the session though. An hour and a half is too long to go without breaking

Revising key skills throughout the workshop worked really well. I think my scenario approach was good, but I want to refine it more. After taking the group through how to add announcements, folders, and various types of content, I took them back out to the portal page and gave them the scenario of "I'm a lecturer and I need to post an announcement to my students about the mid-semester exam, and I need to upload this week's lecture notes. What do I do?". I then asked the group to instruct me on how to do these actions. They perked up a bit as they tried to recall all the 'click here, then here, then here' stuff we had just gone through. I think I will continue to do this, but set a more complex scenario at the end of the session as well, which includes the use of the communication tools and discussion board.

Keep it light and fun, but still focused. One of the sessions got away on me a little and I need to work on taking a more serious direction when this happens.

Writing this wrap-up has been really helpful in clarifying my own thoughts on this. I look forward to doing the post-pilot review and getting the academics thoughts as well

People/Student power!

2006-03-29T10:01:00.000+10:00

Great post from Jerry Slezak of Running with Scissors on Students as Change Agents. Jerry describes an experience where he unsuccessfully tried to convince a non-Blackboard user to use the LMS to collect and distribute student contributions instead of using email attachments. The academic then raised the option with his students who were all for it an encouraged the use of the LMS.

This morning I saw that faculty member again. He had class last night with those students, and they discussed how he was planning to send them the MW Word documents via email. He said to me "I told the students in my class last night about how you suggested using Blackboard for this. They said, 'Yes! - that is much better!'" Then he said to me - "Do you think we have a revolution on our hands?"

Awesome. I must admit, I've been counting on Bond's very vocal students to assist me with encouraging staff to use Blackboard. Here's hoping they come through.

Understanding Networked Learning

2006-03-24T09:11:00.000+10:00

I regularly read Leigh Blackall's blog Teach and Learn Online, and have recently started reading his new "work" blog Educational Development at Tekotago, which chronicles his new appointment at Otago Polytechnic. Because he's blogging about the work he is actually doing, as he actually does it, I'm finding it a great source of inspiration and ideas for my own work here at Bond.

I've been struggling a bit with how best to tackle staff development here, and in particular, raising awareness of the internet beyond static websites (blogging, collaborative authoring, tagging, content re-usability and portability etc). I'd been toying with the idea of holding sessions where I can take academics through 'guided play' in technologies both Blackboard and beyond. Leigh has helped clarify my ruminations in his post on Networked Learning Workshops, where he describes a series of lunchtime workshops he will be running on everything from blogs and wikis to Open Office and tagging.

Thanks Leigh, for putting your knowledge out there to help inform and inspire us ed-tech newbies, and don't let your IT department lock you down!

Still moving along

2006-03-22T11:09:00.000+10:00

Wow. Almost a full month since my last post. Yikes. In my defense, I've been a bit busy. The training program for the first batch of staff who will be using the new LMS has begun in earnest now. The sessions have been fun, if a bit draining. Note to self: don't attempt to do more than 4 hours of facilitation in a day. Organising and then running the sessions while also trying to keep on top of the implementation project itself had me nearing breaking point for a few days. Thankfully an unusually social weekend coupled with a float session revived me.

After spending a solid 2 weeks working out in the faculties, I'm even more impressed by the ideas and teaching talent present in the Bond community. Being able to work with academics who really do care about their teaching is encouraging me to stretch and further develop my own knowledge of instructional design. I've also been asking staff who have used LMSs at other universities what they liked/didn't like about the may those LMSs operated. This has proved very useful both to informing the implementation at Bond and to lobbying support by being able to do away with past annoyances.

I've also had an idea for a paper I would like to present at this year's Blackboard Asia Pacific User's Conference. I'm thinking of something along the lines of "6 Steps to Blackboard Administration Nirvana" or some such title. I thought of this while Matt and I were discussing some of the myriad of options to consider when setting up Blackboard such as site naming convention, content management process, static vs dynamic sites, site persistence, access rights, roles etc. I was thinking about how great it was to be able to make decisions on these things with 4 years of LMS management experience behind me. I draw on my knowledge of what worked and what didn't at both Griffith and ACU with the ultimate aim of making the system at Bond operate with the right balance of simplicity, flexibility, and stability. Matt also brings his own experience from administering Blackboard at RMIT. We've both had to deal with inherited system configurations in the past and are both excited to be taking what we've learned and applying it to a brand spanking new implementation. My idea for a paper is around what we have/are doing given our past experience. One of those "What would you do if you could start from scratch" things. I think it could spark some interesting discussion amongst sys admins and managers alike.

On being "service-oriented"

2006-02-21T18:53:00.000+10:00

There has been an awful lot of discussion and action among IT divisions within the university sector in regards to the provision of services to the university in which they operate. This notion of IT divisions as service providers has resulted in methodologies such as ITIL being implemented and a greater increase in the view of students as clients.

I've been giving a fair bit of thought to service provision within universities and my thinking goes like this:
Universities have two main outputs: Research and teaching. Yes I know there is a whole element of contribution to the broader knowledge of the community bear with me as I oversimplify things. To simplify it even further, you could say that the academic elements of a university (eg. faculties, schools, research centers) produce two products: research output and program offerings. My thinking is that every other element of the university including IT divisions, teaching and learning centers, student administration, libraries, marketing and so on are therefore engaged in either the service of those academic elements, or the service of the clients of those academic elements (eg. the students).

Bear with me as I know my thinking is half-baked at best, but the point I am attempting to make is that those of us within a university not involved in teaching or research, need to focus on how best we can service those who are. They are after all, making sure we even have a role to play.

I consider myself to be a professional engaged in the provision of services in support of the teaching activities of the university.

On teaching with technology

2006-02-16T10:14:00.000+10:00

I came across a great quote today, from an anonymous author:

If you can't do something, you can't do it with a computer.

I like the connotations this quote carries when applied to the use of instructional technology. It succinctly reinforces in my mind the notion that teaching with technology is still just teaching. An ineffective teacher will be no more effective once you teach them how to use an LMS, or blogs, or social software. I think the adoption of PowerPoint as a teaching tool has taught us that.

Fun with Blackboard Release 7's Language Pack Editor

2006-02-15T13:37:00.001+10:00

I've been working with the Blackboard Language Pack Editor, which is a new component in release 7. The editor allows you to customise the Blackboard interface to accommodate foreign languages, institution-specific terminology, and um, other customisations.

I had a bit of a play with the extensive editing capabilities and thought I would share some of the most amusing. Don't get me wrong, the Language Pack Editor is one the easiest to use, most powerful, and most user-responsive bit of functionality Blackboard has come out with. I think these images illustrate just how simple to use and powerful it really is. All images were taken from our development environment only and promptly returned to their original text. Enjoy.

I started off with the Control Panel:

Then had a play with the portal.

Blackboard and the Library

2006-01-25T13:57:00.000+10:00

I gave a presentation this morning to a group of library staff here at Bond. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was asked to 'talk about Blackboard' sometime late last year. Rather than give a very dry explanation of the Blackboard implementation project and the nuts and bolt of the roll-out, I decided to take a page from Presentation Zen and try my best to deliver 'inspiration over information', while making sure that the main points still came across. There was some great discussion after the presentation and a few excited-looking faces, which was pretty good for a 9am start! I was impressed by the types of suggestions that came from the librarians, reinforcing my belief that there are some seriously switched-on people within the profession.

Talking with a colleague afterwards, I commented on how managing an LMS in Bond's environment was going to be very different doing it in the large public universities I'm used to. One of the things I've noticed here is the volume of creative ideas for using Blackboard that are being raised already. I'm finding myself regularly saying "What a great idea! I haven't heard of Blackboard being used to do that before, but I'm pretty sure it can." And the thing isn't even live yet. Just imagine what ideas will come up once people actually become familiar with the system. I can't wait.

Turns out I'm an educational institution all by myself

2006-01-24T11:03:00.000+10:00

"Combined Ingenuity. That's Genius. That's Clarkson."

That's the tagline in the welcome message from the President of Clarkson University. Apart from sharing my name, the university is also one of America's Most Connected Campuses according to Forbes. I wouldn't expect anything less from a Clarkson.

Thoughts on education in a wider sphere

2006-01-18T10:16:00.000+10:00

Having survived the cold and wet of a west-coast Canadian winter, I'm now struggling to cope with the heat and mugginess of a Queensland summer. The trip was wonderful, and gave me a chance to think about education in a broader context than just my little corner of the planet. In my last post, I mentioned figures given in the final keynote address at ASCILITE regarding the growth of tertiary education in China. While en-route to Canada, I read a series of articles on the state of higher education in fast-developing countries such as India and China. One article discussed the need to improve the quality of tertiary education in India in particular, and quoted one Indian chancellor as saying that 90% of university graduates are unemployable due to extreme underfunding of universities. It made me think about educational institutions in developing countries needing to change the way they operate in order to produce graduates that will be globally competitive.
When I spent a month in India last year, I was excited to see the number of young women attending the local university in a city I worked in for a week. I was then saddened to hear from my hosts that a number of them only attend in order to improve their marriage prospects. My western mind struggles with this.

But the main purpose of my trip was to spend time with family I hadn't seen in years, my older sister in particular. She has spent considerable time in the Canadian university sector, both as a student and as a tutor. She told me about the high number of graduates who go into debt living off student loans, only to find that the only jobs they can get upon graduation are only barely within their field of study and grossly below their qualifications. She told me about students she had who excelled in the most challenging areas of their computer science degrees, only to have to return to university to complete more lower-level IT degrees in order to find paying work. It almost seems like the economy is not at the point where it is able to utilise the advanced skills of the graduates that universities are turning out.

Blogging From ASCILITE: Day 3 - Sessions

2005-12-07T21:12:00.000+10:00

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

2005-12-07T12:21:00.000+10:00

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

2005-12-06T20:49:00.000+10:00

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

2005-12-05T18:16:00.000+10:00

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!

Discovery made simple

2005-11-21T13:59:00.000+10:00

I came across a great example of a digital library that has made acess to and discovery of their collection simple, powerful and fun. The collection is catalogued in a very natural manner, mimicking the way we actually look for books. The results are presented and viewed in a way that is innovative, fun, and promotes use. It is actually the most intuitive yet powerful search interfaces I have come across. Oh, and did I mention the collection is made up of children's books, and the search interface was desigend in part by kids? Check it out at The International Children's Digital Library.

On delivering inspiration over information

2005-11-21T13:21:00.000+10:00

I've been asked to give a presentation to a group of library staff about the project I am managing. While the presentation is still a ways off, its promted me to start thinking about my own presentation style and how presentations of this sort are used to convey information and hopefully act as knowledge delivery channels. I've always considered myself to be an energetic, open, and informed presenter. I've received positive feedback when I've been asked to give presentations during the course of my work. Upon reflection though, the majority if not all of my presentations have centred on information delivery. Basically, they have been reports on past, current, or future activities within my field. I know that I am a clear communicator and generally am not nervous about speaking to a group on a topic I know well.

As I started thinking about what I wanted to cover in my presentation, I started to think I wanted to try tings a bit differently with this one. So I started reading a few articles on presentation styles and approaches. There is a school of thought that focuses on the idea that presentation software (eg. Keynote, PowerPoint) have made perfectly nice people into horrible presenters. I tend to agree with this. Presentation Zen takes a "less is more" approach to corporate presentations and makes some very interesting comparisons between the use of presentation software by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Seth Godin has produced an e-booklet titled "Really Bad PowerPoint and How to Avoid it".

Then I started thinking about the presentations that I've been exposed to as an audience member. I started thinking about the presentations that had inspired me and made me think about my own positions and viewpoints, and the presentations that had just described the process and outcomes of an activity or series of activities. I can think of a great example in one of the keynote addresses from a conference I attended recently.

On the first day of the conference, the keynote speaker was a woman who spoke from extensive experience as a pioneer in educating communities of children using technology and other educational tools. She also came from a background in educational administration within government and tertiary education and knew the politics of education inside and out. But it wasn't her knowledge and experience that got me. It was what she chose to talk about. While she did describe the function of the experimental education unit she had founded, she focussed on the ideas that guided the unit, rather than reporting on specific activities. She talked about industry trends in an abstract form and she demonstrated those trends with personal anecdotes and examples. Above all else, her presentation focussed on ideas, not facts. As a reflection of this, her actual presentation (eg. the slides she put up) were highly visual, with lots of graphical elements reinforcing the points she was making, and not detracting from her own very passionate presence on the stage.

My point is this: While every audience and every situation is different, I feel it is important to take advantage of the opportunity provided to you by having your audience physically present in front of you. I believe that a report on activities and initiatives is best achieved by writing and distributing a concise summary of those activities, or reporting on them in a meeting. I believe that you should take advantage of a live audience by focussing on communicating that which is very difficult to convey in writing: Ideas.

The keynote speaker I have described inspired me to apply innovative ideas and practices to my own work and profession yet in the process, provided me with enough information to get started. As for my own upcoming presentation, I think I will take a risk, break away from bullet points, graphs, and figures, and aim to inspire first and inform along the way. Lets hope it works.

Welcome

2005-11-08T12:24:00.000+10:00

Its funny how life can sometimes plonk you down just where you never thought you would be but exactly where you should be. Now that I've been appointed to manage Bond University's teaching and learning systems, I suppose I can safely say that I've chosen a career, or perhaps that a career has chosen me.

I've come to Bond to manage an implementation of a new learning management system, as well as to oversee the ongoing development and provision of learning technologies and the academic staff development programs which support their use. I'm also looking at completing a research master's while I'm here and as such have been allowing myself the luxury of reading and investigating and listening to what's going on out there, instead of living only in my own little world, professionally speaking.

My new role has given me a lot to think about, and consequently, a need to collate and keep track of these thoughts. To this end, I've created this blog to:

Record my thoughts and observations on the progress of Bond's LMS implementation project

Collect and share pieces of research, thoughts and opinions on teaching and learning with technology

Help me pull together information that will help me form and write my research thesis

Another, more optimistic goal is to encourage discussion and debate on what happens when teaching and learning, technology, project management, and *gasp* business get together for dinner.