Category Archives: LMS

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.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 6

First published in Campus Morning Mail 14th Sept 2021

The iceberg theory of EdTech: One Laptop Per Child from Gaurav Singh (Twitter) (5 mins)

The One Laptop Per Child initiative is a cautionary tale about what happens when well-meaning thought leaders with compelling pitches for ed tech don’t do due diligence and actually ask the people on the ground if their idea will work. OLPC was a project to manufacture and give robust, crank powered laptops to young learners in the Global South to help them eLearn out of poverty. This Twitter thread from @gauravsingh961 forensically works through the details of the failure of this project as a case study against the ‘tech as silver bullet’ mentality.

How Learning Technology Can Help from Education…technically (6 mins)

Rolling out a learning technology is only part of many when it comes to good digital education. The Scottish pivot to online learning in Higher Ed due to COVID19 was the focus of a recent government taskforce there, and Chris Kennedy discusses the vital support component of it in this blog post. While there was a sensible decision to lean heavily on JISC resources, he notes the virtual absence of input from expert professional support staff, subsequent proposed cuts in support to achieve efficiencies, and an expectation that educators will add a suite of digital learning capabilities to their quiver in their free time. In terms of understanding how some of the powers-that-be understand 21st century education, this post is eye opening.

How dark patterns trick you online video from Dark Patterns (7 mins)

User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) has come into its own as a discipline in the last decade or so in helping us to understand how we use the web and how to design better and easier interactions. The shadow side of this – “Dark Patterns” – sees business and designers exploiting these principles to make users do things that they didn’t mean to using design tricks and cognitive science. This video explains some of these common tricks and the site overall offers some valuable tips to deepen our digital literacy.

“The end of Blackboard as a Standalone EdTech Company” from Phil on EdTech

While the title of this article veers toward the dramatic, the recent merger of the Blackboard LMS company and Anthology, a company with products on the student management, enrolment and retention side of things is kind of a big deal. This article walks through the details of this merger with somewhat of a business focus but it also discusses possible implications for particular platforms and institutional users. Given that Blackboard still has approximately a third of Australian LMS market, this is something useful to stay on top of.

Games for Change Asia Pacific Festival Oct 5th – Oct 7th

On a slightly more cheerful note, the expanded Games for Change festival is coming up in early October. This free online event offers more than 80 speakers talking about different ways serious games, game-based learning and other associated technologies are being used in tertiary education and beyond to help build a better world. It includes a mix of presentations and interactive workshops.