Monthly Archives: November 2021

ASCILITE2021 Conference Day 2 – notes on the fly

Awards

Ah, this is why Beth was asking whether edvisors value CMALT yesterday.

Congratulations also to Keith Heggart for the Emerging Scholar award

Poster from Kate Coleman, Kate Mitchell Kelly Anderson, et al. If unis are saying they are transformational/innovative, does this match the reality

Find the whole poster online at

https://twitter.com/kateycoleman/status/1465095576815431684?s=20

OES work on Learning Analytics

Martin Bean calling for competency based education and authentic assessment in Higher Ed. Can’t argue with that

Lovely set of Pecha Kucha (pronounced Peh Cha Ku Cha) slides from Carmen Vallis in meme format. (There are some older memes there but they check out)

Another handy tweet about some of the conference posters

Back to what? What STEM and Health teaching academics learnt from COVID – Christopher Bridge, Birgit Loch, Dell Horey, Brianna Julien, Belinda Thompson and Julia Agolli

Wide range of practices under consideration post – COVID

Deakin Launch Network: an employability network that improves engagement, graduate outcomes and wellbeing by connecting and leveraging the expertise of diverse students and alumni – Trina Jorre de St Jorre

Nice presentation about students that meaningfully included student voices

Well that was a diverse Day 2

We also had a big discussion in the TELedvisors community around our aims and some future possibilities – more on that in time

ASCILITE2021 Conference Day 1 – notes on the fly. (Now with my presentation)

Opening keynote – Prof Sarah Pearson, Uni of Queensland

Oh joy – we are looking at Education Technology through the lens of venture capital.

Oh – not even ed tech from what I can see.

Holistic ecosystems – probably the most valuable part of the session.

Oh Jesus Christ – someone refers to themself as a Netflix for education. (I am pretty sure I have heard the same thing from senior leaders – now I know where that came from, I guess)

There’s some other stuff about needing more women in STEM – sure, obviously.

A systematic approach to learning design for supervisor training in a specialist medical college – Jorge Reyna, Santosh Khanal, Victoria Baker-Smith and Ellen Cooper

Common issues coming up – resistance from educators to spending time in actually working on their learning design

That session finished and I’m just jumping from one session to the next like I’m flicking through tv channels.

Ok, so this presenter of a short paper has 80 slides and is showing them in Presenter view. Bless.

Powerpoint slides with text about insitutional claims

I like that he has a bow tie

I haven’t completely tuned into this but I think I need to read this paper.
Benchmarking educational quality – an independent analysis and alternative approach – Stanislaw Paul Maj

One session to go now before mine – feeling nervous

Implementing Learning Analytics: The Journey To Improve Teaching and Learning at five Australian Universities – Jo-Anne Clark and David Tuffley

Factors associated with edvisor perceptions of their work being understood and valued are not what they seem – Colin Simpson and Jessica Frawley

Huh, that title actually is kind of clunky. I wanted to have a Twin Peaks reference. I should probably listen to people more. 🙂

Ok, me now.

Ok, I got through that – I have a VERY unacademic style – but folksy?

Managing Career Transitions into post-secondary Learning Designer Jobs: An Australasian Perspective – Michael Sankey and Jack Sage

(This is kind of a reboot of the webinar they ran for us last week)

I have my doubts about this next session but lets see how we go

Well, the TELedvisors Network hosted a group to identify technology themes. We agreed that “Increased use of learning technologies” is so vague as to be ridiculous. And also, just, duh.

And that’s a wrap for day 1

Ed Tech must reads – Column 14

First published in Campus Morning Mail on Tuesday 16th November 2021

Professional Development Opportunities in Educational Technology and Education via Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes has been a go-to source for information and opinion about online learning for decades. He is also one of the originators of the idea of the MOOC. In this post, he shares a comprehensive Word doc list (147 pages) from Clayton R Wright of Ed Tech/Education conferences, seminars and workshops of note between now and 2024. (I did still manage to find one that isn’t on the list – that’s at the end of this column – but you had better believe it is comprehensive)

Teaching like a Master(Chef) – Using MasterChef as a model for effective and ineffective lesson design from Medium

Reality TV shows provide us with hours of content every week of ‘real’ people engaging in challenging practices right at the edge of their capability for our viewing pleasure. In some cases they are thrown into a task cold but more commonly they are supported in different ways that can offer us insights into wider learning and teaching practices. James Bullous explores (UK) Masterchef in this engaging post, ranging over Discovery learning, Cognitive Load Theory, feedback, modelling, motivation and more.

25 more real-world examples of Virtual Reality from E-Learning Provocateur

This post is a couple of years old now but given recent buzz about Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR), it’s worth revisiting as a handy source of exemplars of innovative uses of the technology in education/training, healthcare, marketing, gameplay, ‘travel’ and storytelling.

Brain Implant Translates Paralyzed Man’s Thoughts Into Text With 94% Accuracy from Science Alert

Something that is a little further down the road from practical application in the classroom but nonetheless fascinating is this story that draws on an article from Nature. Researchers have been able to capture thought-to-text at a rate of ~18 words per minute with high accuracy. The mind boggles.

EdTechPosium 2021 – Canberra, Friday December 10th

EdTechPosium is a one-day conference with a practical bent covering innovative uses of educational technologies in ACT universities, TAFE and schools. Once known as MoodlePosium back when Canberra education institutions were collectively a Moodle shop, it is a great opportunity to connect with the dynamic local Technology Enhanced Learning community. Keynote speakers include chief Moodler Martin Dougiamas, ANU PVC Education & Digital Prof. Maryanne Dever, Ed Tech guru Natalie Denmeade and Astrophysicist Brad Tucker. For $90 including dinner, it’s hard to go wrong.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 13

First published in Campus Morning Mail on Tuesday 9th November 2021

Examination of the SAMR model for effective technology integration through an adaptive leadership approach from i-Managers Journal of Educational Technology (Paywall)

The SAMR (Substitute – Augment – Modify – Redefine) model offers a framework for increasingly sophisticated uses of a given technology in learning and teaching. It is underused in education and particularly in areas responsible for planning educational transformation, but Heatherton and Trespalacios (Boise State University) offer some useful suggestions for its application. While the article does focus on the K-12 sector, their suggestions are easily applicable to Tertiary education as well. Their discussion of the need for flexibility in a space where change has become a constant is equally valuable.

About Twitter Spaces from Twitter

Spaces is new, relatively unheralded functionality on Twitter that enables live audio conversations. It seems to be Twitter’s response to the mobile app Clubhouse, extending some functionality natively to desktop and laptop users. (It is possible to listen to the audio there but not speak). I stumbled across a Spaces session hosted by medical researcher @upulie while idly browsing Twitter one evening and was struck by the tool’s potential for innovative use in teaching and educational CoPs.

Using head mounted display virtual reality simulations in large engineering classes: Operating vs observing from Australasian Journal of Educational Technology

The recent palaver about Facebook’s ambitions in the Mixed/Virtual Reality (XR) ‘Metaverse’ prompted some discussion about one of the biggest practical issues faced by institutions, access to and management of sufficient hardware. Seven scholars from Engineering at UWA explore whether everyone actually needs to have a go to benefit in this handy AJET article from earlier this year.

Microsoft Teams enters the metaverse race with 3D avatars and immersive meetings from The Verge

While we are talking about XR and the metaverse, it’s worth noting that Microsoft announced last week that they plan to bring their own toys (Mesh and HoloLens) into their communication and collaboration platform Teams next year. The most notable functionality in this would seem to be the ability to be represented by an animated avatar in Teams meetings. Given that one of the struggles of Zoom classrooms in the COVID era has been the cameras-on/cameras-off debate, with students feeling over exposed but teachers wanting connection and non-verbal feedback, avatars may offer a middle ground if they work well enough.

Simulating a university Twitter thread from @BryanAlexander

Bryan Alexander is an ‘education futurist’ and one of the more engaging speakers I have seen in recent years. He recently posted on Twitter that he was planning a seminar for his students which would involve a game simulating a university over the next decade. He called for suggestions of random events for them to grapple with. The responses were wide-ranging and at times hilarious.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 12

First published in Campus Morning Mail Tuesday 2nd November 2021

A heutagogical approach for the assessment of Internet Communication Technology (ICT) assignments in higher education from International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (Open Access)

With students increasingly identifying as online content creators, and the slowly evolving nature of academic publishing, it makes sense to harness Internet platforms in their education. Lynch, Sage, Hitchcock and Sage here outline some formal structures to support a more self-determined form of assessment, where learners are as mindful of the external audience for the resources they create in their courses as they are of their teachers. This article offers a comprehensive guide to the theory behind this approach as well as some exemplar rubrics. The only issue that I would possibly take is the breathless excitement about this as a new mode – not to toot my own horn but I had my students posting blogs for assessment a decade ago. Perhaps without the rich theoretical framework though.

Bringing Clinical Simulation & Active Learning Strategies into the Classroom During COVID-19 from Healthy Simulation

Medical disciplines have long been leaders in the adoption of technology enhanced learning and teaching, with a particular need to be able to give learners as much authentic practical experience as possible while also being safe and logistically feasible. In this informative but brief post, Amy Curtis describes the practical changes that were required in a university nursing program in the South East US in response to COVID19.

Administrators are not the enemy from The Chronicle of Higher Education

Brian Rosenberg is the President in residence of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and pulls no punches with this strongly worded cri de coeur – the subheading is “Faculty contempt for nonfaculty employees is unjustified and destructive”. It isn’t a long read but covers a decent amount of ground about academia, from the primacy of expertise to toxic behaviour in hierarchies.

Introducing design thinking online to large business education courses for twenty-first century learning from Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice

Vallis (USyd) and Redmond (USQ) discuss the application of design thinking principles that are, in essence, a more human centred angle on problem solving, in teaching business disciplines. They interview academics and student in a first-year course in this case study to delve into its usefulness in this practice and find some handy benefits.

Opinion: There’s nothing appealing about the Metaverse from Game Developer

When Facebook is in the news it can be easy to tune out these days but this opinion piece from Bryant Francis about Mark Zuckerberg’s rebranding of the parent company as ‘Meta’ and their roadmap for a remarkably Second Life-like all encompassing virtual social world is worth a read. While this isn’t about the educational applications of such a space, it points out a number of the logical flaws and so-what questions that aren’t yet being discussed enough.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 11

First published Campus Morning Mail, Oct 26th 2021

Team-based quizzes on no budget from Amanda loves to audit

Australia’s favourite lecturer on auditing, Amanda White at UTS, integrates technologies into her teaching to inspire and engage her students. In this post, she shares her approach to creating weekly branching quizzes that are taken firstly individually and then in small groups to create opportunities for collaborative learning via multiple attempts. She discusses how she has created a solution that bypasses LMS quiz limitations but which retains accountability.

Support Designer-Teacher Collaboration in Educational Game Design Using Learning Science Principles from Ma and Harpstead, CHI-PLAY 2021 proceedings

A common concern held about educational technologies is that the tech is prioritised about the pedagogy. This work in progress from Ma and Harpstead (Carnegie Mellon University), presented recently at the Computer-Human Interaction in Play conference outlines their work on educational game design support frameworks linked closely to evidence based learning science principles. Given the potential of educational games to create rich, authentic learning experiences, this work shows great potential.

Vale Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from Jane McGonigal (Twitter)

For people with an interest in learner engagement, motivation and productivity, the loss of Csikszentmihalyi last week was a sad moment. His 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience developed the idea of a ‘flow state’, the sweet spot between challenge and skill where people find themselves fully absorbed in an activity. This has been highly influential on education and game design and games in education. The comments below this tweet from McGonigal, an influential figure in serious game design thinking, offer a taste of the impact his work had.

UTS Video Meetup #10 Podcasting, Live-streaming and designing educational media Tues Oct 26, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm (AEDT)

This video meetup this afternoon features academics and learning designers from a range of organisations presenting about using educational video (Mark Parry, AISNSW), live-streaming on Twitch (Jamie Chapman, UTAS), Learner generated digital media (Beverley Myles, OpenLearning) and podcasts as learning and teaching resources (Fidel Fernando, Macquarie Uni).

Towards a taxonomy of assessment types – webinar/workshop Thurs Oct 28th 12 noon (AEDT)

Hans Tilstra (Keypath Australia) leads what should be a lively set of activities intended to lead towards a meaningful taxonomy of assessment types in modern tertiary education. This is the final ASCILITE TELedvisors Network webinar for 2021 and caps off a stellar year of these events.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 10

First published in Campus Morning Mail, 19th October 2021

Watch Party Lectures: Synchronous Delivery of Asynchronous Material from Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education

Something that I’ve noticed recently in online conferences is an increased use of pre-recorded presentations. My initial response to this was a sense of feeling somewhat ripped off, but in better sessions I have realised how well this can work. Presenters are freed up to engage in simultaneous chat as the video plays, answering questions and following the audience down new discussion paths that would not be possible in a synchronous session. Emily Nordmann (University of Glasgow) is one of the leading lights in scholarship of lecture capture. This paper with her colleague Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel describes their recent use of this innovative approach with lecture “watch parties” with students. Once lecturers get past the strangeness of watching themselves, they and the students report real benefits from this mode of teaching.

Platinum (LMS) picks for 2021 from Craig Weiss

I’ll preface this with a large caveat that I am wary of anyone who describes themselves as “the most influential person in the world for learning systems” and whose evaluation criteria include being signed up to their own business’s “Customer Excellence Pledge”. That said, this list of 30 Learning Management Systems (LMS) recommended by Weiss offers a handy resource for anyone exploring options in the LMS space and it covers a range of organisational contexts. I recognised just one name on this list, D2L.

Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows from MIT Technology Review

It’s no secret that Facebook has an oversized grasp on the world’s psyche but this report from the MIT Technology Review still manages to chill in terms of how effectively this is misused. In 2020, 19 of the top 20 “American” Christian pages in terms of views were based in troll farms in Eastern Europe with suspected ties to Russian Intelligence. These aren’t even pages that people have signed up to, simply those that Facebook presents as ‘related content’. More than anything, stories like this highlight the urgency of embedding digital and media literacy and critical thinking in every level of the education system.

12 ideas to refresh your teaching in less than 10 minutes from The Educationalist Alexandra Mihai draws on a range of resources in cognitive psychology and faculty development to provide 12 brief activities (and wider practices) to bolster student learning in classes. Ranging from keeping the lesson plan visible for signposting/contextualisation to retrieval practices and activating prior knowledge, these are all things that can be picked up with minimal preparation.