Of course, what many of you may not realise is the strong role ASCILITE have had in the project so far, and how this role will continue, at least over the next few years. While Rob gave us a glimpse of this in our first podcast, here Geraldine LaFoe, Vice-President of ASCILITE, tells us more about the important role ASCILITE will play, and how (and why!) you can become involved.
For more information on the project, please visit the website
The newest initiative to emerge from the Carrick Institute was discussed this morning in a very interactive session with ASCILITE members. The Resource Information Network Project will use a range of technologies, including Web 2.0, to bring people together who share common interests in teaching and learning – an overarching community that will go beyond the current discipline or institution-based initiatives already happening in Australia and internationally.
It makes sense really – how many times have you heard people say at this conference, ‘Oh, our work is so closely related. We’ll have to keep in touch!’ But the logistics of developing and sustaining such a network stumped quite a few members at the morning session. Is it to be a peer-reviewed digital repository, or a dynamic community for collaboratively developing resources? And why do we need this anyway, when we already have a whole host of resource repositories which are being underutilised?
We talked to Elizabeth Greener and Rob Phillips to work out what this project means for us. They clarify many points in this complex yet visionary project, and give us a sneak preview of what we can expect over the coming months.
We were fortunate to have four respected editors share their time and expertise with us. Roger Atkinson, Catherine McLoughlin, Grainne Conole and John Hedberg pointed aspiring researchers-looking-to-be published in the right direction to get published and to gain those all important DEST points, citations, and all the other measurables of success in the academic world. The audience contained a high portion of researchers with limited publishing experience, and even some journal ‘virgins’ – waiting for their first time!
The editors were within their comfort zone in the early stages of the questioning, which focussed on the practical aspects of submitting papers and reviewing (one had to feel sorry for the many ‘blind’ reviewers out there). But the audience was not going to let them sit there
But what is the publishing of the future, who is going to double blind referee the Stephen Downes’ blogs? will bloggers get DEST points, and what of collaborative publishing – we teach our students to collaborate, we encourage teamwork, but if we as academics publish, we do it alone (who would share their points and funds four ways when you can keep it yourself?).
How effective is asynchronous conferencing in enabling students to reflect on, elaborate and challenge ideas? Caroline Coffin from the Centre for Language and Communications at the Open University UK, reports on the studies conducted by herself and her colleagues which investigated CMC’s use as a medium for developing students’ argumentation skills. This framework allows researchers to systematically examine such claims and to gain insight into individual and collective processes of argumentation and learning.
What are the indicators of quality learning in student CMC contributions? Are they easily discernable? Can this framework be developed to help with the difficulty of assessing and determining quality student CMC contributions? Caroline answers these and other questions here…
Online learning has been around for quite some time now, why haven’t we done a whole lot more with it? This was just one of the questions that Rod Sims from Capella University put to the participants at this very thought provoking session called “Reinventing and reinvigorating instructional design: A theory for emergent learning”. Indeed, the participants probably left with a lot more questions than answers, but that was probably the effect that Rod wanted to achieve!
Rod discussed his and Elena Kay’s work in the area of emergence theory as a means to interpret and redefine current approaches and models of instructional design. Rod proposed that with this theory, learning can be understood from more complex and ‘chaotic’ perspectives.
What is currently missing from the current instructional models that can be drawn from multi-disciplinary perspectives? What can we learn from the more organic and self-regulating emergent social, recreational and educational networks?
While this may be a challenging and complex area Rod makes it a not to be missed discussion….
In this podcast, Catherine McLoughlin shares some of the passion and insight that she and Joe Luca shared in their formal presentation on some of the dynamic forms of authentic assessment that are driving learning today. What are Web 1 and Web 2 technologies? What do our students want, how can we, or should we, give them what they want? And what are the pedagogical challenges in designing for this practice?
The Open University in the UK, with some 200,000 students, faces particular challenges as it moves towards a new VLE with the implementation of an open source LMS in 2007. Chris Jones and Grainne Conole from the Institute of Education Technology at the OU posed the question, “Who will own the new VLE?” and shared some of the issues faced by those responsible for introducing staff to the new VLE and encouraging new practices, together with some solutions, including the use of toolkits.
In various presentations over the past two days we’ve heard the comment, ‘Why are we so slow in taking up elearning initiatives? We’ve been shouting about their potential for years, yet here we are again, still convincing people that it’s worthwhile!’ Have you heard (or felt) the same thing at ASCILITE 2006?
Diane Salter of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, along with Wendy Myers and Geraldine Lafoe of the University of Wollongong gave separate presentations on blogging this morning to a packed room of e-learning professionals. Although blogging is one of the newer technologies to emerge over the past few years, we thought it was worthwhile to explore this idea of technology uptake – why are some academics so resistant and what have been their tactics for moving beyond this?
But of course, we were specifically interested in blogging, particularly why a busy academic would even bother with blogs as well as different scenarios where they could be most useful. We came away with some great tips of what to do . . . and what not to do in your first blogging experience. Hope you enjoy this interview as much as we did.
Learners in our courses are from increasingly diverse backgrounds. Are our online learning environments culturally suited to our learners? What are their learning preferences and how can we design courses that are culturally conducive for learners? Andrea Hall from Sultan Qaboos University considered many models that might prove suitable to provide as a basis for these guidelines. Just why did Andrea draw on Vygotsky’s sociohistorical theories? Here’s what Andrea had to say…
It’s been a buzzword throughout the ASCILITE conference – and no, it has nothing to do with what we’re doing here with our podcasting blog!
Whatever you think about it, podcasting seems to have people talking at ASCILITE 2006. Belinda Tynan and Stephen Colbran from the University of New England were certainly the focus of much attention this afternoon in their presentation on podcasting in the UNE Faculty of Law.
In one of the largest studies undertaken so far, Belinda and Stephen tell their own ‘war story’ about student reactions to podcasting of law lectures – and it’s a happy ending. Forget about stories of pandering to the needs of the net generation – over 30 percent of their students were over 35s, and still loved it! From allowing students to control the delivery of content (pause, rewind) to the flexibility of managing their own time, students found that podcasting had a positive influence on their learning, including increased comprehension, engagement and motivation. It even influenced attrition rates!
Podcasting clearly has great potential, and we were glad to be able to chat further with Belinda and Stephen about their work and what the future holds beyond podcasting. It’s our prediction that we haven’t heard the last from these two . . .
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